Details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Netvivbes builds dashboard intelligence platform for Fortune 500 brands, enterprises and agencies. Customers include Coca Cola, HP and a number of high profile brands. It’s in many ways a widget maker. Thy say they serve a billion Web apps per month and have 250,000 apps in its network. Its core capabilities allow customers to connect internal enterprise systems such as Salesforce.com and ERP environments in as Web oriented architecture. It then applies social analytics across a customer’s systems for use in business intelligence.

Dassault Systèmes is a French technology giant that develops 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions that support industrial processes and provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance to recycling.

The two companies see the potential to marry Netvibes Web experience and social analytics with the need to collect data and make sense of all aspects of industrial processes by providing a social view of the people in and outside the company that participate in the processes.

From the press release:

Dassault Systèmes enables companies to experience the world, from parts to products (e.g. planes, medical devices, buildings), from individual workers to supply chain and distribution (e.g. stores), from designing to experiencing usage scenarios. Netvibes specializes in understanding the Web in new ways, to reveal customer sentiment, brand identity and emerging influencers. Together, Netvibes contributes to Dassault Systèmes’ vision to Experience Everything in the world and on the Web.

The news is noteworthy. Netvibes emerged as a consumer oriented company that allowed its users to create personalized pages. It served as a next generation “MyYahoo,” page where you could aggregate feeds from multiple news sources. The service grew well and for a time enjoyed the spotlight as one of the luminaries of the nascent Web 2.0 world. Many a social media hound used Netvibes to provide fast glimpses of the breaking news of the day.

But it never really found its groove in the consumer space as a breakout service. Facebook emerged after Netvibes became established and quickly grew by aggregating social data from individuals that it then transformed into a social graph. With other services such as Twitter, Facebook emerged as a social network that used real-time updates to give people a reflective view of the world with their new found friends.

Netvibes though proved smart enough. The company turned its technology into a dashboard for companies to monitor the social activity of its brands. It built upon its success and understanding of communities and how they interact to create a compelling service.

Services Angle

This is a story about transformation. The new service providers that come from a consumer oriented market have some advantage when competing in the enterprise. They come unencumbered but more importantly they have a sense of how to provide needed data in a real-time manner in a Web oriented environment. Smart move by Dassaut. Netvibes provides a modern way to bring relevance to established processes that need new ways to remain relevant.

Netvibes Acquired by Dassault Systèmes is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

You may also enjoy:

• Why Apps Might Just Save Content
• Couchbase Releases Membase Server for Mac OS X, Refreshes Couchbase Server
• Microsoft Releases Free eBook. You Know, For Kids. [Dark Cloud]
• Citrusleaf Real-Time Data Analysis Gets Boost from The Trade Desk
• Companies’ Irrational Fear of Social Media
• Net Neutrality Power Grab Is Worse than Obamacare

That’s the big picture from Coucbbase, which today announced the results of a survey it did with 1,300 practitioners. Couchbase is one of the leading vendors in the NoSQL market so it’s not a big surprise to see them publish these rosy results. But the finding do speak to the overall transformation of the database market and the roaring plume of data that is shaping a new tech landscape.

I agree that NoSQL has moved beyond the experimentation phase.  In part, you can thank Oracle for that. The fact they jumped into the market has given customers more reason to invest more capital into the technology. It’s a validation point.

Here are some of the results from the survey:

• Nearly half of the more than 1,300 respondents indicated they have funded NoSQL projects in the first half of this year. In companies with more than 250 developers, nearly 70% will fund NoSQL projects over the course of 2012.
• 49% cited rigid schemas as the primary driver for their migration from relational to NoSQL database technology. Lack of scalability and high latency/low performance also ranked highly among the reasons given for migrating to NoSQL  (see chart below for more details).
• 40% overall say that NoSQL is very important or critical to their daily operations, with another 37% indicating it is becoming more important.

Couchbase asked how companies are using NoSQL Some interesting answers included that go way beyond the traditional use cases:

• real-time tracking and segmentation of users for ad targeting
• disaster recovery
• inventory tracking
• manufacturing automation
• insurance underwriting
• multi-call center operations (with replication of production data)
• Twitter stream analysis

Respondents were  also asked about what they expect and hope for out of NoSQL in 2012. Couchbase breaks down what they say into four boxes: schemas; replacing RDMS/makign it default database; scalability/performance and speed/agility in app development. Answers included:

• Gaining freedoms from inflexible schemas that do not adapt well to changing business requirements.
• Making NoSQL an integral part of daily operationsa nd handle at least 30% of transaction load.
• Allowing the capability to share billions of documents across multiple commodity servers.
• Help in deploying new features faster without having to manage SQL patch scripts and migrations.

