Microsoft® BizSpark® startup launches OPlanner in time for London 2012 Summer Olympics

July 23, 2012 - PRLog -- Santa Monica, CA - OPlanner (http://www.OPlanner.net), an iPhone App that helps people plan, organize, and share their viewing schedules for the London 2012 Summer Olympics, is now available in the Apple iTunes store. The App was developed by Intelli-Focus, a Microsoft BizSpark startup that’s based in Santa Monica, California. The Silicon Beach based startup gives Olympics fans an easy way to find their favorite events, organize a viewing schedule in their local time zones, and share viewing schedules on Twitter and Facebook.

It is expected that 3.2 billion people worldwide will watch the Olympics this Summer, and Intell-Focus co-founder, Bob Wall, hopes that the 73 million iPhone owners use OPlanner to enhance their Olympic viewing experience. Wall said, “Being selected into the BizSpark program gave us the ability to really create an incredible product. Microsoft’s products are a huge part of how we’re able to create beautiful apps for people.  Yes, this app is for the iPhone, but our services are all running on Azure, and by doing so, we know we will be able to scale as the user base increases during peak Olympic moments.”  

OPlanner was created in just over a week by Jose Segura, the other co-founder of Intelli-Focus, their lead designer, Oleg Sharov, and Bob.  “Building highly scaleable web api’s has become so effortless with Azure.  It is truly such a pleasure to work with.” said Jose.  Oleg adds, “Some of my design inspirations are pretty in-line with the cleanness that is the new Metro UI.  I wanted to make something that was truly beautiful and still dead simple to use.  I think we nailed it with this one.”

Intelli-Focus was chosen to be part of Microsoft’s worldwide BizSpark program in 2011. The program helps software startups succeed by giving them access to software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, and providing marketing visibility. The program also includes access to Windows Azure, a flexible, comprehensive, and powerful cloud platform for the creation of web applications and services.

The southern California startup was also recently nominated by Microsoft Evangelist, Aaron Stannard, to be part of the BizSpark+® program. Only 1 percent (1%) of all BizSpark startups are chosen to be part of the “plus” program. "I think it’s really amazing just how quickly Intelli-Focus was able to get OPlanner up and running – goes to show you just how much you can get done when you let Windows Azure manage the infrastructure so you can just focus on shipping products instead of managing VMs, security groups, load balancers, etc..." said Stannard.

“Just to be nominated is pretty surreal. We started this company because we love building software and now getting to mesh it with our love of sports, is very exciting.  BizSpark helps us forget about infrastructure and lets us concentrate on being creative.” said Wall.

OPlanner is available in Apple’s iTunes store as a 99 cent download.

Read more by visiting http://www.OPlanner.net

iTunes App Store - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oplanner/id545347754