Daily Links 4/5/2011: Software AG seeks acquisitions, improved ties with SAP

PhillyDeals: Michael G. Rubin is dealing again, this time with eBay (Philly.com: Philly Deals)

Alteryx Secures $6M Series A Funding From SAP Ventures (PR Newswire)

Software seeks acquisitions, improved ties with SAP (Reuters)

Lawson Talks Product As ERP Consolidation Looms (Information Week)

Epicor, Activant ... last one out, please turn off the lights (The ERP Graveyard Blog)
As I posted yesterday, Activant has a major Delaware Valley presence.

Can a humble Chart object get some love? (… and points beyond)
Questions QlikTech's position in graphical display. Maybe there is a little acquisition they can make that would help with that.

Scvngr pilot LevelUp targets entrepreneurs with special local deal (VentureBeat)
Starting in Boston and Philly.

As Hulu Revenue Doubles, It Sparks a Set Top Box Boom (Gigaom: NewTeeVee)

NBCU Targets Hispanics With Marketing Initiative
Custom Ad Packages Include Broadcast, Cable, Online (Multichannel News)

Comcast Keeps Eye on the iPad Prize (Light Reading Cable)

Cephalon Rejects Valeant’s $5.7 Billion Takeover Bid (New York Times: DealBook)

Practice Fusion raises $23M in 2nd round (San Jose Business Journal)

Transplace Acquires SCO Logistics, Leading Provider of Logistics Services to Chemical, Process Manufacturing Industry (Business Wire)
SCO Logistics is based in Kennett Square.



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Apax Partners to acquire Epicor and Activant Solutions; includes Activant's Yardley-based Prophet 21 business

Private equity firm Apax Partners has agreed to acquire Epicor and Activant Solutions for a total value of about $2 billion, and plans to merge the two companies. The move will create a larger player in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) market.


Although no specific price was given for the Activant purchase, the price for Epicor is $12.50 per share, or about $1 billion, so presumably the Activant price was also in the $1 billion range. California-based Activant acquired Yardley-based Prophet 21 in 2005 for $215 million, and Prophet 21 is still a major component of its business. Prophet 21 provides ERP software for distributors, and was founded by John and Dorothy Meggitt in 1967.

Epicor’s revenue for FY 2010 were $440 million, while Activant reported revenue of $378 million in 2009

Google's Invite Media Founders: Why We Decided Not to Start the Next Facebook
Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg on Exchanges, Display Ads and Mobile, and Video-Buying Trends (Ad Age)

Angel investors growing in Phila. (Philly.com: Philly Inc)

Comcast Begins Search For Minority Networks
Hispanic-, African-American Owned-Or-Operated Channels To Launch First (Multichannel News)

Media Giants: The Difference Between Digital Survival And Smarts (Silicon Alley Insider)


Court dismisses Verizon lawsuit against FCC net neutrality rules (Washington Post: Post Tech)

SAP’s OnDemand Design Strategy (JD-OD.com)
Video: Interview with John Wookey, who heads SAP’s on-demand strategy.

CIGNA Announces New Chief Information Officer (Hartford Courant)

The Wharton School of Entrepreneurship (Wharton Journal)

Cablevision Launches iPad App With 280+ Channels (Light Reading Cable)

Email Breach At Email Marketer Epsilon Affects TiVo, Citi, Marriott And More (TechCrunch)

Philly Tech People News 4/3/2011

Harold Finders Named Chief Executive Officer of SunGard Financial Systems (PR Newswire)

Rosetta Promotes Three to Partner (PR Newswire)

Gannett Names New Chief to Front Digital Push (ClickZ)

Neumann Joins MTI as Senior VP, Client Management (Business Wire)

Energy Plus Appoints Top Industry Veteran as Chief Information Officer (PR Newswire)

ID Media Taps Diana Bald As New SVP, Marketing Director (PR Newswire)

MEI Appoints Stephen Arbour as Vice President of Technical Services
(PRLog)

SunGard Higher Education sues hosting provider Cajana

In a case that, at least on the surface, has some vague similarities to Oracle's lawsuit against SAP over its now shuttered TomorrowNow unit, Malvern-based SunGard Higher Education filed suit in February against Cajana, an Atlanta-based provider of application management and hosting services.

The complaint, filed in the US District Court's Southern Division of Ohio, charges Cajana with copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. It refers specifically to application management and hosting services provided by Cajana to Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio beginning late last year. By providing these services, SunGard contends, Cajana has access to SunGard's intellectual property and trade secrets without SunGard's explicit permission as required by contract. SunGard also says that Cajana has been soliciting several other Ohio schools to provide similar services. Sungard seeks an injunction and potentially compensation for damages.


In a response filed with the court in March, Cajana says SunGard HE has "unclean hands" because it "brought this action solely for the improper purpose of gaining an unfair and unlawful competitive advantage in the marketplace and with the goal of interfering with Cajana’s business relations and prospective business relations with its customers".

Cajana's existing Higher Education business appears to be more closely aligned towards supporting Oracle's PeopleSoft product line geared towards that segment.

SunGard Higher Education is a unit of Wayne-based SunGard Data Systems.

The case is No. 2:11-CV-00148-JLG-TPK. Documents can be viewed through PACER (registration required and fees may apply).

Comcast Chief's Compensation Increases 14% as NBC Takeover Is Completed (Bloomberg)
But Steve Burke earns more.

