Philly Tech People News 2/24/2013
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TicketLeap names Tim Raybould President, Chris Stanchak out as CEO (Technically Philly)
Louis Hayner announced on his LinkedIn page that as of March 1st, "I will resign from my position of CSO (Chief Sales Officer) at Alteva to pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities". Although he says he will continue to act as a consultant with Alteva "for some time", he writes that he is looking forward to a long vacation and planning his next
entrepreneurial adventure.
Suprakash Chaudhuri Is MD, SAP India & Subcontinent (CRN)
Philadelphia Insurance Names New Chief Marketing and Chief Information Officers
Brian O’Reilly promoted to CMO and Andrew Peel hired as CIO of PHLY. (PR Web)
Tom Flinn Joins Adminovate as Chief Customer Officer (Business Wire)
CareKinesis names Joseph J Filippoli as CIO (CareKinesis Website)
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SAP Acquires SmartOps to Help Customers Optimize Inventory and Service Levels in Supply Chain
Using the SAP HANA® Platform, Move Will Enable Companies to Run Leaner and Free Up Capital for Innovation and Growth (PR Newswire)
SmartOps is based in Pittsburgh.
Intel acquires developer tools from Lancaster's appMobi (Central Penn Business Journal)
Talking Small Biz: His Kensington firm has silver linings
(Philly.com)
Daily Links 2/22/2013: Enterprise Software Roundup
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SAP Speeds Up With Its Hana Database Software (Businessweek)
The Second Question (Vijay Vijayasankar/Vijay's thoughts on all things big and small)
Why run SAP BW on HANA?
Coke bottler picks SaaS over SAP (Computerworld)
Brit SAP house G3 Global slurps 2e2's SAP house
Diagonal moves from Morse to 2e2... to an SME in Weybridge (The Channel)
Diagonal is based in Berwyn, PA.
Informatica Stitches Workday and NetSuite Together (All Things D)
Infor: a grown-up stealth start-up (Vinnie Mirchandani/Enterprise Irregulars)
4Q12 Performance for Trident Capital’s SaaS Portfolio; Nice Way to End the Year (Trident Capital Blog)
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Intel acquires Lancaster-based AppMobi's HTML5 tools business
Tom Paine
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Intel has acquired Lancaster-based AppMobi's HTML5 developer tools platform and hired several of appMobi's related personnel, AppMobi announced yesterday. Those individuals moving to Intel will continue to be based in Lancaster, the company said. Terms were not disclosed.
AppMobi said in October it had more than 130,000 active developers working on mobile and desktop apps using HTML5. Existing and new users will have to register at Intel's website to gain access to the tools, which require no usage or licensing fees.
Meanwhile, AppMobi will position itself as a cloud services company that is focused on delivering mobile app engagement and monetization services across numerous platforms. AppMobi's cloud service are fee-based to developers. Those operations will also be based in Lancaster.
TechCrunch posted a copy of AppMobi's letter to its developers explaining the deal.
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Student Entrepreneurs Explore Startups at Princeton Hack Week
Alan Skontra
Some of the brightest young minds in New Jersey spent an entire week hacking ideas and forming potential new companies during Princeton University's Hack Week 2013, from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2, 2013.
More than 80 students heard guest lectures by veteran entrepreneurs, and many formed teams to present their own startup ideas during Demo Day on Saturday.
The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club organized Hack Week. According to junior and computer science major Momchil Tomov, this was the club's first official Hack Week. It had previously hosted weekend hackathons and a weeklong event last year, though without the Hack Week name. He said last year’s event prompted the club to plan a bigger, more organized one this year.
Tomov explained that the club wanted to give students more time to work on their startup ideas. “The basic idea is that we want students to explore projects that could lead to startups in a more focused way,” he said. This year's Hack Week was timed to coincide with Princeton’s winter break, allowing students to attend without worrying about their classes.
Tomov noted that the Entrepreneurship Club had awarded prizes as high as $1,500 during previous events, but it decided against doing so at this one. “Rather than prizes, we figured the main incentive is building a product, getting experience working in a team, getting a sample of what working on a startup would be like and seeing what other people are up to,” he said.
The club received support from Tigerlabs, an “entrepreneur campus” based in the town of Princeton that offers capital, advice and other resources to startups. Several of Tigerlabs' leaders — including managing partner Bert Navarrete, who spoke about accelerators; Jason Glickman, venture partner and CEO of Princeton-based Connected Sports Ventures, who discussed raising capital; and program director James Smits, who covered pitch decks — made guest speeches during Hack Week.
Smits said Tigerlabs was eager to participate. “We thought it was a really good venue for student entrepreneurs to build something,” he said. “We really like when people are actually building products.”
