Guidewire provides software targeted at insurance companies that provides property, workers’ compensation and casualty insurance to its customers. Its software product includes a web-based claims system, an enterprise application for transactions and other administrative tasks.

Founded in 2001, the San Mateo, California-based company brought in $190M in revenue in the past year (ending Oct. 31). The company’s net profits were $38.5 million in the twelve months ended October 31, 2011, while sales increased 51 percent to $52.4 million in the most recent quarter.

According to Guidewire, about 90 percent of the more than 7,000 insurance companies are still using outdated technology systems originally developed over 30 years ago, meaning there are still plenty of potential clients available. The company currently has more than 100 customers, including major insurance company clients, including Nationwide, CNA and American Family Insurance.

Guidewire, which filed its IPO paperwork in September, will use GWRE for its stock ticker. Two of the company’s biggest investors — U.S. Venture Partners and Bay Partners — have shown interest in purchasing up to 400,000 shares of common stock at the IPO price, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Samsung pointed to its TouchWiz interface on the phones as the main reason for the snub, saying that there isn’t enough RAM and storage to run both Android 4.0 and TouchWiz, the Verge reports.

The company recently announced that its newer Galaxy S II phones will receive an Ice Cream Sandwich update early next year.

Given that Samsung sold over 10 million Galaxy S units in 2010, there are certainly going to be a lot of customers angered by this news. It’s particularly surprising since the Nexus S, which is also built by Samsung and shares plenty of hardware with the Galaxy S series, will be getting an Android 4.0 upgrade. Samsung explains that away, saying the Nexus S doesn’t run TouchWiz, so there are more resources available for Ice Cream Sandwich to use.

The news shows yet another downside to custom Android skins, which have been criticized for slowing down phones without adding much additional functionality. While Samsung likely won’t ever let go of TouchWiz on the Galaxy S, some intrepid users could release a version of Ice Cream Sandwich for the phones with Samsung’s software stripped out.

Additionally, Samsung also said that its first tablet, the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab, won’t see an upgrade for similar reasons. That’s less of an issue, since that tablet didn’t win over many fans.

The move allows third-party companies to use webOS, but HP will still be able to guide development of the platform. HP says it will be an “active participant and investor in the project.”

“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” HP CEO Meg Whitman said in a statement today. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

But while webOS will live on, HP will likely still follow-up the news with more layoffs from its webOS group. After all, with help from the open source community, HP won’t need as many bodies on board to push the platform forward. We heard that the company was close to releasing several new webOS devices before it decided to get out of the mobile business earlier this year.

HP said in a blog post today that it will “explore the viability” of new webOS devices, but I don’t see that happening (aside from the company’s curious obsession with webOS printers). Update: Whitman says that HP hasn’t given up on tablets just yet — it’s working on webOS tablets for later 2012 or 2013, reports the Verge.

The news is particularly good for consumers, since it means we can see webOS popping up on non-HP devices in the future. And if you picked up one of those cheap TouchPad tablets, there’s the potential that you’ll actually be able to receive updates in the future (though intellectual property issues may make that impossible), or upgrade the slate entirely to an open sourced version of webOS.

We reported in September that Amazon was one of many companies in deep negotiations to acquire webOS, a varied group that at times was said to include Intel, Qualcomm, and RIM. HP was actively trying to sell webOS up until last month, when we caught word that it was also demanding a sweet deal to use webOS in its future printers. Now, as an open source project, HP will still be able to throw webOS on its printers (yay?), while also getting development help for free.

HP says it will open source the underlying webOS code and work together with the open source community to define a charter for the open source webOS project. Additionally, HP says it will make ENYO, the webOS application framework, available to the open source community as well.

GainSpan’s goal is to create incredibly low-power Wi-Fi modules and drivers that are suitable for all kinds of devices, including household appliances. On top of creating hardware, the company also develops embedded Wi-Fi software. The five markets the company said it focuses on are: healthcare and fitness, smart energy, industrial control, commercial/building automation and consumer home.

The new funding round was led by existing investors Sigma Partners, Opus Capital, New Venture Partners and Intel Capital. New investors Hatteras Funds and Mobile Internet Capital participated along with prior investors In-Q-Tel and Camp Ventures.

“Being able to attract such world-class companies is the ultimate seal of approval that we are in the right place at the right time with the right solution,” said Greg Winner, President and CEO of GainSpan, in a statement. “While the debate over what wireless technology works best will continue, it’s hard to argue with powerful financial backers, real customers and proven, innovative products in a hot market.”

