Attending Take Your Own Path (TYOP) Heroes

Warren Brown
Founder and Owner
CakeLove
www.cakelove.com
Fort Washington, MD

Warren was two years into a successful law career and just shy of his 30th birthday when it hit him. “I said, ‘Hey, if you don’t actually do something about this dream and this idea you have, you’re not going to do it before you have some mid-life crisis. Why don’t you just skip all the middle stuff and get right to it?’ "I said to myself, 'Hey, let’s avoid a mid-life crisis you can predict. Do you want to spend 20 years studying the law or would you rather develop an understanding of ingredients, recipes, foods from around the world?'” Just like that, Warren said goodbye to his job of stuffy courtrooms, cantankerous judges and long hours as a federal litigator and said hello to sweet smelling kitchens, happy customers and (still) long hours as the owner of his bakery, CakeLove.

Of course, Warren doesn’t just bake cakes to make himself happy. He makes his living catering to his customers. “I bake entirely from scratch because I like the adventure. It’s just more interesting celebrating old-fashioned baking traditions. From cupcakes to brownies to layered cakes, we mix and bake in small batches with the finest available, all-natural ingredients. Plus, we’re really into focusing on what makes a cake taste exceptional — from watching the cake to frosting ratio, to keeping in mind it’s easier to enjoy if it’s not too sweet."

Warren’s philosophy on baking seems to be paying off with:

• Seven CakeLove locations in and around Washington, D.C.
• Two cookbooks, CakeLove: How to Bake Cakes From Scratch and United Cakes of America
• Sugar Rush, his show on the Food Network
• LoveCafe, a successful café that serves sandwiches, salads and sweets all day long

Warren sums it all up sweetly, “Right now, I couldn’t be happier with the choice I made to leave the law.”

One of the hardest parts about keeping Warren’s business safe is finding the time and expertise to deploy and manage the right security solution. As CakeLove grows, so does its vulnerability to a growing IT threat landscape. Warren has an influential customer base and often caters cakes and desserts for Washington DC political events and notable politicians. CakeLove needs higher levels of security to protect customers’ data and its own proprietary business information, which is why they turned to Dell and Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Services to provide a solution that is safer, smarter and simpler. 

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Vishvas Chitale
Chief Technology Officer
Chitale Group
www.chitaledairy.com
Maharashtra, India

Their story begins in Bhilwadi, a quaint little village in Maharashtra about 230 kilometers from Pune. It was 1939 a visionary, Bhaskar Ganesh Chitale had the foresight and a burning ambition to succeed in Dairy Industry and so, he established the Chitale Dairy Farm, starting on a small scale, drawing milk manually, pasteurizing it mechanically and supplying it locally. Today, Chitale’s is the name to reckon with in the dairy sector. Systematic organization, methodical planning and forecasting have been the key words here.
It has been their belief that dairy farming can be converted into an industry, and not restricted to small units in villages. The dairy farmers have to be kept updated with all the technological advances in dairy farming and helped with the choice of the right breed of buffaloes to give an enhanced milk yield. Studies conducted by the Dairy clearly emphasized the need for high merit pedigreed bulls, for production performance. And today they have established Asia’s Ultra Modern Buffalo Research and Development farm, a nursery for calf breeding, a frozen semen laboratory, and a blood profile and pathogenic lab. Installed with automatic feeding stations, the buffalo farm is a feather in Chitale’s cap and a pioneering effort in the dairy sector.

“People always ask me, you know, why you are spending so much on IT, and my answer always to them is IT is not a white elephant!” Vishvas has been an early adopter of technology since the late 1980’s and uses technology to constantly improve productivity and better serve his end customers. In short, his vision is “Taking cows to cloud computing!”

Until recently, Chitale’s existing hardware and systems could not keep pace with the rapid growth, and were actually a hindrance to Chitale Dairy’s IT roadmap. Chitale virtualized eight of their physical servers on two of Dell’s M1000E blade’s and used Dell™ EqualLogic™ series for their storage needs.

“With the aid of virtualization, the consolidation of servers took place and then we felt the need for storage virtualization. Consolidation of servers and storage virtualization was key for us. Virtualization uses all the available resources and thus, the addition of resources becomes very easy.”

