Links 12/19/2013: EBay's strategy for taking on Amazon; Why TWC's NY biz could attract Comcast
EBay’s Strategy for Taking On Amazon
(NY Times Magazine)
Includes discussion of role of King of Prussia-based EBay Enterprise.
For Comcast, Time Warner Cable's New York unit could be big business (LA Times: Company Town)
NBCU’s Olympics Coverage To Rely Heavily on Digital (Variety)
BlackBerry’s CEO hires two more of his former colleagues (Globe & Mail)
More former SAP/Sybase executives. Follows announcement that former SAP mobile boss John Sims would lead its global enterprise business.
Two analytics start-ups say they to discern what consumers want (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Nevels, Comcast's Angelakis Appointed to Lead Philly Fed Board of Directors (Philly Fed)
December 2013 Business Outlook Survey (Philly Fed)
Philly Manufacturing index recovers slightly in December (Marketwatch)
IBM acquires Aspera and its tech for moving massive files to the cloud (Gigaom)
Building products company halts SAP project, citing strategy shift (PC World)
Links 12/18/2013: Amazon to bring AWS Cloud Services to China; Blackberry hires former SAP global chief to lead enterprise business
Amazon Raises Its Game Against Alibaba, Will Expand AWS Cloud Services To China In 2014 (TechCrunch)
BlackBerry Ltd hires former SAP mobile boss John Sims to lead global enterprise business (Financial Post)
Oracle Earnings: What to Watch (Wall Street Journal: Digits)
Oracle profit slips, but results beat estimates
(Marketwatch)
Oracle Shakes Off Wall Street’s Worries, Beats Estimates in Q2 (AllThingsD)
Ellison defends Oracle's cloud strategy and pricing against Amazon, Microsoft (ZDNet)
Tech executives to Obama: NSA spying revelations are hurting business (Washington Post)
Reform NSA, Tech Execs Tell Obama (Information Week)
IMS Health hires JPMorgan to lead IPO -sources (Reuters)
IBM Closes Acquisition of Fiberlink Communications (Press Release)
All in the Insight family: Unitrends buys PHD Virtual to compete against Veeam
Tom Paine
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There was an interesting comment by Unitrends CEO Mike Coney following the announcement of his company's acquisition of Philadelphia-based PHD Virtual yesterday, as quoted by TechTarget.com:
"Unitrends CEO Mike Coney said the addition of PHD gives the vendor a better chance of competing with virtual backup pioneer Veeam Software and makes it stronger in cloud backup."
The irony, perhaps, is that all three firms (Unitrends, PHD Virtual, and Veeam) have had the same VC firm, Insight Venture Partners, as their primary investor.
Unitrends, based in Columbia, SC, announced a major growth equity investment by Insight at the end of October.
Veeam, which is the largest of the three, received a secondary minority investment from
Insight this year. Veeam, which is based in Switzerland, has reported recent bookings growth of close to 100% and says it is shooting for $1 billion in annual revenue.
PHD Virtual, the smallest of the three, had received at least $8 million in venture capital from Insight and Citrix Systems by my count, plus $2 million venture debt financing from Wellington Financial this year.
PHD Virtual had its beginnings in New Jersey and still has many of its tech people in
Morris Plains. Insight got involved in 2010, put Thomas Charlton in as CEO and moved its
headquarters to Center City ( See my 2011 article on the company) . PHD Virtual grew to at least 80 employees (its LinkedIn page shows 82 currently). Charlton, who now heads his own Conshohocken-based firm, Goliath Technologies, was succeeded by James Legg last year. Coney says he expects PHD Virtual to remain in Philadelphia, and Legg to continue as CEO.
I had though that Insight might put PHD Virtual together with Veeam, but Insight is segmenting the market differently. The combined Unitrends/PHD Virtual will focus on the SMB market. Coney told TechTarget that PHD Virtual's biggest weakness was
the lack of a physical backup component, as PHD's offering was entirely virtual, and Unitrends' was the lack of a virtual solution.
"When we get into a competitive situation with Veeam -- especially if it's a 100 percent virtual account -- our win rates drop," Coney said. "The PHD team is successful against Veeam, but when they get into a situation where they need physical protection, their win rates drop. So there's a nice marriage of our go-to-market strategies."
Links 12/17/2013: Report - Comcast weighing options on Time Warner Cable
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Exclusive: Comcast weighs three options for Time Warner Cable deal: sources (Reuters)
Who's In, Who's Out at Obama's Meeting of Tech Execs? (Mashable)
Brian Roberts is in.
EveryBlock Is Back From The Dead
Comcast will be resurrecting the hyperlocal news site (Chicago Grid)
Dish, Sprint to test a home broadband service using LTE (Gigaom)
AT&T Sells Connecticut Operations to Frontier for $2 Billion (Bloomberg)
Universal Display Surges 9%: JMP Encouraged by Samsung, LG, Apple Prospects (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)
Salesforce.com will adopt Openstack* (*says Rackspace) (Gigaom)
Source: Oracle Is Quietly Reorganizing Its Sales Force And Signing A Huge Agreement With HP
(Business Insider)
HarperCollins Publishers Selects RSuite CMS (RSI Content Solutions)
Links 12/16/2013: Fearing arrest, InterDigital execs won't meet with Chinese officials; PHD Virtual sold
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InterDigital execs fear arrest, won't meet China antitrust agency (Reuters)
Unitrends Acquires Philadelphia-based PHD Virtual; Builds Powerhouse in Data Protection and Disaster Recovery
Insight Venture Partners' portfolio companies join forces to create data protection platform ideally suited for small and mid-market organizations (PR Newswire)
Chip-maker LSI to be bought for $6.6 billion (Allentown Morning Call)
In 2006, LSI acquired Lehigh Valley-based Agere Systems, a legacy business of the old
Bell Labs. LSI still employs more than 700 in the area.
