VMblog: How did Bulb get its start?

David Runkles: Bulb started with a stellar development team ahead of the business idea about 18 months ago.  The angel investors funded the team of developers that came from my previous company Ssuru.  We started to tackle the problem of online sharing and found most of the stuff to be antiquated and tied to teaching paradigms around Higher Ed/University.

VMblog: Ok, so please tell us then, what is a Bulb?

Runkles: A Bulb is a collection of knowledge with a system that allows users to find the knowledge when they want it and explore other topics related to it. Knowledge can take on any medium such as diagrams, images, text, and/or video.

VMblog: And how is Bulb different from online courses?

Runkles: Bulb can offer online courses too.  Bulb allows for non-sequential content structure, with an immersive, rather than linear approach.  Learning can then be absorbed, synthesized and passed onto others.  Bulb is much easier to use. The Health Science Center at the University of Texas San Antonio is using our application to provide health awareness information.  Another content owner is using Bulb to create private, contextual content for adults with low computer literacy.

VMblog: Why did you choose a cloud provider?

Runkles: It was essential for us to focus on product development instead of infrastructure.  Our investors were looking for an alpha release within four months. We wanted our developers to learn new programming techniques and libraries to solve the technical problem.  They are not immune to traditional systems admin task such as configuring their own testing environments. It's just a matter of focus.

VMblog: What were some of the technical reasons for choosing a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider?

Runkles: Our experience tells us that we were always behind the curve if we hired consultants for systems administration.  Server downtime is not always hardware related, some problems can be traced back to the network or due to frequent configuration changes or DB replication issues.

VMblog: And with all of the choices available out there, how did you finally choose your PaaS provider?

Runkles: Bulb uses Java, Spring and MongoDB.  Many providers were either in beta or some offered DB hosting only at the time.  We looked for a single vendor that could provide the whole tech stack. Without dotCloud we would need to hire another part-time or potentially full-time developer.

VMblog: What's the next milestone for Bulb?

Runkles: Self sign-up is the next milestone. Plan for Pro accounts later this year. Lots of use cases for Bulb, especially via mobile. In our private beta, about one-fourth of the traffic came from an iPad.  There's a mass to consumer model for training, similar to what Vimeo has done for video sharing.  Another engagement model could be on a per-seat basis, particularly useful for organizations offering in-house training. Legacy internal training portals can be displaced all together.  Try Bulb by requesting an invitation to the public beta.