Philly Tech People News 2/6/2011

Ulticom Names Bruce Swail CEO (Marketwire)

LLR Partners Expands Investment Team with Four Hires (Business Wire)

Grant Thornton announces next Phila. leader (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Apollo Health Street Adds New Vice President of Sales in the Northeast (Business Wire)

Unisys Federal Systems Appoints New Leaders for Civilian Agencies, Homeland Security and Sales (PR Newswire)

WHARTONITE SEEKS CODE MONKEY

More Devices, Netflix Mean More Traffic for Comcast (Gigaom)

Through Ed Sabol's lens, the NFL and its players became mythic (CNN)

National health IT chief to step down
Blumenthal to return to Harvard; HHS to begin national search for new IT chief (Computerworld)

Cisco To Buy Video-Streaming Startup Inlet For $95 Million
Acquisition Aimed at Supporting Cisco's Videoscape Initiative (Multichannel News)

Exclusive: Comcast, NBCU Net Affiliate Units Merging
Consolidation Will Shift Jobs To N.J. From Philadelphia, With Cuts Likely (Multichannel
News)

Clearwire shares rise on spectrum sale speculation (Reuters)

Azavea, George Mason University and Harvard University Present District Builder, an Open Source Web-based Redistricting Application (PR Newswire)

ICG Announces Execution Of Merger Agreement Between Metastorm And OpenText (Globe Newswire via TheStreet.com)

SAP 2010 - Predictions Review Of A Turnaround Year (Forrester Blogs)

SAP to fight Oracle's $1.3 billion jury award (Computerworld)

Comcast's Versus network will stay in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Hulu By The Numbers: Hulu Plus Projections & More (paidContent)

Big Media Wants More Money From Netflix (Gigaom: NewTeeVee)

Cisco, Motorola Embedding Intel Chips Into Set-Tops? (Multichannel News)

Blumenthal to step down as health IT coordinator (Government Health IT)

SunGard Acquires PredictiveMetrics to Broaden the AvantGard Suite and Expand into Trade Credit Liquidity (PR Web)

B2B Integration Solution Provider EXTOL Announces Strong Revenue Performance in 2010 (PR Newswire)

Technology chips in to assess concussions (National Post)

Daily Links 2/2/2011: Marin County files RICO suit against SAP, Deloitte

Marin County alleges SAP, Deloitte engaged in racketeering (Computerworld)
RICO suite. Somewhat surprising to see SAP included, since most reports I had read had laid the blame more on Deloitte rather than SAP.

Two Hints at Stepped-Up Media Rivalry in Online Streaming (New York Times)

Comcast App Now Playing Video On iPads
Streaming Content Includes Shows and Movies from HBO, Turner, Showtime, Starz (Multichannel News)

Comcast Versus President Davis to Exit Sports Channel After NBC Merger (Bloomberg)

Mark Lazarus Named President of NBC Sports Cable Group (Press Release via Hollywood Reporter)
Ebersol names management team for newly formed NBC Sports Group.

NBC Sports Group restructures in wake of Comcast deal (LA Times: Company Town)


Time Warner Cable Buys Enterprise Hosting And Cloud Services Company NaviSite For $230M (TechCrunch)

U.S. court rejects Verizon request for same judges (Reuters)

Unisys' 4th-quarter profit falls 13 percent (Bloomberg)

SunGard Availability Services Announces General Availability of Enterprise Cloud Services (PR Newswire)

Gartner Quadrant Reports BI Split (Information
Week)
QlikTech in Gartner's Leaders Quadrant for first time.

Epocrates shares rise on higher IPO pricing (AP via Forbes)

U.S. Tries Open-Source Model for Health Data Systems (New York Times: Bits)

SAP Extends Ecosystem via Google Docs Alliance (IT Business Edge)

iPads become reality in Wharton classrooms (Daily Pennsylvanian)



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Aria Systems rounds up $20 million

Aria Systems, the Cloud and online subscription billing service which was founded in the Philly area and still has a significant presence in Media (Delaware County) , today announced a Series C funding round of $20 million, bringing its total funding to date to $34 million (Press Release) . InterWest Partners led the round with additional investment coming from existing investors Hummer-Winblad and Venrock. An unnamed "Fortune 500 technology firm" also participated as a strategic investor (later identified as EMC Corp., majority owner of VMWare, an important Aria partner). Bruce Cleveland, general partner at InterWest Partners, who has been an exec at Siebel Systems, Oracle and Apple, will join Aria's board.