Smits, himself a Princeton graduate, agreed with Tomov that Hack Week would give students time to practice outside class. “It lets the students forget about school for a moment and apply everything they've learned to a real-life application,” he said. “Hopefully it wasn't too much like school.”
Smits said he had enjoyed acting as a mentor to the students. During his talk on pitch decks, he urged them to think about how they present their businesses. “As technical as you might be, you're still one of the spokespersons for your company,” he noted.
Other guest speakers included Pericles Mazarakis, managing director at Boston-based private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, who discussed interacting with other entrepreneurs; Savraj Singh Dhanjal, founder of energy tracker Wattvision (Princeton), who presented a case study on his company; and Spencer Costanzo, president of app developer and e-book publisher Malibu Apps (Princeton), who spoke about generating revenue.
More than 14 student teams presented their projects on Demo Day. They included groups that devised the following apps: Symba, which helps users make better decisions about what they eat based on what they've already consumed that day; Safety Ninja, an app that alerts authorities and close friends when a person is in danger; Pursuit of Mappyness, which notifies students of campus events and other information; and Am I a Freak?, which lets users compare their body parts to human averages.
Tomov said he hopes the students will continue to work on their projects and that the ideas evolve into something more. A group that participated in the event last year went on to form a company, Mapsaurus, that makes an app discovery engine for Android phones. The Am I a Freak? team has uploaded its app to the Google store.
“We've already had companies start out of this, and we think we can help a lot more,” noted Tomov.
For more information about Princeton's Hack Week 2013, see the photos and videos published on Tumbler here.
This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly.com, and is reposted here with the permission of the author, Alan Skontra, and NJTechWeekly.com.
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Daily Links 2/21/2013: VCE intros new product line including specialized HANA box
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VCE collective takes integrated systems battle down to the midrange
Cisco-EMC-sometimes-VMware converged boxes take on the tier ones (The Register)
Product line will include specialized appliances to run SAP's HANA in-memory database.
VCE adds two new converged infrastructure models, SAP certification (Computerworld)
Amazon gets (more) serious about the enterprise. No kidding (Gigaom)
San Jose Sharks' controlling owner Hasso Plattner can be hands-off and hands-on (San Jose Mercury News)
Comcast launches app store for biz customers (Gigaom)
Comcast Gets Bizzy With Apps (Light Reading Cable)
Cable TV work caused K.C. gas leak; body found in rubble (USA Today)
Nielsen changing the way it measures television consumption (LA Times: Company Town)
February 2013 Business Outlook Survey (Philly Fed)
Below expectations.
Manufacturing in the Philadelphia Region Unexpectedly Shrinks (Bloomberg)
InterDigital Announces Fourth Quarter 2012 Financial Results (Business Wire)
InterDigital Halted, Rises 4%: Q4 Results Crush Estimates; Anticipates Higher Q1 Revenue (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)
ICG Announces Fourth Quarter and Annual Financial Results--Correcting & Replacing (Globe Newswire)
Google reportedly in talks with Warby Parker to make its Google Glass specs look cool (The Next Web)
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Guest Post: Could Networks Become Houses of Cards?
Alex Conners
NetFlix announced last week its first original series, House of Cards. According to a recent NYTimes article, the first 13 episodes of House of Cards are already available on NetFlix. This upfront investment – much different than the way standard TV shows are produced - is a foreshadowing of what’s to come for streaming Internet television. The reality is DVD and BluRay relevance is changing, the way the relevance of physical books changed with the Kindle, Nook and tablets. And now it seems traditional television broadcasting is also being challenged by online video from companies like NetFlix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go and Hulu.
Therefore, my concern is less about the success of the show House of Cards. It is only a matter of time before NetFlix develops an original series or movie that’s an instant success. Frankly the success of NetFlix’s move to create an original series relies less on plot, actors, writers and storylines. The longterm success of this venture will depend on the quality of viewer experience.
The irony of the whole thing – the show title House of Cards, could become a metaphor for the networks it’s streamed on.
According to the Wikipedia page for the phrase House of Cards, “… the expression dates back to 1645. It means a structure or argument built on a shaky foundation or one that will collapse if a necessary (but possibly overlooked or underappreciated) element is removed."
If NetFlix and other companies (Hulu, Amazon Prime and HBO Go) over time start streaming on “shaky [network] foundation[s]” and network management is "overlooked or underappreciated," it could be a disaster.
Today, NetFlix accounts for about a third of all peak Internet bandwidth consumption. But this is only the start. Sandvine, the provider of broadband network solutions for fixed and mobile operators, forecasts that real-time entertainment will be one of the biggest growth areas in data consumption. Sandvine also predicts streaming will account for two thirds of peak bandwidth consumption by 2015. Lastly, Sandvine expects the 2014 World Cup will be the most streamed event in Internet history.
