澳大利亚线上顾问平台Expert360获得310万A轮融资
导语：这笔融资将会用于扩大其顾问支持团队，并且增加更多企业级服务。HRTechChina也报道过专注中小企业咨询的 “收费版知乎”的“答赏”，“答赏”是通过垂直领域的专业问答涉足在线咨询，为企业经营者提供解决问题方案的，致力打造最有价值的商业分享和人脉社区。国外方面，连接企业家和高级顾问和行业专家的Clarity也与之相类似。
澳大利亚Expert360是一家提供高端顾问服务的平台，近日该公司获得了410万澳元（约合310万美元）的A轮融资，领投方是Frontier Ventures风投公司。
这笔融资将会用于扩大其顾问支持团队，在研究、数据、以及其他知识产品方面提供服务。此外据Expert360联合创始人兼首席运营官Emily Yue透露，该融资还会用于Expert360增加更多企业级服务，一些从大企业退休的高管将会加入到Expert360的顾问人才团队，客户还能获得专属项目经理的支持。
据了解，目前全球顾问行业的市值已经达到了3500亿美元。
参与本轮投资的还有澳大利亚本土科技基金Rampersand，一批机构投资人，现有股东，和高净值投资人（比如Macquarie银行前任总经理Allan Moss AO）。本轮投资之后，Frontier Ventures风投创始人Dmitry Alimov将会加入到Expert360公司董事会。
Alimov说道，“线上顾问服务具有颠覆全球顾问行业的潜力，而Expert360则是此领域里的佼佼者。他们突破了传统的咨询顾问方法，利用科技的力量，全球互联，以及个体性专长，为客户提供优秀的解决方案。Expert360团队给我们留下了深刻印象，他们的执行力非常快，产品质量和发展轨迹也很不错。我们非常高兴能够重新回到线上顾问服务行业。我们的目标，就是帮助该公司的联合创始人和他们的团队，把这项事业推向新的。”
Expert360公司成立于2013年，他们在全世界拥有超过4500名专业顾问，企业客户可以轻松地与旗下顾问联系，获得帮助。根据该公司官方信息，目前Expert360总部设在悉尼，在澳大利亚和东南亚拥有15名全职员工。
Bridget Loudon是该公司首席执行官兼联合创始人，她说道，“我们的公司愿景非常简单，就是希望利用科技的力量，帮助客户或是客户的项目得到优质的顾问服务，让他们能够随时随地的获得顾问价值。我们非常高兴，因为有一批非常棒的投资人帮助我们将Expert360推上一个新台阶。我们的领投方，Frontier Ventures风投，在全球市场有着丰富且有价值的专业经验，我们非常期待与他们合作。”
Frontier Ventures是一家专门在全球新兴市场从事互联网领域投资的风投公司，他们主要关注东南亚和俄罗斯的消费互联网服务。该风投的投资组合包括亚洲餐厅预订平台Chope，俄罗斯线上视频公司ivi.ru，以及俄罗斯和独联体的线上企业服务平台profi.ru。本次对Expert360的投资，是他们第十笔线上服务平台类投资，也是他们在亚太地区的第二笔投资。
Frontier Ventures leads US$3.1M Series A round in Australia’s Expert360
Frontier Ventures has led an oversubscribed AU$4.1 million (US$3.1 million) round raised by Australian consulting marketplace Expert360.
The newly raised capital will see the company expand its support for consultants through access to research, data and other IP. The money will also be used to expand its enterprise services offerings so that executives in larger organisations can get instant access to a pool of consulting talent and support from a dedicated project manager, shared Expert360’s Co-founder and COO Emily Yue.
The global consulting industry is worth US$350 billion.
Co-investors in the round include Australian technology fund rampersand, institutional investors, existing shareholders, and high net worth individuals such as former Macquarie Bank MD Allan Moss AO.
Frontier Ventures Founder Dmitry Alimov will join the company’s Board of Directors.
