Author: Serkadis

The JC Penney board was looking for a silver bullet. They thought former Apple retail leader Ron Johnson had one. Turns out the guns were empty and a couple of years later, he has been handed his walking papers.

His firing from JC Penney is a good reminder that just because an executive is part of a winning team doesn’t mean an individual was the sole reason that team kept winning. Instead, it is the whole team effort that keeps the winning streak intact. (And more importantly, there is this little thing called luck and timing.)

A lot of people came together at Apple at precisely the right time and created magic. Similar plot lines unfolded at Google and then at Facebook. It happened at Microsoft and Sun. It is a story that repeats itself, and yet we forget about these magical confluences of luck and talent, and tend to believe in the power of one.

Johnson was awesome as Apple’s retail chief because he had a great product, great brand, great supply chain and most importantly a great think tank that wanted to change retail. He failed at JC Penney because he had none of those things. He was trying to rework a brand and change the culture at a company which had little or no time for his way of doing things.

Maybe he should come back to Cupertino.

Update: I had originally incorrectly spelt JC Penney as JC Penny. The error is regretted. 

Is IPTV an epic fail, or just for Microsoft? Ericsson is buying Mediaroom, ending weeks of rumors and leaving me (and presumably others) wondering what this means for Xbox 720 (or whatever Microsoft calls it) as an entertainment hub. Perhaps the visionaries up in Redmond, Wash. see something the Stockhom, Sweden-based telecom equipment giant should: IPTV has no long-term future.

Mediaroom is great. I’ve used the product since February 2008, when AT&T U-Verse came to the neighborhood. The program guide is straightforward and functional, and there are lots of trendsetting features, or were. Not much changed over the past two years, even while rivals added more HD-channel recording capabilities, among other enhancements. Many of the best, early features, such as streaming recorded shows among other boxes in the home, are mainstream from rivals. Mediaroom was not high on Microsoft’s priority list.

The company made its first inroads into IPTV nearly 15 years ago, with Microsoft TV being the first, major branded product for telecos. Microsoft renamed Mediaroom in June 2007. In the United States, Verizon developed a solution based on Microsoft TV, but dramatically changed the user interface about a year after launch. I first subscribed FiOS TV about a decade ago and kept the service until moving from the Washington, DC area to San Diego in October 2007.

AT&T deploys purer Mediaroom, which competes with Cox cable in my neighborhood. U-Verse uses an IP network to provide television broadcasts and Internet service. Telco, rather than cable company, provides the service, which in my home failed only twice in more than five years. The first time AT&T had service problems. The second time, there was a massive electrical outage in San Diego, which took down everything. I have never had cable service so reliable as this.

Besides AT&T, Entertain of Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, Telefonica and TELUS Optik TV all use Mediaroom, but reach is limited: Just 22 million set-top boxes worldwide. That’s a puny market that makes more sense for a telecom than a software company.

“Ericsson’s vision of the Networked Society foresees 50 billion devices to be connected via broadband, mobility and cloud”, Per Borgklint, a senior veep, says. “Future video distribution will have a similar impact on consumer behavior and consumption as mobile voice has had”.

That sounds like Ericsson might be looking beyond the traditional subscriber-TV model. There has to come a time when cable operators and telecos providing Internet pipes to homes adapt the business model. The Internet has gutted many traditional media markets, why not television, too?

When I look at what syncs more with Microsoft’s business, particularly entertainment strategies, cloud services to Xbox and other devices makes more sense than developing a platform architecture with limited reach. C`mon, 22 million set-top boxes globally might as well be nothing to Microsoft. But they matter more to Ericsson.

“This acquisition contributes to a leading position for Ericsson with more than 40 customers, serving over 11 million subscriber households”, Borgklint says. “In addition, Ericsson will be powered with senior competence and some of the most talented people within the field of IPTV distribution”.

