Contributor: Venator Partners - Venator Partners is a Boston-based executive search firm that specializes in recruiting senior-level executives in the software and communications industries.
Copyright: Copyright © 2004. Venator Partners, LLC.
Covered Categories: M&A, Start-ups, Personnel Changes

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Sun Acquires SeeBeyond, Releases New Java Integration Suite - informationweek

Piece “Sun Microsystems Inc. has acquired SeeBeyond Technology Corporation and announced the release of a new Java Integration Suite.
SeeBeyond Stockholders approved the acquisition and will receive $4.25 per share for an aggregate consideration of about $383 million. The SeeBeyond subsidiary will operate under Sun’s software division. The move is expected to enhance the value of the Java Enterprise System platform.
Sun also announced the availability of Sun Java Integration Suite, the sixth suite in Sun’s Java ES. The suite, combined with the operating system Solaris 10 makes the ES even more attractive for business and system integrator development, Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems, said in a statement. “

Microsoft reveals its subtle services strategy - insight.zdnet.co.uk

Piece “Rather than compete with third-party consultants, Microsoft’s services group is seeding demand for the company’s products and helping customers manage existing systems better. Senior UK staff from Microsoft Services claim the company is creating a series of standardised service modules, known internally as SKUs — short for ‘stock-keeping units‘. These are basically a mix of software, services and Microsoft-developed intellectual property that deliver ‘predictable results’ for clients. Multiple SKUs can be combined to form a Service Delivery Solution (SDS) — essentially a pre-packaged services engagement aimed at solving a particular problem. Microsoft is considering whether to allow partners to license and sell SKUs, which seems likely — though probably with a snappier name.”

The Perfect VC: Operator or Investor? - billburnham

Piece “Conventional wisdom has long held that the best background for a successful Venture Capitalist is that of a hardened industry “operator”. The reasoning behind this wisdom is that a VC with operating experience should be much better equipped to help portfolio investments deal with the day-to-day challenges of running a start-up and can therefore better help manage an investment to a successful outcome.
Indeed, when you ask someone to give you their impression of what a week in the life of a successful VC must be like, most people paint the picture of grizzled operator, sleeves rolled up, dispensing pearls of managerial wisdom as they make the rounds of their investments. Relying on their vast operating experience, these VC supermen are able to take fragile start-ups and through shear managerial brilliance mold them into the Ciscos, Ebays and Goggles of tomorrow.”

Term Sheet Series Wrap Up - FeldThoughts

Piece “For ease of reference, following are the various sections (linked to their corresponding post) that we covered.
Price
Liquidation Preference
Board of Directors
Protective Provisions
Drag Along
Anti-Dilution
Pay-to-Play
Dividends
Redemption Rights
Conversion
Conditions Precedent to Financing
Vesting
Information Rights
Registration Rights
Right of First Refusal
Voting Rights
Employee Pool
Restriction on Sales
Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement
Co-Sale Agreement
Founders Activities
Initial Public Offering Shares Purchase
No Shop Agreement (also Unilateral or Serial Monogamy)
Indemnification
Assignment

Is Google Talk a Skype Killer? - redherring

Piece “When Google Talk launched this week, its voice-chat feature drew comparisons not just to other instant messaging services, but also to VoIP companies like Skype.
Granted, a comparison between a one-day-old product with few users and an industry leader with a cult-like following might seem a little odd. Skype, a Luxembourg-based Internet telephony company, has more than 40 million users and adds 155,000 new users every day.
However, when the challenger is Google, which has managed to establish a leadership role in the search sector, comparisons are inevitable.
“This isn’t the final product,” said Will Stofega, an analyst with IDC. “There are a lot of options for them as they develop this product further. The other way to think about this is that it’s not just a chat product, it’s a search engine doing a lot of fantastic things.”

