Today in Philly Tech History 3/1/2001; Bala Cynwyd-based Digital Access Inc., after blowing through $450 million, shuts down

On March 1, 2001, Bala Cynwyd-based Digital Access Inc., having spent $450 million trying to build a broadband competitor to companies such as Comcast, announced it could not raise more needed cash and was shutting down. It was trying to raise another $900 million in debt to finance its buildout, but couldn't find it in the environment that followed the Internet bubble meltdown.

Digital Access was planning to enter the Indianapolis, Kansas City and Milwaukee markets. It cited market conditions, as well as regulatory delays that slowed down it down, as major factors, but in fact the opportunity for major independent residential broadband competitors to the established cable operators to get off the ground was coming to an end. Investors in Digital Access included Goldman Sachs, Navis Partners and Bachow & Associates.



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Daily Links 2/28/2013: VMware exec: "Hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books"

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EPAM Systems Reports Record Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012 (Thomson Reuters One via Yahoo Finance)

Universal Display rides higher on hopes of OLED TV ramp
Organic LED materials specialist reports 'best ever' financial year, and is excited by investments at LG and Samsung. (Optics.org)


COMCAST LAUNCHES COPYRIGHT ALERT SYSTEM (Comcast Voices/Official Comcast Blog)

Cablevision to Suspend Repeat Copyright Scofflaws, Comcast to Hijack Browsers (Wired)

Cablevision Declines After Sandy Damage Leads to Quarterly Loss (Bloomberg)

Salesforce Forecast Tops Estimates on New Product Demand (Bloomberg)

With 23 million weekly listeners, digital radio platform Jelli partners with Entercom to supercharge distribution (PandoDaily)
Entercom is based in Bala Cynwyd; First Round Capital was an early investor in Jelli.

Liberty Media 4Q revenue, profits fall (AP via Businessweek)
52% revenue decline from last year attributed to deferred revenue recognized last year by
Berwyn-based TruePosition from huge telco contract.

VMware Top Execs Lash Out At Amazon Public Cloud (CRN)
"I find it really hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books", VMware President/COO tells partners conference.

Disruption guru Clay Christensen says incumbent media players are making a classic mistake (paidContent)




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451 Group research note on Dell Boomi has some interesting info

Tom Paine

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The 451 Group, a software industry research group, has published a research note on Berwyn-based Dell Boomi (pdf) republished with permission on Boomi's website.

The report describes Dell Boomi as "a strong thought leader in the hybrid cloud-integration market. Its AtomSphere platform, Atom integration componentry and design capabilities such as its Suggest feature make it a desirable tool for integration designers and administrators alike." It cites Boomi's recently announced one million cloud-managed integration processes per day milestone "as a wakeup call for systems integrators, cloud hosts and all manner of integration technology and services
rivals to step up their efforts to enhance hybrid integration architecture as part of datacenter and cloud operating environments." The 451 Group also mentions Dell Boomi's recently announced partnership with Wipro, in addition to a similar partnership announced last year with Infosys, as being important steps forward with the systems integrator community.

I knew Boomi was still rather small when it was acquired by Dell in 2010, but The 451 Group's estimate of $5 million in revenue at that time (if accurate) suggests it was even smaller than I thought. It estimates the acquisition price (never disclosed by Dell publicly) at about $60 million and projects that Boomi will contribute $20 to $25 million in revenue to Dell in 2013.

The 451 Group sees Informatica, closely followed by MuleSoft, Jitterbit and IBM Cast Iron, and on occasion, SnapLogic, as its closest competitors, while middleware offerings from Tibco, Pervasive, IBM (WebSphere), Oracle (Fusion) and SAP (NetWeaver) remain factors. The report concludes that perhaps the greatest competitive threat to Dell Boomi comes from the open source community.

An anticipated upcoming product from Boomi will be the formal unveiling of its cloud-based MDM (Master Data Management) suite offering enhanced tools for modeling, storing, synchronizing, validating and cleansing master data, The 451 Group says.