ServicesAngle

NoSQL – it fits with so much that we write about. It’s a huge factor in the transformation of the enterprise and a necessary focus for any services provider looking to provide a level of value added services.

Hat tip: Originally saw this news on Diversity, courtesy of Ben Kepes.

It’s Schema Free – Why NoSQL Continues to Gain Adoption is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Oracle Releases Big Data Appliance with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop
• Cloudant Plans to Shift Focus to Apache CouchDB and Merge Features from BigCouch
• Apache CouchDB Chairman Says the Project is “Alive and Kicking”
• 5 Distinct Hadoop Deployment Patterns
• Video Interview: Couchbase’s J. Chris Anderson on How P2P Changes Business as Usual
• Google Announces Database-as-a-Service for App Engine, Hot on Oracle’s Heels

The company has seen revenue surge by 45 percent in Q4 last year, the most profitable quarter to date, and one that sealed what was a successful fiscal year overall. OpenLogic also said that its customer base has ballooned to over 300 enterprises, with Global 2000 companies accounting for 70 percent of orders.

OpenLogic named manufacturing, government and media as its fastest growing industries in 2011, while at the same time IT, financial services and again manufacturing ended up as the top three largest customer industries.

“OpenLogic saw a broadening of our business in 2011 due to significant growth across new verticals, as well as a deepening of relationships with existing customers as they bought additional products and services,” said Steve Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic.

“We are seeing growth beyond industries that are early adopters of open source, and into more mainstream technology adopters. As open source is used more widely and cloud development continues to gain steam – more enterprises are turning to OpenLogic for open source provisioning, scanning and support.”

The PaaS provider had several other milestones recently. One of the latest is the announcement that CloduSwing can now run on Rackspace Cloud, news that it revealed in late December. October was another important month – CloudSwing launched into general availability.

The platform is fairly new, and is based entirely on the concept of offering a completely open product for enterprises to customize and integrate into their IT environments. It supports a long lineup of different languages and clouds, not just Rackspace, in order to facilitate the flexibility OpenLogic promises.

OpenLogic’s Q4 Revenue Surged 45% – Other Milestones is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• OpenLogic Gets PaaS Savvy with CloudSwing
• OpenLogic PaaS Now Deploys on Rackspace Cloud
• OpenLogic Rolls Out Open PaaS to the Public
• Save Your Code from Patent Infringement with OpenLogic’s New Tool
• Joyent CEO Tells How Node.js Fits Into Mobile Strategy [Video]
• VMware CTO Talks Node.js, Mobile Development [Video]

The acquisition encompasses all of the sites paidContent is operating, including paidContent.org itself, mocoNews.net, contentSutra.com and paidContent:UK.

“With our shared commitment to journalistic ethics, GigaOM and paidContent are a natural fit,” said Paul Walborsky, CEO of GigaOM. “paidContent is the leading voice covering the evolution of media, an area that is very important to us. Integrating our teams will enrich our editorial coverage and expand our footprint immediately in two markets that are critical to our growth – New York City and the UK.”

The M&A scene in the IT blogosphere is not a particularly active one, so it’s notable when a deal does take place. It will also be interesting to see how GigaOm and paidContent manage to integrate beyond only the creation of a more unified,intercontinental news channel.

GigaOM Buys paidContent in Blogosphere Acquisition is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Verizon Xbox LIVE FiOS TV Lackluster on Broadcast Content
• PARC Innovates the Next Internet Era with Content-Centric Networking
• Live Blogging Simon Crosby – The Tale of Two Clouds: Private & Mobile
• Happy Cloud Brings the Power of the Cloud to Video Game Downloads
• Stack Overflow Injects $12 Million, Mutates Into Stack Exchange
• Bought the Presses: AOL Purchases The Huffington Post for $315M

VFCache is EMC’s answer to Fusion-io and other startups that have been gaining traction among online and cloud services. However, unlike their products, it is a read-only cache that stores a copy of heavily used data from the storage array onto the server, where applications can access it over the PCIe bus, reducing latency by orders of magnitude.