San Jose, Calif.-based GainSpan was founded in 2006 and maintains a research and development team in India. With the new funding, the company has raised about $56 million, including a $5 million investment back in November 2010.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week, I’m writing a column on business and technology called Dylan’s Desk, while Dean Takahashi is writing a column on video games called The DeanBeat. They are available to newsletter subscribers a whole day before they appear on the VentureBeat website.

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Software is eating the world, storied venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently wrote — and from his perspective, it certainly looks like it. But that’s only part of the picture.

It’s true that the fastest-growing companies in a variety of markets are driven by their deep understanding of software. Andreessen cites Amazon, Netflix, Skype, Pandora and Zynga as examples.

And like Andreessen, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff lauded HP for getting out of the PC business to focus on software-based “cloud” products and services.

It’s true that if you’re an investor looking for a good multiple, software startups offer an unparalleled opportunity to create value with relatively small investments. And yet, if you’re concerned about the long-term shape of technology, software is only one dimension of many. Arguably, hardware makers and service providers exert far more control over the future direction of technology.

When I look at the companies that will make a difference to my future (and my children’s), I’m more concerned about the latter. Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Nike’s Nike+ system, sensors built into cities and computer chips printed on paper: These are the kinds of things that will change the world over time. The data-usage and app policies of wireless and wireline carriers: These are the kinds of things that can enable revolutionary change, or kill it in its cradle.

And the truth is, all of this software couldn’t exist without hardware to drive it. A massive infrastructure had to be built before software could “eat the world,” including hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable, millions of servers and billions of handsets.

For every 600 smartphones sold, a carrier has to deploy one server, according to sources at Intel. You think that’s not a business opportunity? Talk to AT&T, which has struggled — or perhaps dragged its heels — to install enough back-end hardware and cell towers to support all the iPhones it sold, and to Verizon, whose infrastructure let it capitalize on AT&T’s weakness. Even Google owes an often-overlooked debt to the genius of its hardware engineers, which let the company make the most of its clever search and ad-sales algorithms.

If you think that all the companies that built that infrastructure are just going to step aside while software startups extract value from it, you’re mistaken.

Just look at the carriers’ enormous resistance to net neutrality, which they pay lip service to but panic whenever it threatens to become legislation. Google’s decision to purchase Motorola so it would have some leverage against the whims of every other handset manufacturer. Apple’s tenacious defense of the hardware, software and services complex it has created around iTunes, iOS and apps.

Even Netflix’s failure to renew its contract with Starz, an old-school cable TV company, shows that, at the end of the day, software is at the mercy of hardware. Starz is a cable TV content provider, but it’s dependent on customers paying monthly fees for access to the wires installed and provisioned by the likes of Comcast and Time Warner. Netflix was desperate enough for that content that it was willing to pay $300 million for it. $300 MILLION. And Starz turned it down, because it knew Netflix was a threat to its basic business and that of every other cable company.

The fact that Netflix is a threat gives me some hope, because a business model based on fear won’t last long. Sooner or later, Netflix — or some other company — is going to find a way to distribute video without going through the cable companies’ current subscription model, where you have to subscribe to the premium package before you can get the movies you want.

But guess what? Even when that happens, you’ll still be paying the cable companies for access to the Internet. You’ll still be paying Apple, Dell or the former PC division of HP for your computer. You’ll pay Apple, RIM or Nokia for your phone. You’ll still be paying Intel for the chips, and Intel will still be paying Applied Materials for the million-dollar machines that make those chips.

Software is not eating the world. It’s merely riding on the back of an infrastructure leviathan, like a monkey on an elephant.

Photo: An early Google server rack. Photo by Steve Parker/Flickr.

Here are a few other recent stories from VentureBeat that I think you’ll enjoy.

• Can a single game reach a billion players?
• Amazon has Palm in its shopping cart — will it click Buy? (exclusive)
• Box.net founder Aaron Levie is poised on the edge of startup stardom
• 29 electric car makers ready to rule the streets
• Amazon unveils Kindle Fire tablet for $199, coming Nov. 15

The Santa Clara-based company made that clear today at an event in San Francisco. Intel representatives highlighted the company’s efforts in software, stating that Intel won’t sell as many chips if there isn’t an adequate software ecosystem across multiple platforms in support of Intel’s chip designs.

Doug Fisher, Intel’s vice president in charge of software efforts, said Thursday morning, “Software companies are reshaping the industry today.” He said Intel has been making software for 30 years, ever since the launch of its RMX real-time operating system in the early 1980s.

In recent years, Intel has made some big software purchases, including Havok physics in 2007, Wind River in 2009 and McAfee in 2011.