“EqualLogic was the natural choice because of scalability in storage. Other storage solutions available in the market are not as scalable as EqualLogic. With EqualLogic, black boxes in the storage array can be added in accordance to the company’s growth. You don’t need any additional software or additional manpower to scale up the storage virtualization. So from the management point of view, EqualLogic storage was a great system for us because it doesn’t require much manageability.”

“We had two data centers which were running our business critical applications so with the virtualization from two data centers we came down to one.”

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Daniel Duarte
President
Tellfree 
www.tellfree.com.br
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Founded in 2005, Tellfree was the first IP telephony company in Brazil and has become the leader in this segment. Tellfree is a multimedia communications service operator that provides telephone services and unified communications for the corporate market. Tellfree helps companies improve their communications by providing innovative solutions that reduce costs, increase productivity and foster collaboration for businesses. Tellfree is focused on being a supplier that helps enable small and medium-sized businesses with affordable technology. Technology is at the core of their business, and they have moved to cloud and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) models to help meet the needs of their customers. For Tellfree, technology has and continues to be their competitive advantage. Serving over 10,000 companies and with a growth rate of 100 percent per year, they must be doing something right!

As the founder and president of Tellfree, Daniel Duarte knows that a strong devotion to technology can be the key to success in today’s marketplace. He knows that communication and the speed with which a business communicates can be the difference in success or failure for today’s business. That is why he is so passionate about technology as the enabler for his business, because it will result in success for his customers. This innovative spirit will help ensure Tellfree continues to be a leader in the communications business in Latin America.

As their business has grown by leaps and bounds over the last five years, so has Tellfree’s data needs. They must ensure that their client’s confidential data is secure but also available when the company or Tellfree needs to access it. Tellfree relies on Dell PowerEdge™ servers, based on the Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 Series, and EqualLogic storage devices to provide easy and reliable accessibility to their ever-growing data while keeping it secure.

With Dell, redundancy is already built in to Dell storage products, so Daniel and team don’t have to worry about creating it when implementing their systems. Redundancy ensures that their systems stay up and running and protects their data in the event of various types of failures.

“The storage of mailboxes creates a large demand for storage, and the products that we use today do not only meet our needs today, but also in terms of the future and the growth that the company plans to have in the next few years.”

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Daniel Zanutti
CIO
Tellfree
www.tellfree.com.br
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Founded in 2005, Tellfree was the first IP telephony company in Brazil and has become the leader in this segment. Tellfree is a multimedia communications service operator that provides telephone services and unified communications for the corporate market. Tellfree helps companies improve their communications by providing innovative solutions that reduce costs, increase productivity and foster collaboration for businesses. Tellfree is focused on being a supplier that helps enable small and medium-sized businesses with affordable technology. Technology is at the core of their business, and they have moved to cloud and SAS models to help meet the needs of their customers. For Tellfree, technology has and continues to be their competitive advantage. Serving over 10,000 companies and with a growth rate of 100 percent per year, they must be doing something right!

Daniel Zanutti joined Tellfree during the company´s first year as the Chief Information Officer (CEO), supporting the development and research of new products based on technology. He knows that a strong dedication to technology can be the key to success considering the competitive market. As part of Tellfree´s philosophy, the company understands that communication can make the difference for its success or failure. This innovative spirit will help ensure Tellfree continues to be a leader in the communications business in Latin America.

Kym Houden
Founder and Managing Director
Task Retail Technology
www.taskretail.com/au
Sydney, Australia and Atlanta, Georgia

Incorporated in 2000, Task Retail Technology has grown to be one of Australia’s leading point-of-sale (POS) software developers, supplying turnkey retail POS systems to a wide range of high-profile hospitality, franchise chains, retail outlets, stadiums and large venues. A strong focus on customer service, adding value and technology innovation has fueled this growth. Driven by a lack of functionality and scalability of software in the market, Task Retail Technology commenced development of the Xchangexec™ software suite in 2006. As a highly successful and experience value-added reseller, Task Retail saw the need to take advantage of the new wave of emerging Web centric technologies, mainly to address market demand for an affordable, stable and easy way to deploy and manage very large numbers of POS terminals across widely dispersed retail enterprises. Xchangexec is the culmination of those efforts, a globally scalable, retail POS application with a securely hosted management suite. The application harnesses the power of the Internet to deliver real time sales data, centralized POS terminal management, interactive customer loyalty, SMS ordering and electronic menu boards to any retail enterprise or large entertainment venue.