See my next post for more on changing TV trends, focusing on cord-cutting. I originally wrote for this story but decided to separate content into two shorter posts.

Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

Google is always hosting authors for “At Google Talks” these days, and fortunately, it’s made for a great deal of interesting content for the rest of us. Goole regularly shares the talks on YouTube for all to enjoy.

In one of the latest additions to “At Google Talks,” Robert Greene, author of “Mastery” talks to a room full of Googlers:

More recent At Google Talks here.

There has probably been at least one time when you noticed that one of your pages used to rank for a certain search query, but then later dropped for some unexplained reason. Matt Cutts, in the latest Google Webmaster Help video, talks about why this might be the case.

Cutts responds to the following submitted question:

When we create a new landing page with quality content, Google ranks that page on the top 30-50 for targeted keywords. Then why does the rank get decreased for the next 2 to 3 weeks? If pages didn’t have required quality, then why did it get ranked in the first week?

“That’s a fun question because it sort of opens up how writing a search engine is kind of a complex task,” says Cutts. “You’re basically trying to make sure that you return the best quality result, but you also have to do that with limited information. For example, in the first minute after an earthquake, you might have different people, you know, saying different things. You know, ten minutes after an earthquake you have more information. An hour after an earthquake you have a lot more. With any event that has breaking news, it’s the sort of thing where it can be hard to know, even if multiple people are all saying the same thing, and one person might be the original author, one might be using that RSS. It can be difficult to try to suss out where was this content appearing originally.”

“And over time – over the course of hours, or days, or weeks – that gets easier,” he continues. “But it can be harder over the course of just minutes or hours. So a lot of the times whenever you see something ranking for a while, we’re taking our best guess, and then as more information becomes available, we incorporate that. And then eventually, typically, things settle down into a steady state. And then when there’s a steady state, we’re typically able to better guess about how relevant something is.”

As Cutts goes on to note, Google finds that freshness is deserved for some queries, while evergreen content works better for others. In my experience, Google struggles with this a lot, but seems to give more weight to freshness more often than not. Of course, I’m typically writing about newsy topics, so that makes sense to some extent (though there are plenty of times in researching topics that freshness gets a little too much weight).

Meryl Streep issued a statement to the press today sharing her thoughts on the late Margaret Thatcher. Streep played Thatcher in the film “The Iron Lady,” directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Streep won an academy award for the role.

Here’s what she had to say about Thatcher (via The Washington Post):

“Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics.

It is hard to imagine a part of our current history that has not been affected by measures she put forward in the UK at the end of the 20th century. Her hard-nosed fiscal measures took a toll on the poor, and her hands-off approach to financial regulation led to great wealth for others. There is an argument that her steadfast, almost emotional loyalty to the pound sterling has helped the UK weather the storms of European monetary uncertainty.

But to me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. To have come up, legitimately, through the ranks of the British political system, class bound and gender phobic as it was, in the time that she did and the way that she did, was a formidable achievement. To have won it, not because she inherited position as the daughter of a great man, or the widow of an important man, but by dint of her own striving. To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas- wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now-without corruption- I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle. To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable.

I was honored to try to imagine her late life journey, after power; but I have only a glancing understanding of what her many struggles were, and how she managed to sail through to the other side. I wish to convey my respectful condolences to her family and many friends.”

For more thoughts on Thatcher’s passing from the Twitterverse, go here.

Here is what Facebook Graph Search has looked like for me until today:

Everybody else that has had Graph Search that I have seen has had the same design. That is until last week, when we spotted a new design the company started testing. This one had more of a classic Facebook search feel to it, including a white box with a magnifying glass icon in it:

Today, we’re seeing several more variations. This one is only slightly different than the one above, with straight edges instead of rounded, and the icon on the opposite side:

This one is similar to the original one, but cuts down on the text to just say “Search”:

It gets right to the point. But then there’s also this one:

Facebook tests different designs and features with certain subsets of users all the time, so it’s not really surprising that people are seeing different looks, but it seems like the’ve kicked up the experimentation in recent days.

