Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (11/28 to 12/4 2011)
Obviously, the two biggest news items of the week were the deal between several cable companies and Verizon Wireless, which on the surface may look like a simple sale of wireless spectrum, but in fact raises a number of issues which I believe will face intense public and regulatory scrutiny; and SAP's Saturday announcement of an agreement to acquire Cloud/SaaS Human Capital Management vendor SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. On the Veizon Wireless deal, Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett emailed the New York Times: “This is a REALLY big deal. Maybe the most significant deal the industry has ever seen. And that’s a pretty amazing thing to say for a deal where less than $4 billion changes hands.” On the SAP deal, I put together a post highlighting the views of leading enterprise software analysts on the SuccessFactors acquisition.
As TechCrunch reported, Malevern-based AboutOne raised $1.6 million in a round led by Golden Seeds and has a new partnership with Microsoft.
Dell Boomi enhanced its services with the announcement of its Cloud-Based Master Data Management Solution.
Clearwire got a major lifeline from Sprint in the form of a $1.6 billion financing deal; but it doesn't matter much to Comcast since they've gone in a different direction and will be phasing out its marketing relationship with Clearwire, though Comcast will still own a small stake in the company for now.
In Philly Tech People News, former TruePosition Inc. EVP Fred Beckly has joined New Hope-based Quepasa Corporation (myYearbook's parent) as General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Business Affairs. And Katy Theroux, a top exec with New Jersey-based standards and solutions organization GS1 US, was elected the first female Board Chairman of Philadelphia's Peirce College.
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