Links 2/2: Comcast begins Docsis 3.1 rollout; Salesforce names Block as COO






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Comcast 2Gbps fiber available to 18M homes; gigabit cable coming soon (Ars Technica)
-But Philly is not on initial list.

Comcast Earnings On Tap, With Stock Buybacks, Auction Spending Eyed (Investor's Business Daily)

Salesforce.com Names President Keith Block as COO (Re/code)

Salesforce unveils Field Service Lightning, a new cloud service launching in Q2 2016 (VentureBeat)


Fanatics acquires UK soccer e-retailer Kitbag for $17 million (Internet Retailer)

Magic Leap Just Landed an Astounding Amount of VC Money (Wired)
$793.5 million, to be exact. This virtual reality stuff is cool.


Takeaways from Yesterday

Key takeaways from yesterday:

Apple spends a billion per year with Amazon Web Serices (analyst)

Join the crowd: IBM buys dgital marketing agency

NBC expands NFL footprint, to Share 'Thursday Night Football' Rights with CBS

Mark Hurd blasts SAP, as usual

Unisys opens it’s doors to hundreds of new jobs for Augusta


Links 2/1: Apple's been spending $1 billion/year with AWS but that may slow-analyst; IBM Buys Marketing Agency






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Apple, Amazon Rivalry May Cause Shift Away From AWS Cloud (Investor's Business Daily)

IBM Buys Marketing Agency To Bolster 'Strategic Imperatives' (Information Week)

Google adds lots of cloudy flash, no sign of saviour (The Register)


Oracle CEO Mark Hurd blasts SAP and tips year of consolidation (Financial Review / Australia)

SAP settles with U.S. SEC over Panama bribery scheme
(Reuters)

How and when to engage with Salesforce Lightning for app development for Sales Cloud and other clouds (CBR)


CBS, NBC to Share 'Thursday Night Football' Rights
(Ad Age)

Unisys opens it’s doors to hundreds of new jobs for Augusta (NBC26)

Edison-backed PHX and Pay-Plus Solutions merge with Parthenon-backed Stratose (PE Hub)


phillytechnews bytes 1/31






Sunday Highlights: Inside the FCC's audacious plan to blow up the cable box; Inquirer profiles Universal Display






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Small-Screen Giant (Philadelphia Inquirer)
On Universal Display.

Comcast customer's Raspberry Pi bot tweets when speeds are lousy (Engadget)

Inside the FCC's audacious plan to blow up the cable box (The Verge)


Tech Valuations In 2016: The End Of The Line For Sloppy Growth (TechCrunch)


Philly Tech People News 1/31/16: SevOne adds new CFO; Nutter to teach at Columbia






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SevOne, which the Boston media correctly identifies as Boston-based as Philly Tech News readers first found out, announced this week that it had appointed a new CFO.
Rafe Brown


Rafe Brown, who had previously served as CFO of Pegasystems, a publicly traded Cloud software company, was named to the position. Brown had an earlier stint as a senior vice president of finance for Salesforce.com. Over the course of his nine years at Salesforce.com, Mr. Brown led the treasury and tax functions, real estate, and collections teams. Presumably, his appointment might be seen as another step towards an IPO, or whatever kind of exit or capitalization event SevOne may eventually seek.

CEO Jack Sweeney said in an interview with the Boston Business Journal late last year that the network monitoring company expected to exceed $100 million in revenue for 2015, up from about $65 million in 2014.

The bulk of SevOne's engineering workforce employment remains located in Delaware and Pennsylvania, though top managerial and administrative staff is ensconced in Boston's Prudential Center. SevOne is backed by Bain Capital and other mostly Boston-based investors.

A September round may have valued SevOne at or very close to the $1 billion mark, although the company didn't confirm that.


Chris Satchell's job: Make Comcast products more fun (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Nutter to teach at Columbia (Philly.com)


Frank Quattrone to Step Down as C.E.O. of Qatalyst (New York Times: DealBook)
Controversial South Philly native will be Executive Chairman.



