Comcast Launches Enterprise Internet of Things Trial Venture
Collaborating with Semtech to provide LoRa® Technology IoT solutions for enterprises (Press Release)


Comcast Launches Enterprise Internet of Things Trial Venture
Collaborating with Semtech to provide LoRa® Technology IoT solutions for enterprises



October 05, 2016 04:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time
PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Comcast today announced machineQ™, a new business trial venture focused on building business-to-business solutions and a platform for the Internet of Things (IoT). As a part of machineQ, Comcast will work with select commercial partners in proof of concepts to use its network to enable partners to gather, transmit, and analyze data from connected devices distributed throughout their organizations.

“Semtech is committed to working with Comcast to make LPWAN networks broadly available in the United States. We believe this will foster innovation by enterprises for new IoT solutions that allows us all to benefit from the advantages of our emerging connected world.”
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Comcast will use Semtech Corporation’s (NASDAQ: SMTC) globally-proven LoRa® Wireless Radio Frequency Technology to deploy network trials in Philadelphia and San Francisco later this year. These trials will focus on enabling use cases such as utility metering, environmental monitoring (e.g., temperature, pollution, noise), and asset tracking through LoRa Technology-enabled devices and network services. Organizations and enterprises interested in participating in trials for LoRa-specific proof of concepts are encouraged to contact Comcast here.

According to a 2016 study of the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market by Machina Research, the total number of global M2M connections will grow from 6 billion in 2015 to 27 billion in 2025, with 20 percent of these connections originating in the United States. The global market is estimated to generate $3 trillion in revenue by 2025 with 22 percent ($660 billion) originating in the United States. Machina’s study also indicates that 11 percent of the connections by 2025 will use Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) connections such as LoRa.

"We believe the business-to-business segment of the Internet of Things market is going to expand rapidly over the next decade as businesses look to IoT-based technology to manage their businesses in a more effective and sophisticated manner," said Sam Schwartz, Chief Business Development Officer, Comcast Cable. "Technologies such as LoRa are setting the stage for the era of connected devices, and we think our network potentially has a role to play in connecting the millions of internet-enabled devices deployed within enterprises.”

Comcast has invested tens of billions of dollars to build a network that spans 20 of the nation's top 30 markets. It includes more than 149,000 route miles of fiber optic cable and more than 500,000 miles of HFC plant that is in close proximity to hundreds of thousands of businesses and city locations.

“The decision by Comcast to complement its existing infrastructure with LoRa Technology will enable connected devices, servers and software components to communicate seamlessly and securely on its new LoRaWAN™-based IoT platform,” said Mohan Maheswaran, Semtech’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Semtech is committed to working with Comcast to make LPWAN networks broadly available in the United States. We believe this will foster innovation by enterprises for new IoT solutions that allows us all to benefit from the advantages of our emerging connected world.”

If the initial trials are successful, Comcast intends to commercially deploy LoRaWAN networks and LoRa-related services across its markets, with the goal of completing commercial deployments within the next 18 to 30 months.

About Semtech

Semtech Corporation is a leading supplier of analog and mixed-signal semiconductors for high-end consumer, enterprise computing, communications, and industrial equipment. Products are designed to benefit the engineering community as well as the global community. The Company is dedicated to reducing the impact it, and its products, have on the environment. Internal green programs seek to reduce waste through material and manufacturing control, use of green technology and designing for resource reduction. Publicly traded since 1967, Semtech is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol SMTC. For more information, visit www.semtech.com.

About Comcast Cable

Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone providers to residential customers under the XFINITY brand and also provides these services to businesses. Comcast has invested in technology to build an advanced network that delivers among the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings. Comcast Corporation (CMCSA) is a global media and technology company. Visit www.comcastcorporation.com for more information.

Contacts
Comcast Corporation
Joel Shadle, 215-286-4675
joel_shadle@comcast.com
or
Semtech
David Guerra, Media
805-480-2185
dguerra@semtech.com
or
William “Sandy” Harrison, Investor Relations
805-480-2004
sharrison@semtech.com




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Nokia CTO & president of Bell Labs Weldon describes possible cable wireless plans



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This is perhaps the best explanation I've heard of what Comcast's wireless strategy could look like. Of course, I doubt that Weldon
knows exactly what Comcast's plans are, but then again I'm not sure Comcast does either.

You'll be hearing a good deal about small cells, hybrid WiFi/LTE, and backhaul.


