Philly Tech Tidbits 7/25/2010

Drexel graduate Nathan Kuruna has been going all over America shooting interviews with gamers about Newgrounds, the Glenside-based Flash gaming site founded by Tom Kulp, with the goal of producing a video documentary titled "Everything, By Everyone", a site called Kokatu Australia reports. But he is going to need some funds to put the whole production together, so he has set up a KickStarter page where people can contribute. Right now he is about halfway to his $12,000 goal. Contributions of $100 or more will get you a personal tour of Newgrounds' offices.

Boomi, the Berwyn-based provider of cloud-based application integration systems, tweeted last week that they are looking to fill several new positions. Everyone in the business talks about how great Boomi is doing, but I haven't been able to find any information of how Boomi is actually doing in terms of metrics (such as revenue, growth or number of employees) although I am sure some industry analysts have a good idea. Boomi hasn't reported any additional venture capital infusions since an initial round of $4 million by FirstMark Capital in 2008. Competitor Cast Iron Systems was acquired by IBM in May.
Another company that appears to have several open positions is Health Market Science, the King of Prussia-based healthcare marketing information company.

Two upcoming events are of particular interest. The BDPA (Black Data Processing Associates), an organization founded in Philadelphia in 1975 by Earl A. Pace, Jr. and the late David Wimberly, will hold its National BDPA Technology Conference at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriot July 28 through July 31. And Tech cocktail, which hosts technology showcases in various US cities, is coming to Philadelphia for the first time. The event, to be held on the evening of August 12th at the Field House Sports Bar, will features companies in the DreamIt Ventures program as well as other local startups.

Applications to be Fellows for the initial year of Code for America, which will help Boulder, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle and DC build Gov 2.0 apps, are due August 15, ReadWriteWeb reports. Fellows will spend most of their 11-month 2011 term in Code for America's home base of San Francisco and will spend one month in the city they are assigned to help. The program provides a stipend of $35,000, travel expenses and health benefits.

Alteva, the Philly-based provider of hosted VoIP and unified communications services, cites the the potential for significant energy savings and reduced carbon dioxide gas emissions from using hosted versus on-premise VoIP systems.

Collegeville-based mobile technology firm Movitas seems to have ramped up its online advertising since announcing a $3 million investment last week. I am seeing Movitas ads all over the place.

Geekadelphia reports that the Center City Apple store on Walnut Street now has an Apple logo, though it is still unclear when the store will be ready to open.




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Philly Tech People News 7/25/2010

Ad Council to Honor Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts with 57th Annual Public Service Award (PR Newswire)

SAP Taps North America Channel Chief For Higher Post (Channel Web)

SCTE Hires DOCSIS Developer To Be Its First CTO
Daniel Howard to Help Association Step Up Focus on IP Networking (Multichannel News)

Monetate Names Retailing and Marketing Thought Leader Kevin Ertell to Strategic Advisory Board (PR Newswire)

InvestorForce Bolsters Management Team in Support of Strong Growth (Business Wire)

iMANY Expands Executive Development Team
iMANY Appoints Three Executives to Development Team to Meet Growing Market Demand for Contract Performance (Marketwire)

Harleysville Insurance Names Two IT Execs (Insurance & Technology)

ICG Commerce Expands Executive Advisory Board With Former Unilever Executive and Appoints Industry Veteran to Lead Its Consumer Products Practice (Globe Newswire)

RES Software Continues to Strengthen Management Team with Appointment of Marc Zinnemers as Vice President of Finance EMEA (Business Wire)




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A look at Philadelphia's MedAd Firms

Medical Marketing & Media's July 2010 issue should be of interest to anyyone in the Philly advertising, digital media or pharma/healthcare communities. This is MM & M's "Agency Issue", providing profiles of what it considers the top 75 advertising agencies in the business in terms of revenue. Philadelphia-area shops profiled include:

Cadient Group (King of Prussia)

CDM Princeton (Princeton)

Digitas Health (Philadelphia)

Dudnyk (Horsham)

nitrogen-formerly Dorland (Philadelphia)

Razorfish Health (Philadelphia)

Rosetta Healthcare (Hamilton, NJ)

Roska Healthcare Advertising (Montgomeryville)

Saatchi & Saatchi Healthcare Innovations (Newtown)

Vox Medica (Philadelphia)

Others in the Top 75 with offices in the Philadelphia area include IMC2 Health & Wellness, evoke interaction, Eveo, and Blue Diesel.
Several others are in New York or further up the Jersey Turnpike.

