OK, now I can finally talk about it! As you may have heard, we have closed a series B led by Cisco. SoonR now has the world leader in microprocessors (Intel)  and the world leader in networking equipment and services (Cisco) as strategic investors. How do these technology industry giants complement the SoonR vision?

We started SoonR over 2 years ago with the goal of keeping people In Touch with the information and applications that they need to do their jobs and keep connected to co-workers. As folks became more mobile, we focused on providing this while people were on the go. Sounds simple right? Nope. In order to really have access to what you need when you are mobile, four things must be true.

1. Connection - you must have a connection to a data transport. In most cases, this is the Internet. Whether the connection is wired or wireless, you must have a way to get to a place where data is stored.
2. Storage is the next requirement. Information must be stored in a manner that can be requested. Whether it’s the vast cadre of slave machines of the Google data center routing you to various websites or it’s your own computer, the stuff you want must be some where stored in a retrievable format.
3. Search - Terabytes of stored information is useless if the stuff you want cannot be found because it is not there! This problem is often overlooked. The fact remains that the most critical information is personal and most personal information is on a laptop or desktop computers. This information doesn’t appear in any Google or Yahoo search!
4. Display - Once you connect and locate what you need, you have to be able to see it in a format that makes sense for your device. This is where many remote access products fall apart. If you find that great Visio diagram you needed, but have no way to show it to anyone, then all you have is a bunch of useless bits.

SoonR can’t help you with your connection (Item 1), but we can help you with everything else! To access the information on your computers, you need to have it stored (Item 2) somewhere. The SoonR agent offers the ability to continuously backup and store your information in a world class datacenter that is available 24×7. With our partners like WebEx and Telia Sonera, you can get generous storage space so that all your critical information can be always available when you search (Item 3) for it. This system works in the background to make sure that what you need will be there when you need it.

Finally, you need to be sure that you can display (Item 4) your information on any available connected device. The SoonR Platform will automatically transform the Visio diagram created on your PC to a format that you can see on your mobile phone. Send Powerpoints created on the Mac to your friend’s linux based mobile internet device. The freedom to share is unlimited because you have over 600 devices that you can display information on. All this happens in the background when someone uses SoonR. You don’t have to think about it because we have built the intelligence into the network. There are a lot of hard problems that are solved for you.

So how does this map to our partners and investors? Your connections are getting better because carriers are working hard to make your data connections faster and cheaper. Our carrier partners are investing billions in equipment to roll out services to customers. Broadband penetration is going gangbusters worldwide. Intel’s WiMax efforts even promises connections in the deepest and most remote parts of the world’s jungles. Mobile carriers are rolling our 3G and 4G services at a breakneck speed and most phones include data connections as a standard feature today. They buy equipment based on Intel chipsets and Cisco equipment.

Dynamic and compelling information is being created on faster more powerful computers and consumed on mobile devices with more horsepower than ever before. Intel makes a lot of the chips and reference platforms that power these devices. All this information is being stored on computers in data centers that serve to grow the information base contained in the internet “cloud”. Much of this cloud is built on Cisco equipment. You will use this “cloud” to host data and services for 24×7 availability.

SoonR offers our partner compelling services that moves information into this ever expanding information infrastructure so that you can securely and reliably access everything that you care about. Have you checked the footprint of wireless carriers? Each services millions, if not hundreds of millions of customers. Each country has at least one carrier. They say 41% of the world’s population has a mobile phone. The carriers are a major force in rolling out services. They are the link to the customer and SoonR let’s then forge a stronger link with a branded service.

We are the glue that is tying all this together.

Conclusion

The good news here is that a mega-trend is happening that makes things appear more simple and convenient to the end user. With the series B investment, we can continue to roll out the platform to help this mega trend that magically makes it simple to get what you want wherever you are. With our carrier partners and investors we are utilizing a small part of the vast Internet to build an area for your private data access. You don’t have to navigate the technology because we are making it seamless. You see, simple things are hard.

