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Showing posts with label ThingWorx. Show all posts

Lux Research: Is GE too dependent on ThingWorx? (Update: GE partners with Microsoft on cloud services for Predix)

Update 6/11: GE Partners with Microsoft on Azure Cloud for Predix.

Fortune has an item this morning about a report by an outfit named Lux Research knocking GE's IoT software strategy and questioning the market readiness of its Predix software.

I have no firm basis for either dismissing or accepting Lux' conclusions. But I have often rolled my eyes at GE's projections for Predix. Perhaps much like IBM's Watson, GE is trying soften up the turf ahead with a heavy dose of PR artillery.

What's interesting is that report acknowledges and questions GE's dependence on PTC (primarily ThingWorx) for its go to market IoT platform.

"Predix is not as fully developed as GE represents it to be, has minimal market penetration, and has not been battle-tested at scale," said Isaac Brown, Lux Research Analyst and lead author of the report titled, "A Tale of Two IoT Titans: The Curious Case of the GE-PTC Partnership," in a statement.

"In contrast, the PTC solution has millions of connected devices across hundreds of scale customers", Brown added.

GE responded, saying claims in the report “are not based on fact or objective research,” and contain “numerous factual errors.”

It seems to me that if GE decides that the ThingWorx IoT platform is suitable for a longer term relationship, then the acquisition of all or part of PTC (NASDAQ:PTC) might be in order. PTC, which made its name by selling CAD/CAM software on workstations back when that was a novel concept, has declining revenue, and IoT constitutes only a small portion of that. But PTC has a market capitalization of only $4.3 billion, and GE could swallow it like a minnow if it wanted to. ThingWorx is headquartered in Boston now, closer to both GE and PTC.

An early hint that GE might move to Boston?

Tom Paine

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Perhaps this announcement by GE, as described by NJ.com on June 2, 2014, was a precursor for GE's announcement this week that it was picking up its toys and moving its headquarters from Fairfield, CT to Boston. Perhaps the move was already in the early planning stages. Major corporate moves of that size usually require a five year planning horizon.

GE subsidiary to move jobs from Princeton, Piscataway

"GE Healthcare Life Sciences confirmed today its plan to consolidate operations near Boston, which will impact many of its 400 New Jersey employees — including job loss for some.
The facilities that will be closed next year are in Princeton and Piscataway. Operations in Livingston and South Plainfield will be unaffected by the plan, according to a company spokesman.
Of the Princeton and Piscataway employees, some will be invited to relocate to the Massachusetts facility, some may end up working remotely, while the third category would be laid off."

Though I feel little sympathy for Connecticut, whose inflexibility helped lose GE according to reports, knowing a bit about how the power structure works in that state. However, Connecticut apparently offered considerable incentives to Comcast in order for NBC Sports to relocate there three years ago.

Coincidentally, GE's move will bring it closer to PTC, headquartered in Needham, which is GE's primary IoT partner, with a significant contribution from its Exton-based ThingWorx unit. The geographical proximity doesn't mean anything in particular, but GE could snap up PTC in a minute if it wanted to.

Note: PTC announced another acquistion today to support ThingWorx and its IoT strategy.

Columbus Day Highlights: Dell has deal with EMC subject to shop around period;
ThingWorx parent PTC buys augmented reality platform from Qualcomm for $65 million for IoT strategy

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Dell to Acquire EMC for $67 Billion in the Largest Ever Tech Takeover (Re/code)

Six takeaways from Dell-EMC deal
(Fortune)

Dell to Buy EMC for $67 Billion: Five Initial Takeaways (Constellation Research)

Silver Lake Explored Sale of Dell’s PC Business Ahead of EMC Deal (Recode)

Why PTC just bought this augmented reality platform for $65 million (Fortune)

Is AWS The Most Important Enterprise Company? (TechCrunch)

The CFO who led Infosys during its toughest period is moving on (Quartz)

Campbell's Ready to Serve Recipe Ideas Through Amazon Echo (Ad Age)

Arris Launches DOCSIS 3.1 Modems (Multichannel News)

Sunday Morning Tech Fix 10/11/2015: Bubble Up? GE IoT & software moves

Tom Paine

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(Where I somehow try to answer questions I haven't been able to answer the rest of the week, at a time when I'm least capable of doing so.)

