Business

InsideSales.com has raised $4 million from Hummer Winblad in a Series A Round that the company will use to grow its big data analytics sales force automation (SFO) technology. Joining in the round were Josh James, co-founder and former CEO of Omniture. Mark Gorenberg, managing director, Hummer Winblad, said before the funding, the company was profitable and had not taken any investment. He said the company reminds him of Omniture, which the firm funded under similar circumstances. Omniture was also profitable when it accepted its investment. Omniture was acquired for $1.8 billion in 2009 by Adobe Systems. InsideSales serves small and medium sized companies. It uses predictive analytics to help serve inside sales professionals. Its algorithms are designed to tell the sales professional who to contact, when to contact and how to tailor the message for the sales target. The company has increased its employees from 65 to 140 people. In the past several months the company has increased fr...

News Corp, Home of Fox News and one of the world’s most powerful media entities, has announced its long-awaited plans to disrupt education. Former New York City education chancellor and CEO of Amplify, News Corp’s new k-12 education division, will attack education reform through technology, with three specific strategies: assessment via mobile tools, curriculum design, and the online distribution of resources via AT&T-powered tablets. “The strategy of Amplify is to fundamentally change the way we think about delivering education in the K-12 space,” says Klein, who will be revealing more information about on the ambitious project at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, September 8-12. While details are still scant, we did find one video in the Amplify website that gives a hint at what the vision is: a tablet that gives students a fully-customized learning experience, from the moment they arrive in class, complete with a proprietary developed curriculum that has a heavy emphasis on int...