That was July. Wednesday, Domo will announce that it has raised another batch of money, and is bringing in a new investor. The company has closed a $20 million round led by Institutional Venture Partners.

IVP, which had invested in Omniture and so has a history with James, is joining an all-star cast of investors including Benchmark Capital; Andreessen Horowitz; Ron Conway and David Lee of SV Angel; and Hummer Winblad, plus a bunch of personal investments. The round — which is being described as an A-1 round, brings Domo’s total capital raised to date to $63 million.

IVP general partner Todd Chaffee said Domo is an example of a dynamic management team going after a high-growth market. “We know Josh has the experience to build Domo into a disruptive and dominant player in a growing $10 billion market,” he said in a statement. Aside from Omniture, IVP has backed HomeAway, MySQL, Twitter and Zynga.

James wouldn’t tell me the implied valuation, but he did concede that it’s upward of “a couple hundred million.” And if that’s not surprising enough, what’s equally surprising is one possible use for the money: Acquisitions. Well, maybe.

“Let’s just suppose, and this is 100 percent supposition,” he told me over the phone Tuesday, “that we want to buy someone. We’ve thought about it. We’ve had potential targets cross the email threads. It’s not the right time to do that stuff just yet. But it’s nice to know we have the flexibility when the time comes.”

So where’s Domo, the business intelligence software-as-service play he was building? It’s running as a demonstration with a few early customers, he says. And he’ll have more to say about it publicly in about three to four months.

“We have a few thousand people who say they want to see a demo, and we’re working through that list,” James says. “The feedback has been more positive and at a higher rate than I would have thought possible. I think we’re going to have to figure out how to do a lot of installations all at once.”

That’s what we call a good problem to have.

Small businesses have a hard time getting loans because the banks that make loans look primarily at an owner’s personal credit information and not at the day-to-day financial data related to the business itself.

The recession hasn’t made it any easier. Data from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council show that in 2009, banks originated $73 billion in loans to small businesses, representing a decline of 47 percent since 2007. And the overall number of loans fell by 69 percent to 1.6 million loans, from 3.6 million loans during the same period.

Raising capital doesn’t seem to be a problem for On Deck Capital. The New York-based start-up announced today that it has landed a $15-million C Round led by SAP Ventures, the venture capital arm of the German software company SAP. Its previous investments include stakes in LinkedIn, WebEx, MySQL and Red Hat Software.

On Deck is something of a right-time, right-place story, emerging as it has during a period when small businesses are struggling for needed capital. Launched in 2006, its software gathers live digital data from a business’s operations in order to help evaluate the business’s health. The point is to give banks and potential investors a tool to realistically evaluate the risk of making a loan that goes beyond the simple credit rating of the business owner. On Deck has been used to make $100 million in loans over four years.

Even in 2006, when credit was plentiful, most small businesses were able to secure loans because the banks treated them as consumers, not as businesses, says On Deck CEO Mitch Jacobs. For banks, it’s also a question of time and attention “Banks simply can’t afford to spend 80 hours to underwrite a flower shop that needs $30,000 for a relatively short period of time. It just doesn’t make economic sense.”

But at the same time, small businesses started embracing digital tools to run the shop. They started doing their banking online, and using QuickBooks to handle invoices and payroll. They started taking credit cards more often, and selling their goods and services on the Web. All of these are streams of useful data that can be captured to help paint an accurate picture of the business’s financial health, Jacobs says.

Combine that with technology that makes the repayment process both simple for the business owner and reliable for the lender, plus real-time monitoring of financial data from companies that get loans, and it’s not hard to see why On Deck is growing: Revenues tripled in 2010.

Not just any company can apply for an On Deck loan. The typical borrower company has been in business for at least a year and has at least $3,000 in credit card transactions per month. Loans range in size from $5,000 to $100,000 but average about $30,000, Jacobs said. Payments on the loan are made daily using an automated direct debit system. The small daily payments help prevent that moment that causes headaches for lenders when unexpected expenses crop up and the monthly loan payment ends up at the bottom of the priority list.

On Deck also announced that David Hartwig, managing director at SAP Capital, has joined its board of directors. Other investors include Contour Venture Partners in New York, First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures and Village Ventures.

No surprise then that it’s beefing up its executive team. Zendesk named Zack Urlocker chief operating officer. Urlocker is currently a former executive in residence at Scale Venture Partners. Before that he was an executive vice president at MySQL, and helped boost its sales to $100 million before it was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

Among the new Zendesk customers are Groupon, OpenTable and Zappos Insights, as well as established brands like Adobe and Sony Music. This news comes on the heels of its $19 million round of funding led by Matrix Partners late last year, along with Charles River Ventures and Benchmark Capital.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

An inevitability, I suppose. But one that’s evidently approaching quite rapidly. Word of Schwartz’s impending departure comes as Oracle gears up for a Wednesday event at which it plans to reveal its strategy for Sun.

