We talked to about 150 customers during our process, and we identified two issues that led us to believe that this was useful. Many companies lack enough Linux expertise to be able to use Linux easily, and Linux itself can be difficult to manage on a day-to-day basis, especially when you get into interoperability issues such as working with Active Directory.

With Linux, it's the #2 server operating system, and we're seeing that migrations are by and large successful. But companies are less successful using it in a mixed environment. That's the problem we set out to solve.

Over the last several months we've reached a number of critical milestones. We launched our company in the fall, conducted a highly successful beta evaluation program, closed our first paying customers, launched Likewise 1.0 across the U.S. and Europe, and introduced a new open source project. We're extremely pleased to see that momentum continue, and we're excited to have this opportunity to work with outstanding VC partners like Intel and Trinity.

People either give up on it or struggle with it.

We're definitely focused on the mid-market and the enterprise, and the channel will be key.

When I was a Republican governor, he was obviously a Democratic president, but on issue after issue after issue, President Obama was very helpful to us in education, in the environment, with the handling of the BP oil spill.