IBM continues their healthcare focus with a relationship with CVS. The more information Watson has about health behavior, the more powerful and useful it will become. With Watson growing, IBM continues to focus on big data and segmented marketing to engage a fragmented customer base.
While IBM figures out how to leverage big data, HP is responding to negative feedback about their dress code. As their employee’s dress is making news, key departures are also making headlines as the company starts to officially split into two.
EMC had a strong endorsement regarding VMWare this week, while a competitor has opted to remove themselves from the game.
IBM
- IBM, CVS bring Watson to health care
Under a deal expected to be announced Thursday, the companies will work to develop a system that would be able to provide better personalization of care, prevent the use of unneeded and costly interventions, and even predict health declines for a wide range of conditions including heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20150801/business/150809962/
- IBM Big Data Evangelist James Kobielus Talks Analytics and Staying Flexible
The data scientist will become the core application developer in this new order of things. The assets they build and maintain—big data clusters, statistical models, machine learning algorithms, and so on—are becoming the chief intellectual property that drives recommendation engines, decision automation, next best actions, and so forth within cloud, mobile, social, Internet of Things, marketing automation, and other business and consumer apps. Consequently, the data scientist is rapidly evolving away from a high-skilled R&D function performed by premium university-educated talent toward an operational function that will need to be scaled and automated to a high degree by less pricey data-center IT staff positions who’ll need to be on call 24×7. Data scientist skills will rapidly become commoditized, just as low-level programming and system administration jobs became years ago. Like it or not, data scientists will be grown in the future through trade schools, vocational education programs, and other channels that will certify large numbers of freshly minted personnel who won’t require a 4-year college degree in mathematics, statistics, or some highly statistically oriented domain specialty.
https://icrunchdatanews.com/ibm-big-data-evangelist-james-kobielus-talks-analytics-staying-flexible/
- Here is the reference article James Kobielus wrote:
Customer Segmentation: The Fine Line Between Profiling and PersonalizationIt’s the ultimate oxymoron: pigeonholing with personalization. But it’s not as if this technology is only being used to individually tweak bulk messages for maximum impact. It’s also providing tools that help people (e.g., your account reps) to listen and interact with other people (i.e., your customers) in a more human fashion. As the cited article notes, IBM customer USAA uses Watson Engagement Advisor to guide personalized interactions with returning US veterans who are trying to navigate the confusing fields of healthcare insurance options. As the article states, “In an instant, a good customer service rep identifies your personal pain and tailors a response using both institutional knowledge and their own memory, which has been built by hundreds of customer calls a day. Watson’s performance in the USAA pilot suggests that a cognitive computing system has the potential to become, in a scatter of months, what the smartest, wisest clerk in the bank becomes after a career.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/customer-segmentation-fine-line-between-profiling-james-kobielus
- Will IBM acquisition boost Cloud data services?
The cloud database arena is projected to be worth US$14 billion by 2019, with IBM claiming open source databases like MongoDB to be a significant part – “and rapidly growing portion” – of this sector. Thousands of clients across a variety of industries, including retail, IoT, higher education, marketing services and ecommerce have created over 100,000 databases with Compose.
http://www.reseller.co.nz/article/580868/will-ibm-acquisition-boost-cloud-data-services
- IBM Recycles 97% of End-of-Life Products
In its other waste and recycling accomplishments, IBM sent 86 percent of the nonhazardous waste it generated worldwide in 2014 to be recycled, and purchased recycled plastics for use in products such that 12.1 percent of purchased plastic by weight were recycled resins.
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/07/31/ibm-recycles-97-of-end-of-life-products/
- The death of IBM? https://soundcloud.com/drericjackson/ep-11-mike-dauber-on-venture-enterprise-investing-finding-the-next-cisco-ibm
Hewlett Packard
- The Great Dress-Code Debate rages at HP
“According to HP, men should avoid turning up to the office in T-shirts with no collars, faded or torn jeans, shorts, baseball caps and other headwear, sportswear, and sandals and other open shoes. Women are advised not to wear short skirts, faded or torn jeans, low-cut dresses, sandals, crazy high heels, and too much jewelry.” Not surprisingly, to have one the region’s high-tech legends issue such an uncool edict sent legions of programmers, developers, product manager, venture capitalists, founders and co-founders into a veritable tizzy. Even more embarrassing, techies took to the Twittersphere to ridicule HP’s fuddy-duddy dictum while rival companies dangled job offers before HP’s disgruntled masses, promising them they could wear whatever the heck they wanted to wear to work.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2015/07/31/the-great-dress-code-debate-rages-at-hp/
- HP’s head of corporate HR responds with a video (yes I know this has nothing to do with business, but I appreciate the conversation and HP getting feisty)
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2015/07/hewlett-packard_video_what_dre.html - Paul Chapman Named as CIO of Box
HP execs continue to flee the company…While at HP, Chapman was also one of the key people in defining the future for HP Enterprise, as Hewlett Packard announced that the firm will be split into two.
http://www.cloudwards.net/news/paul-chapman-named-as-cio-of-box-9225/
- HP scoops up cloudy app-dev platform Stackato
Stackato consists of a Platform-as-a-Service rooted in the open source PaaS Cloud Foundry and utilizes Docker for its Linux Containers. Stackato will be incorporated into HP Development Platform, the vendor’s version of the Cloud Foundry PaaS launched in 2014.
http://tvnewsroom.org/newslines/business/hp-scoops-up-cloudy-app-dev-platform-stackato-60827/
EMC
- U2 Finds What It’s Looking For in EMC Storage (this is a horrible headline – can’t let it slide)
During its iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE concert tour, U2 decided it might be a good idea to capture every concert in a digital format. To that end, U2 engaged EMC to deploy an all-Flash array version of VNXe 3200 storage system and its Data Domain backup systems.
- Confirmed: Cisco has killed its EMC-killer product and laid off the team
The official shuttering of Invicta confirmed an earlier report by Chris Mellor at The Register that Cisco had thrown in the towel and laid off nearly all of the Whiptail staff. Whiptail made a flash-storage product that competed head to head with EMC’s line of flash storage. Flash storage is when data-center computer servers use the same super-fast storage used by smartphones, tablets, and thumb drives. Cisco and EMC were once close partners and had a successful joint business where they sold Cisco’s UCS computer servers blended with EMC’s storage and software from EMC’s subsidiary VMware.
http://www.businessinsider.com/cisco-killed-its-emc-killer-product-2015-7
Other
- Citrix CEO to Step Down as Company Considers Shedding GoTo Unit
Citrix Systems President and CEO Mark Templeton plans to retire and officials will review what to do with the vendor’s GoTo online collaboration portfolio as activist investor Elliott Management grows its influence over the company. The company also is making changes on the board of directors, including appointing Jesse Cohn, senior portfolio manager at Elliott, as an independent member. In addition, Citrix officials will search for another independent board member who is agreeable to Elliott and who will replace another board member when appointed.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13240114/1/citrix-red-hat-boost-startup-culture-in-raleigh-nc.html