Category: News

Google has definitely taken the world of wearable computing by storm with Glass, but there’s another class of wearable computers that’s slowly gaining popularity – the smart watch. Pebble already proved that there’s a demand for smart watches with its $10 million Kickstarter, and Apple is rumored to be dabbling with the tech as well. Now another tech giant is joining in.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft may be working on a smart watch design. The news comes from Microsoft suppliers in Asia that were asked to ship smart watch components to the company for testing. It’s said that Microsoft’s hardware designers are looking into it, but there’s no guarantee that Microsoft will move ahead with it.

So, what will Microsoft’s potential smart watch look like? There’s not much information available at the moment, but we do know that the company ordered 1.5-inch displays from its suppliers. It would be a bit bigger than Pebble’s 1.26-inch display, but display size isn’t exactly the most important aspect of a smart watch. What’s most important is its functionality and which phones it can work with. Windows Phone is the most obvious choice, but Microsoft would be stupid not to add support for iOS and Android as well.

Still, all of this is merely a rumor for now, just like Apple’s own rumored smart watch. These devices may not even see the light of day as smart watches, while popular among certain groups, are still struggling to find mass market adoption. Microsoft should know this better than anybody else as its previous foray into wearable computing didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome.

Detroit-based Superior Capital Partners and Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Plymouth Venture Partners have put an undisclosed amount of capital into XanEdu Holdings, a division of NAPC Holdings. NAPC Holdings is a platform created by Superior Capital in 2009. Details of the round were not disclosed.

PRESS RELEASE
Superior Capital Partners, LLC, a Detroit-based private equity firm, and Plymouth Venture Partners, an Ann Arbor-based venture capital firm, announced today a joint investment in XanEdu Holdings, LLC. XanEdu is a division of NAPC Holdings, LLC, a platform that was created by Superior in 2009 to affect the acquisitions of XanEdu and NA Publishing, Inc.

XanEdu is a leading publisher of customized course materials for the higher education market. Based in Ann Arbor, XanEdu has nearly 100 employees located in offices in Ann Arbor, MI, Louisville, KY and Acton, MA. XanEdu custom course materials are used by more than 630,000 students at 1,000 institutions. Folio-X, XanEdu’s award-winning e-learning solution, was launched in December 2010, the same year the iPad was introduced. The financing will enable XanEdu to expand the capabilities of the Folio-X platform and accelerate its growth initiatives including new publisher partnerships, content development, and custom publishing editorial services.

“We’re excited to be partnering with Superior and the XanEdu team,” remarked Mark Horne, Plymouth’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our due diligence revealed the proven potential for XanEdu to expand its leading position in the higher education custom textbook and e-learning market. We’re confident that they have the right strategy and management team in place to continue delivering on its mission.”

“We’re honored that Mark Horne, Ian Bund and the rest of the Plymouth team share our belief in the growth potential of XanEdu,” said Mark Carroll, Superior’s Managing Partner. “During Superior’s ownership period, the Company has transformed from a traditional provider of mostly print-based coursepacks to a provider of a wide variety of custom-developed solutions that are now delivered via the Folio-X digital platform. Plymouth provides us with an investment partner with deep experience in accomplishing aggressive growth initiatives in a technology driven market.”

Alar Elken, CEO of XanEdu Holdings commented, “This combined investment from Plymouth and Superior provides XanEdu with the resources to accelerate the transformation of XanEdu into a dynamic e-learning company. Education is becoming more portable, more dynamic and more engaging. Students are demanding mobility, interactivity, and currency. We have the resources in place to assist instructors, students, and institutions in accessing greater choices and in providing greater flexibility in their learning materials at a lower price point than traditional solutions.”

SOURCE Superior Capital Partners, LLC

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KPS Capital Partners has closed its KPS Special Situations Fund IV with with $3.5 billion in investor capital commitments. The firm will focus on controlling investments in corporate carve-outs, turnarounds, restructurings, bankruptcies and other special situations. KPS Capital said the fund surpassed its $3 billion target.

PRESS RELEASE
KPS Capital Partners, LP (“KPS”), a leading private equity firm, announced today the first and final closing of KPS Special Situations Fund IV (“KPS Fund IV” or the “Fund”) was held on April 12, 2013. KPS Fund IV, with $3.5 billion in investor capital commitments, will be focused on controlling investments in corporate carve-outs, turnarounds, restructurings, bankruptcies and other special situations.

KPS Fund IV, which had a $3.0 billion target, is the third oversubscribed institutional private equity fund raised by KPS. The fundraise was completed in under three months.

