Links 12/3: Who will pay what for Yahoo's web business? Uber Is Raising Another Couple Billion, At A $62.5 Billion Valuation

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Who’s Willing to Pay Up for Yahoo’s Web Business? (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)

Analyst Sounds Warning on Altice/Cablevision Deal (Light Reading)
Hate to disagree with the esteemed Mr. Moffett, who I'm sure knows more about these issues than I, but I have a hard time sseing the argument for how removing the Dolans from ownership would be against the public interest. For example, no one would argue againt
removing control of the Knicks from Dolan control.

Uber Is Raising Another Couple Billion, At A $62.5 Billion Valuation (TechCrunch)

What are Oracle and SAP's vision of the future of enterprise apps? (ZDNet)

NetSuite Marketing Execs to Depart (The Information)
CEO Zach Nelson prefers to be his own marketing guy, even to the point of writing his own copy on occasion.

Verizon, the final Frontier: Landlines, TV, ISP biz to explore strange new worlds (The Register)

Veeva Systems Introduces Medical CRM to Improve Key Opinion Leader Engagement and Ensure Lasting Relationships (Business Wire)

Links 12/2: Another Pulblicis reorg; Arris-Pace merger passes DOJ review

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Publicis Groupe Reorganizes in Effort to Move Away From 'Silos' (Ad Age)
Seems like Publicis has done alot of reorgs, but l guess it would say its a natural evolution as it sorts through and incorporates its newer digital proporties.
Still not sure what became of Rosetta, though, which is not mentioned in the announcement. Guess its been swallowed up.
Agency Spy described some of the changes at Rosetta this past summer.

Buyout Firms Could Slice Dell's Debt to Get EMC Deal Done (Fortune)

Arris: DoJ Wraps Up Probe of Pace Deal (Multichannel News)

Why You Should Stop Calling ADP a Payroll Vendor (Fortune)

Impact Radius Acquires eBay Enterprise Attribution Unit ClearSaleing, As Unbundling Continues (Ad Exchanger)

Violin Memory Reports Disappointing Quarter, Is Exploring 'Strategic Alternatives' (CRN)
Was once conisidered a key potential supplier for SAP Hana apps (in-memory relies on flash memory), but things have not gone smoothly.

Evariant raises $42.3M to support expansion of engineering, sales teams (Med City News)
Like Veeva Systems, also a Salesforce partner, but seems focused on different niche within healthcare.

Edison Partners Invests $8M in Clearpool Group (Globe Newswire)

Advertising; A small request for decency

Tom Paine

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I've been amazed at the idiocy of much of the advertising aimed at traders. They sound as if they were written by Donald Trump's ad team.

One in particular that struck me as over the top was running on Bloomberg TV; I couldn't identify the advertiser, which is an important measure of an ad's effectiveness. I'll try to ID it later.

The ad starts with a woman saying to a male companion: "Did you hear about the huge earthquake in Asia"? Rather than following that remark with a discussion of how many were affected, or how they might make a donation or do something else that might be helpful, the woman goes on to say something like: "This creates some tremendous opportunities. [My broker's] system is up when all the others are down. I've got some hedge fund trades to make."

No doubt people do trade on natural disasters. And though this behavior may appear at times selfish from a micro point of view, it serves a useful economic purpose from a macro point of view. But the nature of the ad is so crass so to make it a complete turnoff.

UPDATE 12/4: Ad is by Interactive Brokers, Inc. Still looking for exact copy on Youtube.

Update 12/7: This is the exact same ad as the earthquake ad, except the opening pretext changed. Now its "Did you hear? Russia shot down a NATO plane"?

Links 12/1: FIS completes SunGard acquisition; FirstMark Capital co-founder leaves for Fashion Venture

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Unicorn Volatility: Fidelity Marks Up Shares of Dropbox and Snapchat (Fortune)

Adobe is telling people to stop using Flash (The Verge)
Are they offering compensation for all the lost time spent trying to load Flash plugins?

