CenterBeam
The Daily Deal, 5/24/02: Tech Mover of the Day: CenterBeam Francis For CEO slot
by Paul Bonanos
Managed information-technology services firm CenterBeam Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., has hired as CEO, A. Kevin Francis, who previously had sold Canadian form-filling software maker Accelio Corp. to Adobe Systems Inc. He succeeds CenterBeam founder Sheldon Laube, who will continue as chairman of the company's board.
The new CEO arrives at a company that has raised more than $170 million in venture funding. "We had raised a lot of money that was focused on creating the [product] itself," Francis said. "I hope to begin an aggressive expansion of our sales and marketing efforts, and take the product to market."
Prior to his arrival at Accelio in 2000, the Nova Scotia-born Francis was vice-chairman, CEO and president of Xerox Canada, officially retiring in April 2000. He spent just over two years in that role, following a year as chief operating officer. He had been a Xerox Corp. employee for 25 years prior to his appointment as COO.
At Ottawa-based Accelio, previously known as JetForm Inc., Francis led the acquisition of Joey Technologies Inc. of St. Petersburg, Fla., a maker of form-filling software for handheld devices, in a stock-and-cash deal worth less than $1 million in November 2000.
Accelio struggled somewhat last fall, laying off workers and recasting the senior management team as its profits turned to losses. In December 2001, it received an unfriendly and unsolicited acquisition bid from Open Text Corp. of Waterloo, Ontario. Francis reportedly termed the CN$68.5 million ($42.7 million) cash bid "insulting."
He rejected it in January 2002. The company retained the services of CIBC World Markets and received a competing all-stock offer, worth CN$114 million from San Jose-based Adobe, which was quickly approved by 98% of Accelio's shareholders. Francis remained on board in an advisory role through the completion of the acquisition this spring, and will officially step down June 1. He will begin overseeing daily operations at CenterBeam in about ten days, he said.
Laube, who co-founded CenterBeam in 1999, is a former chief information officer of Price Waterhouse, chief technology officer of Novell Inc. of Provo, Utah, and a founding chief technology officer of USWeb Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. USWeb later merged with Cupertino, Calif.-based CKS Group, eventually becoming MarchFirst Inc. of Chicago following its subsequent merger with Whittman-Hart Inc.
"Sheldon Laube is one of the luminaries in the IT field, a very focused visionary," said Francis. "He anticipated shifts in the customer's view of distributed computing, that people will begin to think of it as a service, rather than simply as infrastructure."
Laube took CenterBeam through its three rounds of strategic fundraising. The company's first round of $21 million in summer 1999 was followed by a $41 million round in January 2000, which included $6 million in equipment financing. CenterBeam then announced an eyebrow-raising $115 million round in November 2000. The company's backers include Dell Ventures, EDS Ventures, Intel Capital and Microsoft.
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IT Management
CIO, 5/17/02: IT and Business Capabilities Linked to Core Competencies
Jan Duffy,
Group VP, Solutions Research
The basic tenets under which every commercial enterprise operates remain unchanged year after year:
· Change and uncertainty are constant.
· Assets must be used to generate value.
· Profitability is fundamental to survival.
· Competitors will come and go.
· New technologies and knowledge introduce new tools and techniques.
It is the way in which an organization deals with the environment that has changed and that can set it apart from the crowd. The best opportunity lies in dealing with challenges as a whole rather than as individual challenges and bringing technology to the forefront as the best weapon you've got. Along with the people who manage it and who use it, information technology (IT) now represents the nucleus of most core competencies. Sustainable success means staying ahead of the pack and throwing up dust as you go in the hope that your competitors won't see the way forward as clearly as you do.
[more]
Darwin, 5/02: Six Ways to Keep Spending On Track and In Line
You still need to invest in technology, even in tight economic times.
But you need to be smart, careful and learn how to manage like a banker.
BY DAINTRY DUFFY
Top companies in technology-dependent industries such as financial services, telecommunications, and transportation and logistics are using IT budget management to keep their momentum going, even in tough economic times. But the ability to intelligently manage an IT budget has always depended on a carefully honed set of management best practices.
Knowing where to spend your IT dollars when every dollar counts is critical to any company that wants to grow in lean times. Here are six ways to keep your spending on track for growth and in line with budgetary restraints.
[more]
Microsoft
ZDNet, 5/24/02: Coming soon: Windows your way
David Coursey,
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Today, Microsoft is releasing details of its plans to comply with the antitrust settlement reached with federal prosecutors last year. As part of that settlement, Microsoft agreed to open up the Windows desktop to middleware competition. With the release of Service Pack 1, due later this year, it will do just that.
Specifically, SP1 will allow both computer manufacturers and users themselves to make programs like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Messenger, Java, and Windows Media Player seem to disappear from their machines.
[more]
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