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
Informed Millennials
April 15, 2015
With the fall of traditional newspapers and aging TV News audiences, just where are today’s 20- and young 30- somethings turning for news coverage? Science 2.0 tells us “How Millennials Get News,” reporting on a recent survey from the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The joint effort comes from a collaboration arrangement the organizations call the Media Insight Project. Conducted at the beginning of 2015, the survey asked Millennials about their news-consumption habits. The article tells us:
“People ages 18-34 consume news and information in strikingly different ways than did previous generations, they keep up with ‘traditional’ news as well as stories that connect them to hobbies, culture, jobs, and entertainment, they just do it in ways that corporations can’t figure out how to monetize well….
“‘For many Millennials, news is part of their social flow, with most seeing it as an enjoyable or entertaining experience,’ said Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center. ‘It is possible that consuming news at specific times of the day for defined periods will soon be a thing of the past given that news is now woven into many Millennials’ connected lives.’”
Soon? Even many of us Gen Xers and (a few intrepid Baby Boomers) now take our news in small doses at varying hours. The survey also found that most respondents look at the news at least once a day, and many several times per day. Also, contrary to warnings from worrywarts (yes, including me), personalized news feeds may not be creating a confirmation-bias crisis, after all. Most of these Millennials insist their social-media feeds are well balanced; the write-up explains:
“70 percent of Millennials say that their social media feeds are comprised of a diverse mix of viewpoints evenly mixed between those similar to and different from their own. An additional 16 percent say their feeds contain mostly viewpoints different from their own. And nearly three-quarters of those exposed to different views (73 percent) report they investigate others’ opinions at least some of the time–with a quarter saying they do it always or often.”
Well, that’s encouraging. Another finding might surprise some of us: Though a vast 90 percent of Millennials have smart phones, only half report being online most of all of the day. See the article for more, or navigate to the report itself; the study’s methodology is detailed at the end of the report.
Cynthia Murrell, April 15, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Google Altered Search Results?!
April 8, 2015
If you know anything about search results, search engine optimization, and search algorithms, you probably wondered if Google ever changed its search results so they would be favor one search result over another. Google already alters results with Google AdWords, the Right to Forgotten, and removing results if they break rules.
The FTC revealed via The Wall Street Journal that Google has been altering its search results for profit: “Inside The US Antitrust Probe Of Google.” The FTC found that Google was using its monopoly on search to harm Internet users and its rivals. FTC recommended a lawsuit be brought against Google for three of its practices. The FTC voted to end the investigation in 2013, which is strange, but they did so because they had competing recommendations.
Google continues to stand by its own innocence, citing that the case closed two years ago and that people continue to use its services. There is one big thing that the Wall Street Journal points out:
“On one issue—whether Google used anticompetitive tactics for its search engine—the competition staff recommended against a lawsuit, although it said Google’s actions resulted in “significant harm” to rivals. In three other areas, the report found evidence the company used its monopoly behavior to help its own business and hurt its rivals.”
Can this be considered part of their “do not evil” bylaw?
Whitney Grace, April 8, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Google has Made Web Sites Hot and Angry
April 7, 2015
Business Insider tells more about Google’s dominating behavior in “The Google Backlash Is Growing.” The backlash spawned from the FTC’s recently leaked report about how Google threatened to remove Web sites from search engine results if they did not allow Google to use their content.
“At the heart of the matter is the internal FTC report’s finding that Google was effectively blackmailing competing sites like Yelp and Amazon into using their data in its own search result. If they didn’t agree, they would get blacklisted from search results entirely.”
Google was facing a lawsuit, but they made some changes so they were able to escape…in the US. In Europe, an investigation is still underway. Some think the EU is harboring hostilities against a US company, but they are say it is not.
People in the US like Consumer Watchdog want the US Senate to reopen investigations to prove that Google is favoring its own services in search results and making competition appear in lower search rankings. Google, however, maintains its innocence and wants the matter to rest.
Is it not common business practice to downplay the competition? Not to say Google is innocent, but it makes logical sense to use that old school business tactic, especially when they control a whole lot of search.
Whitney Grace, April 7, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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