Philly Tech News Facilities Roundup: Who's moving or expanding? (6/13/2012)

Tom Paine

Real estate decisions (leases, expansions, new buildings or offices) are often a good indicator of what's happening within a company, industry or region. This periodic Philly Tech News feature is a roundup of recent facilities news involving Philly area tech firms.

Zivtech, the Philadelphia development shop focused on content management systems such as Drupal and Alfresco and headed by partners Alex Urevick-Acelsberg and Jody Hamilton, moved this week from its old office on Strawberry Street to new digs in the Philadelphia Building on Walnut Street, where they have taken about half of the 15th floor-RJMetrics has the other half. They tell me they've just about doubled their square footage.
The old office, now available, was Indy Hall's original location. Zivtech also has people located in Madison, WI, and New York City.
Zivtech got Drupaldelphia off the ground a few years ago, and its fifth edition will be held on Saturday (correction: that's Friday), June 22 at Temple. There will be other events during the weekend, including the Drupaldelphia After / Zivtech Office Opening Party Jawn on Friday night.

Comcast has extended and expanded its lease at a former data center in Mount Laurel, going from 44,000 to 72,500 square feet. Comcast currently employs about 200 in the space at the former SunGard Data Systems facility, at Executive Park at East Gate on West Park Drive, which it first moved into in 2007. Comcast says it is expanding its research and development operations in Mount Laurel, which are apparently related to its rapidly growing Business Services segment.

Bethlehem-based online video service Viddler announced in April the opening of its second data center in New York City. Its existing data center in Phoenix now serves as a redundant backup. In what it described as a "six figure investment", Viddler said its "new, redundant, premium hardware assures the performance boost along with the ability to serve even more traffic at high speeds". "Lastly, we’ve enhanced our security and monitoring capabilities to provide a faster response to any potential problems."

Radnor-based Business Intelligence software vendor QlikTech has taken a seven-year lease on a pre-built 6,000 square foot space in the newly rennovated building at 292 Madison Avenue in New York, the Commercial Observer reported last week.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews cutting ribbon at opening of VideoLink's new Philadelphia
facility (Source: VideoLink)

Newtown, MA-based VideoLink opened a new video studio and production facility on Delancey St in Philly last week. MSNBC's (and Philly native) Chris Matthews was on hand for the ribbon cutting. The new facility has 4800 square feet, up from 3000 square feet in its old facility on N. 17th St. VideoLink is a provider of broadcast and corporate media services, solutions, and proprietary video production technology.

At Media, the social media-oriented branding agency, moved its offices in early March from Cherry Street to 222B Race Street. The new office provides ground level storefront space and two levels.

King of Prussia-based GSI Commerce, a unit of EBay, has opened a new office in New York. It houses staff from GSI Commerce's marketing services businesses including mobile advertising, ad retargeting, ad analytics, affiliate, and email. The office will have about 150 employees.



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Philly Tech Tidbits 7/12/2010

Our state-controlled liquor monopoly is more innovative than you might think. Oracle has recognized the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board as one of its 2010 Retail Excellence Awards honorees. The company says the PLCB uses Oracle Retail solutions "to help to improve inventory turns, increase multi-channel revenues, improve product availability and reduce costs associated with retail operations". Meanwhile, the Liquor Control Board has started testing self-serve wine kiosks in two central Pennsylvania grocery stores, using equipment from Conshohocken-based Simple Brands.

Internet Capital Group said it had purchased an additional 5% of King of Prussia-based ICG Commerce for $14.4 million, bringing its total ownership stake to 81%, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. ICG indicated in May when it last increased its stake in the company to 76% that it would seek to purchase the remaining 5% not owned either by itself or employees, and this apparently accomplishes that. Both this and the previous deal value ICG Commerce at just under $300 million. There has been some speculation that ICG Commerce could be considering an IPO.

Huntingdon Valley-based email marketing firm AWeber released results of a survey it conducted of 2500 small businesses regarding email marketing and social media marketing efforts that highlights the increasing relationship between the two tools. According to the study, "almost 70 percent of small business marketers are employing some sort of social media tactics and a majority (77 percent) indicate that integrating email marketing and social media is either 'very important' or 'moderately important' ".

Wharton's Supernova Conference will be held in Philadelphia for the first time this year (in the past its been in San Franciso). Described as being focused on "the transformation of computing, communications, business, and society in the Network Age", Supernova appears to be half unconference and half a more tradtional conference structure. Speakers include Comcast's David Cohen, First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman, and Philly CIO Allen Frank, though it is much more than a local conference. It takes place on
July 29-30 at Wharton's Jon M. Huntsman Hall.

A recent Bloomberg Business Week piece on "virtual world" website Second Life discusses the experiences of Tim Allen, IT Director of Web Technologies for Wharton Research Data Services at Penn, who created a eBay type store for virtual items on Second Life before selling it to focus on his day job.

Richard Kahn, CEO of Middletown, Delaware-based interactive agency eZanga.com was named one of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneurs of the Year in the Philadelphia area last month. eZanga was ranked among the fastest growing companies in the Philly Metro area last year by Inc. Magazine.

Mason Wendell, Co-Owner and Principal Designer & Developer of Canary Promotion + Design since 2001, has joined Drupal/Alfresco shop Zivtech as Creative Director of a newly created design department. Megan Wendell will remain at the helm of what will now be called Canary Promotion.

GSI Commerce's interactive agency TrueAction apparently let eight employees go, according to the Times Leader of Wilkes Barre, although it is not clear where they were located.




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