San Diego BizTech Roundup: Active Network, Accelrys, Entropic, & More

—San Diego’s Active Network (NYSE [[ticker:ACTV]]), which provides online event registration and related services, acquired Philadelphia-based StarCite for about $51 million in stock and cash. StarCite, which provides Web-based event management services for companies around the world, has about 300 employees. The Active Network said StarCite will become part of its newly launched “Business Solutions” division, which will serve the events industry.

—San Diego-based Accelrys (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ACCL]]), which provides scientific enterprise research and development software and services, said it’s paying $35 million to acquire VelQuest, a Boston-area developer of systems that support good manufacturing practices for FDA-regulated industries. Accelrys said the VelQuest acquisition would expand its product line to include software used in pharmaceutical quality assurance and quality control.

—San Diego’s Entropic Communications (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ENTR]]), which specializes in Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) technology used in home entertainment systems, said it wants to purchase certain assets of Trident Microsystems’ set-top box and system-on-a-chip business. Entropic submitted its $55 million offer as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization that Sunnyvale, CA-based Trident filed last Wednesday. The bankruptcy court in Delaware must approve the Entropic offer, which could happen by the end of March if no other bidders step forward.

—Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs is set to deliver the opening keynote address tomorrow morning at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Jacobs is expected to talk about Qualcomm’s vision for mobile computing as smart phones and tablets increasingly become a mainstay tool for consumer media and entertainment. The three-day show also will serve as a global stage for Sony Electronics, the San Diego-based arm of Sony’s U.S. business. San Diego’s Razer, Entropic Communications, Leap Wireless, Independa, Skin-It, and Marchon 3D, also are displaying products at the show.

—I profiled San Diego-based Verimatrix, a venture-backed company that develops encryption software and related security technologies for pay-TV networks. Verimatrix CEO Tom Munro told me the company has been successful in creating piracy protection software for Internet-Protocol Television (IPTV), and today more than half of the company’s business is in so-called unmanaged networks, such as Netflix, which provides streaming video “Over the Top” (OTT) of a cable- or satellite-based broadband Internet platform.

—The 2011 executive compensation survey showed a 3.7 percent increase nationwide in tech sector CEO pay over 2010. The annual CompStudy survey produced by executive search firm J. Robert Scott and law firm WilmerHale in collaboration with Noam Wasserman, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. The study found that non-founder technology CEOs brought in average base salaries of $242,000 in 2011, up from $233,000 in 2010.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.