Philly Tech People News 2/10: New iPipeline President enters as predecessor gets big job; Who's left watching your money at PA SERS?




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iPipeline Announces Appointment of Andrew Damico as New President (Businss Wire)


Melchiorre, former President of Exton-based iPipeline, gets big job with unicorn Anaplan


Paul Melchiorre, former President of Exton-based iPipeline , was appointed global Chief Revenue Officer of San Francisco-based Anaplan today. Melchiorre’s appointment follows Anaplan’s recent announcement that it raised $90 million in a funding round.

Prior to iPipeline, he served as Global Vice President for Ariba, the B to B supply chain software company acquired by SAP  in 2012. Before that, he was an executive with SAP.

A graduate of Villanova (undergrad) and Drexel (MBA), Melchiorre has been omnipresent on the Philly Tech scene, working with numerous startups such as ExpenseWatch, ListenLogic and VC firm MissionOG.

One former SAP associate said on LinkedIn: "The way it was told to me, Paul basically built Ariba ... Actually I know Paul much better from his many years with SAP, where not only did he lead the company in sales but did so while being a hell of a nice guy."

Ariba was an early competitor to Malvern's Verticalnet, and both crashed in the 2000 era tech bust. But Ariba came back to survive and prosper, while Verticalnet barely hung on.

Anaplan, which calls itself "the enterprise planning cloud company", announced a $90 million round at a valuation of S1.09 billion post funding in January, and hired a new CFO. It definitely indicated it is planning for an IPO. It competes with older-line companies such as SAP, as well as other new-breed SaaS business planning startups.

Melchiorre left iPipeline after it was acquired by PE firm Thoma Bravo last year.



Moul becomes CEO at Philly-based Cloudamize; Founder Shah to serve as chief evangelist & board chair



Bob Moul, former CEO of Boomi (sold to Dell) and Artisan Mobile (acquired by TUNE) has been named chief executive officer of Philadelphia-based Cloudamize, effective February 1. Cloudamize is a leader in cloud infrastructure analytics and cost optimization.

Khushboo Shah, who has led the company as founder since its inception, will continue to serve as chief evangelist and will chair its board of directors.

“I am thrilled that Bob has agreed to join the company,” said Shah in statement. “He has been a close advisor for many years and brings deep insights into our market, our customers, and our partners. With his proven 35-year track record in hi-tech, he is ideally suited to take Cloudamize to the next level and to achieve our vision as the leader in maximizing cloud value for our customers.”

Moul has also been a visible leader in Philadelphia's tech community. And he gave an honest self-assessment of his missteps at Artisan, which reportedly sold for less than the amount invested in it.

Cloudamize is venture-backed by MissionOG, DreamIt Ventures, and Gabriel Investments. It has received $1.2 million in venture capital, according to CrunchBase. There's been no indication yet that additional funding is tied to Moul's new role.

Moul described in a separate blog post how he met Shah four years ago when he was coaching her in an incubator program, and has worked with her ever since.

I profiled Shah and Cloudamize a
Khushboo Shah / LinkedIn
little more than a year ago, I was very impressed with what they where doing, but wondered about the company's ability to scale up in a rapidly exploding market. Moul's entry is intended to address just that.

There are so many companies named 'Cloud' around, I think it needs some explaining. Cloudamize may be complementary to CloudNexa and shares a common investor, but is not a direct competitor (at least that's how it appeared a year ago). Cloudmine and Cloudamize share some common investors and might be helpful to each other, but are really two different businesses.

First Round Capital is an investor in a Portland-based company called Cloudabilty, that's raised $16 million and does appear to be in the same space as Cloudamize.

A year ago, Cloudamize seemed focused solely on cost optimization and tracking for Amazon Web Services customers. AWS was at a $10 billion annual run rate in the 4th quarter. But Shah's plan was to expand its range of services to other clouds, It appears to have expanded to cover Microsoft Azure, the second most popular public cloud.



Drexel President John Fry named chairman of Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce (Philadelphia Business Journal)

The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports that TE Connectivity (Berwyn) Chief Financial Officer Robert Hau would resign next month, and the company has begun a search for his replacement.

Thomson Reuters Buyouts reported (subscription) that PE officer Brandon Halm is leaving PA SERS as of February 26. The System has lost three PE professionals since last year, and is unable to fill vacancies because of a statewide hiring freeze, Buyouts reports.

He was an early Seamless employee, sold his next company for $100 million, and became a VC — now he's launching a food delivery startup    (Business Insider)


Milestone Partners Announces Promotions and Addition to Senior Team (Milestone Partners)

Lovell Minnick Partners beefs up team with three new hires (PE HUB)

TierPoint Appoints Morrison, Morales, Hicks and Markley to Technology and Operations Leadership Positions (Business Wire)
Bob Hcks, who has headed TierPoint's six Philly-area data centers, takes on broader role.

AMETEK Chief Financial Officer Robert R. Mandos, Jr. To Retire (PR Newswire}


Links 2/10: The $20 billion market that the writer apparently didn’t know existed: SAP slaps patch on leaky factory software







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The $20 billion market you didn’t know existed (Marketwatch)
The writer mistakenly refers to Motorola as a major set-top box maker; of course that business now belongs to Arris.

