Links 12/16: Fidelity gives BlackRock an early leg up in robo advice brawl; Violin Memory files for chapter 11



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Violin Memory shares collapse as it files for chapter 11 (The Register)
SAPs Sapphire Ventures was a significant investor in Violin prior to its IPO, as SAP was seeking better sources of advanced flash memory for use with HANA.


Fidelity gives BlackRock an early leg up in robo advice brawl (Reuters via Daily Mail)
Fidelity also has Radnor-baed eMoney Advisor, of course.


Uber Defies California Regulators With Self-Driving Car Service (NY Times)


4 Takeaways From Oracle's Earnings Call
(Fortune)

Oracle Drops 4%: Cloud Transition Bumpy, Bulls Say Stay the Course (Barron's Tech Trader)

Net Neutrality’s Future in Crosshairs as FCC Chief Departs (Bloomberg)

Canada’s Rogers Kills Internet TV Project, Reaches Comcast Pact for X1 System (Variety)
Another nation sees the light, I imagine. Its hard to understate how central X1 is to Comcast's strategy.

Verizon Said to Weigh More Media, Ad Deals Amid Yahoo Turmoil (Bloomberg)


New North Shore building project hints at possible office move for SAP (Pittsburgh Business Times)

SAP Fieldglass Caters to Mid-Market With New Fieldglass Flex Offering (ASUG News)

Tax accounting software firm Avalara prepares IPO: sources (Reuters)
Doesn't quite compete head-on with Vertex, but might in future.







at 11:16 AM 0 comments

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LiquidHub Expands Data Management, Market Research and Analytics Capabilities with the Acquisition of Annik for Enhanced Data-Driven Customer Insights

Business Wire
LiquidHub Expands Data Management, Market Research and Analytics Capabilities with the Acquisition of Annik for Enhanced Data-Driven Customer Insights
Annik will expand the company’s global footprint and strengthen its existing data management and analytics solutions

December 15, 2016 10:30 AM Eastern Standard Time
PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LiquidHub, a customer engagement company, today announced the acquisition of Annik, a global data management and analytics solutions firm that creates better customer experiences for brand name clients, including Microsoft, Netflix, HP, Nestle, and Vistaprint.

“It’s a great opportunity for us all at Annik to join forces with LiquidHub and together create a future re-imagining customer engagement.”
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With offices around the world, including India, Poland, China and the United States, Annik will expand LiquidHub’s geographical footprint and presence in high-tech markets. Combining Annik’s capabilities around data science and data management with LiquidHub’s expert team of innovators, designers, technologists, marketers, and strategists, this acquisition complements and enhances LiquidHub’s ability to create extremely valuable, and engaging customer experiences for our trusted client partners.

“As digital transformation continues to drive disruption and change, companies need better insights to transform their customer engagement strategies or they risk becoming irrelevant,” said Jonathan Brassington, CEO and co-founder of LiquidHub. “As we continue to re-imagine engagement by better understanding the people who matter most to our clients, the addition of Annik’s world-class capabilities in market research, data science, data analytics, and insights around customer behavior is critically important to LiquidHub’s rapid growth in this space.”

The acquisition of Annik will add 1,000 professionals to the LiquidHub team, including Rahul Sahgal, President and CEO, and Sandeep Bhatia, chief operating officer. Together, Sahgal, Bhatia, and other members of the Annik executive team bring decades of experience in delivering innovative and transformative digital solutions to global companies.

“LiquidHub has a long history of delivering exceptional customer engagement solutions for their clients and through the addition of Annik’s expertise we are uniquely qualified to solve our customers’ most challenging problems,” said Sahgal. “It’s a great opportunity for us all at Annik to join forces with LiquidHub and together create a future re-imagining customer engagement.”

For more information, please visit www.liquidhub.com.

About Annik

Established in 2000, Annik is a global leader in providing world-class data and analytics solutions that help businesses realize the full potential of their data assets. Using a global delivery model, Annik’s solution framework leverages considerable in-house data and process expertise leveraging its configurable workflow automation products. Annik has grown to over 1,000 employees located across 6 global locations.

