Links 11/11: Greg Bentley answers three questions; SAP S/4HANA expands from financials to other core ERP functions

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Sure, IBM Shares Have Gained 3,400,000% But Are They a Buy Now? (Bloomberg)

3 Questions about 3D Tech: Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems (Spar Point Group)

Pneuron Finds Itself at the Center of Containers and Microservices (Nate Lentz/Osage Venture Partners Blog)
Osage invested first in Pneuron, and was joined later by Safeguard Scientifics.

Independence Blue Cross and Jefferson Health Hack to Fuel Innovative Solutions to Pressing issues in Health Care Access and Delivery
(Globe Newswire)


Comcast 'Stream TV' goes live in the Boston area (Multichannel News)

Cox inks national X1 deal with Comcast (Multichannel News)

Public hearing set for Comcast deal with city (Phily.com)


DraftKings, FanDuel Go to War with Eric Schneiderman (Fortune)

SAP S/4HANA expands from financials to other core ERP functions (TechTarget)

Four Arguments in Favor of Analytics in the Cloud (ASUG News)

Links 11/10: Comcast resets 200,000 compromised email passwords; NY Attorney General cracks down on Fantasy Sports betting

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Enterprise Software Co Atlassian Files IPO On Sales Of $320M, Net Income Of $6.8M In 2015 (TechCrunch)

Attorney General Tells Daily Fantasy Sports to Stop Taking Bets in New York (NY Times)


Dell’s EMC Deal Could Fall Apart on Tax Rule (Re/code)

Verizon Denies Report It Is Selling Enterprise Business (But It Also Said It Wasn’t Buying AOL) (Re/code)

Verizon won't need more capital to build FiOS customer base (FierceTelecom)


Comcast Resets 200,000 Compromised Email Passwords, But Questions Remain (Information Week)


SAP combines info about full-time staff with external workers in SuccessFactors (FierceCIO)

The quest for growth: Cherry-Hill based AmeriQuest files for a $75 million IPO. (Renaissance Capital)

Rackspace Rises On Q3 Beat; Hybrid Cloud 'Not Dead' (Investor's Business Daily)

Square’s S-1: Of Ratchets And Unicorn Valuations (TechCrunch)

Life among the unicorns in their native habitat

Tom Paine

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The biggest layoff news in Pennsylvania this month came from Erie, where GE Transportation announced it would be laying off about 1500 of 4500 blue collar workers. The cuts had been expected due to a slow down in locomotive orders; in fact, one GE official says the cuts are not as bad as earlier expected. Nonetheless, considerable hardship is expected at the far end of the state.

Less of these / Source: GE website

Jet.com, Marc Lore's somewhat risky anti-Amazon startup, appears to have raised $500 million at a $1 billion pre-money valuation led by Fidelity, according to latest reports (though I'm not sure I've seen a confirmation that the round had closed.) But a Wall Street Journal report, citing a look at the startup's financials, said it was rapidly running short on cash and racing to close the round. Who allowed the Journal reporter to see so much of Jet's financials, and why, is a good question.

The Hoboken-based online retailer dropped its $50 upfront fee requirement in October, and I can only imagine what its breakeven projections might be now. Penn-related MentorTech Ventures, which made out well when Lore's previous venture, Quidsi, sold to Amazon, has a small seat on this ride too, although I would expect it to be a long and bumpy one. But MentorTech doesn't have much to lose, I would guess.

Jet.com did say last week that it had passed the one million customer mark, and a source told Fortune that Jet.com’s total sales reached $20 million in September, and it beat its target for October by 11 percent, selling $33.2 million worth of items.

Alibaba, meanwhile, reportedly plans to invest $80 million in ecommerce retailer Boxed, which is sometimes described as a competitor to Jet. There is certainly some overlap betwwen the two, but Boxed concentrates on larger, bulky grocery store-type items. New York-based Boxed had already raised $30 million from investors including First Round Capital. Alibaba was already an investor in Jet.com.

What about the ongoing FanDuel/DraftKings saga? Well, FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles opened up in an interview with Bloomberg.

He admitted that people saw the same advertising for too long, and got sick of it. For now, he saw less ads, more regulation, no merger (with DraftKings), and no IPO for the forseeable future. Comcast Ventures owns a stake in FanDuel.

The Telegraph (UK) cites DropBox as its poster child for an overvalued unicorn. DropBox, which was privately valued at $10 billion 2 years ago, hasn't done a great deal to live up to that valuation, the Telegraph implies, asserting that parts of its product line have been commodizised.

And then there's Square, Jack Dorsey's other company and also in First Round Capital's portfolio. The payment processsing startup set its preliminary IPO target at a valuation of around $4 billion, well short of its last private valuation of $6 billion.

