Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (3/5/2012 to 3/11/2012)

I reported on Bentley Systems' 2nd annual corporate update conference call; growth seems to be picking up again and the main message I took away from the call was the emphasis on China.

I wrote about Philly & New York-based Solve Media's effort to expand its CAPTCHA branding business to pre-roll advertisements for online videos.

Netflix is looking for cable operators to partner with, but Comcast quickly said it wasn't going to play that game.

The FCC signaled that it wasn't going to give Verizon Wireless and several cable operators a quick pass on their proposed spectrum sale and marketing joint venture, requesting more (unredacted) information from all parties involved.

Fortune Magazine profiled Comcast's strategy for its NBC Sports Group to double down on sports.

The New York Post broke a story that Google was looking to unload Motorola Mobility's Horsham-based set-top box business even before the acquisition was completed. Although there has been no confirmation, many industry observers would not be surprised if it were true.

PE Hub reported on SAP Ventures' plans for its next fund. SAP Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe said in an interview at CeBIT that collaboration software would be the company's next product category to expand in; that doesn't necessarily require an acquisition but nonetheless his comments got the rumor mills going again. SAP also rolled out at CeBIT what it referred to as a multitenant Cloud version of its Business One ERP suite for smaller enterprises, although some analysts questioned whether it was a true multitenancy architecture.

Exton-based Scala introduced several new offerings at Digital Signage Expo 2012, including what it calls CxO Board, a digital display scoreboard that enterprise managers can use to monitor key performance metrics.

Fisker, with its plans to produce autos in Delaware delayed, had a Karma it delivered to Consumer Reports break down almost immediately on the testing grounds.

And a somewhat altered group now said to be headed by Lewis Katz and Gerry Lenfest apparently has exclusive rights to bargain for Philadelphia Media Network; Ed Rendell's position in the group is not clear at this time.

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Daily Links 3/12/2012: Oracle gets a downgrade due to growing competition from SAP

Dell working on cloudy analytics apps
Survey says SMBs want one SaaS throat to choke (The Register)

Oracle: SAP Draws Blood; Jefferies Downgrades To Hold (Eric Savitz/Forbes)

Why Workday has Oracle and SAP worried (Fortune Tech)

A couple interesting tidbits came out of a blogger SAP HCM briefing call (Jonathan Reed)

Top VC Sees More Business Software Deal-Making (Forbes)

Passport Health Acquires STAT Technologies, Gains Market-Leading Enterprise Scheduling Capabilities (PR Newswire)
Tennessee-based Passport Health's Healthworks division is located in King of Prussia. STAT Technologies is based in Hazlet, NJ. "Passport executives did say they anticipate additional M&A activity this year as the company responds to increasing market demand for its products and services, and carries out plans for continued aggressive growth", according to its press release.

Parts of healthcare are moving to the cloud (O'Reilly Radar)

AppMobi Releases First Public Version of jqMobi HTML5 Framework (ReadWriteMobile)
AppMobi is based in Lancaster.

AT&T accelerating LTE rollout, targeting 11 new cities (Gigaom)
Philly apparently not one of them.

Wawa Searches for Right Mix of Technology vs. Customer Service (Convenience Store News)

Aereo files countersuit against broadcasters (Reuters)
First Round Capital was an early backer of Aereo.



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