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.

Contacts
Brian Communications
Joey Lee
Direct: 484-385-2952
jlee@briancom.com


origin source: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161215005820/en/


at 10:49 AM 0 comments

Links 12/15: Charter Communications’ stock jumps amid Verizon comments; FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Exiting FCC Jan. 20



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Charter Communications’ stock jumps amid Verizon comments (NY Post)

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Exiting FCC
Will leave Jan. 20 (Multichannel News)


Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Is Back for the Rest of Sky (Fortune)

NBCUniversal, IOC Pact for Year-Round Linear Olympics Channel (Variety)

NBCU Says Nielsen's Total Content Ratings Aren't Ready for Primetime (Ad Age)


Comcast’s Xfinity Home Lights Up More Device Partners (Multichannel News)

Oracle earnings: 61 cents a share vs estimates of 60 cents (CNBC)

Oracle Slips: FYQ2 EPS Beats; Says Bigger Than Salesforce (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)

Why Embedded Analytics Will Change Everything (Information Week)



Radnor company [Freedom Pay] moving its HQ to Cira Centre South in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Business Journal)



at 7:30 AM 0 comments

Private Equity buyouts this week: Apple Leisure Group (Newtown Square) ; Phlexglobal (Malvern)


Tom Paine



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What's the largest business in relatively bucolic Newtown Square? SAP North America? Sunoco Logistics? Well, the next largest?

Its probably Apple Leisure Group, which the trade pub TravelPulse says is the leading seller of all-inclusive vacation packages in all of North America.

ALG was just sold, by Bain Capital. The buyers were also private equity firms, KKR and KSL Capital Partners. Terms weren't disclosed.

Bain paid $343.5 million for Apple Leisure, according to Moody’s (cited by Buyout), and is selling after owning it for almost four years.

Apple Leisure produced a $250 million dividend (presumably to Bain) in 2015.


ALG CEO Alejandro Zozaya


ALG CEO Alejandro Zozaya founded resort sales, marketing, and brand management company AMResorts, in 2001. It focused mainly on owned Caribbean and Mexican resorts. It combined with Apple Vacations, founded in 1969, to form a vertically integrated travel management group. After Bain bought in, ALG expanded by acquiring online platform CheapCaribbean.com, and B2B tour operator Travel Impressions from American Express.

In June, Reuters reported that Bain was listening to offers for ALG, because of interest expressed by potential Chinese buyers. The sought-for valuation was reported to be in the $1.5 billion range, including debt.

The opening to Cuba could give an additional boost to ALG's business.


Travel Weekly reported in September that Apple Leisure Group was investing more than $50 million to upgrade its technology, including web pages, booking engines, access to flights and software programs.

Although ALG has thousands employed at its resorts, LinkedIn only shows it having a little more than 100 employees in Newtown Square.




Vitruvian Partners buys majority stake in Phlexglobal



Vitruvian Partners, a European private equity firm, has purchased a majority interest in Phlexglobal, a UK and Malvern-based life sciences cloud-based systems and services company. Previous majority investor Bridgepoint Development Capital (“BDC”) will exit the company with the sale.

The benefits of integrated, cloud-based eTMFs has led to life sciences companies switching over from old on-premise software.

Last year, Vitruvian also purchased a majority stake in CRF Health, also US (Plymouth Meeting) & UK-based, which creates electronic Clinical Outcome Assessment (eCOA) solutions which also go into clinical trial data collection. There could be a fit between the two down the road, one might think.





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Dell Boomi Brings iPaaS to the Enterprise (Video: Silicon Angle)



Interview with Dell Boomi CEO Chris McNabb (Silicon Angle)



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Comcast repair truck insists it only needs four cones on snowy road, & havoc ensues (update: Police say Comcast not at fault)


Tom Paine



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Here's the story on
Comcast's reaction, from FierceCable.


Comcast not at fault in icy pileup, Indy police say (FierceCable)





at 10:58 AM 0 comments

Links 12/14: Uber self-driving cars hit streets of SF, until; Seating chart at Trump’s table of tech giant



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Uber’s launching self-driving cars for the San Francisco public today (VentureBeat)
Yesterday's "very soon" apparently meant today.