Aria's biggest competitor in the online billing space is Zuora Inc., which itself raised $20 million in November. Aria recently reported that its fourth quarter bookings had tripled, though that does not necessarily mean its revenue tripled also. According to Dow Jones VentureWire, Aria CEO Mike Morini said the round was "flat to up", with a valuation between $50 million and $100 million.


Aria moved its headquarters from Media to San Mateo, CA, last year, and now is planning to move it to San Francisco. Morini came aboard last spring from SAP BusinessObjects (where he served as Head of Global Sales), taking over as CEO for founder Ed Sullivan, who remains as Chairman. Sullivan grew up in Delaware County and is a Drexel graduate (see "CoE Inducts Six Members Into the Circle of Distinction"), and previously founded and sold white label ISP LaserLink to Covad before starting Aria in 2003.


Media continues to be the base of Aria's product development & customer operations, in addition to having some sales and marketing personnel located there. Aria plans to use the funding to double its workforce from about 50 to 100; no word from the company on how many are currently based in Media or how much of the growth in headcount might occur in the Philly area.


Although Aria provides billing services for all kinds of online applications, its growth prospects appear pegged to the emergence of SaaS applications and Cloud Services for larger customers.



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Daily Links 2/1/2011: Checkpoint Systems acquires Shore to Shore

Comcast, Time Warner Activate TV Everywhere (paidContent)

Amazon poised to launch online movie service to rival Netflix (LA Times: Company Town)


Comcast Back-Burners SDV (Again) (Light Reading Cable)


Checkpoint Systems, Inc. Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Shore to Shore, Inc. (Business Wire)

SAP, Microsoft Try Again With Duet Enterprise (PC World)

Temple, University of Maryland top IT management research rankings (ZDNet Blogs)

Unisys Announces Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2010 Financial Results; Company Reports Strong Margins and Cash Flow; Further Balance Sheet Improvement
(PR Newswire)


Tyco to lay off 248 employees in Shakopee (Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal)

Only a fraction of pharma ad budgets go to mobile, survey finds
(Medical Marketing & Media)



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Detailed MoneyTree Q4 VC report is out

The detailed PricewaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree Venture Capital report (free registration) has been released for Q4 2010. A total of $85 million was invested in Philadelphia Metro, down from $152 million for the same period in 2009, of which $55 million was for Biotechnology and $9 million for Industrial/Energy, with the remaining $21 million going mostly to Information Technology investements, spread among 19 companies.


The largest individual IT-related investment was $5.1 million in Conshohocken's Monetate, by First Round Capital, the Floodgate Fund, and a third undisclosed firm. Another interesting venture funded is stealth startup Relay Network of Radnor ($2.1 million), which appears to be targeted to the FinTech market. Investors include NewSpring Capital. Other sizable investments included networking technology company OnPATH Technologies of Marlton ($3.1 million), health information technology company Halfpenny Technologies of Blue Bell ($2.6 million), TimeSight Systems of Mount Laurel ($2.1 million), which provides IP-based video surveillance systems, and crowdsourced advertising website Poptent of Wynnewood ($3 million).



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Daily Links 1/31/2011: Comcast Kicks Off IPv6 Over DOCSIS Test (just before Internet runs out of addresses)

Verizon Ripping Cloud Valuations To Pieces (CRN)
Implications for value of SunGard Availability?

PhillyInc: Malvern's Rajant Corp. finds big success in exporting (Philly.com)

Git Hacking: A Social Layer for GitHub (Read Write Web)
Winning project developed at Philly Startup Weekend.

