LOS GATOS, Calif. and ATLANTA (Nov. 20, 2008) — Cloud Sherpas, a pure-play cloud computing systems integrator, has selected TriCipher to deliver strong authentication, single sign-on convenience and identity federation to its portfolio of enterprise-ready cloud computing solutions. Together, the businesses are enabling mid-to-large enterprise IT organizations to securely embrace IT services delivered via the Web and realize the overall economic and productivity benefits of cloud computing.

“We’re guiding large organizations to the cloud every day,” said Michael Cohn, CEO at Cloud Sherpas. “TriCipher’s myOneLogin allows us to create ‘Private Clouds’ through its federation capabilities and deliver secure single sign-on across the portfolio of cloud solutions we offer to enterprise customers.”

Securing access to sensitive company data

Cloud Sherpas offers an alternative to legacy, on-premise messaging and collaboration solutions, specializing in enterprise migrations from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes to Google Apps for enterprises. TriCipher’s myOneLogin provides secure single sign-on to a portfolio of Internet applications, including Google Apps, and protects businesses by:

• Safeguarding logins with strong authentication, delivered seamlessly as an on-demand service
• Enabling IT managers to instantly revoke privileges from end-users when they leave the business, helping prevent unauthorized access to sensitive company data

“In today’s economy, businesses are rapidly adopting cloud computing solutions to boost productivity and cut costs,” said Vatsal Sonecha, vice president of business development and product management at TriCipher. “As a leading cloud computing systems integrator, Cloud Sherpas is now offering their enterprise customers a strong authentication, single sign on solution that integrates across their product portfolio.”

Creating a federated environment for enterprise cloud computing

TriCipher’s myOneLogin Federation lets partnering businesses communicate securely, by extending the identity assurance measures of one company to another while offering fast-growing online communities the ability to expand at a moment’s notice. Employees benefit from having a single site to access all their online applications and IT administrators benefit from having a federated management console for those applications. myOneLogin Federation is the only entirely web-based solution – making activation immediate and giving any business the ability to safely control when and how they connect to new partners, by managing their own private clouds.

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About TriCipher

TriCipher, Inc. provides a unified authentication infrastructure to protect web and enterprise portals, the people that use them and the business process that flows through them against fraud and identity theft. The TriCipher Armored Credential System™ (TACS) is the first authentication system that enables companies to deploy and manage multiple types of credentials from a single infrastructure. Through this flexible “Authentication Ladder,” TriCipher protects customer investment by adjusting authentication strength to defeat new threats and to meet regulatory changes without the need to implement a new infrastructure. Recently, TriCipher introduced myOneLogin™ the first secure on-demand offering that delivers strong authentication, single sign-on (SSO) convenience and the ability to seamlessly integrate multiple Software as a Service (SaaS) applications in a single solution. Founded in 2000, TriCipher is headquartered in Los Gatos, Calif. The company is funded by ArrowPath Venture Capital, EPIC Ventures, Intel Capital, RBC Technology Ventures, and Trident Capital. For more information, visit TriCipher on the web at www.tricipher.com.

About Cloud Sherpas

Cloud Sherpas (www.cloudsherpas.com) is a pure-play cloud computing systems integrator, delivering a suite of solutions that enable mid-to-large enterprises to improve productivity, reduce cost and lower risk. The company has earned the confidence of customers in a wide range of industries and holds the distinction of being an enterprise deployment partner for Google, EMC, TriCipher, GoGrid, Nirvanix and other leading cloud computing vendors.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

Since sometimes reading “lol” doesn’t deliver the same punch as actually hearing your friend laugh at your jokes, you can now use voice and video capabilities in your Gmail chat. From within Gmail, you can have an actual conversation with someone (seriously, out loud), or even chat face to face over video.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

• • Download the Gmail voice and video chat plug-in, quit all open browser windows, and install the plug-in.
  • Sign in to Gmail.
  • In the Chat section of your Gmail, select the contact you want to call. If they have a camera icon next to their name, you can make a voice or video call to them; just click Video & more

If your friend doesn’t have a camera next to their name in your chat list, you can invite them to download the Gmail voice and video chat plug-in from the Video & more menu in a chat window. Even if your friend doesn’t have a video camera, you can still make a voice call or a 1-way video call.

