Wednesday, October 30, 2013ServiceMesh Acquired By CSCSanta Monica-based ServiceMesh, the developer of enterprise, cloud management tools headed by Eric Pulier, has been acquired by CSC, the two said late Wednesday afternoon. The deal was worth $300M, including an upfront cash payment of $158M. According to CSC, it will use the acquisition to help it transform itself into a "next-generation" IT company. ServiceMesh develops enterprise cloud software management products, used to manage enterprise apps running in private, public, and hybrid cloud env (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013(Full story)
Domain, Versant Portfolio Firm Veracyte Hits IPO MarketSouthern California venture capital investors Domain Associates and Versant Venture saw a public exit of one of their portfolio companies this morning, molecular diagnostics equipment maker Veracyte. Veracyte debuted on the NASDAQ Global Market this morning at $13.00 per share, and was trading slightly down at $12.95 this morning. Veracyte's other investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and TPG Biotech. Interestingly enough, Southern California's IPO activity in the last few months ha (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013(Full story)
Insights: Venture Capital: The Times, They Are A-Changin'
For our Insights and Opinions section today--where we feature the thoughts and opinions of the local high tech community--we have an article from Jeff Grabow, of Ernst & Young, talking about the changing world of venture capital:
The VC environment isn't what it used to be. Guess what? That's not a bad thing. The venture environment has evolved and understanding three key trends in that evolution can be critical to getting your company funded.
First, VC isn't strictly about start-up comp (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013(Full story)
BloomNation's Goal To Empower Your Local Florist, And Improve Flower Delivery
If you've ever ordered flowers from one of the big floral services, you know it's an impersonal, cookie-cutter, and heavily commoditized area. Those services work on volume, and the designs you can send--and which you receive--are from a limited selection, not at all personalized to the recipient, and for the florist delivering the flowers, provides slim margins and no opportunity to build a customer base. Los Angeles-based BloomNation (www.bloomnation.com) is looking to change the model, and (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013(Full story)
Ashton Kutcher: Actor, Investor, Product Engineer?In what might be the first ever "celebrity product engineer", computer maker Lenovo held a launch event yesterday at Youtube Space LA for a new tablet, announcing that it has partnered with Ashton Kutcher to be the newest product engineer on its new line of tablets. Lenovo said that Kutcher will work with the company's engineering teams to help develop and market the company's new Yoga line of tablets, providing input and decision-making into design, specifications, software and usage scenarios. (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013(Full story)
Amazon.com Expands In The Inland EmpireE-commerce giant Amazon.com said Tuesday that it is opening up another fulfillment center in the Inland Empire, in Moreno Valley, which it says will create more than 1,000 full time jobs. The new center will be the fourth fulfillment center for the company in California. The new employees will help to pick, pack, and ship products to Amazon.com customers. Amazon.com also has centers in Patterson, San Bernardino, and Tracy. The e-commerce company said that its jobs pay on average 30 percent more (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013(Full story)
Emulex Debuts New HBA Technology Aimed At Flash StorageCosta Mesa-based storage networking hardware developer Emulex said Tuesday that it has rolled out new technology for its host bus adapters, which helps to optimize the performance of its products with flash-based arrays and cache. Emulex said its new Gen 5 Fibre Channel (FC) Flash Services technology helps optimize I/O performance of its products when running with those high speed storage devices. The new technology is a no-charge upgrade to the company's existing hardware. The new technology in (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013(Full story)