There are still a lot of Facebook users that don’t have access to Graph Search. The company did say when it was introduced that it would be rolling out slowly. They weren’t kidding. Who knows what it will look like by the time the entire user base has it?

Preference?

I want to thank Janet Keough for the following update. I have worked with Jan on some of their efforts in Cloquet Valley and I am always so impressed with her and the whole team of dedicated community leaders – especially since community leader seems to be a labor of love or necessity, not a paid position…

Some progress is being made toward better broadband in a group of townships north of Duluth known as the Cloquet Valley Internet Initiative.  In the last few months, this group of intrepid folks has completed two feasibility studies and established a new website (www.connectcloquetvalley.com), thanks to help from the Blandin Foundation, St. Louis County and Lake County, and AgStar Financial.  These efforts are starting to realize results, with modest improvements in broadband speed and efforts underway to expand the scope of improvements.

The first study was conducted by U-reka Broadband Ventures, and it provided an expert overview of internet availability in the 9-township region.  Through interviews with the regional internet providers, the U-reka team gave us an assessment of the real potential for expansion and upgrades.  U-reka worked with the townships to test actual speeds, and they gave us recommendations for next steps.  Their report can be found in the Cloquet Valley Internet Initiative website.

The second study was an engineering and business analysis by Compass Consultants, Inc., and was also a collaborative effort with the township team.  The engineering analysis was based on property locations that had been assembled by the townships and on the results of the townships’ market questionnaire (Thanks to the Blandin Foundation for help with the questionnaire!).  The study looked at FTTH and FTTN-DSL options, and included maps, technology needs, a set of best, moderate and worst case business plans, and scenarios for fulfilling capital needs.  An executive summary can be found in the CVII website.

We are taking the advice of our consultants seriously, and in fact, incremental improvements have already been realized.  Immediate improvements are coming to many citizens who are trying mobile wireless options or the upgraded satellite systems, Exede and Gen4.  Some townships are having discussions with the electric cooperative, Cooperative Light and Power, about deploying fixed wireless along with advanced electric metering systems.  We are continuing to pursue fiber-based options, but our feasibility studies have shown us the reality of cost of this technology.  We are seeking partners with interests in rural, underserved markets such as ours.  And we are continuing to learn about broadband opportunities and issues.

We have learned a great deal about the challenges to bringing high speed broadband to rural areas.  The cost of fiber projects can be daunting ($4000-10,000 per premise!).  Partnerships are critical.  And there are many dimensions to meeting these challenges in rural areas, including public policy, incentives for providers, shifting market interest, evolution in electric utilities, rapid technology development and progress in neighboring areas; all these are in play to potentially align with local strategies!

We are using our new website to educate our citizens about what broadband internet can do, and helping them connect with the state and national dialogue on broadband.  The website was made possible through the Blandin Community Resources Program who helped us get the website started and designed.  We hope the website can show regional leaders and regional broadband providers that there is a good market in our rural area!

Last month, Facebook launched the new Timeline look with more focus on interests, and let users showcase stories from apps in dedicated collections (this is all still in the process of rolling out). Today, the company announced that it is rolling out new tools to make it easier for developers to set up their apps’ Open Graph stories and timeline collections.

“Common action and object types such as ‘video.watches’ and ‘music.listens’ no longer require configuration within Open Graph tools,” explains Facebook’s Caroline Schafer, in a post on the company’s developer blog. “To start publishing common actions, simply select the SDK that you use and paste in the sample code that we provide for each action type.”

Documentation for this is available here.

Facebook has also made it easier for developers to create custom actions and object types, enabling them to preview the stories that their apps can publish to the News Feed. Once a story’s configuration is finalized, developers can hit “Get Code” in the Open Graph dashboard, and past it into the app to publish the action with logged in users.