Alimov said, “Expert360 is a leading marketplace for online consulting services with potential to disrupt a massive global industry. It breaks apart traditional consulting methodology by using the power of technology, global connectivity and individual expertise to provide superior client solutions. We are very impressed by the company’s team, its speed of execution, product quality and outstanding growth trajectory. We know online service marketplaces and we’re excited to back this one. Our goal is to help Bridget, Emily (Co-founders) and the Expert360 team take this business to a new level.”
Launched in 2013, Expert360 connects consultants with companies and has more than 4,500 independent consultants available from around the world. From an initial small team in Sydney, it now has 15 full-time employees across Australia and Southeast Asia, said an official release.
Bridget Loudon, CEO and Co-founder of Expert360 said, “Our vision is simple: it’s about harnessing technology to connect clients and their projects with great consultants, anywhere, anytime and in a way that delivers outstanding value for both parties. We’re extremely excited to have a great set of investors on board to help us take Expert360 to the next level. Our lead investor, Frontier Ventures, brings a wealth of global marketplace expertise that will be very valuable. We look forward to working with them.”
Frontier Ventures is a venture fund focussed on Internet investments in global emerging markets, with a main focus on consumer Internet services in Southeast Asia and Russia. Its portfolio includes Asia’s restaurant reservation platform Chope, Russia’s online video company ivi.ru and online marketplace business in Russia and CIS profi.ru. This investment marks the 10th online marketplace in Frontier Ventures’ portfolio and the fund’s second deal in the APAC region.
来自：e27
微软新推出套件集合大数据和分析工具
微软在奥兰多举行的全球合作伙伴大会上宣布了 Cortana Analytics Suite。 它将该公司的机器学习、大数据和分析产品都集合到一个完全统一的套件中
微软寄希望于该套件能够为企业用户提供一站式的大数据和分析解决方案。
微软负责 Azure 机器学习的企业副总裁约瑟夫·斯瑞西（Joseph Sirosh）告诉 TechCrunch，“我们的目的是将这些分散的部分集成在一起，这样用户就可以有一个完整的平台来搭建智能解决方案。”
至于 Cortana，这是微软在 Windows 10 中推出的语音驱动的个人助理工具，只是解决方案的一小部分，不过斯瑞西表示，微软以 Cortana 来命名这个套件是因为它象征着微软公司希望通过这个套件提供的符合实际的智能。
这个套件汇聚了微软的云机器学习产品 Azure ML、数据可视化工具 PowerBI 和上周宣布的企业数据共享和数据存储访问服务 Azure Data Catalog 等等。微软希望利用脸部和语音识别等一系列技术来生成推荐引擎和生产预测等一系列的解决方案。
一切围绕集成
微软希望通过提供一个集成的解决方案，第三方和系统集成商可以基于这一套件打造打包式解决方案，让一些不同的产品能够很好地在一起发挥功效，这样的产品将会吸引消费者。这正是这一集成所在做的事, 这样就会减少让这些类型的工具合作的复杂性——至少理论上是这样。
“这一套件提供的价值在于卓越的互操作性，已完成的解决方案，既有配方又有指导书，”斯瑞西解释道。
微软举了一个例子，它谈到 Dartmouth-Hitchcock 医疗中心的一个医疗保健协调项目。被称为 ImagineCare 的解决方案正是建立在 Cortana Analytics Suite 和 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 工具的基础之上。
这个解决方案希望通过向患者提供家庭监护来测量心率、血压、睡眠模式、体重等等，并且在 Azure 云中共享这些信息，这样医护人员可以协调更好的医疗服务，还可以防止像心脏病发作这类重大医疗事件的发生。
护士可以在医疗数据仪表盘上监控一组病人的数据，在病人的数据发生整体变化时，协调更好的治疗和更好地应对，这些变化如果不及时治疗可能会带来更大的问题。斯瑞西谨慎地指出，这更多的是一种未来的理想状态，但微软希望通过将这些分散的功能用一种协作的方式集合在一起，为这些复杂项目的发展提供一个平台。
套件情结
微软用在这个套件上的是可靠实用的打包技术，那些我们多年来在微软、IBM 和 Adobe 这样的大公司身上所看到的技术，他们用这一技术把一组有些关联的产品放在一起，鼓励顾客去购买所有的产品而不是其中的一两个。
微软在 Office 套件中就万年不变地使用类似的集成手段。Adobe 在 Creative Suite 上也是如出一辙。两家公司都为套件中的产品提供了更方便的操作。
Cortana Analytics Suite 会在今年秋季晚些时候上市。斯瑞西没有说价格的事情，不过据他说，如果你想买这个套件，收费模式会更加简单，肯定比你单独购买这些产品要划算得多。
这看上去是一个挺不错的营销做法，但在现实中，根据过去几年的经验显示，消费者想要产品类别中最好的那一款，而且他们更愿意组合他们想要的或是已有的产品。
各家企业已经不想再受制于一家供应商。他们要让他们的供应商，特别是在云端，能够让各种不同的产品，不管生产商是哪一家，都能够更容易地一道工作。
这一套件属于逆势而上。时间会告诉我们消费者是否买账。
Microsoft Hopes To Unify Big Data And Analytics In Newly Announced Suite
At its Worldwide Partner Conference in Orlando，Microsoft announced the Cortana Analytics Suite. It takes the company’s machine learning, big data and analytics products and packages them together in one huge, monolithic suite.
