Charlie Wood
Charlie is the founder and CEO of Spanning Cloud Apps, a startup that aims to become the Norton Computing of the cloud computing era. He's a married father of two and a native Austinite. He blogs at Moonwatcher
On the Perils of Not Taking iCloud More Seriously
In 2007 I attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston and sat in on a session on the mobile workforce. At the time, Steve Jobs had introduced the original iPhone but it wasn’t yet shipping. As I remember it, the panel for the session included several industry analysts as well as representatives from Nokia, Motorola, [...]
The Emerging Mobile+Cloud Stack and Its Natural Owners
Apple’s is set to launch iCloud in the next few days, and with it Steve Jobs plans to move the center of your digital life to the cloud. Amazon just announced the Kindle Fire, which Jeff Bezos calls a service, not a tablet. When you buy a new Android phone or tablet, the first thing [...]
Going All-In on the Cloud
At Spanning we’ve decided to to keep no paper files, and instead use Google Docs as our filing system—for everything. And the thing that’s given us the confidence to go all-in on the cloud? Spanning Backup. All legal, HR, finance, operations, marketing, sales, IT, engineering, and corporate documents—everything but stock certificates, which we’re legally required [...]
On Apple’s Big Move to the Cloud
Yesterday Steve Jobs introduced iCloud, saying, “We’re going to move the digital hub—the center of your digital life—to the cloud,” and concluding his presentation with an admonition: “If you don’t think we’re serious about this, you’re wrong.” Apple is the…
So, Mr. Bootstrap took venture funding, huh?
Longtime readers of this blog will know that I’m a big fan of bootstrapping. Instead of putting together a pretty pitch deck and hitting Sand Hill Road (or 300 W. Sixth Street, as the case may be) I’ve long preferred the model where you open up the IDE, build something valuable, find a few people [...]
Spanning Cloud Apps Raises $2 Million Series A Round of Venture Funding From Foundry Group
Spanning Cloud Apps, the makers of Spanning Backup for Google Apps, today announced that the company has secured $2 million of funding from Foundry Group, a Boulder-based venture capital firm. Launched in September 2010 and spun out of Spanning Sync, Inc., Spanning Cloud Apps will apply the resources to continue to build on the company’s [...]
Spanning Backup Launches "3 Seats Free" for Google Apps Domains
Today we’re launching a better way for Google Apps admins to try Spanning Backup. It’s called “3 Seats Free”, and it gives every Google Apps domain three Spanning Backup seats absolutely free. These are fully-functional seats that never expire and be assigned to anyone in the domain. Just add Spanning Backup to Google Apps, assign [...]
Spanning Backup Now Backing Up Over 1 Billion Google Apps Objects
As of this morning, Spanning Backup has backed up more than 1,000,000,000 calendar events, contacts, and docs for Google Apps users. That’s a billion fewer things our users have to worry about. But what about people who don’t yet back up their Google Apps data? The questions they most often ask are, “Do I really [...]
Got Lots of Google Docs? Spanning Backup Has You Covered.
If you’re a Google Docs power user, today’s update to Spanning Backup will make backing up and restoring your docs even faster. Some people use Google Docs for the occasional spreadsheet or as a convenient way to share notes in a small group. But other people have made Google Docs a central part of their [...]
The Ten-Year "Overnight Success" of Cloud Computing in the Enterprise
Often what looks like overnight success is actually the result of years of hard, grinding work. Look around today and you might think that cloud computing in the enterprise is some new thing that’s happened overnight. Giants like SAP have…
