Utopia is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost solutions providers in the enterprise data management market. The company provides cutting edge solutions to clients looking to manage large volumes of structured and unstructured content and build a foundation for future initiatives around Big Data analytics, Business Intelligence (BI), real time in-memory computing like the SAP HANA® platform, the Apache™ Hadoop™ framework, Enterprise Asset Management and mobile applications.

“Utopia’s proven management team and proprietary methodologies have enabled it to become the premier pure play enterprise data solutions provider in this high-growth market,” said Brad Bernstein, FTV Capital partner and new Utopia board member. “The company’s unique Enterprise Data Lifecycle Management (EDLM) framework and managed services model is the most comprehensive approach to data management we have seen and is attracting many blue chip Fortune 500 clients.”

Utopia is an SAP® Premier Partner for SAP Services and an SAP PartnerEdge Value Added Reseller (VAR). It has also become the partner of choice for global enterprises looking to invest in long-term partnerships with data experts in order to strategically determine ways to effectively harness the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being produced daily (Source: Gartner).

Liron Gitig, FTV principal, who is also joining the Utopia board said, “Enterprises are attracted to Utopia’s focus and thought leadership on rapidly emerging, complex data management issues, combined with the company’s deep domain expertise in multiple industries as well as its cloud-based access. Utopia’s distinct competitive advantages are compelling to clients who are choosing to build relationships with Utopia for the long haul.”

Utopia has experienced triple digit revenue growth in recent years. “Demand for our services is growing rapidly as content explodes all around us and companies start to harness the power of data in a highly competitive business climate,” said Arvind J. Singh, president and CEO. “With additional funding, we can now accelerate and expand our global footprint, leverage Utopia University to hire and train locally in international markets, expand our offerings in to new verticals, and invest in cutting edge research at Utopia Labs, our new R&D and innovation center, to help define the future of data. We plan to hire an additional 500 employees in 2012 to meet our growth targets.”

Utopia is celebrating its 10th year in business this year. “We couldn’t be more delighted with our choice of new business partner,” added Singh. “FTV Capital has an unusual understanding of market trends and shares our vision for the future of data. Their experience and proven track record with high growth services businesses like Utopia will benefit us as we embark on the next exciting phase of our growth.”

Matthew E. Roy, formerly Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, becomes the new Vice President of Human Resources and Administration. He succeeds Jeremy Gump who held that position since July 2007. Gump announced last fall that he would be leaving the company to pursue entrepreneurial interests.

Michelle D. Spreitzer, Assistant General Counsel since 2000, succeeds Roy as Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary.

“With his deep understanding of labor laws throughout the Americas and his success as a leader in the organization, I am confident Matt will do an outstanding job leading the team in Human Resources and Administrative Services, ” said Peter Zieringer, President and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA LLC. “Michelle has built a solid reputation for working closely with her business partners and has demonstrated strong leadership on many critical issues throughout her career and we are fortunate to have her join the executive leadership team.”

In his new position, Roy is responsible for overseeing Human Resources strategy for Daimler’s Sales and Financial Services entities in the Americas Region.

Roy joined the company in 1998 and was responsible for Commercial Affairs. He became General Counsel in 2007. He was awarded an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1987 and a Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, from Tulane University Law School in 1990.

In her new position, Spreitzer is responsible for all of the legal activities in the Americas Region for Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. She also joins the core executive management team in the company called the Operations Committee.

Spreitzer joined the company in 1996 as a staff attorney after working at a Detroit law firm and a national bank where she focused on financial services. She was awarded a Bachelor of Social Work degree from Wayne State University, Detroit, in 1984. She returned to Wayne State to earn a Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, in 1991. In her most recent position, she was responsible for consumer regulatory affairs and employment law.

In the initial AOL auction, Microsoft secured the ability to own or assign approximately 925 U.S. patents and patent applications plus a license to AOL’s remaining patent portfolio, which contains approximately 300 additional patents that were not for sale.

As a result of today’s agreement, Facebook will obtain ownership of approximately 650 AOL patents and patent applications, plus a license to the AOL patents and applications that Microsoft will purchase and own.

