wilmatmlaskowsk-blog

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Seattle startup raises $1.3 million to encrypt the cloud

Kory Gill’s “a-ha” moment came in the form of a lightning bolt that struck his Seattle home and fried his computers. In the aftermath, his wife’s main concern was whether their digitally stored family photos had survived the blast. “What more of a sign do you need to go start this company?” Gill recalled his wife asking him, who used the scare to leave a 20-year career at Microsoft (MSFT.O) and launch his own online backup company. Three years later (Reuters first interviewed Gill in 2009), Gill and co-founder Marius Nita – a former Microsoft colleague – are seeing some traction with Newline Software Inc, having launched the first version of their online storage product, Exact, into the market in August. Gill told Reuters they have just closed their latest financing round – Newline’s third – to bring their total funding to $1.3 million. The money, raised from friends and family, will be spent on improving the product, growing the brand and building a new software platform that will allow Newline to encrypt every piece of data stored online, or in “the cloud,” said Gill. The platform called OPTIC (Online Privacy Technology In the Cloud) is an application programming interface (API) that Gill hopes will give Newline a competitive advantage over much larger rivals such as Carbonite and Mozy. “There are a lot of online backup products out there so we needed a way to differentiate ourselves,” said Gill, referring to OPTIC as an “index to encrypt data in the cloud.” Newline is really two different companies: an online data storage service (Exact) where users store files and a software program (OPTIC) that is able to protect and archive sensitive data stored anywhere on the Web. OPTIC can be used on any platform, meaning Mozy or Carbonite customers can use it to encrypt their files, said Gill. He also noted that because Newline encrypts every piece of data, customers are able to retrieve files exactly the way they originally saved them, something the competition doesn’t currently offer. “The impact of that is (if) you backup all your pictures and news stories over the last year and you get a new computer and restore all those files to your computer they all have today’s date on them,” said Gill, who confessed that most of these advantages could be adapted by competitors within “three months.” Newline also faces a tough challenge competing for users against Carbonite (CARB.OQ), a publicly traded company that has raised more than $60 million in venture capital, that spends far more on customer acquisition costs. Gill, who won’t disclose the company’s number of users, said Newline aims to grow at roughly a tenth of the rate as Carbonite, which has more than a million subscribers. Newline will target “smaller incremental more steady growth,” said Gill, adding they will look to attack the crowded space in different ways. “We’re looking for the blue oceans,” said Gill, whose company eschews flat monthly fees, preferring to charge customers for what they actually use. “We have some markets and niches that are not being noticed by the current players in the space and that’s where we’re making our largest inroads in some of the spaces that are being overlooked.” He added that Newline also promises “100 percent data privacy,” which means none of its staff can see the files they store. Gill said this service is unique to Newline and  something that will be especially attractive to businesses that have highly sensitive legal and financial information. Gill is trying to transition Newline more towards the data privacy spectrum, where its software has “applications far beyond what we’re doing.” He said cloud computing is still in its infancy and companies like Newline are just starting to discover how people store their personal data and share it between devices such as personal computers and smartphones. “Like any product that has just launched part of our struggle and job is to make a name for yourself and be seen as a reputable service,” said Gill, adding Newline will be looking to attract some venture capital going forward “to really make a dent here.” See related Reuters video:

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UPDATE 1-Suntech sees U.S. solar market at 2 GW this year

DALLAS Oct 17 (Reuters) - Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd expects U.S. solar installations to reach about 2 gigawatts this year, a senior executive said on Monday.Most industry projections were for between 1.5 and 1.6 GW for the U.S. market for this year, compared with less than 900 GW last year.Including Canada, this year's number could be 2.2 or 2.3 GW, Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Beebe said. That would be greater than the capacity of two large nuclear reactors.At the same time, the German market in the second half of the year has been slower to pick up than the company had expected, Beebe said."Europe is going through a lot of macro issues in terms of finance support, and a lot of people are waiting for a lot of things," Beebe said in an interview. "Sometimes they are waiting to see how much lower can panel prices go ... other people are waiting to see when can financing stability sort of re-enters the world over there."The erosion of subsidies in Germany and Italy, the world's two biggest markets, and rising production of the panels that turn sunlight into electricity has left the industry awash in a glut of equipment and driven panel prices down by some 35 percent this year.That is good news for consumers and distributors who buy the solar modules, but has left manufacturers reeling as their profit margins shrink and their share prices plummet to multi-year lows. Suntech's stock, for instance has sunk 72 percent this year.In the United States, Suntech is supplying modules for Sempra Energy's 150 megawatt Mesquite Solar 1 project in Arizona. It has already delivered 140,000 panels to the site, or 15 percent of the total, Beebe said.Suntech will recognize revenue from the Mesquite project over six quarters, Beebe said.

