There are two primary reasons why, the first of which is obvious: Companies are tired of managing applications and infrastructure, so something that optimizes a common task using techniques they don’t know on servers they don’t have to manage is probably compelling. It’s called cloud computing.

The other reason is that the big part of big data really is important if you want to get a really clear picture of what’s happening in any given space. While no single end-user company can (or likely would) address search-engine optimization, for example, by building a massive store comprised of data from hundreds or thousands of companies as well as the entire web, a cloud service dedicated to that specific task can.

From web security to systems management, we’re already seeing how centralized data stores provide SaaS companies a broad view into what’s happening that can then be filtered down to serve each individual customer’s specific situation. BloomReach, a SaaS startup that helps companies optimize web-page content, is another good example of this principle in action.

How do you say, “cotton maxi dress”

Ideally, BloomReach Head of Marketing Joelle Kaufman told me, the company wants to help customers ensure they get found in web searches by making sure they’re not invisible (buried deep down), irrelevant (not saying anything meaningful on their sites) or incompatible (not speaking their consumers’ language). On Tuesday, the company announced a new feature called Continuous Quality Management, which lets customers continuously monitor their pages to ensure they’re still featuring the right products and the right terminology. It’s the latest addition to a seemingly useful service that’s built atop a big data foundation few — if any — of its customers would ever attempt to build themselves.

BloomReach is able to help companies optimize their sites because it’s constantly crawling the web in order to figure out how everyone else is describing their content, laying out their pages and structuring their links. Running on the Amazon Web Services cloud, BloomReach runs more than 1,000 Hadoop jobs a day that process about 5 terabytes of data and a billion data points about users’ site behavior. With the latter, co-founder and CTO Ashutosh Garg explained, the company is trying to figure out who’s visiting sites, what they’re doing, how long they’re spending there and how they’re related in terms of behavior.

“You need to have the right amount of data and from the right places before we can do anything with it,” he said. “… It’s a massive machine learning problem.”

When you consider all the possible ways something could be described or formatted, the scale of the problem becomes more evident. Simple semantic analysis like associating “desk” and “table” is easy, Garg explained, but what if some wants a lightweight camera and you only have its exact weight listed without any indication of how it compares to other options? What if people searching for “smartphones” really mean “Android phones,” but you’re top-loading your results with BlackBerry phones and Windows phones?

Another of Garg’s hypotheticals has to do with consumers’ presentation biases. If, for example, they’re looking at a lot of websites that look the same or focus on the same things (e.g., megapixels for digital cameras), they’ll expect to see the same things from every site.

10 nonillion possibilities: Choose 1.

From a sheer numbers perspective, things get even hairier when you’re trying to determine the relationship between any two pages in order to figure out the best path for links to to take. Garg said this is what computer scientists call an NP-complete problem, which means the amount of time it takes to process the results is exponentially greater than the amount of content you’re analyzing. So, for example, analyzing 40 pages doesn’t take 10 times as long as analyzing 4 pages, but more like 100 times longer.

Actually, BloomReach CEO Raj De Datta gave me another example of this problem when we spoke in early 2012. Here’s how I described it then:

[I]f a company wants to display just 1,000 products across 100 pages, De Datta explained, there are 10-to-the-28th-power (10 octillion) possibilities for how to do that. When it comes time to describe those products, there are 10-to-the-30th-power (10 nonillion) possibilities.

If a website has a million pages, Garg said, “it will take you longer than the life of the universe to solve that problem.”

Where this type of problem arises, BloomReach turns to Monte Carlo simluations, a favorite technique of physicists and Wall Street quants. The method involves running lots of simulations over large data sets in order to determine approximate results in a reasonable time frame. (And if all this isn’t enough computer science and cloud infrastructure for you, I suggest attending our Structure conference in June, which features a who’s who list of speakers, including Google’s Jeff Dean, Facebook’s Jay Parikh and Netflix’s Adrian Cockroft.)

