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

Batteries Not Included

Saving energy – one step at a time

Going On A Water Cequesta

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

Red Bend Software ‘Continues to Dominate’ in Firmware Over-the-Air Updates, According to New Ovum Study

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

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