This is a week of unexpected actions. HP Enterprise purchases ConteXtream to enable cloud SaaS telecom, EMC purchases Virtustream to act as the centerpiece of their cloud offerings. Now there are rumors (again) that EMC might buy HP Enterprises post split.
CA bought Rally Software and SalesForce purchased Tempo.
Meanwhile, IBM gets both good and bad news about their cloud offerings and deepen their overall relationship with Apple.
IBM
- IBM to distribute 50,000 Apple machines to employees
With this announcement, IBM has not only become one of the biggest purchasers of the Macs, it has also become one of the strongest supporters of Apple. The company has currently distributed around 15,000 Macs in the organization, however, now it plans to provide 50,000 machines to its employees by the end of 2015.
- Microsoft and Google rise while IBM sinks in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for cloud providers
IBM achieved some scale in the IaaS business by buying SoftLayer. However, Gartner says SoftLayer “typically sold to Mode 2 customers (specifically start-ups and gaming companies with a strong interest in bare-metal dedicated hosting). Since the acquisition, IBM has increasingly focused on acquiring Mode 1 customers, but SoftLayer better meets the needs of Mode 2 customers.” Gartner also notes that “IBM’s aPaaS (BlueMix) is hosted in SoftLayer data centers but the offerings are not integrated.”
- IBM cloud computing services earns $7.7 billion over the past year
IBM’s most recent quarterly earnings report indicates that the company is seeing rapid growth in its cloud business revenues, which increased 75 percent year-over-year, resulting in total cloud revenues of $7.7 billion in the twelve months leading up to the end of 2015’s first quarter. Even given the recent success of the Amazon Web Services cloud platform, these most recent financial figures show that IBM’s cloud computing services are outperforming Amazon’s by more than $2.5 billion over the last year.
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/05/29/ibm-cloud-computing-services/id=58034/
- IBM is Most Popular Hosted Private Cloud Provider: Survey
Forrester noted that survey respondents were concerned about vendor lock-in. However, the report said “standards like OASIS’s TOSCA and open source projects like OpenStack provide enterprises the future hope of less lock-in and greater adherence to standards.” IBM is a major supporter of open cloud computing and a key contributor of code to the OpenStack and Cloud Foundry projects.
http://www.eweek.com/cloud/ibm-is-most-popular-hosted-private-cloud-provider-survey.html
- IBM ships new predictive analytics suite
IBM today announced 20 new industry-specific solutions with pre-built predictive analytics capabilities that will make it easier and faster for organizations across industries like retail, banking, telecommunications, insurance and others, to uncover and act on critical business insights.
http://www.finextra.com/news/announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=59924
- Xamarin, IBM Expand MobileFirst Partnership, Add Security
Xamarin said interoperability with IBM MobileFirst Protect enables enterprises to more securely deploy, manage and monitor business applications. IBM MobileFirst Protect, formerly IBM MaaS360, is a secure enterprise mobility management platform that provides mobility management and security of mobile devices, applications, documents, emails, plus access to the Web from a single portal.
http://www.eweek.com/developer/xamarin-ibm-expand-mobilefirst-partnership-add-security.html
Oracle
- Oracle isn’t even in the Gartner magic box for cloud
http://www.cio.com/article/2926133/amazon-rules-gartners-magical-box.html - Obama administration asks U.S. top court not to hear Google copyright fight against Oracle
According to Google, an Oracle victory would obstruct “an enormous amount of innovation” because software developers would not be able to freely build on each others’ work. But Oracle says effective copyright protection is the key to software innovation.
HP
- Mphasis Hung Out to Dry by Parent Company Hewlett-Packard
The Indian Economic Times has reported that, despite owning just over 60 per cent of Mphasis, HP has no plans to offer further financial support to the software services company. However, Mphasis chief executive Ganesh Ayyar insists that his organisation will not be stepping back from the BPO arena.
- HP acquires Israel’s ConteXtream to liberate telcos from hardware (HP has been snapping up quite a few networking companies lately)
“In the networking world there are countless functions — firewalls, caching, all kinds of activities — and we have all kinds of monolithic hardware boxes to do these things. NFV is about saying, ‘Why can’t we put these various functions in the cloud? Why does each function need to be on specialized and dedicated hardware?’”
http://www.geektime.com/2015/05/27/hp-acquires-israels-contextream-to-liberate-telcos-from-hardware/
- HP enterprise services told to cut $2bn over three years (Cathie Lesjak on some of their accounting plans)
In particular, the infrastructure technology outsourcing (ITO) business was severely dented by competition from cloud providers. Government austerity programs in the United States and Europe have forced a business model transformation, HP said in its results.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/404384,hp-enterprise-services-told-to-cut-2bn-over-three-years.aspx
- With the reduction comes…EMC Deal Makes Post-Split HP More Vulnerable
Making all that happen will require an enterprise salesforce, and a lot of engineers with experience building actual clouds. Those are two things HP has. With the personal computer pieces of the company jettisoned, HP Enterprise becomes affordable to EMC, which starts to trade today with a market cap of $52 billion.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3214566-emc-deal-makes-post-split-hp-more-vulnerable
EMC
- EMC buying Virtustream for $1.2B
When the deal closes (expected in Q3), Virtustream will form EMC‘s new managed cloud services business. “The acquisition represents a transformational element of EMC’s strategy to help customers move all applications to cloud-based IT environments,” says the company
http://seekingalpha.com/news/2543006-emc-buying-virtustream-for-1_2b
- Why EMC’s Acquisition of Virtustream Is Good News
With increasingly more businesses migrating applications to the cloud, Virtustream gives EMC the needed expertise and offerings to help its customers manage this transition. “It’s a game changer,” said EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci.
- EMC and Canonical expand OpenStack Partnership
For the last two years, EMC has been a part of Canonical’s Cloud Partner Program and OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL). During this time EMC created a new Juju Charm for EMC VNX technology. This enables deployment by Canonical’s Juju modeling software. This past week, we specifically announced the availability of a new OpenStack solution with Ubuntu OpenStack and Canonical as part of the Reference Architecture Program announced last November in Paris. The solution is built in close collaboration with Canonical in EMC labs then tested, optimized, and certified.
http://www.cloudscaling.com/blog/openstack/emc-and-canonical-expand-openstack-partnership/
Other
- CA is buying Rally software for $480M
CA, which is looking to cut its dependence on a slow-growing system management software market (pressured by cloud competition), states Rally’s Agile Development tools will “complement and expand CA’s strengths in the areas of DevOps and Management Cloud.” Rally’s clients include over 35 Fortune 100 firms.
http://seekingalpha.com/news/2547046-ca-buying-rally-software-for-480m-raly-plus-42_5-percent
- In the middle of these buyout rumors, Salesforce buys Tempo
Tempo launched in 2013 as part of an emerging trend of “smart assistant” mobile apps for email, calendars, and such. Tempo connects to a user’s calendar, contacts, and other apps to provide helpful information and suggestions like sending an email if they’re running late for a meeting, or flight and weather details ahead of a trip. It competed with similar apps like Cue, Sunrise, Donna, and others.
- Splunk Stock Too Expensive Despite Exceptional Cloud Growth
At around $68 a share, Splunk’s price-to-earnings ratio is 766 factoring in Splunk’s 9 cent-a-share earnings in its last fiscal year. That P/E is 36 times the average earnings multiple of companies in the S&P 500 (SPX) index. And even when compared with the more expensive iShares North American Tech-Software ETF (IGV), which has an average P/E of 30, Splunk stock still trades 25 times higher.