Daily Links 2/7/2011: Zucker says NBC tried to buy Huffington Post for 18 months

SAP's Business ByDesign Gets Software Development Kit (PC World)

SAP Business ByDesign Graduates From App To Platform (Information Week)

Salesforce.com Rides Chatter Momentum Toward $2 Billion (Information Week)

Epocrates Opens The Door For Health IT (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)

A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms (Read Write Web)

Lehigh Valley angel investor group launches (Allentown Morning Call)

Zucker: NBC tried to buy Huffington Post for 18 months, couldn’t agree on price (Poynter)

COMCAST SPOTLIGHT TOUTS SURVEY CLAIMING 67% OF COMCAST SUBS INTERESTED IN INTERACTIVE TV (Interactive TV Today)

Saying goodbye to cable
More TV consumers are using the Internet or even an old-fashioned antenna (Wilmington News Journal)



permalink

TicketLeap snags Comic-Con assignment but runs into some issues

Philadelphia-based online ticketing startup TicketLeap got a bit more publicity than it bargained for yesterday morning when ticketing for the popular Comic-Con 2011 event (to be held in San Diego) went live, as its system quickly went to overcapacity after the 9 am (Pacific) start time, and the problems apparently lasted up to four hours. This was particularly troublesome since the Geek-oriented convention had turned to TicketLeap after two previous failed attempts with another vendor, and TicketLeap had tried to carefully test out its system for the event with a trial run in December. Reaction was so widespread that TicketLeap was briefly trending globally on Twitter.


TicketLeap CEO Chris Stanchak, who responded yesterday on Twitter, posted on the TicketLeap Blog today about the situation. To summarize, he said that although they tried to prepare for heavy demand it still was more than they expected, and as they tried to adjust the scale of their infrastructure with Amazon Web Services during the day, a yet to be specified "bottleneck" prevented the necessary adjustments from taking effect quickly. Not clear whether that bottleneck was more TicketLeap's
or Amazon's problem; a basic benefit of Amazon Web Services is that it is supposed to be fairly elastic in expanding to meet customer capacity requirements. Chris says TicketLeap will follow up with a more technical explanation in the next few days.

Update: TicketLeap's post on the technical issues.



permalink

PhillyDeals: Pa. pension plan's woes are costing taxpayers (Philly.com)

What it's like to cut the cord and stop paying for TV (Washington Post)

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)



permalink

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.



permalink

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)



permalink

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).



permalink