Different queries, different pages

Things get even trickier when you’re trying to change the content of web pages in real time as people are searching for things. This isn’t the best method for organic search, where pages need to stay pretty consistent with the indexed versions, but it can be ideal in situations such as paid search and mobile. There are millions of ways to segment buyers, Garg explained, and how accurately you assess their intent and display your content can make the all the difference. Whether someone is a new or repeat visitor often matters, as does whether someone is price-conscious (e.g., the query included “cheap”) or perhaps searching for a particular brand.

Source: BloomReach

Around the holidays, the company actually realized something interesting: The bounce rate on queries for things like “gifts for dad” or “gifts for co-workers” was pretty high, but so was the conversion rate. The time to conversion was relatively fast, as well. It turns out, Garg explained, that people don’t like to overthink certain gifts too much, so if something is presented in a visually appealing manner and is within their price range, they’ll buy.

But creating these types of models involves more than meets the eye. For all the talk about machine learning — and machines do a majority of the work for BloomReach — people also play a critical role. A person might know better than a machine whether something was likely purchased as gift, Garg explained, or they might spot the offensive content on the T-shirt the machine decided was ideal.

“Humans are really good at creativity, thinking through stuff,” he said.

Smart humans are also good at knowing when they’re overmatched, which is why SaaS is so valuable in the big data era. CMOs could try doing what BloomReach or similar companies such as DataPop are doing, or they could pay someone to do it much better. Guess which route the smart ones will take.

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Zact is one of the new breed of mobile virtual network operators (MVNO), though ItsOn CEO Greg Raleigh refuses to use that term to describe his company. Like any MVNO, Zact doesn’t own any spectrum or wireless network infrastructure. It buys its access from a larger carrier instead – in this case Sprint. But Raleigh argues that MVNOs typically repackage traditional mobile voice and data plans, selling them at cheaper prices and without contracts. Meanwhile, Zact is offering a radically different way to buy services, making its plan options so granular that customers can tailor them specifically to their mobile habits.

Zact is actually a lot like Ting, an MVNO launched by Tucows last year that allows customers to select their voice, data and SMS usage separately, lets customers share those services across multiple phones and charges customers only for the minutes, texts and megabytes that they actually use. Zact, however, is taking that concept one step further.

The company plans to offer plans you can customize by the app. For $5 a month you could choose an unlimited Facebook or unlimited navigation and mapping plan, which would exempt either service from your monthly data usage. The virtual carrier is also supporting granular parental controls, which could let adults remotely control when their kids use their phones, but also who they call and what types of apps they can access.

The mobile industry has been talking about such app-tailored plans for years, but, except for a few limited cases, carriers have yet to implement them. The reason Zact is ahead of the curve is because ItsOn core business is in the policy management technology that powers such service models. While there is a huge segment of the wireless industry dedicated to building network-based traffic shaping and policy service technology, ItsOn is trying upend that market by virtualizing all of those capabilities in the cloud.

ItsOn is already trialing its technology with four major carriers – three in Europe and one in the U.S. – but the company wanted to jumpstart demand for such customizable service plans by launching its own service provider, Raleigh said. He added though, that ItsOn has no plans to shut down Zact even if it proves successful selling its cloud policy service to carriers.

ItsOn, however, faces a lot of competition on both sides of its business. The big telecom vendors like Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Oracle and Cisco Systems have been upping their game in the policy management space, in many cases buying up smaller policy players. Alcatel-Lucent recently unveiled a new consumer-facing phone client and back-end management system called Smart Plan that supports most of the same plan tailoring features Zact and ItsOn offer.

The MVNO market is becoming an increasingly crowded one, as well. Ting not only has a head start over Zact, it’s also supporting many new and popular smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S 4. Meanwhile Zact is selling two older LG Android devices for now. Dozens of other MVNOs are vying for consumers’ attention, and though they may not have the granularity of Zact or Ting’s service plans, they’re all trying to distinguish themselves with other features just as likely to attract consumers’ attention such as ultra-cheap pricing or unlimited data.