Michael Psaros and David Shapiro, Co-Founders and Managing Partners of KPS, said “We are humbled by the demand from the global investment community for KPS Fund IV and we are very grateful for the support of a group of prestigious investors from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

“We believe that the demand for the Fund reflects our ability, over decades and across economic cycles, to add real value as a general partner by seeing value where other investors do not, buying right and making businesses better. We believe our success is the result of our operations focused investment strategy, the long term continuity of our partnership and the strength of our core investment team.”

The KPS Fund IV investment team will be managed by partners Michael Psaros, David Shapiro, Raquel Palmer and Jay Bernstein, who lead a team of experienced and talented professionals.

The investment period for KPS Fund IV will commence following the conclusion of KPS Special Situations Fund III’s investment campaign.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP served as legal counsel in the formation of KPS Fund IV.

About KPS Capital Partners, LP

KPS Capital Partners, LP is the manager of the KPS Special Situations Funds, a family of private equity funds with $6.0 billion of assets under management focused on constructive investing in restructurings, turnarounds and other special situations. The KPS investment strategy targets manufacturing and industrial companies with strong market positions that are going through a period of transition or experiencing operating or financial difficulties. For over two decades, the partners of KPS have worked with the management teams and associates of its portfolio companies to improve operating and financial performance by focusing on cost reduction, efficiency, operational excellence and strategic growth initiatives. KPS Portfolio Companies, as of December 31, 2012, have aggregate annual revenues of approximately $6.8 billion, operate 85 manufacturing plants in 25 countries, and employ over 29,000 associates, directly and through joint ventures worldwide. The KPS investment strategy and portfolio companies are described in detail at the firm’s website: www.kpsfund.com.

SOURCE KPS Capital Partners, LP

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There is no denying that the Volkswagen Beetle does a lot of things well. It gets decent fuel economy, is fun to drive and is small enough that you can generally park it anywhere. But crossing a lake? That’s a bit much even for a Beetle. If you’re a redneck though and you’ve got a crowd of drunk spectators goading you on, well then, I suppose anything is possible. Check it out after the jump.

Source: Youtube.com

Dish Network proposed a $25.5 billion merger with Sprint Nextel on Monday. Under the proposal, which has been submitted to the Sprint Nextel Board of Directors, Sprint shareholders would get $7.00 per share.

The proposal is designed to upstage the pending $20.1 billion acquisition form Softbank, which has yet to close.

Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen said, “The Dish proposal clearly presents Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending SoftBank proposal. Sprint shareholders will benefit from a higher price with more cash while also creating the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in a combined Dish/Sprint with a significantly-enhanced strategic position and substantial synergies that are not attainable through the pending SoftBank proposal.”

“A transformative Dish/Sprint merger will create the only company that can offer customers a convenient, fully-integrated, nationwide bundle of in- and out-of-home video, broadband and voice services,” he added. “Additionally, the combined national footprints and scale will allow Dish/Sprint to bring improved broadband services to millions of homes with inferior or no access to competitive broadband services. This unique, combined company will have a leadership position in video, data and voice and the necessary broadband spectrum to provide customers with rich content everywhere, all the time.”

According to Dish, the proposed combination will “result in synergies and growth opportunities estimated at $37 billion in net present value, including an estimated $11 billion in cost savings.”

The company has shared Ergen’s full letter to Sprint Nextel Chairman of the Board, James Hance, Jr.:

Dear Jim:

Charlie Ergen
Chairman

Facebook Home, the company’s new OS-lite “app family” that takes over your Android device and turns the homescreen into a Facebook news feed, launched this past Friday. Now you can download the app collection from Google Play, free, on a select number of Android devices.

When Facebook first announced Home, they launched a quirky little ad featuring some plane antics. Now, Facebook has unveiled the second Facebook Home ad in this style, made by the people at Wieden+Kennedy. This ad is called “Dinner”:

Facebook also put out this semi-ad called “Launch Day.” It stars Zuckerberg, whose pep talk is flooded with events from on engineer’s news feed. Both of these ads stick with the Facebook Home brings your Facebook life everywhere theme. Check it out:

One of the best parts about Google Drive is its real time collaboration. Real time collaboration is only available in Google Drive documents or apps built with the Realtime API though. Now Mozilla is working on bringing that level of collaboration to the entire Web.

Mozilla Labs, the group that brought us Open Badges, Popcorn and more, has unveiled its latest project – TowTruck. In essence, TowTruck is an open source HTML5-based tool that lets multiple people work on the same Web page together. The tool uses WebRTC to enable video/audio communications between parties while they edit and browse the Web together.

Here’s an early proof of concept video that shows what Tow Truck looked like two months ago. The version that’s available now has WebRTC:

Tow Truck – Proof of Concept in Progress from Simon on Vimeo.