Jason S. Armstrong to Join Comcast Corporation as Senior Vice President, Investor Relations (Business Wire)
Consolidation will cut cloud choice next year, Gartner says (PC World)
For Workday, payback comes at a price (Fortune)
Oracle's Q2: What to expect (PC World)
Inside Avon's Failed Order-Management Project (Information Week)
Cable, Wireless Players Try to Snare Piece of $4.2B Connected-Home Business (Ad Age)
Skift Q&A: Visit Philly CEO on Using New Media to Rebrand an Old City (Skift)
The NeatConnect Scanner Is a Cloud-Connected Guilty Pleasure (All Things D)
Philly Tech People News 12/15/2013
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Comcast hires a fourth executive VP (Philadelphia
Inquirer)
Victor Takes Key Role At Comcast Business (Multichannel News)
BioAgilytix Labs Names Jim Datin Chief Executive Officer (PR Newswire)
Datin was previously EVP and Managing Director at Safeguard Scientifics.
Campbell Appoints Yin Woon Rani Vice President, Integrated Marketing (Business Wire)
Tim Foster has joined LLR Partners as Vice President, Business Development, focused on
the New York metro area. A Penn graduate, he was previously with KPMG and Edison Ventures.
appMobi Announces Year-End Resignation of Leland A. Westerfield, Chief Financial Officer (PR Web)
Jim Seuffert Joins Wheelhouse Analytics (PR Web)
Axway Appoints IBM, Oracle and SAP Executives to Build on Strong Global Momentum (Business Wire)
Exclusive: Pa. pension officer retires; hidden $3M loss alleged (Philadelphia Inquirer)
HOW SEEIT SHOWCASES COMCAST'S LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL TV (Comcast Voices/Official Corporate Blog)
Aereo Founder Explains Delayed Expansion Plans (TechCrunch)
Delaware's financial hit from Fisker comes into focus (Wilmington News Journal)
Saturday Highlights 12/14/2013: Verizon expands LTE capacity with spectrum bought from Cable; Accolade raises $30mm
Google Acquires Boston Dynamics, Creating a Robotized Future That's 'Looking Awesome' (Bostinno)
As Google slowly preps the Chromecast ecosystem, waves of new apps are on the way (Engadget)
Verizon quietly unleashes its LTE monster, tripling 4G capacity in major cities (Gigaom)
As Software Eats The World, Non-Tech Corporations Are Eating Startups (TechCrunch)
Plymouth Meeting-based Accolade gets $30-million investment (Philly.com)
Working the crowds at the Pennsylvania Society (Newsworks)
Links 12/13/2013: Charter said to prepare offer letter for Time Warner Cable
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Charter Said to Prepare Offer Letter for Time Warner Cable (Bloomberg)
Charter Prepares Takeover Offer for Time Warner Cable (New York Times: DealBook)
DirecTV CEO Talks Online Video Plans, Dish Deal Hurdles (Hollywood Reporter)
DirecTV Said Near Renewal of Deal for NFL Sunday Ticket (Bloomberg via Ad Age)
Sprint reportedly preparing bid to purchase T-Mobile in 2014 (The Verge)
Verizon In Advanced Talks to Buy Intel’s Internet TV Unit (Variety)
Time Warner Cable to drop Comcast's NECN (FierceCable)
The worst IT project disasters of 2013
The Healthcare.gov rollout leads a pack of painful projects including one from Australia (CIO.com)
The Indian SMB gold rush (Information Week)
Deals of the Week: GSK's Stealth Move To The Coasts (IN VIVO Blog)
Nimble Storage soars: Stock up 49% following IPO (VentureBeat)
A younger version of PA Society (Philadelphia Daily News)
Epicor moves Americas ERP headquarters from Yardley to Bensalem & planning for growth; Grand Opening today (Friday)
Tom Paine
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Most tech professionals in the area know that enterprise software giant SAP has its headquarters for the Americas, and well over 2,000 employees, in Newtown Square. And in May of next year it will be the home base for SAP's sole CEO, although the company remains based in Germany.
But less are aware that another important, though smaller Tier II ERP provider, Epicor, has its headquarters for its Americas ERP business in Bucks County. And it is moving from Yardley to Bensalem and holding an open house tomorrow.
 |
| Epicor EVP Donna Troy |
Epicor Director of Continuous Improvement Stuart Maxel, who coordinated the move, said in a phone interview with Philly Tech News that Epicor's key objectives here are to continue the migration of products to the Cloud (Epicor was traditionally on-premise, but now has a mix of on-premise and Software as a Service - SaaS), moving up from serving smaller and medium-sized enterprises to competing for more accounts in larger enterprises, and enhancing its vertical & niche offerings. Epicor's traditional core strengths have been in retail, distribution, and manufacturing.
Although Maxel couldn't talk specific numbers, he said part of the reason for the move
was to allow for expansion, and that is definitely in the plans. I mentioned that Epicor
has not been very visible on the Philly Tech Scene during the time I've covered it,
and he said increasing that was one of its goals.
 |
| Epicor's new Bensalem facility |
The Yardley facility dated back to the Prophet 21 days (Epicor still uses the Prophet 21
name for some offerings). In the Bensalem facility at the LEED certified Horizon Corporate Center, Epicor is leasing 43,000 square feet on the second floor. Bensalem Mayor Joseph DiGirolamo, local representative Gene DiGirolamo, and state senator Tommy Tomlinson are expected to attend the open house today.
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