Links 2/26/2014: SAP, BMW research project will connect drivers with real-time offers and services

More Comcast Xfinity stores for Phila suburbs (Philly.com: Philly Deals)

SAP, BMW research project will connect drivers with real-time offers and services (PC World)

Gartner BI Magic Quadrant: Winners & Losers
Tableau and QlikTech move up. (Information Week)

Workday Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2014 Financial Results (Marketwire via Yahoo Finance)

Workday Slips: FYQ4 Revenue, EPS Beat; Q1, Year Views Higher (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)




eBay Leads Giant $133.7 Million Investment in Indian Shopping Site Snapdeal (Re/code)

Square Acquires Online Scheduling Startup BookFresh (Re/code)

CenturyLink inflates its cloud & adds a way to serve up data fast (VentureBeat)

Cablevision beats Street on subscriber numbers, shares rise
(Reuters)

House Proposal Would Raise Taxes on Private Equity Income (New York Times: DealBook)


Having been burned before, Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco (PandoDaily)

Skyhook Acquired: Interview with CEO Jeff Glass (GPS Business News)

Links 2/25/2014: Boomi a key to new Dell/NetSuite Alliance

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Dell and NetSuite form alliance for mid-market SaaS (Computer Dealer News)
Dell exec calls Boomi “a secret weapon” for the company.

Dell Takes NetSuite Under Its Wing (Information Week)

Fiberlink Unveils MaaS360 for On-Premises Deployments (PR Newswire)

SAP and Xamarin work to simplify enterprise mobile app development (PC World)


Workday Losses, Big Sales Growth Seen Continuing (Investor's Business Daily)

How to tell the difference between Box and Dropbox (Fortune Tech)

Comcast/Netflix: Unwinding the Latest Traffic Jam, but at What Cost? (Knowledge@Wharton)


Rovi to Buy Veveo to Bolster Television Analytics (Bloomberg)
Rovi has a significant presence in Radnor.

Customer Supplied Images Drive Social ROI at Urban Outfitters (Retail Info Systems News)

Philly Tech People News 2/24/2014

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SAP Appoints Rick Costanzo as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Global Mobility Solutions (SAP Press Release)

IPO-Bound Box Hires Cloud Chief Graham Younger Away From SAP (Re/code)


SAP appoints Adaire Fox-Martin president of APJ region (CIOL)

Rajant Introduces Sagar Chandra as Vice President of Business Development, Latin America
(Business Wire)

DreamIt Ventures Brings Two Leading Talents to the Team and New York Community (Marketwire)


SureClinical Enhances Customer Experience with New VP Sales (PR Web)
Another ex-Dell Boomi executive.

Links 2/24/2014: Oracle buys Blue Kai; Pivotal spins off Cloud Foundry with SAP support

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WhatsApp Shows How Phone Carriers Lost Out on $33 Billion
(Bloomberg)

Can Google Eat All That Fiber? (Bloomberg/Business Week)

Verizon: Heavy Web users should pay more (PC World)

Why Netflix Is Actually the Big Winner in the Comcast Bandwidth Deal (Variety)



First Comcast-TW Cable Showdown with Feds Set for March 26
(Variety)



Supreme Court Declines Tennis Channel Review of Comcast Case (Variety)


Oracle buys Blue Kai, gains massive consumer data mart (PC World)

IBM Invests Another $1 Billion In its Cloud Business (Re/code)

Pivotal spins off Cloud Foundry, gains SAP and Rackspace support (Business Cloud News)


Vision - and money - for a start-up ecosystem in Philly
(Philadelphia Daily News)

Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor (Fast Company)


LoudCrowd app eases classroom input (Penn Current)

Convergence, consolidation in US, Global broadband markets

Tom Paine

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Convergence. That's the word to describe today's broadband market, as distinctions between traditional telcos, cable systems, and to some extent wireless carriers (as mobile speeds increase) diminish. Cross-border and trans-oceanic barriers are becoming less important as well.

If the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger is ultimately approved, the US broadband market will consist of three giants surrounded by minnows. But don't forget Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, which all have their own designs on slices of the market. And there may be other emerging competitors we can't even recognize today. Middlemen, including fiber networks and content delivery networks (CDNs) such as Akamai, are also important players.

Market value is not the sole indication of strength, although it does give one a general idea of who might have the upper hand in future consolidation. Of course, the figures in
the table below include only equity values, not debt loads, which can be very significant in the broadband industry.

Verizon just completed the acquisition of the rest of Verizon Wireless from Vodafone
this past week. And Vodafone will pay out $82.5 billion to its shareholders, cutting
its market value to about $100 billion. There has been speculation that AT&T might be
considering a bid for Vodafone.

The combined Comcast/TWC market value is shown as being the simple sum of the two's current market values, as it is a straight stock transaction. However, several factors could move the value up or down.




Link to chart

Source: Philly Tech News, based on closing prices as of 2/21/2014 (Price quotes from Google Finance)

Sunday Highlights: Netflix in agreement to pay Comcast for direct access to Comcast's network

Netflix Reportedly Enters Paid Deal With Comcast To End Slowdown Standoff (TechCrunch)

Comcast, Netflix Forge a Stronger Streaming Connection
(Multichannel News)

Inside The Netflix/Comcast Deal and What The Media Is Getting Very Wrong (Streaming Media)


Netflix strikes deal to pay Comcast to ensure online videos are streamed smoothly (Washington Post)


Comcast and Netflix Team Up to Provide Customers Excellent User Experience (Business Wire)
Press release doesn't add much.



