“BMC believes the opportunity to become a private company will provide additional flexibility and position us to invest more strategically to drive powerful innovation and deliver cutting edge customer solutions,” said Bob Beauchamp, chairman and chief executive officer at BMC. “We look forward to working closely with all parties to complete this transaction and enter into our next chapter of growth and industry leadership.”

The deal represents the largest “pure” leveraged buyout this year, Reuters reported.

Based in Houston, BMC creates software to help manage corporate software networks. The company has two main divisions. Its enterprise service management business counts for nearly two-thirds of the company revenue, networks, databases and storage. About 40 percent of its business comes from managing International Business Machines Corp.’s sizable mainframe computers. That division grows slowly, but offers a valuable asset that should prove profitable to the new owners. The company has had a difficult time staying ahead of rivals in the server software market as more companies rely on web delivered services.

“They’ve been out positioned by some of the growth companies out there,” Joel Fishbein, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, told Bloomberg. “The world’s changed from a technology perspective very dramatically, and they haven’t been able to keep up.”

The company’s revenue is expected to grow a mere 3 percent to $2.23 billion in the year ended March 31. The previous year, growth was 5 percent.

A number of buyout firms had expressed interest in the company during its auction process. Bain and Golden Gate aggressively began leading the deal last week.

“BMC is the only enterprise software vendor that can go from mainframe to mobile, with solutions that help IT drive real business innovation and optimize operations management and employee productivity,” said Ian Loring, managing director at Bain Capital.

BMC has 30 days to consider higher bids. The deal is expected to close later this year.

Harnessing the power of ammonia, Ductor hopes to revolutionize both garden farming and gas tanks by the end of this summer.

The company is developing what it claims to be the world’s first industrial scale ammonia and phosphate production technology based on a 100 percent biological process that actually reduces rather than contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. This allows it to create a low cost fertilizer that doesn’t pollute, as well as a commercially viable way to produce a crude oil alternative made from algae.

On the fertilizer side, Ductor’s technology replaces current industrial production of ammonia from natural gas and mining-based phosphates production. Ammonia and phosphate production are the basic components of fertilizer manufacturing that are also big contributors to pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. Under precise conditions as well as a specially patented brand population of bacteria, the company utilizes organic waste streams like slaughterhouse and food waste as feedstock materials to create ammonia through a natural process. Ammonia and phosphates are separated from the feedstock to make fertilizers, and the remaining biomass can be sold as black soil to optimize each resource. One hundred percent biologically produced, the fertilizers are equal in strength to chemically manufactured fertilizers, according to the company.

The company is also working on creating crude oil from algae in what it claims to be “the first commercially viable solution,” CEO Ari Ketola wrote in an email interview with Red Herring. Most R&D spent on creating crude oil from algae has focused on genetic manipulation of the algae, Ketola explained. Current approaches to crude oil also require intense energy to create it as well as an abundant supply of algae. Ductor’s bioprocess actually produces all the energy required, plus excess energy that it can then sell elsewhere. The company takes existing algae and optimizes growing conditions, using nutrients gathered through the Ductor bioprocess, as well as other undisclosed innovations. The resulting product has the needed mass to reach profitable production, according to Ketola.

The company is currently fine tuning its technology in a small scale bioprocess testing factory. Ketola estimates it is 1.5 years ahead of its original schedule. As a technology company, Ductor will license the technology to customers that will then manufacture the product.  Its technology will be ready for licensing by the end of the summer.

“Ductor’s innovation is a truly unique solution that will not only solve several key issues for our planet, but also creates a new, highly profitable business,” Ketola said. “The Ductor bioprocess is extremely economical as it produces its own energy for the process. Cost efficiency has been one of our leading bioprocess design principles, and we are absolutely confident that the overall business case is viable, also for developing countries.”