How to hire a product manager - heynorton.typepad

Piece “I’m looking to hire a product manager at JotSpot (more on that below). It’s been a while since I was hiring at a startup, and recruiting at a startup is very different from hiring at a big company. At Yahoo! Search, it seemed like we were constantly hiring. I did an average of 5-8 interviews a week. It was a never-ending drumbeat of resumes, interviews, and offer letters. Now, I wasn’t always the hiring manager. I only hired a handful of product managers in my time there. But somebody was always hiring a product manager and I was usually on the interview team. “

Larry Ellison and the “Living Dead” - dealarchitect.typepad

Piece “We would rather see the four of you become well behaved Tier 1 suppliers and work better with us Tier 2 and 3 suppliers - and even compete with some of us for Tier 1 business.
Respectfully,
“The Living Dead”
Accenture, Adobe, Ariba, Apache, BEA, BMC, CA, Cerner, Cognizant, Cognos, Compuware, Epicor, FiServ, Infosys, Intuit, Lawson, Mercury, Novell, Parametric Technology, Progress, RedHat, salesforce.com, SAS, Siebel, SSA, SunGard, Symantec, Tibco, TCS, Wipro and hundreds of other business software and services companies”

How to Predict Google’s Next Product - nivi

Piece “Google takes existing apps (mail, maps, IM, VoIP) and adds one incredible feature that changes the game and leaves the competition scrambling.
Google Maps had drag-able maps and integrated satellite images.
GMail was fast and acted like a client-side mail program.
Google Desktop Search is a file browser that makes “browsing” irrelevant.
Now we have Google Talk:
Google Talk lets you use any IM client that supports Jabber and/or SIP to connect to Google’s IM network. Google calls this Client Choice. (I have read that Apple’s iChat VoIP already works with Google’s IM network. I have also heard Google Talk’s voice quality is excellent.)
Google Talk will federate IM networks so someday folks on Yahoo IM may be able to talk to folks with AOL IM. Google calls this Service Choice. People with Verizon can talk to people with Sprint so why can’t we do the same on IM networks?
Google’s is implying that any IM network that doesn’t support Client Choice and Service Choice is giving a big middle finger to their customers.
So how do you predict Google’s next product?
Take any piece of software you use all day: e.g. address book, calendar, web browser, iTunes, MS Office, stock charts.
Ask yourself: “What do I really really really wish this product could do?”
Wait for Google to make your dream come true. Or develop the dream product yourself so you can sell it to AOL/Yahoo/IAC/MS when Google launches their version.
What do you think Google will do with Google Finance?”

Mayfeld raises new fund - siliconbeat

Piece “Mayfield Fund, a big player in the Silicon Valley venture capital scene, announced today it has finished raising a $375 million fund, its twelfth. That’s down from Mayfield’s most recent fund, raised in 2000, which was just under $1 billion. As partner Kevin Fong told us yesterday: “The environment changed.”
Here’s the release (downloads file). Dan Primack has done a great job in covering the ins and outs of the Mayfield fund-raising process, including more today. Much of what Fong told us yesterday is well-covered by Primack. We asked Fong about Mayfield’s sub-par performance (bottom-quartile, according to Private Equity Intelligence) by on its most recent funds, relative to others firms in the venture industry. This was his response: “Judging performance has to be done in a relative sense,” he said. “Clearly, a Kleiner or Sequoia that have a Google in their 1999 and 2000 funds are in a class all by themselves. The rest of us have to fight for positions behind them.” However, this doesn’t explain why Mayfield has performed below average, because most other venture capital firms didn’t invest in Google either. Fong seemed to acknowledge that, but said that the firm’s performance stands for all to see, and that 3/4 of this latest fund’s money came from prior investors. “

Q&A: Rational exec explains app life-cycle management focus - computerworld

Piece “Lee Nackman, vice president of product development at Rational Software Corp., sat down with Computerworld to discuss the company’s increasing focus on application life-cycle management and the IBM unit’s future plans to more tightly link its development tools with IBM’s Tivoli Software product line. “

