Hewlett Packard Autonomy: Bank Issues Alleged
September 15, 2015
“The Price of Silence on Wall Street” provides a bit of information about the role of intermediaries in the HP deal for Autonomy. I find it difficult to figure out if the bank was doing its normal sales job for a juicy deal or if the bank was doing some fancy dancing.
Here are portions of the write up I highlighted when I was out of Internet range in a far off land. There is some value to printing online article for offline reading.
Item 1:
He [a bank whistle blower] says he believes people need to know about certain acts related to Barclays’ role in Hewlett-Packard’s $11.1 billion acquisition of Autonomy, a British software company, in 2011. Barclays was a financial adviser to HP on the deal and the sole provider of a one-year, $8.3 billion loan to be used, in part, by HP to buy Autonomy. Since then, the Autonomy acquisition has generally been viewed as a disaster. In 2012, HP wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion, and said that some $5 billion of it stemmed from a willful misrepresentation by Autonomy’s management of the company’s financial performance (Autonomy’s management disagreed, and the two sides headed to court).
Item 2:
Mr. Sivere [bank whistle blower] says he believes there is more to the HP story, in particular that Barclays may have breached its internal ethical walls regarding the deal, allowing some confidential information from the banking side of Barclays to be used by Barclays traders. He reached this conclusion in his role as a compliance officer and after he saw internal digital correspondence between the two groups that made him nervous that the wall had been breached. In 2013, Mr. Sivere tells me, he filed an internal report at Barclays that questioned the ethics and legality of what he had witnessed. He reported his concern that confidentiality had been breached around certain foreign-exchange trades; around so-called Contracts for Difference trades, known as C.F.D.s; and around certain representations that Barclays had made to HP when it provided the $8.8 billion loan.
Item 3:
Mr. Sivere wrote in his letter to the Barclays board, he also believed that Barclays entered into certain suspicious derivative transactions with HP at the time of the Autonomy acquisition. “Some of these transactions included FX trades, a dollar/sterling option and C.F.D.s traded prior to the announcement (and also the bridge loan pegged to a possible manipulated Libor rate),” he wrote. “The unwinding of such derivative transactions most likely occurred during 2012 which should have raised suspicions of what exactly the Hewlett-Packard write-down was related to if not for Autonomy’s purported accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures.
The article includes other interesting information. I urge you to read it.
My view is that the HP Autonomy deal remains interesting to me. The amount HP paid for Autonomy set a high water mark for a content processing acquisition. This write up suggests that there is information about the deal which has not been revealed in publicly accessible articles.
The parallels with the Fast Search & Transfer matter may be worth exploring.
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2015
Datameer Declares a Celebration
September 8, 2015
The big data analytics and visualization company Datameer, Inc. has cause to celebrate, because they have received a huge investment. How happy is Datameer? Datameer’s CEO Stefan Groschupf explains on the company blog in the post, “Time To Celebrate The Next Stage Of Our Journey.”
Datameer received $40 million in a round of financing from ST Telemedia, Top Tier Capital Partners, Next World Capital, Redpoint, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Software AG and Citi Ventures. Groschupf details how Datameer was added to the market in 2009 with the vision to democratize analytics. Since 2009, Datameer has helped solve problems across the globe and is even helping make it a better place. He continues he is humbled by the trust the investors and clients place in Datameer, which feeds into the importance of analytics for not only companies, but also anyone who wants supportable truth.
Datameer has big plans for the funding:
“We’ll be focusing on expanding globally, with an eye toward APAC and Latin America as well as additional investment in our existing teams. I’m looking forward to continuing our growth and building a long-term, sustainable company that consistently provides value to our customers. Our vision has been the same since day one – to make big data analytics easy for everyone. Today, I’m happy to say we’re still where we want to be.”