Microsoft has put together the suite with the hope of providing a one-stop, big data and analytics solution for enterprise customers.
“Our goal was to bring integration of these pieces so customers have a comprehensive platform to build intelligent solutions,” Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president at Microsoft, who is in charge of Azure ML told TechCrunch.
As for Cortana, which is the Microsoft voice-driven personal assistant tool in Windows 10, it’s a small part of the solution, but Sirosh says Microsoft named the suite after it because it symbolizes the contextualized intelligence that the company hopes to deliver across the entire suite.
It includes pieces like Azure ML, the company’s cloud machine learning product, PowerBI, its data visualization tool and Azure Data Catalog，a service announced just last week designed for sharing and surfacing data stores inside a company, among others. It hopes to take advantage of range of technologies such as face and speech recognition to generate a series of solutions like recommendation engines and churn forecasting.
It’s All About Integration
Microsoft expects that by providing an integrated solution, third parties and systems integrators will build packaged solutions based on the suite, and that customers will be attracted by a product with pieces designed to play nicely together. It is building in integration, thereby reducing the complexity of making these types of tools work together — at least that’s the theory.
“Where the suite provides value is the great interoperability, finished solutions, recipes and cookbooks,” Sirosh explained.
As an example, Microsoft talked about a coordinated medical care project at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The program, called ImagineCare, is built on top of the Cortana Analytics Suite and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM tool.
The hope is that by providing patients with home monitoring to measure things like heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, weight gain and so forth, and sharing this information in the Azure cloud, they can coordinate better care and perhaps prevent a major medical event like a heart attack.
Nurses could monitor the data from a group of patients in a medical data dashboard and coordinate better care and responses to changes in the overall patient profile that could signal larger issues if left untreated. Sirosh was careful to point out that this is more of a future ideal, but Microsoft is hoping that by putting these pieces together in a coordinated fashion, it will provide a platform for these types of sophisticated projects moving forward.
Suite Emotion
What Microsoft is doing with this suite is the tried and true packaging technique, we have seen from big companies like Microsoft, IBM and Adobe for years, taking a group of somewhat-related products and putting them together to encourage customers to buy all of the products instead of just a couple.
Microsoft made billions for years delivering a similar type of integration with the Office suite. Adobe did the same thing with Creative Suite, both companies delivering ways to work more easily across the products that make up the suite.
Cortana Analytics Suite will be available later this Fall. Sirosh wouldn’t discuss pricing, but if you buy one suite, you’ll get a simpler billing model and more savings than you would get buying the individual pieces, he said.
It seems like a sound marketing practice, but in reality customers have indicated over the last several years, they want the best of breed across product categories and prefer to string together the products they want or already own.
Companies no longer want to be locked into a single vendor. They want their vendors, especially in the cloud to make it easier to make the various pieces work together, regardless of the manufacturer.
This suite bucks that trend. Time will tell if customers will bite.
来源：Techcrunch
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