Kym Houden has been in the POS technology business for over 25 years, and in 2000 he decided to make the jump and start his own business (initially running out of his house) to capitalize on the deficiencies he saw in many of the POS systems on the market at the time. Task has achieved great success in its first ten years — achieving 100 percent growth year over year.

Built on his father's philosophy — “Believe in yourself because if you don’t, no one else will” — Kym has his company poised for international growth.

All of the data that passes across Task Retail’s systems and networks is very sensitive to its customers. Data security is not an option — it is a must have. That said, Task Retail’s customers need to know that their data is safe but also accessible.

What’s the cost of a critical loss of data or experiencing a network outage? Depending on the incident and its severity, it could easily range from a week’s revenue to the loss of your entire business. The right IT infrastructure from Dell provides real protections that help you avoid disaster. Dell PowerEdge Servers based on the Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series leverage Intel’s leading technologies to establish superior protection and reliability.

“We need the ability to be able to make sure that our customers' data is not compromised in any way whatsoever, so we chose Dell for the best technology and that’s what we deliver. The peace of mind knowing that it is backed up by Dell servers and then RAID 5 technology means that we will never have an issue whereby data loss has happened.”

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Pixomondo is a global visual effects company with a network of studios in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, London and Los Angeles. Founded in 2001, Pixomondo offers 24x7x365 visual effects production, CG character creation, and 2 and 3-D animation for feature films, television, corporate presentations and commercials. Pixomondo’s competitive advantage stems from its “always on” network of studios that allows it to provide continuous development and workflow of projects for its customers.

Thilo Kuther, the founder and CEO, of the “digital production powerhouse”, Pixomondo, started out studying medicine, and then he made a 180-degree turn to follow his passion in design. Starting out in his garage, Thilo didn’t pay attention to the naysayers. He began to move his business forward because of the passion he had for digital design.

Today, he keeps Pixomondo on the right track by focusing first on the people that make his business tick. By having goals and always thinking ahead, Thilo’s business has grown into a major player in the visual effects business and seems poised to be successful in the future.

To support a 24x7 production model, Pixomondo must have a technology model that is just as efficient as its processes. Dell has worked with Pixomondo to standardize the configuration of all of its new workstations, servers and storage so that the company can get up and running as quickly as possible. Specifications are agreed to, and then everything is streamlined.

In some cases, Pixomondo even relies on Dell’s Deployment services so they can get up and running as quickly as possible without problems.

“We need support on site to set up the systems, to get the systems integrated and sometimes it’s an expansion even to the system that we’ve bought before, so we need their support to help walk us through the machines and set up specific set ups for the machines. That’s something where all these parts from Dell come in place and work perfectly together. We have a custom-made machine system and really it’s been arranged for us, but you can rely on the fact that machines coming off the shelf work together.”      

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Kentaro Iemoto
President Clara Online, Inc.
www.clara.co.jp
Japan

Kentaro Iemoto bravely began Clara Online, Inc. in an environment of tremendous personal adversity. A brain tumor and botched surgical procedure found a 15-year-old Kentaro confined to a wheelchair and using the Internet to connect to the outside world. With deep gratitude to the Internet for helping him find comfort and support in other people with similar situations, he wanted to give back, literally to the Internet, and began a Web hosting company. Having conquered the confines of a wheelchair and naysaying parents, he took to heart the words of Richard Branson, “Nothing ventured, Nothing gained”, and began Clara Online Inc. Today, Clara Online aims to become the number one hosting provider in Asia. The company provides hosting services based in Tokyo, Nagoya, Taipei, Singapore and Dalian in China. Clara Online services include Dedicated Server Service, Virtual Private Server Service, Collocation Service and Domain Registrar Service.

Kentaro shares two pearls of advice for any budding entrepreneur:
“First, you just don’t know until you actually start your business. In other words, you can think of it a lot beforehand, but when you compare that to the knowledge you will gain after you started it, the latter is so much more. Second, I always keep this in mind and these words help me out… “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He is talking about the sense of meaning in starting something new. I really like the phrase. Of course I like Richard Branson himself, but within these words, you will find your faith to keep challenging. I think that’s important for people who are starting something new.”