IBM software continually backs up files - infoworld

Piece “The product will join an emerging field of so-called continuous data protection (CDP) products. Other vendors include Storactive Inc., of Marina del Rey, California, and startup Lasso Logic, in San Francisco. In addition, Veritas is currently beta-testing a CDP product called Backup Exec Panther.
Still, IBM claims its product is a novel one. Some other systems require a dedicated server to monitor and store file changes, the company said, while others back up files only periodically, every hour or so, rather than continually.
IBM is aiming its product at both large and small businesses. While IBM is marketing it primarily for laptops, it also works on desktop PCs and enterprise file servers. It will be available via Internet download from Sept. 16 and on CD the following month, priced at $35 per laptop or desktop and $995 per server processor, IBM said. “

Unix server market shares in Q2 2005: IBM - 31%, HP - 30%, Sun - 29.5% - blogs.zdnet

Cisco and Intel Team Up on Wi-Fi - wirelessnewsfactor

Piece “Intel and Cisco unveiled the new Business Class Wireless Suite to prioritize network traffic for Internet telephony and improve the quality of VoiP calls from laptop computers.”

New Ideas from Software Investors - sandhill

Piece “Experienced VCs and private equity partners share their perspective on what’s “hot” with everything from ASPs to SOAs.
Given the dramatic changes going on in the software business today, it is no wonder that software investment is also rapidly evolving. Although venture capital investment is down from its peak, software continues to account for more funding than any other sector. At the same time, leverage buyouts, spinouts and strategic investments from corporate partners are on the rise.
At the Enterprise 2005 conference earlier this month, a panel of veteran investors discussed the very latest thinking on software funding trends.

* Aneel Bhusri, Greylock Partners, focused on traditional enterprise software VC

* David Golob, Francisco Partners, focused on buyouts

* David Helfrich, Garnett & Helfrich, focused on venture buyouts and spinouts “

US company Protegrity buys Kavado - globes

Piece “The acquisition will enable Protegrity, which deals in information security and management, to diversify its product line. The merged company will have 300 customers in diverse markets. Following the acquisition, Protegrity will be able to offer its customers a complete basket of security products, including central information management and monitoring capability. “

Radiance acquires open source intelligence provider - washingtontechnology

Piece “Defense contractor Radiance Technologies Inc. has acquired Open Source Publishing Inc., a provider of open source intelligence support services, said Radiance officials.
“Their corporate culture is very similar to ours,” Jardines said. “Having spent nine years developing and enhancing our unique approach to open source exploitation, I wanted to be sure that whatever firm acquired us would maintain our business model.” Jardines will remain with the company as director of the Open Source Intelligence Division. Open Source had 13 employees. Radiance has about 250 employees, Jardines said. Radiance revenue in 2004 was $35 million, according to Radiance’s Web site.”

IBM sets up advisory panel of 7 venture capital firms - baltimoresun

Piece “International Business Machines Corp. has created an advisory panel of venture capitalists to help identify startup companies that may become suppliers, customers or acquisition targets.
Investors from seven firms, including Accel Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and U.S. Venture Partners, will meet with IBM executives four times a year to suggest products and companies that may be of interest, IBM said yesterday.
IBM’s venture unit has identified more than 850 startups around the world with the help of venture capitalists and provides the companies with sales prospects and advice, said Mark L. Hanny, an IBM vice president.
The panel is part of a plan by IBM Chief Executive Officer Samuel J. Palmisano to spend about $1 billion a year to build relationships with investors, professors and researchers that may lead to sales, Hanny said.”

Google makes IM/VoIP play - zdnet.co.uk

Piece “Google has launched an instant-messaging (IM) program that allows text chat and computer-to-computer voice connections, a move that highlights the search giant’s increasing competition with Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online.
Google’s Web site in the early hours of Wednesday morning provided a link to download Google Talk and stated that the software “enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free — anytime, anywhere in the world.” Google’s messaging program is linked to Google’s Web-based email, Gmail, and both projects are in beta.”

