Two noted Halifax startups – topLog and Swapskis -- launched their products last week, moving into the phase of their development in which gaining customers becomes ever more important.

Both IT companies have female CEOs and are tenants of Volta Labs, the Halifax startup incubation centre. And both have an association with the Propel accelerator – topLog as a successful graduate and Swapskis as a current participant.

And there the similarities end.

TopLog helps companies or other organizations to prevent network failures – a problem that can cost (and has) cost large businesses tens of millions of dollars. TopLog uses pattern-detection algorithms to help companies predict system and applications failures, and more quickly resolve the problems when they do occur. Its dashboard enables IT operation teams to notice problems in real time.

“Most system or application failures take hours to resolve, with 80 percent of that time spent on discovering the source of the problem,” said CEO Ozge Yeloglu in a statement.  “We’ve developed a powerful tool that does the heavy lifting for IT operation teams, monitoring logs in real time to find problems before they lead to service interruptions.”

The company is now offering special pricing for the topLog solution and plans to release new product features early in 2015.

Swapskis bills itself as the world's first skills marketplace for women. It allows women to barter their skills with one another, so they can build up resumés and network and eventually charge real cash for their services. It’s aimed largely at women entering the work force who need to get experience in their field and also need services they may not have the cash for.

The company founded by CEO Katelyn Bourgoin launched its public beta test on Wednesday and within two days attracted more than 275 members, who posted more than $12,000 of services. By the weekend, four service swaps had been confirmed.

"After so much work, it feels amazing to finally launch our minimum viable product,” said Bourgoin in an email. “This is just the beginning of course. And we've got big plans for taking it to the next level."

Disclaimer: Entrevestor receives financial support from government agencies that support startup companies in Atlantic Canada. The sponsoring agencies play no role in determining which companies and individuals are featured in this column, nor do they review columns before they are published.