Datameer was one of the early contenders in big data that always managed to outshine and outperform its bigger name competitors. Despite its record growth, Datameer continues to remain true to its open source roots. The company wants to make analytics available to every industry and everyone. What is incredibly impressive is that Datameer has numerous applications for its products from gaming to healthcare, which is usually unheard of. Congratulations to Datameer!
Whitney Grace, September 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Bank Exports IT to India
September 1, 2015
Computer World’s article, “As It Sets IT Layoffs, Citizens Bank Shifts Work To India Via Web” sounds like it should have been published five years ago. It was not that long ago when Americans were in an uproar about jobs being outsourced to China and India, but many of those jobs have returned to the US or replaced with an alternative. Despite falling out of interest with the mainstream media, jobs are still being outsourced to Asia. Citizens Bank is having their current IT employees train their replacements in a “knowledge transfer” and they will be terminated come December.
Citizens Bank signed a five-year services contract with IBM for IT services. IBM owns a large scale IT services company in India, which pays its workers a fraction of the current Citizens Bank IT workers.
As one can imagine, the Citizens Bank employees are in an uproar:
“The number of layoffs is in dispute. Employees said as many as 150 Citizen Bank IT workers were being laid off. But this number doesn’t include contractors. IBM will be consolidating the bank’s IT infrastructure services, and, as part of that, the bank is consolidating from four vendors to one vendor, IBM. This change will result in the elimination of some contractor jobs, and when contractors are added, the total layoff estimate by employees ranges from 250 to 350.”
It is reported that some IT workers are being offered comparable positions with IBM, while others are first in line for jobs in other branches of Citizens Bank. However, the IBM jobs appear to be short term and the other bank jobs do not appear to be turning up.
Other companies are shifting their IT work overseas much to the displeasure of IT workers, who thought they would be assured job security for the rest of their lives. IT workers place the blame on companies wanting to increase profits and not caring about their employees. What is going on with Citizens Bank and other companies is not new. It has been going on for decades, but that does not make the harm to Americans any less.
Whitney Grace, September 1, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Stroz Friedberg Snaps Up Elysium Digital
August 20, 2015
Cybersecurity, investigation, and risk-management firm Stroz Friedberg has a made a new acquisition, we learn from their announcement, “Stroz Friedberg Acquires Technology Litigation Consulting Firm Elysium Digital” (PDF). Though details of the deal are not revealed, the write-up tells us why Elysium Digital is such a welcome addition to the company:
“Founded in 1997, Elysium Digital has worked with law firms, in-house counsel, and government agencies nationally. The firm has provided a broad range of services, including expert testimony, IP litigation consulting, eDiscovery, digital forensics investigations, and security and privacy investigations. Elysium played a role in the key technology/legal issues of its time and established itself as a premier firm providing advice and quality technical analysis in high-stakes legal matters. The firm specialized in deciphering complex technology and effectively communicating findings to clients, witnesses, judges, and juries.
“‘The people of Elysium Digital possess highly sought after technical skills that have allowed them to tackle some of the most complex IP matters in recent history. Bringing this expertise into Stroz Friedberg will allow us to more fully address the needs of our clients around the world, not just in IP litigation and digital forensics, but across our cyber practices as well,’ said Michael Patsalos-Fox, CEO of Stroz Friedberg.”
The workers of Elysium Digital will be moving into Stroz Friedberg’s Boston office, and its co-founders will continue to play an important role, we’re told. Stroz Friedberg expects the acquisition to bolster their capabilities in the areas of digital forensics, intellectual-property litigation consulting, eDiscovery, and data security.
Founded in 2000, Stroz Friedberg says their guiding principle is to “seek truth” for their clients. Headquartered in New York City, the company maintains offices throughout the U.S. as well as in London, Hong Kong, and Zurich.
Cynthia Murrell, August 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Autonomy iManage: Out of the HP Way
July 29, 2015
Autonomy’s beefy revenues came from acquisitions. One of the properties in the pre-HP portfolio was iManage. Believe it or not, iManage is a document management-Outlook centric system. There are some customers who cannot prepare legal documents without its functionality. One can send an attachment in an email so a colleague can click on the document and edit the document within the iManage work flow and document management environment. Some attorneys is a very big US government agency are in raptures about this type of “keep it together” capability.