Dell Boomi was cofounded by its current GM, Rick Nucci. Former CEO Bob Moul left a year after the acquisition and now is CEO of Philly mobile platform startup Artisan, as well as President of Philly Startup Leaders.

Daily Links 2/27/2013: Monetate raises another $15 million

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Monetate of Conshohocken raises $15M (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Gov. Christie signs internet gambling into law (NJ.com)

Intel, SAP Make Big Data Play Behind Hadoop (CRN)

Salesforce.com Expected To Beat Q4 Earnings Estimates (Investor's Business Daily)

Liberty Interactive Corporation Reports Fourth Quarter and Year End 2012 Financial Results (Business Wire)
Consolidated QVC revenue grew by 2%; says QVC is the second largest mobile commerce multi-category retailer in 2012, behind only Amazon, according to Internet Retailer.

Universal Display Posts Mixed Q4; Shares Gain After Hours
(Forbes)


Bucks to launch $4 million venture capital fund for local business (phillyBurbs.com)

UPenn robots spring into action, save wooden hero (video) (Engadget)

Cablevision-Viacom battle echoes Malone-Redstone fight (LA Times: Company Town)




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Daily Links 2/26/2013: SAP and Ericsson join forces on M2M services

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SAP adds to supply-chain tech with SmartOps acquisition
SAP plans to tie SmartOps' technology to HANA (Infoworld)

SAP and Ericsson join forces on M2M services (Network World)

SAP Transitioning To Cloud And Other Growth Areas (Investor's Business Daily)
Q&A with SAP CTO Vishal Sikka.

SAP Shifts 5,000 Direct Accounts To Channel Partners (CRN)


InterDigital and SemperCon Launch CirrusCon, Cloud-Based Platform for Mobile Application Bandwidth Control, Connectivity Management (Business Wire)

Philadelphia: Give Sharing a Chance (Sidecar Blog)

Oracle: Eloqua Will Stay Friendly With Salesforce.com (Information Week)

Salesforce unveils 'customer company' mantra: Can it deliver? (ZDNet)

Verizon's Shammo: 50 Mbps is FiOS' sweet speed spot
Reaffirms copper-to-fiber transition initiative (FierceTelecom)

Comcast's 'X2' to Get Personal With the TV (Light Reading Cable)

Maybe You’ll Get the Pay TV You Want, After All: Cablevision Sues Viacom to Break Up the Bundle (All Things D)

Comcast Business, Baltimore Tech Park partner (CED Magazine)




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Daily Links 2/25/2013: Christie expected to sign Internet gambling bill tomorrow; Warby Parker raises $41.5 mm

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$30 million Bethlehem project targets tech companies (Lehigh Valley Business)

First Round Capital Funds Another $500K Student-Run Venture Fund in New York (All Things D)

Warby Parker Grabs New Investment From American Express & J. Crew CEO, Closing $41.5M Round (TechCrunch)
Founded at Wharton; First Round Capital was an early investor.

Workday competitor SilkRoad selects banks for IPO -sources (Reuters)

FCC Roughed Up in D.C. Circuit
Judges have lots of issues with statute of limitations on carriage complaint and First Amendment implications of remedy (Broadcasting & Cable)
On Comcast/Tennis Channel dispute.

Awaiting the Dimming of G.E. at 30 Rock (New York Times: City Room)

Motorola Brings ITV to Older Set-Tops With ActiveVideo Software (Multichannel News)

Gov. Chris Christie expected to sign bill allowing Internet gambling on Tuesday (Press of Atlantic City)

Wharton and Cisco Show Off the Telepresence Classroom of Tomorrow (Time Tech)


SideCar Says Three Philadelphia Drivers Caught In ‘Sting’, But It Plans to Continue Operations (TechCrunch)

Xtium Expands Partnership with YASH Technologies
Partnership brings increased deployment velocity, economic benefit to managed cloud hosting market (PR Web)

MeetMe® Launches in Chinese, Russian and Japanese
(Marketwire)




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Artisan (formerly appRenaissance) launches mobile development platform, Artisan Optimize

Tom Paine

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Artisan, The Old City Philadelphia mobile platform developer formerly known as appRenaissance, today announced from eTail West the general availability of its first off-the-shelf product, Artisan Optimize, which it calls the industry's first Mobile Experience Management (MEM) platform. Artisan Optimize is designed to put the ability to design, test and modify mobile apps directly in the hands of end users, rather than relying on developers, and greatly speed the app development process.

