Zuora, Inc. Announces Formation of Strategic Advisory Board with Executives from eBay, Cisco and Accenture : SaaS and Online Billing Experts Join to

Telepresence and Holography / Holograms - November 2008

Editor’s viewpoint on their differences, likenesses and future...

We all just recently viewed an historic CNN holographic interview on an historic Election Night. CNN stated this type of imaging has never been done before on National TV and I believe that. I haven’t seen anything like it. The live interview caught me by surprise and sure had the “wow” factor attached to it didn’t it? Here’s a link to the actual interview.

CNN Hologram Video

The question now has to be asked. Is it Telepresence?

I’m no expert on the subject but I’m going to throw my hat into the ring, go out on a limb and say yes, I believe it is. Although I know many video conferencing purists are rolling their eyes and grabbing their guns right about now with my statement.

While I do know that Telepresence still hasn’t been universally defined (Houston, we have a problem), here’s how I see it…. Broken down to its simplest form - “tele” (through electronic means) and “presence” (present). This is how I’m justifying my opinion by lumping holography and Telepresence together. Just as Telepresence is surely an offshoot of video conferencing, holographic imaging (like we viewed on CNN) surely has to be considered an offshoot of Telepresence. The interviewer was “telepresent” from Chicago and beamed into the CNN Election Headquarters. She was most assuredly - “telepresent”. There was negligible latency, the imaging was fantastic and both interviewers were rehearsed on what they would say. I’ve just recently read that CNN actually “downgraded” the experience to make it “movie” quality and not as good as it could have been. Maybe they thought us mere mortals would be shocked if they showed their complete hand. I have a feeling it was so big to them, they didn’t want it to get upstaged by the historic election. I’m willing to bet we’ll see the “true” power of this technology in the upcoming weeks and months when they can put the pedal to the medal and show it off without having it sidetracked.

What an amazing time for this technology (all differences and opinions aside). Telepresence Doctors, nurses, teachers, schools and healthcare (healthpresence) will benefit from the recent gains in this state-of-the-art industry whether holograms, Telepresence or holography. Airlines also have to see the threat to a portion of their business travel. Hell, who wants go through security and fly to Miami for a two-hour conference when you can look them in the eye via Telepresence?

Beam me up Scotty! Simply amazing…!

Visit the free Telepresence Forum for more information and discussion

Your Editor and Administrator - L II
"Ride on the Next Plane of Existence" TM

SAN FRANCISCO (Business Wire EON) August 19, 2008 -- "Our mission is to do for the subscription industry what Amazon and PayPal have done for online retailing and payments ? make it easy and accessible, so that any company can offer subscriptions online," said Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, Inc. "Now, we've put together a board of well respected advisors with the right background and experience to help us achieve our vision. With their guidance, we'll continue to develop the killer apps companies need to build, manage and grow subscription businesses."

The advisory board members bring expertise in developing and leading business strategies and billing operations for some of the world's largest and most successful companies. Their guidance, experience and knowledge will help Zuora to achieve its mission of transforming the SaaS and subscription industry. The advisory board members include:

Elizabeth Tse, eBay: VP, Global Billing, Payments and Collections ? Tse is responsible for overseeing worldwide billing operations at eBay, the world's largest online marketplace. Tse has held similar executive level positions with Providian Financial (now Washington Mutual) and American Express.

David Welsh, Adams Street Partners: Partner ? As a partner at Adams Street, a private equity firm, Welsh focuses on investing in a variety of technology companies that show promise to impact entire industries. At McAfee, Welsh oversaw the strategy and development of bringing SaaS solutions to users of every size and security need. Welsh also headed corporate development for online billing company Portal Software where he helped grow the company from a start-up to over $200 million in revenue per year.

Dan Halabe, Accenture: Former Partner ? In addition to his position with Accenture, Halabe was a leader of several large-scale billing and development projects at media and telecom companies including Electronic Arts, Hongkong Telecom, Netscape and Sony Computer Entertainment.

Michael Everett, Cisco: Vice President of Finance ? Everett is currently a vice president of finance at Cisco and was the chief financial officer at on-demand collaboration leader WebEx before its $3.2 billion acquisition by Cisco in 2007. Before WebEx, Everett acted as CFO for multiple private and public companies including VMWare, Netro Corporation, and Raychem, a Fortune 500 company.

"There are few start-ups that have the winning combination of experience and vision that I see at Zuora," said Elizabeth Tse. "Look for great things to come from this company. I am honored to be part of the team."

Zuora was founded to create a major shift in how subscription-based businesses operate. The company launched their first product Z-Billing, in May 2008 and since then have deployed more than 20 customers. Z-Billing is the first Web-based billing software of its kind for subscription businesses. The product is built as an on-demand service, putting control and flexibility in the hands of the end user. It allows both business to business and business to consumer companies to quickly launch new products and pricing options, scale operations and have one central location for all of their recurring revenue data. The user interface of Z-Billing is simple to learn and can be customized per each clients' individual needs and preferences. Z-Billing is also designed to work seamlessly with the most popular CRM and accounting systems, so users can get started quickly.

The company plans to launch additional products this year to support the growing subscription industry. For more information, go to www.zuora.com.

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora, Inc. is a Redwood City-based company created to support the growing subscription market with a complete solution that is flexible, powerful and integrates with the entire company infrastructure. The platform created by Zuora changes the way subscription businesses manage and sell to customers, as well as allows them bring new products to the market in less time, and with less hassle. Zuora was built from the ground up by SaaS industry visionaries and veterans from salesforce.com, WebEx, Accenture, Postini (now Google), and Oracle. To learn more about Zuora, please visit www.Zuora.com.

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To learn more about Telepresence, the revolutionary new style of immersive video conferencing; visit these websites:

Telepresence - "Ride on the Next Plane of Existence" - Telepresence
Telepresence Web Portal - Telepresence Internet web portal
Telepresence Report - 24/7 breaking Telepresence related news and information
Via Telepresence - Video conferencing via Telepresence
Telepresence Forum - Free user discussion forum for everything Telepresence related
Telepresence Today - Telepresence information and editor qualified headline news
Telepresence Resource Directory - Telepresence web resource directory
Telepresence Tube - Telepresence videos, pictures and more