I'll be periodically posting updates on the so-called 'bubble scare' of 2015, trying to emphasize facts rather than gossip, mostly as it concerns private equity and private tech companies.

As always in a hot market, there are people who want to keep talking it up, and others who want to talk it down to cool off values a bit. And some (few) are straight shooters.

Fortune's Dan Primack, on his visit to Silicon Valley last week, said of the investment class there, speaking primaarily of unicorns (private startups valued at $1 billion or more), "As in the past, they are nearly unanimous in sentiment. The difference now is that their sentiment is fear."

Mattermark's (an emerging business information and research company) Danielle Morrill gets specific and names some unicorns that might be in trouble, including the FanDuel/DraftKings duo that have been spending huge amounts to batter each other's brains out. Some suggest that merging the two is the only solution.

Boston or Wilmington-based SevOne, which has very legitimate value, announced it had closed its latest round at $50 million (the Form D filed before the close indicated up to $60 million) and failed to indicate clearly to anyone whether it had reached unicorn status, which it was on the brink of. Which is probably just as well, since the attention that brings you may be more negative than positive now.

Of course, all of this is unicorn talk, and Philadelphia is neither Silicon Valley or New York. So I will try to focus future installmments on somewhat more micro indicators most of us need to know about.

I'm still trying to decipher all the moving parts involved in GE's enormous announcents about both its Internet of Things platform and its Predix software venture. Such as what it means for PTC's ThingWorx, which has a big role to play at least in IoT (not sure about Predix), and what it means for ERP players and the software industry in general. I think ThingWorx has to be fairly quiet, following the interests of GE and its own corporate parent.

I also noticed that ThingWorx had a presence at AWS re:Invent 2015, where it was a sponsor, though it wasn't prominently mentioned in AWS' releaeses about its new IoT platform, which was built upon the acqusition of anoter IoT platform vendor. But GE says it outsources much of its processing to AWS.

Also, waiting for some clarifcaion on Quentin Clark's new role at SAP. On SAP's website for at least the past few days, he has been listed as Chief Business Officer, rather than CTO (his prior position) though no trace of an external announcement has been found. SAP did post about two other significant appointments last week.

Links 8/27/2013: Potential Fisker buyer has plans to start Delaware production

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After soaking up $1.4B of investment, Fisker might sell for just $25M (VentureBeat)
German group's plans include starting up production at Wilmington plant.

Flash-Memory Firm Violin Memory Reveals Finances In IPO Filing (Wall Street Journal: Digits)
SAP one of its investors.

VMware’s Cloud And The Fit With IT, Cloud Foundry And OpenStack (TechCrunch)

Workday's Q2 stronger than expected, outlook raised (ZDNet)

America's most hated device: The cable box (Fortune Tech)

AllThingsD nears split with Dow Jones (Fortune Tech)
Report cites Comcast's NBCU as one possible bidder.

Apple TV Gets Vevo Music Videos, Disney And Disney XD, The Weather Channel And Smithsonian Content (TechCrunch)

Vertex Enterprise® Recognized as Visionary Technology by Ventana Research (Business Wire)

ThingWorx Expands Global Reach Through Value-Added Reseller Partnership with SPIMESENSE Technologies (Business Wire)

Resilience Capital Partners Acquires CableNet Services Unlimited As An Add-On Investment To Its Aero Communications Portfolio Company (PR Newswire)
CableNet is based in Boothwyn. It provides cable installation and support services; apparently Comcast is a customer in the Philadelphia area.