Lawrence Lenihan Leaves FirstMark Capital for Fashion Venture (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)

FIS completes SunGard acquisition, creating banking and capital markets technology giant (FierceFinanceIT)

City still to reach a franchise deal with Comcast (Philadelpia Inquirer)


iPipeline Launches Bank and Broker-Dealer Technology Advancement Program with Four Seasons Financial Group to Simplify and Streamline Life and Annuity Processing (Business Wire)

Links 11/30: SAP - DHL problems not our fault; Dow finishes SAP ERP upgrade but may have different future plans

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SAP: Don't blame us for DHL's ailing logistics system (PC World)

Dow Chemical CIO Says Another 8-Year ERP Project Is Unimaginable (Wall Street Journal: CIO Journal)

When IPTV Isn’t OTT: Comcast’s Dilemma (Broadcasting & Cable)

Justice Dept. opens antitrust probe of Comcast cable-ad business (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Salesforce's New Segmentation Features Tread DMP Territory (Ad Exchanger)





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Philly Tech People News 11/30/2015: New Greenphire CEO; Two join new investment firm backed by Comcast

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Two executives join new investment firm backed by Comcast -sources (Reuters)

Greenphire Appoints Jim Murphy as CEO (PR Newswire)


Tim Minahan Leaves SAP (and Ariba) For Citrix – A New Chapter Begins (Spend Matters)

Payment processor names new leaders for business unit (NJBIZ)


Clutch names Mark S. Pollock CFO to help shape its financial future and manage its rapid growth (Businss Wire)

Former Hulu Executive Andy Forssell Jumps to Fullscreen (Re/code)


NCCN Foundation Appoints Three New Representatives to Board of Directors (Marketwire)

Sunday Highlights: Why Watson can't be as great as IBM claims

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Why Watson May Not Quite Be the Great Civilizational Advance IBM Says It Is (The Healthcare Blog)
Nails it.


Why the Internet Could — But Probably Won’t — Land a Mega-Deal With the NFL (Re/code)

The End Of The Startup Gold Rush, Absurd Burn Rates And Tourist VCs (TechCrunch)

To one analyst, Virtustream's value seems to be less than zero, versus the $1 billion plus paid for it earlier this year Was once SAP acquisition candidate

Tom Paine

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A report in Friday's Wall Street Journal cites one analyst who apparently questions the economic viability of EMC's Virtustream acquisition. The Journal piece was
based upon a Reuters article.

Virtustream, founded six years ago, was seen as extremely valuable in helping to implement SAP Hana applications, so much so that SAP offered to buy the company (though there are quetions about who walked first) before it eventually sold this past summer to the so-called "EMC Federation" for $1.2 billion.

But in a research note this week, FBR & Co. analyst Daniel Ives recommends that EMC / VMware shutter (not sell) Virtustream as part of a number of steps aimed at saving the Dell / EMC deal (which naturally leads to the question, why does it need to be saved?)

One issue revolves around simple financial engineering. By keeping Virtustream under EMC, rather than folding part of it into a planned JV with VMware, EMC/Dell could prop up the value of VMware's publically traded "stub", a key to the deal.

In addition, Ives evidentially sees Virtustream as a continuing cash drain. That is partly due to a planned ramp up in expenditures related to
a broader corporate cloud strategy. VMware Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Chadwick said on a conference call on Oct. 20 that Virtustream would have an operating loss of about $200 million to $300 million in 2016.

But it leads to the further question as to whether the technology and economics of cloud architecture has changed so much in a few years that Bethesda, MD-based Virtustream may simply not have the value it was percieved to have had by some not long ago. Which may bring up that dirty word, Amazon Web Services.

If EMC, by partially following Mr. Ives' logic, were to cut its losses and offer Virtustream to SAP at a fraction of the price it paid for it, would SAP even have an interest in it?

