SEUK to partner with Oxford University to develop a 'trustmark' for the sharing economy

 The UK’s sharing economy trade body, SEUK, is partnering with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School (SBS) to develop the world's first comprehensive ‘trustmark’ for the sharing economy. The aim of the academically developed trustmark is to establish responsible practices and high trust standards to guide both sharing economy businesses and consumers.

This partnership will see SEUK join forces with Oxford faculty and Rachel Botsman, the global thought leader and author on the sharing economy, who supports the trustmark. Rachel has just completed teaching the first-ever SBS MBA course on the subject together with Pamela Hartigan, SBS’s Director of the Skoll Centre.

Consumers across the world have welcomed the rise of the sharing economy – PwC estimates the combined value of the global sharing economy to have risen to $15 billion. Today’s partnership announcement will see SEUK build on this, by working closely with Oxford University, to develop a rigorous and research-backed trustmark, with clear criteria for best practice, with the aim of ensuring consumer trust in the sharing economy. The trustmark will be rolled out in stages throughout the next year.

SEUK launched in March 2015, with founding members including Airbnb, Love Home Swap, Zipcar, Echo and Hassle.com, to represent and champion the UK’s sharing economy businesses. In recent weeks SEUK have met with the new Minister of State for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise, Anna Soubry, who has expressed support for the trade body and the development of the trustmark.

Debbie Wosskow, Chairman of SEUK and Founder and CEO of Love Home Swap, said: “The sharing economy has grown exponentially over the past seven years and is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting spaces in the technology industry. Sharing businesses, by their very nature, are innovative models, which are shaking up traditional industries. This is why a robust, comprehensive, industry-wide trustmark is needed, to ensure absolute protection for both consumers and workers, and ultimately to propel the sharing economy forward into an exciting future.”

“I am confident that working with the brilliant minds at Saïd will result in precisely the best practice trustmark our industry is calling out for."

Pamela Hartigan, Director of the Skoll Centre at Saïd Business School, noted:  “It is fitting that the Skoll Centre should be embarking on this pioneering effort, given that the entrepreneur responsible for our existence is Jeff Skoll - the first President of eBay, the venture that spearheaded this new form of trust. As we know, eBay turned thousands of people into microentrepreneurs and lay the groundwork for the hundreds of shared economy platforms that are transforming the ways ordinary people can engage with one another.”

Colin Mayer, Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies, Saïd Business School, “The sharing economy is a fundamental part of our lives and is set to become much more so in the future.  Central to this is the creation of trust between platforms and users of the services and understanding the factors that promote trust is key to unlocking not only the sharing economy but economic activity in general.  We are therefore delighted to be partnering with SEUK in gaining fundamental insight into how trust is fundamentally built and destroyed in the sharing economy.”

Business Secretary, Sajid Javid said: “Britain wants to be the most welcoming place in the world for digital and disruptive technologies. The sharing economy has enormous potential to create jobs and growth, and the Government will continue to scrap outdated regulations that hold back innovation. Consumer trust is vital for any new product, technology or service, and I welcome the efforts being made by Sharing Economy UK and Oxford University to set the standards for companies in this exciting sector.” 

Equinix Selects Infinera Cloud Xpress for Datacenter Interconnect in Hong Kong

Infinera, provider of Intelligent Transport Networks, announced that Equinix has selected the Infinera Cloud Xpress to interconnect its Hong Kong datacenters. The Infinera Cloud Xpress offers Equinix a platform with hyper-scale density, operational simplicity and low power consumption.

Equinix is a global interconnection and datacenter company, operating International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) datacenters in 33 markets across 15 countries in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions. The Equinix IBX datacenters provide major networks and businesses a place to interconnect, building business ecosystems that have become vital for service providers, enterprise companies, and emerging businesses alike.

Equinix selected the Infinera Cloud Xpress to serve the growing need for high capacity customer interconnectivity between Equinix facilities in the same metro area, empowering its customers to efficiently grow and extend their ecosystems beyond the confines of a single building.