But to Marc Andreessen, who's not an investor in Square, this pullback is an indication that there's no tech bubble, since in real tech bubbles of the past the excesses of the private markets were eagerly lapped up by the public markets.

Link 11/9: SAP HANA Must Be Hurting Oracle; but bring bug spray

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Salesforce Volume Deals Add New Twist to an Old Story
(Fortune)

Oracle's Amazon-killer might really be 6 months away (Business Insider)

SAP HANA Must Be Hurting Oracle (SAP Hana Blog)

Dangerous bugs leave open doors to SAP HANA systems (Computerworld)


Wizards, Capitals owner to get equity stake in Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic (Baltimore Businsss Journal)

phillytechnews bytes 11/8

Philly Tech People News 11/8/2015: Eatroff joins Comcast as EVP, Global Corporate Development and Strategy.

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Robert L. Eatroff has joined Comcast Corporation as Executive Vice President, Global Corporate Development and Strategy.
He will join Comcast in January 2016 from Morgan Stanley in New York where he was Managing Director and Head of Mergers & Acquisitions for the Americas. He will report to Michael J. Cavanagh, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Comcast Corporation.

Mr. Eatroff will succeed Alexander D. Evans who will join Michael J. Angelakis, former Chief Financial Officer of Comcast, in January 2016 at the new strategic company Mr. Angelakis formed in partnership with Comcast that will focus on investing in and operating growth-oriented companies. He also succeeds Bob Pick, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, who is retiring at year-end and will consult for the company on special projects.

Mr. Eatroff earned his MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Bucknell University. He will be relocating from New York City to Philadelphia.

The word "Global" in Eatroff's title probably has particular significance.



Accolade, the Plymouth Meeting-based corporate health services firm, announced that Rajeev Singh has joined the company as chief executive officer and member of the company's Board of Directors. Singh most recently was co-founder, President & COO of Concur prior to its acquisition by SAP last year for $8.3 billion. Also, two other former Concur execs will join the company; Michael Hilton, another Concur co-founder, and Rob Cavanaugh will both be in senior operating positions. Along with their additions a dual headquarters structure will be established with a Seattle headquarters to complement the one in the Philadelphia area.



Quality Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: QSII), announced this week the election of Jeffrey H. Margolis as the independent chairman of the board of directors, effective immediately. Margolis succeeds Sheldon Razin, 77, founder, who has served as the chairman of the board since the Company’s inception in 1974.

Following his decision to retire as chairman, Razin will continue to serve on the board as chairman emeritus. Since founding Quality Systems more than 40 years ago, Razin has led the Company to its industry leadership position in the continually evolving healthcare information technology sector, with an installed user base that spans 85,000 providers across 4,000 clients.

Quality Systems' principal business is Horsham-based NextGen Healthcare.



Jim Brady, a former sports and executive editor at WashingtonPost.com and currently the CEO of Spirited Media, is the new public editor at ESPN.

Brady will start on Nov. 15 and serve for 18 months in the role, which was formerly called the ombudsman. Brady will be charged with providing "independent examination, critique and analysis of ESPN's programming and news coverage on television, digital, print, audio and other media," ESPN said in a statement.

Brady has more than 20 years of experience in digital and print news at AOL, the Washington Post, Digital First Media (where he served as editor-in-chief) and currently at Spirited Media, which runs the mobile news platform Billy Penn in Philadelphia.


CoreDial, LLC, a leading cloud communications software and services provider, announced that Caitlin Clark-Zigmond has joined the company as Vice President of Product Management for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).

Ms. Clark-Zigmond comes to CoreDial from Comcast Business, where she served as Senior Director of Product Management since 2013. Her core focus, among other responsibilities, was managing advanced voice solutions, specifically Comcast’s Business VoiceEdge platform. She also previously worked for companies such as unified communications wholesaler, New Global Telecom (NGT), and enterprise video provider, Level3. She now joins CoreDial with over 20 years of experience in the telecom and unified communications industries.



The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania announced Thursday Chris Satullo will be its new professional in residence for the 2015-16 spring semester.

Satullo was the former WHYY executive who was reportedly forced out recently over policy disagreements.

Sunday Highlights: Recounting what happened to GSI Commerce; Comcast responds to cap criticisms

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How Campbell is taking cues from tech to reorganize internally (Digiday)

Trade In, Trade Up (Joseph DiStefano / Philadelphia Inquirer)
On remnants of Ebay Enterprise / GSI Commerce. Amazing how closely Rubin's account of what happened with GSI Commerce and Ebay, as retold by DiStefano, is in sync with my account here written before the IMPACT event, though I've never discussed the matter with Rubin or any of his associates.