Yet Intel has had some setbacks in software, especially in the mobile arena. It started its Moblin operating system in 2007 as a mobile version of the Linux operating system. That became MeeGo as part of its alliance with Nokia, which was working on its own Maemo software. With Nokia’s CEO change, that alliance came to an end. And Intel’s support for MeeGo seems like it’s up in the air. But Fisher said Intel is “fully committed” to MeeGo and is open to new partners coming in to help develop the open software. (Rumors are floating that Samsung might acquire MeeGo).

Still, skeptics exist. One analyst, David Wu of Indaba Global Research, said he thought MeeGo seemed like it was “off to the orphanage.” He noted that Nokia’s big supporter, its former CEO, is out of a job, and Anand Chandrasekher, the big supporter at Intel, also left Intel this year.

The McAfee deal represents a renewed focus on using both hardware and software to lock down security of devices in an age when it seems like everything is getting hacked.

Fisher said Intel spends a lot of time working with partners to make sure their software runs well on Intel chips. But Intel is also focused on applications and ecosystem support. Intel has more than 90 tools for software developers. It works with 20,000 independent software vendors and touches 3,700 apps. The Intel software network has 14 million developers; and in the academic community, Intel works with 2,700 universities that have trained 350,000 students and 5,000 professors.

Lincoln Wallen, head of research and development at DreamWorks Animation, said that his own team works with 20 to 25 Intel software engineers to help the company adjust to a world of cloud computing and mobile apps. That includes making sure all the different platforms in the enterprise interact across a common hardware architecture.

All those moves are necessary to ensure Intel chips can be used in everything from servers to mobile phones. The full set of devices also includes desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets, embedded devices and smart TVs.

“The power of the Intel architecture is its consistency,” Fisher said.

The importance of keeping up with software is clear. Overall, IDC estimates software will grow from a $316 billion business worldwide in 2011 to $428 billion in 2014. The direct app store sales business is expected to grow from 2 percent of the market, or $4.8 billion, to 5 percent, or $20 billion, by 2014.

While Intel touted its efforts in software, it reminded everyone about its close alliance with Microsoft. Speaking at the Intel event, Microsoft’s Stefan Kinnestrand, director of product management for Windows, said the companies continue to work closely on Windows 8, power-efficient processing, and security. On the other hand, the interests of the companies are clearly different. Microsoft’s Build event next week directly overlaps with the Intel Developer Forum. In other words, they will be competing for the attention of developers. Both companies said they were pressing hard to help developers, who face a lot of changes in the world of apps and now have much different expectations for revenue growth these days.

Next week at Microsoft’s BUILD developers conference, the two companies will show off a new Windows 8-powered Samsung tablet,  AFP reports. If true, it will mark the first time that Samsung has collaborated with Microsoft on a new hardware devices, a source points out.

It certainly makes sense for Microsoft to tap Samsung’s expertise, as the company has in short order become a premiere Android smartphone and tablet manufacturer. Samsung has also braved other platforms, including phones on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, as well as its own Bada platform for low-end smartphones. It also makes sense for the company to find shelter on other platforms, as its dominance on Android may be threatened by Google’s recent $12.5 billion Motorola purchase.

What Microsoft needs for Windows 8, which is being touted as both a hybrid tablet and traditional desktop OS, is an experienced hardware partner that can create devices on-par with Apple. Samsung seems like the most logical choice. In June, we reported that Microsoft was putting together an official Windows 8 tablet to take on the iPad — it just may be this purported Samsung tablet.

Microsoft has already teased a bit of the Windows 8 interface, which borrows heavily from Windows Phone 7′s Metro UI. The company will be pushing the benefits of Windows 8 and its tablet interface at the BUILD conference next week, reports Reuters. Microsoft has a lot to prove at the event, mostly that it’s attempting something fresh and new with Windows 8 instead of just merely copying Apple.

Windows 8 and its companion tablet hardware are expected to launch around this time next year.

Dell has been struggling for years to get a toehold in China. Now it has help: China’s leading search engine, Baidu, has teamed up with Dell to develop tablets and smartphones, according to Reuters.

The partnership adds a dose of legitimacy to Baidu’s newly announced Baidu Yi mobile OS, which aims to tap into China’s massive mobile user base of over 900 million. It could also serve as a major gateway into the Chinese market for Dell.

“I suspect this is just Dell, [which] has a lot of problems on the mobile and tablet front, grasping at straws to get any kind of publicity that it can to make its product more attractive,” Michael Clendenin, managing director of consulting firm RedTech Advisors, told Reuters. “Ultimately in China, I still think it is Apple’s game, still for the iPad and iPhone.”

The Baidu Yi OS is based on Android, but the company has “forked” it to make the software its own. Instead of Google’s typical Android apps, the OS sports Baidu’s apps and services.

