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WSJ | SAP - A1S - ready to go?

SAP AG (SAP) Thursday said that it won't start the online-delivery of the new software for small- and medium-sized companies, code-name A1S, Sept. 19, as had been reported by the media.

The company will only present information on the status of A1S that day, Angelika Pfahler, a spokeswoman for the company, told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday.

It is only an informative event and not the presentation of a finished product nor the start of its sale, she said.

A1S was designed as a software package for SMEs. Its launch is expected at the beginning of 2008, according to previous announcements by the company. SAP hopes to add 10,000 new customers by 2010 with its new software.

Link: Article - WSJ.com.

VentureBeat | Clearwell, email analytics company, raises $17M

Clearwell Systems, a Santa Clara email analytics company that lets employees search and manage correspondence related to things like litigation and regulatory issues, has raised $17 million in a third round of financing (see announcement).

It also said it surpassed 100 corporate customers.

We wrote about this company last year (scroll down), when it raised its second round of funding.

The site has a demo about how the product works.

The funding comes from new investor DAG Ventures, existing backers Redpoint Ventures and Sequoia Capital and an unnamed investor.

The company has now raised $16 million, and says that will be enough to get it to profitability.

Link: VentureBeat » Clearwell, email analytics company, raises $17M.

WSJ | Business Technology : Passing Judgment on ERP, continued ...

Many of the enterprise-software projects that were supposed to make businesses more efficient have instead made things more complicated. That raises the question: Whose fault is it?

Last week the Business Technology Blog wrote about a study that found that most Enterprise Resource Planning software, the monolithic systems of record from vendors like SAP and Oracle, had actually hurt businesses because the systems weren’t able to adapt to new business processes at the rate companies need. Strangely, none of the people who left comments on this blog disputed the idea that many ERP implementations haven’t lived up to their promise, even though most identified themselves as information-technology pros or ERP consultants. Most claimed that the reason was that businesses don’t fully commit to the project, however. Here are a couple examples:

“Technology IS supposed to simplify business; however, in too many cases, businesses view an ERP implementation as a challenge to crush the application into a reflection of their old way of doing business and not an opportunity to simplify the processes. And it makes little difference that the application may not be capable of the task. The result is a complex, sometimes inefficient ERP system everyone curses.”

“Though ‘business process re-engineering’ ranks down with many other concepts that often are more buzzword than useful concept, implementing the underlying ideas of BPR are a necessary condition of a successful implementation of ERP. If you don’t change your processes in a way that allow you to use an integrated system, the ERP installation will be a waste of money.”

Sense a theme? The commentators say that ERP doesn’t work because companies aren’t willing to embrace the processes that the system requires. The Business Technology Blog doesn’t disagree. But how does your company gain a competitive advantage if you’re forced to adopt the same plain-vanilla processes as every other company in your industry? This blog’s point is that business today requires having flexible processes, rather than the rigid ones that proper use of these systems demands. And that companies that have implemented an ERP system are now being held back because of it.

The techies had their say last week. ERP user, what do you feel about these systems: Have they made your job easier or held your company back?

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Link: Business Technology : Passing Judgment on ERP, Part Two.

VentureBeat | Oracle buys Bridgestream, follows purchase of Bharosa

Oracle has agreed to buy San Francisco-based Bridgestream, which makes software that maps business relationships within a department, division or across a whole company. It follows Oracle’s purchase of a different sort of company, Bharosa, a few weeks ago.

Bridgestream’s annual revenue is around $500k, with the sale price somewhere between $33 million and $36 million, says PEHub’s Dan Primack, though apparently without company confirmation.

Bridgestream was founded in 2000, and swallowed $14 million in total funding. Given the amount of time that passed, this company most likely failed to make money for its investors Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Outlook Ventures, ArrowPath Ventures and Polestar Capital.

It’s just the latest in a steady string of acquisitions by Oracle.

A few weeks ago, Oracle purchased Santa Clara, Calif. company Bharosa (see announcement), which specialized in real-time fraud detection and online authentication security business for large companies. It is being merged with Oracle’s Web-based single sign-on and authorization offering. Founded in 2003, Bharosa said it had more than 25 million users.

Link: VentureBeat » Oracle buys Bridgestream, follows purchase of Bharosa.