Daily Links 7/29/2013: CSC partners with ThingWorx; iMomentous wins best unknown business in America competition

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Avoiding Detroit's crash (Opinion/Philly.com)

NBC Chief Bob Greenblatt: 'There's Still Room for Improvement' (Hollywood Reporter)

Cable TV Subscriber Losses: Will Q2 Be Replay Of Q1? (Investor's Business Daily)

SC Unveils New Machine-to-Machine Solution
Developers in Manufacturing Industry Can Build Custom M2M Applications within Days (Business Wire)
In partnership with Exton-based ThingWorx.

Forget Pagers, Philly Startup Seratis Wants To Bring Hospital Communication Into The 21st Century (TechCrunch)

Bessemer Venture Partners Launches $100 Billion Cloud Index
(All Things D)

Is Silicon Valley Losing Out on Business Software Companies? (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)
OpenView Ventures Partners Managing Director Adam Marcus (OpenView investments include Monetate, NextDocs, and Xtium) points out that many of the most successful cloud enterprise software companies are located outside Silicon Valley.

SAP expands partner program for application development (PC World)

NetSuite’s improbable growth steams cloud froth (PandoDaily)

Dish is likely eyeing new acquisitions after losing Sprint (PC World)

Gregory FCA and Safeguard Scientifics Name Best Unknown Businesses in America (Business Wire)
Horsham-based iMomentous and Lehigh Valley-based Bridgeway Academy the winners.

Daily Links 3/13/2013: Monetete adds COO, CFO

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Monetate Rounds Out Leadership Team to Further Drive Company's Growth and Market Momentum
Additions of John Healy, chief operating officer, and David Stetson, chief financial officer, will help SaaS firm respond to the rising enterprise demand for its personalization technology (PR Newswire)

Why Amazon Prime Could Soon Cost You Next to Nothing (Wired Business)

Comcast will stream on demand shows from HBO, Showtime, and 28 others during free trial week for subscribers (The Verge)

Invidi Strikes Comcast Deal To Extend Addressable TV To 60 Million

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/195744/invidi-strikes-comcast-deal-to-extend-addressable.html#ixzz2NSDGBKVY">Invidi Strikes Comcast Deal To Extend Addressable TV To 60 Million (MediaPost: Media Daily News)

SAP Opens Singapore-Based Co-Innovation Lab (TechCrunch)

Oracle to acquire cloud management software biz Nimbula (VentureBeat)

Oracle Buys Nimbula For Cloud OS Software, Not OpenStack (TechCrunch)

The Drexel 40 Under 40 (Drexel Magazine)
Some fairly well known names and other interesting people.

ThingWorx Continues to Improve on Developer Efficiency with Version 4.0 (ThingWorx Blog)

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ThingWorx completes $8 million Series C

Tom Paine

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Exton-based "Internet of Things" M2M application platform startup ThingWorx has apparently completed a
Series C round first announced in October, according to an updated SEC filing appearing on FormDs.com. The new filing shows that ThingWorx has raised $8 million (well, actually $7,999,977), up from about $5.4 million reported for the round in October.

ThingWorx previously raised a $5 million Series B in early 2011, bringing its total funding raised to date to at least $13 million. Both the Series B and Series C were lead by Safeguard Scientifics.

ThingWorx has developed a number of customer relationships to extend its M2M application platform into different vertical industrial markets.

Philly Tech News VentureWatch 10/11/2012

Tom Paine

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Some interesting venture activity in the Philly area lately:

RightCare Solutions said yesterday it had raised a $1.75M Series A financing round. It was led by Compass Partners of New York and Domain Associates of Princeton. RightCare's Discharge Decision Support System, D2S2, was developed during a decade of research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. D2S2 seeks to reduce hospital readmissions by revolutionize the discharge planning process, which is critical not only for patient health but also because the new healthcare act penalizes hospitals for readmissions.

RightCare won the 2012 Wharton Business Plan Competition, and also the Janssen Connected Care Challenge this past spring.