For Dell, the partnership is almost a repeat of its previous China strategies. The company has previously released its Android-based Streak tablet and Mini phones in the country, none of which have been a huge success. This time around, Dell may have more success since it’s not going to be just another Android device manufacturer.

Samsung seemed like one of the better fits for webOS, and we reported last week that it was possibly interested in snapping up the software. But now it seems HP will be stuck with webOS for some time, unless another brave company steps up to buy it.

“It’s not right that acquiring an operating system is becoming a fashion,” Choi told reporters at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. He went on to say that the company is working on its Bada software for low-end phones “harder than people outside think.”

We noted last month that Bada had a bigger worldwide market share than Microsoft’s flagship Windows Phone 7 platform, according to Gartner.

Other potential buyers for webOS include HTC and Facebook, Bloomberg reports. I can’t see such a deal happening with either company though — HTC is doing quite well building gorgeous Android and Windows Phone devices, and owning a mobile OS seems like a major distraction for Facebook.

HP announced weeks ago that it was giving up on webOS hardware like the Pre and TouchPad and will instead focus on licensing the software. The company plans to make another run of webOS-powered TouchPad tablets for the US, after the tablet became a hit with deal-hounds when it was discounted to $99.

HTC declined to comment for this story, saying it does “not speak to rumors or speculation about unannounced products.”

A massive Mango update was already rumored for Sept. 1, so the event date makes sense. Mango will offer more than 500 new features, including direct social networking integration, contact groups, live tile notifications, Xbox Live improvements, Bing indoor maps, and an Internet Explorer 9 that’s the same as the desktop version rather than a mobile version.

The report from BGR says HTC will show off the HTC Eternity, a Windows Phone featuring a 3.7-inch display bound for AT&T, and the HTC Omega, a Mango device with a whopping 4.5-inch screen that will be released on T-Mobile.

The Mango push is intended to help the Windows Phone platform catch up to Android and Apple’s iOS, and hopefully attract more consumers. The current crop of Windows Phone devices have not done a good job of helping the OS capture market share, with just 1.7 million devices sold worldwide in the second quarter on 2011.

Alongside Mango, the Windows Phone ecosystem could see a new surge of support this fall because of two major recent events. First, the Google-Motorola deal could entice more Android manufacturers to build for Windows Phone devices because they see Motorola as having priority. Second, HP’s decision last week to stop building hardware for webOS has caused nearly 1,000 webOS developers to look into Windows Phone development.

What do you think of Windows Phone? Do you think it has a bright future?

If you’re a small business or startup, Microsoft Office 365 should be on your technology shortlist. It’s a cloud-based suite based on the world’s most popular office software that launched in late June. It will likely get small businesses and enterprises to start considering cloud software solutions if they haven’t already. Microsoft also hopes this offering can edge into the space Google Apps has had to itself for several years.

After testing the suite’s small business tools for several weeks, I’m convinced that it’s a strong option for small businesses, startups, and enterprises. It’s possibly even better for small companies than Google Apps. With a promise of 99.9% uptime, generally reasonable pricing, a deep list of features, and rich cross-application compatibility, I can see many businesses wanting to use Office 365.

Opinions are mixed on just how useful the Office 365 will be to small businesses and nimble startups. Our own Matthew Lynley made the case that startups with young personnel that grew up with social networking won’t see Office 365 as the ideal solution for them. But frequent VentureBeat columnist Peter Yared argued that Office 365 will clobber Google Apps and similar cloud software options because it has familiarity and considerably more features.

The pricing for Office 365 packages is wide-ranging, perhaps too much so for its own good. Pricing starts at $6 per user per month for small businesses under 25 people. At a step up, the cost for medium- to enterprise-size businesses ranges from $10 to $27 per user per month. This is considerably more than competitor Google Apps, which charges $5 per user per month no matter how big the company.

Office 365 pricing plans escalate when companies need to add more features. If a user needs more powerful features than the ones provided in the cloud-based Office Web Apps, the company can pay more for a monthly subscription to Office Professional Plus, which is the latest desktop version of Office. A business with under 25 employees pays $18 per user per month, while businesses with more than 25 employees pays $24 per user per month to rent the latest desktop version.

A lot of the cloud-based tools available in Office 365 were previously available under the less-catchily named Business Productivity Online Suite. Office 365 improves on those tools by updating Exchange Online and SharePoint Online to include the features of the 2010 desktop version, whereas BPOS had its software bits based on the 2007 versions.

The online services that 365 specifically offers are Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, and Office Web Apps. In addition, there’s a set of Web Apps, which are slightly slimmed down versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that are accessible through a web browser.