Documentation for this is here.

“In addition to News Feed stories, users can now add your app’s content to dedicated collections on their timeline and About page,” says Schafer. “For example, a recipe app can include collections such as ‘Recently Cooked Recipes’ or ‘Top Recipes.’ Collections can also have different layouts, such as lists, map, and gallery below.”

Documentation for this is here.

Developers must submit their app’s News Feed stories and timeline collections for approval, so Facebook can make sure they’re up to snuff with their quality guidelines. The review status can be seen in the Review Status section of the dashboard. Developers will also receive alerts when submissions are made, approved or returned for changes.

Mad Men returned to AMC on Sunday night after much anticipation from die hard fans of the popular series. For those of you who haven’t gotten to see the episode yet, you don’t have to have cable or a satellite package to enjoy the show.

AMC announced today that it has made the episode available to watch for free online at AMCTV.com. Watch it soon though, because it will only be available for free for a limited time (though you shouldn’t have any trouble finding it elsewhere online for a price).

Here’s the link.

The episode is two hours long.

If you’ve already seen the episode, you might be interested in watching this short behind-the-scenes video:

The next episode premieres this Sunday at 10/9c.

Microsoft and Ericsson announced today that Ericsson will acquire Microsoft Mediaroom, its IPTV platform. It will be integrated into Ericsson’s existing Business Unit Support Solutions.

Microsoft will now focus its TV-related efforts on the Xbox brand. In a post on the Official Microsoft Blog, Corporate VP of Marketing, Strategy and Business for the company’s Interactive Entertainment Business, Yusuf Mehdi, writes:

This acquisition is mutually beneficial and strategically aligned for both parties. Ericsson will continue to invest in the growth and success of Mediaroom to the benefit of customers, employees, and the industry. It allows Microsoft to commit 100 percent of its focus on consumer TV strategy with Xbox.

…

With the sale of Mediaroom, Microsoft is dedicating all TV resources to Xbox in a continued mission to make it the premium entertainment service that delivers all the games and entertainment consumers want – whether on a console, phone, PC or tablet. And with 76 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world with 46 million Xbox LIVE members, it is a mission that gets us out of bed in the morning.

The company indicated that it aims to form numerous partnerships in the industry, including content creators, studios, labels, networks, content aggregators, operators and distributors.

Per Borgklint, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Unit Support Solutions at Ericsson said: “Ericsson’s vision of the Networked Society foresees 50 billion devices to be connected via broadband, mobility and cloud. Future video distribution will have a similar impact on consumer behavior and consumption as mobile voice has had. This acquisition contributes to a leading position for Ericsson with more than 40 customers, serving over 11 million subscriber households. In addition, Ericsson will be powered with senior competence and some of the most talented people within the field of IPTV distribution.”

“Mediaroom is the leading platform for video distribution deployed with the world’s largest IPTV operators,” Borgklint added. “This strategic acquisition positions Ericsson as an industry leader thanks to the skills and experiences of the talented people of Mediaroom combined with Ericsson’s end to end service capabilities.”

“We are proud of the number one IPTV market position that we have achieved with Mediaroom. Ericsson’s complementary portfolio of TV and networking services will help drive the future growth and development of Mediaroom,” said Microsoft Corporate VP Tom Gibbons. “Ericsson is positioned to be a valuable strategic partner for operators and TV service providers around the world as the IPTV market evolves.”

Microsoft is planning an Xbox event for next month, when the company is expected to announced the next generation Xbox.

What shameless exploitation. I know PC sales are slow, with Windows 8 giving no lift. So Microsoft resorts to this? Today, Stephen Rose issues an ultimatum: Windows XP support ends in 365 days. From April 8, 2014, there will be no more patches and updates for you.