At the close of January, the company landed €1.1 million ($1.4 million) from TEKES (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Research), which it will use to complete technology development and start commercialization. This brings Ductor funding to total €3.85 million ($5 million) for the past year as the company previously in 2012 raised another round of  €2.75 million ($3.58 million).  Naturally, the company targets the energy industry, but recycling industries like vendor rendering and food waste will also benefit from its technology as well as organic fertilizer manufacturers.

“This new Ductor technology will change several matters for our planet, secure food production, reduce CO2 emissions, reduce fertilizer-based pollution, free farming land from energy crops to food production,” Ketola said.

If all goes well, Ductor’s technology should be contributing to gas stations and gardens by the next harvest.

Everyone has that little voice inside them that wonders in the middle of the night whether or not the front door is locked. Do you get up to check or stay in bed as the worries seep into bad dreams?

When it comes to SSH keys, however, most companies don’t even realize that up to 10,000 unlocked back doors may be open in the middle of the night, but that is exactly the case, at least according to SSH Communications Security. SSH keys, otherwise known as secure shell keys, are a cryptographic network protocol that automates commands between two or more networked computers. When it comes to large banks or logistic companies with 20,000 to 100,000 servers, there can literally be hundreds of thousands of keys. One of the company’s clients has 10,000 hosts with over a million keys, 10 percent of which provided the highest possible administrative access.

Most companies, however, don’t even realize these SSH keys are a lurking security issue that provide an open backdoor into their security systems, warns Tatu Ylönen, CEO of SSH. . The keys can be set up by the IT staff and forgotten about, providing an unlocked entrance that can circumvent the encryption system to enable theft, corruption, or unauthorized data modification. “Such a break could be devastating,” Ylönen said. “Imagine if a hacker gets into one server, they could use these key based trust relationships to move from one server to another, and do anything they wanted to the system.”

The trouble is most companies don’t know how many SSH keys they even have, or which are still important, and have no idea where to begin when it comes to making sure every door is locked. If a large bank were to remove an essential SSH key, for example, an entire branch could be shut down for days, Ylönen explained.
Makers of a secure shell protocol, SSH Communications Security recently announced new services to help companies secure and maintain their encrypted networks. Last September, the company signed a $2.5 million deal with a one of the world’s top 10 banks to identify all keys, eliminate those that are outdated, and set up a secure process to create new keys to ensure that every key created is authorized by the system.

The company counts as customers two of the top 10 banks in the US, one of the top three retailers, and one of the top three largest logistic companies in the US.

The company uses software to first identify all the SSH keys in a client’s system, and then checks to see which SSH keys are used over a three month period, eliminating any unused keys under the assumption they are nonessential. It then sets up each remaining key to a new location only accessible through a key manager, eliminating the possibility of unauthorized key setups. Every key then becomes documented. The company provides an API script for integration into the enterprise change management system for easy set up with little effort on the part of the client. A typical bank project takes up two years to set up.

By not relying on IT staff to set up and manage each key, Ylönen estimates these new automated services can save enterprises $2 to 3 million per year, essentially paying for the company’s services within two years.

With a number of patents filed a year ago, Ylönen expects that his company is about 12 months ahead of the competition. He estimates the company faces a market worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Albeit remotely, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the opening bell on NASDAQ as its IPO debuted on the stock exchange. In pure hacker fashion, the world’s youngest billionaire punched a remote control NASDAQ button from its offices in Palo Alto, following an all-night hackathon where Facebook employees tinkered on various side projects and played middle of the night street hockey in pure Silicon Valley fashion.

After accepting a ceremonial hoodie from NASDAQ officials, Zuckerberg rang the bell and pumped his fist into the air three times to the celebrating hooting of employees, and then promptly updated his status.

“I know this may seem like a big deal. But here’s the thing: our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected,” Zuckerberg said in a short speech following the ringing of the bell that was broadcast on Bloomberg TV. “All of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You’ve done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of and I can’t wait to see what you’re going to be doing as we go forward. So on this special day, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I just want to say to all the people out there who use our products, thank you.”

