[June 26, 2013]

SelectHub Emerges from Stealth Mode to Curb Shadow IT and Increase Value from Technology Investments

SelectHub™, a new platform for visibility and collaboration across IT software investments, announced today the launch of the SelectHub™ software-as-a-service to global enterprises. As a streamlined solution for company stakeholders to collaborate and interact with vendors across all areas of software acquisition, SelectHub enables the adoption of a standardized evaluation process that will increase the value of technology investments.

Coming off a successful exit of selling IT automation software vendor Stratavia to HP in August of 2010, CEO of SelectHub, Venkat Devraj (News - Alert), sees solving inefficiencies in enterprise technology procurement, evaluation and vendor sourcing as his next big challenge.

Enterprises spend over $300 billion annually on software purchases including SaaS (News - Alert), third-party and internally hosted solutions. Yet independent studies have found failure rates for these software projects to be as high as 68 percent.

"Enterprise software has been plagued with a disproportionately steep failure rate. Much of this can be attributed to fundamental communication challenges within organizations. SelectHub focuses on increasing success rates by applying modern collaboration and project coordination techniques to the software evaluation process. CIOs, IT Finance and Procurement leaders would be well served to take a closer look," said Shawn Rogers, Vice President at analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates.

SelectHub delivers a modern collaborative environment where both IT and non-IT constituencies can work together to evaluate, select and purchase the right software and enterprise-orientd solutions. Users can seamlessly create a project, invite stakeholders, define and combine requirements, short-list products, research solutions, message vendors, issue RFIs, compare and rate vendor responses, and manage Proof-of-Concept use cases, lab logistics, and other deliverables.

"It is becoming common for individual users or departments within companies to sign up for a new software or service and IT is the last to know. Without IT and other key stakeholders' involvement and guidance, the already excessive software failure rates will continue to worsen while creating new problems for IT," said Devraj. "Enterprises need a platform that makes it easy for the right stakeholders to come together and collaborate on purchasing not only the best product for their requirements, but also one that has the best chances of being successful in their environment based on relevant security and compliance standards, as well as integration with prior software investments."

With the rapid increase in decentralized or department-level IT spend, often referred to as "shadow IT," the launch of SelectHub comes at the perfect time.

Rajeev Ankireddypalli, Head of Information Technology at Advanced Energy Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ: AEIS), stated, "The rise of decentralized technology spend is casting tremendous pressure on IT, Procurement and Finance groups to rapidly gain alignment amongst themselves, and with peer business units to optimize investments. SelectHub's proposition of streamlining the technology evaluation process and keeping all of these stakeholders in lockstep throughout the entire procurement cycle is a timely one."

The SelectHub platform enables a streamlined evaluation process based on industry best practices that accelerates procurement timelines, and makes IT more accessible thereby eliminating the need for buyers to cut corners or departments to have to resort to shadow purchases. SelectHub makes stakeholder participation fast and easy, and makes all communications transparent and auditable. To further accelerate solution research timelines, SelectHub's marketplace lists popular product options across a hundred different software categories.

"SelectHub is definitely the next generation product that is going to simplify and transform the cumbersome and politically driven Procurement process in companies today," said Ram Prabhakaran, Senior Manager, Information Technology at Level 3 Communications (News - Alert) (NYSE: LVLT).

About SelectHub

SelectHub is a new software-as-a-service offering aimed at enterprises for technology evaluation, vendor sourcing and IT procurement. It enables a streamlined and transparent technology acquisition process within the enterprise, and offers a comprehensive set of evaluation stages including preliminary research, real-time vendor communications, RFx, technical due-diligence, business case analysis and contract negotiation. Based out of Denver, CO, the company is founded by a team of successful repeat entrepreneurs and is privately funded. The product is offered free of cost to both buyers and vendors of software products, along with a subscription-based Premium service that covers technology purchases beyond software.

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