How outrageous! Microsoft cuts off XP users thirteen-and-a-half years after releasing the operating system. My leather jacket is older, and the clothier who made it isn’t forcing me to buy a new one. Nor does Texas Instruments demand I upgrade from the calculator purchased in college. If users want to run Windows XP forever, Microsoft should let them. Instead, it’s compute at their own risks or upgrade.

America is all about freedom and spreading the right to choose across the planet. So why is the company located here, which long had the goal of putting a PC in every home, working against choice? Actually, choice anchors Microsoft marketing. But no longer. First Internet Explorer 6, and now Windows XP. If customers choose to run both products for even a quarter century, shouldn’t Microsoft support them?

You have the right to run old, buggy software. You have the right to get more viruses and to be swooped up into the next spam-spewing, identity-stealing phishing botnet. You have the right to run PCs that should be in museums not your kid’s bedroom. You don’t need no stinking Microsoft telling you when to upgrade.

But noooo, Microsoft has to pull Windows XP’s Lifecycle Support plug and lay the operating system to rest. Windows 8 needs fixing. PC sales aren’t there. So some sneaky Microsoft marketer decides to kill off PC support, after the company extended it over and over and over again. Surely you were confident that another reprieve would come, like so many before.

Obviously profits matter more than loyal customers like you who bought Windows XP in 2001 — or 2004 with Service Pack 1 — and never gave Microsoft another dime. Or you pirated XP and paid nothing. But you’re loyal! You could have switched to Linux long ago. It’s free, too. But you used Windows XP all these years. Now Microsoft expects you to change?

You want your Start button and menu. You need your ActiveX. You don’t want a browser that properly displays all websites, unlike IE6 on XP, because it’s thrilling to feel like you’re a rogue, a cowboy living in the rustic, untamed Wild West. You chuckle at all the unprompted porn popups. What service! Nudes come to you, you don’t have to search for them! And you know your buddies don’t have this benefit, because newer Windows versions prevent this kind of activity.

You’re comfortable shagging a cup of coffee, while waiting for software to download and install. It’s important me-time your Windows 7 and 8 friends never get to enjoy. They’re glued to chairs, while you’re free to roam. Now Microsoft wants to take that freedom way!

Yes, I’m being sarcastic. You thought otherwise?

In all seriousness, Rose’s explanation of Microsoft Lifecycle Support is one the best you’ll read anywhere.

If you’re using XP today, don’t wait another 365 days to upgrade. Do us all a favor and take your botnet PC offline today. Please?

Photo Credit: abd/Shutterstock

Last month, I wrote about an interesting iPhone 5 case called the Linkase. And by interesting, I mean it claims to something that most cases can’t: Boost your iPhone’s Wi-Fi signal strength by up to 50 percent. It’s made by a company in Taiwan called Abosolute Technology. The case has a few minor design flaws in my opinion — the fact that it doesn’t work with a 30-pin to Lightning adapter is one — but more important is the wireless signal claim. Does it actually work?

In this brief video, I show you how the case works in locations where my wireless network generally sucks. We have 75 Mbps FiOS broadband service with a new 802.11 a/c router and yet in a few rooms, the Wi-Fi is generally useless. And outside of the home far from the router? Same story. Yet in both of these locations, you can see the positive impact made when use the Linkase with my iPhone 5.

The magic is in the slide-out EMW, or electromagnetic waveguide element, which works with phone’s internal Wi-Fi antenna for the boost. I’ve done plenty of tests with the $49 Linkase — not just what I show on video — and it generally works as advertised. Wi-Fi signals are typically much better with the EMW element extended although it really only works in areas with poor or marginal signal reception. Don’t expect Wi-Fi to be faster where it’s already pretty solid.

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If there’s a poster child for Ireland’s ideal climate for free cooling, it would be the huge data center in Dublin that powers Microsoft’s online services in Europe. Our photo feature, Inside Microsoft’s European Cloud Hub, examines how Microsoft has optimized its data center design to make efficient use of fresh air, and follows the path of the air through the giant facility.