Intuit’s Bennett: Ready for Mr. Gates - businessweek

Piece “Fast-forward to today: QuickBooks accounts for some 40% of Intuit’s revenues — and Redmond is lurking, eager to peel off some of those customers. On Sept. 7, Microsoft is set to release its Small Business Accounting product, aimed at a core of the QuickBooks franchise. It’s a slugfest Intuit CEO Stephen Bennett has been waiting for ever since he moved into the corner office in 2000 (see BW Online, 8/25/05, “How to Face Off Against Microsoft”).
Intuit and Microsoft have a storied past. The two have gone head-to-head with competing financial software six times, yet the giant Microsoft has never been able to dislodge the scrappy Silicon Valley upstart — which has grown into a $2 billion company. Yet, much rides on this latest clash. Win again or lose for the first time, “I will own a big piece of this outcome,” says Bennett. “

Microsoft Posts Sample IM, Presence Code - informationweek

Piece “Microsoft is throwing more fuel on the instant-messaging fire.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company on Thursday released sample code and new controls to show how IM and presence can be integrated into everyday business applications. The releases aren’t new code or new products per se, but proof-of-concept tools for developers and VARs to show how line-of-business applications can be fortified with Microsoft Live Communication Server on the back end, said Marc Sanders, senior product manager for Microsoft’s realtime collaboration group. “

Google Opens Gmail Service to Public - betanews

Piece “When Google unveiled its instant messaging client yesterday, there was only one problem: Google Talk requires a Gmail account, which has been invitation-only since its beta debut in 2004. This changed on Thursday, however, as Google opened Gmail to anyone in the United States with a mobile phone.
The mobile phone requirement was designed to prevent Gmail accounts from being created by robots and stop spammers from signing up multiple times. Google will send an invitation code via SMS, which can then be used to register with Gmail. Only one account may be created per phone number.”

Microsoft Defends Its Turf, Diplomatically - linuxinsider

Piece “Microsoft has been criticized, of course, for its competitive tactics. It has settled many of the lawsuits stemming from a U.S. antitrust case and is still negotiating the terms of European antitrust penalties. Thus far, Microsoft has awakened to new threats in time to defend its turf.”

Oracle/IBM battle beyond the database - javaworld

Piece “No longer satisfied with its role as the corporate database leader, Oracle has been building out its middleware portfolio through R&D and acquisitions and is increasingly going head-to-head with IBM.
“For years, the database has been an extremely vigorous competition between DB2 and Oracle database,” says Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting. “The heat has gotten more intense because middleware has been added to the mix.”
Others, including SAP and Microsoft, also see opportunity as corporate data centers move to environments where data and systems are shared and reused in so-called service-oriented architectures. Middleware—such as application servers, business integration software, and data management systems based on open standards and Web services—provides the foundation for this new IT environment.”

Secure Computing to acquire CyberGuard - arnnet

Piece “Secure Computing announced it had reached an agreement to acquire CyberGuard for approximately US$295 million in a cash and stock transaction, with the merger expected to be completed in the November timeframe following the regulatory approval process.
In acquiring its rival in the firewall and content-filtering arena, Secure Computing expects to see revenue escalate from about US$110 million per year to US$200 million, said Mike Gallagher, senior vice president of product development. While specific product and staff consolidation plans have not been laid out, Secure Computing sees some re-alignments that could result in possible product change and layoffs. “

IBM’s New Linux Strategy Pushes Solution Sets - eweek

Piece “After six months and some 300 customer engagements, trying out a new sales and services approach that concentrates on industry-specific solution sets, IBM has decided to realign its global Linux-related sales and marketing teams around this model.
The Linux teams are now concentrating on selling and marketing 17 solution sets that address IT and customer business problems, rather than focusing on selling specific products. The shift recognizes the growing demand from IBM customers that the company transform enterprise operations to become more responsive, “real time” and on demand, Scott Handy, the vice president for worldwide Linux at IBM in Somers, N.Y., told eWEEK. “

Microsoft demos RSS features in IE 7 - pcworld.idg

Piece “Whether the content streams are eventually called RSS ,Web feeds or some other name, a key design goal of the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 is to let users easily subscribe to blogs and websites via Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
Attendees at the Blog Business Summit in San Francisco last week got a sneak peek of this functionality in IE 7 running on Windows Vista.
The new version of the browser will include support for RSS, a technology that alerts users to new content posted to blogs and websites. The goal is to make subscription activities more mainstream by allowing users to add an RSS feed as easily as creating a Web page bookmark.
To subscribe to an RSS feed in IE 7, a user simply clicks on a subscribe button in a toolbar that runs across the top of the browser. Users can then see a preview of the feed and add it to a list of favourites. “