As someone who has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours helping large enterprises transition to the latest and greatest collaboration and messaging tools, I’m constantly impressed with the way the Google builds and implements products.  But enough about infrastructure; it’s not nearly as cool as the end results.  See the screen shots below.

Screen Shot of Google Talk Video

Let’s take a deeper look at the reality of what Google provides; the chart below from the Radicati Group documents average downtime as experienced by business for several enterprise messaging systems on a monthly basis.  It’s clear that the traditional on-premise approach is at least an order of magnitude less reliable than Gmail.   

Email Up-time Comparison

I am not one to be swayed by reports & averages, and real world experience trumps any marketing hype or consultants research, in my opinion.  In this light, we setup our own enterprise monitoring solution that tracks Google on a regular basis.  

The charts below are from monitoring our own internal Google Apps Gmail over the last few months. Keep in mind, this is actual production data, not just a simple “ping” of gmail.com.  These results are based on successful log-in actions via an automated script, performed every minute from no less than 12 internationally dispersed servers that intelligently check for full Gmail availability.  

Google Apps Gmail Downtime for Cloud Sherpas

If you look at things in even more detail, you can see that not only is Google delivering on the SLA, they provide a great user experience.  See the response time graph below; this is the amount of time that it takes for the login process to occur.  Google is providing sub-second response time over this entire same period.  How long does it take you to login to your current on-premise mail system?

Google Apps Gmail Response Time

They might also mention how many laptops have been stolen or lost in the last year.  Let’s face facts; people who want your data would rather steal the laptop of a Product Manager or Sales Director to have all of the contacts, emails, and documents locally than spend all the time and effort to hack firewalls, crack passwords and then cover their tracks.  Does your company have encrypted PSTs or My Documents folders on laptops?

Now let’s contrast this situation with Cloud based email at Google.  If my laptop is stolen, the thief gets nothing.  There’s no data stored locally on my machine.  Google even takes things a few steps further to ensure security and privacy.  

At the bottom of every Google Mail page, you will notice a button called “Activity”.  If you click on it, it displays not only the address of all the recent connections to your mail but also the method (imap, browser, etc…).  Even more, with Google Apps, you can automatically enforce SSL encryption at the domain level.   

Google Activity Details

Need more security?  How about the fact that Google Apps includes Postini Message Security and Discovery at no additional cost.  This includes spam control, anti-virus protection, and message filtering.  Need still more?  With Google’s support for Single-Sign-On, we can implement multi-factor authentication which means that even if a password is compromised, additional private information is required to access the account.  

In reality, Cloud computing provides better security in a quicker and efficient way.  If you too have “security concerns”, we would love to talk with about how to improve your controls, while reducing costs.  To set up a demo or just get started with a trial deployment, contact Eran at 404-665-3132 or email sales@cloudsherpas.com.

I know that many of you will remind me how you diligently store all of your documents on the corporate file server, and the system administrators will elaborate on scripts mapping users’ “my documents” back to network share or use an off-line/folder sync solution.

The reality is that many users (i.e. folks like consultants and sales reps that travel and are out of the office regularly) don’t ever get the important files on to the corporate servers. External drive manufactures picked up on this right away; they put “One-Touch” buttons on USB drives that allow you to do a “complete backup with the touch of a button”. In my world, that’s still too much to remember, and even once I remember to do it, it takes a long time and slows down the machine. I can’t remember the last time that I was ever able to recover a useful file from a USB drive.

Enter Mozy Enterprise. Last night, I needed a customer presentation that I’d left on my laptop back in the office. Since Mozy is service that runs in the background on your PC, it had already backed-up the file to EMC’s data center, and I was able to login to the website and retrieve it, even though my machine was off. I know that even if my laptop died or was stolen today, I would have all the important stuff that I need without any effort on my part.