Unlike the Fusion-io and other competing PCIe flash products, which are flash-only systems, VFCache is designed to be integrated with EMC storage arrays, which are either all disk or hybrid disk-flash systems. And while the focus of Fusion-io has so far been on leading-edge big data analysis systems, EMC seems to be focusing on the traditional business market and specifically on its existing business customers.

The hour-long Peer Incite will be led by Wikibon CTO David Floyer and will explore the following questions:

• What is Project Lightning, and why does it matter?
• How is the storage hierarchy evolving, and where does Lightning fit relative to the competition?
• How will the role of spinning disk change as a result of flash generally and Lightning specifically?
• How should practitioners view Lightning, and what actions should they take to maximize value?

Interested parties may also subscribe to the free Peer Incite e-Newsletter, which will carry several short articles by Wikibon experts analyzing the implications of VFCache by registering on the Wikibon Web site.

A Closer Look at the Implications of EMC’s VFCache: Join the Live Discussion is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

You may also enjoy:

• Google Becomes Heedful, Buys Nortel Patent Portfolio
• Bandwidth: Why fast is important in a Global Economy
• Sued! The Repercussions of Using Carrier IQ Software
• AppleTV Gains Momentum, Google TV Lags Behind
• Facebook Introduces Instant Personalization Tutorial for Users
• Barnes & Noble Survives Digital Transition with $204M Investment

Michael Hugos has published an article at CIO Blogs addressing just this question: how can we look at massively multiplayer online (MMO) games as models for business collaboration?

His example game is actually quite brilliant. EVE Online is one of the best-known sandbox MMO games ever produced, run by CCP Games headquartered in Iceland, this MMO has been at the center of a great deal of controversy because it broke the mold for a game played by and for players. In its science fiction environment, players are given all the tools they need to build a career from a multitude of actions that affect other players from resource gathering, hauling, trading, playing with the internal stock market, or even fighting wars as a mercenary.

The high fidelity model of social interaction with a corporate and resource model, however, isn’t what makes EVE Online perfect for looking at how MMOs could be an excellent model for business collaboration. It’s how the game allows players to communicate and pay attention the current status of what they’re working on in relation to everyone that they’re collaborating with. In many ways, the heads-up-display (HUD) and user interface of EVE Online generates a sort of near-technological telepathy between players working together in a corporation to get things done.

Essentially, EVE Online—sometimes chided as being “spreadsheets in space”—envelops a gamified approach to logistics and resource management.

Hugos presents this in  his article and I’d like to expand on it,

Business intelligence and analytics software has something to learn from games and from MMOs in particular. MMOs use well designed heads-up displays that combine data analysis with group collaboration capabilities. This is illustrated below in screenshots showing two of the heads-up displays used by players flying spaceships in a battle. Note how they use moving 3D displays to present information from real-time data feeds provided by the game.

In addition to the moving 3D displays in the center of the screens, notice the other information shown around the edges of the screens. There are dials and readouts with relevant data, and thumbnail displays showing their status and the actions of other players they are collaborating with. To supplement these visual displays, players also communicate with each other moment to moment using text messages via chat features and Internet-based voice messages that can be directed to individual players or the entire group through headphones and microphones.

What makes MMO games engaging and interesting to players often can be boiled down to entanglement and immersion. If what a player does has an impact on the world that they’re playing in, and they can see the fruits of their labor (and that labor is not intense) they feel rewarded by the experience. What I’ve just described may even be seen as the benefits of working for a real-world company, making an impact on that company’s outcome, and providing some sort of tangible labor.

With the advent of the mobile phone and apps that allow for close collaboration we’ve moved closer to having on-demand communication with colleagues through the day. With the introduction of gesture-detection we’ll even be able to bring intense amounts of data into an immersive format with 3D displays (the peripheral relevant data that Hugos refers to.) Video games even present a way to collect vast amounts of behavioral and active big data and democratize massive small-actions by a multitude of people into organized work—directed by a person with an interface that could allow them to direct that work it would become the next-gen of human resources.