Mobile app store downloads from the four major stores — Apple, BlackBerry, Google and Microsoft — reached 13.4 billion in first quarter, generating $2.2 billion revenue, according to Canalys. Combined, revenue from new sales, in-app purchases and subscriptions grew 9 percent from fourth quarter, while number of downloads climbed by 11 percent.

There are a half-dozen measures that mark successful platforms, with money being the most important. Developers typically go where they earn more. That’s preface to a fascinating juxtaposition partly explaining developer preference for iOS, even though more Android devices ship and cumulative sales (750 million to 500 million) are larger. Google Play accounted for 51 percent of downloads during Q1. But Apple’s App Store generated 74 percent of the revenue. Ponder those numbers for a moment.

Winner takes Bronz

“Apple’s App Store and Google Play remain the heavyweights in the app store world”, Tim Shepherd, Canalys senior analyst, says. “In comparison, BlackBerry World and the Windows Phone Store remain distant challengers today, though they still should not be ignored”.

BlackBerry and Windows Phone, once dominant smartphone operating systems, struggle for relevance with consumers and developers. “BlackBerry and Microsoft particularly need to continue to proactively work to attract fresh, innovative content and services to their respective catalogs, and fill gaps in their inventories”, Shepard says. Some of those holes are huge, with homegrown apps for services like Facebook and nothing at for others, such as Instagram.

“They also need to increase device sales around BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8 to increase the addressable market opportunities on offer to developers”, Shepard warns. BlackBerry and Microsoft had respective smartphone OS sales share of 3.5 percent and 3 percent during fourth quarter, according to Gartner.

BlackBerry and Windows Phone struggle with the age-old chicken-and-egg scenario. Which comes first users or apps? Developers don’t want to invest in platforms if there aren’t users for the apps. Meanwhile people don’t typically adopt platforms without there being apps. Vying against Android and iOS, which are more widely adopted and pack stores with hundreds of thousands more apps, extenuates the dilemmas.

Platform Winners

Typically, successful platforms share six common traits:

• There are good development tools and APIs for easily creating applications
• There is at least one killer application people really want
• There is breadth of useful applications
• Third parties make lots of money
• The platform is broadly available
• There is a robust ecosystem

By most measures, BlackBerry and Windows Phone currently fail to meet the final four.

“The strength of app ecosystems will increasingly help to determine winners and losers in the smart device industry”, Shepard acknowledges. “BlackBerry 10 now has more than 100,000 apps available through its storefront, showing good growth from the 70,000 it boasted at launch, and the new devices on the platform have given BlackBerry a much greater chance to compete for consumer attention. Its app story is going from strength to strength, but there is no room for complacency”.

But the majority of newer BlackBerry apps are Android ports, which signals less-than-stellar developer commitment.

“Microsoft, with the help of partners such as Nokia, is also making good progress attracting some important titles to the Windows Phone platform, but it too needs to do more to make building apps for its platform a priority for developers and also do a better job of marketing and communicating the already established strength of its app story”, Shepard says.

Android-iOS success leaves room, at best, for one more platform, which puts BlackBerry and Windows Phone in direct competition — groveling share at the bottom rather than raking it off the top.

That said, “the Apple-Google duopoly creates certain challenges for app publishers, carriers, investors and device vendors, so there is intense interest in the possible emergence of a third ecosystem”, Adam Daum, Canalys chief analyst, says.

Global Trends

More broadly, tracking with recent device buying trends, emerging markets — Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa — lifted app downloads. Mature markets also saw healthy growth rates: revenue and downloads grew by 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively, in North America and 8 percent and 10 percent in Western Europe.

“Apps have had a huge impact on the way consumers use mobile devices, what they value, and what they expect from smart phones and tablets”, Daum emphasizes. “They are now central to how consumers engage with content and connected services, and how they personalize their devices around the app-enabled features that are important to them”.

