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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (47859)	1/24/2009 1:19:21 PM
From: fedhead	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57684

I think the appropiate historical comparison is the 30s. I am sure there will be big bear market rallies on the way down and one can latch onto the some of the hot names then. Anindo

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (47859)	1/26/2009 9:53:02 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

an excellent future of social networks presentation slideshare.net

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (47859)	1/26/2009 9:57:16 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

The Cook Doctrine at Apple gowest.blogs.fortune.cnn.com

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (47859)	1/28/2009 2:24:09 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

Talari Networks Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based developer of private networking technology, has raised $6.2 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures... PRESS RELEASE January 28th, 2009 -- Talari NetworksTM, Inc., the pioneering leader in providing high-bandwidth, high-reliability Enterprise WANs at consumer Internet pricing, today announced that the company has raised a $6.2 million round led by Menlo Ventures and also including existing private investors. The capital is expected to fund a significant expansion of research and development operations in North Carolina’s Research Triangle area. “We’re excited to be able to help Talari Networks bring Internet economics to business-quality WANs,” said Hal Calhoun, managing director of Menlo Ventures. “Adaptive Private Networking’s unique ability to substantially lower IT operating costs without sacrificing reliability makes an important contribution to the marketplace in today’s difficult business climate.” “We’re delighted that Menlo Ventures shares our vision for delivering both value and reliability to help businesses large and small meet their technical and economic challenges,” said Andrew Gottlieb, founder and CEO of Talari Networks. “In a tough environment for both business funding and employment, we’re pleased to attract investment that lets us provide local opportunities and continue to grow our world-class engineering team in order to strengthen our leadership and meet the needs of our growing customer base.” Customer adoption “Our deployment of Talari equipment to connect overseas locations has proved both cost-effective and reliable,” said Chip Greel, director of information security at Finisar Corporation. “We’ve been able to save several thousand dollars a month in bandwidth costs versus the other approaches we evaluated.” “Thanks to Talari Networks, Grant County has been able to extend its tele-psychiatry program to locations that didn’t have a reliable network connection to support high-quality video” said Darla Boothman, director of finance & information services at Grant Mental Healthcare. “Talari’s combination of higher reliability and greater bandwidth improved our video quality to allow our care providers to see more patients, while saving on travel costs at the same time.” Adaptive Private Networking technology Talari’s Adaptive Private NetworkingTM (APN) approach leverages standard VPN technology for secure data delivery and uses end-to-end algorithms for dynamic, real-time, per-packet traffic engineering. It continuously measures loss, latency, and jitter and adapts network traffic flow almost instantly, delivering reliable and predictable application performance that leverages all available bandwidth sources. APN solves the reliability problems often associated with running VoIP and videoconferencing on shared IP WANs, and it can be added seamlessly to existing networks. “In recent years the most dramatic advances in access bandwidth and cost-performance have come in the consumer space, but without much attention to the additional requirements of business: scalability and reliability,” said Peter Christy, principal, Internet Research Group. “Talari’s contributions are precisely in this area, translating the benefits of consumer services to meet the requirements of business.” About Talari Networks Talari Networks does for Enterprise WANs what RAID did for storage - delivering a network with 30 to 100 times the bits per dollar, ongoing WAN costs reduced by 40% to 90%, and greater reliability than existing corporate WANs - bringing Moore’s Law and Internet economics to Enterprise WAN buyers, outsourcers and MSPs for the first time in 15 years. For more information, please visit talarinetworks.com

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (47859)	1/28/2009 11:06:28 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

