The ability to create and innovate with the rapid expansion of new media and digital technologies has provided numerous individuals with opportunities to succeed and thrive. While Silicon Valley is well-known as a breeding ground for Internet empires, Orange County has recently had its own share of startup companies that stand out from the rest.
Numecent, an Irvine-based company, announced in late May that it was able to raise $13.6 million from investors in a funding round led by T-Venture. The company’s “cloudpaging” software aims to bring Microsoft Windows applications into the cloud.
Osman Kent, CEO and co-founder of the company, explained the factors that comprise this process: “When it all comes together, something truly magical happens. Any software, put through our system, comes out from the other side as a ‘cloudified’ version. We deliver it back 20 to 100 times faster to the user, which is near instantaneous; by avoiding installation, we make install time zero.”
The software allows users to access these applications remotely, without having to download and install them on a device. “Applications themselves require very special kinds of treatment because they are not data, they are instructions they give to your machine. With our product, the Web applications are running somewhere else and communicating with your browser, taking place remotely,” Kent says.
The possibilities are seemingly endless at this point, as the firm is just getting started. That is, the issue of remote data storage has only recently come into light. Kent says that the “original project was actually conceived in UC Irvine in conjunction with DARPA, developed by very clever scientists and engineers who thought that the problem [regarding remote data storage] could not be solved. We had the patience to deliver something unique.”
Numecent is only just beginning to make its mark on Web-based industries. “We will be launching an expansion to our existing product line, which makes it easier for our customers to use. However, we are not disclosing anything yet,” Kent says.
Because it is so new and is growing at a steady rate, the company is currently looking for exceptional developers to contribute to their team.
Another startup company, Babblr, has had similar success, though even more subtle. So subtle, in fact, that even the creators were unprepared for it. Based in Costa Mesa, the company has developed browser extensions to enable a chat feature on Tumblr.
As Tumblr is increasing in popularity and exposure in its own right, Babblr is paralleling the growing success. This success seemed daunting to the company at first; during its first launch, the company’s servers were unable to bear the intense traffic that its website and application were getting. In other words, even the company was not prepared for the positive feedback and eagerness with which Tumblr users would respond to the extension.
As advances in technology are made every day, who is to say what could be the next Facebook or Google. Regardless, Orange County has demonstrated that it is home to bright individuals who are ready to step up to the plate.