TowTruck is obviously built with developers in mind. Many Web designers no longer work in the same office, let alone the same state or country. A tool like TowTruck would be incredibly useful for these designers as they can now show others examples of their work, including the code, in real time. The others can then help refine that code in real time.

If you want to try out for TowTruck for yourself, you can do so here. Mozilla also provides the JavaScript necessary to integrate TowTruck into your own site at the above link. That being said, Mozilla warns that TowTruck is currently in alpha and doesn’t recommend that you use it in production at this time.

[h/t: The Next Web]

PowerSecure International Inc., a publicly traded company, has acquired privately held Solais Lighting Inc. Solais is a Stamford Conn.-based maker of LED lamps and fixtures for commercial and industrial applications. PowerSecure paid $6.5 million in cash plus 675,160 shares of PowerSecure common stock and assumed approximately $200,000 million in negative working capital for a total transaction value of $15 million, the company announced in a press release.

PRESS RELEASE
PowerSecure International, Inc. (Nasdaq: POWR) today announced that it has acquired Solais Lighting, Inc., a private company based in Stamford, CT which has a proprietary portfolio of LED lamps and fixtures for commercial and industrial applications that provide superior light output, thermal management, optics, light quality and aesthetics.

The acquisition strengthens and complements PowerSecure’s existing LED business with additional product lines and an expanded customer base, and adds strong skill sets around product design, product commercialization, manufacturing and materials sourcing.

PowerSecure paid the stockholders of Solais $6.5 million in cash plus 675,160 shares of PowerSecure common stock and assumed approximately $0.2 million in negative working capital for a total transaction value of $15 million. The PowerSecure shares were valued at their volume-weighted average closing sale price (VWAP) as reported on the Nasdaq Global Select Market over the five business days immediately preceding the closing date of April 12, 2013, or $12.22 per share. All outstanding shares of capital stock of Solais were exchanged for the merger consideration.

“The expertise Solais has demonstrated in developing best-in-class innovative technology in parallel with some of the most effective sourcing, procurement and manufacturing in the industry will provide us with catalysts to accelerate the growth and profitability of our LED lighting business,” said Sidney Hinton, chief executive officer of PowerSecure.

“James and the accomplished Solais leadership team bring additional strength to PowerSecure and experience with distributor channel relationships that add to our new ESCO product channel and broaden our product offerings to our direct customers and utility partners,” Hinton added.

PowerSecure expects the transaction to be slightly accretive to revenues and earnings in 2013 (subject to finalization of accounting related to the amortization of intangible assets) and meaningfully accretive in subsequent years.

“There is tremendous synergy between our companies. With this merger, we combine the breadth, strength, innovation and success of PowerSecure with the business of Solais to accelerate our growth in the marketplace and better serve our clients. In addition, we can apply our efficient manufacturing expertise and proprietary technologies to enhance the value of PowerSecure’s overall LED lighting portfolio,” said James Leahy, chief executive officer of Solais.

Conference Call

PowerSecure International, Inc. (Nasdaq: POWR) will host a conference call on Monday, April 15, 2013 at 8:30 a.m. ET to discuss the company’s acquisition of Solais Lighting, Inc.

To access the live webcast, please log on to the investor section of the company’s website at http://www.powersecure.com.

Analysts and institutional investors can also access the call by dialing 888-679-8018 (or 617-213-4845 if dialing internationally) and providing passcode 38138943. If you are unable to participate during the live webcast, a replay of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after the completion of the call through midnight on April 29, 2013. To listen to the replay, dial 888-286-8010 (or 617-801-6888 if dialing internationally), and enter passcode 23703878. In addition, the webcast will be archived on the company’s website at www.powersecure.com.

About PowerSecure

PowerSecure International, Inc. is a leading provider of utility and energy technologies to electric utilities, and their industrial, institutional and commercial customers. PowerSecure provides products and services in the areas of Interactive Distributed Generation ® (IDG®), energy efficiency and utility infrastructure. The company is a pioneer in developing IDG® power systems with sophisticated smart grid capabilities, including the ability to 1) forecast electricity demand and electronically deploy the systems to deliver more efficient, and environmentally friendly, power at peak power times, 2) provide utilities with dedicated electric power generation capacity to utilize for demand response purposes and 3) provide customers with the most dependable standby power in the industry. Its proprietary distributed generation system designs utilize a range of technologies to deliver power, including renewables. The company’s energy efficiency business develops energy efficient lighting technologies that improve the quality of light, including its proprietary EfficientLights® LED lighting products for grocery, drug and convenience stores, and its SecureLite area light and PowerLite street lights for utilities and municipalities. PowerSecure also provides electric utilities with transmission and distribution infrastructure maintenance and construction services, and engineering and regulatory consulting services. Additional information is available at www.powersecure.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of and made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are all statements other than statements of historical facts, including but not limited to statements relating to the projected success of the Solais business and the projected financial results of the acquired Solais business and the effect of the acquisition on the financial results of the company, the outlook for the company’s future revenues, earnings, margins, cash resources and cash flow and other financial and operating information and data; the company’s future business operations, strategies and prospects; the anticipated benefits and future results of the reported transaction; and all other statements concerning the plans, intentions, expectations, projections, hopes, beliefs, objectives, goals and strategies of management, including statements about other future financial and non-financial items, performance or events and about present and future products, services, technologies and businesses and the reported transaction; and statements of assumptions underlying the foregoing.

Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or events and are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed, projected or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to, those risks, uncertainties and other factors identified from time to time in the company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, as well as in subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. Accordingly, there can be no assurance that the results expressed, projected or implied by any forward-looking statements will be achieved, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this press release speak only as of the date hereof and are based on the current plans, goals, objectives, strategies, intentions, expectations and assumptions of, and the information currently available to, management. The company assumes no duty or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as the result of changes in expectations, new information, future events, conditions or circumstances or otherwise.

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No official announcement has been made yet, but reports have come out indicating that Google has settled with the European Commission in a two-year antitrust investigation. This one goes far beyond the settlement the company recently reached with the Federal Trade Commission in the United States.

Under the proposal, as it’s being reported, Google will label its own results, and it will show competitors’ links in cases where it shows its on results. The New York Times reports:

Google will not have to change the algorithm that produces its search results, the people said. Under the proposal, Google agrees to clearly label search results from its own properties, like Google Plus Local or Google News, and in some cases to show links from rival search engines.

…

In areas where Google does not make money from search results, like weather or news, the company will label the results as Google-owned properties. In areas where Google sells ads, like local business reviews, it will show links to at least three competitors. In areas in which all search results are paid ads, like shopping, Google will auction links to rivals.

Like in the U.S., Google will also have to give sites a way to keep their content from being included in vertical search results while letting them stay in regular search results. According to the Times, sites will be able to keep portions (as much as 10%) of their content out of Google so users are compelled to visit the site. It gives the example of Yelp keeping out business hours.

Additionally, Google is reportedly agreeing to be policed by an unknown third party, and will face fines if it doesn’t comply with the terms. This will go on for five years.

With the proposal, Google will avoid a lengthy and costly legal battle in Europe.

According to Bloomberg, Google competitors aren’t happy with the details of Google’s proposal that have surfaced, despite going significantly further than the concessions made in the U.S.

Last week, FairSearch announced a complaint with the EU claiming that Android gives Google an unfair advantage in search. More on that here.

Last month, Google released an opt-out tool for sites to keep content out of its vertical search engines.

It was introduced at CES as the ASUS Qube, but it will officially be spelled as the Cube. I found it interesting that they spelled it with a “Q” in the first place, and I suspect there was too much confusion with the Nexus Q, hence the change. Last week it was reported that it would be available on April 23rd, which was darn close as it looks like it will be April 24.

How do we know? Newegg has the Cube on their site with that release date, and it’s available for pre-order now. Pricing is a little higher than what we were told as well. The plan was for $129, but now it’s $139. However, Newegg is offering a $10 promotional gift card, but only for people who order by April 23.  This pricing is very surprising when you consider that most of the competition is around $99, and ASUS has a strong history of pricing their Android devices competitively.

I didn’t get to spend too much time with the Cube, but I didn’t see anything that it offered more than other Google TV devices except for the unique cube-like user interface. Priced at $139, does the Cube have a chance of helping bring Google TV to the forefront? Check out our hands on video, and/or hit the break for Neweggs’s 21 minute demo video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

source: Newegg

Come comment on this article: ASUS Qube becomes the Cube and is now available for pre-order

Continue reading…

Former U.S. Representative Charlie A. Wilson has died at the age of 70.

According to an Associated Press report, Wilson had a stroke in February and had been recovering since that time. He reportedly became sick over the weekend and died Sunday afternoon at a hospital in Boynton Beach, Florida.

Wilson owned funeral home and furniture store businesses before entering state politics in Ohio. In 1996 he was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives, where he served until 2002. In 2004 Wilson was elected to the Ohio Senate, and in 2006 he ran for U.S. congress when Ohio congressman Ted Strickland ran for governor of the state.

Though Wilson’s name did not appear on the primary ballot, he ran a successful write-in campaign to become the Democratic candidate for Ohio’s 6th district. He won the general election and served two terms before being defeated by current U.S. Representative Bill Johnson in 2011.

