Last week we hit the road across the US with a mission to spread the word among the analyst community about Clarizen; our vision, strategy, solutions and the value they bring to business users. This very successful tour was followed by an extraordinary design partner event that was held in Santa Clara, CA.

Feedback from analysts was very positive and there was strong agreement across the variety of analysts we briefed that the solutions we bring to the market are unique in providing great value to our target market. Our vision of a collaborative project management solution for businesses of all sizes and our growth strategy also struck a chord with analysts. In particular, analysts were interested in discussing the potential of Clarizen’s unique cross-organizational collaborative platform, which allows creating collaborative project networks, and reviewing our strategy for creating value to our customers through partnerships with technology partners and project management consulting partners.

Clarizen’s 2^nd design partner event in the US took place on April 18^th at the Santa Clara Marriott Hotel. The event was an impressive one, with active participation of over 40 representatives from companies across the country. Avinoam’s presentation of Clarizen’s vision and growth strategy opened the event and was followed by an expert panel with an eye-opening discussion about project management challenges in today’s global and dynamic economy.

The panel consisted of

- Prof. Alain Bensoussan of the International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis of the University of Texas at Dallas and the former Chairman of the European Space Agency and of the French Space Agency

- Dan Clancy – Engineering Director at the Google Book Search Project and formerly a Director at NASA

- Steve Mezak – CEO of Accelerance, an international outsourcing and off-shoring expert and the author of "Software without Borders"

- Amir Neeman – VP Product of Qylur Security Systems and a principal consultant in Jacobs Consultancy

After a short lunch break, I demonstrated how we use Clarizen internally to manage all our projects and how we leverage it to collaboratively plan and execute projects both within the company and with our partners. In the last session on the day we shared our planned roadmap for 2007 and our initial thoughts for the long term.

Responses from our partners were very positive and, together with the analyst tour, constructed extremely encouraging market feedback for Clarizen’s vision and strategy as well as for the content and timing of our Beta launch.