While games like EVE Online may feel like “spreadsheets in space” and to some may become a second job (being CEO of a corporation in a video game can be quite stressful) these sorts of social and technological interaction provide keen insights into how we can engage workers, management, and executives in the businesses of the future.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games as a Model for Business Collaboration is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• EverQuest 2 Player Base Swells 300% Since Switching to Free-to-Play
• Free-to-play MMO Spending Up 24 Percent in the US; DC Universe Online Revenue Leaps 700 Percent After Going F2P
• World of Warcraft Turns 7: Players Blow out Candles, Eat Cake
• Blizzard to Experiment with Real-Money for Gold Scheme in WoW via Tradable In-Game Pet
• Blizzard Planning Diablo III Cash Auction House: Items Will be Bought, Sold for Real Money
• Bitcoins for World of Warcraft Virtual Gold? Just Look to Bitmit.net

The first addition to the company’s analytics portfolio is SAP HANA for SAP Business One, a smaller application that’s based on the solution, designed for easier use and runs on  partner hardware. It’s also integrated with the SAP Crystal Reports software and will become available via resellers later in 2012, according to the company. The emphasis is on simplicity, which SAP hopes will help drive productive up for users.

The second new HANA-powered solution is referred to as the Edge edition. It’s built for the mid-market, specifically users of the Business-All-in-One software SAP offers, and has been built to deliver more value if bundled up with some of the other SAP solutions worldwide partners are offering. This is an early step towards realizing the vision of integrating HANA into SAP’s core portfolio, which is on the company’s list of long-term agendas.

On the short term, they still have a community portal update to sort out. The roll out of the new SAP Community Network was originally scheduled for last December, but has been delayed due to technical issues, and no updated ETA has been provided.  A beta program has been running ever since. SAP’s Mark Yolton did however provide some new details in a recent blog post. The following tidbit rounds up what his team has achieved so far:

“To give you an idea of the amount of work completed already:

• 116 blocker/showstopper and critically important items have been resolved
• 163 high-priority items have been resolved
• 201 medium-priority items have been resolved
• 11 low-priority items have been resolved”

Yolton said that eight more eight blocker or show-stopper items need to be tweaked, as well as eight critically important items.

PCWorld’s  Chris Kanaracus notes that SAP is trying to avoid the bad experience Oracle had after relaunching a buggy portal back in ’09, which seems rather appropriate considering that the latter is currently trying to reverse its own bad luck in a copyright lawsuit against SAP.

New SAP Products Coincide with Oracle Demands for IP Case is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• SAP Skirts Antritrust Issues with Success Factors, Bright Year Ahead
• SAP Continues HANA Migration to SMB Application
• HANA Chairman at the Center of SAP-Oracle Rivalry
• SAP Beats Expectations, Hopes to Spirit Marketing with Open-Minded Exec
• SAP’s Big Data Strategy Simplifies Analytics with HANA
• Hitachi Integrates Converged Infrastructure with HANA

And Google wants to maintain that lead.  Google’s Chrome browser has been catching up to Mozilla’s Firefox on PCs and they want to translate that success in the mobile realm; thus the launch of Chrome for Android.

Chrome for Android Beta is now available for download in the Android Market for free, but it’s only for devices running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, because of the browser’s dependency on hardware acceleration, which earlier versions of Android don’t support.  Google states that they focused on creating a seamless, personalized experience that users can enjoy anywhere, even on different devices.

Fast and Simple Mobile Browsing

With Chrome for Android, users can search, navigate and browse with Chrome, fast.  Search and navigation can be done in the omnibox, making things as simple as possible.  Justt like Chrome on the desktop, there are tabs, Link Preview, and for the pervs, the incognito mode is also available.  ;)

Personalized Experience

Signing in to Chrome for Android opens up a different browsing experience as it becomes personal.  By signing in, you can:

• View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)—picking up exactly where you left off.
• Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you’ll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.
• Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you’re using.

Watch IntoMobile’s video of the Chrome for Android Beta demo below.

Though Chrome for Android was just released yesterday, critics are already gnawing on it. Some users are happy with the auto-fill feature because it makes things easier, while some are concerned it can be a security risk.  Most are delighted with the sync feature, as it also syncs open tabs, but some are concerned with privacy.  And of course, they look for things that aren’t there, like the bookmarks, Flash support and support for plug-ins. Some people are just insatiable.

