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Enjoy!
Biotech firm is biggest U.S. company yet to outsource crucial computing work to Google
SAN FRANCISCO — Todd Pierce recently put his job on the line.
To meet the computing needs of 16,300 employees and contractors at Genentech Inc., Pierce took a chance and decided not to rely entirely on business software from Microsoft, IBM or another long-established supplier that would have let Genentech own the technology. Instead, Pierce decided to rent these indispensable products from Google Inc.
The Internet search and advertising leader will run Genentech’s e-mail, as well as some word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications, and it will do it over an online connection - an approach called “cloud computing.”
The decision has turned Genentech, a biotechnology pioneer, into a lab rat for Google and other alternative software services trying to convince skeptical corporate decision makers that cloud computing is more than a pie-in-the-sky concept. In the process, Google hopes to bleed revenue from Microsoft Corp. and surpass its biggest rival in the race to control the gears of computing.
Genentech’s chief executive, Arthur Levinson, sits on Google’s board of directors, but Pierce says those ties didn’t propel his leap of faith. After lengthy internal testing, Pierce became convinced that Google can be trusted to provide critical software programs for Genentech as adeptly as it deciphers Internet search requests to sell ads.
“You don’t want to get caught clinging to the past,” said Pierce, Genentech’s chief information officer. “I feel like we are surfing in front of the wave instead of the back of it.”
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Putting a positive spin on a bleak outlook, Renaissance Capital said it only expects about 100 initial public offerings in 2009, but suggests that the best values surface during hard times.
“Historical precedent suggsts that IPOs in periods of low issuance can generate very strong returns as companies are forced to become more realistic with their proposed valuations,” Renaissance said in a recent report.
Online education company Grand Canyon University of Phoenix is a case in point. It trimmed its offering price by roughly a third to acquire public status in November. So far investors have harvested the gains as the stock has risen more than 40 percent, Renaissance said.
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Bridgepoint Education files for $230 mln IPO
Link to Bridgepoint Education files S-1 : idea.sec.gov
Bridgepoint Education Inc, a provider of post-secondary education services, filed with U.S. regulators on Monday to raise up to $230 million in an initial public offering of common stock.
The San Diego-based company told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a preliminary prospectus that Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan were underwriting the IPO.
In 2004, investor Warburg Pincus, Bridgepoint’s chief executive, Andrew Clark, and other executives launched the company.
The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price.
Bridgepoint plans to use proceeds from the IPO to pay holders of series A convertible preferred stock and for general corporate purposes.
Warburg Pincus holds about 10.5 million of the company’s series A convertible preferred shares.
For the year ended Dec. 31, 2007, the company posted net income of $3.3 million on revenue of $85.7 million.
The company intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “BPI.”
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The world of higher education has a strange dichotomy unfolding.
Once laughably feeble, online institutions such as the University of Phoenix, owned by the Apollo Group (APOL Quote - Cramer on APOL - Stock Picks), and DeVry University, part of DeVry (DV Quote - Cramer on DV - Stock Picks), are undergoing an enrollment explosion and rapid expansion as renowned brick-and-mortar schools are slashing budgets, shrinking freshman class sizes and freezing development projects.
The reason for this shift is likely driven by the models on which these institutions are built.
The stock-market decline has pinched even the most gaudy of Ivy League coffers. Large university endowments, which are a major source of the schools’ operating income, are concentrated in non-cash investments that have tumbled. Harvard, for example, lost $8 billion, or 22%, of its endowment’s value in the four months since the fiscal year ended in June.
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SOLANA BEACH, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–“People are losing jobs every day,” laments Dr. Michael K. Clifford, the man whose firm, SignificantFederation, LLC, served as the lead investor in Grand Canyon Education (LOPE), the only company to go public this fall.
“This is driving their need to refresh existing skills and develop new ones,” said Clifford. “Online education, with its financial aid options and non-linear learning model, offers adult learners the opportunity for intellectual and professional improvement.”
Clifford (http://www.significantventures.com/bio.php) was an evangelist for online education long before the recession tightened its grip on the United States last fall. Now he’s an even bigger proponent, given its potential for helping the country recover its footing.
“Being enrolled in online education gives adult learners the flexibility to leverage a student loan for living expenses, gain new skills, and continue searching for an even better employment situation than the one lost,” said Clifford. “Being engaged in learning engenders a positive attitude, allowing the adult learner to say: ‘I am in school improving myself. I would like to add value to your company.’ It demonstrates the individual’s desire to grow, learn, and be productive.”
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