Intuit, Salesforce.com Team Up to Target Small Businesses (Wall Street Journal: Digits)


SAP's on-demand strategy signposts new directions (ZDNet Blogs)

Device-to-Device Media Sharing that Works
One proximity-based app has nailed the triangulation problem. (MIT Technology Review)
On NearVerse's LoKast.

Dot Obits: The Man Who [Really] Invented the Internet (Read Write Web)
Born in Poland, Paul Baran was raised in Philly, got an engineering degree from Drexel, and worked on the UNIVAC.

Q&A: Former Comcast CTO David Fellows
(Light Reading Cable)

Fight over Time Warner Cable's iPad service comes down to philosophical differences (LA Times: Company Town)

UniTek Global Services Expands Specialty Wireless Capabilities With Acquisition of Pinnacle Wireless, Inc. (Globe Newswire)

Daily Links 3/31/2011: New Hope's myYearbook buys a bunch of Android Apps

MyYearbook Buys Five Android Apps in Mobile Gaming Push (All Things Digital: NetworkEffect)

Will Google Pick Additional Fiber Cities?
New Hints That Kansas City is Just the Start (Broadband Reports)

Comcast In TidalTV's $30 Million Round
NEA Leads Funding Into Baltimore-based Video Ad Startup (Multichannel News)

Theater Owners Fuming Over Studios' VOD Plan (Hollywood Reporter)

Time Warner Cable blinks first in fight with programmers over iPad app (LA Times: Company Town)

Quintiq Posts Record-Breaking Revenues in 2010, Projects 40% Growth in 2011 (PR Newswire)
Quintiq has dual headquarters in the Netherlands and Radnor.

SAP: We will become largest supplier to banks by 2015 (Computerworld UK)

Enterprise M&A In Pictures, Courtesy Of 451 Group (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)


Organic LED firm raises $250M in offering
Universal Display Corporation boosts its balance sheet as it completes a public offering of 5.75 million shares. (Optics.org)
Universal Display is based in Ewing, NJ.


Ben Franklin and the art of business development
(Fortune)

Virtual Aliens, Squid and Rainbow Coming to Philadelphia as Augmented Reality Exhibit Opens in April (Business Wire)



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Looking back at Josh Kopelman's Midas Capital

It is interesting to take a look back at Midas Capital, which was the personal investment fund of First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman. Although no longer actively investing, it had quite a portfolio, which you can see here.

Through Midas, Kopelman was a fairly early investor in LinkedIn, which filed in January for an IPO that could value the company in the $2 billion range, according to some observers. Kopelman also was an early investor in Boomi, the Berwyn-based Cloud services company that Dell acquired late last year. Kopelman had apparently become familiar with Boomi as a customer while he was running Half.com.

Also, there was TurnTide, the anti-spamming software company that was spun off from ePrivacy Group in 2004 and sold to Symantec six months after its creation for $28 million. Other Midas investments included InstaMed Communications, the successful Philadelphia-based health payments network; Delicious, the social bookmarking service sold to Yahoo in 2005 for somewhere in the $15 to 30 million range; Five Below, the off-price retail chain for kids currently backed by Philly-based LLR Partners; and another anti-spam business, IronPort, which was acquired by Cisco Systems for $830 million in 2007.

Not too bad.

Daily Links 3/30/2011: EBay, GSI Commerce Sued by Septa over deal

Salesforce Buys Social Media Monitoring Company Radian6 For $326 Million (TechCrunch)

Ultra high-speed broadband is coming to Kansas City, Kansas (Official Google Blog)

Thoughts on being hermitically sealed inside the SAP Mothership (ZDNet Blogs)

HP's Apotheker makes pitch to partner with other companies (San Jose Mercury News)
Rules out buying SAP, saying he "would much rather have a strong partnership with them".

Valeant seeks to buy Cephalon for $5.7 billion (Reuters)

TWC's Witmer: We Didn't Anticipate iPad App Backlash
Operator Has Received at Least One Cease-and-Desist Letter from a Programmer (Multichannel News)
Apparently, it was Fox that sent the Cease-and Desist.

EBay’s Lowest-Value Takeover Target Generates Losses: Real M&A (Bloomberg Business Week)

EBay, GSI Commerce Sued by Septa Over $2.4 Billion Buyout (Bloomberg)

Who will buy ING Direct USA? (Delaware Online: Delaware Inc)

Clearwire Finally Unveils Best Buy Service Plan (Light Reading Mobile)



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Josh Kopelman, GSI Commerce and eBay

Just wondering what role Josh Kopelman played in the eBay/GSI Commerce deal.

The timing is interesting, since Kopelman, Managing Partner of Conshohocken-based VC firm First Round Capital, joined GSI Commerce's board in early February, less than two months before the deal was announced yesterday.

Kopelman, of course, goes back a long way with eBay. He sold his Half.com internet retailing startup to eBay in a deal valued at slightly over $300 million in 2000, staying on with eBay for awhile before leaving to return to entrepreneurial pursuits.

After he started First Round Capital, it was an early backer of StumbleUpon, which was acquired for some reason (nobody ever understood the fit) by eBay in 2007 for $75 million. It did not fare well under eBay, and was sold back to the founders and other investors in 2009 at a much lower price. StumbleUpon has since experience a resurgence, and First Round has recently invested again in it.

No way of knowing at this time what role Kopelman may have played either as an advisor or facilitator in eBay's acquisition of GSI Commerce, but he certainly knows the territory and the art of the deal.









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