When the term ‘mobile’ is used, it generally refers to being on the ‘go’, i.e. away from work or home. In this new connected age every second counts as we interface with businesses and customers around the world. As businesses and business people, we want to impress clients and compete with quicker response times. Customer needs, on-the-spot trouble-shooting and fast sales-cycle are examples of real time operations that can benefit from being always on. Yet, sometimes it can be a challenge to maintain a balance between our business and personal lives while being always on.

Personally, I have been experiencing this challenge the past few years as a founder and executive here at SoonR.  We have a company with offices in the US and Europe, and are engaged with customers on 3 continents. My phone rings a lot. Text messages come in at all times of day and my inbox grows like weeds. I think I have over 4 thousand messages in my inbox, but that’s another story.

One consequence of this is that I have to turn my smart-phone off when I go to bed, simply to get some quality sleep and not be woken up by constant ringing or other sounds from the phone throughout night. The down-side is that I have had to get a regular alarm clock instead of using my phone.  In the morning I prefer a gradual wake-up rather than jumping out of bed immediately. I have come up with a new ritual which I call ‘mobile in bed’.

The idea to use my Nokia N800 internet device, connected with SoonR from bed. The N800 is an amazing on-the-premise device with fast WiFi connectivity, a great browser (Opera) and scaled down Linux-based architecture. To me, the N800 is a great example of a light internet based device. I hope the UMPC manufacturers are paying attention to this device.

SoonR and the Nokia N800 are great companions; they act as the perfect remote control for my laptop and its applications which is left in my office. I get access to all my emails and attachments (no spam thanks to the spam filter in Outlook) from multiple email accounts (soonr, yahoo-mail and gmail) under one interface. I can easily forward documents and slide-shows as SoonR provides me with access to all my remote PC’s (including Mac’s) where the documents reside.  “Mobile in Bed” means I can have a nice slow awakening in bed where I handle the most urgent business matters before I get up. When I eventually get up and start working on my laptop; all the work I have been doing with SoonR is also synchronized back on my laptop automatically. I can see which emails were sent earlier, meetings scheduled etc. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my smart-phone and use it a lot, but I find myself using it more when I am mobile in the traditional sense: on the train, walking on the street etc.

I think this is an example of how we will see work habits change over the years to come. The definition of mobile will expand to not only cover when we are physically away from our primary workplaces but also to when we away from the constantly changing digital content that is so critical in our jobs. Work is no longer 9-to-5, its more integrated into our life-style and it can take place anywhere and anytime. At SoonR, we are very focused on understanding the key use cases in this life-style and delivering meaningful solutions – even  in the bed.

As you may know, half the SoonR team is in Denmark. So it was with great excitement that I received an email from our Engineers telling us that SoonR was featured on a national TV story about Silicon Valley. I just wanted to share this story with our blog readers.

Watch it!: SoonR on Danish TV

For those of us who do not understand Danish, there are parts of the story in English. The overall tone of the story is about the pace and opportunity for innovation in Silicon Valley.

If you see some videos about SoonR in another language, please send us a note!

OK, so I am a die-hard tech junkie. I usually am one of the first to try anything. Perhaps that’s why I was in the PAID Vista beta and I immediately paid $250 for Vista Business on my laptop the week it was officially announced. I was excited to see the all the visual eye candy of “Aero”, use the new screen flipper to change tasks, and replace my dedicated image editing tools with all the built in imaging facilities. I thought life was going to be good. That was 4 months ago. I really tried to live with Vista on my laptop. This week, I have decided to Upgrade back to XP. It took me 2 solid days, but I couldn’t be happier. Read on and learn why I made this decision.