Appnomic Systems (f.k.a. Vitage Technologies) a Bangalore, India-based provider of infrastructure management services, has raised $4.2 million in VC funding from Norwest Venture Partners... PRESS RELEASE January 28th, 2009 -- Appnomic Systems, a leading infrastructure management services (IMS) company (formerly Vitage Technologies), announced today that it has secured $4.2 million from Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), a leading global venture capital firm. Appnomic Systems, headquartered in Bangalore, India, with operations in India, Middle East and Africa, will use this funding to strengthen its existing market presence, expand into the U.S. market and further build out its innovative product and service offerings. As part of the investment, Promod Haque, Managing Partner, NVP, will join Appnomic’s board of directors. This NVP-led investment is the first institutional round of funding for Appnomic, and NVP’s third major investment in the rapidly growing next-generation services sector in India. “The managed services market is already a mature industry, however the offshoring of infrastructure management services (IMS) to India is still in its infancy. The market opportunity for IMS in India is predicted to be as large as the application development and maintenance (ADM) sector, and it is regarded as the ‘third wave of outsourcing’ (after ADM and BPO/KPO),” said Promod Haque, NVP. “The growing pressure on corporations to better handle the complex IT requirements demanded by internal and external regulators is accelerating the need for simplification and efficient management of IT at a low cost, and we believe that 70 to 75 percent of infrastructure management opportunities can be offshored. Appnomic has the next generation technology, proven customer traction and seasoned team necessary to capitalize on this growing market need.” Appnomic simplifies the complexities of managing information technology (IT) by offering large and mid-size companies with highly automated technology, intelligent analysis and process methods. Appnomic’s unique delivery model, including application performance management and service delivery automation, enables companies to be more efficient and enhance productivity by more than 30% over current solutions in the marketplace. “The demand for highly automated, infrastructure management services (IMS) is on the rise, and the timing of this financing couldn’t be better as we expand our company and offerings and address this rapidly expanding market,” said D Padmanabhan, MD & CEO of Appnomic Systems. “We are extremely pleased with the demand we are seeing to date from enterprise customers, and with this funding, we are well positioned to serve our growing customer base with even more next-generation offerings. We see the customer requirement moving to just accessing a business service, while the entire ecosystem of application, IT systems, IT operations & management and business process services is being offered on a hosted model.” Appnomic’s Offerings and Customer Traction Appnomic’s patent-pending application management services platform provides mid to large size corporations with end-to-end analysis of the application load, response and infrastructure behavior in production and pre-production environments. This innovative approach simplifies the complexities involved in managing the performance of a heterogeneous application environment by using automated intelligent analysis. One of the largest portals in India, a leading bank, top real estate companies and many other global companies have already benefited from embracing Appnomic’s platform to solve these critical and growing IT challenges. “Appnomic’s next-generation technology and service offerings combined with its significant enterprise customer traction to date made this investment an easy decision for us. We believe India must offer high-value, high-impact differentiated services that require deep domain expertise and provide significant barriers to entry. Infrastructure management services, is an example of a growing category in this area, and we believe Appnomic is addressing the market at a critical time and is poised for tremendous growth,” Haque added. “We are pleased to work with such a quality global investor as NVP. Their focus and understanding of the infrastructure and application management services space, combined with Promod’s and the entire team’s network of strategic business relationships will be of great value to us as we grow our company. We look forward to working with NVP to take Appnomic to the next level,” said P Rangarajan, COO of Appnomic. About Appnomic Systems Appnomic Systems is a leading infrastructure management services (IMS) company in India that provides Application Performance Management, Remote Infrastructure Management and IT Assessment to effectively manage IT assets of large and medium scale enterprises. Appnomic’s unique service delivery model includes a patent pending technology for application performance management and process tool for Service Delivery automation. These enable customers to manage their IT infrastructure efficiently while enhancing productivity. For more information visit: appnomic.com About Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a global venture capital firm that has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 47 years. NVP focuses on investments in information technology including: software, services, enterprise and communications systems, semiconductor/components and Internet, media and consumer. The firm currently manages more than $2.5 billion in venture capital. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, Mumbai and Bangalore. Managing Partner Promod Haque has been ranked as a top dealmaker on the annual Forbes Midas List for the past eight years. In 2004, Forbes named him as the #1 venture capitalist worldwide based on performance over the last decade. NVP has funded over 450 companies in the U.S. since inception, as well as several direct investments in India and more than 20 cross border companies. Some of the firm’s recent investments and transactions include Adventity, Airespace (acquired by Cisco Systems), deCarta, KACE, mBlox, Omneon, Open-Silicon (acquired by Unicorn Investment Bank), Persistent Systems, Rackspace (NYSE:RAX), Resonext Communications (acquired by RF Micro Devices), SideStep (acquired by Kayak), Spinnaker Networks (acquired by Network Appliance), Sulekha, Winphoria Networks (acquired by Motorola), Yatra, and Yipes (acquired by Reliance/Flag Telecom). NVP has also funded such market leaders as Actel Corporation, Cerent (acquired by Cisco Systems), Documentum, Extreme Networks, Forte Software (acquired by Sun Microsystems), PeopleSoft and Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM). For more information, please visit nvp.com