When he was appointed CEO in April 2006, Schwartz was charged with restoring Sun to its glory days. Sadly, he was unable to do it. And while he came up with some some inventive strategies–buying MySQL, open-sourcing Java, and Solaris–none were of much benefit to Sun financially. So now, with the former Silicon Valley icon about to become another acquisition notch in Oracle’s belt, Schwartz is leaving.

But he’s leaving with his pockets full. According to Sun’s definitive proxy statement, Schwartz stands to earn about $12 million from the severance package he negotiated, plus another $5.1 million or so for the shares he still holds in the company.

“Go, Oracle,” indeed.

Sun declined a request for comment.

FURTHER READING:

• Departing Sun Co-Founder to Employees: Kick Butt and Have Fun!
• Sun CEO: Go Oracle, Beat IBM [Internal Memo]
• EU Approves Oracle-Sun Deal
• EU Poised to Approve Oracle-Sun Deal
• Oracle Sack Half of Sun’s Workforce? Ridiculous, Says Sun.
• Q: What’s the Difference Between Neelie Kroes and Larry Ellison?
• Ellison: Oracle Is the New IBM
• Oracle: IBM, Come Out to Play-ee-ay
• Mr. Ellison Asks That His Burgers Be Served With Freedom Fries Until Further Notice

The European Commission this morning unconditionally approved Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, removing one of the last hurdles to the $7.4 billion deal. Digital Daily reported Monday that people close to the companies expected the EC to clear the deal by today.

“I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned,” European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement. “Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products.”

All that remains in the planned merger’s way now is approval from Chinese and Russian antitrust authorities, and Oracle (ORCL) expects them both to clear it unconditionally. That being the case, the company has scheduled an event to discuss its strategy for absorbing Sun (JAVA) for the morning of Jan. 27. CEO Larry Ellison will host the event, which will be Webcast live from 9 am to 2 pm Pacific Time.

The EC’s full statement, below.

Mergers: Commission clears Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems

The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of US hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems Inc. by Oracle Corporation, a US enterprise software company. After an in-depth examination, launched in September 2009 (see IP/09/1271 ), the Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: “I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products.”

Oracle is a supplier of business software, including middleware (i.e. software that connects software components applications), database software, enterprise application software and related services.

Sun provides network computing infrastructure solutions that include computer systems, software, storage and services. In 2008, Sun acquired the open source database, MySQL.

The Commission’s in-depth investigation, opened on 3 September 2009 assessed whether the acquisition of the world’s leading open source database MySQL by Oracle, the leading proprietary database vendor, would lead to a significant impediment of effective competition within the EEA. The database market is highly concentrated with the three main proprietary database vendors – Oracle, IBM and Microsoft – accounting for approximately 85% of the market in terms of revenue.

Although Sun’s share of the database market in terms of revenue is low, as users of MySQL can download and use the database for free, given its open source nature, the Commission’s investigation confirmed MySQL’s position as the leading open source database. The Commission’s investigation therefore focussed on the nature and extent of the competitive constraint that MySQL currently exerts on Oracle and whether this would be affected by the proposed transaction.

The Commission’s in-depth investigation showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment.

Given the open source nature of MySQL, the Commission also assessed Oracle’s ability and incentive to remove the constraint exerted by MySQL after the merger and the extent to which this constraint could, if necessary, be replaced by other actors on the database market.

The Commission’s investigation showed that another open source database, PostgreSQL, is considered by many database users to be a credible alternative to MySQL and could be expected to replace to some extent the competitive force currently exerted by MySQL on the database market. In addition, the Commission found that ‘forks’ (branches of the MySQL code base), which are legally possible given MySQL’s open source nature, might also develop in future to exercise a competitive constraint on Oracle in a sufficient and timely manner. Given the specificities of the open source software industry, the Commission also took into account Oracle’s public announcement of 14 December 2009 of a series of pledges to customers, users and developers of MySQL concerning issues such as the continued release of future versions of MySQL under the GPL (General Public Licence) open source licence. Oracle has already taken action to implement some of its pledges by making binding offers to third parties who currently have a licensing contract for MySQL with Sun to amend contracts. This is likely to allow third parties to continue to develop storage engines to be integrated with MySQL and to extend the functionality of MySQL.

The Commission also examined the potential impact of Oracle’s acquisition of the intellectual property (IP) rights connected to the Java development platform in the context of the proposed transaction.

It found that Oracle’s ability to deny its competitors access to important IP rights would be limited by the functioning of the Java Community Process (JCP) which is a participative process for developing and revising Java technology specifications involving numerous other important players in the IT industry, including Oracle’s competitors.

The Commission also found that Oracle would not have the incentives to restrict its competitors’ access to the Java IP rights as this would jeopardise the gains derived from broad adoption of the Java platform and therefore the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns in respect of the licensing of IP rights connected with Java.