Next: The Good and The Bad of Office 365

The big M is clearly taking notes from Apple, which has more than 230 retail locations in the U.S. In the first quarter of 2011, Apple had an eye-popping $3.2 billion in retail sales, and most of that came from the U.S., according a report released today.

Microsoft, in comparison, has only opened 11 retail stores in the last two years, with four of those in California. The most recent location opened June 30 in Los Angeles.

The new stores will be concentrated in the northeast region of the U.S., but the map indicates a healthy sampling of stores hitting major cities around the country, too. Florida, Texas, Washington, Missouri, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and even Hawaii will see stores opened in their large cities. California will also see many stores added.

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to share any further details outside of what Turner announced or a company rationale behind the planned expansion.

Microsoft retail outlets carry PCs running Windows, Windows Software, Xbox 360s, Zune media players, and Windows Phones. Speaking of Windows Phones, it’s likely Microsoft is launching these stores as a way to get Windows Phone 7 devices to more customers.

The map of proposed future locations is below:

If the report is true, Apple must feel pretty strongly that Lion is an important, necessary upgrade for customers. The new MacBook Airs are reportedly ready to ship but have the Snow Leopard OS, which was released in June 2009, installed.

The new MacBook Airs will reportedly feature powerful Intel Sandy Bridge processors and quick Thunderbolt expansion ports. But as is normal for Apple, software is just as important as hardware, and if the Airs warrant a little extra cooking time, so be it.

A few weeks ago, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was debuted at WWDC and it will offer 250 new features. Some new features include multitouch gestures, full-screen apps, an enhanced app store, and the ability to resume exactly where you left off when you closed an application. Lion also will hook directly into Apple’s new iCloud storage service, which will help users sync media across all Apple devices.

The 10 million mark is a significant bump from the company’s reported 6 million users in January. It also reported that more than 400,000 of its customers pay $5 a month for a premium plan that enables bigger uploads and better collaborative tools.

“Ten million users seemed like an inconceivable number when we were getting ready to launch the service into open beta less than three years ago,” founder and CEO Phil Libin wrote on the company’s blog. “Well, it wasn’t literally inconceivable; we actually put it on business plans and investor pitch decks and everything.”

Evernote launched less than three years ago and helps customers keep notes in sync across different computers and mobile devices. In that time, the service has pushed itself on to an impressive number of platforms, with apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, Mac, and more.

Libin’s blog post notes that 75% of its customers access Evernote on two or more platforms. The graph below details customer usage in better detail.

Recently Evernote significantly revamped its website and its Android app. The company has raised around $45 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, DoCoMo Capital, Troika Dialog, and others.

The Mac App Store allows users to instantly purchase software for their Macs from a single location. It was an attempt by Apple to bring the app purchasing mentality from iOS into the desktop arena, and it looks like that plan was indeed successful.

One success story Apple pointed out was the Mac image editor Pixelmator, which managed to earn $1 million in its first 20 days on the App Store. Autodesk, the company behind the popular 3D design tool AutoCAD, gained 1 million new users thanks to the store. Just like its iOS App Store, Apple takes a 30 percent cut from purchases on the Mac App Store.

I’d still like to see a further breakdown of just how well Apple’s Mac Store is performing. It definitely seems strange that a service only available to Macs could sell more software than established retailers. Then again, Apple could just be counting individual programs sold, and not the total amount it’s making from them.

Windows President Steven Sinofsky is scheduled to speak at the D9 conference and let loose all the details. The software will work for touch-screen devices running hardware with Nvidia’s Tegra chip that is intended for tablets. The dual-core chips are a smart choice for mobile devices because they offer a good mix of power and long battery life.

Various Windows-based tablets have been released in the past but all models pale next to the popularity of the Apple iPad, the clear leader in tablet sales with more than 19 million sold thus far. Several Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Motorola Xoom also provide a good measure of competition.

The biggest hindrance to a Windows tablet achieving popularity before has been software. Microsoft never released a touch-specific version of Windows for tablets, so using one of those devices was frustrating and unfriendly for fingers. Hopefully the software we see next week will take many cues from the easy-to-use Windows Phone 7 platform.

The ads will take the form of large banners that will appear on top of Skype’s Home tab. The company says it’s working with big advertisers like Groupon, Universal Pictures and Visa. The ads will initially appear in, and be focused on, the US, UK and German markets. Skype says it currently plans to show one ad from one brand per day in each market. The ads will begin rolling out this week on the Windows version of the program.