Charlie A. Wilson is not related to Charlie Nesbitt Wilson, the former U.S. Representative for Texas who is the subject of the book and movie Charlie Wilson’s War.

Today, Google is honoring Leonhard Euler, the Swiss mathematician known for his prolific works in many mathematical fields, including calculus and many areas of physics.

Euler is known for introducing most modern mathematical terminology and notation.

Euler was born on April 15th, 1707 in Basel, Switzerland to a pastor and a pastor’s daughter. In his early life, Euler studied under famed mathematician Johann Bernoulli and entered the University of Basel at the age of 13. He received his Master of Philosophy just three years later after a dissertation on Descartes and Newton.

He spent most of his adult life in St. Petersburg, Russia and in Berlin, Prussia. In St. Petersburg, Euler served a position in the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences’ mathematics department. He stayed in St. Petersburg from 1727 to 1741, when he left for Berlin to take up a post offered by Frederick the Great of Prussia. There is where Euler published his most important work: The Introductio in analysin infinitorum (1748), which was about mathematical functions, and the Institutiones calculi differentialis (1755) on differential calculus.

Euler is considered the most important mathematician of his era and one of the most important mathematicians of all time. He worked in nearly every field of mathematics, including algebra, geometry, calculus,and number theory. He also worked in some areas of physics.

Euler is the only man to have two mathematical numbers named after him. “Euler’s Number” in calculus (e), and the Euler-Mascheroni Constant (γ).

Euler was also known for his work in fluid dynamics, mechanics, and astronomy, one of the most prolific mathematicians of all time, Euler’s collected works fill dozens of volumes.

Wealth management company National Financial Partners said it agreed to be bought by private equity investment firm Madison Dearborn Partners LLC for about $1.3 billion, including debt, Reuters reported. Madison Dearborn will pay $25.35 for each National Financial share, a premium of about 8 percent to the stock’s Friday close. National Financial shares were up about 6 percent before the bell on Monday.

(Reuters) – Wealth management company National Financial Partners said it agreed to be bought by private equity investment firm Madison Dearborn Partners LLC for about $1.3 billion, including debt.

Madison Dearborn will pay $25.35 for each National Financial share, a premium of about 8 percent to the stock’s Friday close.

National Financial shares were up about 6 percent before the bell on Monday.

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Networking startup NoviFlow is trying to get ahead in the OpenFlow networking race by bringing out a switch capable of running on the OpenFlow 1.3 protocol at up to 200 Gbps.

More and more IT people are coming to understand and express interest in implementing OpenFlow, which separates the control plane from the data plane and lets servers take charge of telling switches what to do with packets. As the trend takes hold, NoviFlow will surely have to put up with fierce competition, as more vendors move to make their switches OpenFlow-compatible and as OpenFlow-friendly code from the OpenDaylight Project hits the market.

The news comes a year after NoviFlow was founded and just a few months after NoviFlow promised switches that could deliver 100 Mbps. Clearly NoviFlow is serious about capturing marketshare as enterprises consider OpenFlow options and at least think about moving away from legacy vendors such as Cisco.

Cisco, of course, downplays the threat to its bread-and-butter business and is taking steps to protect its market-leading position in switches and routers and enviable profit margins.

“I don’t see this (software-defined networking and network-function virtualization) as a commoditization threat whatsoever to Cisco,” said David Ward, Cisco’s chief technology officer for engineering and chief architect, during a call with investors on Thursday. Startups like NoviFlow are hoping to prove Ward wrong.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• The promise of SDNs in the enterprise
• Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and data
• The promise of software-defined networking

I missed Twitter. I first heard about it when everyone did in 2006. And I started an account in a knee-jerk way. But I didn’t grasp it. In those days, I would just stare at the entry box and think, “What?”

Now of course, I pretend Twitter struck me as an irresistibly good idea the first time I heard it and that I was an early champion. I have forgotten and concealed the early days, the days in which I had no clue.

There’s a convenient forgetting going on out there. Our lives are now filled with a stream of disruption, things that are new and strange. Whatever our first reaction, we now like to pretend we were early adopters and enthusiasts. Call it “disruption denial.”

The fact of the matter is our professional lives now churn with change. Markets change. Technology changes. Consumers change. Channels change. Competitors change. This is an era of disruption. Not disruption as the occasional event, but disruption as the constant, chronic condition of our professional lives. You would hope that we were getting better at understanding and managing change. And sometimes we are. Too often however, our response is to ignore and forget change, to fake our way through it, to pretend an engagement and a mastery we do not have. And that’s bad. That means we are not getting better at change, but steadily worse. We are denying disruption, instead of adapting to it.

