Does the town next door have faster internet? This map will tell you

In the race for Internet speed, Gloucester and Cumberland are lagging behind. Data from the Federal Communications Commission highlights the disparities across New Jersey when it comes to broadband technology. The two counties lag on maximum advertised download speed, which 32 out of 39 New Jersey Internet Service Providers reported to the FCC. The median download…

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Roundup: NJ’s Privately-Held Tech Companies Talk About Their Results: SHI and iCIMS

Esther Surden
Publisher & Editor, NJTechWeekly.com

Thai Lee of SHI International | SHI website

SHI International: SHI International Corp. (Somerset), which calls itself one of North America’s 15 largest IT solution providers, reported a record $3.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2016 — a 12 percent increase year over year.  The company said that its close partnerships with legacy providers and emerging partners contributed to the growth, despite new challenges faced by the IT channel.

Addressing those hurdles, SHI President and CEO Thai Lee noted that large mergers, acquisitions and disruptive technologies continue to change the IT landscape, and that cloud, data-center and hybrid solutions have shifted how organizations support their IT environments.

“Born-in-the-cloud technologies and advanced data-center solutions from dozens of SHI’s emerging partners have driven new growth and replaced traditional business in the IT marketplace,” said Lee in a press release.

 “In the past 12 months, SHI recognized over $400 million in revenue from emerging partners, the vast majority of which are cloud-based. Our relationships with those providers and our ability to help customers understand, evaluate, and deploy a growing number of advanced solutions have been key to our continued growth,” she said.

“SHI is a #1 partner for 10 of the industry’s largest IT providers, more than double the number in 2009, and we’ve become a strong #2 partner to dozens of other major industry leaders,” she added.

Microsoft’s legacy and cloud-based technologies drove considerable growth in the first half of 2016, the company statement said, as did a broad portfolio of security solutions and data-center software and storage components.

To support its partners and clients alike, SHI continued adding to its sales and support teams, hiring 1,000 employees in the last 12 months. Over the same time frame, SHI has also doubled the size of its advanced-solutions teams to deliver additional support to customers’ data-center transformation initiatives.

Colin Day at Bell Works | Esther Surden

iCIMS: Matawan-based iCIMS Inc. announced its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2016, saying that its revenue increased 45 percent compared with the same period in 2015. This marked the 11th straight quarter of revenue growth greater than 30 percent.

“Our results have exceeded our expectations and underscore two key trends: companies continue to recognize the importance of recruiting great people, and they are increasingly choosing best-to-market software to help them hire top talent,” stated Colin Day, chairman and CEO of iCIMS, Inc., in a release.

According to the release, some key highlights for the first half of 2016 are as follows:

• iCIMS continued to expand its market share by winning customers of every size and in every industry. Some of the new customers added during the second quarter include Massage Envy, ExpressJet Airlines, City Gear, Group 1 Automotive, and Southeastern Freight Lines, among many others.

• iCIMS’ Hiring Trends Report has become a leading source of insight into the U.S. economy, providing hiring companies and labor economists with useful information about labor trends in the United States.

• There was the launch of the first phase of UNIFi, the iCIMS developer platform that enables other developers to build and integrate applications that work seamlessly with the iCIMS Talent Acquisition Suite of software. UNIFi immediately became the largest ecosystem of third party products in talent acquisition, with more than 100 add-on products available to iCIMS customers on the first day of availability.

 Based on the company’s success during the first half of the year, iCIMS expects to deliver year-over-year revenue growth in excess of 30 percent for the full year ending December 31, 2016, while remaining profitable.

Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of NJTechWeekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with her permission.

Links 8/17: Disney, NBC in Battle to Stream Sports (and More); Comcast 'Carefully Evaluating Our Options' for Mobile

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Malvern-based Scala, pioneer in digital signage, sold to Ohio competitor

Tom Paine

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Scala, Inc., the Malvern-based company that's been a global leader in the digital signage industry, has agreed to sell a controlling majority interest in itself to Dayton, Ohio-based Stratacache, it was announced Monday. Terms were not disclosed.