Eye Candy:

The first thing In noticed after installing Vista was the new UI was beautiful. Everything looked great. Then I noticed that things were really slow. Dragging Windows and multiple applications on my screen was a painful test of my patience. My laptop harddrive was constantly spinning. My Vista performance index was at 3.0. Hmm, time to optimize. I shut off all the Aero effects, went to a simple classic UI. I turned off all power save features and selected maximum performance. My index increase to 3.2. Still not so great, but the best I could do for now.

Sounds:

I use Skype constantly. When I bought my laptop everyone was amazed at how I could have a conversation using the built in microphone of my laptop and the video cam. The conversations were so clear that I used my laptop as a speakerphone to talk to our development staff in Europe. After I installed Vista, that all stopped. Echos and crackles were the order of the day. Upgrade the drivers you say! I did that - about 5 times. I tried drivers from laptop manufacturer, the soundcard maker, and any other related things I could find in blogs. No luck.

Get a set of headphones like everyone else. I tried 4 sets. Vista was trying to be fancy and actively would switch drivers when it detected my headphones. Sometimes the detection worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometime I would plug in the headphones and hear nothing at all from laptop speakers or the headphones. I never had these problems before. So basically, I was not in a good place if I cared about sound of any kind.

Networking Hell:

Being able to connect to other computers is a given. I have multiple computers at home and work that I interact with all the time. Well. Vistas great “improved” TCPIP stack that was supposed to be error correcting, made networking a nightmare. Half the time my other PCs wouldn’t be accessible and then the times that they were, the transfers were so slow that I would shut it down. After hours of searching on the web for help on this, it was clear that I wasn’t the only one seeing these issues. I had to turn off the fancy new TCPIP and revert to the older ones. After that, most of my networking activities were back to normal. Still had a few issues, but at least I could connect.

Battery Life:

I make lots of trips. My laptop with an extended battery used to last an astounding 4 hours! I could fly cross the USA and watch 2 movies. I could goto meetings without a power supply, confident that I would make it through the presentation without incident. I could put my machine on standby for days and turn it back on in a few seconds. I once forgot my power supply and worked at the office all day on batteries alone. It was great to have that kind of security.

After Vista, I am lucky to get 1 hour. I tried different batteries and super power save modes. Not much changes. I tried switching to the “low performance” graphics card settings. Vista would barely run. OK, I wasn’t going anywhere without an A/C adapter now.

Upgrading to XP:

So, if you are a laptop user and value fast performance, great sound, network connectivity, and reasonably battery life, Vista is not your friend. I tried for 4 months to adapt. I had spent half a day installing Vista and I didn’t want to regress. Coupled with the fact that you can’t downgrade and keep your applications intact, that meant that I was going to have to do a “clean install”. It was going to take days.

Two days ago, I started to copy all 60GiGs of my data onto an external hard drive. After that was complete, I whipped out the “restore” disks and chose to take my computer back to factory settings. I started at 8:30pm. I was 4:30am when I found myself nodding off in my chair, so I went to bed. XP was running, but I had a lot of applications and data to restore.
The next morning, I started to install all my most used applications. It was like seeing an old friend when those familiar XP apps popped up on the screen and they ran FAST! I changed the look and feel options a bit and it felt like a new computer. I logged into my network and everything popped up quickly and was accessible. I called my brother in law with Skype and he told me I sounded clear as day.

I plugged in a standard battery and the indicator said that I had 2 hours and 15 minutes of runtime. With a sigh and a smile, I looked at the clock and realized it was time to head home. It was 6pm and I had the familiar feeling that all was right in my computing world again. I have upgraded my computing experience from one of slow frustration to being able to work worry free. It took 2 days, but it was worth it!

Anyone want to buy a slightly used license of Vista Business?

P.S. I also built a honking new desktop to run Bioshock. It’s got a Core 2 processor 4G of memory and the latest NVidia 8800 graphics card. On that machine I installed Vista Ultimate. I am totally happy with that. That machines scores a 5.9 on the performance index. Lesson learned? Make sure you really have the horsepower to run Vista!