VentureBeat | Application Integration as an Appliance - Sequoia keeps it in the family with Cast Iron

Cast Iron Systems, a Mountain View, Calif. company that sells “application integration appliances,” has raised $16 million in a fifth round of capital.

The funding is notable because it continues a surprising trend of co-investing between Sequoia Capital — one of the most respected, but secretive venture firms in Silicon Valley — and an obscure hedge fund called Artis Capital.

The two companies have declined comment on the relationship. But it’s widely known that David Lamond, the son of a well-known Sequoia partner Pierre Lamond has worked at Artis. Artis was allowed to invest alongside Sequoia in video-sharing company YouTube, and went on to make a killing when YouTube was sold to Google for $1.6 billion. Normally, you’d chalk this up to coincidence, because family ties exist in every industry. However, Artis’ involvement is unusual because hedge funds rarely participate in early-stage investments of technology start-ups. Most firms would consider it a big privilege to invest alongside Sequoia, because it sees some of the best deals. Indeed, one of Artis’ partners, Stuart Peterson raised eyebrows shortly after the YouTube sale by paying $20 million to buy Andre Agassi’s Tiburon, Calif. estate after the YouTube sale.

The Cast Iron funding was first reported by PEHub two weeks ago.

Lehman Brothers Venture Capital led the round, which included return backers Sequoia Capital, Artis Capital Management, Norwest Venture Partners and Invesco Private Capital.

Cast Iron has now raised about $60 million in funding since 2001.

VentureWire followed up with a story this morning. Here’s a good description of what Cast Iron does:

Cast Iron Systems’ appliances integrate information from one application into another, saving its customers the time and expense of developing a homegrown solution or entering the information manually…

Although its products work with a wide range of applications, Cast Iron Systems works closely with certain software vendors such as Salesforce.com Inc., SAP AG and Oracle Corp. to make products geared at integrating software from those companies, in an effort to get people to begin using the product to integrate those applications and then up-selling later when a customer wants to expand the number of endpoints the appliance connects…Cast Iron faces competition from software-based application integration products such as Red Hat Inc.’s JBoss and Tibco Software Inc.

Link: VentureBeat » Sequoia keeps it in the family with Cast Iron.

WSJ | Rivals IBM, Sun Team Up To Pair Solaris System With Big Blue Servers

International Business Machines Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., longtime rivals, said IBM will become the first major hardware vendor to resell Sun's Solaris operating system.

The deal will allow IBM customers to buy Solaris on selected Big Blue server systems, starting with those that use the x86 chip design offered by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. IBM and Sun executives added that the software may later be offered on IBM's popular mainframe systems.

Such cooperation is becoming increasingly common as customers pressure competing vendors to offer more-convenient technology combinations. It was already possible for customers, for example, to buy IBM x86 systems and then get Solaris from Sun, said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's chief executive. Now they can simply go to IBM to get both, he said.

The two companies have cooperated before, particularly in promoting IBM software for Sun machines and Sun's Java software as an alternative to Microsoft Corp. offerings. But they compete fiercely in computer sales.

Scott McNealy, who gave up the job as Sun's CEO last year to Mr. Schwartz, was once particularly disparaging about IBM's strategies and technology. Mr. Schwartz, however, has taken more pragmatic positions and has aggressively pushed the use of Solaris on machines other than those sold by Sun.

Teaming up with Sun is "a sea change for the hardware business" at IBM, said Bill Zeitler, general manager of IBM's systems and technology group. He said that the rapprochement started shortly after Mr. Schwartz became CEO and invited him and IBM CEO Sam Palmisano to visit him at Sun's offices in Silicon Valley. Since then, they have worked on various issues, and Mr. Zeitler said yesterday's announcement heralds further cooperation.

IBM has three operating systems of its own and also sells two distributions of Linux and Microsoft's Windows. Adding Solaris to the mix gives its hardware sales representatives one more option to offer customers.

IBM once catered to "true Blue" customers who bought only from IBM, but Mr. Zeitler said it has been years since "we tried to force our customers into one operating system."

Bob Djurdjevic, president of market researcher Annex Research in Phoenix, said he thinks IBM will move quickly to put Solaris on non-x86 computers because the operating system has a much wider audience than AIX, IBM's variant of the Unix operating system. He added that Mr. Zeitler has successfully promoted Linux on IBM computers, allowing "alien objects to enter the Big Blue web."

