I always like to be able to write about the successes of businesses down in my neck of the woods and today I’ve got a couple of stories to write about.

Firstly GreenButton, the company that I’ve called “the perfect cloud case study” nabbed USD1M in funding from non other than Microsoft. You’ll recall that GreenButton enables data intensive processes (like film rendering) to be broken up into chunks and passed over to cloud processing. In this way processing times can be massively reduced and, more importantly from an innovation perspective, the cost of entry for new businesses doing data intensive stuff is greatly reduced – hey no longer need their own infrastructure to get going. The GreenButton intro video is embedded below FYI;

The deal sees Microsoft help sell the GreenButton technology to major software vendors and, in return, sees GreenButton recommit to using Windows Azure for it’s processing needs. GreenButton and Microsoft have a revenue share around the computing charges that users pay or their processing requirements.

Microsoft hasn’t taken an equity stake – it’s really about building the use cases for cloud computing and, by extension, selling more Azure services. It’s a real validation of both the GreeButton model, and also the ability to build globally significant businesses from New Zealand – well done guys!

The second good news story is around Swiftpoint. Swiftpoint is a new take on the mouse for laptops – the distinctive mini red and black mouse is designed to be used on the surface of a laptop and has some pretty innovative features (super quick charging, dual-purpose docking/charging station) and, while looking like it would be uncomfortable to use, has quickly become my mouse of choice when I’m travelling. The video below shows off some of the Swiftpoint features;

Swiftpoint launched a year or so ago after a couple of years of top secret development. Since then they’ve gained a fair bit of attention – they’ve been named by Popular Science magazine as one of “the 100 greatest creations of the year,” and rated by Computer Shopper as “the Best Notebook Mouse”, it was also the recipient of an Innovations Award at CES.

Swiftpoint has now been picked up by massive US chain Costco who will be selling the Swiftpoint mouse to its online customers. It opens Swifpoint up to a massive marketplace and one that should drive sufficient revenue to allow them to continue innovating the product (there re already prototypes of future similarly impressive devices).

A couple of awesome wins from downunder – congrats to the teams at both GreenButton and Swiftpoint

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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