Sunday Morning Tech Fix 10/11/2015: Bubble Up? GE IoT & software moves
Tom Paine
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(Where I somehow try to answer questions I haven't been able to answer the rest of the week, at a time when I'm least capable of doing so.)
I'll be periodically posting updates on the so-called 'bubble scare' of 2015, trying to emphasize facts rather than gossip, mostly as it concerns private equity and private tech companies.
As always in a hot market, there are people who want to keep talking it up, and others who want to talk it down to cool off values a bit. And some (few) are straight shooters.
Fortune's Dan Primack, on his visit to Silicon Valley last week, said of the investment class there, speaking primaarily of unicorns (private startups valued at $1 billion or more), "As in the past, they are nearly unanimous in sentiment. The difference now is that their sentiment is fear."
Mattermark's (an emerging business information and research company) Danielle Morrill gets specific and names some unicorns that might be in trouble, including the FanDuel/DraftKings duo that have been spending huge amounts to batter each other's brains out. Some suggest that merging the two is the only solution.
Boston or Wilmington-based SevOne, which has very legitimate value, announced it had closed its latest round at $50 million (the Form D filed before the close indicated up to $60 million) and failed to indicate clearly to anyone whether it had reached unicorn status, which it was on the brink of. Which is probably just as well, since the attention that brings you may be more negative than positive now.
Of course, all of this is unicorn talk, and Philadelphia is neither Silicon Valley or New York. So I will try to focus future installmments on somewhat more micro indicators most of us need to know about.
I'm still trying to decipher all the moving parts involved in GE's enormous announcents about both its Internet of Things platform and its Predix software venture. Such as what it means for PTC's ThingWorx, which has a big role to play at least in IoT (not sure about Predix), and what it means for ERP players and the software industry in general. I think ThingWorx has to be fairly quiet, following the interests of GE and its own corporate parent.
I also noticed that ThingWorx had a presence at AWS re:Invent 2015, where it was a sponsor, though it wasn't prominently mentioned in AWS' releaeses about its new IoT platform, which was built upon the acqusition of anoter IoT platform vendor. But GE says it outsources much of its processing to AWS.
Also, waiting for some clarifcaion on Quentin Clark's new role at SAP. On SAP's website for at least the past few days, he has been listed as Chief Business Officer, rather than CTO (his prior position) though no trace of an external announcement has been found. SAP did post about two other significant appointments last week.
Philly Tech People News 10/11/2015: Bentley adds new General Counsel, First Chief Talent Officer
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Michael Kleinemeier to Join the Executive Board of SAP SE (PR Newswire)
SAP Names Lori Mitchell-Keller Executive Vice President and Global General Manager of Consumer Industries (SAP News)
Hank Summy Joins LiquidHub as Partner, Vertical Markets Lead
(Business Wire)
Bentley Systems Appoints David Shaman as General Counsel
In His New Role, Shaman Will Report to Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley (Business Wire)
Florence Zheng Named Bentley Systems’ First Chief Talent Officer
In Her New Role, Zheng Will Report to Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley (Business Wire)
Comcast Ups Soto to Global Chief Information Security Officer (Multichannel News)
OnGolf names vice president of sales
Amanda Koss will work to grow client roster in North America. (Golf Course Industry)
Previously with ThingWorx.
Saturday Highlights: Uber pushes for statewide legislative solution; GE Predicts Predix Platform Will Generate $6B In Revenue This Year
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Uber pushes for statewide legalization (The Times Leader)
GE Predicts Predix Platform Will Generate $6B In Revenue This Year (TechCrunch)
BlackBerry CEO wants to sell 5 million phones a year (The Verge)
Amazon Web Services: We Are Coming For Your Cloud (Applause)
AWS re:Invent Wrap 10/9: AWS' new found relationship with Accenture; GE and Capital One endorse AWS
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digibyte: Amazon and Accenture get cozy, watch out everyone else (Diginomica)
AWS jabs at rivals, proclaims cloud the 'new normal' (The Register)
Jaws takes a bite out of AWS Lambda app deployment (Infoworld)
How Amazon wants to dominate in enterprise tech (CNBC)
Amazon takes a swing at Oracle (CNBC)
New Massive-Memory AWS Cloud VMs First IaaS to Use Intel’s Latest Xeon
(Data Center Knowledge)
GE and Capital One endorse AWS at re:Invent (ZDNet)
Amazon Web Services: Staggering numbers: dominant now, but nothing lasts forever (I think)
Tom Paine
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Amazon gave everyone an idea of whst Amazon Web Services'(AWS') numbers might look like for 2015 earlier in the year, but some revised estimates AWS Chief Andy Jassy showed the day before yesterday at AWS re:Invent were stunning.
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| Andy Jassy / Courtesy Amazon |
Revenue for 2015 is now forecasted to be $7.3 billion. AWS now has more than 1 million active customers, and database revenue alone now accounts for more than a $1 billion annual run rate. AWS reported year-over-year revenue growth of 81% and operating margins of 21%, but I believe these were for quarterly results only.