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I feel like we are on the cusp of a similarly fundamental shift in business software. Once again, the change is about rethinking business applications, but this time it is with a mobile lens. When talking with companies that don’t have a specific mobile strategy, I keep hearing about how mobile is just a feature of cloud-based applications. Yet when we meet with entrepreneurs who are building “mobile-first” business apps, we can see a completely different way of thinking: Leveraging the unique capabilities of mobile devices is at the core of every decision they make.

At Emergence, we have put together a first cut at defining the emerging mobile business app landscape based on conversations with over 100 early stage companies. Here’s a look at our findings:

Vertical apps: field-based, on the go

Vertical apps are defined by their singular focus on industries that have a substantial cohort of non-desk workers. Real Estate is a great example. The industry has been notoriously slow to adopt new technology, but in the last two years there has been an explosion in mobile-first technology solutions. For example, Cartavi’s mobile solution for real estate transactions gives agents, buyers, sellers, and related parties (mortgage banks, title companies, etc.) the ability to store, access, update and share transaction documents in the cloud.

On the construction side of real estate, PlanGrid is eliminating reams of paper-based blueprints and change orders with a rich mobile app built specifically for the iPad. Given the field-based nature of the work and its traditional reliance on paper-based solutions, it makes sense that real estate is one of the most crowded boxes on the Emergence mobile business app landscape.

Healthcare and education are other verticals that are particularly well-suited to mobile business solutions. In these sectors, most mobile business apps are enabling entirely new forms of communication, rather than replacing paper-based solutions. Doximity offers a professional networking solution for physicians that hasn’t existed before (Disclosure: The author’s firm, Emergence Capital Partners, is an investor in Doximity). More than 160,000 doctors have joined the network and over 75 percent of their engagement is through mobile devices.

Other vertical categories including restaurants, transportation and hospitality have begun to attract attention, and we predict that we will soon see more apps in the manufacturing, retail and agribusiness verticals, given the “always on their feet” nature of the workers in these sectors.

Horizontal apps: innovating on existing services

Looking at horizontal apps, most start-ups emerge in three sub-sectors: productivity; mobile marketplaces; and sales, marketing and services. A defining characteristic of the companies in the productivity space is their focus on leveraging the native integration of email, desk and calendar in mobile devices. For example, Tylr Mobile has recently launched a new mobile app for salespeople called Workinbox that directly connects salesforce.com data with email. Another young company, Cloudmagic, has developed mobile search capability that allows users to find names, documents, or other files stored in any of your cloud-based applications (e.g. email, calendars, Box, Evernote).

In the mobile marketspace sector, many business apps share a heavy reliance of location-based services. There are several promising car service companies such as Uber, Flywheel, Hailo, and Taxi Magic that enable drivers to find passengers through a marketspace leveraging GPS data. Another interesting company, Quri, has developed a mobile platform that uses both GPS data and mobile cameras to crowdsource in-store intelligence for consumer brands.

Within the sales, marketing & service, ServiceMax, has developed a mobile solution that helps companies manage the entire field service process including scheduling, parts and contracts (Disclosure: The author’s firm, Emergence Capital Partners, is an investor in ServiceMax). The company sells into over 20 verticals, and its bookings increased over 150 percent relative to last year. As we think about the other horizontal sub-sectors, some companies that stand-out have found innovative ways to use mobile cameras (Expensify, Flint), alerts (PagerDuty), and even the headset jack (Square).

Unsolved challenges remain

At Emergence, we feel optimistic about the tremendous growth in mobile business applications that we have seen over the last 12 months. However, like all nascent categories, there are many unsolved challenges. Distribution issues come up during every conversation we have with entrepreneurs. All mobile business app entrepreneurs want to figure out how to leverage mobile app stores more effectively, but most struggle to do so.

In addition, founders are working through the question of whether to native-build mobile business apps or to use a browser-based approach. To date, I have found that native apps tend to provide a better user experience. Further, business users often like access to their applications even when they don’t have connectivity – which makes native apps a better choice today. However, developing and maintaining native apps across multiple platforms is challenging and costly. I am hopeful that the evolution of HTML5 will help entrepreneurs achieve the benefits of both.

