Baskin-Robbins, the Canton-based sister chain of Dunkin’ Donuts known for its ice cream, said Tuesday that it is rolling out a new line of “shelf stable sherbet flavored freezer bars” that will be sold at such retailers as CVS/pharmacy, Dollar General, Rite Aid, and Walgreens. Dunkin’ Donuts has long sold packages of its coffee in supermarkets that consumers can buy and then use to brew coffee at home. But to enjoy a frozen treat from Baskin-Robbins treat has generally meant a trip to a Baskin-Robbins store. Now Sherbet Flavored Freezer Bars will be available at many retailers, and that means that Baskin-Robbins products will be exposed to a wider audience, the chain said in a press release. Initial freezer bar flavors include “Rock ‘N Pop Swirl” and “Rainbow Sherbet.” Iron Mountain Inc., a Boston firm specializing in records management and data storage, said Tuesday that it has acquired three records management businesses owned by Texas-based Information Storage Consolidation Co. As a result, Iron Mountain said it will assume responsibility for serving the nearly 1,000 customers of Safe Records Center in Lansing, Mich.; Archives USA in Dallas; and the Document Bank in Miramar, Fla. No financial details of the transaction were included in Iron Mountain’s press release. With the purchase, Iron Mountain said it establishes a presence in Lansing and strengthens its existing operations in Dallas and across southeast Florida. One of Iron Mountain’s strategies is to acquire companies such as ISCC that grow its business and increase its storage rental revenue. WegoWise, a Boston firm whose analytics help owners of multifamily real estate portfolios save money on utility bills, said it has raised $3 million in financing from Boston Community Capital. The funding will support WegoWise’s recent expansion into the commercial real estate sector, said the firm, which added that it has raised nearly $5 million to date since its founding in 2010. With 22 employees, WegoWise provides a Web-based utility analytics platform. Bridging big data and energy efficiency, this platform distills large aggregations of energy and water data into useful, actionable information for building owners, managers, and energy auditors so they can lower their costs. “WegoWise’s mission is to create a universal tool to improve the efficiency of the built environment,” WegoWise CEO Andrew Chen said New York Times Co. chief executive Mark Thompson, speaking at an investor conference in Boston Tuesday morning, said he was “very pleased with the interest, and the progress, that’s been expressed so far” in the company’s effort to sell The Boston Globe. He declined to offer details on the sales process. The Times Co. in February announced it planned to sell the New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe, as it focuses on its flagship newspaper and an international strategy. Thompson called the Globe “a great newspaper in a great city” and cited recent coverage of the marathon bombings as a display of strength. However, he said the Globe, as a metro, or regional newspaper, is “a very distinct business from the New York Times.” Boston’s LogMeIn, Inc. has launched Xively, a cloud platform for developing and managing commercial products on what the company calls “The Internet of Things.” Cloudant, a Boston company whose technology helps Web and mobile app developers to scale their data, said Tuesday that it has raised $12 million in Series B funding from Devonshire Investors, the private equity firm affiliated with Fidelity Investments; RackspaceHosting; and Toba Capital. Cloudant also said that current investors - Avalon Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Samsung Venture Investment Corp. - purchased additional shares. According to its website, Cloudant was founded in Cambridge in 2008 by three MIT physicists who were frustrated by the available tools for managing and analyzing Big Data in their research. ‘‘The market opportunity for managed, hosted databases is large,” David Jegen, Devonshire Investors managing director, said. And Cloudant is “in the sweet spot of this market.” There were 5,948 single-family Massachusetts homes put under agreement in April, up 32.8 percent on a year-to-year comparison basis, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, or MAR, said Tuesday. That was the most homes that have gone under agreement in any month since the association began tracking data in January 2004, the association said in a press release. Also last month, pending sales for Massachusetts condominium hit their second highest point, the association said. “Buyers came out in force to make offers on the limited number of homes for sale in April,” association president Kimberly Allard-Moccia said in a statement. “While the activity is positive, we need more homes on the market to make sure prices don’t spike up too quickly.” | | |
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