Triangle TechBreakfast provides innovators with a platform to share, whether it’s a new app, physical product or IT solution. Check out highlights of two startups that pitched at the September 2016 event at Research Triangle Park.
DivvyCloud
DivvyCloud leverages public and private cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenStack, IBM SoftLayer, Eucalyptus and others, to provide customers with a cloud management platform (CMP) that can be customized to meet business goals.
While on stage, VP of Business Development Jeremy Snyder (pictured top) demoed how a business could utilize DivvyCloud to locate and remove unnecessary firewalls. He also walked through a July 2016 use case to illustrate how DivvyCloud’s multi-cloud application platform can optimize cloud waste and reduce costs.
According to the RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Survey, 26 percent of survey respondents labeled cloud cost management as a high level challenge, an 8 percent increase from 2013. DivvyCloud founders Brian Johnson, Chris DeRamus and Andrew Mann, all former IT managers at Electronic Arts, are aware of the complex nature of the cloud infrastructure and used their experience within the IT sector to create this software.
DivvyCloud is able to track project resources, improve security, reduce business operating costs and automate cloud lifecycle management.
When questioned by the audience about cloud optimization specifics, Snyder took a cue from his black shirt with “botfactory.io” printed in bold white and orange letters by walking through DivvyCloud’s May 2016 release of BotFactory. This addition to the DivvyCloud solution provides a deeper framework to the existing infrastructure and allows DivvyCloud customers to create cross-platform automation.
DivvyCloud was launched in 2013, in Arlington, VA, and first offered the solution solely within the AWS Marketplace. Three years later the team has a range of 12 public and private cloud platforms that their solution supports. In 2015, DivvyCloud received the Cool Vendor Award in Cloud Management from Gartner, Inc.
The Sixth Flag
The Sixth Flag offers customers a virtual Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution. This Raleigh company saw an increasing need for security solutions, with more employees within large companies traveling with their work devices and entering situations for potential data breaches and other costly security problems. The Sixth Flag virtual desktop provides a cost effective, temporary solution for clients.
Peter Kofod, company founder and CEO (pictured below), started his time on stage demonstrating the real-time deployment of the virtual desktop through his browser. His account took a few seconds to authenticate.
Kofod also showcased the company’s patent-pending watermarking technology, dewdrop.tsf™. The theft of intellectual property is an alarming security challenge Kofod has seen first hand with a past client. The watermarking tool, when deployed on a user’s screen, creates a unique pattern across the desktop.
“When information is being sold in black market forums, hackers will never transcribe the information into a cleaner document,” Kofod points out. “Traditionally they will post a raw image so that buyers know the information being sold is authentic, which also makes it more valuable.”
The Sixth Flag’s watermarking tool allows users to identify the screen that was compromised by locating the unique overlay that was assigned and halting any further attempts at intellectual property or other data theft.
Before starting The Sixth Flag with co-founder David Kinghorn, Kofod was principal of Raleigh-based Datasages Consulting Group LLC, which he founded in 2008. In October 2015, he was included in CRN’s “100 People You Don’t Know, But Should” list. The company received Gartner’s 2016 Cool Vendor Award in Endpoint Computing.
