MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Highlights Early-Stage Companies at the Forefront of Technology

Innovation Showcase Finalists Given Key Exposure at Premier Global CIO Event

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--The 7^th Annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium today announced the finalists for its first Innovation Showcase.

“MIT is all about innovation and leadership, and we developed the Innovation Showcase to highlight companies that embody these traits”

The Innovation Showcase, sponsored by SunGard Availability Services and Intuit, highlights ten outstanding early-stage companies that provide cutting-edge technology and offer new levels of value and advancement to Enterprise IT.

“MIT is all about innovation and leadership, and we developed the Innovation Showcase to highlight companies that embody these traits,” said David L. Verrill, Executive Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, and the Co-chair of the Innovation Showcase. “The Symposium provides these early-stage companies with a platform to demonstrate their new thinking and approaches to vital challenges facing CIOs in today’s changing economy.”

After several rounds of review, the Innovation Showcase Judges, (consisting of MIT faculty, entrepreneurs, and early-stage investors) chose these ten companies because they:

• Are currently selling enterprise IT solutions to CIOs today.
• Have solutions that were deemed innovative and unique.
• Offer products or services that clearly have potential to help CIOs drive top line growth and bottom line results, which is in line with the 2010 CIO Symposium’s theme.
• Are start-ups with less than $10 million in 2009 revenues.

The 10 finalists are:

• Abaca Technology Corporation from San Jose, CA
  Abaca, an innovator in email protection and messaging security, provides the world's most effective spam filter.

• Buzzient from Cambridge, MA
  Buzzient makes social media actionable for global enterprises by providing a next-generation solution for analytics and integration of this valuable content with enterprise applications.
• CloudShare from Menlo Park, CA and Tel Aviv
  CloudShare is a quick and easy way to share copies of complex IT environments, online, so users can collaborate with customers, partners, and colleagues – for demos, proofs-of-concept, training, or other enterprise applications.
• CloudSwitch from Burlington, MA
  CloudSwitch helps users migrate existing enterprise applications to the cloud simply and securely, without re-architecting the application or changing your management tools.
• Copiun from Marlborough, MA
  Copiun offers an Enterprise-Class solution for distributed PC and laptop data management, storage and search.

• Digital Reef from Boxborough, MA
  Digital Reef is the most scalable and open solution for eDiscovery and Digital Information Governance, empowering corporations, law firms, and service providers.
• effiScience from Chevy Chase, MD
  effiScience delivers breakthrough ROI by using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to optimize business performance and returns.
• Okta from San Francisco, CA.
  Okta provides a Cloud platform for managing applications. Okta transforms siloed cloud applications into a secure and manageable Cloud Area Network.
• OpenSpan from Alpharetta, GA.
  OpenSpan’s products enhance personal workflow management and the end user experience by enabling all the applications required for daily tasks to work together seamlessly.
• Yammer from San Francisco, CA.
  Yammer is a suite of applications for Enterprise Micro-blogging, Collaboration, and Real-time Communications.

The Innovation Showcase will take place 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm in the MIT Kresge Auditorium on Wednesday, May 19, 2010, at MIT, in Cambridge, MA. The full agenda of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is available at www.mitcio.com/agenda.

About the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium

The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is the premier global event for CIOs and senior IT executives to become better business leaders. In one day, CIOs and senior IT executives receive actionable information that enables them to meet the challenges of today’s changing global economy. The annual event offers a day of interactive learning and thought-provoking discourse on the future of technology, best practices, and business that is not available anywhere else. The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is organized and developed by a team from the MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston, the MIT Center for Digital Business and the Boston Chapter of the Society for Information Management. Visit www.mitcio.com for more information and registration.

To stay connected to the community developing around the Symposium, please join The Global CIO & Executive IT Group (An MIT Sloan CIO Group), which can be found on Linkedin.com: http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=1719457. Follow Symposium updates on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mitciosymposium.

Editor’s Note:

Journalists interested in a press credentials or speaking with any of the Showcase Innovation finalists should contact Rachel Greenstein ([e-mail]; +1 617.569.6269) or Robert Minicucci ([e-mail]; +1 603.488.5856), Warner Communications.