The shift towards ads makes sense for Skype, as it commands some prime screen real estate for hundreds of millions of users. As of last October, the company had 560 million registered users, 124 million of whom use the software once a month. 8.1 million of those users pay an average of $96 a year for the service. In February, Skype reached a milestone of 29 million users logged on at the same time.

The ad revenue will come in handy for Skype, which is reportedly delaying its plans to sell $100 million worth of shares to the public as it waits for the market to settle down and for its new CEO Tony Bates to find his footing.

The company says it may experiment with other ad locations in the future. It’s also taking care not to interrupt your Skype experience with pop-up ads, or ads that get in the way of your conversations. Skype says it will use some anonymous data to help target ads to you, but you can also turn that off in the “Privacy” section of the program’s options.

In December, Skype finally brought video chat capabilities to the iPhone version of its app, following a widespread outage that affected tens of millions of its users. Skype purchased video chat company Qik in January, and rumors pegged the deal at $100 million.

It’s unclear what Skype’s plans are for bringing advertising to other platforms, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find it implementing similar ads in the Mac and mobile versions of its software.

Below, you can catch a glimpse of what the ads will look like:

Storenvy brings in $1.5M for online shopping community: The creator of a social shopping network has raised a seed funding round led by Spark Capital and First Round Capital with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Charles River Ventures and a group of angels. The San Francisco-based company, whose best-selling products include t-shirts and sunglasses, lets users create an online store for free, with no programming skills necessary.

Cohuman grabs $600K to help teams work better together: The San Francisco-based startup has raised a second round of angel funding for its project management software, TechCrunch reports. The web-based software company, which generates revenue through a freemium model, prioritizes tasks for users based on factors like due dates and involved coworkers.

On Deck gets $15M to help small business owners get loans: The provider of small business loan financing has raised a third round of funding led by SAP Ventures. The alternative lending company has developed a tech platform to assess small businesses and has delivered more than $100M in loans to thousands of businesses to date.

Snapdeal scores $12M to deliver daily deals in India: The company has raised a funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners to offer discounts from local merchants online, peHUB reports. The Groupon competitor is based in India and claims to be the largest daily deals site in the country.

But don’t expect to get your hands on one anytime soon. Apparently, there will only be around 65,000 units produced, and those will go to Google’s closest “friends and family.” It’s a testing method the company has already used for its Nexus S Android phone, and which it seems to be using for its upcoming Nexus S phone. The version of Chrome OS on the devices will also be an early beta release that’s not quite ready for prime time, so Google wouldn’t want to sell the netbooks to general consumers.

The news follows our report from early November that speculated Google was set to launch Chrome OS smartbooks during that month. Many of the details from that report seem to be validated with this latest news — namely the low production amounts, and that the devices will be manufactured by Taiwanese firm Inventec. That earlier report was wrong about the first Chrome OS device being a smartbook though — it’s apparently running an Intel Atom Pine Trail processor, like a typical netbook, and not a cellphone processor as smartbooks generally do.

All Things Digital is also reporting that Google is gearing up to launch its Chrome App Store on December 7th, which would house web apps that would work on Chrome OS, as well as Chrome browsers on any platform. What better way to launch your app store than with a shiny new device?

Chrome OS and other devices running it won’t be available to consumers until 2011. Hopefully by then, Google can get a better sense of what it actually wants to do with Chrome OS. We reported last week that Google executives still don’t have a clear way to define the OS.

Cisco announced yesterday that it was lowering its outlook for the fourth quarter this year as sales of computer networking and teleconferencing equipment to the U.S. government and other large institutions fell more than expected. That ignited a broad selloff in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index that has continued today (though inflation fears in China certainly haven’t helped).

Cisco’s announcement took the wind out of the sails of an apparent rebound in the technology — and particularly the enterprise — sector. Intel’s earnings for the third quarter beat expectations of analysts, thanks to solid demand from corporate customers. Intel, the largest chipmaker in the world, is largely seen as a bellwether for the rest of the tech industry — so when Intel is doing well, it’s likely that the rest of the industry is doing well.

Intel raised its dividend payouts by 15 percent today — a signal that the company is expecting a strong holiday season and can free up some of its cash for its shareholders. But that’s probably a result of strong demand for consumer electronics.

Intel is making a strong play in the consumer space with its Atom chips and the AppUp store, which will compete with Apple’s App Store and the Android marketplace.  Add to that an upbeat outlook from Nvidia, which expects to stuff its graphics chips in just about every mobile device possible — including tablets and phones.

The result is a very clear signal that the consumer electronic space is going to be a strong point for sales this holiday season (as it often is). But nowhere in that equation is enterprise sales, and whether there’s any hope for companies like Cisco to ride the consumer-driven tech rebound.