Nokia CTO Marcus Weldon says cable could win at wireless this time (FierceCable)


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Comcast - dropped YES Network loses ratings war to SNY; Fox hires forrner Comcast RSN chief to run YES


Tom Paine



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Comcast took a good deal of heat over the past baseball season for not carrying the YES Network, on which Yankee games are seen, to its nearly 1 million New York area subscribers, citing cost and lack of viewer interest.

Comcast was proven correct in a sense, as SNY, cable home of the Mets, finished the regular season as baseball’s most-watched regional sports network, beating out YES for the first time since the two networks began competing against each other in 2006. SNY said in a statement that its Mets games outdrew the Yankees on YES by about 20% on average. Of course, presumably the YES ratings were negatively impacted to a small extent by Comcast's lack of carriage.

Comcast owns a minority stake in SNY, which is majority-owned by the family which controls the Mets. Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox Inc. owns a majority stake (80%) in YES, while the Yankees own the rest.

Ironically, FOX Sports in September named Jon Litner President of the YES Network. Most recently, Litner had been President of Comcast's NBC Sports Group, responsible for the eight NBC Regional Sports Networks and the Golf Channel.

There is a possibility that there may eventually be some territory realignment among Comcast, Charter (Time Warner Cable), and Altice (Cablevision) now that the latter two's deals are complete, in which Comcast would surrender its New York area properties for a price or more Comcast-contiguous properties, though there has been no indication that any such discussions are forthcoming.


Charter inherited a minority stake in SNY through its TWC acquisition.


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Links 10/6: Who's really bidding on Twitter? SAP Ariba competitor Coupa closes first day 84% above IPO price



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Verizon Said to Be Nearing Data Center Deal, Most Likely With Equinix (Data Center Knowledge)

Accenture embraces public cloud and ‘kills’ data centers around the world (Data Center News)

Commvault and pals should score when tape-ditching stampede arrives - analyst (The Register)


Sources: Google will not make a Twitter bid and Apple is also an unlikely suitor (Recode)

As the Twitter Turns: Down 17% as Re/code says Disney, Google Not Interested (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)

Comcast: Verizon BDS approach Lawless, Irrational (Multichannel News)

CAA Owner Among Final Bidders for College Sports Licensor Learfield (Hollywood Reporter)
Comcast-funded PE unit Atairos said to be in mix.

Dell looks inward [to Boomi] to integrate its properties post-EMC merger (Computerworld)


Coupa closes at $33.28 after first day of trading, 84% above IPO price (VentureBeat)
Values the company at $1.6 billion.








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Links 10/5: Payoneer raises $180 million with help from Susquehanna Growth: Moxe Health raises $5.5 million led by Safeguard Scientifics



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Dreamforce '16: The Philly Connection


Tom Paine



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Over the next few days, I'll be tweeting and posting about Dreamforce '16, with an emphasis on Philly connections. Let me know if you've got any items to add.





















































"Industry verticals would be very, very nice. I know they’ve dabbled, but truly for a health and life sciences business, having an industry vertical you can use of the box would be very, very welcome. Very often we have to take what is given to us and then augment it with our own development, or with app cloud vendors and so on, in order to give us that solution. Personally I’d like to see more of that."

-Sanjay Singh, IT Director at Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices.


"Other real-world products that use the Xively IoT platform, also on display at DreamForce, include:
--Wireless lighting by industry pioneer Lutron, the company that invented the light dimmer two generations ago. Lutron light control products range from individual dimmers to total light management systems that control entire building complexes. Some of the larger Lutron light control systems in the United States include the 52-story New York Times Builngek.com/innovation/numerous-iot-related-products-services-debut-at-dreamforce.html


Most Innovative Solution: Accenture with Merck Animal Health (using Veeva CRM)
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/05/salesforce-marketing-cloud-innovation-winners.html














































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Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals Plans Cognitive Hospital Rooms powered by IBM Watson Internet of Things (Press Release)


Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals Plans Cognitive Hospital Rooms powered by IBM Watson Internet of Things


ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals Inc., three facilities with more than 900 acute care beds and part of Jefferson Health in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is working with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to launch cognitive hospital rooms powered by IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT) designed to enhance the patient experience and help bring deeper levels of personalized, agile and responsive care to its patients. Jefferson is currently planning to deploy speakers in some hospital rooms, providing patients in those rooms with access to basic information, as well as more control over their surroundings to help make their stay more comfortable.

According to The Physician's Foundation, 81 percent of physicians describe themselves as either over-extended or at full capacity, while only 19 percent indicate they have time to see more patients. Moreover, physicians spend 20 percent of their time on non-clinical paperwork. Now, with the ability to interact with in-room speakers that are connected to the IBM Watson IoT Platform, patients can take control over their hospital stay and the overall experience -- operating lights, window blinds, asking questions about hospital facilities or even getting background information on their physician.