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Group of US senators press for a refinance plan

Interest rates on a 30-year fixed mortgage dropped to 3.94 percent for the first time last week, according to Freddie Mac. There are nearly 19 million loans guaranteed by both mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in which borrowers pay interest rates above 5.0 percent that could benefit from refinancing, the senators wrote.The bipartisan group, led by Senators Barbara Boxer and Johnny Isakson, sent the letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward DeMarco and National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling.The Obama administration is working with FHFA to ease rules to make refinancing more accessible under its two-year old initiative called the Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP. The program is open to borrowers whose loans are backed by Fannie and Freddie and are having trouble making loan payments since they owe a large portion of their home's value.Specific changes to HARP are expected in a few weeks, Geithner told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.The group of lawmakers said they support improvements to HARP that address hurdles that have limited its success, "including representations and warranties, mortgage insurance, and high lender origination fees.""All of these changes can be accomplished administratively and we urge that you take immediate steps to do so," the letter stated.

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Fed up with Washington, wealthy boycott campaign fundraising

* Rich blame portfolio losses on politiciansBy Jessica ToonkelOct 12 (Reuters) - They might not be among the jobless protesting against Wall Street, but the rich are angry, too. Furious over U.S. government gridlock, the wealthy have their own form of protest: Refusing to make political contributions.A number of financial advisers say their wealthy clients have told them they will not make political contributions this year, many for the first time ever.Bessemer Trust CEO John Hilton says in his 42 years advising ultra high-net worth investors, he has never seen clients so frustrated with the state of affairs in Washington.He said a number of the firm's clients - who have an average of $30 million in investable assets - say they believe a lack of leadership and political wrangling are the primary cause of recent market problems - and the declines in their portfolios. Because of that, they say they're saying no to requests to make political contributions."People are pissed," said Alan Ungar, an adviser with Critical Capital Management Inc. in Calabasas, California. His clients have an average $1.6 million or more in assets invested with the firm. "This isn't about taxes," he said. "It's about the partisan dynamic."Political contributions from wealthy donors are crucial for presidential campaigns, said Michael Beckel, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks donations and their impact on elections and policy in the U.S.Thirty-one percent of all individual donations came from people who donated $2,000 or more during the 2008 presidential elections, according to the Federal Election Commission. "We are definitely seeing a slower start in donors giving money than we did four years ago," Beckel said.In the second quarter of 2007, Republican candidates raised about $115 million from individual donors. In the second quarter of this year, the latest crop of candidates raised about a third of that, according to the Campaign Finance Institute.ON THE SIDELINESThe frustration among wealthy donors has been building throughout the year.For months, Congress fought about raising the federal government's borrowing limit. An agreement to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending in August came just in time to avert a possible debt default but concerns about the gridlock and the nation's budget deficits led credit rating agency Standard & Poor's to remove the United States' triple-A rating.In the weeks that followed, stock indexes have seen wild swings, including a record number of days of 400-plus point swings in the Dow Jones industrial average.Markets have remained volatile since and the gridlock continues. On Tuesday, the Senate blocked President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs bill.One client told Hilton that he was recently contacted by the political party he is affiliated with to make a contribution. He told Hilton that he declined, telling the caller that considering the situation in Washington and with his retirement account down 25 percent partly because of it, he didn't want to contribute.In the Washington, D.C. area, wealthy donors are often active in fund-raising for presidential campaigns. This year, many are sitting on the sidelines, said Ted Halpern, a Rockville, Maryland-based financial adviser whose average client has more than $2 million in assets."My clients are the ones who are usually hosting fund-raisers at their homes," he said. Many have historically been staunch Democrats, but Halpern said this year some say they might vote for a Republican because they hope a change will lead to action of some kind in Washington, Halpern said."There is just a lot of resentment out there," he said.Jim Heitman, an adviser with Compass Financial Planning in Alta Loma, California, whose average account size is $1.3 million, said several of his clients are usually active in their parties. But this year, they're doing less and some are using the money they earmark for political contributions to pay off mortgages on vacation homes or to invest in alternative assets like gold, he said."The attitude is increasingly 'a pox on both their houses,'" Heitman said.