(Manila, Philippines, April 14, 2008) - Morph Labs, Inc. announced today the acceptance by financial, telecom, and venture capital executives Lorenzo Tan, Orlando Vea and Martin Lichauco of their nomination to its board of directors. The three executives are expected to be formally elected to the Morph board this week, according to company officers.
The announcement follows the company's filing of its Registration Statement with the SEC and Listing Application with the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) in anticipation of an initial public offering in the second quarter.
"We're delighted to welcome three of the Philippines' most respected and accomplished executives to our board," said founder Winston Damarillo, who is chairman of the company. "Morph Labs will benefit in many ways from the experience and insights of these executives. We are privileged that they have agreed to play key roles as we work to make strategic contributions to the development of the SaaS market globally."
Tan is President and CEO of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) and concurrently Vice Chairman of RCBC Savings Bank and Director of RCBC Bankard, GREPALIFE and SMART Communications. A Certified Public Accountant, Tan obtained a Master of Management degree from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Commerce degree from De La Salle University.
Vea is Chief Wireless Advisor of SMART Communications, Inc. and President and CEO of MediaQuest Holdings, Inc. where he is responsible for the PLDT Group's initiatives in traditional and new media platforms. Vea founded SMART in 1991 and served as its President and CEO until 2000. He holds an Economics degree (Cum Laude) from the University of the Philippines.
Lichauco is Managing Director of AO Capital Partners, Ltd. (AO Capital), an investment and financial advisory services firm. He has over 14 years of private equity and venture capital experience, and is a member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) in the U.S. Lichauco holds an MBA with Honors from the Arthur D. Little School of Management and an Economics degree from Ateneo de Manila University.
Morph Labs is a leading enabler of Software as a Service (SaaS) for web applications. The Morph AppSpace service, the first Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Ruby on Rails - a popular open source programming framework - allows developers to quickly deploy applications into an enterprise quality on-demand environment. "Our subscription service takes away the mystery and complications of deploying an Internet web application" says David Abramowski, CEO of Morph Labs. "And our use of Amazon EC2 and S3 web services provides tremendous scalability at a price point that is hard to believe."
SaaS generally refers to applications available on the Internet as a service, typically on a subscription basis. According to industry analysts, SaaS is expected to capture a 23 percent share of the $120 billion US software market by 2010.
According to Damarillo, since launching services in January this year, Morph Labs has signed up more than 170 Morph AppSpace subscribers testing applications in the new environment. Also, over 200 Morph helpME sites are under construction, and over 600 Morph eXchange subscribers regularly access both fee and for-fee SaaS subscriptions, he said.
Morph helpME is used for the development of help and training sites. Morph eXchange is an online community for developers and their customers. Damarillo previously founded Gluecode Software, acquired by IBM in 2005; LogicBlaze, acquired by Iona last year; and Exist Global, a software and software services firm with operations in Manila, Cebu, and Los Angeles, CA.