As a hosting provider to many businesses, downtime is not an option, as it will impact not only the business itself, but also on the business of its customers.

Clara Online Inc. must be a reliable service provider to maintain and expand their customer base. Clara Online Inc. uses Dell PowerEdge servers, based on the Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series, to ensure its customers' businesses are never impacted by downtime.

“Our customers definitely use the Internet 24 hours a day every day, and so if the servers we operate are down for even just a little while, the customers have to pay the loss for their business directly.” 

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Jean Mizrahi
President and Founder
Ymagis
www.ymagis.com
Paris, France

Jean was among the first in France to recognize that digital was taking over as the standard cinematographic format. He predicted that there would be a big need for digital conversion not only by cinema houses, but also by distributors, producers and advertisers. Ymagis offers a customizable digital conversion solution, so it needs to rely on an IT partner that can support the unique needs of each of its clients. About three years ago, Jean was managing a 35 mm film lab and post-production house, when he realized that digital would soon become the industry standard. However, it was hard to convince the group’s shareholders to start making the conversion. So he left and started Ymagis.

He started by developing a system of tools and services needed to make the conversion to digital. For each client, he starts as a consultant helping to customize a cost-effective solution that suits the company's business. Then he delivers the hardware, software and services they need.

Jean says that his biggest challenge in launching Ymagis was financing. “I needed to explain my vision to potential investors, and gain their trust based on my knowledge and my team’s experience in the industry. Once the U.S. market started to move toward digital, investors became easier to sway.”

Technology is at the heart of what Ymagis offers. “When we go into a cinema house to customize a digital solution, we try to make the technology as simple as possible.” The server and storage device acts as a central movie library that can automate the cinema.

Jean is motivated by the impact digital is having on the entire film industry. “Digitization provides not only better picture quality, but greater access to a wider spectrum of films. And the new opportunity for budding filmmakers is really exciting. Digital technology puts filmmaking tools directly in the hands of artists, which is playing a major role in advancing the art of cinema.”

Ymagis provides servers and storage to cinema houses to act as the central movie library, enabling them to automate the cinema. The solutions must be reliable and able to handle the heavy load of large digital movie files. Downtime is not an option, since it would result in lost revenue and unhappy moviegoers.

Ymagis counts on reliable Dell PowerEdge servers, based on the Intel Xeon Processor Series, and PowerVault™ storage to build its digital cinema solutions for its customers. Ymagis (powered by Dell technology solutions) has helped its customers seamlessly transition into the digital age — making moviegoers happy with the enhanced digital experience…and more importantly, coming back for more.

“Their business isn’t technology. That’s our business. We bring global experience to them, so they can enter digital easily.” 

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Fiona Page
Partner and CTO
PensionsFirst
www.pensionsfirstanalytics.com
United Kingdom

Helping their customers manage risk — the risk of pension liability: pensions are promises of future payments, the amount of which is uncertain; companies need to know what their liabilities are, so that they can adequately manage the risk, financial exposure, impact on balance sheet and meet regulatory/accounting requirements. PensionsFirst does this through a proprietary application they’ve developed which enables their customers to analyze, manage and track pension risk. For years, risk management in the pensions industry was a game of baseless projections and fuzzy numbers. Compared to other financial sectors, the $20 trillion pensions industry was operating in the Stone Age. Then Fiona Page and Timothy Lyons (founder and CEO) changed everything by introducing the world’s first integrated risk management platform for non-actuarial pension managers.

By providing fast, accurate reporting on risk, Timothy and Fiona did nothing less than revolutionize the pensions industry. And if they ruffled the feathers of some old-school actuaries in the process, it only made them more confident in their innovative and no-nonsense approach. Whether they’re reshaping the pensions industry or piloting their own private aircraft, Timothy and Fiona are bold, smart and ambitious in everything they do.