Upon closing of this transaction with Facebook, Microsoft will retain ownership of approximately 275 AOL patents and applications; a license to the approximately 650 AOL patents and applications that will now be owned by Facebook; and a license to approximately 300 patents that AOL did not sell in its auction.

“Today’s agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction,” said Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel, Microsoft. “As we said earlier this month, we had submitted the winning AOL bid in order to obtain a durable license to the full AOL portfolio and ownership of certain patents that complement our existing portfolio.”

“Today’s agreement with Microsoft represents an important acquisition for Facebook,” said Ted Ullyot, general counsel, Facebook. “This is another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook’s interests over the long term.”

The parties are evaluating the accounting treatment for these transactions. These transactions are also subject to customary closing conditions, including clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended.

“Acura has a sparkling reputation and we are thrilled to build the gateway vehicle to this brand at our Greensburg facility,” said Jun Nishimoto, president of Honda Manufacturing of Indiana. “As the exclusive builder of the ILX, HMIN has a big responsibility. Our associates meet this challenge by working together as one team and today we are ready for our customers to share our pride in this beautiful new product.”

The new Acura ILX sedan symbolizes the gateway to the Acura lineup and comes with both gasoline and gas-electric hybrid powertrain options. HMIN produces three versions of the Acura ILX – a 150-horsepower, 4-cylinder 2.0-liter model, a 201-horsepower 2.4-liter model with 6-speed manual transmission, and the ILX Hybrid, with a 1.5-liter 4-cylinder engine. The gasoline engines for the 2.0- and 2.4-liter versions of Acura ILX come from the Anna, Ohio, engine plant of Honda of America Mfg., Inc.

The Acura ILX hybrid version is Acura’s first-ever hybrid model, the first hybrid vehicle to be made in America at a Honda plant, and the first Acura model to be produced in Indiana. The Acura ILX joins the TL sedan, ZDX crossover vehicle, and the MDX and RDX sport-utility vehicles as the fifth Acura model produced exclusively in North America. Acura finished second among all luxury brands in the J.D. Power and Associates’ 2011 Initial Quality Study.

“This all-new Acura luxury sedan is closely linked to the future of Acura,” said Jeff Conrad, vice president and general manager of Acura for American Honda. “Just as the Acura ILX is the gateway to the Acura brand, Honda Manufacturing of Indiana is a gateway to Acura customers.”

With 155 million people, Nigeria has the world’s eighth most populous nation and has the third largest economy in Africa, following South Africa and Egypt. Nigeria is the eighth largest exporter of petroleum in the world, accounting for nearly 11% of United States oil supply.

“This quarter, our company has reached a milestone with over 500 vehicles on backlog, a record for T3 Motion. To fulfill this demand, we are expanding our manufacturing capabilities and are launching strong sales campaigns to leverage our success,” stated Ki Nam, T3 Motion CEO. “As the third largest player in Africa, Nigeria represents a milestone in our company’s expanding footprint, reinforcing our global deployment strategy and supporting our ongoing sales growth.”

The T3 ESV is an electric law enforcement patrol vehicle known for its command presence, quick response time and iconic look that is designed to decrease operating costs, reduce crime and increase patrol capabilities. More than 3,000 T3 Series vehicles have been deployed in over 30 countries worldwide.

This web-based, portable approach to enterprise management provides the power of ECRS’s award-winning CATAPULT retail automation solution to run on a Tablet device, such as Apple iPad or Motorola Zoom. The new CATAPULT applications will also run from within all major Internet browsers, such as Windows Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Apple Opera, and Google Chrome.

“Modern mobile devices and web technology have spread to encompass all vital areas of our lives,” said ECRS Vice President of Development, Mark Noble. “ECRS’s introduction of the Tablet-ready executive dashboard and maintenance application are only the beginning of our comprehensive Web 2.0 vision. This platform frees CATAPULT and allows our customers to work where, when, and how they choose.”