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (47859)	1/29/2009 12:54:34 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

Tech Industry CEOs Back Obama's Rescue Package online.wsj.com Corporate America Sees Benefit of Massive Federal Spending to Help Turn Around Slumping Sales, Combat Huge Job Losses JANUARY 28, 2009, 11:34 P.M. ET By NEIL KING JR. and DON CLARK THE WALL STREET JOURNAL President Barack Obama won a well-timed plug for his economic-rescue plan from the U.S. high-tech industry, a group he nurtured heavily during the campaign. Mr. Obama's gathering with 13 chief executives at the White House Wednesday -- the first corporate sit-down of his presidency -- showed how much the two sides now need one another's support. Ten of the 13 executives run companies that would broadly be considered from the technology industry. Mr. Obama is lobbying heavily for his $819 billion package of government spending and tax cuts in the face of sharp criticism from congressional Republicans, and even some Democrats, that the plan is too costly. Corporate America, meanwhile, is desperate to turn around slumping sales with the help of a burst of spending from the federal government. "I'd say that the message has to be that the situation is dire," said David Cote, chief executive of Honeywell Inc., who described the prevailing emotion as one of "incredible fear." Joining him were the heads of International Business Machines Inc., Xerox Corp., Motorola Inc., Corning Inc. and Eastman Kodak Co., among others. Administration officials said the White House meeting came together after dozens of technology CEOs last week lent their support to the stimulus package in a letter to Congress. The group was then broadened to include the heads of JetBlue Airways Corp., Aetna Inc. and BET Holdings Inc. Notable by their absence were any representatives of the hard-hit retail, banking or automotive sectors. Still, nearly all of the companies invited to the White House session have been hurt by the sinking economy. Xerox's fourth-quarter revenue fell 11%, and it barely broke even. Corning Tuesday announced plans to cut its work force by 13% this year. Memory-chip maker Micron Technology Inc. reported a $706 million quarterly loss in December. Most of the attendees also stand to benefit from the stimulus package, which emphasizes energy, infrastructure and technology projects meant to create or save millions of jobs. IBM, for example, could benefit from Mr. Obama's proposal to spend $9 billion on high-speed Internet projects. IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano said a company-commissioned study found that a $30 billion investment in high-tech infrastructure could create more than 900,000 jobs. IBM's services unit would presumably benefit from all these initiatives, but the analysis said that most of the jobs would go to small businesses. Aetna CEO Ron Williams said he pushed for a $20 billion investment in health-care information technology, which could help connect doctors and hospitals with electronic medical records. Mr. Williams said government will also have to work closely with the private sector to ensure that providers use the new tools. "The technology alone is not enough," he said. Many of the CEOs said they were pleased that measures they had long championed were now part of the stimulus package. Eric Schmidt of Google Inc. said in an interview that he appreciated the emphasis on renewable-energy technology and the deployment of broadband services. "All of that is a real positive for [Google]," he said. "The things that we asked for are in there." For his first meeting with CEOs as president, Mr. Obama reached out to some longstanding friends and supporters. Mr. Schmidt, seated beside the president, campaigned for Mr. Obama and advised him informally during the campaign. Xerox's Anne Mulcahy joined Mr. Obama's economic-advisory team during the transition. Mr. Williams, of Aetna, was one of a coterie of business leaders who lunched with Mr. Obama at the Fairmont Chicago Hotel in June. Mr. Schmidt described the president's mood Wednesday as sober and said he asked for the business leaders' help to get the stimulus bill passed. "Businesses are very concerned about what is going on," said Mr. Schmidt. "There is not a sense that business is getting better. There were people who said things were getting worse." —William M. Bulkeley, Jessica E. Vascellaro and Vanessa Fuhrmans contributed to this article.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (47859)	1/29/2009 4:04:18 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