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital: smart hospital rooms improve quality of patient care

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital: smart hospital rooms improve quality of patient care
"Being in a hospital can often be a hectic, anxiety-ridden, or even intimidating experience for patients and their loved ones. If we can minimize that discomfort, even a little, we are doing a lot to increase the well-being and care of our patients," said Neil Gomes, Vice President for Technology Innovation and Consumer Experience at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health. "Thanks to our visionary President and CEO, Dr. Stephen Klasko, we are able to invest in new innovations like the Watson IoT-powered speakers to give our patients the ability to interact in natural language to get basic, but important, information about their hospital visit without having to buzz in for a nurse."

The in-room speakers will be connected to the IBM Watson IoT Platform that taps IBM Watson cognitive computing and natural language capabilities, as well as provides the ability to easily access hospital data that is relevant and important for patients and the types of questions they typically may have about their hospital stay.

For example, patients can request information (i.e.: "When can my brother visit me on Tuesday?" or "Tell me about my doctor"), request specific actions (i.e.: "Play waterfall music," or "Make the room warmer or cooler"), trigger actions (i.e.: "Remind me to get up and walk every four hours"), and have an interactive dialogue with the speaker (i.e.: "Conduct a survey and record the responses for my nurse"), which can help make a patient's hospital stay more comfortable, relaxed and enjoyable.

About Jefferson:

Jefferson, through its academic and clinical entities of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, is reimagining health care for the greater Philadelphia region and southern New Jersey. Since its mergers with Abington Health and Aria Health, Jefferson now has 23,000 people dedicated to providing the highest-quality, compassionate clinical care for patients, educating the health professionals of tomorrow, and discovering new treatments and therapies to define the future of care. With a university and hospital that date to 1824, today Jefferson is comprised of six colleges, nine hospitals, 32 outpatient and urgent care locations, and a multitude of physician practices throughout the region, serving more than 96,000 inpatients, 363,000 emergency patients and 1.9 million outpatient visits annually.

About IBM Watson Internet of Things:

For more information about IBM Watson IoT, visit: www.ibm.com/iot




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Links 10/4: Verizon's PA landline problems; Thomas Jefferson University Hospital partners with IBM on IoT



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Links 10/3: Salesforce is buying Krux for $340M in cash and stock; Qlik introduces web-based data visualization tool Qlik Playground for developers



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Catching up with Paul Boyer, Managing Partner of Mount Laurel-based Communications Solutions Provider Ancero



Marc Weinstein
NJTechWeekly.com


                                         Paul Boyer of Ancero | Marc Weinstein


Last New Year’s Eve, Paul Boyer had more to celebrate than the ushering in of another year. Boyer, managing partner at Ancero, a Mount Laurel-based communications solutions provider, received word that evening that his company had won one of its biggest accounts: a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) contract with a large Midwestern company.

Boyer noted that Ancero’s contract with that company, based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, involves the largest VoIP deployment in the Northeast that Ancero has undertaken with its national provider partner. The deal involves about 17,000 VoIP connections to the company’s subsidiaries’ offices, bringing nearly $300,000 a month in revenue for Ancero.

With this piece of business added to an expanding client roster, Ancero is reaping the benefits of an evolving tech environment.

The 18-year-old company began as a traditional integrated systems provider, but later switched to a managed-service-provider model. However, an analyst at the technology research firm Gartner (Stamford, Conn.) convinced Ancero to get into the VoIP business.

The analyst said that managed services companies should start offering VoIP services as a competitive advantage in the ever-changing technology services industry, Boyer recalled.

The analyst’s recommendation turned out to be right: VoIP became “an enormous piece of business for us,” Boyer said.

Along with its VoIP business, Ancero offers managed and cloud services and networking solutions to its clients, who are located across the country. But it’s VoIP that Ancero is betting its fortunes on these days. “VoIP is the number-one activity generator over and above anything else,” he noted.

Industry statistics support Ancero’s decision to go headlong into VoIP and make it the company’s key revenue driver. According to a report by Infonetics Research (Campbell, Calif.), the combined residential and business VoIP industries were estimated to be worth nearly $75 billion at the end of 2015. The report also said that VoIP subscriptions had been growing approximately 14 percent year-over-year since 2009.

Ancero largely focuses on small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) for its client base. The company has about 1,100 clients, of which Boyer estimates that more than half are very active.