The Commission also examined the potential effects arising from the proposed transaction on the market for middleware and in the ‘IT stack’, where the merger would strengthen Oracle’s presence. It concluded that no competition concerns would arise in these areas in the light of the merged entity’s market shares and prevailing competition in the markets.

“Larry Ellison: We’re a big fan of open source–in fact, we’ve had the major transaction engine to MySQL–it’s something Oracle bought years ago and has invested in it to a higher level than it was invested in before. We believe in open source, we’re a huge supporter of Linux. MySQL and Oracle do not compete–at all….There’s a long list of database machines and database software we compete against–we never compete against MySQL. They’re both called databases, they address very different markets–furthermore, it’s open source.

Ed Zander: If they ask you to spin it off, will you?

LE: No.

EZ: If they told you to spin it off, would you?

LE: No. We’re not gonna spin it off. The U.S. government cleared this, we think the Europeans are gonna clear this, and we are not going to spin anything off.”

– Excerpt from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s September Churchill Club interview with former Sun CEO Ed Zander

Looks like Oracle has managed to ease European regulators’ antitrust concerns over its $7 billion acquisition of Sun–perhaps even enough for them to approve the thing.

This morning, Oracle (ORCL) and the European Commission both said they have had “constructive discussions” about the company’s plans for Sun (JAVA) and more specifically, its open-source MySQL database software.

Driving those discussions: A 10-point list of commitments from Oracle intended to ensure that MySQL will remain a competitive force in the database market. In the list, Oracle spells out plans for the database software, promising to boost spending on research and development, refrain from seeking commercial licenses from makers of MySQL storage engines and to establish a customer advisory board of MySQL users.

These concessions went over well with the EC, which is clearly warming to the idea of a Sun-Oracle union. “Today’s announcement by Oracle of a series of undertakings to customers, developers and users of MySQL is an important new element to be taken into account in the ongoing proceedings,” said the EC in its statement.

“In particular,” the EC continued, “Oracle’s binding contractual undertakings to storage engine vendors regarding copyright non-assertion and the extension over a period of up to 5 years of the terms and conditions of existing commercial licenses are significant new facts.”

European Union regulators have until late January to make their decision.

And evidently for good reason. Oracle (ORCL) has managed to muster a substantial list of customers willing to argue that its purchase of Sun (JAVA), and more specifically, of Sun’s open-source MySQL database software, will not undermine competition in the database market.

Among the eight companies helping Oracle defend the deal: Vodafone (VOD), the U.K.’s National Health Service, Sabre Holdings and Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBV). “There can’t be a better voice than customers,” Vinje said. “The customers said that there is robust competition in the market.”

But that’s today. Tomorrow will be a different story entirely. Tomorrow, Microsoft (MSFT) and SAP (SAP) will comment on the $7 billion deal, and neither company is particularly fond of it, or of Oracle for that matter. Both will presumably argue that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun could hinder MySQL’s development since Oracle has little reason to support a database technology that competes with its own–though some, like IBM, disagree.

One last bit of news worth noting, here. European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes seems confident the EC will resolve its differences with Oracle. “I am still optimistic that we can reach a satisfactory outcome that will ensure that there is no adverse impact on effective competition in the European market,” she told a news conference.

More tomorrow.

Should make for an interesting meeting given Oracle’s refusal to take the EC’s concerns about the future of Sun’s MySQL database seriously. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine Oracle (ORCL) caving to the Commission’s demands when it has criticized the group’s findings as a “profound misunderstanding” of the database market and open source.

And if not that, then what? Would Oracle abandon the deal instead? That too seems unlikely because it would mean delaying CEO Larry Ellison’s plan to transform Oracle into the next IBM (IBM). As Ellison said in October, “T. J. Watson’s IBM was the greatest company in the history of enterprise in America because its combination of hardware and software was running most of the enterprises on the planet. We think with the combination of Sun technology and Oracle technology we can succeed and beat IBM. That’s our goal.”

Given the EC’s concerns about the Sun (JAVA) acquisition and Oracle’s refusal to address them, what other option is there?

According to Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison, Sun (JAVA) is already losing $100 million a month as it waits for regulatory approval, and judging from the price of the company’s stock today, it may be losing even more than that. Shares in Sun slid to $8.11–about 15 percent below Oracle’s offer price and a far cry from the $9.18 they hit in mid-October.

Clearly, investors are alarmed by this latest turn of events, though industry observers say there’s little reason for them to be. Morgan Stanley, for example, believes Oracle’s acquisition of Sun will win EU approval with few, if any, modifications to the MySQL database software about which regulators are so concerned.

“Based on our diligence, we believe the EC is likely to approve the deal with no remedies or remedies pertaining to MySQL’s licensing,” the research house said in a note to clients today. “It is highly unlikely that Oracle restructures the deal (e.g. spins MySQL) or walks away.”

Morgan Stanley’s call: The deal will go through and at $9.50 per share. As the firm notes, the EU hasn’t blocked a U.S.-based transaction since GE/Honeywell in 2001.