Analysis: Lack of IPOs drives layoffs at Wilson Sonsini and other Silicon Valley law firms January 27, 2009 -- Silicon Valley's tech companies aren't the only ones trimming staff. Times are also tough on the region's law firms. Cooley Godward Kronish laid off 52 lawyers and 62 staffers last week, and its rival Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC announced Monday that it would cut 45 associates and 68 staffers. The moves were driven by the economy, of course, but behind them lie an array of long-term forces that threaten the law firms themselves. The most obvious of those is the decline of the IPO. The frenzy of the late 1990s has never recurred, not only because investors were badly burned but also because the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 made going public much less appealing. At the time, lawyers estimated that SOX meant that to be viable, a public company needed to have a market capitalization of about $250 million, double what would have previously been required. VCs adjusted their ambitions accordingly and started to put more emphasis on funding companies from which investors could successfully exit via a sale instead of an IPO. Over time, that's meant fewer public companies for Wilson and Cooley to represent. They and their rivals at Fenwick & West LLP, Gunderson Dettmer LLP and the Silicon Valley offices of national firms do VC work and sell private companies, but those assignments don't generate the revenue that public companies do. To take just one example, there's no securities litigation, a field in which Wilson and Cooley developed large practices. Fenwick, with about 300 lawyers in four offices, and Gunderson, with about 100 in four offices, are better structured for such work than Cooley, which has about 725 lawyers in eight offices, and Wilson, a firm of roughly the same scale. By way of comparison, Wilson had only 375 lawyers on the cusp of the tech market boom in 1997. At that size, Wilson was designed to play small ball, a game in which big firms, such as Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, could not compete with the native Valley firms; today's Wilson, even after this week's layoffs, is not. But as Wilson and Cooley have developed the cost structures of national firms, they have not broadened their practice beyond technology companies, and rivals have encroached on their turf. Hostile deals used to be rare in technology, but that's changed dramatically; seven of the 10 largest bids in the tech sector last year started out hostile. None of the principals in those situations used a Silicon Valley firm, though Google Inc. did tap its usual counsel, Wilson Sonsini, in helping Yahoo! Inc. fend off a bid from Microsoft Corp. No Valley firm has worked on more than one of the 10 biggest tech deals or bids of 2008. That suggests Wilson and other Valley firms are losing out on one-off M&A assignments. New York's Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, which has no branch offices in California or anywhere else, landed roles in three of the seven hostile situations. Other firms have capitalized on their branch offices. Skadden's Palo Alto, Calif., office played a lead role for Yahoo!, while its Los Angeles branch defended SanDisk Inc. against a hostile bid from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. And Latham & Watkins LLP represented Oracle Corp. and Mentor Graphics Corp., the latter of which beat back a hostile approach from Cadence Design Systems Inc., and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in forming a joint venture with Advanced Technology Investment Co. of Abu Dhabi. Layoffs may ease financial pressures at Wilson and Cooley in the short term, but they do nothing to address the fundamental challenges both firms face. -David Marcus TheDeal.com