Philly Enterprise Bits 1/26: SAP, LiquidHub (Capgemini), Dell Boomi, roundCorner (Salesforce), Termaxia
Hockey puck chocolate cakes? Only in the Club Level @SAPCenter for #NHLAllStar - pic.twitter.com/9z7X86OlvA— Lara Toscani Weems (@LTWPhilly) January 26, 2019
Several recent SAP items:
- The Qualtrics acquisition closed . The ultimate marriage of X-data and O-data the wold's been waiting for ($8 billion worth).
- SAP has launched a blockchain-based tracking system that enables healthcare providers, pharmacies and wholesale pharmaceutical sellers to authenticate drug shipments.
- SAP will begin targeting a portion of it SAP.io fund for startups to women and underrepresented minorities.
- SAP and Google teamed up on two different initiatives: a new contest to find entrepreneurs with viable, revenue-generating business plans that promote sustainable consumption and production, and SAP National Security Services (SAP NS2) partnering with Google Cloud.
- SAP was one of several (I would bet thousands) of companies said to be "gaming" GlassDoor ratings . SAP showed the Wall Street Journal an email from its “employer brand” team asking workers to post reviews on Glassdoor and mentioning the annual best-workplace award, the paper reported.
- SAP reports full-year 2018 earnings on Tuesday . I'll be looking at CRM progress, SAP S/4 HANA Cloud results, and Qualtrics integration plans.
French-based global consultancy Capgemini acquired Wayne-based LiquidHub for $500 million in March. LiquidHub was to be a leading component of a digital transformation group within Capgemini, a trend at many major system integrators.
In September, Capgemini launched "Capgemini Invent" , which "combines market leading expertise in strategy, technology, data science and creative design, to help CxOs envision and build what’s next for their businesses", Capgemini said. The transition for
LiquidHub within the new group is going well, I hear. Jonathan Brassington, co-founder and CEO of LiquidHub, is Head of Capgemini Invent NA.
New system implementations' most critical path is often the integration of different Cloud and legacy systems. iPaaS (intergrated Platform as a Service) has played a key role in lowering implementation costs, thus speeding the migration to the Cloud or hybrid Clouds.
A Forrester study (commissioned by Dell Boomi) looked at six Dell Boomi customers across multiple industries to determine the scale and the extent of cost savings from a switch to the cloud. Forrester estimates that the Dell Boomi platform allows IT staff to complete integrations 70 per cent faster than with legacy software.
roundCorner, the Villanova-based software firm for non-profits, foundations, and educational institutions, has been acquired by Salesforce.org , it was announced on Monday.
roundCorner offers cloud-based SaaS CRM solutions built on the Salesforce platform and designed specifically for non-profits and higher ed institutions. Major customers include Girl Scouts, City Year, American Red Cross, Skoll Foundation and ASPCA. Salesforce.org is a non-profit arm of Salesforce (CRM).
roundCorner received a Series A round in 2013 lead by Salesforce Ventures , with the amount not disclosed. It appears there was an earlier seed round, , in which Boston-based CPD , a collaborative fundraising service for public media stations, participated.
roundCorner's relationship to Salesforce has been difficult to ascertain at times, though this acquisition certainly clarifies things. A 2016 statement indicated that Salesforce,org would no longer be directly selling and servicing roundCorner products .
Meanwhile, co-founder and CEO Dan Lamont departed late last year and put a shingle out for a new venture, Threshold World .
Constellation Research provided more insight into the deal .
Philadelphia-based Storage startup Termaxia claims it has pilots and production deployments in place for its petabyte-scale appliance that provides continuous availability without a cache. One of its co-founders, Professor Boon Thau Loo, is an award-winning professor at the University of Pennsylvania.