Newtown company's system hacked, 300 eateries affected (Bucks County Courier Times)

As Oracle’s OpenWorld approaches and deck chairs shuffle, has Oracle finally figured out the cloud? (Gigaom)


at 8:54 AM 0 comments

Comcast posts letters to FCC, many from local businesses, expressing support for Time-Warner Cable Merger





Tom Paine



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Comcast has submitted numerous letters in support of the Time Warner Cable merger to the
FCC, including many from Philadelphia area small businesses and associations. It has also
included them in an SEC filing and posted them on its website.

Among those submitting letters was Tracey Welson ‐ Rossman of Chariot Solutions, citing among other things Comcast's support for TechGirlz.org, the organization she founded;
Evan Urbania, CEO, ChatterBlast Media, who praises the expansion of Comcast's business services; and the CIO of Hanover-based Utz Quality Foods, who cites Comcast's assistance in
upgrading Utz' communications infrastucture.



at 11:29 AM 0 comments

Links 9/26: Comcast turns off Streampix, appoints new customer service chief








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Time Warner Cable merger critics take jabs at Comcast’s shots (NY
Post)

Comcast Turns Off Streampix (Light Reading)

Comcast seeks to fix awful customer service, admits “it may take a few years” (Ars Technica)

Bentley takes project management to the cloud (Graphic Speak)

Oracle, Salesforce.com trade moves in marketing software battle (PC World)







at 9:19 AM 0 comments

InstaMed: Another $15 million raised; total now $77 million, according to Crunchbase





Tom Paine



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InstaMed, the Philadelphia-based healthcare payments platform, has raises another $15 million, the company announced yesterday.

I haven't keep count of all their financing events, but Crunchbase (which isn't always completely accurate), puts InstaMed's total raised now at $77.2 million in 15 rounds from 5 investors. As has been the case recently, InstaMed didn't name investors in this round, only to say that existing and new investors were in it. InstaMed says it is supported by a broad investor base, including four funds and four publicly traded companies. Osage Partners and Ashby Point Capital are two of them. Josh Kopelman was an early investor, as an individual. InstaMed only said that it "will deploy the new capital to meet the increasing demands of healthcare consumerism."

InstaMed says it proceesses more than $10 billion in healthcare payments a year. Earlier this year it launched a mobile app, InstaMed Go. Bill Marvin is InstaMed's CEO, and its
executive ranks and investor group have a heavy Penn orientation.

InstaMed calls Philadelphia its headquarters, and has another major office in Newport Beach. There are 108 InstaMed employees on LinkedIn, including 72 in Philadelphia.





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Links 9/25/2014: Workday, Salesforce.com Foundation introduce higher ed recruitment packages on same day; Salesforce's in conjunction with local firm



N. Virginia Set to Overtake New York as Biggest Data Center Market by 2015 (Data Center Knowledge)

FinancialForce.com Appoints Former SAP Executive as Chief Financial Officer (Marketwire)
Big news. FinancialForce.com, the Salesforce1 platform-based and Salesforce.com-backed financial suite, is becoming an important player in the finance app cloud market.

UPDATE 2-Vista Equity, Thoma Bravo vie for TIBCO Software -sources (Reuters)
TIBCO in the past had been frequently rumored to be a SAP acquisition target. However, it has fallen off a growth track recently and is considered more of a PE play now. But its
Spotfire product line, which competes against Qlik and Tableau, remains a source of
considerable interest.

Apple Pay's tokenization has parallel significance for B2B, SAP says (FierceFinanceIT)

Workday Student Debuts With Higher-Ed Recruiting (Information Week)

Salesforce.com Foundation Announces Salesforce1 for Higher Ed (MarketWatch)
Teams up with roundCorner, which is partially based in Villanova. Same day as Workday
a coincidence?

Andreessen goes on epic tweet storm, advises tech community to “worry” (PE Hub)






at 9:25 AM 0 comments

Links 9/24/2014: Comcast: Discovery & other critics tried 'extortion' tactics in exchange for silence



Comcast: Discovery, Other Critics Tried ‘Extortion’ Tactics to Stay Quiet on Merger (Variety)

Comcast says it’s too expensive to compete against other cable companies (Ars Technica)
Cable companies are like mob families; although they can collaborate on things, they're
supposed to stay in their own territories.


Comcast Plans RDK-for-Broadband Gateway Trials in Q4 (Light Reading)
Arris collaboration with Comcast. The RDK joint venture is based in Philadelphia. Arris has operations in Horsham.