PublicStuff, the First Round Capital-backed startup that is providing the software for the Philly311 system that launched last month, has raised another $5 million, TechCrunch reported. FirstMark Capital (investor in Boomi and appRenaissance) and the Knight Foundation led the round, with previous investors also participating. Although now based out of New York, PublicStuff has some Philly roots, having started out in the GoodCompany Ventures incubator program in 2009.

CorpU announced late last month it had received $4.5 million in funding to help "revolutionize talent development with Virtual Learning Communities (VLCs)". The round was led by Global Silicon Valley Capital (GSVC), Red Eagle Ventures, and Penn Venture Partners. CorpU also announced the addition of two new board members, David Pottruck, former CEO of Charles Schwab, and investor Michael Moe. Pottruck, who also teaches at the Wharton School, will serve as CorpU's Chairman of the Board. Integrating high-definition video, social media, web 2.0, and cloud delivery with live instructor and student interaction, CorpU VLC's include The Art of Negotiation; Leaders-as-Teachers; Leading and Managing People; Leading Bold Change, and Total Leadership.

Although the company is officially headquartered in Mechanicsburg, a company spokesperson told Philly Tech News that "the Philly office is a core center for CorpU and has a dual purpose of being a Customer Visit Center and the company’s primary studio for building course content for our mission critical business applications." Right now CorpU has ten people working out of the Philly office, the spokesperson added.

Digital Life Technologies, whose website indicates it is based in Bala Cynwyd and Bellevue, Washington, says it has received investments from Ben Franklin Technology Partners Southeastern Pennsylvania (although I don't think Ben Franklin has announced it yet), JumpStart NJ Angel Network, and St. John's Capital LLC. The company claims to have "developed the first reprogrammable magnetic stripe card that communicates with an eWallet on a mobile phone via Near Field Communications (NFC)", the GoNow eWallet Card. President & CEO Doug Spodak has had tenures at TruePosition among other places.

TripAdvisors has acquired Wanderfly, a neat site that is like a Pinterest for travel. Co-founder Christy Liu is a Penn grad, and its backers included Penn-associated MentorTech Ventures. Terms were not disclosed.

ThingWorx, the Exton-based M2M, "Internet of Things" startup, announced on Tuesday that it had raised a Series C financing , led by previous investor Safeguard Scientifics. The size of the financing was not disclosed; the Series B was for $5 million. (Update: the SEC filing dated yesterday was for an offering of $8 million of which $5.4 million has already been sold.)

Also, King of Prussia-based clinical trial tracking and payments firm Greenphire said in an SEC filing it had raised another $4.3 million.

Jerry Baker has left Halfpenny Technologies, the Blue Bell-based provider of a SaaS Health Information Exchange platform, were he served as president and chief executive officer, to take an executive position with Wayne-based Medecision. Which may lead some to wonder what is going on at Halfpenny Technologies, which received $2.6 million in funding from Osage Venture Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, and LORE Associates two years ago.

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Safeguard Scientifics holds Investor Day 2012 conference in New York

Tom Paine

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Safeguard Scientifics held its Investor Day 2012 Conference yesterday at the Yale Club of New York. You can access the transcript from the event here, and view the webcast here. You can also view presentation slides here.

I found the presentation instructive and in line with Safeguard's efforts to be a more transparent and easier to understand company. In particular, the opening comments by President & CEO Peter J. Boni are worth watching, as he describes how the company has transformed itself since its meltdown resulting from the bursting of the 2000 tech bubble. Also worthwhile is the presentation of Joe Zawadzki, CEO of MediaMath, a NewYork-based ad buying platform (similar to Google's Invite Media) that is one of Safeguard's fastest growing partner companies.

Safeguard also announced that it was increasing aggregate revenue guidance for its partner companies for 2012 from a range of $160 million to $165 million to a range of $185 million to $190 million. Exton-based partner company ThingWorx also said yesterday it has raised Series C funding led by Safeguard.

I may have a few more observations after sorting through all the details.

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