Cisco is also betting on the consumer space with a living-room teleconferencing device, the Cisco Umi. But even then, the device is going to cost consumers a whopping $600 and an extra $25 a month. There are also a number of cheaper alternatives like Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller that can also serve as a teleconferencing device.

So is this the end of the enterprise tech comeback? Investors seem to think so. Cisco’s shares tanked after the announcement yesterday, and have fallen 18 percent to $20.07 today. That’s a 52-week low for one of the largest providers of technology for corporations. We’ll have to wait to see how the fourth quarter goes for big-business sellers like Salesforce.com and Cisco to know for sure what the final damage is.

[Original photo: daveonflickr]

The per share price is 60 percent more than McAfee’s $29.93 closing price on Wednesday. McAfee shares jumped 58 percent after the deal was made public to $47.42 in pre-market trading, while Intel shares dipped 2.5 percent to $19.11, the AP reports.

The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the deal, but it’s still pending McAfee shareholder and regulatory approval. Intel said the deal “reflects that security is now a fundamental component of online computing.” Intel went on to say that security is now just as important to the company as energy efficiency and internet connectivity.

McAfee will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel and will report to its Software and Services Group. Both companies are based in Santa Clara, Calif. Founded in 1987, McAfee has some 6,100 employees, and saw $2 billion in 2009 revenue.

Intel will benefit from McAfee’s entrenched position in the security field, and McAfee may be able to optimize its notoriously performance-hungry software now that it’s a part of the company that provides the CPUs to many computers.

Intel recently announced its best quarter ever with $2.9 billion in profit, thanks to an influx of delayed computer purchases by businesses.

Photo via cytech

In the past few months, IBM has gobbled up the real-time data compression firm Storwize, network compliance specialist BigFix, business software maker Sterling Commerce, and web analytics firm Coremetrics. The company has said it will spend $20 billion on acquisitions through 2015.

The Unica buy will strengthen IBM”s existing portfolio of software meant to “help companies automate, manage, and accelerate core business processes across marketing, demand generation, sales, order processing and fulfillment” — which includes the aforementioned Sterling Commerce and Coremetrics purchases. It will allow IBM to better help businesses predict and analyze customer tastes and focus their marketing efforts.

The Waltham, Mass.-based Unica has more than 1,500 customers worldwide — including Best Buy, eBay, ING, and Monster. Its 500 employees will move to IBM’s Software Solutions Group, and its software will bolster IBM’s Business Analytics and Optimization Consulting organization — which IBM describes as “a team of 5,000 consultants and a network of analytics solution centers” that’s backed by $11 billion in acquisition investments made over the past five years.

via Between the Lines

You’re heard of “fremium” pricing models for web-based applications, but what about desktop applications? Even worse: What about desktop applications that retail at $1,000 or more?

Long before the fremium fad swept the browser-based world, traditional desktop software makers had two primary ways to provide a low-friction way for customers to subtly get addicted to their product:

Free Trial — a timed-limited trial in which you can use the entire product for only a few weeks, or a feature-limited trial in which you can use a subset of the software, just enough to see how it works but not do anything vital, e.g. you can’t save, you can’t print, or you can’t export without a hideous watermark.

Lite Version — a lower-cost edition of the software where many features are missing or hobbled. This is fully-functional software which many people can use as-is.

Which path is wisest? Ferrua Mavituna raised the question recently on Answers OnStartups.

The answer is more complicated than it may seem – and it often depends on the type of customers you’re seeking and the nature of your software. The debate (which is ongoing) has been intense – and brought out proponents of both sides of the issue.

Here’s a summary of some of the advice he got:

• A “Lite” version can cannibalize sales. Customers who would have paid for the $1,000 version might be satisfied with the $500 – you’ve lost $500 for nothing.
• A “Lite” version can increase sales. Many people will balk at $1,000 but will sniff around a cheaper version. If you make those sales, that’s revenue you wouldn’t have had, and since the Lite version is simpler, tech support is cheaper, which means it might be just as profitable.
• A “Lite” version can help manage competition. If you’re expensive, you probably have a lot of cheaper competition. Sure they do less or it’s lower quality, but money is money. This way you can still compete if price is the primary factor for the customer. Better they buy a cheaper version from you than buy anything from anyone else.
• A “Lite” version can cheapen your image. If you want to command a high price tag, you need to exude “luxury and value ” everywhere from the website design to customer support to price. Under-cutting yourself just makes you look like “Shareware with a stretch.”
• A “Lite” version can segment the market. Often there are several distinct market segments that don’t require the same features and cannot bear the same price tag. For example, photo-editing software might have an inexpensive, simple version so that amateur photographers can do common tasks like cropping and red-eye-removal, but also have an expensive edition for things like creating bound photo albums or DVD slideshows – supporting services professional photographers offer their clients.
• People steal software, so Lite versions are unnecessary. If your software is over $1,000, someone is going to hack it and post a version that doesn’t require a license code. People who really don’t want to pay for software aren’t going to pay you anyway. If you embrace that fact, you’ll find Lite versions aren’t worth the effort. Better to make a good profit off of honest people and have the pirates at least be using your software instead of a competitor’s.
• Free to read, costs to write. This is the Adobe PDF model: It’s free for anyone to read, search, print, and share documents, but you have to pay Adobe if you want to author PDFs. This is a nice way to have a “Lite” version to increase usefulness and spread the word, but still make money on a smaller subset of users.
• You can combine the two ideas. Start with a time-limited trial of the complete product so customers are impressed and hooked. After the trial expires, revert to a hobbled “Lite” version that continues to function, but which misses vital features. Because they can still try to use the product, but fail, they’ll want to purchase.
• You can change your mind. Start with the Pro/Lite combo. At the early stage of your company you want new customers above all else – not unprofitably so, but almost at any cost. Use the two tiers to test price levels and which features people will really pay for. Eventually you can elect to drop the Lite version; just offer free or inexpensive upgrades for your existing Lite users and move on.

Featured companies: VistaGen Therapeutics, MindWeavers, Cutanea Life Sciences, Heptares Therapeutics

VistaGen raises $3.75M for stem-cell based drug discovery — South San Francisco, Calif.-based VistaGen Therapeutics, a biotech that uses human embryonic stem cells to discover new drugs, raised $3.75 million in a bridge financing as it prepares to raise up to $20 million in a fourth round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Montaur Capital Partners provided the funding.

VistaGen, founded in 1998, isn’t your typical stem-cell company. Where companies ranging from Geron and Advanced Cell Technology to Novocell aim to use the controversial cells — which must be derived from five-day-old embryos in a destructive process — directly as therapies to help regenerate damaged organs, VistaGen merely grows stem-cell cultures in its labs and uses those cultures to discover and run preliminary safety tests on drug candidates.

The embryonic cells are capable of “differentiating” into any type of cell in the body, which VistaGen says makes them valuable for determining how an experimental drug molecule will interact with living human tissue. The company uses its stem-cell “screens” to identify promising small-molecule drugs (that is, compounds that can be swallowed rather than injected) and to determine what side effects they might cause once ingested. Over time, VistaGen suggests, it might develop screens for drugs that trigger stem cells’ regenerative powers, potentially inducing cellular repair in conditions such as heart disease or diabetes.

For now, however, VistaGen’s lead drug candidate is a relatively prosaic compound called AV-101 that the company plans to begin testing against epilepsy later this year. AV-101 is a “prodrug” — a molecule that’s converted into an active form by the body’s natural metabolism — that turns into a neuroinhibitor once it reaches the brain. In addition to epilepsy, VistaGen suggests that the drug may also have uses in stroke, neuropathic pain and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. For more detailed info, see the company’s Web site here and here.

Oxford’s MindWeavers raises $1.1M for mind-altering software — MindWeavers, an Oxford, England-based software company that develops software designed to improve mental function, raised $1.1 million (£558,000) through City and Merchant Group. Next year, the company hopes to raise up to £1 million with a listing on London’s Plus Markets electronic exchange.

MindWeavers develops its programs based on neuroscience research from Oxford University, which spun out the company in 2000. Its first product was Phonomena, a interactive game for children that the company says builds auditory discrimination and language skills. Several other programs are designed to improve “neuroplasticity” and to stimulate brain activity in middle-aged and elderly people in order to ward off age-related cognitive decline. VentureWire has more.

Skin-care firm Cutanea raises “millions” in convertible debt — Cutanea Life Sciences, a Cambridge, Mass., specialty pharmaceutical company focused on dermatology, raised a “multi-million” dollar round of convertible debt, VentureWire reports. Institutional investors such as Nexus Medical Partners provided the funding. Cutanea licenses neglected or cast-off experimental drugs from universities or other companies and runs them through human tests.

Heptares Therapeutics spins out of Britain’s MRC — The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology has spun out a new company, Heptares Therapeutics, with undisclosed seed funding from MVM Life Sciences Partners. The company will focus on drugs for diseases of the nervous system and metabolism. (Hat tip: PE Hub.)

CORRECTION: Due to incorrect information supplied by VentureWire, the VistaGen Therapeutics item originally stated that Montreux Equity Partners provided funding. In fact, Montaur Capital Partners led the funding. The VentureWire correction is here.