I read “Autonomy Unit iManage Exits HP With Buyout.” The main point of the article is that iManage was an “asset.” Imagine. HP is okay with the notion of some of Autonomy having value.
The deal puts some of the old team back in the saddle. To add some gloss to the “we want outta this place,” the article reports that the new iManage will use HP cloud services and will use IDOL for some content processes.
Several observations:
- What other bits and pieces of Autonomy will HP dump?
- Why was HP unable to leverage the iManage system as an organic revenue stream?
- Is HP confident that it can generate pre-acquisition Autonomy revenues without the mosaic of products and services which allowed Autonomy to hit $700 million plus in revenues?
Interesting development. iManage has some significant accounts and is likely to have a bright future away from the HP way.
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2015
Blackberry Gets Alerted
July 23, 2015
The idea of industrial strength notifications is understood in some mission critical entities. For most folks who focus on marketing hyperbole, the notion of an alert is a Twitter message or a real news release.
Blackberry, confused and baffled Blackberry, has realized that commercial alerts can be a good business. According to “Blackberry to Buy Crisis Alerts Firm AtHoc,”
AtHoc’s communications software is essentially a messaging alerts system, but for entities that need to exchange potentially sensitive and critical information between devices, organizations and people when other forms of communication may be unavailable. The software supports a variety of devices and platforms, including iOS, Android, PCs and Macs.
At Hoc has interesting technology. There is the alert function. The company also features filtering and scheduling activities and a number of content processing functions.
I like At Hoc. I assume the sale will not significant alter the At Hoc products and services. But, hey, it is Blackberry.
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2015
Search the Snowden Documents
July 16, 2015
This cat has long since forgotten what the inside of the bag looked like. Have you perused the documents that were released by Edward Snowden, beginning in 2013? A website simply titled “Snowden Doc Search” will let you do just that through a user-friendly search system. The project’s Description page states:
“The search is based upon the most complete archive of Snowden documents to date. It is meant to encourage users to explore the documents through its extensive filtering capabilities. While users are able to search specifically by title, description, document, document date, and release date, categories also allow filtering by agency, codeword, document topic, countries mentioned, SIGADS, classification, and countries shared with. Results contain not only full document text, pdf, and description, but also links to relevant articles and basic document data, such as codewords used and countries mentioned within the document.”
The result of teamwork between the Courage Foundation and Transparency Toolkit, the searchable site is built upon the document/ news story archive maintained by the Edward Snowden Defense Fund. The sites Description page also supplies links to the raw dataset and to Transparency Toolkit’s Github page, for anyone who would care to take a look. Just remember, “going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit.” (Chrome)
Cynthia Murrell, July 16 , 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Sprinklr Aims to Conquer Consolidation Market
July 8, 2015
Sprinklr is in a race with the likes of Salesforce as well as fellow social-consolidation startups. Forbes declares, “Sprinklr Acquires NewBrand, the $1 Billion Social Startup’s Seventh Buy in 18 Months.” Back when social media was new, companies scrambled to leverage its potential with a hodgepodge of tools. Now, Sprinklr founder Ragy Thomas sees a wave of consolidation approaching, as companies tire of struggling to unite disparate solutions. Writer Alex Konrad writes:
“Sprinklr is one of a number of companies facing pressure to provide a more complete stack to brands looking to integrate their social marketing and customer support, Thomas says. An obvious example is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, built off a nucleus of its own acquisitions like ExactTarget, Buddy Media and Radian6. Demand for a more end-to-end solution has intensified in the last year, Thomas argues. That’s why Sprinklr has acquired so much and so quickly, the CEO argues, typically taking the absorbed startup and absorbing its code directly into Sprinklr’s main code. …
“Sprinklr will face competition from also well-financed startups like Percolate as well as from larger suite offerings like Salesforce. ‘We are in a race against time to provide the capability to brands,’ Thomas says. ‘It’s becoming a three or four horse race with a clear set of companies that big brands can bank on moving forward.’”