Comcast says it publicly outlined its usage-based pricing philosophy back in 2010 (FierceCable)


In the cloud, beware the sinking ships (David Linthicum/Infoworld)

The cloud wars explained: Why nobody can catch up with Amazon (Business Insider)

QVC: Usual pattern; Low overall US Growth, but higher mobile & web growth; Amazon's possible entry threatens status quo

Tom Paine

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QVC Group (QVCA) reported its results for the 3rd quarter 2015 on this past Wednesday.

QVCA (NASDAQ: QVCA) consists of West Chester-based QVC's worldwide businesses, about 38% of HSN, and 22% of the equity in TripAdvisor.

QVC US revenue increased 4% to $1.4 billion in the third quarter, while operating income grew 5%. QVC.com revenue (originating from the website) as a percent of total US revenue increased to 48%; QVC US mobile penetration accounted for 52% of QVC.com orders. Overall, QVC's US web sales grew 15%. The acquisition of Zulily closed at the completion of the quarter, so its results were not included in QVCA results.

However, due to unfavorable cuurency fluctuation, according to QVCA, QVC's consolidated worldwide revenue decreased 1% in the third quarter to $2.0 billion. International revenue decreased 10%.

While the growth in ecommerce and mobile transactions is important and necessary, some percentage of those orders are simply replacing busineess from existing customers rather than coming from new customers. Even if it were all new revenues, it would take quite some time before QVC might emerge as a growth company given the continued detorioration of its older (mostly telephonic) orders base.

"There's been no growth in the number of consumers shopping by television in three years. The majority of their business is repeat customers, but the number of new viewers isn't growing," said Britt Beemer, chairman and CEO of America's Research Group, a retail consulting agency, as quoted by the Tampa Bay Times.

Entrance to QVC headquarters /
Pennsylvania Center
for the Book)

But QVC has been on a well-orchestrated PR campaign recently, seemingly aimed more at the financial community. Besides the Zulily acquisition, they've also been touting a new QVC app on Apple TV , and there was also a well-timed feature in the Washington Post, among other articles.



But the news that sent the closely knit home shopping industry into overdrive was a well-substantiated report by Seattle-based GeekWire posted on October 28 outlining Amazon's plans to enter the market. Obviously Amazon sees TV shopping as one outlet among numerous ecommerce buying possibilities, but its unclear whether Amazon could bring either the technology or showmanship need to increase TV shopping's percentage of the overall ecommerce spend.

There has even been speculation, far-fetched at this point, that Amazon may eventually try to acquire QVC.

Despite its slow growth, QVC has been very good at generating cash flow. That has given it a current market valuation in excess of $19 billion. Actually, QVCA was created as one of Liberty founder & Chairman John Malone's tracking stocks, which help investors focus on a company or group of companies with distinct characteristics, and maybe gives management more freedom to manuever.

One thing executives emphasized in the earnings call - yes, QVCA has its own earnings call now (transcript courtesy of Seeking Alpha) - is the work its put into making its software more responsive and personalized. Personalization often refers to Monetate, though QVC has been working with Monetate for several years now.

Phorum '16: Call for papers open, deadline November 13

Tom Paine

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The sponsors and organizers of next Spring's Philly Phorum (think baseball season, with the tag line, "Its got to be better than last year") entitled "Systems of Insight", to be held on April l4 at the new Fillmore Philadelphia, are particularly eager to get as broad a range of inputs for the event as possible. See the full press release here .

It has opened its call for papers, looking for experts in new technologies, architectures, systems, processes and integration driving Systems of Insight. Proposals are being sought for conference sessions on topics including information management, Big Data platforms, architectures, machine learning, natural language processing, predictive analytics, IoT, security, governance, data-driven engagement and integration.

If the term "call for papers" sounds too academic, don't be put off by it. The Phorum people wants to hear what you've got to say, in a simple, organized manner. No particular degree level is required.

The deadline to submit proposals, which should include a speaker’s bio, success stories, failures and/or lessons learned is November 13.

So submit you proposal today (or soon). Please send your bio and a two to three paragraph subject brief. Email your information or request more details at speakers@phorumphilly.com.

Links 11/6: PeopleLinx announces new release; Verizon weighs sale of enterprise business

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PeopleLinx announces new release as sales tech landscape takes shape (VentureBeat)


QVC’s U.S. web sales rise 15% in Q3
(Internet Retailer)
But QVC's total US revenue only inched forward 3.6%.
Forgot that since QVC now has its own tracking stock (QVCA), its got it own earnings call as well: ( transcript here on Seeking Alpha. )
QVCA, wich also includes a roughly 30% stake in HSN and a small bundle of ecommerce businesses, has a market cap today of over $19 billion.

Verizon weighing $10 billion sale of enterprise assets - sources (Reuters)
Since Comcast has said they would like to build a similar business, I wonder if? Actually, I doubt Comcast would care
to be encumbered with old equipment and long legacy contracts. I think they'ed rather start from scratch, with the
help of some small strategic acquisitions.