Mr. Zeitler said developers have already successfully run Solaris on IBM mainframes, which he said is appealing to many customers. IBM's mainframe business has been robust in recent years, in part because of its growing sales of Linux running as a virtual server on the big machines. Despite an aging product line, in its latest quarter, IBM mainframe revenue rose 4%, largely due to 130% growth in the amount of computer power assigned for running Linux.

Link: Rivals IBM, Sun Team Up To Pair Solaris System With Big Blue Servers - WSJ.com.

Business Wire | Opsware acquired by HP

Acquisition Positions HP to Become a Leader in High-Growth Data Center Automation Software Market

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Opsware Inc. (Nasdaq:OPSW), a market-leading data center automation software company, through a cash tender offer for $14.25 per share, or an enterprise value (net of existing cash and debt) of approximately $1.6 billion on a fully diluted basis.

Upon closing, the acquisition will enhance HP’s portfolio of Business Technology Optimization (BTO) software. Combining Opsware’s solutions with HP’s enterprise IT management software will deliver a comprehensive and fully integrated solution for IT automation. Opsware is the latest in a series of strategic software acquisitions, including Mercury Interactive and Peregrine Systems, which expands HP’s leadership in BTO.

“The acquisition of Opsware is intended to enable HP Software to help our customers resolve one of their critical pain points: controlling the increasing complexity and cost of managing the data center,” said Thomas E. Hogan, senior vice president, Software, HP. “We expect Opsware’s outstanding team will help us drive leadership across our BTO offerings.”

Opsware Chief Executive Officer Ben Horowitz said, “We are about to see one of the biggest application and infrastructure build-outs in history. The addition of Opsware to the HP Software portfolio will make HP the obvious choice for powering the next generation of data centers to come.”

The acquisition of Opsware is intended to extend HP Software’s capabilities to automate the entire data center – from initial provisioning of servers, networks and storage devices to managing ongoing changes and compliance requirements – with integrated process automation, removing the latency inherent in today’s IT environments.

“Following last year’s acquisition of Mercury Interactive, the addition of Opsware is expected to enhance HP’s standing as one of the world’s leading software companies and drive profitable growth for HP,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “With this strategic acquisition, I believe customers will see HP as the clear vendor of choice to help them transform how they manage and automate IT to drive better business outcomes.”

Following the close of the transaction, Opsware will become part of the HP Software business. At that time, HP also expects to appoint Ben Horowitz to lead the Business Technology Optimization organization reporting to Thomas E. Hogan, senior vice president, HP Software.

The acquisition will be conducted by means of a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Opsware, followed by a merger of Opsware with an HP subsidiary. The tender offer is subject to a number of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close before the end of HP’s fourth fiscal quarter of 2007. 

About Opsware

Opsware, a leading data center automation company, unlocks the promise of technology by accelerating IT to zero latency. The company’s software, the Opsware System, automates the entire data center, from provisioning to patching, configuration to compliance and discovery to deployment, turning data center operations into a competitive advantage for business. Opsware’s technology is used by hundreds of companies worldwide including banks, service providers, retailers, manufacturers and Internet companies with IT environments ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of servers, network devices, storage devices and IT processes. More information on Opsware (Nasdaq:OPSW) is available at www.opsware.com.

About HP

HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers – from individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world’s largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $97.1 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2007. More information about HP is available at www.hp.com.

Note to editors: More news from HP, including links to RSS feeds, is available at

www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/

Link: Opsware Headlines powered by Business Wire.

VentureBeat | JasperSoft, open source biz intelligence co., raises $12M more

JasperSoft, a San Francisco provider of open source software for “business intelligence,” said it has raised $12 million in its fourth round of funding.

Scale Venture Partners led the round and was joined by new investor SAP Ventures. Existing investors DCM,
Morganthaler Ventures and Partech International also participated in the round.

The company said it has more than 6,000 customers, and that it would use the funding to extend its international reach.

Here’s a statement, in which JasperSoft outlines its progress.

It has now raised $35.3 million in total funding.

Link: VentureBeat » JasperSoft, open source biz intelligence co., raises $12M more.