The website Sixteen-Nine.com, which covers the digital signage industry, noted that "the deal is not all that big a surprise, as Scala has been known to be on the market, for the right price, for the last few years. The executive house-cleaning that saw CEO Tom Nix and several other execs leave in June was a bit of a signal that things weren’t going all that swimmingly for the company."








While Scala had long been the gold standard in the industry, it had suffered in recent years from its attachment to a proprietary architecture in a market that was increasingly moving to open source, among other factors. But Scala's value to Stratacache is in its unmatched global partner network.

"Combining the largest U.S. digital signage company with the largest international digital signage company will provide significant operational synergies and allow both firms to deliver enhanced solutions and services to customers across the globe. Stratacache’s strong balance sheet and large-scale operations will enhance Scala’s competitive edge – and Scala’s global channels and significant reseller and partner network will fuel Stratacache’s growing business outside of the United States," Stratacache’s release announcing the deal stated.

Scala was founded in 1987 by a Norwegian entrepreneur, and as I understand it landed in West Chester to be close to Commodore International, as its initial platform was based on the Amiga. However, Commodore soon thereafter folded and Scala eventually switched to Windows, but remained in West Chester until moving to Malvern in recent years.

But Scala continued under largely European ownership and board oversight.

While Scala was never a huge local employer (59 according to the latest count on LinkedIn), its force multiplier was its large international partner network. And I'm sure that if that network wasn't getting the product or support it needed, those issues found their way back to the board.

Stratacache has 270 employees, presumably not including those joining from Scala, according to the Dayton Business Journal.

Links 8/16: Jet.com's 'mafia' to live on in Jersey; Anonymous fund manager oversees $800 Billion for Vanguard

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LiquidHub to Enhance Design-Thinking Capabilities with Electronic Ink Acquisition to Strengthen Human-Centered Research Expertise

LiquidHub to Enhance Design-Thinking Capabilities with Electronic Ink
Acquisition to Strengthen Human-Centered Research Expertise

PHILADELPHIA – August 12, 2016 – LiquidHub, a customer engagement company, today announced the acquisition of Electronic Ink, a human-centered design consultancy, with a client roster that includes such brand names as Penske, Morgan Stanley, Johnson & Johnson, and Ford Motor Company. With the addition of Electronic Ink, LiquidHub brings expanded design-thinking resources under one roof to deliver compelling customer experiences faster and at greater scale.

“Companies who enjoy the most successful business transformation solutions are those who go beyond examining customer preferences or patterns of behavior; they dig deeper to understand customers as people and study how they interact with technology,” said Jonathan Brassington, CEO of LiquidHub. “The addition of Electronic Ink’s research expertise will bring insights of human context to all aspects of our clients’ businesses. Having worked on assignments over the years with their talented team, I am thrilled to welcome them to our organization.”

Electronic Ink will strengthen LiquidHub’s digital marketing and creative capabilities, adding focused research on the human effect of technology on people. Their design skills allow them to create impactful visualizations that enable clients to easily understand the output of that research for greater ideation and solution development. Electronic Ink’s core competencies complement and integrate nicely with LiquidHub’s structured innovation solutions and customer engagement capabilities, providing even deeper insight into the human experience.

“Design that is rooted in human insight is foundational for success in today’s digitally-driven economy,” said Harold Hambrose, founder and CEO of Electronic Ink. “That foundation must be grounded in understanding the human effect on technology across the consumer ecosystem, including operations. That’s what we uniquely bring to LiquidHub and that’s what is so exciting – our ability to build on the already outstanding talents of a leader in the customer engagement space. The opportunities for our employees and clients on both sides are tremendous. I am thrilled to be joining the team.”

“I am proud of the groundbreaking work Electronic Ink has created and the reputation we have established over the course of our more than 25 years in the design industry,” said Joe Weiss, chairman of Electronic Ink. “I know this next chapter will be equally successful as we join forces with another industry leader dedicated to raising the bar on innovation and delivering human-centered solutions that help businesses become brand leaders.”

