Skyztree is a Malaysian startup company focused on designing and developing innovative mobile applications. The company’s newest creation, First Smile, acts as a personal baby journal and is designed to make it easier for parents to capture, organize, and share the precious steps of their child’s growth with close friends and family. In the mold of a digital scrapbook, First Smile automatically organizes photos and videos in chronological order, then saves and stores them in a secure cloud environment – helping families preserve their most important memories forever. First Smile is different from your typical social sharing platform because it was developed by parents, for parents, says CEO Sean Lee. “Our whole team is made up of parents, so we understand that many want to share their child’s development with family and friends, but would like a guarantee that their information won’t be viewed or used by unapproved third parties. We place a premium on security so that customers don’t have to worry about anything but sharing important experiences with their loved ones.”
A Microsoft BizSpark member, Skyztree has begun to attract international attention and was recently interviewed about First Smile by Modern Living host, Kathy Ireland. The interview was subsequently broadcast on E! and Bloomberg TV, making Skyztree the first Malaysian technology startup to be featured on a major United States television program. “We’re really excited by the level of international exposure First Smile is getting,” continues Sean, “Appearing on television in the United States has increased our name recognition and will, hopefully, allow us to rapidly expand in new markets.”
Skyztree has used a wide range of Azure products to build and design First Smile, namely Virtual Machines, DNS Zones, App Services, and Virtual Networks. The company leverages DNS Zones to host their domain names, App Services to host the company’s main website, and Virtual Networks to create private cloud networks. Joining the BizSpark program has helped Skyztree in many ways, says CTO Loi Hui Lye, “BizSpark gave us access to a lot of technology, which greatly minimized our initial startup costs and allowed us to focus our limited financial resources elsewhere. The Azure Management Portal has been especially helpful to us, we can now easily create and manage our service without needing to be physically present at the data center. It’s been a pretty remarkable development that has allowed our company to really take off.”
View an introduction to the First Smile, Baby Journal app:
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About BizSpark: Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps startups succeed by giving free access to Microsoft Azure cloud services, software and support. BizSpark members receive up to $750 per month of free Microsoft Azure cloud services for 3 years: that’s $150 per month each for up to 5 developers. Azure works with Linux and open-source technologies such as Linux, Ruby, Python, Java and PHP. BizSpark is available to startups that are privately held, less than 5-years-old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue.