Links 12/23/2013: SAP Co-CEO’s Ex-Assistant Settles SEC Insider Claims; Broadcasters respond to Aereo's Supreme Court claims
SAP Co-CEO’s Ex-Assistant Settles SEC Insider Claims (Bloombeg)
SEC says traded ahead of SuccessFactors, Ariba deals.
Time Warner Cable Has Shareholder Backing as Takeover Bid Looms (Bloomberg)
Fandango Scores Record-Breaking Year (The Wrap)
Fandango is owned by Comcast.
TV Broadcasters Fire Back at Aereo's Supreme Court Claims (Hollywood Reporter)
SoftBank CEO meets banks to get finance for T-Mobile bid: Bloomberg (Reuters)
Fisker Won’t Make Cars at Former GM Plant, Carper Says
(Bloomberg)
Mobile app developers' interest in HTML5 is slipping (Infoworld)
Why Older Technology Companies May Attempt Desperate Deals
(NY Times: DealBook)
Can Salesforce.com Grow Into a $10 Billion Company?
(AllThingsD)
Karan Mehandru’s SaaS Predictions for 2014! (Trinity Ventures)
Elevator Pitch: Doug Pepper of InterWest Partners on the future of enterprise software (San Jose Mercury News)
$10M committed to Pittsburgh venture capital fund (Pittsburgh Business Times)
MeetMe Transitions Mobile Ad Inventory to Pinsight Media+ Platform (Business Wire)
Lockheed Martin Team Moves Forward In "Elite Eight" Following DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials (PR Newswire)
Philly Tech People News 12/22/2013
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Digitas Health appoints Michael Leis
Move backs up its social strategy drive (PMLive)
Comcast arena unit hires SMG veteran (Philly.com: Philly Deals)
Jack Redding Joins Halfpenny Technologies as the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing (Business Wire)
The Wistar Institute Names Andrew Peabody Chief Information Officer, Will Guide Expansion of Scientific Computing (Wistar Press Release(
Plex Names Enterprise Software Veteran Karl Ederle Vice President of Product Management (PR Newswire)
Solve Media's own year-end video: "To All Humans: Can You Meme It? Yes, We Can!"
Philly & New York-based Solve Media, a First Round Capital portfolio company born in Philadelphia, produced its own year-end video inhouse using Philadelphia talent. It took 600 hours with 30 people and one cat (the cat was not harmed during production) and was produced in the famous Metropolis Studios (now known as StudioA), a Solve Media spokesperson said via email.
Its entitled "To All Humans: Can You Meme It? Yes, We Can!."
Saturday Highlights 12/21/2013: Vision of a Microsoftie's Healthcare.gov
A Microsoftie’s Healthcare.gov (Comic) (AllThingsD)
Oracle to Buy Responsys for $1.5 Billion for Sales Tools (Blooomberg)
Unitrends Buys PHD Virtual To Expand SMB Disaster Recovery, Take On Veeam (CRN)
Comcast Will Spend Millions Developing And Promoting Khan Academy To Encourage Low-Income Broadband Adoption
(Techcrunch)
Because they're such nice guys, I'm sure.
The future of broadband looks very much like cable TV. Here is why
(Gigaom)
Amazon Bought GoPago’s Mobile Payment Tech And Product/Engineering Team, DoubleBeam Bought The POS Business (TechCrunch)
Links 12/20/2013: Oracle acquires Responsys for $1.5 billion
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Oracle Acquires Cloud Marketing Player Responsys for $1.5 Billion
(AllThingsD)
Warby Parker raises $60 million (Fortune Tech)
First Round Capital, a seed investor in Warby Parker, participates again.
Knewton nabs $51 mln
(PE Hub)
First Round Capital re-upped here again also.
Comcast CEO meets with top U.S. communications regulator (Reuters)
InterDigital Loses U.S. Patent Case Against Nokia, Huawei
(Bloomberg)
BlackBerry stock rises 13% despite $4.4B loss (CBC)
The Top 10 Data Center M&A Deals of 2013 (Data Center Knowledge)
$30M post-incubator business project in limbo (Lehigh
Valley Business)
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."
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