Being a global leader in the billing and subscription commerce model of the new economy, Zuora, lends a helping hand to industries wanting to cross over from the old model to a newer subscription-based one.

Founded in 2007, Zuora is a company that has recognized the new age of subscription as a service model pretty early on in this game. It prefers to describe itself as relationship business management company that helps you manage subscription across customer segments, your revenue inflows, recurring receipts and payments, order tracking etc. Essentially, it helps you manage aspects of your business which deal with subscription as a business model.

Subscription as a business model, is a new way of thinking and of doing business. If, as a company, you have yet to switch over to the new subscription-model economy, and you are used to working on ERP and SAP based models, you may rightly question the need to switch over to this subscription model. Tzuo of Auora has a ready answer for you.

Simplification of a working system is a sign of its genius, and the new age thinking of subscription-as-a-service is nothing but that. Although ERP and SAP have both worked consistently in the past for many companies, they are very tedious and time consuming to setup and maintain. This is especially true in large multinational corporations.

That does not go to say that subscription as a model can be setup by a child. It certainly has its own challenges. But in the long run, it streamlines and simplifies your business to a large extent, which can be achieved by ERP and SAP based solutions, but at a much greater cost.
Zuora offers three kinds of services:

1.   Pre-paid plans that provides you with all the necessary details for a consumption based model

2.   Subscription lifecycle plan which create a new metric and a new way of measuring a product’s lifecycle

3.   An integration plan that takes the above plans and integrates and fuses them with your existing systems such that you can gradually cross over to the new age subscription based model without having any downtime.

Thanks to the splash it has been making in the market, Zuora received a whopping $115 million funding, for its subscription as-a-service model. This additional funding brings its capital base to $250 million, which is a clear and definite sign that more and more companies are switching over to the new subscription-age business model. It is also a sign and a vote of confidence from investors that the subscription based model works.
 
Cofounder and CEO, Tien Tzuo was naturally and understandably all smiles.
 

In the new economy, the focus is on recurring relationship as opposed to a buy and forget model. The subscription based model cultivates the relationship between a seller and a buyer and provides a valuable service, as a subscription.

More and more companies are switching over to this subscription based model. Thermo Fisher Scientific, which builds all kinds of scientific instruments and data analyses software, has quickly made the transition to this new business model.

As per its CEO Mark Field:

He went on to say that not only was Zuora’s solution “a good fit,” because of the manner in which it “easily” integrated into their supply chain management systems and enterprise resource planning, moreover and very importantly “the implementation would cost less and [could] be delivered quickly.”
Zuora’s subscription platform is based on a tried and tested model and Tzuo informs that more staff will be hired to support analytics and other areas of this platform thanks to the new funding.

References:
http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/11/zuora-lands-a-massive-115m-as-the-world-goes-as-a-service/

It is so refreshing to hear that a service that is widely used worldwide improves its security features. Somehow the news tastes even sweeter, when we hear that this service involves and revolves around money. After all, our moolah is pretty dear to us.

With all the security related issues that have been hitting the net, PayPal has gone ahead and acquired a security firm in Israel. Although, in Tel Aviv, PayPal has its own Fraud and Risk Detection Centre, it has nevertheless gone and acquired this startup. This is because CyActive’s "specializes in technology that can predict how malware will develop."

Will this mean a Minority Report  in actuality? Well, not literally but almost literally. CyActive’s algorithms depend on predictive analytics - instead of a person’s pre-cognition to detect and neutralize cyber threats.  

CyActive is now tasked to put in place its technical know-how so as to protect PayPal from potential current and future cyber-attacks.

Tel Aviv has a strong and thriving technical community, of which many specialize in Internet security.
The online payment processor is far from being the first company to expand into Israel by acquiring startups. Israel, especially Tel Aviv, has a thriving tech community, many of which specialize  in cybersecurity.

Founded in 2013, CyActive’s technology is lightweight yet extremely effective. No wonder Siemen’s Venture Capital unit invested heavily in it. Ralf Schnell, CEO, of Siemen’s Venture Capital explained “We see broad potential across major industries and are particularly excited by its approach to securing industrial and utilities assets. CyActive’s founders are leaders in the field and the company’s unprecedented predictive cyber security technology turns the economic equation in favor of the defender.” 

CyActive’s has developed bio-inspired algorithms which can consistently forecast the development pattern of future malware. These also make use of a very fundamental understanding of the mind of a black hat hacking process. The result is surprisingly effective in its protection of endpoint devices.
What is also of note is that CyActive’s algorithms are not CPU intensive, and its memory requirements is pretty low. With a low update cycle, CyActive’s products are a boon for securing critical infrastructure that cannot at any time be offline.

This is not the first time that PayPal has acquired a security company based out of Israel. It snapped up Fraud Science – another Israeli tech startup which dealt in cyber security – for $170 million in 2008.
Although PayPal was not too forthcoming as to what was the cost of this acquisition, but basing on earlier reports it was stated to be around $60 million.

References:
http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/11/paypal-security-center-israel/
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-israel-is-rewriting-the-future-of-cybersecurity-and-creating-the-next-silicon-valley/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-hub-tel-aviv-scrambles-plans-1406068545
http://www.jvpvc.com/news/vc-unit-of-siemens-announces-investment-in-cyactive