At the moment, it looks like Sprinklr may be ahead in that race; predictive-analytics/ business-intelligence firm NewBrand is its seventh acquisition since the beginning of 2014. NewBrand launched in 2010, and is based in Washington, DC.
Ragy Thomas founded Sprinklr in 2009. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices around the world. The other six companies it has snapped up include Scup, Get Satisfaction, Pluck, Branderati, TBG Digital, and Dachis Group.
Cynthia Murrell, July 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
HP Sales Are Slow, But CEO Says Progress
June 24, 2015
According to Computer Weekly, “HP CEO Hails Business Split Progress Amid Downbeat Q2 Revenue Slumps.” HP’s Enterprise Service has the worst revenue reports for the quarter along with several more of its business units with a seven percent net loss. The Enterprise Service saw a sixteen percent loss.
Ironically, the company’s stock rose 1 percent, mostly due to HP expanding into China due to a new partnership with Tsinghua University. The joint venture will focus on developing HP’s H3C’s technology and its China-based server business, supposedly it will have huge implications on the Chinese technology market.
Another piece of news is that HP will split up:
“[CEO Meg ] Whitman also spoke in favour of the progress the company is making with its plans to separate into two publicly traded business entities: one comprised of its consumer PC and printing operations, and the other focused on enterprise hardware, software and services.
The past six months have reinforced Whitman’s conviction that this is the right path for the company to take, and the split is still on course to occur before the end of the firm’s financial year.”
The company wants to increase its revenue, but it needs to cut gross costs across the board. HP is confidant that it will work. Sales will continue to be slow for 2015, but they can still do investment banking things at HP.
Whitney Grace, June 24, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
JackBe May Have a New Owner
June 2, 2015
Jack Be, a Maryland based intelligence software company, sold to Software AG in late 2013. If the information in “Aurea Software with Renewed Offer to Acquire All Update Software AG Shares” is accurate, the major shareholder of Software AG may acquire the German firm. The buyer could be Aurea Software. According the firm’s Web site:
At Aurea, we constantly challenge ourselves to identify and engineer truly transformative customer experiences, and we look for innovative ways that software and processes can transform an average experience for your customers into a great one. Our customer experience platform helps over 1,500 companies worldwide build, execute, monitor and optimize the end-to-end customer journey for a diverse range of industries including Energy, Retail, Insurance, Travel & Hospitality and Life Sciences.
According to a BusinessWeek profile, Aurea is the new positioning of Progress Software. BusinessWeek says:
Aurea Software was formerly known as Progress Software Corp., Sonic, Savvion, Actional and DXSI. As a result of the acquisition of Progress Software Corp., Sonic, Savvion, Actional and DXSI by Trilogy Enterprises, Inc, Progress Software Corp., Sonic, Savvion, Actional and DXSI’s name was changed. Progress Software Corp., Sonic, Savvion, Actional and DXSI comprises four progress software businesses.
A document attributed to Progress Software provides an interesting profile of Aurea. You can find this document as of June 1, 2015, at this link. My recollection is that Progress (now Aurea) used to own the EasyAsk search technology. In May 2015, Aurea acquired Lyris. According to the Aurea-Lyris news release:
Lyris is a global leader of innovative email and digital marketing solutions that help companies reach customers at scale and create personalized value at every touch point. Lyris’ products and services empower marketers to design, automate, and optimize experiences that facilitate superior engagement, increase conversions, and deliver measurable business value.
Jack Be’s screen scraping technology can be used to figure out what customers’ are saying on the Internet and on a licensee’s help desk system. Jack Be did include query tools. If the Reuters’ story is off base, we will update this post. One assumes that the new Progress will “empower” some significant progress.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2015
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