Links 11/23: On Veeva System's strong quarter; Vistar Enhances Out-of-Home Targeting With Brands' Own Data





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Veeva Systems Hits Buy Point, Outlook Beats On Expanding Portfolio (Investor's Business Daily)
Veeva's fiscal Q3 was the first quarter in which Vault billings surpassed the company's older CRM, or customer relationship management, products.

Veeva Surges 9%: A Turducken in the Vault, Say the Bulls (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)

Emergence Capital’s Jason Green on today’s big growth sectors (Diginomica)

Vistar Enhances Out-of-Home Targeting With Brands' Own Data (Ad Age)


TierPoint CEO Jerry Kent Talks Strategy (Data Center
Knowledge)
TierPoint has a major presence in the Philadelphia market, as Philly Tech News reported.

Tableau Cozies Up to Amazon Cloud (Fortune)

'Unique or newsworthy': How the Philadelphia Eagles approach live video (Digiday)



Links 11/22: New Jersey Governor ends tax grab across the river; Urban Outfitters shares tank after company misses expectations



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Sunoco Logistics to merge with parent company (Philly.com)

New Jersey Governor ends tax grab across the river; will keep reciprocity agreement in place with Pennsylvania (Bucks Local News)

Urban Outfitters shares tank after company misses EPS, sales expectations (Marketwatch)


Veeva Systems Q3 Earnings, Q4 Guidance Beat; Stock Up After Hours
(Investor's Business Daily)


Once enemies, Huawei and InterDigital are now allies brought together by patents (IAM)

AT&T, Comcast, Verizon Eye Next FCC Chair, Eisenach Front-Runner? (Investor's Business Daily)

Analyst: OTT Helps Boost TV Viewership (Multichannel News)

Sling TV to Stream to Comcast’s X1 Platform (Multichannel News)



UK & Ireland SAP User Group – 48% of members have no current S/4 HANA plans (Diginomica)

Using software to track contamination (Food Engineering)




Philadelphia-based IntegriChain teams with King of Prussia-based ProMetrics on Specialty Pharmacy


Tom Paine



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The growth of specialty pharmacy is a major strategic shift in life sciences. Specialty pharmacy focuses on high cost, high touch medication therapy for patients with complex disease states. Medications in specialty pharmacy range from oral to cutting edge injectable and biologic products. The disease states treated include cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and rare genetic conditions. Handling special pharmacy channels involves numerous distinct requirements and some retailers and distributors specialize in it, but by 2014 CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and Walgreens represented more than 50% of the specialty drug market in the United States.

Specialty pharmacy is projected to grow from 32% in 2014 to 70% of all pharmaceutical sales in dollar terms by 2020, though its a very small percentage of actual prescriptions.

To better serve this market, Philadelphia-based IntegriChain, which tracks pharmaceuticals through the distribution channels to consumers, last month entered into a strategic partnership with King of Prussia-based ProMetrics, a leader in longitudinal patient-level data aggregation, to deliver the industry’s first guided analytics solution for specialty channel management, patient service model design, and patient access optimization.

The data can be used to understand the patient journey from receiving the prescription to having the therapy in hand. For example:


  • How long it takes for the specialty pharmaceutical therapy to get in the patient's hands?
  • Specifically, how long does it take for each step of the benefit verification, financial counseling, and prior authorization process and where are patients getting lost along that process​?
  • Are patients staying on therapy (i.e., are they refilling their prescriptions)?
  • What are the reasons for patients forgoing therapy (difficulty with insurance, cost, trouble filling prescription, etc.)?


"The new guided analytics offering for specialty pharmacy delivers a single view from factory to patient, dramatically improving the actionability of longitudinal Anonymized Patient-Level Data (APLD) for account managers, brand directors, and patient access leadership," the two companies said in  announcing the partnership.

Kevin Leininger, CEO of IntegriChain, said in the announcement: “Most specialty manufacturers have product portfolios that are distributed through multiple channels. Patients access many of their individual products through diverse pharmacy settings and sites of care. Never before have specialty pharma manufacturers had a single analytics platform that encompasses all of their channels – specialty pharmacy, specialty distribution, full-line wholesale, and retail.”

Marc Duey, President and CEO, founded ProMetrics in 1994. ProMetrics aggregates, integrates, analyzes, and reports data across the specialty brand’s distribution network including Specialty Pharmacies, Specialty Distributors, 3PLs, Hubs, GPOs and more. Its core services include data acquisition strategy, contracting recommendation and execution, as well as data aggregation, integration, analysis and reporting.


Josh Halpern, Executive Vice President and co-founder of IntegriChain, told me in a phone interview that specialty pharmacy is a rapidly growing portion of its business, though he declined to say how much it accounts for, but with the industry's direction and the ProMetrics partnership he expected it to continue to grow significantly. Halpern also said that this was IntegriChain's first strategic partnership in the life sciences industry, and he expects others in the future.

IntegriChain, founded in November 2006, is just celebrating its 10th anniversary. In March of this year, it announced a substantial investment from Silicon Valley-based growth equity investor Accel-KKR, buying out all preexisting outside investors. IntegriChain also completed relocating its headquarters from Princeton to Philadelphia, at Penn Center on JFK Boulevard. It is nearing 100 employees.

IntegriChain serves an important niche within the rapidly growing market for cloud-based life sciences applications and data.

“For ten years, IntegriChain has been the data and analytics foundation underpinning life sciences manufacturer efforts to create more efficient and service-oriented channel models to maximize patient access to critical and often life-changing medical products,” said CEO Leininger in a statement. “We are immensely proud of the company we have built through continuous collaboration with our customers to improve and expand our data and guided analytics offerings. Our close bonds within the Greater Philadelphia tech and academic communities and the incredible healthcare tech team that we have developed will advance IntegriChain to our next stage of growth and evolution.”




Links 11/21: Oracle to buy Dyn, victim of recent DDoS attack; Wayne drug tech firm buys West Coast, India offices



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Oracle to buy internet infrastructure provider Dyn (Reuters)
Price reported north of $600 million.

Oracle buys Internet traffic specialist Dyn after hacking attack (Boston Globe)

'Aggressive' hiring ahead: Wayne drug tech firm buys West Coast, India offices (Philly.com)

Health IT investors share lessons learned from early investments (Med City News)

Former Cablevision owners have gone from friends to foes: Altice (NY Post)

Amazon is in talks to stream live sports, report says (CNBC)

Verizon is now competing with Facebook and Google in tracking consumers’ personal data (Recode)

Microsoft offers EU hardware, software LinkedIn concessions: sources (Reuters)




SNL: QVC Audtions





Sunday Highlights: Infor President talks $2bn Koch investment, Oracle/NetSuite deal; AIF’s inaugural Philadelphia gala honors Raju Foundation



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Sensors, switches, perilous places are the job at TE Connectivity (Philly.com)

Infor President talks $2bn Koch investment, Oracle/NetSuite deal and Brexit
(Diginomica)

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is telling an odd story about how Microsoft tricked him (Business Insider)

AIF’s inaugural Philadelphia gala honors Raju Foundation (America Bazaar)


Satellite dishes that power Time-Warner imperil merger with AT&T
(Bloomberg via Denver Post)


ABC is exploring a 24-hour digital news channel
(NY Post)


Saturday Highlights: SAP’s Fresh Approach to Small to Mid-Size Businesses; 4 biggest surprises from 2016 vertical software report



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A Simple Plan? SAP’s Fresh Approach to Small to Mid-Size Businesses (ASUG News)

Tableau on Partnering, Integrating, and Cohabitating with SAP and IT (ASUG News)

4 biggest surprises from 2016 vertical software report (VentureBeat)
SaaS for the (legal) marijuana business is a hot market.