The profiles give detailed information on each agency, including in some cases headcount, revenue, growth, account wins and losses, key new hires, and business mix (such as digital vs. non-digital). Some agencies prospered in 2009 while others did not do as well. While the overall economy and healthcare cost containment were factors, other industry-specific trends such as industry consolidation, shifts in category spending, salesforce cutbacks and an increasing emphasis on reaching both physicians and consumers through direct media were also important drivers. There appeared to be a growing use of social media, which Pharma has been slow to adopt to due to regulatory issues. Heavily digitally-oriented agencies probably tended to perform better than more traditional shops, several of which reported an emphasis on beefing up their digital capabilities. At the same time, some digital shops tried to add more full-service capabilities.

Cadient Group, which had been one of the faster growing companies in the area, reported a bit of a down year in 2009 with revenue declining 15%, mostly due to two customer roster consolidations and one merger, according to CEO Steven Wray, and it reduced staff by 30 people. However, Digitas Health reported 49% growth, althought its (independently managed) sister agency within the Publicis family Razorfish Health did not give specific figures for the year, perhaps because it was only broken out into a separate shop from the rest of Razorfish in March of this year. MediaBistro"s Agency Spy did report in April that Razorfish Health had "purged" its creative department. Publicis acquired Razorfish from Microsoft in August 2009.

Rosetta Marketing reported 10% growth overall and 33% in healthcare. Rosetta garners a good deal of M&A speculation, both as a possible acquirer and seller, given that it is one of the largest independent agencies out there with a strong digital heritage.

Blue Diesel is planning an expansion of its Newtown office, according to MM & M.




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Daily Links 7/23/2010: FiOS TV adds slowing

Education inventors get boost under new programs (AP via Google News)

Verizon Beats Estimates on Demand for Droid Phones (Bloomberg)
FiOS Keeps Chugging Along
Verizon Posts Gains on TV, Broadband, Wireless (Multichannel News)



Oracle plans to double acquisition budget (Fortune)
Oracle Denies Report of $70 Billion in Planned Acquisitions
Oracle is distancing itself from comments reportedly made by its co-president, Charles Phillips, about the amount of money it intends to spend on future acquisitions (CIO.com)

The Return of Business ByDesign and the Future of the On-Demand ERP Market (Enterprise Matters)

Comcast's 'Project Infinity' Takes Flight (Light Reading Cable)


Police investigate link between Apple Store break-ins (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Honeywell Keeps On Smart Grid Shopping (earth2tech)
More on Honeywell's acquisition of Langhorne's E-Mon.




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Daily Links 7/22/2010: Comcast’s NBC Purchase May Mean Selling Stations (Bloomberg)

Comcast, GE: Character Assassins Shouldn't Shoot Down NBCU Deal
Parties Believe FCC Should 'Expeditiously' Approve The Union (Multichannel News)

Comcast’s NBC Purchase May Mean Selling Stations or Arbitration (Bloomberg Business Week)

New DirecTV chief looks beyond the fizz (LA Times)

QlikTech Announces Closing of Initial Public Offering of Common Stock and Exercise of Over-Allotment Option (Business Wire)
Sold full over-allotment of 1,680,000 shares in addition to initial offering of 11,200,000 shares.

SAP-Sybase: What to Expect in the First 90 Days (PC World)

Tyco Electronics posts quarterly profit (Reuters)

SEI Investments reports 2Q income growth (AP via Bloomberg Business Week)

DreamIt Aims To Accelerate New Business Development (Forbes)

SeatGeek Lands $1 Million for Predictive Ticket Pricing (Digital Media Wire)
NY-based graduate of DreamIt Ventures program.

SunGard Acquires Fox River Execution (PR Web)

Cobblestone | Harris Williams Advises E-Mon, LLC, in its Sale to Strategic Buyer Honeywell International (Business Wire)
E-Mon, which is based in Langhorne, manufactures smart energy submeter systems and integrated energy intelligence software.

Dow Electronic Materials Inaugurates New Facility to Serve Fast Growing OLED Market (Business Wire)




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Daily Links 7/21/2010: Movitas raises $3 million

Mobile Technology Company Movitas Raises $3 Million for Travel Industry Focus (PR Newswire)
Mobile Technology Company Movitas Raises $3M, Goes After The Travel Industry (TechCrunchIT)

LoKast shares media between iPhones and Android phones (VentureBeat)

M&A exits abounded in 2Q (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Comcast Chases Big[ger] Business (Light Reading Cable)

Gartner calls for IT maintenance bill of rights (IDG via Bloomberg Business Week)

SAP Teams With Solution Provider For Health-Care Market Expansion (Channel Web)

arcplan's BI Integrated Planning Connector Extends Life of Companies' SAP BI-IP Investment (Marketwire)

Cross Atlantic Capital Partners Invests $2.8 Million in Interactions Corporation Series D Funding (Business Wire)

Ametek raises outlook for 2Q, year on order gains (AP via Yahoo Finance)




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Daily Links 7/20/2010: SAP-Sybase deal cleared by EU

Venture Investor In Newly Public QlikTech Counsels Patience (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)

A Tale of Two Innovators Going Public (Harvard Business Review via Bloomberg)

SAP, Sybase deal set to win EU OK this week-source (Reuters)
Update: Approval official.

