 Pertino CEO Craig Elliott |
We previously told you about Pertino's CEO, Craig Elliott, who's career was launched in 1984 at age 23 when Steve Jobs gave him a Porsche.
We just got a good look the tech being developed by his startup and we were impressed.
Pertino left stealth mode in February, and is backed by about $29 million in venture funds (from VCs Norwest, Jafco, Lightspeed). It's offering a limited service to the public now and will be fully launched in 2013.
Pertino is a cloud service that lets you securely connect PCs together so you can share applications, music, iTunes accounts, what-have-you. In geek speak, we'd call it a "public Virtual Private Network" or maybe a "cloud LAN."
It works similar to Dropbox, except it lets you share anything on your computer, not just files. Install the Pertino software on your devices. Tell it which apps, files, folders you want to share. Email friends to share stuff with them. They will be guided to install the software.
Pertino's "Personal Network" is free. That covers three people who have three devices each (like a PC, tablet, smartphone), so nine devices total. If you want to build a network with more people, that will cost $10 a month. $10 lets you connect to up to 250 people. UPDATE: Pertino wanted us to clarify that it charges $10 per person/month.
If you want to stop sharing with someone. Click one button and the person is dropped from your network.
What impressed us most about Pertino was how easy it was to set up and manage. We predict IT people at small companies are going to love it.
Today it works on Windows PCs. Macs are coming by the summer. Android, Linux and iOS devices will be supported by the end of 2013, early 2014.
Here's a shot of what a Pertino network looks like:
 Pertino |