Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘boic’ Category

Clash of the technology titans

Posted in boic, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting article from Fortune´s Brainstorm Tech Blog.

“The biggest computing and networking companies in the world are getting bigger – and former partners are now fierce rivals. Is tech’s new strife good for customers?

The largest technology companies in the world are at war.

Sure, the executives who run Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and others appear to play nice: Cisco touts the “regular dialogue” between its CEO, John Chambers, and IBM’s chief executive, Sam Palmisano. Ann Livermore, an HP executive vice president, spoke at Oracle’s annual customer event in October and extolled the virtues of their partnership. And because large customers buy software, gear, and services from all the tech giants, their staffs must work together to get computers and networks up and running.

Don’t be fooled by the handshakes and air kisses. Increasingly these titans are invading one another’s territories in a bid to grab as much of the $1.5 trillion in projected 2010 worldwide corporate tech spending as they possibly can — and it’s going to get bloody.

Customers have cut their tech purchases, and when they do loosen their purse strings, they are buying software and services that help them run their systems more cheaply. To boost sales and profits in this low-growth environment, technology companies are bulking up by buying companies in entirely new businesses.

The endgame? Each aims to steal business from rivals by promising customers one-stop shopping for most, if not all, of their computing and networking needs.

Battling for each other’s turf

Corporate software maker Oracle (ORCL), under pressure from competitors that rent software and deliver it over the Internet rather than installing it on-site, is pushing into computer hardware with its planned $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems (JAVA). When the deal closes (it still faces regulatory hurdles), Oracle will find itself battling partners IBM (IBM), Dell (DELL), and HP (HPQ), all of which also sell servers.

HP, whose legacy personal computer and printer businesses aren’t growing the way they used to, spent $13.9 billion in 2008 to acquire EDS, a specialist in managing and integrating corporate systems. That happens to be IBM’s biggest business. HP also has announced plans to buy 3Com (COMS), a maker of networking gear. (Take that, Cisco!)

Cisco (CSCO), in turn, has announced its own plans to enter the server market. (Take that, HP!) Dell is picking up Perot Systems for $4 billion to take on HP and IBM in services. IBM, meanwhile, has been quietly bulking up in software, hardware, and services: In the past six years it has spent $20 billion on 90 companies.

“It’s the industrialization of IT,” says Pacific Crest Research’s Brent Bracelin. “In the new world that will come about in the next three to five years, you’ll buy the entire stack. Will you buy it from IBM, from Cisco? From HP? That’s what the battle is all about.”

Fighting to dominate a new world order

Tech mergers in the name of world domination aren’t new. (Remember Compaq’s purchase of DEC, or HP’s acquisition of Compaq?) But this wave is also being driven by a coming change in technology. “We’re at an inflection point,” says Forrester Research analyst Andrew Bartels.

He describes a new generation of technology — call it smart computing — in which servers, computers, and networks come together to form a platform on which new applications are built. These new applications aren’t installed on machines in the workplace; instead they live in data centers and are delivered to users’ phones, laptops, and other devices via the Internet.”

Read the full article here.

Read Full Post »

Facebook, GM lead 2010 IPO candidates

Posted in boic, tagged , , , , , , on January 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from CNN Money.

“The stars may very well align for the IPO market in 2010. Literally.

Following one of the worst years in recent memory, public offerings are expected to rebound nicely this year, with potentially much of the action centered around several high-profile companies.

Embattled automaker General Motors, for example, has hinted since last summer that it could once again become a publicly-traded company by year’s end.

Private equity giants Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Apollo Global Management, both of which missed entering the market at the peak of the buyout boom, have both mentioned as possible entries in 2010 recently.

And the IPO rumor mill has been working overtime since social networking giant Facebook introduced a dual-class stock structure in November, a move that often times has preceded a public offering. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) did the same thing before it went public in 2004.

“I don’t think it is a matter of if[Facebook] can or cannot, it is a matter if they want to,” notes finance author Tom Taulli, who has written extensively about the IPO market.

If Facebook, GM and other brand-name firms decide to enter the public markets, that could help push the number of U.S. offerings far beyond 2009 levels. Last year, just 63 companies went public as investors avoided wading into the market chaos that defined the first half of last year.

Those that did brave the turmoil included a rather strange group of bedfellows –including a Chinese online gaming firm, a company developing lithium-ion batteries for cars and nearly two dozen companies that were backed by private equity firms.

This year though, experts are betting that the IPO market will largely be dominated once again by companies that have been bankrolled by venture capital investors. These companies are typically younger firms as opposed to the mature companies that private equity companies often buy.

During the final months of 2009, 16 venture-backed firms filed to go public, according to Renaissance Capital, a Greenwich, Conn.-based investment firm specializing in IPOs, including drugmaker Ironwood Pharmaceuticals and solar panel producer Solyndra.