We seem to adopt and adapt to something like Twitter by stages, a little like Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief. Except in this case, it’s a passage from confusion to congratulation. Self-congratulation.

Stage 1. Confusion. We don’t quite get it. We sign up for the new app. We give it a whirl. Not really getting it. By this time, gurus are reassuring us that Twitter is the greatest thing ever. But that doesn’t help. We’re still not getting it. And so we turn to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Repudiation. It turns out there are lots of people who don’t get the new technology and now social life is a little like a competition to show that we’re not “falling for it.” At this point, there can more social capital in saying that we don’t like the tech than that we do.

Stage 2 is marked by snappy one-liners. With the practiced ease of stand-up comedian, we can now be heard saying stuff like, “Twitter. What could I possibly say in 140 characters?” Or, “FourSquare? Why would I want to be mayor of my living room.”

Stage 3. Shaming. This is when we are so persuaded that we’re right and the new innovation is wrong that we are prepared to make fun of the credulous among us. I was on the receiving end after I gave a presentation on new media to a large advertising firm. When I finished, three planners took turns patting me on the head and telling me, “This Twitter thing. It’s just a fad. Give it a couple of months and it will go away.” We heard a lot of this sort of thing about Pinterest in the early days. Now it’s valued at $2.5 billion.

Stage 4. Acceptance. By this time, the innovation is taking off. The middle adopters are signing on. It’s clear now even to us that Twitter is here to stay. Confronted by accomplished, irrefutable fact, we cave in and sign on.

And that brings us to Stage 5.

Stage 5. Forgetting. This is where we destroy the evidence. Now we are inclined to act as if we always understood and approved of a world installed with new innovation.

Most often, we don’t make this as a formal decision. We don’t say, “I was wrong for the following reasons. And I am converting for the following reasons.” We just slide into a new way of thinking. One minute, we are too smart to be fooled by Twitter. The next we are fully on board. It’s a like high school. We hate that new haircut until suddenly we have the new haircut. We are captives of what Mark Earls calls “the herd.”

Our motive is clear enough. We don’t want to be the person who doesn’t get it. This is amnesia performed to save face. It’s a lie will tell ourselves about ourselves for ourselves.

This is, of course, entirely human. But at some point we have to snap out of it. We have to accept that change is the new structural reality of our lives and we have to begin a new set of problem solving routines that can put things right (or righter).

When you first lay eyes on something like Twitter, don’t react emotionally, don’t reject it out of hand. And when you go back to correct those first impressions, don’t conceal the evidence so that it looks like you (we!) were right all along.

Instead, do a careful, thoughtful analysis, for and against the innovation. Write it down, and consult it every time “Twitter” comes up and enter a new, corrected assessment of where the innovation is and where it might end up. Keep doing this until, as in the Twitter case, we find ourselves 6 years down the road and can look back to see what we got right and what we got wrong.

This is one way to learn to with disruption. I would love to hear your thoughts. What are you doing to adapt to the new reality?

Thanks to Pip Coburn who applies the Kubler-Ross model to change behavior in a roughly similar way in his book, The Change Function.

Dick Benton, a principal consultant for GlassHouse Technologies, has worked with numerous Fortune 1000 clients in a wide range of industries to develop and execute business-aligned strategies for technology governance, cloud computing and disaster recovery.

DICK BENTON
Glasshouse

In our last post, I outlined the fifth of seven key tips IT departments should follow if they want to begin building a better service strategy for their internal users: building the order process. That means developing an automated method for provisioning services via a Web console that can satisfy today’s on-demand consumers.

Measuring and Communicating Your Outcomes

This post covers how to prove what you delivered, because without metrics, monitoring and reporting that demonstrates you’ve fulfilled Service Level Agreements (SLAs), your service consumers and your management won’t know that you’ve met your commitments.

Service offerings and the subsequent signed SLAs will typically contain two types of service delivery metrics. The first group comes under quality of service and may include performance (e.g. IOPS), availability (scheduled hours) and reliability (number of nines). The second group covers protection attributes including operational recovery point and recovery time objectives, as well as disaster recovery point and recovery time objectives. Some organizations also include a historical recovery horizon and retrieval time as service attributes. Service offerings may also typically offer some level of compliance or security protection, and most importantly, the offerings should include the cost of the deployable resource unit of the service offering.

