11 Israel-related headlines from the week of April 12, 2009
Filed under: BTM, Cleantech, Company Briefs, Environment, Information Technology, Mergers and Acquisitions, New Ideas, Partnerships
During the week of April 12, 2009, talk continued about the pros and cons of Shai Agassi’s electric car plans and Check Point announced its purchase of Nokia’s security appliance business. In addition, business transaction management (BTM) company, OpTier was named a 2009 Hot Company by Network Products Guide and frogs might hold the answer to the effects of alcohol during development. For these headlines and more, check below for this week’s 11 Israel-related headlines.
Cleantech
Saving energy – one step at a time
Investments, M&A and the Economy
Check Point Software Technologies acquires security appliance business of Nokia
Int’l credit crunch shifts Israeli business focus in China
Information Technology
PeerTV Announces MX 3.0 Content Management Tool
OpTier Named a 2009 Hot Company by Network Products Guide
Miscellaneous
Israel turns to robotics to boost students’ interest in high-tech industry
Israeli companies make Forbes’ list
Frogs Reveal Clues About The Effects Of Alcohol During Development
Despite economic climate, OpTier raises $63 million in funding
Filed under: BTM, Information Technology, Performance Management, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Uncategorized, VC, virtualization
Last week, OpTier, an Israeli business transaction management software company, announced that it had successfully raised $63 million in its latest round of funding to focus on its product line and market expansion. While $63 million in funds raised is impressive at any time, it is especially impressive now given the unstable global economy and the impact it is likely to have on Israel’s economy in the next year.
This was fourth-round funding though, so presumably OpTier is established enough and has a viable enough plan to improve its product and expand its market share that investing such an amount is much less of a gamble for investors compared to an investment of $4-7 million in a seed or early stage startup seeking funding.
OpTier’s product, CoreFirst, does seem to be a winner. Written off in its first few years as unlikely to stand a chance against competition from companies such as BMC Software, Computer Associates, HP, IBM and Mercury Interactive, OpTier has become one of the leaders with CoreFirst being identified by Forrester Research as bringing Business Transaction Management (BTM) to Business Service Management (BSM).
According to the company website,
“Based on unique Active Context Tracking™ (ACT) technology, our CoreFirst® product assures that business transactions flow smoothly within IT applications and infrastructure, without bottlenecks or outages, for improved end-user experience and reduced cost.”
The latest version of CoreFirst, CoreFirst 3.0, was unveiled earlier this month and promises enterprises the ability to deploy it in even the most complex of IT environments to link business and IT so that transactions flow smoothly through the IT infrastructure, ensuring that services remain uninterrupted and business goals are met. CoreFirst 3.0 now also supports the Microsoft Application Framework (.Net).
Some of its features include:
- “Built-in real time ability to continually benchmark business transactions performance across tiers and provide alerts when SLAs are breached.
- Full recording of every business transaction executed in any system it monitors, so you can easily track every transaction’s execution throughout customer facing systems, backend supporting systems, and shared services environments, pointing out how much time was spent at each stop and how many resources were consumed.”
Plans for this round of funding were first announced in May shortly after B-hives was acquired by VMWare and OpTier noted that the market is consolidating. Whether or not the economy will impact OpTier’s vision or abilities for acquisitions should be seen probably in the next few months.
Company Facts
Founded in 2002.
Headquartered in New York. R&D in Ramat Gan, Israel.
Dov Gal, Co-founder, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer.
Amir Alon, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer.
Four co-founders in total.
Product: CoreFirst
Website: www.optier.com
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