Ideal for high performance datacenter interconnection, the Cloud Xpress leverages Infinera’s unique photonic integrated circuit technology to support up to one terabit per second (Tb/s) of input and output capacity in just two rack units. The Cloud Xpress also simplifies operations using only a single fiber to deliver a full super-channel of DWDM line-side capacity. The ultra-low power and rack-and-stack form factor of Cloud Xpress enables Equinix to scale while using the least amount of space and power compared to other similar platforms. In addition, the Cloud Xpress is designed with the flexibility to fit into any datacenter operational model and offers multiple management options including plugging into existing SDN Cloud provisioning systems.

“Equinix is growing rapidly across the globe and Hong Kong is no exception,” said Raphael Ho, senior director, network engineering and operations at Equinix. “Our three Hong Kong-based IBX datacenters already support over 340 customers and we recently announced expansions at two of these sites. Cloud Xpress is an ideal solution for us to expand network capacity between our sites, with its high density, low power consumption and a very simple rack-and-stack operations model.”

“Equinix and growing datacenter operators alike continue to see a tremendous demand for bandwidth, especially in space and power-limited metro locations,” said Stu Elby, senior vice president of Cloud network strategy and technology at Infinera. “Cloud Xpress is a purpose-built rack and stack DWDM datacenter platform that addresses these needs and continues to gain traction in networks across the globe.”

Infinera introduced the Cloud Xpress family in 2014 delivering a Cloud-optimized DWDM solution to Cloud service providers, Internet content providers, Internet Exchange service providers and other large-scale datacenter operators. Infinera recently expanded the Cloud Xpress family by announcing the Cloud Xpress with 100 gigabit Ethernet (Gb/E) offering customers the choice of 10 GbE, 40 GbE and 100 GbE interfaces to meet their specific requirements.

Mirakl nets $20 million in Series B funding to bring online marketplaces to the world’s retailers

Mirakl, the online marketplace technology firm, has announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B round of funding. The injection of capital will be used to bring Mirakl’s online marketplace platform to a greater number of B2C and B2B retailers across the globe.

The deal was led by 83North’s Laurel Bowden (an investor in firms such as hybris, Just Eat and Notonthehighstreet), Felix Capital’s Frederic Court and Dave Strohm, Partner at Greylock and a founding investor and advisor to 83North. The funding comes on the back of Mirakl achieving growth of 200% between 2013 and 2014 and signing 22 new customers so far in 2015.

The round will drive Mirakl’s international expansion, and following the 2014 opening of its first American office, the US will continue to be a key growth market. Mirakl’s current B2C customers include Best Buy, GAME, Halfords, Harvey Nichols, Woolworths, Galeries Lafayette and Darty, and in total Mirakl has 55 customers across 11 countries.

According to IDC the SaaS enterprise applications market is forecast to increase to a total of USD $50.8 billion by 2018. At the same time Statista projects retail ecommerce to grow to USD $2.39 trillion by 2018.

“Any smart retailer in 2015 should have an online marketplace, or be considering it as an option,” said Adrien Nussenbaum, co-founder and US CEO, Mirakl. “Consumers want choice, service and competitive pricing and an online marketplace delivers all three, allowing controlled growth and the on-going improvement and refinement of the customer experience. It doesn’t matter if your business model is B2C or B2B, an online marketplace will help you reach and service customers better than ever before.”

Laurel Bowden, Partner, 83North said: “Online marketplaces are everywhere, driving multichannel retail and offering a greater scope for expansion combined with higher profit growth and lower risk. We are getting ever closer to a time where every sector, be it art, professional services or travel, will be utilising online marketplaces and Mirakl is well positioned to deliver this. I’m excited to begin working alongside the exceptional entrepreneurial team that has already built Mirakl to where it is today. ”

Philippe Corrot, co-founder and CEO, Mirakl commented: “Mirakl is growing incredibly fast and attracting such a range of world-class investors will be a major benefit to us as we continue our journey. Global commerce is continuously increasing in competitiveness, and those who adapt to changing consumption patterns and place customers at the heart of their business succeed. With this investment we can capitalise on our market leading position in Europe and achieve the same success supporting the most dynamic B2C and B2B online marketplaces across the USA.”

Mirakl is headquartered in Paris and also has offices in London and Boston. It was launched in 2012 by Philippe Corrot and Adrien Nussenbaum.