With that in mind, Linda Killian, a portfolio manager of the IPO Plus Aftermarket Fund at Renaissance Capital, said that more growth companies are likely to be in this year’s crop of IPOs.

And in the growth company category, there is no industry more buzzed about than social networking.

In addition to Facebook, social networking hotshots Twitter, LinkedIn and Zynga have all been rumored as possible IPO candidates.

Experts tend to agree that it is only a matter of time before many of these firms start considering acquisitions however. And with publicly traded stock, that would certainly give them the currency to do so.

John Fitzgibbon, founder and publisher at IPOScoop.com, said if one social networking company goes public and does well, then conditions would be ripe for the rest to follow.

“You need the trailblazer,” he said. “If Facebook goes into the pipeline, you will probably see more of its competitors start there.”

Read the full article here.

Read Full Post »

Venture capitalists offer their best tech predictions for 2010

Posted in boic, tagged , , , , , , on January 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a article from Seattle based TechFlash.

“Google’s stock will lose nearly 20 percent of its value. One of Seattle’s casual game companies — Big Fish, PopCap or WildTangent — will go public. And look for Android to be the hot mobile operating system of 2010, as Microsoft buys RIM in order to compete.

Those are among the predictions from a group of Seattle area soothsayers who offered their forecasts for 2010 in our annual venture capital predictions column. Take a gander at their responses below. How do you think they’ll do?”

Read the excellent article here.

Read Full Post »

Gerbsman Partners wishes you and your family a Happy, Healthy and Safe New Year

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, tagged , on December 31, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We also say “thank you” to our clients, advisors, business partners and all the people the team has been involved with. Gerbsman Partners’ goals have been and always will be, to “Earn the Trust and Confidence” of our clients, and to maintain the highest standards of “Ethics and Integrity”.

As we enter this New Year, we are living in challenging times. The economy, jobs, financial concerns, the security of our nation and the concern regarding the health care system support for our families. However, we look to the New Year with “Hope for the Future”.

Please accept our appreciation for your past support, confidence and continued trust. May 2010 be a successful, stable and profitable year for you and more importantly, provide a gateway and foundation to a bright and prosperous future.

May you and your family be healthy, stay safe and enjoy a hopeful New Year.

Best Regards,

Steven R. Gerbsman
Principal, Gerbsman Partners

Read Full Post »

Top Ten Greentech Misses in 2009

Posted in boic, tagged , , , , on December 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a article from Greentech Media.

“2009 had plenty of greentech hits: technical breakthroughs, lots of VC and government funding, some interesting acquisitions and a few successful IPOs.  But there were also a number of misses. Here’s a list:

Spain Pays for Its Poorly Executed Solar Subsidy: The mistakes happened in 2008 but the echoes were felt in 2009. Spain went from being the largest PV market in 2008 to almost zero in 2009.

Spain had a lucrative feed-in tariff program that required utilities to buy solar electricity at high rates set by the government. After seeing an explosive growth of solar projects that far surpassed its estimates, the government reduced the solar electricity rates for solar power plants installed after September 2008. Additionally,  government investigation uncovered widespread fraud in the administration and roll-out of the FIT program.

A rush to install solar energy systems led to reports of fraud by developers claiming they had finished their projects when they only installed some of the panels or, in some cases, put in fake solar panels to buy time.

Spain had been a great market for Chinese panel makers, who were able to sell their goods at premium prices in 2008.  Not so in 2009.

Optisolar Lands Hard: Optisolar had raised more than $300 million based on a vision of the economies of scale of building a gigawatt-sized factory.  The vision was that the cost of solar could be radically dropped by building “Solar City” factory complexes capable of churning out 2.1 gigawatts to 3.6 gigawatts of solar cells a year. These factories would cost $500 million to $600 million and be composed of factories-within-factories focused on different tasks: an onsite glass making outfit capable of cranking out 30 million square meters of glass a year; a solar cell unit with 100 identical manufacturing lines; and a full-fledged packaging facility.

In this ideal world modules would cost 0.60 cents to 0.52 cents per watt and fully installed solar power would cost $1.00 to 0.88 cents a watt.

As per Michael Kanellos’ article: The ideas from the Keshner NREL paper largely formed the company’s business plan.

After building a factory in Hayward capable of producing 30 megawatts to 50 megawatts, it landed $20 million in tax breaks in 2007 to build a factory at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento County. By 2011, the million square foot facility would employ 1,000 and put out over 600 megawatts worth of solar panels a year. Although the original paper discussed ways of making cheap solar panels out of CIGS, cadmium telluride or amorphous silicon, OptiSolar focused on silicon because, among other reasons, of its far wider availability.

Plans were also being laid to build an even larger factory after McClellan that would contain the in-house sub-factory for glass making as discussed in 2004.”

Read the full article here.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »