Making Copies

Happy Monday.

Only 10 days to Turkey Day. Get ready to gobble gobble.

I’ll tell you who’s not making copies. That would be HP, the board of which rejected Xerox’s acquisition bid over the weekend claiming the $22/share bid undervalued HP and was not in the best interest of shareholders.

Operators of Yahoo sites in Japan and the Line chat app have reached agreement on a merger, one where SoftBank Group and SK internet firm Naver will form a joint holding company. The new entity is expected to become the largest internet player in Japan.

On the funding front: AI-driven news app SmartNews has raised a $92M round at a valuation of $1.2B. The app is said to use machine learning (rather than human curation) to generate personalized news experiences.

The company is focused initially on Japan and the U.S. as key markets.

Self-driving startup Wayve has raised $20M in a Series A to help teach cars to drive autonomously using reinforcement learning, simulation, and computer vision.

Wayve is looking to improve AI through simulation and knowledge transfer to the real world, rather than “hand-coded” rules. It plans to launch a pilot fleet of autonomous Jaguar I-Pace cars in Central London which will include, for now, safety drivers. 

Love and Smartphones

Okay, admit it, you’re *really* excited about the drop of Taylor Swift’s new album…Okay, maybe not.

It’s apparently official: VMWare is buying both Carbon Black and Pivotal for roughly $4.5B. Carbon Black is a cybersecurity firm, and Pivotal a hybrid-cloud infra ops player born out of assets spun off from VMWare and Dell back in 2013.

If you wonder where you fall in the buying a new smartphone spectrum, there’s a study for that. 9to5 mac cites Strategy Analytics data on the smartphone purchasing habits of U.S. consumers: They upgrade very 33 months, had their current iPhone an average of 18 months, and 7 percent plan to spend over $1,000 on their next upgrade. Now you know why Apple is focusing so much more on razors (services, infotainment…) and not just razor blades (iPhones).

Yesterday Google jumped on board the high speed Chinese anti-propaganda train campaign by suspending 210 YouTube channels after they were found to have been tied to misinformation about HK protesters.

Google Security’s Threat Analysis Group wrote in a blog post that “We found use of VPNs and other methods to disguise the origin of these accounts and other activity commonly associated with coordinated influence operations.”

Gambling? In the casino??

Cray Cray and the PGA

Happy Friday.

For golfers everywhere, it’s an especially special week (and weekend).

Normally, the PGA Championship is the last major championship of the year, played in the heat of the August sun.

This year, the tournament has been moved up to mid-May, and is being played at what they call the “peoples’ country club,” Bethpage Black.

Bethpage Black is the hardest of a number of golf courses open to the general public in Bethpage State Park in Long Island, New York.

It has also been home to a couple of U.S. Opens, one in 2002 and again in 2009…it was, in fact, the first public golf course to host a U.S. Open.

So, that’s the backstory. And while everyone is excited to hear about Tiger Woods play after winning the Masters this year, it was Brooks Koepka, three-time major and one-time PGA Championship winner who sunk putts from every which direction and every which length yesterday who took the lead at 7 under par.

Koepka is due back on the Black this PM, and while he has a couple of great players making chase, including Jordan Spieth who’s in today at a cumulative 5 under and Dustin Johnson (-4), it appears Koepka is in charge of his destiny this PM.

As for destiny, let’s jump over to some Friday PM tech news.

First up, for those of you who remember the hey day of supercomputing (whenever that was), you’ll remember Cray Inc.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is taking Cray off the board for $1.30 billion, roughly $35 per share and a premium of 17.4 percent to Cray’s last close, according to Reuters.

At last count, Cray’s supercomputing systems can handle big data sets, converged modeling, simulations, AI, and analytics workloads.

If this news makes you ill, you might want to check into Health at Scale. TechCrunch is reporting that the AI healthcare startup has raised $16M in a Series A round.

The startup has founders with both medical and engineering backgrounds, and writes that it “wants to bring machine learning to bear on healthcare treatment options to produce outcomes with better results and less aftercare.”

The idea is to make treatment decisions more data-driven. While they aren’t sharing their data sources, they say they have information, from patients with a given condition, to doctors who treat that condition, to facilities where the treatment happens. By looking at a patient’s individual treatment needs and medical history, they believe they can do a better job of matching that person to the best doctor and hospital for the job. They say this will result in the fewest post-operative treatment requirements, whether that involves trips to the emergency room or time in a skilled nursing facility, all of which would end up adding significant additional cost.

Anything to improve the condition of the American healthcare system.

Clouds and Coins

Couple of interesting acquisitions on this rainy Austin Tuesday.

Cryptocurrency firm Coinbase is looking to add more cryptocurrencies to its exchange through its acquisition of blockchain intelligence startup, Neutrino.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but here’s the skinny on Neutrino according to a story from TechCrunch:

Based in Italy, Neutrino helps map blockchain networks, and in particular crypto token transactions, to pull in information and insight. With the rise of thefts, that includes a major focus on services for law enforcement agencies to track stolen digital assets while it also includes tracking ransomware and analyzing ‘darknets.’ Other solutions include tracking services for investment and finance companies to help find rising tokens and assets, an area Coinbase could clearly capitalize on as it goes after security token offerings.

Coinbase engineering director Varun Srinivasan wrote in a blog post that “By analyzing data on public blockchains, Neutrino will help us prevent theft of funds from peoples’ accounts, investigate ransomware attacks, and identify bad actors.” 

So, the picks, shovels, and locks plays continue to abound in the blockchain realm.

And the other big deal today, Google announced it was acquiring cloud start-up Alooma.

Alooma helps companies migrate their data from multiple sources to one data warehouse.

Terms also not disclosed, but a CNBC report cited Crunchbase when indicating Alooma had raised $15M from multiple investors.

From Google’s blog post on the announcement:

Leading companies across every industry and around the world are moving to the cloud to be more agile, secure and scalable. As organizations modernize their infrastructure to digitally transform themselves, migrating mission critical systems and the data that powers their business success can be daunting. No matter where your data is stored—on premises, in our cloud, or multiple clouds—we want to make that information accessible, valuable, and actionable.

That’s why today we’re announcing our intent to acquire Alooma, a leader in data migration. Alooma helps enterprise companies streamline database migration in the cloud with an innovative data pipeline tool that enables them to move their data from multiple sources to a single data warehouse.

A Foldable Phone

Happy Monday.

We have ourselves another weekend-announced tech deal, this time SAP announcing that it would purchase survey-software provider Qualtrics for $8 billion in cash.

Axios reports that "this would be the largest-ever purchase of a VC-backed enterprise software company" and "the third-largest sale of any SaaS company (behind Oracle buying NetSuite for $9.3B, and SAP buying Concur for $8.3B).

AP CEO Bill McDermott said in a conference call that the Qualtrics IPO was already over-subscribed, and that this deal will be as transformative for SAP as buying Instagram was for Facebook — with SAP being able to merge its massive trove of operational data with Qualtrics’ collection of user experience data.

Meanwhile, if you’ve been keeping an eye on that nifty-looking foldable Galaxy F smartphone, Yonhap News Agency is reporting that it will launch in March, "along with a fifth-generation (5G) network-powered Galaxy S10."

Yonhap reports that the eagerly anticipated foldable smartphone is expected to launch at the Mobile World Congress in February, but that it is not expected to support 5G. So all that folding will have to transpire on existing 4G networks.

Hey, a slower folding phone is better than no folding phone, right?

And if you’ve already started that Christmas shopping binge, looking for the latest and greatest gaming console, you might want to hit "pause" just long enough to read this effort from The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Needleman.

She writes that tech giants are "trying to bring videogames the same streaming capabilities that gave rise to Netflix and Spotify," which could potentially do an end around traditional gaming consoles.

I wouldn’t short the X-Box or Playstation just yet, but there is the possibility those consoles will have to reinvent themselves to stay up to speed with the Jones’s…errr, I meant to say, the Streamers.

Apple Chips

How about that rough stock market ride yesterday?

All I have to say about that is that it’s October (check your stock market history).

But yesterday’s steep selloff hasn’t stopped deals from happening.

TechCrunch is reporting that Apple will buy a part of Dialog Semiconductor, a chipmaker based out of unit, for $300 million in cash and a commitment of another $300 in further purchases from the company.

While Dialog is describing this as an asset transfer and licensing deal, it will be Apple’s biggest acquisition by far in terms of people: 300 people will be joining Apple as part of it, or about 16 percent of Dialog’s total workforce. From what we understand, those who are joining have already been working tightly with Apple up to now. The teams joining are based across Livorno in Italy, Swindon in England, and Nabern and Neuaubing in Germany, near Munich, where Apple already has an operation.

TechCrunch suggests this deal is part of a continued emphasis on Apple’s "putting considerable effort into building faster and more efficient chips that can help differentiate its hardware from the rest of the consumer Electronics pack….and comes at a time when many expect Apple to release a VR headset in the future."

Dialog says post the acquisition, the remaining part of the business will focus more on IoT, as well as mobile, automotive, computing and storage markets, specifically as a provider of custom and configurable mixed-signal integrated circuit chips.

Adobe To Buy Marketo

TechCrunch reported late yesterday that Adobe is buying marketing automation company Marketo for $4.75 billion:

“The acquisition of Marketo  widens Adobe’s lead in customer experience across B2C and B2B and puts Adobe Experience Cloud at the heart of all marketing,” Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Experience at Adobe said in a statement.

Adobe’s press release had this to say about the deal:

Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Marketo, the market-leading cloud platform for B2B marketing engagement, for $4.75 billion, subject to customary purchase price adjustments. With nearly 5,000 customers, Marketo brings together planning, engagement and measurement capabilities into an integrated B2B marketing platform. Adding Marketo’s engagement platform to Adobe Experience Cloud will enable Adobe to offer an unrivaled set of solutions for delivering transformative customer experiences across industries and companies of all sizes.

Marketo’s platform is feature-rich and cloud-native with significant opportunities for integration across Adobe Experience Cloud. Enterprises of all sizes across industries rely on Marketo’s marketing applications to drive engagement and customer loyalty. Marketo’s ecosystem includes over 500 partners and an engaged marketing community with over 65,000 members.

This acquisition brings together the richness of Adobe Experience Cloud analytics, content, personalization, advertising and commerce capabilities with Marketo’s lead management and account-based marketing technology to provide B2B companies with the ability to create, manage and execute marketing engagement at scale.

And why marketeers should care, according to Marketing Land:

Adobe’s Creative Cloud services has long been part of the marketing industry standard for creating and managing media-rich assets. Now with the addition of Marketo’s B2B marketing automation platform, Adobe will be able to deliver a full-scale marketing solution, allowing marketers — and their marketing technology teams — to unify costs within a single layer of their martech stack.

Broadcom to Acquire CA

Today is apparently a big deal day. Pun intended.

But before I launch into that, let me just send out my congrats to both France and Croatia, both of whom won their respective matches against Belgium and the UK this week to go on to the World Cup Finals on Sunday in Moscow.

There’s been a lot of talk about American viewership being down for the World Cup due to the American men’s team not making the tournament.

Tell that to all the Austin bars and restaurants I saw jam packed with fans watching a whole slew of games (and clearly not all of them were expats). There’s plenty of American soccer fans who grew up playing and loving the sport, and for whom the World Cup is a soccer Superbowl on steroids.  I’m one of them, and I’ll be glued to the TV on Sunday to see if David can beat Goliath.

Now back to the deals…Broadcom has announced it will acquire IT management software company CA Technologies for $18.9 billion in cash, according to a report from CNBC.

From the statement issued by Broadcom:

Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO), a leading semiconductor device supplier to the wired, wireless, enterprise storage, and industrial end markets, and CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA), one of the world’s leading providers of information technology (IT) management software and solutions, today announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which Broadcom has agreed to acquire CA to build one of the world’s leading infrastructure technology companies.

Hock Tan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Broadcom, said, ‘This transaction represents an important building block as we create one of the world’s leading infrastructure technology companies. With its sizeable installed base of customers, CA is uniquely positioned across the growing and fragmented infrastructure software market, and its mainframe and enterprise software franchises will add to our portfolio of mission critical technology businesses. We intend to continue to strengthen these franchises to meet the growing demand for infrastructure software solutions.’

But ZDNet’s Larry Dignan writes that “few investors and analysts are buying it,” suggesting it has overtones of Intel’s own failed software adventures (Wind River, McAfee…)

Macquarie Capital analyst Srini Pajjuri is quoted in the ZDNet story saying that:

History suggests that combining Semi and unrelated Software businesses is risky (Intel + McAfee). Cisco has had success transitioning from a hardware-only model to a recurring revenue model, but in Cisco’s case, software is typically bundled with its hardware solutions, which is different from the Broadcom + CA model.