The company’s top industry verticals are healthcare, financial, legal and other professional service companies — businesses that typically fall within the SMB category and are most likely to be receptive to Ancero’s services.

Ancero views the healthcare sector as its biggest industry vertical because it includes physician group practices and other medical treatment facilities, which tend to have multiple locations and prefer to outsource their technology needs rather than handle them in-house.  

Cost savings appear to be the biggest selling point for businesses considering switching from their current phone systems to a cloud-based system. According to Boyer, businesses can save between 20 to 30 percent with VoIP systems, compared with other phone systems.

Another benefit of using a VoiP phone system is its disaster recovery feature. “If you lost power in your building, the outside world wouldn’t know because your voicemail is working in the cloud, which would give you the ability to transfer everything to your cell phone,” Boyer explained.

With the increasing potential for security breaches in business data, Ancero has taken the extra step of partnering with companies specializing in cybersecurity technology. While Ancero can lock down networks with traditional computer-security techniques, the company realized that cybersecurity experts are the best equipped to battle the highly sophisticated hackers trying to break into the databases of companies.

Ancero’s big bet on the VoIP model seems to be paying off, as the company is posting an annual growth rate between 8 to 12 percent. Boyer said that this is a manageable rate of growth for the company, which at one point was 30 percent a year.

Demand for VoIP systems and for Ancero’s other services are expected to produce around $100 million a year in revenue within the next five years. “We’re well-positioned in the right area. VoIP is the hottest area in the industry,” said Boyer.

Ancero, however, requires a highly skilled workforce to meet that demand, and the company — like other New Jersey technology companies — is having trouble finding the seasoned talent it needs to accommodate its growth. The company currently has more than 60 employees in New Jersey and Philadelphia, with most of them at the Mount Laurel location.

“There is a lack of senior talent in this area of the country,” Boyer explained. “A lot of the technology talent leaves New Jersey to go to California or elsewhere in the country. Finding the right people is a challenge.”

Ancero could have moved its headquarters elsewhere, but decided that Mount Laurel was a perfect location because of its proximity to a major highway. The town is also home to a growing number of technology companies in southern New Jersey.


Boyer knows that Ancero doesn’t have the same stature as those companies that are disrupting the status quo with game-changing technologies. But he doesn’t mind if it’s labeled a “technology plumber.” That’s because Boyer believes the company is quite good at what it does, and that there will always be a need for its services. “We’re excited about the future,” he said.




Marc Weinstein is contributor to  NJTechWeekly. This article
originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with its permission.    




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Philly Tech People News 10/2/2016: TE Connectivity President Curtin will succeed CEO Lynch in 2017; CDI, CardConnect, ERT, Rodale





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Ekistic Ventures launches $15M fund to ‘solve critical urban problems’ (GovFresh)
Advisors include former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Chicago-based firm launches with $15 million fund.

TE Connectivity President Terrence Curtin will succeed CEO Tom Lynch, Effective March 9, 2017 (PR Newswire)

CEO of engineering staffing company CDI resigns (Philly.com)


CardConnect Appoints Jason Williams as Senior Vice President of Business Development (CardConnect)

ERT Further Enhances its Market-Leading Delivery Expertise (ERT)
David Elario joins executive team as head of operations delivery.







After 18 years, Alan Kraus steps down from Ben Franklin Technology Partners (Technical.ly Philly)

Peter Stern Resurfaces at Apple (Multichannel News)
Formerly of Time Warner Cable.



Jason Livingood is now Vice President - Technology Policy & Standards at Comcast, according to his LinkedIn profile. Previously, he was Vice President - Internet Services, for Comcast Cable.




Lincoln Financial Group Names Kristen Phillips Head of Corporate Marketing and Enterprise Communications (Lincoln Financial Group )
Unusual for a position such as that to report to the chief human resources officer.


Don Norbeck, whom I believe calls Philadelphia home base though in fact he's spread out all over the place, has a new role at the new Dell EMC, Senior Director Customer Experience Engineering, Architecture and Product Management. According to his LinkedIn profile, he continues to serve as Chief Architect, VCE, the Converged Platforms Division of Dell EMC.

Beth Buehler / Rodale
Rodale names Beth Buehler, previously Senior VP, Digital, its first Chief Operating Officer (Talking New Media)
Rodale is based in Emmaus, Pennsylvania (near Allentown) and New York.










Social Business Practice Expands: Trellist® Marketing and Technology Offers Enhanced Social Solutions for Clients, Announces New Leader and Staff (Trellist)





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