About Electronic Ink
Electronic Ink is a research and design consultancy dedicated to improving the effectiveness of human capital and bringing insight to the way people interact with technology, environments and one another. We improve the design and usability of business processes, the software that supports these processes, and customer and employee experiences for Fortune 500 clients around the world. Connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About LiquidHub
LiquidHub is a customer engagement company that partners with businesses to improve customer experience and drive growth. Headquartered in Philadelphia, with operations in North America, Asia, and Europe, we serve companies globally, helping them solve their most complex challenges through design expertise and technology innovation. Our customer successes are the result of a culture rooted in thought leadership and delivery excellence. For more information about LiquidHub, please visit www.liquidhub.com or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Links 8/15: LiquidHub buys Electronic Ink; Honeywell nearing deal for supply chain software vendor JDA, says WSJ

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TPG has agreed to buy cable television providers RCN and Grande Communications for about $2.25 billion

Tom Paine

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Private-equity firm TPG has agreed to buy cable television providers RCN and Grande Communications for about $2.25 billion including debt, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night. The seller is Abry Partners.

RCN, a so-called 'overbuilder' that provides competitive cable services in some areas, serves parts of Delaware County and the Lehigh Valley. It began existence by acquiring a controlling interest in C-TEC of Wilkes-Barre, and Twin County Cable in Lehigh Valley in the 1990s.

An interesting aspect of the deal, which may be announced on Monday, is that Google Capital, Alphabet Inc.’s growth-equity investment fund, is taking a minority stake in the companies. Perhaps its trying to learn more about the cable business, as reports have indicated that Alphabet is reassessing expansion plans for Google Fiber.








The two separate deals were announced Monday.

RCN, based in Princeton, had more ambitious plans prior to the 2000-era tech bust, which resulted in a period of bankruptcy.

Grande Communications provides similar services in portions of Texas. RCN and Grande will be integrated after their acquisitions, though its unclear what that means.

According to SNL Kagan data, RCN has about 289,000 video subs, and Grande 88,000. The combined companies say they service over 640,000 residential and business customers. RCN would not provide subscription numbers for its Pennsylvania locations.

Princeton-based Patriot Media Consulting, which has managed the two companies for Abry, is part of the new ownership group and will continue in its management role.

Dentsu Aegis Network to acquire majority stake in Columbia, MD-based marketing agency Merkle, valued ~ $1.5 billion

Tom Paine

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In the late 1980s and early 90s, database marketing was one of the hot buzzwords, and a great deal of effort went in to trying to figure what it actually consisted of. Was it a product or a service? What did it look like? There wasn't really a model to build from.

The truth was that database marketing was a difficult, often rather messy business that typically involved crunching together data from different sources, when the data was not as good and the data crunching tools weren't nearly as good as today. And disk space was at an incredible premium, governing almost every operational consideration.

David Williams

In 1988, a small Maryland data processing shop named Merkle was acquired by a 25 year old entrepreneur named David Williams.

Williams built Merkle both organically and later through strategic acquisitions, adding proprietary tools such as a cross-device identity management system, a CRM-matching database for publishers, and a database known as the M1 audience platform.






All this led Japanese holding company Dentsu Aegis Network to acquire a majority stake in Columbia-based Merkle this past week in a transaction that values Merkle at about $1.5 billion. Dentsu Aegis replaced Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) as Merkle's primary owner, although obviously its interest is more strategic than simply financial. Merkle had $436 million in revenue in 2015, up 14% over 2014.

Merkle was originally a direct marketing play, and though that still applies today it is known more for its ability to feed hungry CRM systems, both on the consumer and BtoB sides. The term it uses to describe what it does is 'performance marketing,' as well as a CRM Agency.

Merkle has more than 3,400 employees worldwide and over 65 employees in its Philadelphia (King of Prussia) office. The Philadelphia office is led by Dean McCarney, a Senior Director within Merkle’s Vertical Markets Group.

Naturally, in Philly Merkle has a bit of a Pharma bent, and in fact is a sponsor of Digital Pharma East 2016 to be held in Philadelphia in October.

Dentsu has 8100 employees in the Americas, headquartered out of New York.

Williams, by the way, began his career at Butcher & Singer, a Philadelphia-based investment bank, and holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration from Shippensburg University.

Sunday highlights: More on the reported Oracle MICROS breach; Hill International postpones annual meeting

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Saturday Highlights: Where is the EMV card 10 months later?; Meet the low-profile VC firm that invested in tech’s last two billion-dollar sales

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