Daily Links 2/9/2012: Oracle in $1.9 billion deal with Taleo, more on Philadelphia Media Network controversey
Oracle Buys Taleo (Marketwire)
Predicted by many, $1.9 billion deal a countermove to SAP's SuccessFactors acquisition.
Oracle Buying Taleo for $1.9 Billion in Direct Hit at SAP (PC World)
News Analysis: The Implications Of Oracle’s Acquisition Of Taleo (Ray Wang/A Software Insider's Point of View)
Wharton Opens New West Coast Campus in Search of Startup Appeal (Bloomberg)
Inquirer & Daily News owners embarrass themselves, and us (Dave Davies/NewsWorks)
PMN defends pulling blog post (Philly.com)
But reporter David Gambacorta obviously disagrees.
2 Solyndras For The Price Of 1? A123 Hurt By Fisker's Woes (Eric Savitz/Forbes)
Google reportedly working on wireless home entertainment system to be sold under its own brand (Engadget)
DOJ Set To Approve Google's Acquisition Of Motorola Mobility: Report
Agency Also Set to OK Consortium's Purchase of Nortel Patents, According to WSJ (Multichannel News)
SunGard Announces Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2011 Results (Business Wire)
Publicis Reports 2011 Revenue Grew 7.3% to $7.7 Billion (Ad Age)
Publicis has a significant Philly area presence.
Urban Outfitters cleans up inventories, shares rise (Reuters)
Urban Outfitters' ecommerce segment is now a $500 million per year business.
Heartland Payment Systems Q4 profit tops estimates (Reuters)
BioClinica Reports Record Service Revenue for the Fourth Quarter and Year End 2011 (Business Wire)
Microsoft's plan to bring its ERP users slowly but surely to the cloud ( Mary Jo Foley/ZDNet Blogs)
Cox and CTDI Hold Grand Opening & Ribbon Cutting For New Facility in Chesapeake, VA, on Feb. 8 (PR Newswire)
CTDI is headquartered in West Chester.
Integromics Partners With FPGMX To Develop Low-Cost Methods For Clinical Genomics (Integromics Press Release)
Integromics' US operations are based in Philadelphia.
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EPAM Systems completes IPO after cutting offering price and size
Tom Paine
Newtown-based EPAM Systems, Inc., a provider of outsourced informations system development services, has completed its IPO. It is trading on the NYSE under the symbol EPAM.
EPAM had to cut back sharply on the size of its offering. It sold only 6 million shares at $12 per share; originally it planned to float 7.4 million shares at $16-18 per share. Only 1.5 million of the shares were sold by the company, with the rest being offered by existing shareholders, meaning that proceeds to the company would be about $18 million. EPAM opened at $13.75 and closed at $14.00, up 17% from the original offering price. Its market value is in the $600 million range.
Sometimes referred to as the Cognizant of Eastern Europe, most of EPAM's developers are located in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. Half of its revenue in the first nine months of 2011 came from North America; clients include several major tech and financial giants such as Google, SAP, Oracle, Barclays Plc and Citigroup. It has over 7,000 employees. Arkadiy Dobkin, EPAM's cofounder, CEO and President, came from Belarus and after migrating to the US worked for Colgate-Palmolive and SAP Labs before starting EPAM. Its services include end-to-end development capabilities, technology consulting, Infrastructure and hosting, QA & testing, and maintenance and support. Revenue for the first nine months 0f 2011 was $239 million, and net income was $32 million.
It is the first significant information technology IPO in the Philadelphia area since Radnor-based QlikTech went public in July of 2010.
(Update 2/13/2012: In response to an email, an EPAM spokesperson tells Phiily Tech News that EPAM has about 150 employees located at its Newtown headquarters.)
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Daily Links 2/8/2012: PMN spokesman has Daily News piece on possible bidder taken down
Spokesman Mark Block says he asked Philly.com to remove sale story from website (Poynter)
Here is an AP story on the same topic as the article that Block asked to be pulled. (Update: The Inquirer now has a story up on the Blatstein group's interest, at least as long as Block will allow it to stay up.)
How Invite Media’s founder is making sure success ‘wasn’t a fluke (Financial Post)
Sounds like Nat Turner is looking towards his next startup.