Why Clinton Lost PA: Examining the Exit Polls (Politics PA)

Comcast Underground Network Could Mean Faster Internet (CBS Philly)


Groceries and Jet.com help Wal-Mart grow e-commerce 20.6% in Q3 (Internet Retailer)



Links 11/18: DraftKings, FanDuel Announce Plans to Merge; Comcast to hire dozens as it modernizes tech dispatch



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DraftKings and FanDuel are (officially) merging (Recode)

DraftKings, FanDuel Announce Plans to Merge
(Variety)
Some Philly-area investors in FanDuel.


Is the Comcast tech here yet? Cable giant to hire dozens as it modernizes tech dispatch (Philly.com)

BuzzFeed raises another $200 million at the same valuation it had last year (Business Insider)
But NBCU gets some downside protection.

Comcast Launching Two New Hispanic Networks (Broadcasting & Cable)

Trump's Plan to Scrap Obamacare Is Already Messing With His In-Law's $2.7 Billion Startup (Fortune)

Tech IPOs Want to Get Ahead of Trump (Bloomberg) Dell Boomi competitor MuleSoft, First Round-backed Blue Apron among those reported thinking about it.


SAP offers cash for referrals in new cloud channel program (PCWorld)






LiveRamp swallows 2 First Round-backed ventures for $140mm plus incentives


Tom Paine



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Ari Jacoby

Ari Jacoby's next act, Philadelphia-based Circulate, was acquired by Arkansas-based consumer database giant Acxiom's LiveRamp unit along with New York-based Arbor, for what LiveRamp said was a total cash consideration of $140 million, it was announced today. There are also equity-based incentives.

LiveRamp's IdentityLink is seeking to build the holy grail of consumer data. IdentityLink aims to produce a 360 degree view of a consumer from information including social and programmatic ad data, CRM data, transactional data and addressable TV data. Others are trying to do the same, such as Dentsu Aegis, which acquired Maryland-based Merkle in August.

The two acquisitions are meant to broaden IdentityLink's data acquisition reach by adding the numerous data publisher relationships Circulate and Arbor possess. LiveRamp's CEO said they would double its publisher network to over 450.

Not coincidentally, both Circulate and Arbor are First Round Capital portfolio companies and run by entrepreneurs previously backed by First Round. Jacoby has started two other successful ventures with First Round's help: VoiceStar (sold to Marchex), and SolveMedia (acquired by Adiant last year).

Arbor was founded by two early employees of Invite Media (acquired by Google): David Yaffe, co-founder and CEO of Arbor, and Nikhil Dixit, co-Founder, Revenue & Operations.

Circulate is headquartered on JFK Boulevard in Center City. Circulate and Arbor both employ about 20, according to Ad Age.

Circulate had raised $17.4 million in funding, from backers including First Round, AOL Ventures, Bullpen Capital, and Chris Dixon.



Links 11/17: Salesforce posts good results; Comcast cuts 'innovation' from high-rise's moniker



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Salesforce Announces Fiscal 2017 Third Quarter Results

Salesforce looks surprisingly good headed into the end of the year with a strong Q3 (TechCrunch)


Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri on competitors, partners and politics (Diginomica)

Facebook buys Pittsburgh-based facial analysis software firm (AP via Philly.com)

Big tower, shorter name: Comcast cuts 'innovation' from high-rise's moniker (Philly.com)


Verizon acquires SocialRadar to buff up MapQuest’s location data
(TechCrunch)

Acxiom's LiveRamp Buys Two Publisher Data Firms in Race to I.D. Consumers Across Devices (Ad Age)


Publicis Merges Digital Shops SapientNitro and Razorfish, Creating SapientRazorfish (Ad Age)
Comcast a key new account.