IBM Closes Weather Co. Purchase, Names David Kenny New Head Of Watson Platform
(TechCrunch)

Local lawyer becomes CEO of entertainment company (Philadelphia Business Journal)


TierPoint Appoints Morrison, Morales, Hicks and Markley to Technology and Operations Leadership Positions
(Business Wire)
Bob Hicks, who has been responsible for TierPoint's 6 data centers in Southeastern Pennsylvania, takes on broader geographical responsibilities.

USA Technologies Announces Appointment of Interim CFO (Business Wire)

Michael Connor Joins Alpha Card Services as VP of Finance (Business Wire)

Phillies snag new hire from Google (Philadelphia Business Journal)

SAP UK and Ireland shuffles management cards
(The Register)





Google's long-term plans to disrupt / destroy the cable industry


Tom Paine



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Two pieces of news out concerning Google could threaten to completely decompose the cable industry as we know it, although these things either take a long time to develop or frequently never come to fruition.

The first is Project SkyBender , in which Google is (secretly?) testing the use of solar-powered drones to provide high-speed internet service to the public on the ground. This approach offers theoretical data speeds 40 times faster than today's 4G LTE signals. Though there are challenges to this, as the website Phone Arena points out.

Google recently entered the wireless market with Project Fi , which resells wireless
carriers' capacity as an MVNO while using WiFi when available (an approach Comcast is also working on).



According to Phone Arena, Project SkyBender is being developed by the same Google Access team that is working on a way to deliver wireless internet using high-altitude balloons.



Less is known about the second initiative. But according to Broadcasting & Cable, invites were sent out for a demo scheduled Friday at Google's DC offices, of a video access solution (the function served by the set-top box) potentially bringing to an end the "era of being forced to rent a box from your cable company," according to Google.




Saturday Highlights: HSN Looking for the Next Joy Mangano; Philadelphia agency caught teaming up with taxi companies to fight Uber







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A Philadelphia agency was caught teaming up with taxi companies to fight Uber (Vox)

Comcast Lashes Out at FCC Set-Top Proposal (Multichannel News)

Google Gears Up for Set-Top Set-To (Multichannel News)


Gift of Joy: HSN Looking for the Next Mangano (Cablefax)


Links 1/29: Birchbox layoffs; Microsoft Cloud growth, but which cloud?






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NetSuite Q4 Beats Street on New Business From Snapchat and Lucky Brand (Re/code)


CenturyLink deal boosts options for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (SearchSAP)

Cloud growth? Take a number, Microsoft. Two engines have stalled (The Register)


Birchbox lays off 15% of staff, citing funding environment and a need to rebalance the company (PandoDaily)

Congress to probe Juniper 'back door' exposure, possible U.S. involvement (Reuters)

Google Fiber testing home phone service to bundle with TV, Internet (The Next Web)

Fandango buys online video retailer M-Go to boost 'super ticket' sales (LA Times)


Links 1/28: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's Cloud both show tremendous growth





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Amazon Sales Soared 22% in Holiday Quarter, but Profit Fell Short (New York Timea)

Amazon Web Services is now an $8 billion-a-year cloud-computing machine (Quartz)

Microsoft Profit and Revenue Fall, but Cloud Computing Grows (NY Times)


12 minutes with Rob Enslin on SAP’s 2016 outlook (Denn Howlett/Diginomica)


Comcast Wants to Limit Your Netflix Binges (Bloomberg)


College Ave Student Loans Secures $20 Million To Fuel Growth (Business Wire)
Round in Wilmington-based company led by Comcast Ventures.

Salesforce causes partner pain with SteelBrick acquisition (Computerworld)
A not surprising reaction from a guest contributor.


Links 1/27: Aereo founder's next act; Salesforce Adds 'Private Spaces' On Heroku Platform




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The founder of Aereo is promising to bring gigabit internet to every home (The Verge)

Is box relief on the way for cable & satellite customers? (Philadelphia Inquirer)

AT&T Eyes TV Everywhere Gold (Light Reading)

Sinclair Found 'Right Fit' To Expand Into Cable (Multichannel News)
Bundling Tennis Channel With Retrans Was 'Palatable Ask'

VMware Cuts 800 Jobs, Narrows Cloud Business (Information Week)

SAP Takes HANA to China With Help From Lenovo (Re/code)

Salesforce Adds 'Private Spaces' On Heroku Platform (Information Week)

Venmo is taking on Apple Pay with in-app purchases (The Verge)