In other news, I’ve been watching startup ThingWorx. Software entrepreneurs Russ Fadel and Rick Bullotta (Lighthammer) have started what they call “the first application platform for the connected world”. It has been growing steadily—partnering with a rapidly expanding list of customers in the M2M, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, Smart Grid and Infrastructure, and printing industries to realize operational innovation through its Connected Application platform. To meet this rapid growth, the company has announced several key additions to the staff as it builds the growing ThingWorx community.
Since the start of 2011, ThingWorx increased its staff by 300 percent, as it has successfully transitioned from a focused set of “lighthouse” customers to a broader market engagement model. The company attributes accelerated customer adoption to the ThingWorx platform’s development efficiency, which reduces application development time by 5X for customers looking to build applications that connect their business processes to the physical world.
“Companies in every industry are looking for ways to accelerate solution development, respond to rapidly changing operational requirements, and to leverage the value in connecting smart equipment into their business processes,” says Russ Fadel, CEO of ThingWorx. “ThingWorx is unique in its ability to increase solution deployment velocity up to five times and in its search-based collective intelligence engine, which empowers business users to solve problems on their own. Our recent expansion includes staff with specific expertise in developing and supporting a platform that meets the specific needs of the connected world, and we’ve been aggressively recruiting talent to make sure that we continue to expand our first mover advantage.”
Significant hires include the addition of a development team based in Southern California. Led by Phil Huber, the software architect who co-founded the Wonderware industrial software business, with key team members including Lawrence Fan, Samuel Malapas, and Brandon Hahr. The ThingWorx Southern California operation adds significant experience in all aspects of user experience, user interface design, and mobile applications for the iOS and Android platforms.
“As we look into 2012, our talent acquisitions will support our new and growing customer base as they test, develop, and deploy the ThingWorx platform,” continued Fadel. “The new members to our team will be instrumental in the success of our short and long term plans. We’re in a great position to capitalize on the shift to a completely connected world.”
Mike McFarlin also joins ThingWorx as a Southeast Regional Sales Manager through this expansion. Previously, he served as Senior Account Manager at SAP and Southeast Regional Manager at Lighthammer Software. Mr. McFarlin’s responsibilities at ThingWorx will include the fostering of ThingWorx’s OEM and VAR ecosystem, in addition to growing sales through direct accounts.
ThingWorx also expanded its training and customer relations capacity by adding new staff led by Pai Chung. Chung, who joins ThingWorx from a successful enterprise software company, brings valuable experience in building highly effective customer training and support operations and will manage the expansion of the ThingWorx community website.