Amazon Just Made A Deal That Could Crush Netflix (Silicon Alley Insider)
Verizon's Prelude to All-Out War ( Jeff Baumgartner/Light Reading Cable)
TiVo open to takeover bids (Deborah Yao/SNL Kagan)
Cable Companies Have Launched A Massive Attack Against Boxee Over Set-Top Boxes (Silicon Alley Insider)
Enforcement Bureau Recommends Denying Comcast Request to Stay Tennis Channel Decision (Multichannel News)
Epam Systems' shares jump in IPO debut (MarketWatch)
Newtown-based company sharply cut offering price and size before launching.
Fed Delays Vote on Capital One Deal for ING Direct (NY Times: DealBook)
Were Turntable.fm and "Group Listening" Just a Summertime Fad? (Read Write Web)
First Round Capital was an early backer of Turntable.fm, investing originally when it was called Stickybits before pivoting.
Path's Apology Will Save Its Reputation (Forbes)
Problems for another FRC portfolio company.
USA Technologies, Inc. Reports Results for Second Quarter of Fiscal 2012 (Business Wire)
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Penn professor's new book raises questions about digital privacy
Tom Paine
Joseph Turow, a professor and associate dean at Penn's Annenberg School, has a new book out, The Daily You, that is garnering considerable attention (see excerpt from The Atlantic) .
In it, Turow challenges the premise that the Internet would promote individual freedom, and "that the consumer is king in the new media environment", by exploring the extent to which data is being collected about us and how it is being used to target us. Nothing new about that; marketers have been using data to target people for a long time. Historically, though, that was mostly done through loosely grouped demographic data that revealed little about you as an individual. Now, through information collected from individuals' activities on the Web, marketers can discern an intricate pattern of your behaviors and habits and use it to target you (and perhaps manipulate you) in very specific ways.
Turow seems to focus not as much on everyone's favorite punching bags, Google and Facebook, but rather on what he calls the transformation of the media buying function through what might be referred to as the advertising technology revolution. (While largely centered in New York, the ad tech business has some important Philadelphia connections.) Turow writes that "the rise of digital profiling and personalization has spawned a new industrial jargon that reflects potentially grave social divisions and privacy issues".
Turow will give talk on the subject tomorrow evening from 6 to 7:30pm at the Penn Bookstore.
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Daily Links 2/7/2012: ShopRunner buys Shopsanity
ShopRunner Buys Shopsanity to Help Retailers Take on Amazon (PandoDaily)
Oracle demands retrial in SAP slurp spat
Snubs paltry $272m payout, wants full $1.3bn in damages (The Register)
Bill and Jim’s Bright Shiny Penny: Understanding SAP’s Success and the Challenges It Brings (Joshua Greenbaum/Enterprise Applications Consulting)
SAP to Offer Hana Analytic Software to Smaller Companies in 2012 (Bloomberg)
With federal loans blocked, Fisker halts work on Project Nina, lays off 66 workers (Engadget)
Meet Spongecell, a Profitable Ad Tech Company With $10 Million in New Funding from Safeguard Scientifics (All Things Digital)
EPAM downsizes IPO, prices below range-underwriter (Reuters)
InterDigital anticipates Q1 revenue shortfall (Forbes)
Vishay Q4 Revs, Profits Miss Estimates; Shares Stumble (Forbes)
Coinstar Soars on Profit, Buyout of NCR Unit (Bloomberg via San Francisco Chronicle)
Redbox and Verizon Face Key Decisions for DVD-and-Streaming Service (Ad Age)
Customers rate Comcast in first of 4 meetings (Savannah Morning News)
Fed may decide on Cap1-ING merger Wednesday (Delaware Online: Delaware Inc.)
DreamIt Ventures seeks five Israeli start-ups (Globes)
SaaS Changes to Higher Ed ERP Market (Delta Initiative Blog)
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Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (1/30/2012 to 2/5/2012)
Reports that surfaced in the New York Post a week ago that Philadelphia Media Network, owner of the Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com, was for sale again turned out to be true, with a group led by Ed Rendell and Ed Snider and another led by members of the Perelman family mentioned to be among the candidates to acquire it.
Exton-based SaaS insurance provider iPipeline"s latest funding round, announced in January, turned to be for $71.4 million, according to its SEC filing.