Uber Might Be Breaking California's Self-Driving Car Law (Fortune)








The seating chart at Trump’s table of tech giants
(Quartz)
Hardly any easterners - no Brian Roberts.

Q&A: Healthcare IT to Enter an Intense Period of Innovation in Philly (Philadelphia Magazine)

Comcast sets focus on creating 'repeatable' content delivery model for content owners (FierceCable)

SAP Buys Attribution Software Company Abakus (AdExchanger)

Why a fast-growing Philadelphia tech company is getting a new name (Philadelphia Business Journal)



at 9:27 AM 0 comments

Links 12/13: Uber to put self-driving cars on SF roads 'very soon'; Newtown Square-based Apple Leisure Group changes PE owners



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Amazon Web Services expands to offer cloud IT services to big companies (GeekWire)

Cisco confirms it’s killing Intercloud public cloud in March 2017 (VentureBeat)


​Uber to put self-driving cars on the road in SF 'very soon' (CNET)
So you got all the bugs worked out in Pittsburgh, huh?


Google's self-driving car project gets a new name: Waymo (AP via Philadelphia Inquirer)


Rumors Are Floating About A Cornerstone OnDemand Sale (ERE)

RS Energy Acquires Upstream Data Company, NavPort (Exploration & Production)
NavPort, based in Plymouth Meeting, was PACT's Technology Startup of the Year for 2016.


Apple Leisure Group Sold To KKR and KSL Capital Partners (TravelPulse)
Newtown Square-based Apple Leisure Group is "the leading seller of all-inclusive vacation packages in all of North America", says TravelPulse.


In Philly, Comcast Trumps Muni Broadband (Light Reading)

NBC to boost new Boston station signal (Boston Globe)
I guess Boston qualifies as a large market






at 3:27 PM 0 comments

Recent Comcast personnel moves: A new board member; Exec finally leaves for Sprint, and one will split time between NYC & Philly


Tom Paine



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Comcast appointed David C. Novak to its Board of Directors last week.


David C. Novak

Novak last served as Executive Chairman of quick service restaurant group YUM Brands, leaving earlier this year.


Though much respected as a business leader, some eyebrow were raised when Novak departed YUM wth a nest egg of $234 million, almost all in a tax-deferred compensation account, exempt from the annual contribution limits imposed on ordinary 401(k)s. The total compensation doesn't seem out of line comparatively with peers for an executive who ran a huge company successfully for 15 years, but some contrasted his earnings to that of the average Yum hourly restaurant worker.

Given the President-elect's fondness for KFC, one of YUM's brands, its surprising that Novak didn't end up with a cabinet position in Washington.




Rob Roy officially joined Sprint as Chief Digital Officer last week, after a detour of several months.

Comcast had filed suit in June against Roy for violating a non-compete clause in his contract, after he indicated his intent to leave Comcast, where he had held a somewhat similar position, to go to Sprint.

After much legal wrangling, an agreement was reached allowing him to finally move on.

Though the use of non-competes has been restricted in several states and they have often been used as a club against employee freedom of movement, sometimes they make sense. In Roy's case, the issue may have been what he knew about Comcast's emerging wireless plans,which certainly could have been an issue as he was moving to Sprint.

Roy didn't spend much time at Comcast, having joined it from Time Warner Cable in September 2015.




In November, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal jointly promoted Kathy Kelly-Brown to SVP Strategic Initiatives. She will be responsible for identifying creative, technological and strategic opportunities across the entire portfolio of both Comcast and NBCUniversal, and will report to both Neil Smit on the Cable side and Steve Burke on the NBCU side, splitting time between New York and Philadelphia.