Though Zuckerberg may have rang in the day for NASDAQ, Facebook’s trading was delayed for half an hour. Scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., the stock actually didn’t begin trading until half hour later, Mashable reported. A NASDAQ official declined comment on the delay. The Wall St. Journal reported that traders were having difficulty changing and canceling orders due to a high volume rush.

Facebook set the price on the high end at $38 of its expected $36 to $38 price the night before. Trading began at $42, but then quickly slipped to its opening price of $38. By mid-afternoon, it had climbed back to $41, before slipping back to $39. As of mid-day, the highs and lows ranged from $43.02 to $38. While analysts expected some market fluctuation, they didn’t expect the stock to pop, as LinkedIn did when its price jumped 109 percent on its opening day. Facebook’s only slight variation in price indicates the stock was priced efficiently without a lot of money left on the table.

No matter the closing price, Facebook is well poised to be the largest tech IPO ever, and the third largest in history, behind Visa’s raise of $19.7 billion and GM’s raise of $18.1, according to Forbes. Even at the low end of $38, Facebook is set to bring in $16 billion.

A crowdsourced bet on Twitter, meanwhile, is betting that Facebook will close at $54 with a $135.7 billion valuation.

While such a pile of money down is unlikely, Facebook’s stock price has had an effect on other IPO stocks. Shares in Zynga slipped 13 percent before trading was halted for nearly 40 minutes. The stock began trading again, though still down 5.7 percent for the day. Prices on Pandora, Yelp, and Zillow likewise dropped significantly.

However the day ends, it was certainly be worth the all night hackathon party. Zuckerberg stands to make just over a billion dollars. Accel Partners, the largest seller, will make more than $1.80 billion. Mark Pincus, Zynga’s co-founder, stands to make about $32 million. Also on the golden ticket is David Choe, the graffiti artist who painted Facebook’s original offices in exchange for stock that could now be worth $500 million.

As Stem’s bare bones website mysteriously states, “Don’t turn off the lights.” Recently
launched out of stealth mode and landing a Series A investment of $10.2 million, the
company takes a green energy approach to energy savings without asking companies
to turn off a single switch or modify what they’re doing in any way. The payback is
immediate from day one, directly tackling one of the biggest expenses that affect the
bottom line–the electric bill.

The company takes advantage of computing power in the cloud to analyze massive
amounts of data. Stem then combines this data with state of the art battery power and
predictive analytics to do something that was impossible just a few years ago. It’s SAAS
solution analyzes a business’s energy usage, buys energy during non-peak, cheap times,
and stores the energy in a battery the size of a dorm fridge for later use. Essentially, it
combines business intelligence on one side, energy storage on another, and has developed
IP for predictive capabilities that allow businesses to buy energy more efficiently. The
savings more than pay for the service.

“We look at electric use like you’d look at financial trading,” said Brian Thompson, CEO
of Stem. “As energy use is constantly fluctuating, so does your energy costs. We buy
energy when it’s low, sell it when it’s high, and we do so whenever it makes the most
sense for our customers.”

“Like solar, the savings vary according to the size and type of business and are
significant. Stem tackles the portion of the electricity bill that hasn’t been touched
before–the part you have to pay,” Thompson continued. “We provide immediate savings,
and the customer doesn’t have to do a thing. People are going to be very pleasantly
surprised when they see the difference.”

Founded in 2009, the company has been focused on R&D, and has only begun to scratch
the surface when it comes to marketing, which is where this new round from Angeleno
Group and Greener Capital will come in handy. Though still in pre-sales, the company
has already signed enough customers to outstrip its manufacturing capacity until next
year. Its clientele include businesses with large commercial spaces – hotels, service
stations and supermarkets. While the company has initially targeted medium to large
businesses as it enters the market, Thompson views every business as a customer, as the
savings could equally apply to small businesses and even households down the road.

“We plan to play a critical role in the digitization of commercial energy,” Thompson

said. “We believe there will be a storage box in every business. Like hybrid cars, every
business should be a hybrid business. If you think of every business and every building
as a customer, and no one has deployed this technology yet, when you do the math you
realize we have a lot to be excited about.”