Philadelphia’s 2nd Annual Global Game Jam [Recap] (Geekadelphia)

Philadelphia Media Network Announces Several Design, Content and Product Enhancements at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and philly.com (PR Newswire)

Hoping Xfinity brand connects (Denver Post)

Comcast Kicks Off IPv6 Over DOCSIS Test
MSO Runs 'Dual Stack' With Cable Modem Users in Colorado (Multichannel News)

NBC Universal CEO Steve Burke Drops Comcast COO Title
Neil Smit is adding an executive vp title at the cable giant. (Hollywood Reporter)

Amazon rolling out Netflix-like unlimited video streaming for Prime subscribers? (Engadget)


'World School' announces 1st of 20 campuses in NY (Reuters)
Perhaps a bit of an unusual investment ($37.5 million) for Philly-based LLR Partners. Do they have a past relationship with Christopher Whittle?

Isn’t it time for Amazon to grow up? (Internet Retailer)
Discusses GSI Commerce's ShopRunner.



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Philly Tech TidBits 1/30/2011

SAP is spinning out its venture arm, SAP Ventures, as a separate company, though one it will still be in control of as sole limited partner. SAP is contributing $353 million to a new fund, SAP Ventures Fund I LP, of which about two-thirds is new money and one-third reflects the value of existing portfolio companies that will be transferred to the fund, Dow Jones Venture Wire reports. SAP Ventures says the new funding will enable it to invest at slightly above its current run rate, and that it may add one to three new investment professionals in either California or Germany.
SAP Ventures has a stake in LinkedIn, which last week filed for an IPO, though that stake is presumed to be less than 5% since SAP Ventures was not specifically named in the filing.


According to the Business Insider, the price Adobe paid to acquire First Round Capital portfolio company Demdex recently was $58 million. Comcast-associated Genacast Ventures was also an investor in Demdex, a provider of online advertising technology.


A recent blog post by Forbes' Maureen Farrell has Cross Atlantic Capital Partners of Radnor listed among "Zombie" VC firms, a reference to firms that haven't announced a new fund since 2005. The firm is still actively making some investments, as my profile of Cross Atlantic last year discussed, recently saw one portfolio company (GAIN Capital Holdings) exit with an IPO, and they didn't sound to me to be a firm that is winding down. However, Cross Atlantic has depended heavily in the past on the Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS) as a source of funding, and PSERS has indicated that it is reducing the percentage of its investments going towards venture capital. Cross Atlantic did not respond to requests for comment, according to Farrell.


Conshohocken's WizeHive has raised between $1 and $1.5 million of funding from Robin Hood Ventures, the Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania and some private investors, according to CEO Michael Levinson (also a founder of DreamIt Ventures). WizeHive shifted its focus last year to gearing its software towards managing the grant and scholarship review process. It started as a more general web-based collaboration tool, but found its niche after using WizeHive to manage the application process for the TechCrunch50 show in 2009 and TechCrunch Disrupt, as well as for DreamIt Ventures' own review process.


Gabriel Weinberg's decision to rent a Bay-area billboard to take on Google and promote his Valley Forge-based Duck Duck Go search engine and its privacy features was a PR move somewhat reminiscent of Josh Kopelman's buying the rights to rename a small Oregon town Half.com. At a cost of $7,000 for four weeks, Weinberg got much more than the visual impressions of the billboard, but an enormous amount of coverage from the national tech press and the reinforcement of Duck Duck Go's David vs. Goliath image. The search engine's traffic has reportedly almost doubled to about 5 million queries per month aided by the billboard and the launching of donttrack.us (also emphasizing the privacy aspect), although that is still a miniscule portion of the search engine market.


Some ask why Philadelphia can't be more like Silicon Valley. Well the difference in VC funding shows just how wide the gap is: according to the latest MoneyTree report, the Philadelphia region last year saw an investment of $431 million in venture capital vs. $8.5 billion for Silicon Valley, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.


Look for SaaS/Cloud billing vendor Aria Systems of Media and San Mateo CA to announce a new round of funding very soon.



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Cross-Promotion Activities In Play As Comcast Takes Control Of NBCU (Multichannel News)