The first phase of the new platform, which is scheduled for release in December 2011, will deliver a powerful, fast, high-level executive dashboard with on-the-fly drill down capability. This CATAPULT functionality will be available to all current ECRS system users at no additional cost. ECRS’ intuitive executive dashboard displays a variety of vital metrics, as configured by the user, with extensive comparative capability. Whether the user wants to compare specific stores, departments, or items, business intelligence comes alive with visually appealing graphs and charts; providing access to a retailer’s most critical data in an easy-to-read format.

Maintenance controls will be available in subsequent versions set for release in the first and second quarters of 2012. With CATAPULT’s Web 2.0 maintenance platform, authorized users can log in and access integral back office functions, such as inventory, pricing, supplier data, and promotions via all major Tablet devices and/or Windows or Apple based personal computers.

“I want to thank Bill for his valuable service and guidance to Motorola and to Motorola Mobility,” said Sanjay Jha, chairman and chief executive officer, Motorola Mobility. “Bill played an instrumental role in the separation of Motorola into two independent publicly-traded companies, as well as in our recent milestone transaction with Google. On behalf of the entire Board of Directors, I wish Bill only the best.”

“It has been a privilege to serve on the Board of Directors of Motorola Mobility,” said William Hambrecht. “Motorola Mobility is an iconic company and I have truly enjoyed working closely with my fellow directors, Sanjay Jha and the entire senior leadership team. I am delighted with the transaction we entered into with Google, and I look forward to seeing the benefits and new opportunities this partnership creates.”

Agua Caliente is the world’s largest solar photovoltaic project currently under construction. The Yuma County, Arizona project has obtained all permits and approvals from both federal and state agencies, and is expected to create up to 400 construction jobs through its completion date in 2014. Financial terms of the sale of the project were not disclosed.

Electricity from Agua Caliente will be sold under a 25-year power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric Co., helping California to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals. At full capacity, the electricity generated by Agua Caliente is enough to serve more than 225,000 homes. The project is expected to offset approximately 5.5 million metric tons of CO2 over 25 years, the equivalent of taking over 40,000 cars off the road annually.

Business demand for rapid time-to-market and lower operational costs is driving IT organizations to quickly adopt new approaches such as composite application architectures and cloud services. As the quest for quickly delivering high-quality business services continues, IT management – from automation and security to governance and service assurance – becomes the most critical factor for success.

CA Technologies acquisition of ITKO will add a new and critical dimension to modern IT management and extend it to encompass the entire service delivery lifecycle. In particular, the acquisition will help customers overcome the limitations of current organizational approaches, breaking down the silos across development, testing and operations.

“The addition of ITKO to CA Technologies will extend our ability to deliver a complete set of capabilities to help our customers and partners to increase their adoption and value from cloud-based applications,” said David Dobson, executive vice president, Customer Solutions Group, CA Technologies.

“ITKO’s technology allows customers to anticipate how their applications will perform in alternate environments, significantly reducing risk, and accelerating their time to value. Together, we believe we will offer the broadest continuum of IT management solutions—one that spans planning to production, emphasizes the service over the infrastructure, and accommodates the new heterogeneity that includes on-premise, cloud and hybrid application environments.”

On an unaudited basis, for the trailing 12-month period ending March 31, 2011, ITKO reported revenue of approximately $39 million, more than doubling the prior 12-month period. For this same period, ITKO was highly profitable and generated positive cash flow. Including transaction-related expenses, the transaction is expected to be slightly dilutive on a non-GAAP basis and dilutive on a GAAP basis to CA Technologies earnings per share in fiscal year 2012. The transaction also is expected to be accretive on a non-GAAP and dilutive on a GAAP basis to CA Technologies earnings per share in fiscal year 2013. The acquisition is expected to be completed within three months, pending regulatory approval.

ITKO’s approach and pioneering service simulation technology has disrupted the traditional application development market. It also has rendered conventional application lifecycle management (ALM) methods and technology obsolete for organizations developing complex composite applications, employing agile development, and leveraging cloud services and components. ITKO customers are able to accelerate application delivery cycle times, improve the quality of services, and save millions in lab infrastructure and testing costs. ITKO’s more than 100 percent bookings and revenue CAGR over four years is a testament to their ability to work with the world’s largest enterprises and systems integrators.