Mayor calls out Verizon on broadband agreement
(Crain's New York Business)

Financialforce.com Repositions Itself As the Latest Cloud ERP Player
(CIO.com)

Program matches foreign investors with Phila. projects
(Philadelphia Inquirer)

RUMOR: Oracle Could Be Buying Marketing Tech Startup BlueKai For About $400 Million (Business Insider)

Fisker claims total nearly $1 billion (Wilmington News Journal)

RJMetrics' growth seen as symbol of Philly entrepreneurial progress

Tom Paine

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Whether, as Mayor Michael Nutter said on Tuesday at the opening of RJMetrics' new offices, that its an example of a company that can “start in Philly, grow in Philly and stay in Philly,” I'm not completely sure, because the startup had its first offices in Camden after originally working out of co-founder Robert Moore's home, which I think was in Jersey at the time if I remember correctly. But that's just a minor technicality.

L to R: deputy mayor for economic development Alan Greenberger, Jake Stein, Mayor Nutter, Robert Moore at RJMetrics office opening (Courtesy RJMetrics)

But another impressive fact about RJMetrics, co-founded by Princeton grad Moore and Penn
grad Jake Stein, was that it was basically bootstrapped from its founding in 2009 until receiving some seed funding in 2012, then getting a 6.25 million Series A round led by Trinity Ventures in 2013. (Trinity, by the way, just lead an $8 million round in Hoopla Software, which has development offices in West Chester.)

RJMetrics has grown from 26 to 46 employees since May 2013, and plans to nearly double that staff this year. This growth necessitated more space, and thus the move from The Philadelphia Building to The Widener Building at One South Penn Square.

RJMetrics has become a star in the business intelligence space, specifically in helping
companies doing business over the web analyze the data coming out of their operational websites. Its SaaS software is said to be easy and not too expensive to get started up on. It says it now has more than 250 clients.

The event was held not only to highlight RJMetrics' success, but the progress of the entrepreneurial community in Philadelphia, for which RJMetrics has been both a key example and a visible leader.

Links 2/21/2013: Verizon closes Vodafone deal; Gigaom: Netflix, Comcast reach peering agreement

Verizon closes $130B deal to buy out Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless today (VentureBeat)

Breaking: Netflix and Comcast have reached a peering agreement (Gigaom)

Comcast’s Web of Lobbying and Philanthropy (New York Times)

Charter CEO Rutledge: After Losing Time Warner Cable, We’re Still Interested in Acquiring Subscribers (Variety)

DirecTV CEO urges U.S. scrutiny of Comcast-TWC broadband reach
(Reuters)

Ergen: Comcast/TWC Approval Could Make DirecTV Merger More Palatable
Dish Chief Says Comcast/TWC Deal ‘Puts Pressure On Everybody’ (Multichannel News)


Startup accelerator DreamIt Ventures sees executive shakeup in New York (exclusive) (VentureBeat)

Radnor-based QlikTech reports 2013 growth of 21%; Ranks near top of Gartner Magic Quadrant

Tom Paine

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Radnor-based QlikTech reported its year-end 2013 results this afternoon.

Total revenue for 2013 was $470.5 million, an increase of 21% from 2012. GAAP net loss was ($10.0) million, compared with GAAP net income of $3.8 million in 2012.

For 2014, QlikTech's guidance projects revenue between $545 and $555 million, and a bottom
line (non-GAAP) of $30 to $35 million. The revenue projections indicate growth of between
16 and 18%.

Although it offers a very different solution, QlikTech business intelligence competitor Tableau reported 95% revenue growth to $81.5 million earlier this month, and GAAP net income of $11.2 million.

Some will offer different explanations, but my sense is that Tableau is taking much of it
out of QlikTech's hide.

Update 3/1/2014: QlikTech CEO Lars Björk and one analyst tend to downplay Tableau as a direct competitor, though I remain unconvinced.

In an interview with TheStreet.com, Björk reviews the company's progress and emphasizes
its push into the healthcare sector:






Also, Gartner's 2014 BI Magic Quadrant was released last week,and you can see that QlikTech ranks very high among the leaders:

Links 2/20/2014: China investigating Qualcomm, InterDigital

Here’s why big cities aren’t getting Google Fiber anytime soon (Washington Post)

Why Comcast Always Wins: Money, Friends and Influence (The Wrap)

Comcast's Ambitions Go Beyond Cable—to Digital (Business Week)


Banking Startup Simple Acquired For $117M, Will Continue To Operate Separately (TechCrunch)
Sounds like a nice exit for First Round Capital and other investors.

University of Maryland says student records hacked dating back to 1998 (The Verge)

Now that Gigaom is all grown up, it’s time for the next chapter
(Om Malik/Gigaom)

China Investigating Qualcomm, InterDigital (AP via ABC News)

China Investigating Qualcomm's Pricing
(New York Times)
More on talks with InterDigital.


InterDigital Announces Fourth Quarter 2013 Financial Results (Globe Newswire)

Box Sales Lead Herbold Bolts to Make Way for New Hire From SAP (Re/code)