Not that there aren’t and won’t be competitors in the future. While other companies do
specialize in energy storage solutions, none couple it with business analytics and IP
that includes predictive capabilities. As competitors emerge, Thompson argues, Stem’s
technology will be well ahead of them.

“It would take significant time and resources to create a comparable solution for this
market, and we have a couple of major head starts,” Thompson said. “Like Google’s
advanced search algorithms keep it competitive, we have a system that works with
several years of development behind it.”

It was Stem’s uniqueness in the field that sealed the investment, explained Zeb Rice, Co-
founder and Managing Partner at Angeleno Group, the lead Stem investor.

“We have evaluated hundreds of companies in the cleantech sector. Stem is the only one
that uses big data, cloud computing and energy storage to improve the bottom line,” Rice
said in a statement.

And while the company’s solutions are green for the planet, they’re also green for the
dollar, Thompson pointed out.

“Any green energy improvement worth its salt is also a money making machine,”
Thompson said. “All companies have one green mandate- reduce the total cost of
ownership. We provide real savings while being good for the environment. That’s what
real efficiency is all about.”

Using Internet and other technology, EveryoneCounts reinvents the cast of the ballot. The company strives to bring elections to any Internet device or phone to make voting as easy as Facebook. And it works. When the State of Oregon used Everyone Counts to make it possible to vote from an iPad, voter participation went up 1,500 percent. When the Swidon Borough Council in the UK conducted an independent pole of the 2007 election facilitated by Everyone Counts’ software, 25 percent of participants voted online, and 35 percent of those who did said they wouldn’t have vote otherwise.

The company delivers an SAAS voting platform that allows voters to independently cast votes via any computer or Internet connection, any phone whether mobile or landline, or email or fax for regions that lack sufficient legislation for online voting.

Everyone Counts also enables voting precincts to establish secure voting units using iPads, notebooks and PCs, much cheaper than the $7,000 electronic voting machines typically used that only have a shelf-life of 10 years. Plus, governments also have the option to then use the devices in schools and libraries when elections aren’t being held.

The company’s solutions save governments typically 30 to 50 percent, and can be quickly established, sometimes in as little as a few days. When a company serving El Paso County in Colorado failed to meet compliance standards, Everyone Counts provided a solution in less than two days. The company regularly organizes special elections in 30 to 60 days.

Security is naturally a concern. From the beginning of its inception, Everyone Counts formed a team of both election experts and IT security and Internet specialists to ensure the systems met the highest security standards. The systems are protected through multiple security levels, including military encryption for every ballot and ballot box, meeting the highest security standards required by banks or top secret government sites.

“Governments adopt more slowly than others, and that has helped us to refine really state of the art solutions,” said Lori Steele, CEO of Everyone Counts. “There’s no reason everyone shouldn’t have the ability to use state of the art online systems.”

The company’s systems have been audited by PWC, Deloitte, as well as multiple divisions of the Department of Defense. Though governments had been slow to adopt the technology, business is rapidly picking up as the technology and the integrity of the security becomes more accepted. The company currently is running 70 percent of the SAAS election procurements in the US, including three full states and the largest counties in another four states.

The company’s customers include Oregon; Florida; Washington; Denver, Colorado; West Virginia; City of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois; El Paso County, Colorado; Utah, New South Wales, Australia, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The company will be the exclusive electronic voting system for the Academy Awards in 2013.

It was the flexibility of the technology that proved to be its biggest selling point, stated Steve Trout, state election director for Oregon, which implemented the company’s machines.

“The Everyone Counts system will work with many different pieces of hardware which is very beneficial since many people that have special needs have their own assistive devices on their own computer systems,” Trout said. “With the E1C solution people can mark their ballots using whatever tools they have on their own, or they can use a tablet, laptop or personal computer provided by election officials which gives us more flexibility. We have learned that there is not a one size fits all solution for voters with special needs and the E1C solution allows us to use many different pieces of hardware to serve their needs instead of relying on just one.”