Mozy Enterprise is a perfect fit for business that need an easy and managed solution to keep remote offices and road warriors protected. It comes with full-featured web-based console that let’s IT departments specify backup policies, configuration settings, and recover files, all using SSL and AES encryption. All this costs about the same as a new pair of tennis shoes. How valuable are your documents?

If you are interested in learning more, setting up a demo, or just getting starting with a trial deployment, contact Eran at 404-665-3132 or email sales@cloudsherpas.com.

Are you a little in the dark about where the Omni box is? Well, its better know as the address bar. Yes, in the same place that you would normally type “www.mysite.com”, is where you can also just type in text as if you where on the Google search page. Too easy.

Not content to leave things well enough alone, Google added the ability to customize the engines that are processing your searches; this means that if you have other places that you frequently search, like wikipedia or even Google Docs, you can easily add these engines to the default list. Here’s how:

Right Click in the address bar and select Edit Search Engines and on the next window select Add. You need to give your custom search engine a name and keyword. On the URL box, paste in one of the URLs listed below. Now when you search, these results will be included in the list. How simple was that? Feel free to post a comment

Wikipedia - URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s

Google Images - URL:
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=%s&btnG=Search+Images

Google Maps - URL:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=%s

Digg.com - URL:
http://digg.com/search?s=%s

September 12, 2008, by Allan Maurer

ATLANTA—Cloud computing providers such as Google, EMC and others rely on a channel partner to educate, train, migrate and support firms using their products. Cloud Sherpas, a startup founded in July and one of 15 in the Atlanta CapVenture program this year, plans to be that guide to cloud computing.

Founder and CEO Michael Cohn tells TechJournal South the company is self-funded now and seeks a $500,000 angel round to establish itself as a cloud systems integrator.

“We’re building a service practice and a support organization to help companies move to the cloud,” he says. On the Google side, for instance, the company plans to help large organizations migrate from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes to Google Apps for Enterprise.

The idea is to give firms migrating to the cloud environment “a local throat to choke,” says Cohn.

“Companies with 100 to 2,000 seats is our sweet spot,” he says.

Cohn says the initial stage of the business looks like a consulting organization, but its goal is to build a platform that enables secure integration.

The advantages of cloud computing are obvious, Cohn notes. “It’s a much lower cost (than licensing software outright). It enables a company to reduce capital expense and move the cost to operational expense by paying for IT as a service. Cloud computing takes the concepts of Software as a Service and utility computing and puts them under one umbrella.”

Cloud Sherpas will have a charge back on vendor per seat fees and will charge a recurring support fee, which Cohn says will be “nominal.”

“If you compare the cost of total ownership to ours, it’s a savings of from 50 to 70 percent while getting higher levels of service,” he says.

“Cloud computing is future proofed. In the traditional model of installed software, you have to update and patch it. In cloud computing, as improvements are made, you get them on the fly. That’s the benefit of multi-tenant architecture.”

Cloud Sherpas currently has a staff of four counting Cohn. “We expect to grow to half a dozen by the end of the year and to 12 by July of next year,” he says.

His partners include Eran Gil, VP of Business Development; David Hoff, VP of Technology, and Neal Miller, CFO.

All have years of experience.

Cohn says CapVenture coaching has been “very valuable.”

“We’re partners with Pete Privateer of Reflex Security (as a coach in the CapVenture program). It’s fantastic that they partner entrepreneurs with seasoned veterans,” he says. “It’s a great benefit to be able to bounce your ideas, your business plan, and your issues off of people who have been there before.

“The access is remarkable for someone who does not necessarily have a deep network in Atlanta. Just getting accepted to CapVenture opened a lot of doors for us. We hope to close a couple of new partnerships in a couple of weeks that are a direct result of being part of the program.

The CapVenture program runs from August 19, 2008 through October 7, 2008 and will conclude with an investor event to be held at the ATDC on October 7, 2008. It is sponsored by the Advanced Technology Development Center and the Technology Association of Georgia.