As we look ahead, we know the mobile business app landscape will continue to evolve. We realize that we have likely missed some great companies, so please let us know if we missed you. Or if you are thinking about other ways to categorize the companies, it would be great to share ideas.

Kevin Spain is a General Partner at Emergence Capital Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm focused on Enterprise SaaS. He sits on the board of several companies, including Doximity, Viglink, and Welltok.

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According to the release, Adobe’s popular desktop tools — Illustrator, PhotoShop, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Premiere Pro — will be rebranded as part of the new Creative Cloud SaaS offering and carry a CC label (e.g. Illustrator becomes IllustratorCC).

For anyone in the media business –including yours truly — this is a huge milestone. Nearly every publication relied on Illustrator to create artwork, and PhotoShop to tweak and touch up (occasionally rebuild) photographs. InDesign contended with Quark as the page layout and production software of choice.

According to a company statement:

“While Creative Suite 6 products will continue to be supported and available for purchase, the company has no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products. This update to Creative Cloud includes the next generation of Adobe desktop applications — including Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC and Premiere Pro CC.”

Adobe Systems is not facing this cloud dilemma alone. Microsoft is trying to ride the wave while offering Office 365 subscription while continuing to update its legacy Office desktop versions.Who knows how long that will last.

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Think about how many other cloud database services, platform-as-a-service offerings and — if you can count that high — software-as-a-service applications have launched in the past few years. If the 75-percent-of-all-startups-fail statistic applies equally to cloud computing as it does to other sectors,  we’re about to see a lot more sad emails to users warning them to move their data or find a new provider within the next month.

It sucks to think of adopting a new, presumably useful service as a significant risk, but that’s exactly what is if your data is trapped in some proprietary format or can’t be easily exported. The tide may be turning, though.

We can’t recreate cloud services, but maybe we can extend their lives

According to Mike Driscoll, founder and CEO of cloud-based analytics service Metamarkets (see disclosure), one of the major problems with cloud services is today is that they’re just not designed to be easily replicated. This creates problems when customers — particularly large enterprises — approach cloud providers with contractual conditions that harken back to the era of actual on-premises software. Essentially, they want the cloud version of a software escrow account that would place the service’s source code with a trusted third party and, should the company cease operations, would allow the customer to keep running the service on its own infrastructure.

For now, the response has been to push back on those requests because it wouldn’t really be possible to run the service anywhere other than where it’s currently running. Driscoll said many SaaS applications today — his own included — are “fairly monolithic in the way they’re architected,” which means there’s a strong dependency between the applications and the cloud operating system on which they’re running. He thinks it’s possible that hybrid cloud deployments could help solve the problem (e.g., what OpenStack, Cloud Foundry and Amazon-Eucalyptus theoretically would allow for), but that a feasible hybrid model is probably a few years out.

However, services like Metamarkets, also require a centralized data model (a la Bloomberg terminals) so much of the value is lost if customers all run their own versions on their own servers. For situations like this, he’s heard it proposed that service providers could put cash rather than software into an escrow account, and the cash would pay for a skeleton crew to manage the service for a year, let’s say, so customers would have ample time to find an alternative.

A screenshot of the Metamarkets service

Until things some of these mitigation strategies get figured out, it’s probably more of the status quo for cloud adoption. Small businesses will likely assume more risk and rely heavily on cloud services, while larger companies will use them for non-mission-critical applications or when they’ve received adequate assurances of security and stability. “When you’re GE or JPMorgan,” Driscoll said, “you’re never going to create a dependency on any application that can just get unplugged.”

How insurable are you and your cloud provider?

Maybe the answer is to adopt but protect. I used Xeround’s closure as a reason to catch up with CloudInsure, a cloud-ratings firm that I first covered as it was just starting in 2011. The idea behind the company is to serve as an actuary for insurance providers that want to get into the business of insuring cloud computing customers like they previously have with managed hosting customers and general purchasers of IT equipment.

The way it works is by analyzing some 140 factors about both the user and the cloud provider(s) in order to assign a risk score. So, a high-risk user (e.g., one with highly regulated, very valuable data) might cost more to insure even though its cloud provider is rated as a very low risk. The inverse could be true, too, where a low-risk user could choose to deploy on a high-risk cloud service. Founder Drew Bartkiewicz said CloudInsure covers IaaS, PaaS and SaaS providers, and the financial stability of the provider is among the variables its models consider.