Steele sees the Presidential election of 2012 as the tipping point, and foresees massive adoption of the platform in the next two to four years. Steele noted that 20 percent of US voters voted through registered mail in 2004, and 35 percent in 2008, with larger percentages projected for 2012 and beyond. Steele thinks the company’s technology could be handling half of that amount by 2016.

“I think we’ll be that seven year overnight success,” Steele joked. “It’s been a long hard battle, but things are turning our way.”

As SAAS election solutions begin to catch on, the company’s greatest concern is that governments understand the risks involved, Steele said. Everyone Counts is the only company with 100 percent accuracy, while all of its competitors have experienced failure of some kind along the way, she added.

“Not just anyone can do this,” Steele said. “As governments realize that SAAS online models work, we need them to remember that experience and the highest integrity in solutions are required. Voting is too important. We no longer see a barrier to adoption, but we need to work to remain the industry leader.”

For mere pennies, Vidyo provides video conferencing that’s as good and perhaps even much better than what the competition charges for by the dollar.

Its patented VidyoRouter architecture enables intelligent Adaptive Video Layering technology, optimizing video content through H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC)-based compression technology. Essentially, the technology enables a cost effective solution for highly sophisticated video conferencing with unprecedented error resiliency and low latency.

The company’s sales pitch is it offers a 10 fold price advantage over its competition, but the math actually works out much better, admitted Ofer Shapiro, CEO of Vidyo. For what the competition charges $6 per minute, Vidyo can deliver for 3 to 5 cents. And it does across multiple routers to multiple locations, enabling perfect video, blip free anywhere there’s Internet.

“Our biggest hurdle is our product sounds too good to be true,” Shapiro said. “When we approach the lower level people in organizations, they are almost afraid because they think the low price will also reflect the video quality. When we show the product to the CEO and they actually see it’s much better than the more expensive competition, their immediate response is, ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’ And then the lower tiers kind of snap into place. It’s amazing.”

Smooth words from a CEO, but he’s not the only one touting the system’s benefits. A report from Baird Research and Technology last November stated, “Vidyo prices its solutions significantly below Cisco and Polycom while providing the same or better quality video experience.” The report also noted that Cisco and Polycom were forced to drop their prices three to four times in order to compete with Vidyo, “the only vendor of size with H.264 SVC product that is generally available.” Likewise, PacificCrest listed Vidyo as one of its 2012 Top Enterprise IT Disruptors.

In fact, Vidyo’s platform has forced the competition to sales pitch technology ahead of release, Shapiro said. These companies use archaic MCU-based architecture developed 15 years ago. In response to market pressure, Polycom touted SVC technology in a press release in Spring of 2010, but haven’t yet released the product 18 months later, Shapiro said.

“We’ve got both Cisco and Polycom to announce products they don’t even have,” Shapiro said. “They’re releasing design wins for future systems. That’s when they get nervous. As Gandhi said, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ We’re reaching the point where the competition is leaping ahead of actual reality.”

Though Shapiro declined to state specific customer numbers, the Baird report states that it serves over 1,500 enterprise customers and 25 service provider relationships. The company has strong relationships in the healthcare, education, and manufacturing sector, with ramping traction in government and financial services. Vidyo serves SMBs and Fortune 500 companies, but has a strong uptake from companies in the mid-market with 100 to 2,500 employees, who seek high quality video without the million dollar price tag.

Vidyo’s cost effective approach to quality leverages a 20 percent annual growth rate. In a multi-billion dollar market, the sky is the limit.

“This is a huge market,” said Young-Sae Song, Vice-president of Worldwide Marketing for Vidyo. “We are confident we are putting all the pieces in place to be a very successful company. We have a very sound operational foundation for this company, and we’re confident we can scale this business and take advantage of this rich opportunity.”

The company has received venture investments from Menlo Ventures, Rho Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds, Star Ventures and Four Rivers Group.