It seems that in less than 10 years of existence as an active business, AWS has fsr surpassed the expectations of the classic disruptor in Clayton Christiansen's "innovative disruptor" model. These are enterprises which typically enter the market with a low cost/low quality (on some attributes) offering and gradually move upmarket to the point where they can attack the core posiions of the market leaders.
(This week I published a comparison of AWS and Salesforce.)
Not quite so fast? Well, I don't now how Amazon did its accounting to arrive at some of these conclusions, but its probably true that the profits margins in particlar reflect a considerable amount of cost sharing / cost savings with the core Amazon business. And its not clear to me for how long the unique advantages of having a dominant position in the market for public cloud computing will last.
Everyone with an understanding of computer industry history knows what happened to the previous 'Age of Timesharing"; it died, due to the minicomputer, cheaper peripherals and companies' desire to have more control over their computing environments. I"m not sure for how long we are locked into the "age of public cloud computing."
Highlights 10/9: Dell offer for EMC reported to be on table; Comcast completes third party Home Automation Integration
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Oracle, SAP, IBM: They're rubbish and charge you billions for Excel, says man
(The Register)
Dell offer for EMC worth at least $30/shr, could be next week — sources (CNBC)
Report: Dell may spin out one of its businesses in an IPO (Fortune)
Dell Said to Offer EMC $33 a Share With VMware Stock (Bloomberg)
As cloud goes mainstream, partner channels mature (Diginomica)
Microsoft is light years ahead of IBM, Oracle, and SAP in the cloud, analyst says
(Business Insider)
Comcast Completes Third Party Home Automation Integration (Cablefax)
Quentin Clark, previously CTO, named SAP's Chief Business Officer
Tom Paine
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Quentin Clark has apparently been appointed Chief Business Officer at SAP, according to the company's website. He joined SAP as Chief Technical Officer in November 2014 from Microsoft.
SAP's website says, "He is responsible for defining the direction for SAP and for advancing the company’s business strategy. In this role, he heads corporate strategy, corporate development, partner strategy and development, and portfolio strategy activities."
Whether this was totally a preplanned transition, or perhaps a step to place in position more management depth following Bill McDermott's recent misfortune, is not yet known.
Although confirmation of this can be seen in plain site in Clark's SAP website description, no official external announcement has been spotted yet, as of late Friday afternoon anyway.
Highlights 10/8: Dell reportedly pursuing deal of some kind with EMC; Strike against Comcast's NBC10 gets nastier
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Pure Storage shares flop in first day of trading after IPO (Fortune)
Latest flash storage IPO ends day slightly below offering price.
In-memory systems such as those used in SAP's HANA depend upon flash memory, but those that have gone public haven't been too successful financially after the IPO.
A Dell-EMC deal doesn't make sense. Here's why (Fortune)
Dell seeking $40 BEEELLION to buy EMC NEXT WEEK say reports (The Register)
Strike against Comcast's NBC10 gets nastier (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Tower to rise at UD's STAR Campus next spring (Wilmington News Journal)
Gartner Survey of More Than 2,900 CIOs Reveals Shift Toward Platform Thinking (Gartner Press Release)
AWS re:Invent Day 3: 10/8: AWS intros IoT platform; Fears of accumulating too much power
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Can AWS break the lock-in mold set by legacy tech giants? (Fortune)
Amazon Dives Into the Internet of Things (Wall Street Journal: Digits)
There's a simple reason: IoT needs the cloud to succeed (Infoworld)
AWS Re:Invent and the risk of filling in the white space
(Computerworld)
AWS re:Invent: Five Takeaways On New Services (Doug Henschen / Data to Decisions)
Roundup Of Cloud Computing Forecasts And Market Estimates Q3 Update, 2015 (Enterprise Irregulars)
Amazon Launches AWS Mobile Hub To Help Mobile Developers Build Back-End Processes (TechCrunch)
GE and PTC Form Broad Strategic Alliance to Pursue Brilliant Factory Opportunity; ThingWorx a key
Tom Paine
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GE (NYSE: GE) and PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) announced late last month that the two companies would form [a} broad strategic alliance to "partner to deliver an innovative manufacturing solution that will be available within GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing Suite. This new GE-branded manufacturing solution leverages the capabilities of PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment."
GE beleives the collaboration will deliver a "shop floor to ERP solution" that will be of particular value.
PTC's ThingWorx has been working with GE for a while, so the partnership is not really a surprise. But the endorsement of GE, perhaps the leading US industrial company, certainly will help ThingWorx secure a place among the leading industrial IoT platforms.
ThingWorx, based in Exton, was founded in 2009 by three veterans of the factory automation industry (before the term Internet of Things stuck), Russell Fadel, Rick Bullotta and John Richardson. Funded during the venture stage in large part by Safeguard Scientifics, ThingWorx was acquired by Massachusetts-based PTC at the end of 2013 for about $112 million plus a potential $18 million earnout.
People often think of IoT as being for consumer or light office application, but ThingWorx' founders understood the unique needs of the industrial enviroment and focused from the beginning on serving that market.
And its a rather big company now, though its hard to believe that LinkedIn has 262 employees listed for ThingWorx, of which 63 are in the Philadelphia area.
It is GE's intent to market the IoT platform to other manufacturers, as well as deploying it internally.
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