Mobile Browsing Gains Traction

As for other mobile browser news, Dolphin Browser recently added Evernote, the suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving, and Skitch, the Evernote-owned screenshot editing and sharing utility, to their offerings.

And Opera Mobile was recently updated to address compatibility issues for ICS and Honeycomb devices but new features are expected to arrive when the Opera 12 is released which can happen anytime soon.

Chrome For Android Draws Early Privacy Concerns is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Finally! The Galaxy Nexus Arrives in the US!
• Android Developers Anxious for Upcoming 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” Release
• Android Addiction–More Ice Cream Sandwich, Please?
• Are You Craving For The Ice-Cream Sandwich On the New Galaxy Nexus? You Should
• Droid RAZR, Galaxy Nexus Take the Spotlight as Android Heats Up
• Galaxy Nexus, Android Ice Cream Sandwich Unveiled Today

This particular case against Google involves a claim that Android’s virtual machine is infringing Java copyrights, which Oracle gained with the acquisitions of Sun in 2010. There’s a lot of stake here; the sheer scale of the Android ecosystem means that Larry Ellison has a lot to gain, and that Google has a lot to lose.

The details of the legal proceedings and various stages of the trial set to be held in the court of Federal Judge William Alsup have been laid out last month, and yesterday The Register reported the latest twist in the plot. A US Court of Appeals panel decided not to overrule a second decision that allows Oracle to use an email sent by Google developer Tim Lindholm, which is a very notable development considering the  contents of the message. This is what Lindholm wrote:

“What we’ve actually been asked to do (by Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We’ve been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.”

The message has been sent before Oracle began to take legal action against Google, and seems to confirm an acknowledgment of foul play by the latter. The search giant argued that the email is protected under attorney-client privilege, but it was dismissed for the following reason:

“The e-mail’s discussion is directed at a negotiation strategy as opposed [to a legal strategy]. The e-mail does not evidence any sort of infringement or invalidity analysis, wrote Judge Alan Lourie, one of the three members of the panel.

Google Loses in the Latest Development from the Oracle Java Case is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• HANA Chairman at the Center of SAP-Oracle Rivalry
• Making its Case: SAP HANA Coming to TIBCO, Tableau and Jive Software
• Jive Goes Public Tomorrow and Thanks to SAP and Oracle It Looks Pretty Good
• SAP Buys SuccessFactors – Acquisition Shows Gathering Strength of Workday and New Enterprise Innovators
• SAP Eyes Database Dominance with Pure In-Memory Approach
• HP Acquisitions Take a Back Seat as Whitman Takes the Helm

“It’s no doubt that each year the Super Bowl attracts an abundance of fans from all over the country. JiWire looked across its entire network of the on-the-go audience connecting to cafes, hotels and airports, to determine the top 20 places that fans traveled from to attend Super Bowl XLVI and watch the New York Giants play the New England Patriots live.”

The tops 5 cities were Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Dallas, and Philadelphia. Among the devices that were used by the on-the-go audience, smartphones top the chart with 47 percent market share, followed by laptops and tablets at 29 percent and 24 percent respectively. Overall, connectivity in Indianapolis alone increased by 18 percent during the event.

While fans travel across America just to catch the game, brands and advertisers are all about marketing and leveraging the world of social-mobile-local. Instead of paying large sums of money for a 30-second cable ad slot, they might as well take advantage of fans’ heavy mobile usage. Mobile marketing company Velti says users connect beyond their in-person friends and are likely to check their phones 10 times more during the game.

Even popular quarterbacks Eli Manning and Tom Brady didn’t escape analytics, as Twitter sentiment compared their positive impressions, putting Manning ahead with 65 percent over Brady’s 62 percent. Here’s also a thought-provoking article from Sandvine about the plunge of internet traffic and Netflix’s viewership during the event. For more on social-mobile, check out this roundup.

image credit: nj.com

Traveling Super Bowl Fans Inflated Indy’s WiFi Nearly 20% is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• How Social, Mobile was Super Bowl 2012? A Brand’s Dream Come True
• Social Mobile’s True Value for Super Bowl 2012? Business Intelligence
• Mobile Travel: An Industry That Doesn’t Yet Know Itself
• Foursquare Surpases 10M Members. Location Services Here to Stay?
• Android’s Big and So are Local Deals, Study Shows
• WiFi Hotspots Prove Mobile Ad Gold Mine, JiWire Raises $20M