SmartPilot Blog

Stealth Israeli start-up Kaminrio to be revealed at SmartPilot

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:38:27 +0000

Good news are trickling down the grapevine, Dani Golan, Co-Founder, and CEO of Kaminario will exclusively unveil the developments of his company at the upcoming SmartPilot event.

Kaminaro has raised a venture capital investment from Sequoia Capital fund and Pitango Venture Capital and holds a development center in Yokneam.

It is yet to reveal its storage solution to the global community.

Final: SmartPilot to be held at the Avenue Convention Center

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:31:44 +0000

We are pleased to announce that the First SmartPilot Conference for 2010 will be held on February 8th, 2010 at the Avenue Convention Center, Airport City, Tel Aviv.

Finding a convention hall capable of hosting four simultaneous panels was complicated, but the Avenue Convention Center will allow us to have an central event, split into four groups as well as provide a fantastic networking area.

Dr. Alex Winokur, former CTO of XIV and founder of Axxana, to present at SmartPilot

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:38:51 +0000

I met with Dr. Alex Winokur today, and to my delight, he agreed to present his new, latest solution at the upcoming SmartPilot convention.

Lifting a 200kg storage solution up on stage may prove to be difficult, but on the other hand, Winokur promises that should a catastrophic, apocalyptic event take place, Axxana's box will survive and safeguard our data.

Anyone needing any further details is welcomed to check out Dr. W inokur's bio, but I will make note of the fact that he has 15 patents to his name through IBM as well as his former position as CTO of storage company XIV, which was sold about two years ago for $350 million.

Wanova to Demo at SmartPilot

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:51:43 +0000

and here I thought the SmartPilot event demo list has closed, but I just received a confirmation from Dr. Issy Ben-Shaul, one of the founders of virtualization start-up Wanova, that he will be making the trip to Israel to present the Wanova demo in our Virtualization session.

Alongside Etay Bogner, founder of Neocleus, and Ophir Kra-Oz (founder of CloudShare), I’m pretty sure we’re covering a good majority of the virtualization-related development being done by Israeli start-ups. If you’re planning to attend the convention, feel free to prepare some tough questions for the founders – I’m sure they’ll be up for the challenge.

Ben-Shaul, like most of the presenters attending SmartPilot, has an impressive biography. His previous start-up, Actona, was sold to Cisco for about $100 million. Full details regarding Ben-Shaul’s lecture, will be updated in the next week.

Tersus to Present Visual Development Tool for iPhone

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:43:53 +0000

Ofer Brandes, CTO of Carmel Ventures and one of the founders of start-up Tersus, will present in the upcoming SmartPilot convention his company’s development application for iPhone apps.

Tersus, which up until now focused on developing a graphic-oriented (as opposed to code) tool for designing organizational applications, is now turning its attention to the iPhone market. They offer one of few development environments that do not require the use of the Objective C coding language, with an option to run the in-development applications on a windows machine.

Aside from providing an open-source, free iPhone dev application, one which doesn’t require a Mac or use of the iPhone SDK, Tersus’ platform allows reuse of an application for different operating systems. Thus, a developer of an iPhone application can use the code he developed through Tersus to create an Android application, or an organizational one.

During his lecture, on Monday, February 8th, Brandes will demonstrate the concept of visual development with Tersus, and will hold a live demo of building an iPhone app without a proprietary Apple development tool.

The XIV Effect – SmartPilot Panel feat. Leading Venture Capital Partners

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:18:55 +0000

I am pleased to announce that in the upcoming SmartPilot convention, I will moderate a panel that may prove to be quite interesting. The panel will consist of the top representatives of the Israeli venture capital industry, chiefly from those funds that invest in start-up companies.

On the panel will be Genesis’ Adi Shalev, Sequoia’s Gili Ra’anan, Gemini’s Daniel Cohen and Graylock’s Erez Ofer. All four are chief partners with a lot of experience in the global IT market. Many of the companies these four have invested in, will in fact be demoing at SmartPilot.

While preparing questions for the panel I nicknamed it with the codename “the XIV effect”, while not the official name of the panel, I am intrigued in finding out how important is a successful technological pilot in a large-scale organization is for a start-up looking for a successful exit.

I seem to recall the stories about the famous pilot held by the folks at XIV at Bank Leumi before they were purchased by IBM, or the pilot preformed by Onigma at Partner before they were purchased by McAfee. What I’d like to find out is the proper way to promote such a pilot – both for the start-up and for the organization incorporating the solution into their systems. I’ll try and discuss the optimal relationship between the start-up company and the organization’s IT managers, as well as the pros and cons an IT manager must consider before he starts such a pilot program.

Another topic, the one that will open the panel discussion, will focus on mapping future IT technologies and the future IT products the venture capital fund people believe they should invest in in upcoming years. These men have very particular information not available to analysts or IT managers, and we will try an define which IT fields no long hold any interest to them, which fields are “packed” with existing start-ups and which fields may disappear completely.

Of course, I’d be happy for active participation from the IT managers and start-up founders in attendance, and we will have microphones spread through the audience that will enable you to take part in the discussion right from your seat. The brave souls among you can take to the stage, so get those questions ready!

Head of Amdocs Venture Investments Ariel Efrati Keynote Speaker at SmartPilot

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:48:23 +0000

Good news are trickling down the grapevine, We will be joined by Amdocs’ Ariel Efrati, whom most of you are probably familiar with.

Efrati is currently VP - Head of Amdocs Venture Investments, Product M&A unit at Amodcs, and he will talk about the "Startup selection process to the Amdocs Open Innovation program".

Efrati will speak at 10:00, and immediately following his highly relevant speech, the VC panel will begin.

SmartPilot1 has concluded

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:06:26 +0000

Our next SmartPilot Convention will take place in Tel Aviv, June 26th, 2010.

SmartPilot – The Film!

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:26:12 +0000

I am proud to present the introduction video to SmartPilot1, held on February 8th.

Over the next few weeks we will upload to the SmartPilot website 15 more videos, each focusing on a different start-up founder and the solution his company presents.

Filming and Edits: Guy Raz Interviews: Lobo Weizner and Raphael Fogel

SmartPilot in the Clouds

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:48:47 +0000

At SmartPilot2 we will focus on the new possibilities opening for computing managers with the shift to Cloud Computing services.

we will listen to the new suggestions of dozens of Cloud oriented Israeli startup companies.

The program of lectures at the SmartPilot2 event are intended for those of you who intend to purchase or set up a Cloud Computing service for large organizational applications, considering setting up a private Computing Cloud for a large organization, to develop Cloud applications sold as a service to external clients, or to use computing services already existing on public Clouds.