moka5™ Announces Additions to Executive Team and New moka5 Engine
moka5 Engine Makes It Easier to Create, Manage, and Use Virtual Computers
VMworld, Booth # 933, San Francisco, CA - Tuesday, September, 11, 2007 — moka5 announced today Mike Schwartz as Vice President of Engineering and Sheila Tan-Salvucci as Vice President of Marketing for the fast growing company. moka5, which has raised $15 million from Highland Capital Partners and Khosla Ventures, makes computing life easy, safe and available anywhere — at work, at home, or on the road.
"I am excited to build on our already established technical foundation and add two seasoned executives to our growing company," said Bill Demas. "Mike and Sheila have demonstrated experience introducing cutting edge products into emerging markets, working in fast-paced environments, and understanding the needs of small to medium-sized businesses and consumers. As people across the world continue to use computers and handheld devices in their everyday lives, virtual computing will fast become a technology to make specific and individual computing environments safe and easy to access from anywhere."
Mike brings proven experience in leading engineering teams to build and deliver bleeding-edge software from his work at Six Apart and OpsWare/Loudcloud, among other companies. Sheila has a proven track record of leading customer discovery processes and leveraging customer insights to drive product concepts and value proposition communication from her Intuit and Procter & Gamble background along with her experience in developing marketing teams to scale for mass market introductions.
moka5 also announced today the new beta version of its moka5 Engine for Windows and BareMetal. moka5 Engine is a software application for subscribing, running, creating, distributing, and updating LivePCs. A LivePC is a complete virtual computing environment including an operating system and applications tailored by a IT administrator for business or personal use and can be used online or offline, making it possible to work anywhere, anytime. LivePCs are always "live" meaning users automatically receive updates in real time as the administrator posts them, with no need for servers or cumbersome desktop software installations.
moka5 Engine beta provides a streamlined and intuitive user interface with few buttons, wizards, and preconfigured LivePC templates to make it even easier to build and use a LivePC in just a few clicks. In addition, moka5 Engine makes it possible to drag-and-drop LivePC shortcuts to the desktop or start menu to launch LivePC without needing to launch moka5 Engine. Also added into the new beta release is the one-step download making it possible to have the LivePC links automatically download moka5 Engine if it is not already installed, making it easy to share LivePCs with others, even if they don't have moka5 Engine installed. Mobile users can also now protect their moka5 Engine with a password, making the mobile use of LivePCs safe and secure.
For a limited time, moka5 Engine for Windows and BareMetal are available for free. Visit www.moka5.com to receive a free hosted LivePC, a free copy of moka5 Engine, or make use of an existing LivePC from the moka5 library.
The growth in the desktop virtual computing market is being driven by several factors including the need for organizations to maintain control over their computing assets and intellectual property and the need to integrate the organization's IT environment with remote workers. And, as people in the real world continue to use their computers and handhelds to manage their daily lives, mobility becomes critical. With moka5 Engine, moka5 is the only company to highly leverage virtual computing technology and provide software to make it easy to create and run a LivePC. The complete LivePC computing environment along with moka5 Engine to play the LivePC can be carried on a portable storage device, such as an MP3 player or a flash drive.
More about Mike Schwartz
Mike joins moka5 with almost 25 years experience managing, designing
and implementing complex software and hosted operations. Mike has
proven experience in developing packaged software in emerging market
categories. Having developed several leading-edge technologies into
shipping products, Mike has worked for several of the largest websites
in the world. Most recently, Mike was vice president of engineering
and operations for Six Apart where he was responsible for pulling
together the robust technology foundation and turning it into a
shipping, packaged solution for a variety of vertical markets
including small to medium-sized businesses and individual
bloggers. Previously, Mike was Elemental Security's vice
president of engineering, where he built the engineering team to
successfully ship their enterprise-scale security system on time and
on budget. Prior to that, Mike led world-class engineering teams at
Opsware/Loudcloud and Branders.com, once again providing market
leading solutions in new market categories. Mike also worked for GO
Corporation, where he built applications for pen-based computing
devices. He worked at Sun Microsystems as a software engineer working
on GUI toolkits, and he began his career at Metaphor Computer Systems
where he worked as a software engineer designing WYSIWYG applications.
More about Sheila Tan-Salvucci
Sheila joins moka5 with over 17 years experience working for
multi-national consumer brands, mid-sized software companies, and
start-ups. Sheila has extensive experience in understanding consumer
behavior as well as developing and scaling marketing organizations to
enter emerging markets. Most recently, Sheila was vice president of
marketing for Presto where she ran marketing to help consumers "stay
connected" by making it easier for them to share digital content. As
Intuit's senior director of marketing for Quickbooks, Sheila was
responsible for developing and managing the central marketing
organization that helped drive the innovation and growth of the
Quickbooks franchise in the SMB market, which tripled in revenue
growth under her leadership. Sheila began her career at the consumer
packaged goods giant Procter & Gamble, where she led the development
and introduction of several new products and held key brand management
positions, including Crest. She led new product innovation and
marketing for online start-up, Reflect.com, specializing in meeting
the diverse needs of women in the custom cosmetics industry. Sheila
also serves as an advisor for Global Giving, "a marketplace for
goodness" designed to connect people to charitable organizations.
About moka5
Founded in 2005, moka5 is a virtual computing company whose mission it
is to make your computing life easy, safe and available
anywhere. moka5 Engine is a software application for subscribing,
running, creating, distributing, and updating LivePCs. The company has
raised $15 million from Khosla Ventures and Highland Capital Partners
and is based in Redwood City, California. For more information, visit
www.moka5.com.
Press Contact:
Kelly Brieger
Manning Selvage & Lee
650-704-1748
[email protected]