The conclusion - scalable big data network and IT performance management will be imperative to ensure superior quality of viewer experience.
Also remember - the infrastructure challenges aren’t limited to home delivery. Even with high-speed LTE networks expanding across the globe, wireless networks will continue to face congestion problems as mobile device use increases and access to streaming video dominates tablet usage.
Businesses are constantly at risk of network outages and failures. We’ve seen firsthand two examples in the last week alone – Twitter and Amazon both had network crashes in the last month.
Twitter and Amazon aside, my question is this: Is the market prepared for the potential infrastructure issues that could result if NetFlix and the other mentioned content providers continue to create extremely high demand for award-winning programming that is only available online?
Alex Conners manages Wilmington-based SevOne, Inc’s blog, Rethink IT Performance. According to its website, SevOne provides the world’s fastest, most scalable IT management and reporting platform, delivered as an all-in-one solution, to help you detect and avoid performance events before they impact you business. On January 15, 2013 SevOne announced receiving a $150 million investment from Bain Capital. This article appeared earlier this month in Rethink IT Performance.
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Daily Links 2/20/2013: SAP Founder Plattner Joins Club of Billionaire Donors
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Ed tech accelerators go corporate: Pearson and Kaplan launch startup programs (Gigaom)
Giving Pledge: SAP Founder Plattner Joins Club of Billionaire Donors (Spiegel Online)
SAP Says Plattner Keeping $9.7 Billion Stake Amid Gates Pledge (Bloomberg)
Cloud Computing 101: Start Here to Avoid Cloud Confusion (ASUG News)
Salesforce CEO Benioff Tries Out Some New Material (Bloomberg)
Conshohocken big data firm Monetate says world is ready for it now (Philadelphia Business Journal)
Comcast Business Services Unveils Upware - a Cloud-Based Business-to-Business Software Marketplace for Small Business Customers (Business Wire)
Bidder From China Leads in Fisker Acquisition Talks (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)
Bye Bye, Delaware!
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Daily Links 2/19/2013: Comcast trying out prepaid Internet Service in Philly
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ICG Increases Ownership in SeaPass Solutions (Globe Newswire)
Curalate Pairs Pinterest, Instagram Analytics Also adds promotions tool for photo-sharing service (Adweek)
Company News: TicketLeap Names Tim Raybould as President and COO; Chris Stanchak as Chairman of the Board
(TicketLeap Blog)
Business Modelling And Planning Solution Anaplan Acquires Vue Analytics, Hires Ex-SAP France COO To Head Up Its European HQ (TechCrunch)
Synygy Rolls Out New Data Management Application for Optymyze (Business Wire)
AppExchange Seven Years On (Denis Pombriant/Enterprise Irregulars)
NBC's 44% Plunge Reveals: Football Has Become TV's Addiction
Pigskin Carried the Peacock in Fourth Quarter, Showing TV's Reliance on Sports (Ad Age)
Comcast Pitches Pre-Paid Internet Service (Light Reading Cable)
CAN AEREO DISRUPT THE TV BUSINESS? (KEN AULETTA/The New Yorker)
Bloomberg’s parting gift to NYC tech: an online hub to make doing tech in NY easier (PandoDaily)
Berwyn-based Diagonal Consulting acquired (Philadelphia Inquirer)
SAP consultant in quick sale after UK parent 2e2 goes bust.
Unisys Awarded Contract to Support IRS Mission-Critical Computing Systems (PR Newswire)
Get ready for a credit-card war in Wilmington (Delaware Online: Delaware Inc.)
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The Founder Institute launching "exploratory" Philly program in Spring; info sessions this & next week
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The Founder Institute, which describes itself as the "World's Largest Startup Accelerator, with a mission to globalize Silicon Valley and help founders build enduring technology companies", is starting what it calls on its home page an "exploratory" Spring 2013 Philadelphia program. Applications are due on April 13 and sessions will occur from April 30 to August 13, 2013.
The part-time program enables would-be founders to develop and shape their business plans without leaving their day jobs, under the tutelage of experienced CEOs and entrepreneurs. The Institute, founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Adeo Ressi in California, says it has helped launch over 650 venture in 39 cities.
The Founder Institute will kick off its Philly program with a free information session and Pitch Boot Camp on Thursday, February 21 at 6pm at the offices of Seed Philly, 1650 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Guest speakers for the evening include Brett Topche, Managing Director of MentorTech Ventures and Mike Krupit, COO & Co-Founder, Real Food Works. Another free information session will be held on February 28 at 6pm at Seed Philly, featuring talks by DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg and WizeHive CEO Mike Levinson.
Also, David Nevas, Principal at Edison Ventures will make an appearance at Coffee & Capital at Quorum, University Science Center on February 21 at 8am.
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