The past, present and future of enterprise mobility (Bill McDermott/Diginomica)

CRM has failed? I am so tired of hearing that (Paul Greenberg/ZDNet)

Bullpen Capital's Paul Martino likes his odds with online betting startups
 (Silicon Valley Business Journal)
Paul Martino is an native of the Philadelphia area. Though bicoastal, I believe he still
maintains a residence in Bucks County.

Tibco Halted, Jumps 7%: Reviews Buyout Bids, Says Reuters (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)


$734M IPO for Radnor lab products supplier VWR (Philadelphia Business Journal)


at 8:09 AM 0 comments

Sage Group to acquire Mt Laurel-based PayChoice for $158 million




Tom Paine



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Sage Group PLC, the UK's largest publicly traded software firm by market value, added to its US cloud business for SMEs yesterday by announcing an agreement to acquire Mt Laurel-based PayChoice, a more than twenty year-old provider of cloud-based payroll services.

The price was $157.8 million. PayChoice, with 260 employees in 16 offices in the US, had 2013 revenues of $38.9 million and has over 100,000 SMB customers. Robert Digby is CEO. PayChoice processses about 1.8 million paychecks each pay period. PayChoice is profitable and growth is in single digits, Sage says, but it expects to increase growth by cross selling among its customer base.

PayChoice licenses its software to others who operate their own service bureaus, though in the early 2000s several licensees were acquired and consolidated to establish the present
day PayChoice.

Sage Group, which has a significant US business, primarily serves small to medium-sized enterprises with accounting and ERP software. It has been seen by many as being behind the
curve in moving applications to the Cloud, a situation paticularly acute in the US. Sage has had basically flat revenue over the past four years. For FY 2013, total revenue was $2.147 billion, of which $623 million was from North America.

PayChoice has been backed by Great Hill Partners, Baird Venture Capital and North Hill Ventures.


at 12:29 PM 0 comments

Links 9/23/2014: Comcast's Werner: Triple-play is not enough








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Comcast Eyes Augmented Reality Tech (Light Reading)

Comcast's Werner: Triple-play is not enough, we must innovate
(FierceCable)

The battle for the hotel television (SNL)


Comcast to add over 1,000 miles of cable to network next year (Houston Business Journal)

Morgan Lewis & Bockius nears merger with major Boston firm (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Pa. House committee skips vote on ride-sharing legislation (Philadelphia Inquirer)



Aging Tech Giants Like EMC Look to Deals to Help Bolster Revenue
 (NY Times)

Infor plots move into cloud financials in strike against Workday (PC World)



at 8:33 AM 0 comments

Links 9/22/2014: Sage buys Mt Laurel-based PayChoice; SAP's new CRM packages built around Hybris



Sage buys Mt Laurel-based PayChoice for $157.8 million, bolsters SMB base (ZDNet)

What's holding back in-memory databases? (Computing)

Hybris, SeeWhy, CRM, cloud: How SAP is pulling it all together (ZDNet)

EMC reportedly held merger talks with Hewlett-Packard
 (PC World)

In EMC Talks, HP Was Interested Most in VMware (Re/code)



AT&T & Chernin Buy Fullscreen, the Big YouTube Video Network (Re/code)
Comcast participated in a major round last year, and NBCUniversal was said to be one of the companies pursuing Fullscreen.

Private search engine DuckDuckGo is blocked in China (VentureBeat)




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Philly Tech People News 9/21/2014








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.
Former Qualcomm Exec to Head Google Fiber (Light Reading)

VC-backed ClearFit hires Beyond.com vet Chris Billetz (PE Hub)

Ex-Chief Data Officer Mark Headd is leaving Philadelphia (Technical.ly Philly)

Stuzo Adds Partner, Focuses On Scaling MEG.com (PR Web)

Revitas Prepares for Sales Growth with Appointment of New Senior Vice President, Sales (Business Wire)

Acting-CEO of medical device company resigns
(Philadelphia Business Journal)





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Labels:



Larry Ellison — Genius Leader, Terrible Copywriter (Re/code)

Oracle CEO changes — laying out the conspiracy theories (Gigaom)


The Concur Acquisition In Context: A SaaS MegaExit (Tomasz Tunguz/Redpoint Ventures)

A Clue in 2000 Ruling? (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Possible clue to ruling in Comcast/Time Warner deal?





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