BonitaSoft, a provider of an open source business process management (BPM) solution, has raised a $13 million Series C round led by the FSN PME Fund, a French government initiative to invest in technology companies to help them scale globally. Also joining the round are previous investors Ventech, Auriga Partners, and Serena Capital. The new funding round brings the total raised by the company to just over $28 million since being founded in 2009, and follows an $11m Series B in late 2011.

BonitaSoft is headquartered in Grenoble, France — hence the French government’s backing — although it also has a U.S. office in San Francisco where I’m told CEO Miguel Valdes Faura spends half his time, as well an another office in Paris. It operates in the BPM space, competing with the likes of Pegasystems, Appian, LongJump, and a number of other open source players.

Companies use BPM software to automate their processes, particularly where these operate at the intersection of machines and people. For example, insurance companies might employ a BPM suite to design software to automate the claims process when a customer is involved in a car accident. Or to streamline and make accountable any business process where without systems in place things would otherwise fall through the cracks, especially at scale.

(Credit: Google)

Google and Microsoft are in the middle of a scuffle over the updated YouTube app in Windows Phone, but the software giant is apparently willing to compromise.

Earlier this week, Google sent a cease-and-desist letter to Microsoft, saying that it must remove the YouTube application from the Windows Phone marketplace. That app, which Microsoft updated to make it look like those on other mobile platforms, was criticized by Google for allegedly violating its terms of service. The company specifically took aim at Microsoft over the application's lack of ad support.

In a statement to CNET sister site ZDNet on Wednesday, Microsoft said the kerfuffle can be addressed very quickly. The company said that it's "more than happy to include advertising" -- a Google demand -- but in order to do so, Google must provide "access to the necessary APIs."

Windows Phone is No. 3 in the smartphone market, thanks largely to Nokia.

(Credit: CNET/ Andrew Hoyle)

Microsoft's Windows Phone grabbed third place from BlackBerry in global smartphone shipments in the first quarter, market researcher IDC said Thursday.

Windows Phone accounted for shipments of 7 million smartphones, earning itself a market share of 3.2 percent last quarter. That was a gain from the first quarter of 2012, which saw shipments of 3 million and a market share of 2 percent.

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET)

Groupon is not racing to find a new CEO, say the interim leaders who've been running the show since the company's founder resigned earlier this year.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Tuesday, Groupon's interim CEOs Ted Leonsis and Eric Lefkosky said that "are not in a rush" to name a new, permanent chief executive, adding that they have only just kicked off the process of finding a replacement.

AirWatch, the startup that helps businesses manage security and more on employees’ mobile devices, is today announcing that it has raised another $25 million, led by Accel with participation also from Insight Venture Partners. The funds come as part of an expanded Series A round, originally for $200 million, which the company announced with a splash in February during Mobile World Congress. This Series A is the first outside money raised by AirWatch, and values the company at just over $1 billion, according to sources.

Both AirWatch’s CEO, John Marshall, and Ryan Sweeney, the partner who led the round at Accel, tell TechCrunch that this latest expansion of the round was made at the same valuation. It comes just weeks after rival Good Technology raised a $50 million round and is preparing for an IPO.

As with the earlier $200 million, this latest injection will be used to help AirWatch build out its business, add more services, and quite possibly make some acquisitions along the way.

A smaller Surface tablet seems likely.

(Credit: Microsoft)

We know a smaller Surface product is likely in the works. But exactly how small isn't clear.

Digitimes has chimed in again claiming, this time, Microsoft will launch an 8-inch Surface tablet in June, citing sources at component suppliers.

Microsoft Surface RT. It's still around but products from other PC vendors are fading fast. RT does not offer the Windows compatibility that Windows 8 does.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Wondering whether to buy a Windows RT tablet? The status of RT at retail may be a good guide.

As of Wednesday evening, the Microsoft store listed no Windows RT tablets aside from Microsoft's own Surface RT. Tablets like the Asus VivoTab RT are no longer listed (though the Intel-based VivoTab is on the site). Even Dell's XPS 10 -- reduced this week to $299.99 -- is absent.

VP9 engineer Ronald Bultje speaks at Google I/O 2013.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google is nearly done with its VP9 video technology, and it wants the world to use it.

At its Google I/O conference Wednesday, company employees made the case for the royalty-free, open-source technology as a higher-quality alternative to today's dominant video codec, H.264. Moving to VP9 -- available now in testing on Chrome and YouTube -- will save bandwidth costs.

Time for a back-up plan for your Twitter back-up plan. Backupify — the cloud-based backup, search and restore provider for online services — is shutting down its TweetBackup service for Twitter users. The company has posted a note about the closure on its site, as well as — yes — on its Twitter account, noting that new signups are stopping as of today, and that existing users will have 30 days, until June 28, to keep logging into their accounts and back up their data.

After 45 days, it notes, “we will begin purging the data from our Amazon servers.”

On one of the two FAQ pages that Backupify has created to answer some questions about the service, it suggests a couple of alternatives to TweetBackup’s subscribers: for business users, they can opt for Backupify’s own-branded service; for consumers, it suggests going somewhere else altogether, Ditto from Norton Labs, owned by one of Backupify’s strategic investors, Symantec.