Links 11/27: LG ups OLED game, with talk of possible Apple usage; Universal Display may benefit

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Atlassian IPO to raise upwards of $370 million (Fortune)

EMC to keep majority stake in Virtustream - sources
(Reuters)
Interesting move, though mostly for financial engineering rather than strategic reasons.
Virtustresm is an important implementation partner of SAP HANA; in fact, SAP passed on aqcuiring the Richmond-based company earlier this year before it was acquired by EMC.

Universal Display Up On iPhone Speculation (Investor's Business Daily)
Universal Display (NASD: OLED), based in Ewing NJ near Princeton, frequently bounces up and down due to various rumors and market reports. For example, I don't know how many times the Apple rumors have resurfaced. Yet if you believe in OLED technology long term, then Universal Display may not be a bad investment since its pretty much a pure play (dependng upon current valuation, your risk tol`erance and time horizon, all the usual caveats).

Japan Apple Suppliers Fall on Report IPhone to Use OLEDs (Bloomberg)


LG bets $8.7 billion you'll want a TV with rich OLED colors (CNET News)

Black Friday’s online sales look to hit $2.7 billion (Internet Retailer)


Witness: Gun pulled on Jahlil Okafor in October Old City altercation (CSN Philly)

NJ State gov't internet access restored after 7-hour outage (NJ.com)



Fraud Tech lab tracks dark side of online sales: theft, burglary, murder (Philadelphia Inquirer)


Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/KofP-Fraud-Tech-lab-tracks-online-theft.html#tSpVlSbvaSk0EYpy.99

Turkey Links: Disney cable sub losses; Amazon's bold online plans

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Amazon Said Planning to Add Other Online Networks to Prime Video (Bloomberg)


Veeva Systems Set for More Growth (Barron's)

Veeva Announces Fiscal 2016 Third Quarter Results (Business Wire)

Disney's Cable Channels See Steep Subscriber Losses (Hollywood Reporter)

SAP shows it took Gartner’s warning seriously, but is it enough? (IT World Canada)


Road to SAP S/4HANA will be long, but many aim to get there (SearchSAP)

How Master Data Management Demand May Change in 2016 (Andrew White/Gartner Blogs)

Comcast update: The good, the bad, and the ugly?

Tom Paine

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Comcast Said to Face DOJ Probe Over Local Cable-TV Ad Market (Bloomberg)
The unit at the center of this inquiry, Comcast Spotlight, is based in Chesterbrook.

Comcast Spotlight / Chesterbrook
LoopNet

Comcast-backed CTI Towers nabs 120 towers from @VyveBroadband, remains small player in overall mkt (Multichannel News)
Comcast doesn't like to remain a small player in any market for too long.



Wall Street Journal: Comcast's previous agreement with YES Network was based on presumption of Time Warner Cable deal going through:
"But Comcast agreed to the higher rate while it was in the process of buying Time Warner Cable, the person close to Comcast said. After the merger fell apart, the price no longer made sense, the person said."
Here Are the Real Reasons Comcast Customers Won’t Get to Watch Nets, Yankees Games (WSJ)`

Comcast, Time Warner Cable get 71% of new Internet subscribers (Ars Technica)


Fox, Time Warner, Comcast Dragged Into Legal Mess Surrounding Daily Fantasy Sports (Hollywood Reporter)

FanDuel, Facing Opposition, Maintains Its Visibility in New York (NY Times)
Its hard to account for how much of the $361 million in venture funding FanDuel is reported to have received came from what sources, but Comcast Ventures snd NBC Sports Ventures (separately) have been major investors. bi-coastal area native Paul Martino's Bullpen Capital was an important early if smaller backer, and Rudy Karsan through his Karlani Capital also invested. Its a high stakes poker game, but for Comcast the number of chips it staked will be barely a small rounding error.

Stream TV: Comcast’s cable guys have ‘cracked the code’ for cord-cutters (Boston Globe)