Scrutiny of the proposed spectrum sale and reseller agreement between Verizon Wireless and Comcast and other cable companies intensified, with a Senate committee planning hearings for later this month. Meanwhile, the joint marketing arrangement continued to roll out, expanding into the Bay area.
The closing of SAP AG's $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors could be delayed for weeks, possibly even months, as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) investigates it, for some reason.
Philly-based ad agency Red Tettemer & Partners (Century 21) and local crowdsourcing site Poptent (Dannon) both had ads they produced run during the Super Bowl, which ad people say is two more than Philly's ever had before. And Nielsen said NBC's 2012 Super Bowl broadcast was the most watched program in TV history.
And Comcast may invest, through its partial ownership of the SNY cable network, $40 million to help bail out the New York Mets. Traitors.
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Daily Links 2/6/2012: NBC's Super Bowl most watched TV program ever
Kenexa Agrees To Acquire OutStart, a Leading Provider of Next Generation e-Learning Solutions (Business Wire)
Kenexa Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2011 (Business Wire)
Company says it paid $38.9 million for OutStart, from which it expects $13.5 million in GAAP revenue for 2012.
Local company's acquisition puts it on the global map (Wilmington News Journal)
NBC's Super Bowl XLVI most-watched show in TV history (USA Today)
What kind of bounce will NBC get?
Verizon to set up streaming service with Redbox (AP via LA Times)
Verizon teams up with Redbox to cash in on video (Gigaom)
Hands on with AnyPlay: Live Comcast video on your iPad (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
Is Workday Silicon Valley's Next Big IPO? (Daily Beast)
Workday certainly deserves some hype, although this article perhaps provides too much of it.
Be everywhere: Google’s real social strategy (ZDNet Blogs)
By Will Reynolds of Philly's SEER Interactive.
Newgrounds Undergoing Redesign (GameKudos.com)
Newgrounds is based in Montgomery County.
Fisker lays off workers in Delaware, California (Wilmington News Journal)
SAP community portal launch date unclear due to bugs (Infoworld)
Greenphire trying for larger place clinical-trial information business (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Someone’s Trying to Frankenstein a Sports Blog Monster That Will Crush Philly.Com (Philly Mag: The Philly Post)
Q&A: Russ Fadel, CEO, ThingWorx – “Hooked on Entrepreneurship” (Safeguard Scientifics Blog)
Poptent's Super Bowl ad for Dannon's OIKOS Greek Yogurt
Poptent, the Philadelphia-born agency that crowdsources video advertising production, has had its Super Bowl ad for Dannon's OIKOS Greek Yogurt prereleased prior to the game. Poptent received 34 fully-produced entries from its top producers, and a spot titled "The Tease", directed by Lewis & Clark College student Remy Neymarc, 21, was selected. The final spot was then shot at Poptent Productions, a division of Poptent.
Poptent's website also shows some outtakes and behind the scenes activity from the shoot. Poptent was founded in 2007 and received $6.8 million led by MK Capital in late 2010. Although it has a considerable presence in Conshohocken, its headquarters is now in San Clemente, CA according to its website.
Poptent joins Red Tettemer & Partners, with its ad for Century 21, as Philadelphia agencies producing ads for the 2012 Super Bowl.
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NBC sees pay dirt with Super Bowls ads, spin-offs (Philadelphia Inquirer)
NBC Channels Marilyn Monroe in Super Bowl Ads to Aid Network (Bloomberg)
A Sign Law Spurs Investment in Philadelphia (New York Times)
Philly Tech People News 2/5/2012
Comcast Hires Singh From Cisco To Head Long-Range Planning
Exec Named Senior Vice President of Finance and Strategic Planning (Multichannel News)
Comcast-Spectacor leader Luukko makes Billboard power rankings (Philadelphia Business Journal)
Kenexa Expands Leadership Team With the Appointment of Goldschmidt to Chief Customer Officer (Marketwire)
Leydon to retire as VP and CIO after more than 30 years in IT field (News at Princeton)
SeaChange Announces Departure of Company President Yvette Kanouff
No Replacement Planned (Business Wire)
BizEquity Adds Leading Business Valuation Expert Scott Gabehart to Senior Team (Business Wire)
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