Determining KPIs

It is very important that the process to establish service offering metrics includes the very people who must execute to the key performance indicators (KPIs) around each service. The operations staff must strongly believe in its ability to deliver to the target metrics. This is not the time to allocate stretch goals. In fact, nothing is more detrimental to consumer satisfaction (and IT morale) than IT failing to meet a published goal. Initial metrics must be absolutely achievable, and operations people must believe that they have an excellent chance of meeting those targets. Once operations have settled in, and the bumps have been worked out, then the process of using upper and lower thresholds and tracking actuals within the desired ranges can start to drive improvements and a better service level for the next service catalog publication. This means IT is now visibly improving its service levels and thus consumer satisfaction.

Determining how to measure service attributes can require some creative thinking. You need a metric that can actually be captured and trended. The service indicators can be measured relatively easily for servers, storage and networks. However, operational protection service indicators can be more challenging. The dimension of time frame is also important. For example, will your metric offer a standard for a single point in time, a trend between upper and lower thresholds during the operational day or a standard at peak periods of the day? It is important to focus your choice of metrics on measures that the end consumer can understand and value. If you are going to differentiate between services based on such metrics, they need to be in “consumer speak” rather than “IT speak.” Formulating an appropriate policy on metrics, their time frame and their reporting should be a fundamental part of your service catalog

Realistic Measurements

The prudent CIO will take steps to ensure that each of the attributes mentioned in the service offering (as detailed in the organization’s service catalog) can be empirically tracked, monitored and reported. These indicators should be established with target operations occurring between upper and lower thresholds. Using a single target metric instead of upper and lower thresholds can inhibit the ability to intelligently track performance for continuous improvement, and can result in a potentially demoralizing black-and-white picture for the operations team. In other words, you either made it or you didn’t. With a range of “acceptance” metrics, the IT organization can ensure their own “real” target is smack in the middle of the acceptable range, with consumer expectations set at the lower threshold. It is important to ensure that the end consumer perceives the lower end of the range as an acceptable service level for the resource they have purchased. This approach gives IT some wiggle room, while the system and the processes and people supporting it go through the changes needed to deliver effective services. More importantly, it also provides an incentive to rise above the target with service level improvements.

Now, Measure!

Now that you know exactly what it is you are measuring and how the attributes will be measured, you have a specification for selecting an appropriate tool or tools to support your efforts. Unfortunately, finding the tools to produce the metrics can be a challenge. There are few, if any, that can work across the range of infrastructure and the vendors who provide it. Typically, more than one tool is required. Many organizations have chosen a preferred vendor and stick with that vendor’s native tools, while others have selected two or more third-party tools with the hope of staying viable as vendors constantly enhance and improve their products. However, at the end of the day, a simple combination of native tools and some creative scripting will provide all the basics you need.

Finally, the prudent CIO will develop and publish a monthly “score card” showing which divisions or departments are using which service offerings, how much those service offerings cost, and most importantly, how IT performed in meeting its service level objectives for the period and in comparison to the previous reporting period. This provides a foundation on which new relationships and behaviors can be based, with IT being able to empirically prove that they delivered what they promised, and in some cases, beat what they promised.

This is part of a seven part series from Dick Benton of Glasshouse Technologies. See his first post of the series.

Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.

While power consumption and cooling are concerns for all IT departments, high-performance computing (HPC) demands extraordinary amounts of both commodities. With pending environmental legislation bringing government oversight to the table, finding the right environment for your HPC projects is critical.

Many IT departments are struggling to stay on top of costs and compliance for their traditional architectures, but more proactive businesses like BMW are creating new value opportunities. By leveraging the greater capacity of their green data center environments, they are pushing greater compute loads to the cloud and creating entirely new products.

In this webinar, our panel of experts will discuss:

• How should tech management prioritize its agenda and re-take the lead on advanced company initiatives?
• After CAD and other types of design simulation, what kind of applications will require high-performance computing, and when?
• How should businesses navigate the decision to build or partner?

Speakers include:

• Cormac Foster, research director, GigaOM Research
• Dave Ohara, GigaOM Research analyst and founder, GreenM3
• David Linthicum, CTO and founder, Blue Mountain Labs
• Tate Cantrell, CTO, Verne Global

Register here to join GigaOM Research and our sponsor Verne Global for “Green HPC: how IT mavericks push the envelope with clean computing,” a free analyst roundtable webinar on Tuesday, April 23, 2013, at 8:00 a.m. PT.

Madison Dearborn Partners has agreed to buy National Financial Partners in a deal valued at about $1.3 billion. Terms of the deal call for NFP shareholders to receive $25.35 in cash for each share of NFP common stock they own. Deutsche Bank Securities, Morgan Stanley Senior Funding and UBS Securities are providing debt financing. NFP is a benefits, insurance and wealth management business. BofA Merrill Lynch advised NFP’s board while UBS acted as financial advisor to Madison Dearborn.