ITKO’s LISA solution enables organizations to “mock up” a service at enterprise speed and enterprise scale—even if the application is unfinished or unstable or the physical resource is unavailable. LISA, which is used by more than 125 enterprise customers, virtualizes an environment by simulating the behavior of external services without actually invoking them—e.g. how a checkout or fulfillment process should interact with a service, without actually authorizing a credit card or putting a box on a truck. “What-if” capabilities offer a whole new way to understand how an application might behave if components are changed—e.g. swapping an internal RDBMS for a cloud-based database or changing package shippers.

CA Technologies believes the combination of ITKO, with the company’s solutions for Service Assurance, Service Automation, Service Management and Turn-key Cloud, will create the most compelling offerings in the market that accommodate the complexity inherent in today’s applications and environments. For customers, the benefit is business services that can be built, tested and delivered in hours and days, not months and years.

“We are thrilled to join CA Technologies because it gives us a tremendous platform to take our growth to an entirely new level,” said Shridhar Mittal, president and CEO of ITKO. “Combining LISA with CA Technologies world-class IT management will give our customers a solution that is ready for where they’re going, not limiting them to where they’ve been.”

At the close of the transaction, Mittal will join CA Technologies as general manager of ITKO, a division of CA Technologies. It is anticipated that all of ITKO’s approximately 120 employees will join CA Technologies.

The acquisition is a continuation of CA Technologies strategy that balances investments to grow the company with returning cash to shareholders. So far in its 2012 fiscal year, the company has repurchased $150 million of its common stock.

“The days of demonstrating marketing effectiveness as an optional extra are over,” said Daryl Lee, Chief Integration Architect of McCann Worldgroup. “With Marc’s experience in connecting strategy with analytics and technology, we will have a 21st century Performance Analytics capability at the center of McCann Worldgroup that will be scaled across every client solution. Marc and Laura will work closely with our Integrated Strategy practice to link integrated marketing strategies to global intelligence and marketing performance systems and ensure effectiveness is embedded into everything we do. With the addition of a Marketing Sciences practice, the strategic toolbox of McCann Worldgroup now leads the industry.”

Schwartz was most recently Global Lead, Data and Analytics for SapientNitro, working across clients such as The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, Johnson&Johnson, General Mills, and American Airlines, among others. In that role he was responsible for all data, analytics and measurement planning for all channels including digital, social media, direct response, and media. Prior to SapientNitro, Schwartz was EVP, Multichannel Consumer Engagement for DDB where he was responsible for interactive, new media, direct response, and online and offline analytics. Earlier in his career, Schwartz worked as Global Director of Data Strategy for Wunderman.

“McCann Worldgroup has gone through an incredible transformation over the past year, so it is exciting to be joining this amazing team at this critical time,” said Schwartz. “Their relentless commitment to strategic collaboration in pursuit of innovation, creativity and performance is what attracted me and what will ensure our success.”

Simpson has been a truth scout for 12 years and has travelled the world talking to a wide range of consumers about a variety of different topics and brands; including cognac drinkers in Paris, ice cream lovers in Manchester and business travelers in Shanghai. For the last 6 years Simpson has worked as head of trends and insight for McCann London. She launched the prestigious Moody Britain study which has charted the emotional highs and lows of British culture and has been covered extensively by the British press. She has presented the findings to deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and discussed the findings on BBC Radio Four. She has worked across a number of clients, L’Oreal, Tragus, Premier Foods and B&Q. Prior to her time at McCann she worked at Synovate.

“I’m incredibly excited about my new role and my move to New York. I am truly a truth hunter and I aim to ensure that the truths we uncover globally through our proprietary research and global intelligence network will help drive solutions that are transformational of our clients’ brands, and businesses,” said Simpson.

The Marketing Sciences practice is the latest in a serious of strategic capabilities that are being built centrally in McCann Worldgroup to be accessed by all teams and clients around the world. “Stay tuned, there’s more to come,” said Lee.