Comcast Business Announces $30 Million Investment to Expand High-Performance Ethernet Network in City of Philadelphia
Investment designed to support business communities requiring high-capacity network services



Comcast Business Announces $30 Million Investment to Expand High-Performance Ethernet Network in City of Philadelphia
Investment designed to support business communities requiring high-capacity network services

NEWS PROVIDED BY
Comcast Cable
Nov 16, 2016, 10:00 ET
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PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast Business today announced it is investing more than $30 million in a major expansion of its fiber-based network in Philadelphia, reaching more than 3,000 businesses directly and benefiting tens of thousands more by making the network more accessible and affordable than ever before. Capable of delivering up to 100 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) of network capacity, the fiber optic Ethernet network expansion will support advanced services and give the company the ability to bring new customers, ranging from small and medium-sized organizations to large enterprises, online more quickly.

While the Comcast Business fiber network already serves many of Philadelphia's largest companies and hundreds of other businesses, this concentrated expansion will deploy more than 50 miles of new fiber optic cable and encompass the city's two largest business districts – Center City (from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill River) and University City. Significant work has already begun over the past few months to provide high-performance Ethernet, Internet and advanced voice solutions to businesses and organizations throughout the city, and additional network expansions will be completed through the remainder of the year.

"Our city has always been on the cutting-edge of innovation and technology, and having access to the latest network services like those that Comcast Business is providing is absolutely essential to keeping us there," said Jim Kenney, Mayor of Philadelphia. "We thank Comcast for its continued commitment to the City."

In addition to the educational facilities, medical industries, law firms and finance institutions prevalent in Philadelphia, the revitalization of tech and retail districts – combined with the influx of new small businesses and startups – creates a hotbed of economic development requiring access to the advanced communications solutions Comcast Business offers.

"This significant investment in our city's infrastructure is critical to provide our businesses with the access and options they need to compete and grow," said Rob Wonderling, President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. "This competitive advantage will also help us continue to attract innovative companies to our city."

With a comprehensive portfolio of Ethernet options, Comcast Business serves schools, businesses, hospitals and other organizations with distributed enterprises that require large amounts of bandwidth, are looking to link multiple sites or branch locations or plan to connect their offices to a third-party data center.

"This is one of Comcast Business' most significant and innovative infrastructure build-outs to date, and we're proud to be making this investment here in our hometown," said David Dombroski, regional vice president for Comcast Business. "As demand in Philadelphia for our high-performance Ethernet offerings continues to soar, Comcast Business recognizes the need to respond quickly to new businesses to provide scalable solutions that can meet demand as they grow."

Over the summer, Comcast Business played a critical role in one of the most technologically-advanced events in history as the official Broadband and Telecommunications Provider for the Democratic National Convention. The company installed more than 25 miles of network plant in the Wells Fargo Center and surrounding area specifically for the event to deliver a redundant 100 Gigabit-per-second connection that serviced all DNC staff, delegates and thousands of media outlets.

Nationally, Comcast Business's Ethernet services are delivered over an advanced network that spans nearly 150,000 miles. Comcast was the first service provider in the world to offer Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) CE 2.0 certified Ethernet services and was also the first service provider to achieve all three of the previous CE 1.0 certifications (MEF 9, 14 and 18).

About Comcast Business:
Comcast Business offers Ethernet, Internet, Wi-Fi, Voice, TV and Managed Enterprise Solutions to help organizations of all sizes transform their business. Powered by a next-generation, fiber-based network, and backed by 24/7 technical support, Comcast Business is one of the largest contributors to the growth of Comcast Cable. Comcast Business is the nation's largest cable provider to small and mid-size businesses and has emerged as a force in the Enterprise market; recognized over the last two years by leading industry associations as one of the fastest growing provider of Ethernet services.
For more information, call 866-429-3085. Follow on Twitter @ComcastBusiness and on other social media networks at http://business.comcast.com/social.

About Comcast Cable:
Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to residential customers under the XFINITY brand and also provides these services to businesses. Comcast has invested in technology to build an advanced network that delivers among the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings. Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) is a global media and technology company. Visit www.comcastcorporation.com for more information.



SOURCE Comcast Cable