Philly Tech People News 2/10: New iPipeline President enters as predecessor gets big job; Who's left watching your money at PA SERS?




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iPipeline Announces Appointment of Andrew Damico as New President (Businss Wire)


Melchiorre, former President of Exton-based iPipeline, gets big job with unicorn Anaplan


Paul Melchiorre, former President of Exton-based iPipeline , was appointed global Chief Revenue Officer of San Francisco-based Anaplan today. Melchiorre’s appointment follows Anaplan’s recent announcement that it raised $90 million in a funding round.

Prior to iPipeline, he served as Global Vice President for Ariba, the B to B supply chain software company acquired by SAP  in 2012. Before that, he was an executive with SAP.

A graduate of Villanova (undergrad) and Drexel (MBA), Melchiorre has been omnipresent on the Philly Tech scene, working with numerous startups such as ExpenseWatch, ListenLogic and VC firm MissionOG.

One former SAP associate said on LinkedIn: "The way it was told to me, Paul basically built Ariba ... Actually I know Paul much better from his many years with SAP, where not only did he lead the company in sales but did so while being a hell of a nice guy."

Ariba was an early competitor to Malvern's Verticalnet, and both crashed in the 2000 era tech bust. But Ariba came back to survive and prosper, while Verticalnet barely hung on.

Anaplan, which calls itself "the enterprise planning cloud company", announced a $90 million round at a valuation of S1.09 billion post funding in January, and hired a new CFO. It definitely indicated it is planning for an IPO. It competes with older-line companies such as SAP, as well as other new-breed SaaS business planning startups.

Melchiorre left iPipeline after it was acquired by PE firm Thoma Bravo last year.



Moul becomes CEO at Philly-based Cloudamize; Founder Shah to serve as chief evangelist & board chair



Bob Moul, former CEO of Boomi (sold to Dell) and Artisan Mobile (acquired by TUNE) has been named chief executive officer of Philadelphia-based Cloudamize, effective February 1. Cloudamize is a leader in cloud infrastructure analytics and cost optimization.

Khushboo Shah, who has led the company as founder since its inception, will continue to serve as chief evangelist and will chair its board of directors.

“I am thrilled that Bob has agreed to join the company,” said Shah in statement. “He has been a close advisor for many years and brings deep insights into our market, our customers, and our partners. With his proven 35-year track record in hi-tech, he is ideally suited to take Cloudamize to the next level and to achieve our vision as the leader in maximizing cloud value for our customers.”

Moul has also been a visible leader in Philadelphia's tech community. And he gave an honest self-assessment of his missteps at Artisan, which reportedly sold for less than the amount invested in it.

Cloudamize is venture-backed by MissionOG, DreamIt Ventures, and Gabriel Investments. It has received $1.2 million in venture capital, according to CrunchBase. There's been no indication yet that additional funding is tied to Moul's new role.

Moul described in a separate blog post how he met Shah four years ago when he was coaching her in an incubator program, and has worked with her ever since.

I profiled Shah and Cloudamize a
Khushboo Shah / LinkedIn
little more than a year ago, I was very impressed with what they where doing, but wondered about the company's ability to scale up in a rapidly exploding market. Moul's entry is intended to address just that.

There are so many companies named 'Cloud' around, I think it needs some explaining. Cloudamize may be complementary to CloudNexa and shares a common investor, but is not a direct competitor (at least that's how it appeared a year ago). Cloudmine and Cloudamize share some common investors and might be helpful to each other, but are really two different businesses.

First Round Capital is an investor in a Portland-based company called Cloudabilty, that's raised $16 million and does appear to be in the same space as Cloudamize.

A year ago, Cloudamize seemed focused solely on cost optimization and tracking for Amazon Web Services customers. AWS was at a $10 billion annual run rate in the 4th quarter. But Shah's plan was to expand its range of services to other clouds, It appears to have expanded to cover Microsoft Azure, the second most popular public cloud.



Drexel President John Fry named chairman of Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce (Philadelphia Business Journal)

The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports that TE Connectivity (Berwyn) Chief Financial Officer Robert Hau would resign next month, and the company has begun a search for his replacement.

Thomson Reuters Buyouts reported (subscription) that PE officer Brandon Halm is leaving PA SERS as of February 26. The System has lost three PE professionals since last year, and is unable to fill vacancies because of a statewide hiring freeze, Buyouts reports.

He was an early Seamless employee, sold his next company for $100 million, and became a VC — now he's launching a food delivery startup    (Business Insider)


Milestone Partners Announces Promotions and Addition to Senior Team (Milestone Partners)

Lovell Minnick Partners beefs up team with three new hires (PE HUB)

TierPoint Appoints Morrison, Morales, Hicks and Markley to Technology and Operations Leadership Positions (Business Wire)
Bob Hcks, who has headed TierPoint's six Philly-area data centers, takes on broader role.

AMETEK Chief Financial Officer Robert R. Mandos, Jr. To Retire (PR Newswire}


Links 2/10: The $20 billion market that the writer apparently didn’t know existed: SAP slaps patch on leaky factory software







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The $20 billion market you didn’t know existed (Marketwatch)
The writer mistakenly refers to Motorola as a major set-top box maker; of course that business now belongs to Arris.

Comcast begs Atlanta customers not to switch to Google Fiber (Ars Technica)

SAP slaps patch on leaky factory software (PCWorld)

Ready to cook Amazon's Lambda? Google releases preview of Cloud Functions (The Register)

The world doesn’t need another Tableau (VentureBeat)


Twitter growth grinds to a halt (USA Today)


Apple May Push Into Corporate Cloud Computing Vs. Amazon, Microsoft (Investor's Busness Daily)

'Mac is key for any modern enterprise' -- SAP (Computerworld)



Private Equity's IHeart Radio Chokes on Debt Load It Can't Repay (Bloomberg)

FanDuel shuts down Florida game studio and lays off 55 (VentureBeat)