Depending on the insurance policy, insured companies would receive monetary remunerations to mitigate against an outage, breach or closure that required them to pay penalties to customers or regulators, or to move to another cloud provider. Insurance broker Lockton is already offering a cloud insurance product through the International Association of Cloud and Managed Service Providers, and has a partnership in place with CloudInsure, as well.

CloudInsure has solidified quite a bit since we last spoke, established some significant partnerships and, Bartkiewicz told me on Thursday, is about ready to make its service a lot more public.

The insurance model could prove to be a really big deal, especially if it helps smaller cloud providers gain a foothold that will allow them to flourish. Right now, a prudent CIO might decide to opt only for services from companies he assumes aren’t going anywhere — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM and the like — when insurance might make it a little easier to take a risk on something that might pay bigger dividends.

Besides, it’s not as if being part of a large vendor is always a sign of stability: VMware bought and then sold an app-development technology called WaveMaker in a two-year timeframe, but it just as easily could have killed the business rather than try to sell it. I have reached out to Amazon Web Services to discuss the circumstances under which it would ever consider terminating a service, but have not received a response.

The internet never* forgets

When you look at the topic of web service closures beyond business applications, you actually see just how perplexing and possibly problematic it is. Screenshots might exist of services such as Google Reader and Posterous, but myriad dependencies on other services might make them impossible to recreate even if you had the source code. Unique file formats and other development decisions could present problems for digital archivists trying to preserve the web in a way that’s accessible by future generations.

“This is a case where the internet is more forgetful than the things that came before it,” Driscoll quipped. “The internet never forgets, until it does — and then it forgets everything.”

Disclosure: Metamarkets is a portfolio company of True Ventures, which is also an investor in GigaOM. Om Malik is also a venture partner at True.

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Starting this summer, customers paying to use the Salesforce customer-relationship-management (CRM) system and the Social.com publishing and monitoring tools will be able to combine both with the new functions. Gordon Evans, vice president of product marketing for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, said he expects customers to be primarily advertising and marketing agencies, big companies with in-house marketing and advertising operations, and gaming companies that run lots of advertising campaigns.

Once the new features are in place, if an ad agency wants to run a targeted Facebook or Twitter ad, it will be possible to aim the ad at people in the client’s lead pipeline. Those people are already documented in the CRM, waiting to be contacted or otherwise encouraged to close on a deal; it’s just a matter of using the existing intelligence in conjunction with social-ad publication tools to try to reach them in new ways. If more potential leads get thrown into the CRM, the ad will be able to target them, too. Users will be able to view tweets emerging in real time and perhaps uncover new leads. They can also manage multiple campaigns and compare them all to figure out which ones generate the highest click-through rates and cost per click.

Salesforce.com is adding customer-relationship management tailoring to social publishing tools.

The combined capability relies on pieces of software resulting from Salesforce’s acquisitions of Radian6 and Buddy Media, which together cost Salesforce more than $1.01 billion. More new features are surely on the way. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in February that he wants to make more acquisitions this year, particularly in marketing — and adding more mobile functionalities is a focus this year, too.

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Invariably those companies have targeted the mobile carriers that run those networks, but a new startup called Wandera is focusing its MDO technology on the people who get stuck paying those data bills: enterprises. Wandera has attracted the attention of Bessemer Venture Partners, which lately has been investing heavily in the telecom and mobile infrastructure space. Bessemer is the sole investor in Wandera’s Series A round, forking over $7 million.

Wandera was founded by Eldar and Roy Tuvey, two brothers from London who created security software-as-a-service company ScanSafe and sold it to Cisco Systems in 2010 for $183 million. After working for Cisco for two years, the Tuveys decided to return to the SaaS model with a new startup, this time selling optimization rather than security software to their enterprise clients.

