Internet Solutions

When Salesforce.com bought crowdsourced business contact database Jigsaw for $142 million earlier this year, the CRM giant said that it would combine its suite of applications with Jigsaw’s model for the automation of acquiring and keeping up-to-date business contact data. Today, Salesforce is unveiling Jigsaw’s deep integration into the company’s platform, Jigsaw for Salesforce CRM.

Jigsaw will now deliver real-time updates to contact and company information within Salesforce CRM through communication platform Salesforce Chatter. Jigsaw, which uses a Wikipedia-style crowd-sourcing model to bring in data around business contacts, has been incorporated into CRM applications to provide on-demand data, and analytics on the health of data and on usage.

Jigsaw also provides customers with the ability to see how much data is being actively managed by Jigsaw, and visual reports on how much data is correct, out-of-date or dead in the data graveyard. And Jigsaw leverages Chatter to identify changes to contact and company data in the Salesforce CRM, update and then publish the changes in Chatter in real-time, giving sales reps the ability to see when data is outdated or updated.

Currently, Jigsaw has a database of more than 22 million business contacts and 4 million company profiles that are continually updated by a community of more than 1.4 million individuals. Jigsaw for Salesforce CRM is priced at $29 per user per month on top of existing CRM use charges.

In the past, we’ve been a bit critical of Jigsaw’s model because the company would pay people simply to upload other people’s contact information, possible causing a privacy fiasco. Jigsaw has changed its model since then: people can now see if their personal information has been uploaded, and there is a process to have it removed, at least temporarily. And users are no longer paid cash to upload contacts. Instead they receive points that can be used to download contact other people’s contact information.

This additional feature should only help boost Salesforce’s ever growing revenue. The company saw record sales for the most recent quarter, adding added 5,100 paying customers during the quarter.

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Electronic payment solutions provider VeriFone Systems this morning announced it has acquired the assets of WAY Systems, a provider of mobile POS solutions and gateway services for mobile merchants.

The purchase price consisted of an upfront payment of $6 million and an earn-out payable in one year of up to an additional $3 million dollars should certain performance targets be met.

VeriFone says the acquisition will not have a material impact on its financial results.

Here’s the funny part of the acquisition: WAY Systems was founded in 2002 with initial seed capital from Bill Melton, who founded VeriFone. From 2004 through 2009, WAY Systems received an additional $50 million in equity investments from Bessemer Venture Partners and Austin Ventures as well as debt financing from Lighthouse Capital Partners.

In other words, not exactly a stellar exit (understatement alert).

Over the past five years, WAY Systems did manage to build up a customer base of more than 25,000 mobile merchants who use the company’s compact mobile POS technology and gateway services.

VeriFone will immediately take over support of these merchants within its PAYware Connect Gateway infrastructure. Additionally, VeriFone will offer continuous non-stop support for all existing WAY mobile systems, bolstered by VeriFone’s extensive mobile portfolio, including PAYware Mobile and VX Evolution secure payment systems.

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Dell withdraws its bid for 3Par after rival Hewlett-Packard raises its offer for the data storage company to $2.1bn.

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Originally posted at Deep Tech

It looks like the bidding war for 3PAR could be over. Dell has just issued a release indicating that it will not increase its most recent $2 billion proposal to acquire 3PAR, and the company’s has ended acquisition talks for the data storage company. Dell is entitled to receive a $72 million break-up fee from 3PAR upon the termination of its merger agreement.

This morning, HP upped the ante today with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR has accepted HP’s bid. Dell also said that its improved offer included a proposed commercial relationship and an increased break-up fee.

Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for $1.8 billion. HP then offered $2 billion last Friday, which Dell matched.

HP basically doubled Dell’s original bid for 3PAR, which was high to begin with. 3PAR provides a virtualized utility storage platform that enables customers to significant drive down cloud computing infrastructure, storage and associated management costs.

As TechCrunch contributor Steve Cheney wrote last weekend, 3PAR is so valuable because of its “thin provisioning” technology enables disk space to be allocated only when applications need capacity, greatly reducing IT management costs. It doesn’t make sense for HP (or Dell) to try to recreate this technology, so buying is the best option. HP, in particular, wants to increase its innovations, especially after reports that Mark Hurd wasn’t an R&D friendly CEO. Cheney forecasted that HP would win this war, and it looks like he is right.

It looks like this bidding war has come to an end. I’d expect a formal deal with HP to be announced soon.

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update Dell walks away from the storage company after a bidding war that started at $18 a share and ended up with Hewlett-Packard’s winning offer of $33 a share.

It looks like we’re back to square one again. Dell has matched HP’s $2 billion offer to buy 3PAR, and HP upped the ante today with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR has accepted HP’s bid.

Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for $1.8 billion. HP then offered $2 billion last Friday.

According to the release, the 3PAR board of directors has determined that HP’s revised proposal constitutes a “Superior Proposal” (as that term is defined in 3PAR’s merger agreement with Dell). Accordingly, 3PAR notified Dell of its intention to terminate its merger agreement with Dell immediately following the expiration of the three business day period contemplated by, and the satisfaction of the other conditions set forth in, its merger agreement with Dell in order to enter into a merger agreement with HP on the terms set forth in HP’s revised acquisition proposal.

This latest offer more than doubles Dell’s original bid for 3PAR, which was high to begin with. 3PAR provides a virtualized utility storage platform that enables customers to significant drive down cloud computing infrastructure, storage and associated management costs.

It looks like this bidding war has come to an end, folks.

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Cisco this morning announced its intent to acquire privately-held Arch Rock, which specializes in IP-based wireless sensor network technology with a focus on energy and environmental monitoring and Smart Grid applications.

Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.

Based in San Francisco, Arch Rock will help Cisco accelerate the company’s ability to facilitate the utility industry’s transition to an open and interoperable smart grid and enable Cisco to offer a fully IP and open-standards based advanced metering infrastructure solution.

Arch Rock’s technology is designed to enable utilities to connect smart meters and other distributed intelligent devices over a scalable multi-way wireless mesh network. The acquisition complements the recently announced strategic alliance between Itron and Cisco to develop solutions that enhance smart-metering technology.

Upon the close of the acquisition, which is expected to follow in the second half of calendar year 2010 pending regulatory approvals, the Arch Rock team will become part of Cisco’s Smart Grid business unit.

Arch Rock raised $15 million in venture capital from New Enterprise Associates, Intel Capital and Shasta Ventures.

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The global disparity in access to broadband around the world and the cost of a connection is revealed by UN figures.