New Forrester reports on RSS for marketers released - blogs.forrester.com/charleneli

Piece “One point that’s sure to catch attention is the number of people using RSS — our Technographics survey of 68,000 North American households showed that only 2% of all online households were “using RSS”. Now here’s the caveat — that doesn’t include all the people who may be using RSS (for example, through My Yahoo!) and don’t realize it. Young consumers between the ages of 12-21 were more likely to be using RSS — 5% of online young consumers say they use RSS.
The second report has detailed best practices on how marketers can create effective RSS feeds for marketing purposes. There are four steps I outline: 1) Determine what content to distribute via RSS; 2) Build the feeds; 3) Market the feeds; and 4) Measure the feeds — and their impact. “

Updated Google has new tools, user monitoring - boston

Piece “Google Desktop 2, available today as a public beta test, is the company’s latest volley against Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. as all three race to expand their presence on PC desktops.
The Google offering includes several twists. Beyond providing search results, it monitors the user’s behavior and presents relevant information in a resizable and moveable vertical window called the Sidebar.
One module aggregates e-mail messages from a variety of accounts, including Google’s Gmail service or the user’s Internet provider. Others display stock prices, personalized news headlines, weather reports, and what’s popular on the Web.
Another module pulls Really Simple Syndication feeds from websites that have been visited and offer that service. Unlike other feed aggregators, the user need not take any action for a feed to be added.”

Sun has plan for digital rights - boston

Piece “Sun Microsystems Inc., weighing in on the fractious issue of protecting copyrighted digital content, yesterday unveiled a project it calls the Open Media Commons initiative that’s designed to create an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
The issue of digital-rights management, or DRM, has spurred a number of plans to protect content, ranging from standards for mobile phones, digital music players, CDs, DVDs and other media, available from InterTrust, Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc., Sony Corp. and others.
Sun is now throwing its hat in the ring. Its chief operating officer, Jonathan Schwartz, argues that the growing number of rival DRM standards that are incompatible with one another could stifle innovation and economic growth.”

Microsoft offers RFID system for postal services - infoworld

Piece “Microsoft is marketing an RFID (radio frequency identification device) package for postal services at a stamp exhibition in Taiwan, hoping to woo the government’s post office and potentially forge a new line of business for the software maker. The technology Microsoft has on offer here allows a postal service, the package sender, and the receiver to view exactly where the package is at all times. It also notifies a receiver when the package will arrive and alerts senders via MSN Messenger or a mobile phone SMS (Short Message Service) after it has been signed for at its destination.”

E-commerce sales up 26% in Q2 2005 - blogs.zdnet

Piece “Online retail sales were up 26% in Q2 2005 from Q2 2004, reaching $21.1 bln, the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce reported. Total retail sales for Q2 2005 were estimated at $940.8 bln, an increase of 8.4% from Q2 2004.”

Skype as the Next Generation PBX - gigaom

Piece “Skype goes beyond the traditional PBX features with its support for IM and ability to share contact information with other applications. These features are exactly the selling points of the newest software based PBX systems. The IM thing especially, as it ties into something called “presence.” Guest Post by Jesse Kopelman
Let’s clear one thing up, right off the bat. I’m not here to tell you how much Skype is worth. That’s not the point, anyway. The point is that, if you are looking at things from the angle of what kind of margin can one make selling generic voice services by the minute, the world has passed you by. The per-minute price for voice is not going to stop going down. This is why there has been so much consolidation in both the fixed and mobile telephone business recently. The only way to grow the business is to keep adding customers and even this will become a losing game eventually. If you are using VoIP to set yourself up as a new player in the telephone business, you’ve come to the party way too late. The most you can hope for is to cut into the profits of the existing players enough to force them to buy you out.”