Sybase Q2 beats Street view
(Reuters)

M&A for Media, Marketing to Heat up in Second Half (Ad Age)
Discusses GSI Commerce and Rosetta Marketing.

Will Moto-NSN Deal Reopen the Set-Top Doors? (Light Reading Cable)

Digital movie locker `UltraViolet' nears launch (Associated Press via Google News)

FCC's Unreleased Broadband Competition Report Already Drawing Fire
Report Finds Broadband Deployment Inadequate (Multichannel News)

Tyco is bullish on broadband (Philly.com: Phily Inc)

Tech firms' mergers signal potential growth (Baltimore Sun: BaltTech)

Scvngr Gamers Can Check In by Bumping Phones Together (VentureBeat via New York Times)

Environmental Tectonics Corporation Announces First Quarter Fiscal 2011 Results
Revenue up 26.5%, Net Income up 151.4% (PR Newswire)




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Daily Links 7/19/2010: Verizon preparing for LTE rollout

As Niche Gets Crowded, Studio Watches Its Back (New York Times)
Comcast rumored as possible suitor for DreamWorks.

Verizon's LTE rollout is imminent, computers updated for 4G SIM cards (Engadget)

NSN to Buy Moto's Wireless Biz for $1.2B (Light Reading Mobile)

Worst VC investment year since ’96 (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Google's growth in city puts Pittsburgh in top tier of regional sites (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Founders of Venmo (Inc.: 30 Under 30)

Swift to acquire SunGard's Ambit Messaging Hub (Finextra)

SAP Walks Tightrope Selling Business ByDesign (CIO.com)

SAP extends offer period for Sybase buy to July 26 (Reuters)

Down To Business: Oracle Suit Casts Shadow On Rimini Gains
Alternative provider of software support services gaining enterprise customers, despite Oracle suit's chilling effect. (Information Week)

Epocrates plans $75 million IPO, again (Mobile Health News)




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Qlik Tech IPOs; What Next? (Seeking Alpha)

Philly Tech People News: 7/18/2010

Phila. gets presence on national innovation council
(Philadelphia Business Journal: Technology Blog)

Apollo Health Street Adds New Senior VP and New Legal and Compliance Counsel (Business Wire)

HighPoint Solutions Names New Solution Lead for R&D and Collaboration Practices

Francis Joyce Joins MISTRAS as Chief Financial Officer (Globe Newswire via MarketWatch)

James G. Dole Joins WorldGate as Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Joel Boyarski Announces Plans to Retire from the Company (Business Wire)

John Weyrauch and Martin O'Brien Join Rosetta as Partners in Healthcare Group (PR Newswire)

QlikTech's Successful IPO

Radnor's Qlik Technologies (also called QlikTech) has successfully completed its long-awaited Initial Public Offering, selling at least 11.2 million shares at $10 per share, up from an estimated pricing of $8.50 to $9.50 in the prospectus. Subsequently, shares rose to over $13 and are currently just under $13, particularly impressive on a weak day for tech stocks. This gives QlikTech a market value of nearly $1 billion, and also gives the company more than $100 million in cash as well as stock it can use as a currency for acquisitions. It is trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol "QLIK".

This is the largest tech (IT) IPO in the Philly area for quite some time that I can recall, though QlikTech has Swedish roots and has a relatively small percentage of its employees in Radnor. The company maintained strong growth throughout the economic downturn and its revenue increased 66% in the first quarter of this year to $43.8 million.

QlikTech has major strategic choices: whether to remain focused on its niche of in-memory, relatively easy and rapid-deployment Business Intelligence solutions, or to expand its product portfolio through acquisition into other area of the BI space. It also faces challenges in terms of scalability for larger enterprise applications, and increasing competition. But anyone who has worked with BI technology as I have understands the significance of the breakthroughs QlikTech has achieved.

My own guess: they will inevitably be acquired, probably by either Oracle or SAP. But I could be wrong.