An NBCU veteran, she replaces Maggie McLean Suniewick, who recently was promoted to the newly created role of President, NBCUniversal Digital Enterprises.






at 10:19 PM 0 comments

RS Energy Group (RSEG) Acquires Leading Data Provider, NavPort


RS Energy Group Announces Acquisition of Data Company, NavPort
Data product a key element to high-powered energy research offering




RS Energy Group (RSEG) Acquires Leading Data Provider, NavPort
December 12, 2016 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
CALGARY, Alberta--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RS Energy Group (RSEG) today announced that is has acquired NavPort, a leading completion and production data company serving the upstream oil and gas market. The acquisition comes following a majority investment in RSEG by Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm focused on growth investing, in late-2015. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.


The acquisition adds a key data component to RSEG’s service offerings. "This is an exciting time for both RS Energy and NavPort,” said Jim Jarrell, Co-CEO of RSEG. “We are highly committed to providing world-class intelligence and service through our research and adding an in-house data product provides our customers with the best of both worlds.”

NavPort was created to fill an industry need for reliable and comprehensive production and completion data and was spun out of Preferred Sands in September 2014. Its team of industry experts specialize in data gathering, visualization and analytics, enhancing RSEG’s current upstream and midstream offerings to provide best-in-class energy intelligence and client service.

The combination of RSEG and NavPort provides energy investors, operators and service companies with unique and objective intelligence that integrates world-class financial, operational and geological data. Companies that subscribe to RSEG can visualize the complete energy landscape from a macro-economic scale down to the well-level, leveraging elements such as proprietary geo/earth modeling, valuations and investment trends, forecasting and predictive analytics and a patent-pending production allocation methodology.

The expanded team continues to map thousands of unique data sets; scrub, enhance and correct complex public information; test and integrate derived analytics and develop an intuitive, user interface for data exploration.

The RSEG team is excited to announce that the culmination of these efforts, RS Data™, will be available to customers in early-2017. “We are dedicating significant resources to building the highest quality data product using today’s technologies,” said Manuj Nikhanj, Co-CEO of RSEG. “The quality, speed, granularity of data and flexibility in the analytics will be more advanced than anything on the market. We couldn’t be more thrilled with what’s to come.”

About RS Energy Group

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, RS Energy Group (RSEG) is the standard in energy intelligence. Since 1998, RSEG’s dedicated team of engineers, economists, geologists, developers, CFA charter holders, data scientists and mathematicians has provided integrated, thorough and objective analysis to institutional investors, governments and corporate clients. RSEG is a privately-held company with office locations in Houston, Denver, New York City, New York; Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London.

To learn more visit www.rseg.com.

[VIDEO]: Hear from the new combined RSEG and NavPort team.

Contacts
RS Energy Group
Leila Thornborough, 403-294-9111
Leila.Thornborough@rseg.com


RS ENERGY GROUP

Headquarters: Calgary, Alberta
Website: www.rseg.com
CEO: Manuj Nikhanj
Employees: 100
Organization: PRI
Release Summary
RS Energy Group (RSEG) is excited to announce its acquisition of NavPort, a leading completion and production data company. RSEG's unique energy intelligence now offers a raw data element.

Original release: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161212005589/en/RS-Energy-Group-Announces-Acquisition-Data-Company




at 10:56 AM 0 comments

Links 12/12: College Board faces rocky path after CEO pushes new vision; Comcast raises controversial “Broadcast TV” and “Sports” fees



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Uber bull (Wharton's) Jeremy Siegel sees Dow 20K any day now as market cheers 'pro-business president' Trump (CNBC)

Big Pharma Just Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week of Job Cuts (Fortune)

Comcast raises controversial “Broadcast TV” and “Sports” fees $48 per year (Ars Technica)


The CBS-Viacom merger is off, which means CBS could still merge with someone else (Recode)

Apple’s TV guide app has launched — without Netflix, which is working with Comcast (Recode)


Cornerstone OnDemand Said to Mull Sale Under Activist Pressure (Bloomberg)

College Board faces rocky path after CEO pushes new vision for SAT (Reuters)

Razor Technology acquires Yardley company (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Why the data center isn’t dead yet: Explaining the rise of the ‘pragmatic hybrid cloud’
(GeekWire)


IPhone screen maker said to buy major OLED venture (PCWorld)





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