Eldar Tuvey said Wandera has built what is in essence a cloud proxy server through which all phone-bound HTTP traffic is routed on its way to an enterprise’s mobile devices. During that traffic’s brief stay in that cloud, Wandera applies any number of optimization and compression techniques intended to reduce the amount of data that flows over the airwaves to those devices – and ultimately reduce the mobile data bill the company has to pay each month.

But Tuvey said Wandera is providing more than just a megabyte-culling data grinder. It’s developed a sophisticated set of monitoring and control tools that allows an enterprise to keep tabs on what apps, webpages and services its employees are using and to apply specific policies on that use.

For instance, an enterprise could set strict limits on social networking use, banning it outright or imposing caps on the amount of data an employee can consume in the Facebook app. Or it could prohibit video streaming when employees are roaming internationally, but allow it when they’re on their home networks.

Tuvey said enterprises can even go so far as to apply specific optimization features depending on the app used. So a company could let employees consume as much video or social networking content as they please — as long as they’re willing to put up with choppy frame rates and pixelated images.

“They can implement whatever policies they see fit,” Tuvey said. “It’s completely up to the company.”

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Yet ironically, in an era when technology rules, IT departments are losing ground fast:  The forces of cloud computing, social media, and information management are evolving rapidly, and business managers are discovering and adopting new technology before IT departments even have a chance to master it. Gartner Research predicts that by 2015, 35 percent of most companies’ technology-related expenditures will be managed outside the IT department’s budget.

In order to thrive and have an impact in today’s businesses, IT departments must stay relevant. They must become service-oriented organizations. That means deploying user-centric and agile solutions that meet the business needs of the organization and individual departments. That means delivering IT as a Service (ITaaS), and becoming a team of service-oriented experts.

SaaS: An often too-quick fix

The increased availability of Software as a Service applications (SaaS) makes it easy for individual departments to “go rogue” within an organization. Employees sign up for inexpensive outside-the-firewall public-cloud SaaS apps because they are convenient, easy-to-use, and address immediate needs – and because they believe they can meet their business needs better and faster than their IT department.

But users inevitably run into problems and end up going to IT for help. They may need to integrate the public-cloud application with another internal service, and/or import or export data. Then IT staff find themselves in an awkward position. They have to quickly master the application, understand the problem, and solve it. Along the way, they will likely identify risks associated with the use of this product – including critical security issues. Had they been involved right from the start, they could have provided real strategic value instead of simply putting out fires.

The lure of the public cloud

Likewise, developers are under the gun to conceive, prototype, and test applications, and then to get them into production. They often turn to public cloud providers for initial prototyping, testing, and even final deployment. The cloud offers a easy, self-service platform that developers can control and works the same across the development, testing, staging and live deployment phases. This practice relegates the IT department to the sidelines, and can minimize its value to that of maintaining legacy systems and infrastructure.

Breaking the vicious cycle

IT departments that remain passive legacy-system babysitters will be caught in a vicious cycle. Today, it is the CIO’s responsibility to bring awareness in the organization about the hidden dangers of decentralizing IT. There are four major ways to elevate IT’s role within the business, transforming it from being an old-school roadblock to a visionary service-oriented enabler:

• Be proactive to build internal relationships. The IT department is uniquely fundamental across all areas of an organization, and must capitalize on that. IT staff must show others how well it understands the business, helps users visualize what is possible, and how IT will enable them to achieve their goals.
• Evangelize how central IT safely, responsibly and responsively serves the organization. If business departments are implementing a SaaS app to solve a problem or if developers are deploying code to a public cloud during prototyping and testing, the IT department should, for instance, demonstrate how the cloud can be unpredictable in accessibility and performance, and be rife with security issues. Make the case that IT always puts the business first, safely and securely.
• Become SaaS experts. Even if a department is convinced that a public-cloud SaaS app can solve a specific need, it is critical for IT to be involved from the beginning. The requesting department can judge which apps can best solve their problem and provide the most value, but IT can consider the security, governance, and interoperability angles.
• Provide a self-service platform for the company’s developers. A good enterprise-ready Platform as a Service (PaaS) will convert a static infrastructure into a dynamic powerhouse. An enterprise-ready PaaS will support any application written in any language and framework on any infrastructure that IT has access to. From development through production, the developers can control a self-service platform, which is safe and secure.

