WHAT WE'RE READING
The Investing Edge
of Enterprise IT
Jun
2013
If Your Board Were “The Avengers”
Eric Schultz, HubCast Chairman and a Venture Partner at Ascent, clearly has been studying his superhero movies closely. Here Eric shares his thoughts on the similarities between Board of Directors dynamics and The Avengers. Read more of Eric’s work on the Ascent blog and on his personal blog, The Occasional CEO. For the half-dozen of you global citizens who missed
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May
2013
Financing News: PerspecSys and the Cloud Data Security Opportunity
Last week PerspecSys announced a new financing round that we participated in, alongside Paladin and Intel. We are very excited to be working with the team and our co-investors, and see tremendous potential for this company. Over the last 12 to 18 months, we have witnessed an almost seismic shift in the posture of large enterprise customers toward cloud-based applications. SaaS
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Apr
2013
Six Pre-Requisites for the New Wave of Enterprise IT Security Solutions
Given that IT security is a $60 billion market, you might think that we have robust solutions for keeping enterprise networks and data protected. But you’d be wrong. In reality, better than 1 in 5 enterprises—and likely more—has been compromised. In the past few years, the number of cyber-breaches and the sophistication of the attacks have heightened dramatically. 250,000 new
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Apr
2013
Ascent Index: BYOD (March 2013)
What a difference a year makes. Well, almost a year. For our newest Ascent Index we took another look at BYOD, the evermore popular news topic as more employees use their personal devices for work purposes. Our Index data confirms that BYOD is only gaining steam, and that’s putting it mildly. In the month of March 2013 BYOD received more
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Mar
2013
Experts Tackle Enterprise Mobility at Latest B2B IT Forum
We had well over 100 folks at our most recent B2B IT Forum, where our expert panel provided a compelling and informative discussion on the shift to mobile within organizations of all sizes. Thanks to the panel, the audience left the event smarter about how they can navigate the challenges of developing mobile apps for the enterprise.
Mar
2013
Selling Data Insights vs. Tools? Let’s Connect
I have written a number of times about the massive potential that resides in extracting insight from data. Leveraging new database, storage, parallel processing and cloud infrastructure, we can now get to these insights at cost levels and in timeframes that can impact decision making at very regular intervals and in major ways. This was just not possible a few
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Mar
2013
Announcing the Ascent Storify Page
While our singular focus at Ascent is enterprise IT, our portfolio spans a wide range of tech subcategories: Software & SaaS, Data & Analytics, Cloud Business Services, Mobility & Communications, Financial Services & Transaction Technology, and Security & Compliance. Each sector witnesses regular news and innovation, and each has numerous compelling stories. To help facilitate telling those stories, we’ve created
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Feb
2013
Mobile App Development in the Enterprise: What’s Next?
Mobile apps are expected to drive more than $38 billion in revenue by 2015, and enterprises have joined the cause. Not only has there been a significant shift in how enterprises develop and deploy software (enterprises now deploy more apps for employee internal use (22%) than consumers (12%), but smartphones have become the dominant interaction point for employees, as they
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Feb
2013
2012 a Year of Record Growth for V.i. Labs
Our portfolio company V.i. Labs recently issued a press release that highlighted the Company’s strong performance in 2012. See the release here. We are very pleased with the Company’s performance and congratulate the management team for a strong year. Software piracy remains an enormous problem for software providers. According to estimates from multiple analysts, the annual commercial value of software
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Feb
2013
Everything I Know About Pitching VCs I Learned From Monty Python (Part Two)
For part one of “Everything I Know About Pitching VCs I Learned From Monty Python,” click here. With help from The Pythons, Matt Fates and I collaborated on some ideas to help turn your exceptional slide deck into an exceptional fundraising pitch. 5) Then, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest… with… a herring! The other key to
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