PensionsFirst’s business has been growing very rapidly, so they must meet new business requirements quickly. For example, setting up a new client — which requires dedicated, secure technology resources to segregate and protect client data. Dell’s virtualization solution, built on PowerEdge blade servers and EqualLogic storage area networks (SANs) and Web-based management tools, made it simple to scale up quickly. Dell also worked on-site with PensionsFirst to train the company's IT team so that it feel confident working in and expanding its environment. The team was deploying new virtual servers extremely fast, in under 15 minutes, and adding entire storage arrays to their existing SAN in less than 10 minutes!

“From day one, we’ve had a consistent team at Dell working on this project — from the initial conversations, to design and installation. That means business knowledge has been maintained. The team understood our business, what we needed and what we want to achieve in the future.” 

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Marnie Webb
Co-CEO
TechSoup
www.techsoup.org
United States

TechSoup Global, founded in 1987 as The CompuMentor Project, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that provides technology assistance to other nonprofit organizations throughout North America and internationally in more than 33 countries. Based in San Francisco, TechSoup Global offers a wide range of programs and services that help nonprofits and libraries use technology to achieve their missions. TechSoup Global runs TechSoup.Org, a technology website for the nonprofit sector and TechSoup.Org Product Donations, a technology product philanthropy service for nonprofits.

Marnie Webb is the Co-CEO of TechSoup Global. Marnie has been with TechSoup Global since 2001, most recently holding the position of Vice President of Knowledge Services. To help address the nonprofit sector's systemic technology challenges, Marnie works towards optimizing TechSoup Global's popular Web resource, TechSoup, and its Knowledge Services program, which includes projects such as Healthy and Secure Computing and MaintainIT. She is one of the driving forces behind the NetSquared Initiative, which brings the social Web to nonprofits across the globe. A sought-after speaker and writer on nonprofit technology, she understands both challenges and technological possibilities facing the sector. Marnie is one of the founding members of the Nonprofit Emerging Technology Exchange and an organizer of the NPTech tagging experiment. In 2008, The Nonprofit Times included Marnie on its list of the 50 most influential leaders in the U.S. nonprofit sector.

TechSoup licensed the Dell KACE™ appliance in 2007 to automate asset management, provide Web-based help desk support and software distribution to end-client systems. TechSoup evaluated Altiris and Microsoft, which both offered many of the same capabilities, but Dell KACE provided all of these in a single appliance. Dell KACE also offered simplicity of deployment over these competitor products. Today, TechSoup uses Dell KACE for managing IT and HR.

With Dell KACE, TechSoup’s help desk support has become much more efficient while allowing them to keep costs low. Dell KACE is even a strategic component of TechSoup’s global expansion initiative and is now able to support users in other countries such as Warsaw and London with Dell Kace via a virtual private network (VPN).
Eight years ago, TechSoup was using eight servers. Today, that has increased to 200. To effectively manage their systems TechSoup is now deploying a physical and virtualized server model with VMware.

Wang Xi
Founder and CEO
Easou.com
www.easou.com/index.html
Shenzhen, China

Wang Xi’s story began in 1999, when young and full of hope, he was motivated by the wave of Internet start-ups across the country. In 2000, he bought his first mobile phone for CNY 4800, the equivalent price of a PC. Whenever he went on business trips, he found it very inconvenient to search from the Internet, and he was always thinking that it would be great if mobile phones could access the Internet. Such a simple idea began his entrepreneurial path, and he successfully established his first company in Shenzhen and became a pioneer of China’s mobile Internet music and community.

In 2005, Wang began his second venture and founded Easou technology, headquartered in Shenzhen, with an R&D center based in Beijing. This is a company focused on providing mobile search and service, again leading the trend of mobile Internet. Easou is now a Chinese mobile search service provider with the largest market share and Wang has become a recognized leader in the mobile search industry.

Easou owns the most advanced Chinese language mobile search technology and wireless operation experience. Its self-developed search engine provides users accurate mobile search results anywhere anytime, also providing enterprises with wireless Internet marketing services.

According to reports from Deloitte, over the past three years Easou’s average annual revenue growth rate is up to 2402 percent. As an IT company of an emerging field that is high-tech and rapid growth, Easou has caught the attention of many institutional investors. The company has already obtained venture funding three times, with total amounts of nearly USD 20 Million. Easou has now become the largest Chinese mobile search service provider, with daily PV of Easou reaching 450 million, and a total of 80 million active users and 100 million daily searches.