This year’s coaches include some of Atlanta’s most highly respected entrepreneurs and executives including: Jamie Bardin, James Davis, Mike Eckert, Kelly Gay, Scott Geller, Dave Gould, Doug Hadaway, Sanjoy Malik, Sanjay Parekh, and Peter Privateer.

On the Web: www.cloudsherpas.com; www.atdc.org/capventure/; www.tagonline.org

With all the excitement around the release of my new favorite browser, Chrome, Google also managed to expand the growing suite of Apps last week to include Video. The primary use cases are still developing, however, product training seems to be an obvious fit.

What you get

With Google Apps, Premier Edition, you now get Google Video included at no additional cost. Each clip can be up to 300MB in size, and you get 3 GB of video storage per user account. Administrators have a variety of controls over the service, such as being able to edit or remove clips, generate usage reports and create tag taxonomies. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

1. Share rich video information – Video sharing makes important communications like internal trainings and corporate announcements more personal, engaging and effective.
2. Keep videos secure and private – Employees can securely share videos with select coworkers or everyone at the company without making confidential information public.
3. No large files or complex infrastructure – Google securely hosts and streams your videos, so employees don’t need to share videos over email, or burden IT for a video solution.
4. Everyone at your company can contribute – Employees can share videos instantly. Viewing and annotating doesn’t require any special software, just a standard browser.

Web 2.0, refined.

As it turns out, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and even Mozilla’s Firefox were never built to be traditional application platforms.  They have provided a useful way to surf links and store bookmarks, but that’s about it.  Think about the last great or even signifiant innovation to come from either; tabbed browsing?  plugin support?

Well, once again, Google re-wrote the book today.  They’ve released an open source browser that brings incredible business value to the cloud.  Here’s what they have to say about their newest project, the Google Chrome Browser.  Why not try it right now -> http://www.google.com/chrome  

At Google, we spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And like all of you, in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends - all using a browser. People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they’re doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.

Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

So today we’re releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff - the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better . By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done. We’ve released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and we’ll continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path. We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others - and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

But enough from us. The best test of Google Chrome is to try it yourself.

“CapVenture has proven to greatly increase the probability of a company successfully raising funds,” said Cindy Cheatham, ATDC Director of Business Development and CapVenture Program Director. “Our selection process for this year’s class was challenging in that we saw increased demand for the program and an uptick in the quality of applications received.”

The companies selected to participate this year include: Arterain Medical, Cloud Sherpas, Event Seek, GadZeus, G2 EcoSolutions, Gotham PC, InterCAX, LocalPrice, ProperNotice, Purewire, Queuent, Radiance Energies, Renovo Data, Servinity, and WORKbits.

The CapVenture program will run from August 19, 2008 through October 7, 2008 and will conclude with an investor event to be held at the ATDC on October 7, 2008. The program, developed by the ATDC staff will be delivered in partnership with the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). This year’s coaches include some of Atlanta’s most highly respected entrepreneurs and executives including: Jamie Bardin, James Davis, Mike Eckert, Kelly Gay, Scott Geller, Dave Gould, Doug Hadaway, Sanjoy Malik, Sanjay Parekh, and Peter Privateer.

To learn more about CapVenture including viewing a full list of program sponsors, visit http://www.atdc.org/capventure/

About the ATDC

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) is a nationally recognized science and technology incubator that helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful companies. ATDC provides strategic business advice and connects member companies to the people and resources they need to succeed. Based at the Georgia Institute of Technology, ATDC has been recognized by Inc. and BusinessWeek as among the nation’s top nonprofit incubators; more than 100 companies have emerged from the ATDC. Founded in 1980, the ATDC has locations in Atlanta and Savannah. Since 1999, ATDC companies have attracted more than a billion dollars in venture capital funding. For more information, please visit http://www.atdc.org.

About Technology Association of Georgia

The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to support its members by generating opportunities for personal, professional and business growth. By forging strategic alliances, TAG serves as a primary catalyst to foster a rich environment for economic development in Georgia’s technology community. TAG is made up of 5200 members representing technology leaders from over 1000 Georgia-based companies, affiliated technology and business organizations. For more information on TAG, visit http://www.tagonline.org