IBM To Acquired StoredIQ

IBM today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire StoredIQ Inc., a privately held company based in Austin, Texas.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

StoredIQ will advance IBM’s efforts to help clients derive value from big data and respond more efficiently to litigation and regulations, dispose of information that has outlived its purpose and lower data storage costs.

With this agreement, IBM adds to its prior investments in Information Lifecycle Governance. The addition of StoredIQ capabilities enables clients to find and use unstructured information of value, respond more efficiently to litigation and regulatory events and lower information costs as data ages.

IBM’s Information Lifecycle Governance suite improves information economics by helping companies lower the total cost of managing data while increasing the value derived from it by:

• Eliminating unnecessary cost and risk with defensible disposal of unneeded data
• Enabling businesses to realize the full value of information as it ages
• Aligning cost to the value of information
• Reducing information risk by automating privacy, e-discovery, and regulatory policies

Adding StoredIQ to IBM’s Information Lifecycle Governance suite gives organizations more effective governance of the vast majority of data, including efficient electronic discovery and its timely disposal, to eliminate unnecessary data that consumes infrastructure and elevates risk.

As a result, business leaders can access and analyze big data to gain insights for better decision-making. Legal teams can mitigate risk by meeting e-discovery obligations more effectively. Also, IT departments can dispose of unnecessary data and align information cost to value to take out excess costs.

What Does StoredIQ Software Do? 

StoredIQ software provides scalable analysis and governance of disparate and distributed email as well as file shares and collaboration sites. This includes the ability to discover, analyze, monitor, retain, collect, de-duplicate and dispose of data.

In addition, StoredIQ can rapidly analyze high volumes of unstructured data and automatically dispose of files and emails in compliance with regulatory requirements.

StoredIQ brings powerful, innovative capabilities to govern data in place to drive value up and cost out.

“CIOs and general counsels are overwhelmed by volumes of information that exceed their budgets and their capacity to meet legal requirements,” said Deidre Paknad, vice president of Information Lifecycle Governance at IBM. “With this acquisition, IBM adds to its unique strengths as a provider able to help CIOs and attorneys rapidly drive out excess information cost and mitigate legal risks while improving information utility for the business.”

Named a 2012 Cool Vendor by Gartner, StoredIQ has more than 120 customers worldwide, including global leaders in financial services, healthcare, government, manufacturing and other sectors. Other systems require months to index data and years to configure, install and address information governance. StoredIQ can be up and running in just hours, immediately helping clients drive out cost and risk.

IBM intends to incorporate StoredIQ into its Software Group and its Information Lifecycle Governance business.

Building on prior acquisitions of PSS Systems in 2010 and Vivisimo in 2012, IBM adds to its strength in rapid discovery, effective governance and timely disposal of data.  The acquisition of StoredIQ is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013.

Go here for more information on IBM’s Information Lifecycle Governance suite, and here for more information on IBM’s big data platform.

IBM To Acquire Flash Memory Provider Texas Memory Systems

IBM announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Texas Memory Systems (TMS), a leading developer of high-performance flash memory solutions.

TMS is a privately held company based in Houston, Texas. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 1978, TMS designs and sells high-performance solid state storage solutions. Unlike hard disk drives that rely on spinning disks and robotic arms, solid state systems are high-speed data storage solutions based on flash or RAM memory that can provide significantly faster throughput and data access while consuming less power.

TMS offers its solid state solutions as the RamSan family of shared rackmount systems and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) cards.

The products are designed to help companies improve performance and reduce server sprawl, power consumption, cooling, and floor space requirements, all of which in turn can help clients save money, improve performance and invest more in innovation.

IDC estimates the amount of solid state storage solutions being shipped into the enterprise will grow significantly, reaching nearly 3 exabytes by 2016.

“The TMS strategy and solution set align well with our Smarter Computing approach to information technology by helping clients realize increased performance and efficiencies at lower costs,” said Brian Truskowski, general manager, Systems Storage and Networking, IBM. “Solid state technology, in particular, is a critical component of our new Smarter Storage approach to the design and deployment of storage infrastructures, and part of a holistic approach that exploits flash in conjunction with disk and tape technologies to solve complex problems.”

Following acquisition close, IBM plans to invest in and support the TMS product portfolio, and will look to integrate over time TMS technologies into a variety of solutions including storage, servers, software, and PureSystems offerings.

TMS employs approximately 100 people. The deal is expected to close later in 2012.