Mobile app success feeds the whole “PC is dead” debate. Last week, Gartner offered grim forecast for the personal computer, as shipments decline, as smartphones and tablets make heady gains.

“This is a multi-billion-dollar growth market, with more and more consumers around the world now comfortable and confident in finding apps, downloading them and making in-app purchases, on a growing addressable base of smartphones and tablets”, Daum asserts.

Photo Credit: David Andrew Larsen/Shutterstock

With smartphones, as with any category of consumer electronics, we have no choice but to accept compromises. This has been the case throughout the history of cell phones and it continues to hold true even with best handsets on the market today. Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 5 features a class-leading design with fast, smooth software, but it has a comparatively small display and lacks some of the great new functionality we’ve seen introduced on other platforms in recent years. The Samsung (005930) Galaxy S III is a sleek handset with a stunning screen and a great feature set, but it feels like a cheap toy, as does its successor. Nokia’s (NOK) Lumia 920 packs plenty of punch in a sleek package, but it’s thick and heavy, and it is missing a boatload of top apps. It’s inevitable — some level of compromise is inherent in all smartphones.

Continue reading…

Google has launched an update (1.3.0) for its Google Drive iPhone app. It now includes the ability to edit documents and spreadsheets in landscape.

In addition to that, the app now loads faster and has quicker editing support, according to Google. The update also comes with some minor bug fixes.

The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and requires iOS 5.0 or later. It’s optimized for iPhone 5.

Last week, Google launched Quickoffice for iPhone (as well as Android) to complement an iPad app launched back in December. Edits can be made to files using Quickoffice, and those files can be saved back to Google Drive.

[via 9to5google]

There’s one area of solar that is going gangbusters in 2013, and that’s companies that are financing and installing solar panels on rooftops. On Monday morning solar financing startup Clean Power Finance announced that it has raised a round of $37 million in growth equity from investors including Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Claremont Creek Venture.

Odds are, it’s a pretty safe bet, even for the venture capitalists that have been scared off by the lack of consistent returns in cleantech investing. Last year there were a record-breaking 3.3 gigawatts worth of solar panels — or 16 million individual solar panels — installed in the U.S., making solar power the fastest-growing energy source domestically, according to Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research.

The reason that solar panels exploded last year was due to a few factors: the price of solar panels dropped dramatically, companies have been offering financing deals that cover the upfront costs of the systems (like Clean Power Finance), and some states have been offering strong incentives to get panels installed. It’s not a coincidence that states like California with the best subsidies for solar panels had the most installations last year.

Clean Power Finance is a solar software and financing company, and it can put money into a variety of solar installers across the country. It originally grew its business on providing Software-as-a-Service tools to solar installers to start the sales, rebate, and lead-gen processes, but more recently started providing financing agreements like power purchase agreements (PPAs) for rooftop solar for home owners. A PPA is a contract over a time to buy the solar power as a service, and commonly avoid having to pay the upfront installation fee.

Solar installer SolarCity, which has a similar business model to Clean Power Finance, went public last December and its stock is trading around $18.50 Monday morning — $10 above its debut price. Sungevity, another solar financing and installation company, was able to raise a large round of $125 million of equity and project finance earlier this year.

Clean Power Finance previously raised funds from Clean Pacific Ventures, Sand Hill Angels and founder Gary Kremen, who is a long time entrepreneur and investor, and who previously founded of Match.com. Clean Power Finance raised another $25 million from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Claremont Creek Ventures back in 2011.

Solar financing and installation is one of the few bright spots in cleantech investing. It’s a business model innovation, which is based around solar panels becoming a low cost commodity, and banks or corporations becoming comfortable putting up the upfront funds for the installation. In contrast solar manufacturing innovation has proved to be far tougher as an investment category (Solyndra, Miasole, etc.). The solar module manufacturing industry is also seeing mass bankruptcies this year, precisely because the cost of solar modules has gotten so low.

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