Corporate Governance

Cambridge, Mass. -- Akamai Technologies and Prolexic Technologies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire Prolexic, a provider of cloud-based security solutions for protecting data centers and enterprise IP applications from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Seattle – Amazon.com hopes to someday deliver packages to its customers using unmanned drone aircraft.

According to numerous media reports, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said during an interview on the TV news program 60 Minutes aired Dec.1 that the company is currently testing the use of drones to pick up customer orders in buckets from fulfillment centers to enable delivery within 30 minutes of a customer executing an online transaction.

Boston – The top five brand experience trends for 2014 include retail relevancy and “small data,” according to brand experience agency Jack Morton. The company predicts the following five trends will prove dominant in brand experience during the upcoming year.

San Francisco – West Elm is scheduled to open the company's first U.K. store in London on Dec. 5. The 12,000-sq.-ft. store will feature furniture, textiles, accessories and gifts, as well as a West Elm Market shop-in-shop and coffee shop. The store will employ 30 full- and part-time sales associates.

The London store will include a Local Gallery Wall featuring art from U.K. artists sourced through Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade or vintage items. The wall is curated by Will Taylor of the blog Bright.Bazaar.

Boise, Idaho -- WinCo Foods will open a store in Glibert, Ariz., on Dec. 5. The supermarket occupies approximately 97,000 sq. ft. and will include WinCo's new red and black decor package that creates a solid, clean feel and coordinates with the hundreds of new WinCo Foods private label products the company has recently introduced.  

Guangzhou, China -- Vipshop Holdings Limited, a Chinese online discount retailer for brands, has appointed Lily Fan as the company's VP of human resources, effective Dec. 2.

Bitcoin, the nearly anonymous, peer-to-peer online currency, has been getting attention lately. The attention has not been necessarily positive, as bitcoin was the preferred currency of the recently closed down Silk Road “darknet” site that served as a virtual global marketplace for narcotics and other illegal goods.

Walgreens has opened the nation’s first net zero energy retail store, in Evanston, Ill. (A net zero building produces energy equal to or greater than it consumes.)

The new Walgreens features two wind turbines, nearly 850 solar panels and a geothermal heating and cooling system burrowed 550 ft. into the ground. Combined, the store’s energy-saving technologies and systems are expected to reduce its electricity consumption to 200,000 kilowatt-hours per year, which is about half of an average Chicago-area Walgreens’ store energy footprint.

Leading cloud services provider Akamai Technologies strengthened its ability to protect the Internet with the acquisition of security solutions firm Prolexic.

SodaStream International named veteran entertainment industry executive Scott Guthrie as regional general manager of the Americas reporting directly to CEO Daniel Birnbaum.