The company of the day is CionSystems Inc., based in the US. They deliver innovative, affordable products that help organizations get more performance from their Windows infrastructure. You will find below an interview with Zubair Ansari, CTO and Founder of CionSystems Inc. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!
Website: www.cionsystems.com.
We are honored and excited to be recognized by Microsoft. We see this as a great opportunity to showcase our company, products, and an excellent validation of our approach and hard work. As a pioneering technology company, Microsoft knows what it takes to be a successful in the marketplace.
CionSystems started with the mission to build affordable Windows Management solution to reduce cost, complexity and expand service offerings for IT Administrators and to help increase their customer satisfaction and maximize return on investments.
All of the CionSystems products are easy, affordable and are exposed as a website for centralized management thereby making IT administration a snap.
The idea came after several discussions with IT experts regarding the difficulty they face when dealing with user provisioning and de-provisioning, federated identities, password management, SSO, disaster recovery, passing compliance requirements and ensuring the overall security of the enterprise. Even though Active Directory is the most important piece of an enterprise, it is often neglected as mid size enterprise struggled to keep up with changes to the data.
We found that few companies provide a comprehensive solution to these problems. Those that did, designed them for large enterprises. We realized there is a market for simpler and more affordable Active Directory management for midsized and small enterprise companies wanting the same level of performance, scalability and flexibility, and founded CionSystems, Inc. to pursue that vision.
Until now it’s been Bootstrapped, but are now beginning to look for future funding.
Yes, we are interested in holding conversations with VC’s, Angels and individuals looking to invest in a fast growing IT software company. We have a proven and diverse management team that knows what it takes to succeed in the industry.
Our solutions are based on Microsoft technologies so joining Bizspark was a natural step for us. Bizspark, along with the Partner Program, has allowed us to showcase and increased the reach of our company and products. Thank you Microsoft for the program!
CionSystems sells a companion solution to Windows Server, providing secure, affordable web-based Active Directory management. The solution suite is available to SMBs and Enterprise customers and is licensed per user. Our mission is to make our customers succeed in managing their infrastructure while reducing administration costs.
Yes and we are looking to also patent some parts of our platform technology.
Vertical Agnostic, Windows-based environments with over 100 users, with more focus on education, health care and financial sector.
Yes, we are currently focused on US and Middle East, with a plan to expand in Europe and other areas in 2010.
We are 20 people strong, with a team focused on development internationally, complemented by operations, support and some engineering here in Redmond.
We are always looking for talented candidates who are passionate and want to make a positive change.
We are a Microsoft shop. I have a long association with Microsoft and it was natural to develop on Microsoft platform. Code is written C#, ASP and hosted in IIS with interfaces to SQL/Exchange, Active Directory, SAML.
"CionSystems provided us an easy-to-use, web-based and affordable AD management tool. It has simplified and improved our efficiency by 40% for AD management, security and planning." – Reza Seyed, Director, Cascade Engineering Services
Bill Gates, his dream of having a desktop on every desk and the way he went about achieving it.
17+ years at Microsoft in software development and management in windows group, working on networking, high availability and scalability solutions, security, storage technologies and emerging market. I am very passionate about Windows management and simplifying IT’s job.
Dream big, believe in it, take risks and don’t lose your focus through all the phases of business development. Always keep customer’s need ahead, and develop your product based on what your customer want, not on what you think they want or what you want to build. Be passionate about it.
SaaS will gain ground as more and more users and providers are embracing it as a delivery method.
We are looking forward to a great year and a great ongoing relationship with Microsoft.