PRESS RELEASE
National Financial Partners Corp. (NYSE: NFP), a leading provider of benefits, insurance and wealth management services, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC, a private equity investment firm, under which a controlled affiliate of Madison Dearborn will acquire NFP.

Under the terms of the agreement, NFP shareholders will receive $25.35 in cash for each share of NFP common stock they own, in a transaction with an equity value of approximately $1.3 billion, which includes the full value of the Company’s convertible debt. The purchase price represents a premium of approximately 26 percent over NFP’s closing share price of $20.05 on March 12, 2013, the last day of trading prior to press reports that NFP was considering a possible sale of the Company.

As previously disclosed, as a result of interest it had received from private equity firms, NFP’s Board of Directors formed a special committee of independent directors to explore a possible sale of the Company. After a thorough and rigorous process, and with the assistance of its legal and financial advisors, the special committee negotiated and recommended this transaction with Madison Dearborn to the full Board. The transaction was unanimously approved by the Board.

“This compelling transaction provides shareholders with substantial value, and is a successful outcome of the thorough process undertaken by our Board,” said Jessica M. Bibliowicz , chairman and chief executive officer of NFP. “This agreement also provides significant opportunities for our clients and employees by partnering with an extremely well-respected firm with proven expertise in the financial services sector.  NFP has a solid foundation, and we are confident the Company will thrive as a private enterprise in this next chapter of its evolution.”

“Madison Dearborn’s interest in NFP is a clear endorsement of the quality and success of our business, the value of our client-centric culture, and the hard work and dedication of our people. We are confident that partnering with this world-class investor will help us continue to execute on our long-term One NFP strategy and grow the business,” said Douglas W. Hammond , president and chief operating officer of NFP. As previously disclosed, the Board expects to appoint Mr. Hammond chief executive officer of NFP when Ms. Bibliowicz steps down from that role in May.

“We are pleased to have this opportunity to invest in NFP and help the Company advance its strategy,” said Vahe Dombalagian , a managing director at Madison Dearborn. “We look forward to working closely with the Company’s leadership team as it continues to build a strong diversified business. We fully support NFP’s focus on providing high-quality and value-added services to all of its clients, including corporations, through a more unified brand across its business segments.”

Madison Dearborn has obtained debt financing commitments from Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., and UBS Securities LLC, the proceeds of which will be used to fund the transactions contemplated by the agreement and to pay related fees and expenses. Pursuant to an equity commitment letter, controlled affiliates of Madison Dearborn have committed to provide a cash investment on the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the letter.

The transaction, which is subject to the approval of holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of NFP common stock and other customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the third quarter.

BofA Merrill Lynch served as financial advisor to the Board and the special committee, while Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP was their legal counsel. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP served as legal advisor to the Company.  UBS Securities LLC served as financial advisor to Madison Dearborn, while Ropes & Gray LLP served as its legal advisor.

About NFP
National Financial Partners Corp. (NYSE: NFP), and its benefits, insurance and wealth management businesses provide diversified advisory and brokerage services to companies and high net worth individuals, partnering with them to preserve their assets and prosper over the long term. NFP advisors provide innovative and comprehensive solutions, backed by NFP’s national scale and resources. NFP operates in three business segments. The Corporate Client Group provides corporate and executive benefits, retirement plans and property and casualty insurance. The Individual Client Group includes retail and wholesale life insurance brokerage and wealth management advisory services. The Advisor Services Group serves independent financial advisors by offering broker/dealer and asset management products and services. Most recently NFP was ranked eighth on Business Insurance’s 100 Largest Brokers of U.S. Business; second on Business Insurance’s Largest Agents and Brokers Headquartered in the U.S. Northeast; and as the ninth Top Global Insurance Broker by Best’s Review; it operates the third largest executive benefits provider of nonqualified deferred compensation plans by total clients as ranked by PlanSponsor; operates a top 10 independent broker/dealer as ranked by Investment Advisor; and has three advisors ranked in Barron’s Top 100 Independent Financial Advisors. NFP is also a leading independent life insurance distributor according to many top-tier carriers.  For more information, visit www.nfp.com.

About Madison Dearborn Partners
Madison Dearborn Partners, based in Chicago, is one of the most experienced and successful private equity investment firms in the United States.  Since Madison Dearborn’s formation in 1992, the firm has raised six funds with aggregate capital of over $18 billion and has completed approximately 125 investments.  Madison Dearborn invests in businesses across a broad spectrum of industries, including financial and transaction services; basic industries; business and government services; consumer; health care; and telecom, media and technology services.  Its noteworthy investments include CapitalSource, Nuveen Investments, PayPal, TransUnion, and EVO Payments.  For more information, please visit www.mdcp.com.

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