Artisan Optimize is the end result of a private beta process that began in September and public beta started in December. Beta testers included more than 100 customers, of which more than 12 were Fortune 500 members. This release targets iPads and iPhones up to iOS 6; Android support is forthcoming, Artisan says. Also, the Artisan app is now available in the iPhone app store. Artisan Optimize is the first of a series of products on the Artisan MEM platform; others are scheduled for release this year.

A key design element to Artisan's approach is its patent-pending technology which renders the user interface of a native mobile application dynamically from the cloud. The Cloud-based user interface approach grew in part out of Artisan's acquisition of UXFlip last year and bringing its founder Michael Raber on board, Artisan CEO Bob Moul told me in a phone interview.




At least on the surface, there are some similarities to Conshohocken-based Monetate in Artisan's positioning. Marketers and retailers are high on Artisan's list of target markets, and there is an emphasis on giving end-users the ability to rapidly design and modify A/B tests on the fly without programmer involvement.

Artisan has raised $3 million so far led by FirstMark Capital, a New York-based VC firm that knows Moul well since it also backed Boomi, which Moul guided to its successful exit to Dell; Moul and other local private investors have also participated. They've been ramping up; Moul tells me headcount is around 20 and there are nine openings currently listed on Artisan's website, all based in Philadelphia. Artisan's go to market approach will include both outside and inside sales (VP, Sales is among the open positions) and the channel. Price points are $1,000, $4,000 and $10,000 per month. Moul says a Series A round may happen down the road.




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First Round Capital Bridges 'Chasm' Between Startups and Brands
A Seed-Round Fund That Takes the Ad Business Seriously (Ad Age

Philly Tech People News 2/24/2013

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TicketLeap names Tim Raybould President, Chris Stanchak out as CEO (Technically Philly)

Louis Hayner announced on his LinkedIn page that as of March 1st, "I will resign from my position of CSO (Chief Sales Officer) at Alteva to pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities". Although he says he will continue to act as a consultant with Alteva "for some time", he writes that he is looking forward to a long vacation and planning his next
entrepreneurial adventure.

Suprakash Chaudhuri Is MD, SAP India & Subcontinent (CRN)

Philadelphia Insurance Names New Chief Marketing and Chief Information Officers
Brian O’Reilly promoted to CMO and Andrew Peel hired as CIO of PHLY. (PR Web)

Tom Flinn Joins Adminovate as Chief Customer Officer (Business Wire)

CareKinesis names Joseph J Filippoli as CIO (CareKinesis Website)



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SAP Acquires SmartOps to Help Customers Optimize Inventory and Service Levels in Supply Chain
Using the SAP HANA® Platform, Move Will Enable Companies to Run Leaner and Free Up Capital for Innovation and Growth (PR Newswire)
SmartOps is based in Pittsburgh.

Intel acquires developer tools from Lancaster's appMobi (Central Penn Business Journal)

Talking Small Biz: His Kensington firm has silver linings
(Philly.com)

Daily Links 2/22/2013: Enterprise Software Roundup

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SAP Speeds Up With Its Hana Database Software (Businessweek)

The Second Question (Vijay Vijayasankar/Vijay's thoughts on all things big and small)
Why run SAP BW on HANA?

Coke bottler picks SaaS over SAP (Computerworld)


Brit SAP house G3 Global slurps 2e2's SAP house
Diagonal moves from Morse to 2e2... to an SME in Weybridge (The Channel)
Diagonal is based in Berwyn, PA.

Informatica Stitches Workday and NetSuite Together (All Things D)

Infor: a grown-up stealth start-up (Vinnie Mirchandani/Enterprise Irregulars)

4Q12 Performance for Trident Capital’s SaaS Portfolio; Nice Way to End the Year (Trident Capital Blog)




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