Square Inc IPO to value company at up to $4.2 billion (VentureBeat)

Comcast data caps aren’t about congestion, leaked memo shows (PC World)
Piling on: not a serious or thoughtful assessment of whether Comcast faces real capacity constraints. They do.

HR tech firm snags $2 million, hopes to shake up market (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Jet.com logs more than 1 million customers (Internet Retailer)
Nice news to put out while many ponder its possible demise.


Salsa, DonorPro Announce Deal (The Non-Profit Times)

Amazon to Launch its First Cloud Data Centers in UK (Data Center Knowledge)

SAP wins but did Oracle even bid?

Steve Brooks
Enterprise Times

Lloyds Register begins new dawn with SAP cloud ERP software

Lloyds Register has selected SAP SE to deliver a cloud based ERP and business management solution. This is a huge win for SAP as Lloyds Register has traditionally been an Oracle customer, even presenting last year at Oracle Openworld 2014 about a mobile application they had developed.

On Sunday (10/25) Larry Ellison, CTO and Executive Chairman of the Board at Oracle made his opening keynote at the event and was dismissive of SAP as he stated: “We now compete with Salesforce.com and a new company called Workday in applications, those are the companies that we see most frequently when we sell applications in the marketplace. We virtually never ever see SAP, this is a stunning change. The largest application provider in the world is SAP, but we never see them in the cloud, and we sell a lot of applications in the cloud.”

This latest announcement by SAP questions not only the above statement but also one wonders what the Oracle sales team have been doing. Large cloud wins by Oracle and SAP have been, unlike Workday who seem to be gaining customers at both their expense, quite often.


What are Lloyds Register doing?


In the past companies announce wins that seem trivial once the actual detail is understood. While there is no revelation about the value of the deal itself and for how long it will be, there are several pertinent facts that are relevant.

Lloyds Register is not a small company. It has £1 billion turnover with 9,000 employees operating in 78 markets supporting more than 60,000 clients. Those markets are rapidly changing, each becoming digital at a different rate of change. To meet this challenge Lloyds Register has embarked on a major transformation program. They decided to look for a solution that would be part of that program and enable the changes required to the company’s finance, project management, project resourcing and human resources processes.

After an “extensive review of cloud technology vendors”, one assumes that this included Oracle, Workday, SAP and Netsuite but the actual names of the vendors were withheld, Lloyds chose SAP, as Andrew Punter, transformation director, Lloyd’s Register commented in the release:

“We are 255 years old, but standing still is just not an option. Today, businesses like Lloyd’s Register are global, we need the most modern, mobile, easy and user-friendly solutions possible to ensure we provide the right people with the right tools to make their jobs easier.

“SAP Business ByDesign and SuccessFactors can remove complexity and allow our team to focus on business innovation, not process.”

This will not be a small project, with a two year implementation plan one wonders exactly how much cloud revenues that SAP will be able to book during that two year period either.

The solution chosen, will be delivered using Software as a Service (SaaS) via SAP Business ByDesign and SuccessFactors on the SAP HANA platform. It will support the multi-language and multi-currency requirements that Lloyds Register has. More importantly Lloyds Register will be moving to a shared service operating model and this new solution will enable that.

It will be interesting how quickly the solution comes online as Lloyds Register are committing to a continuous release cycle for the solution updates. For SAP this is an important win though as Cormac Watters, Managing Director UK and Ireland at SAP commented: “Lloyd’s Register has a tremendous heritage of innovation which is why we’re so pleased to be collaborating with them on this major strategic initiative. We look forward to helping them transform the way they work and simplify their business processes.”

The SAP win is not just a blow to Oracle but as Lloyds Register were looking for new tools to support their full HR lifecycle, from “hiring to retiring” it will also be a loss to Workday. That SAP has won what appears to be an HCM centric opportunity will be a blow and one that SAP will hope to leverage in the future.


Conclusion

Whether Ellison, or his speech writers should have modified their tone a little in the keynote is worthy of note. The timing of this announcement by SAP seems rather opportune though, but despite that this it is a big win for SAP, SAP HANA and its cloud solutions. Lloyds Register has global brand recognition and SAP will no doubt hope to leverage that in the same way that Oracle did last year. With a two year implementation one hopes that the project goes well for SAP and Lloyds Register as this is clearly a major project.

If Oracle never see SAP in cloud bids, perhaps they need to enter more bids themselves. Ellison’s comments do bring into question how much cloud business they are actually going after. Perhaps this is one reason why they opened up their partner channel to all comers in another announcement at Openworld.




This article originally appeared in the Enterprise Times and is republished here by the permission of its author.