The new IT: Win-Win-Win

This new service-oriented central IT model can deliver new  benefits, including lower costs (by eliminating duplicate projects among different departments), more interoperability between differing SaaS applications, improved cohesion among departments, and reduced security risks.

Faster time to market for internal applications dramatically impacts the development side in an organization. An enterprise PaaS provides a common platform environment throughout the cycle and eliminates inconsistencies between development and final deployment. With PaaS, developers can now use the “right tool for the right job,” because any language and framework can be deployed in production.

Bart Copeland is CEO of ActiveState. You can read his blog posts here; follow him on Twitter @Bart_Copeland.

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Previous investors including Benchmark Capital participated in this round as well. Insight and T. Rowe Price accounted for three-fourths of the latest round of funding, with half of the total money coming from Insight. The company has so far raised about $115 million, and after this round is valued at $750 million. Cirne had previously started Wily, which he sold to CA for $375 million. He started New Relic to offer network application monitoring as a cloud-service back in 2008. He declined to share the company’s revenues but they are estimated to be in the range of tens-of-millions of dollars.

“We are aiming to eventually go public and all the pieces are in place for us,” Cirne said in a conversation. Cirne is betting that company will keep the current trajectory and will go public, perhaps as soon as 2014. He wants to take a page from the play book of single-product companies VMWare and Salesforce which took relatively simple, but fast-growing products  - virtualization software and on-demand CRM – to build large software companies.

“We are at a point we have a large market and have a strong story so we want to put the foot on the gas,” said Cirne. According to him, the company tripled its revenue growth in 2012 and doubled its customer base during the year. New Relic customers include Comcast, Sony, ESPN, Nike, and E*Trade.

New Relic is one of the growing number of startups that are capturing the upside presented by technological shift to the cloud and the mobile. “Our next area of focus is mobile, and mobile visibility,” Cirne said. “Virtually every one of our customers is asking for more mobile intelligence.”

The company recently announced a brand new iPhone app that is getting positive reviews from New Relic customers. In addition, the company is looking to expand its presence in Europe and also ramp-up its sales efforts. The company currently has 200 employees and it plans to add another 100 in next few months.

When I asked Cirne if he is going to go out and make acquisitions, he said his preference is to build products in-house but again, he knows time is of essence and will be opportunistic because “sales are very important to us as well.” With a valuation of $750 million it has some flexibility when it comes to making acquisitions.

My colleague Derrick Harris wrote about Cirne’s management strategy and how he turned New Relic into a sales machine. New Relic was named to the GigaOM Structure 50 list in 2011 and was one of our picks for cloud  startups to watch.

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I suspect the Office 365 outage is related to making the "new" Office 365 plans available to current subscribers.—
Ed Bott (@edbott) February 01, 2013

More here from  Neowin.net and Engadget and ZDnet.

This snafu — which appears to be resolved — comes a few weeks after a Hotmail and Outlook outage. Microsoft resolved that issue in a day,  although judging from comments on GigaOM’s January 8 post, the problems persisted for some users.

This has been a bad week for a lot of online services, with both Twitter and Amazon.com (no not AWS — Amazon.com) experiencing glitches yesterday. But Microsoft faces unique issues as it tries to move more of its productivity applications revenue over to a subscription-based SaaS model without denting its juggernaut on-premises Office business. The growing popularity of Google Apps makes this a particularly pressing issue for Microsoft.

RT @mvanhorenbeeck All in all, the #Office365 issues got solved relatively quickly. <- Indeed. One hour orso?—
Dave Stork (@dmstork) February 01, 2013

Microsoft has been contacted for a comment. Story will be updated when they get back.

Update: According to a statement emailed by a company spokesman:

“Some Microsoft services experienced a short-term issue as a result of a networking adjustment. We worked quickly to roll back the adjustments made and all services are now restored to normal.”

This story was updated at 11:00 a.m. PDT with Microsoft comment.

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