Comcast begs Atlanta customers not to switch to Google Fiber (Ars Technica)

SAP slaps patch on leaky factory software (PCWorld)

Ready to cook Amazon's Lambda? Google releases preview of Cloud Functions (The Register)

The world doesn’t need another Tableau (VentureBeat)


Twitter growth grinds to a halt (USA Today)


Apple May Push Into Corporate Cloud Computing Vs. Amazon, Microsoft (Investor's Busness Daily)

'Mac is key for any modern enterprise' -- SAP (Computerworld)



Private Equity's IHeart Radio Chokes on Debt Load It Can't Repay (Bloomberg)

FanDuel shuts down Florida game studio and lays off 55 (VentureBeat)


Llnks 2/9: Ametek's two buys; NewSpring - bigger's not always better






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Amazon Is Building Global Delivery Business to Take On Alibaba (Bloomberg)

NewSpring: More, not bigger
(Philly.com: Philly Deals)


Comcast to shell out $250 million for new Telemundo headquarters (Philly.com)

Microsoft – the modern ERP arms merchant (Brian Sommer/Diginomica)

The cloud breakdown: Amazon, Microsoft, and everyone else ( Business
Insider)

AMETEK buys Knightdale tech firm for $130M (Triangle Business Journal)

AMETEK Announces Two Acquisitions (PR Newswire)

DraftKings loses its exclusive ESPN ad deal (Engadget)




phillytechnews bytes 2/7



Sunday Highlights: TE Connectivity pushes into medical devices with Creganna buy; Malone-funded health tech research center opens at Hopkins






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New York City, PSC Staff Wary of Cablevision/Altice Deal (Multichannel News)
New York doesn't want the French any more than they wanted Philadelphians.


TE Connectivity pushes into medical devices with Creganna buy (Reuters)
TE Connectivity is run from Berwyn, though its headquarters is in Switzerland.

New interdisciplinary center at Johns Hopkins aims to reshape medical care (Hub/Johns Hopkins)
Funded by alum and cable pioneer John Malone.

SAP’s CEO Has Big Plans for Fixing Health Care With Software (Re/code}


Critiquing the Gartner BI and analytics MQ
(Diginomica)


Verizon touts wireless stats from Super Bowl


I guess the gist of it is you can follow @VerizonNews on twitter for the latest stats and data.






How publicly traded Philly Tech stocks held up yesterday

Tom Paine



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Looking at publicly traded Philly Tech companies, only a few were significantly impacted by yesterday's fallout ( I consider +/- 5% to be within normal range for all but the largest tech stocks).

The biggest losers on the day were:

Qlik Technologies (14.9%)

EPAM Systems (11.5%)

MeetMe (6.5%)

Universal Display (5.9%)

Radnor-based Qlik, which was recently panned by Barron's, was definitely impacted by competitor Tableau's problems, which could be both a positive and negative for Qlik. Part of what the market may be seeking is a more rigorous BI Engine, which is Qlik's strength.

It may also help Qlik in recruiting versus Tableau.

SAP  SE, wich has considerable positive momentum right now, was hardly pinged, down 3.6%.



Here's some stats on all of all of
the Phiily area's
major tech stocks.



Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly included USA Technogies among companies losing 5% or more of their market value yesterday.



Links 2/6: What the heck happened at Tableau?; LendingClub Models Misfire as Loan Write-Offs Top Forecasts






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What the heck happened at Tableau? It gruesome. (Denn Howlett/Diginomica)



After $66 Billion Goes Poof, Cloud Software Stock Outlook Turns Very Foggy (Re/code)

Are We Seeing Another Dotcom Crash?
(Fortune)

Twitter will change its timeline to use algorithm, BuzzFeed says (Marketwatch)

Dorsey Says Twitter Is Not Planning to Reorder Timelines Next Week (Bloomberg)


LendingClub Models Misfire as Loan Write-Offs Top Forecasts (Bloomberg)

Comcast grabs 475 acres in Orlando for theme park (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Deal Shows Investors Are Willing to Make a Blind Bet on Uber (NY Times)


Bill McDermott on SAP's transition to the Cloud (Bloomberg Video)






Tableau, on weaker outlook, down 49% today; sparks tech sector slump


Tom Paine



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I don't usually report on stock movements.

But Qlik competitor Tableau (NYSE: DATA) saw the bottom drop out this morning after an earnings report yesterday that concerned some and a disappointing outlook going into 2016.

Its shares are down 49% so far today.

Tableau’s outlook for the current quarter missed Wall Street views, and its revenue for Q4 2015 met expectations but disappointed some.

“We have data and have heard anecdotally that the Tableau solution is the most expensive in the market when compared with” products from rivals Microsoft (MSFT) and Qlik Technologies (QLIK.), Summit Research analyst Srini Nandury told Investor's Business Daily. Some also mentioned an impact from Amazon.com’s AWS QuickSight.

Q4 revenue rose 42% to $202.8 million. Tableau's net (GAAP) loss of 57 cents a share was influenced by a negative tax adjustment.

One might say that Tableau's results don't look too bad, but momentum stocks pay a heavy price when the expectations bubble bursts. I don't have the time, but someone could do a great dataviz of recent Tableau price movements.

QLIK is down 15% today.


Update 3:40pm: Tableau seems to be dragging the whole tech sector down.


The Nasdaq Bloodbath Led by LinkedIn, Tableau (Wall Street Journal: MoneyBeat)

Tableau finished the day down 49.5%, Qlik 15%.