Highlights: Last two weeks on Philly Tech News (12/19/2011 to 1/1/2012)

I took an end of year look at Exton-based digital signage company Scala and had a conversation with its CEO, Tom Nix.

Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners, which invested heavily in Philly ventures in 2011, has raised another $99 million, and there may be more to come.

Safeguard Scientifics invested in two companies, including West Chester-based Hoopla Software, which makes leader scoreboards for Salesforce.com systems, and a Virginia based "Internet of Things" startup. Safeguard's other Internet of Things portfolio venture, Exton-based ThingWorx, announced a significant staff expansion.

A Federal judge threw out RICO charges against SAP in Marin County's (CA) lawsuit against SAP over
a failed software implementation. Marin County has a separate lawsuit against Deloitte, the consultant on the project.

Oracle's 2nd quarter results released in December fell short of expectations, and shook up the market outlook in the enterprise software business going in to 2012.

An FCC administrative judge ruled against Comcast on the charges it discriminated against the Tennis Channel in package placement; Comcast says it will appeal to the full commission. And Sprint sued Comcast and other cable companies over alleged violations of its VoIP patents, a move some see as a reaction to the recently announced proposed relationship between several cable companies and Verizon Wireless.

And Verizon Wireless quickly dropped a proposed plan to charge some customers $2 for paying their bills online or by phone..

Novotorium accepts first tenant: Zuppler

Tom Paine

Novotorium , the Langhorne-based business accelerator started by Mike Krupit that launched late last year, today announced it had accepted the first company into its program: Zuppler. Founded by Shiva Srinivasan, Zuppler provides full-service restaurant portals that offer online ordering, table reservations, customized restaurant websites, ratings and other functions. Zuppler also manages the processing of the orders and ensures that the orders are received and confirmed by the restaurant. Its portals also have restaurant listings, events, coupons, menu, reviews etc. Originally started in India as aPlaceToDine.com two years ago, the company migrated to the US as Zuppler and currently services about 100 restaurants located mostly in the Chicago area.

Shiva earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Bangalore University and a master’s degree in computer science from Drexel University, and has 15 years of professional experience.

See the announcement from Novotorium's website.



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Daily Links 1/3/2012: RJMetrics raises $1.2 million

A Renewal Of Enterprise Landscapes
How the HANA in-memory technology is helping transform businesses (VISHAL SIKKA, CTO, SAP)

2012: the year of cannibalisation in enterprise land? (Dennis Howlett/ZDNet Blogs)

RJMetrics Raises $1.2M For Hosted Business Intelligence Software Suite (TechCrunch)

Disruptor of the Day: RJMetrics Raises $1.2 Million and Explains the Benefits of Waiting to Raise the Money (Daily Disruption)

Moul, post-Dell Boomi: "I want to do it again" (Philly.com: Philly Deals)


Universal Display in for less revenue from Samsung: analysts (Reuters)

Cablevision Entices Buyers With Low Value (Bloomberg)

Comcast Is Like Sweet Heroin
And I’m back on the junk. (Philadelphia Magazine: The Philly Post)

8 Reasons Why We’re Excited about 2012 (Safeguard Scientifics Blog)

Yell Group Brings In Consultant To Implement Its New Strategy (paidContent)
Yell Group has a major presence in King of Prussia.

Fisker says its problem Karmas are almost all fixed (Gigaom)

Felix Salmon Pinpoints the Problem: ‘Uber Is a Car Service for Computers’ (BetaBeat)

AMETEK Acquires Technical Manufacturing Corporation (PR Newswire)



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