RED HERRING | Buyout Latest in Hot BPM Market

MetaStorm, a privately held maker of business management software, announced Wednesday that it has used the proceeds from a funding round to acquire Proforma, another business software firm.

Baltimore, Maryland-based MetaStorm did not disclose the amount it paid for Southfield, Michigan-based Proforma but said it will use all of its $30 million investment from ABS Capital to fund part of the acquisition.

This deal and a number of others over the last couple years underscore the growing interest from both VCs and private equity in a market that’s both fragmented and difficult to understand.

Both MetaStorm and Proforma sell software and services designed to capture the mix of acquired knowledge, science, and hunches that makes up the corporate decision-making process.

The theory goes that by automating the way companies arrive at operational and strategic decisions, business software firms can help corporations make decisions faster, improve their processes, and adapt to changing conditions.

(full article) Link: RED HERRING | Buyout Latest in Hot BPM Market.

WSJ | Web 2.0 Mashups Sews Data Together

As Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast in August 2005, storm trackers at Schumacher Group, a Lafayette, La., company that manages physicians for emergency rooms, consulted a variety of information sources -- TV weather reports, a map studded with pins representing homes of nearby doctors and a computerized phone book -- to make sure hospitals would be fully staffed.

Almost one month later, by the time Hurricane Rita hit, the storm trackers had new software that let them see weather conditions along with location and contact information for area physicians overlaid on a map -- all on one screen.

Douglas Menefee, Schumacher Group's chief information officer, says the hurricane-tracking software took one developer less than two days to build, thanks to a new technology called "mashups."

More and more companies, including Audi AG, the Ingolstadt, Germany, unit of Volkswagen AG, and AccuWeather Inc. of State College, Pa., are adopting the same technology. Mashups essentially are a way to take data trapped in separate software applications and combine them into new, hybrid applications. At most companies, data typically have been stored in silos -- customer information is in a customer-management system, for example, and information about order status is in an inventory-management system.

While the concept of stitching together these different systems isn't new, it traditionally has been one of the most costly and complicated projects an information-technology department can undertake.

Mashups, however, are cheap and easy to build. International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp., among others, recently released easy-to-use mashup-building tools. IBM in February launched QEDWiki, which provides developers with a portal where they can choose which applications to include in a mashup and define how they want these applications to work together. Microsoft's mashup tool, Popfly, works with its SharePoint collaboration software. Google Inc. has let developers make mashups with its popular mapping software since 2005.

Developers simply use the mashup-building software to combine existing applications into a new one, creating software designed specifically for the way small groups or individual employees work, which would be prohibitively expensive using traditional integration methods. And mashup-development tools are so intuitive to use that ultimately, non-information technology workers should be able to make their own mashups, says Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

A mashup "combines data from disparate sources into something that is more valuable than the sum of its parts," says Mr. Young. He estimates about 20% of companies use mashups in one form or another.

Developers at Audi recently built a mashup that helps product managers for the company's A-series line of autos perform competitive analyses. The mashup draws data from 20 different sources, ranging from Audi's inventory system to demographic figures on German Web site Spiegel Online.

Audi's product managers used to check each of the 20 sources individually and copy the results into spreadsheets. While the task was time consuming and inconvenient, Audi's information-technology department didn't want to pay as much as $500,000 to combine all of the data into one application using traditional software-integration techniques, says Anton Hermann Kramm, a member of Audi's IT management team.

But using a mashup tool from Kapow Technologies Inc., one developer was able to build the new application in just four days for a fraction of that cost. Mr. Kramm says developers at Audi have built about 30 mashups, using data from nearly 100 sources.

Mashups don't work across the board. Only software that can be accessed with a Web browser can be included in a mashup. That means applications that are accessed through software installed directly on a worker's computer, including many business systems from SAP AG and Oracle Corp., can't be included in a mashup without some complex work. Data that reside on mainframe computers are also hard to use in a mashup.

Mashups aren't immune to the challenges of linking disparate tech systems, says Mirko Minnich, vice president and chief architect at Thomson Scientific, a unit of Thomson Corp. A mashup that combines various sources of data is useful only if all systems identify the information in the same way, for instance. And as usual, issues like security and standards must be considered.

Write to Ben Worthen at ben.worthen@wsj.com

Link: 'Mashups' Sew Data Together - WSJ.com.