The Investing Edge
of Enterprise IT
Jan
2013
Technology Drives Change at a Top Global Bank
Ascent strives to anticipate long-term technology trends within the enterprise that can change business for the better. Taking the long view means the technologies we identify can take years before their impact is felt at the enterprise level, so it’s encouraging to get a glimpse of emerging areas of technology that are already driving massive change at large companies. Recently
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Jan
2013
StartApp Named One of 2012’s Fastest Growing Startups
Business Insider recently released a list of the “5 Fastest Growing Startups of 2012,” comprised of emerging companies with the potential to “transform industries and the business world at-large.” We’re thrilled to see one of Ascent’s portfolio companies on the list: StartApp, which Business Insider deems “poised to significantly impact the mobile industry.” StartApp’s mobile app monetization platform recently surpassed
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Jan
2013
4.4 Million Big Data Jobs? Not So Fast
Gartner made headlines recently when it predicted big data would create 4.4 million jobs by 2015. The analyst firm opined that there’s not enough hired talent to meet the challenges of big data and finding opportunities to turn information into revenue. Gartner reasons that big data will accelerate growth in the global economy and create job opportunities. On the surface,
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Dec
2012
Five Winds of Change in Enterprise Sails (Sales)
If there was one theme that consistently arose during our enterprise sales strategy forum a few weeks ago, it was that selling to business now is a completely different ballgame than it was 10 years ago. Our panel, made up of sales and IT executives from companies like Staples, HubSpot, and American Tower, among others, provided significant insight into how
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Dec
2012
Infographic: ClickFox Finds Shoppers Get Better Customer Service Online
Last week Ascent portfolio company ClickFox published the below infographic, which shows two major trends at work simultaneously: how Big Data insights can illuminate consumer behavior and how retail is evolving from bricks-and-mortar to multi-channel commerce, which Ascent calls “More clicks, less bricks.” ClickFox leveraged more than 500 million consumer behaviors across their customer base to reveal that shoppers are
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Nov
2012
Winning the New Enterprise Sales Game: This Week’s B2B IT Forum
We are very pleased that our second B2B Enterprise IT Forum was so well received. Thank you for all of the positive feedback. We had a strong turnout, smart questions from our audience, and great advice from our panelists on how to successfully sell enterprise IT. If you weren’t able to attend, we’ve compiled some of the key takeaways from
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Nov
2012
Ascent Index: Cybersecurity
AT&T last week reported that cybersecurity was a billion dollar opportunity for the company, as attacks on its networks had doubled in the past four months. But it’s not just the telecommunications giant that hopes to seize on the cyber opportunity; many leading companies – be they Google, IBM, General Dynamics or countless others – have acquired information security vendors
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Oct
2012
Big Data Still a Tough Nut to Crack
Last week, when I was at the Xconomy Future of Big Data event moderating a panel on analytics & data infrastructure, one of the speakers essentially said the term ‘Big Data’ is somewhat meaningless. He’s right, of course; there are too many important sub-categories for one overarching term to have any real meaning. He also made the point, which I
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Oct
2012
Young Turks in the Enterprise
There was a widely circulated news item recently that tried to explain the mindset of this year’s college freshmen, noting that, for them, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Kurt Cobain have always been dead. (Message to this generation: please do yourself a favor and delete a few LMFAO and Lady Gaga tunes from your iPod in favor of selections off Nirvana’s
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Oct
2012
Congratulations, Copiun
Congratulations to Puneesh Chaudhry and the Copiun team on their recent acquisition by Good Technology, and to Puneesh personally for his 40-under-40 nomination by the Boston Business Journal. Puneesh is a friend and Copiun is a local company we’ve followed for over a year. Puneesh deserves a lot of credit for foreseeing the enterprise world’s movement toward consumerization and BYOD,
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