IBM
- IBM announces two new flash storage systems:
…as well as superior reliability that helps lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and accelerates data-intensive infrastructures and applications. IBM’s latest solutions offer customers real-time analytical insights, providing up to 50X better performance than traditional enterprise HDD storage, and up to 4X more capacity in a smaller rack footprint than EMC XtremIO flash technology.
- Here is a less press-release flavored post about the flash arrays (there are many about this topic this week):
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/it-unmasked/ibm-unveils-storage-arrays-that-use-mlc-flash-memory.htmlAlso: Netflix is pulling IBM to rethink their storage solutions:
http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2015/02/17/netflix-looks-to-ibm-for-cloud-storage-revamp/ - Apple’s new enterprise business is going to be so much bigger than most people realize:
IBM and Apple are also planning apps for personal finance companies, banks, you name it. Any type of business interaction where it might be useful for an employee to suddenly have the entire company’s data available at the tap of a touchscreen. It won’t matter whether the employee is using an iPhone 6 Plus or an iPad — the apps are the same on both.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-ibm-partnership-on-enterprise-apps-2015-2
- IBM South Africa has invested R700 million in an equity empowerment program to boost skills
This is less about IBM’s training investment in South Africa and more about their continued push into smaller international markets (for some reason, I keep thinking about Coca-Cola as a parallel).
http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/ibm-invests-r700m-to-boost-skills-1.1821092Another Example: IBM improving traffic in Nairobi
http://www.itwebafrica.com/business-intelligence/500-kenya/234183-ibm-on-course-to-ease-traffic-in-nairobi - IBM increases Hadoop offerings:
IBM BigInsights for Apache Hadoop will introduce three new modules, including the IBM BigInsights Analyst, which will include IBM’s SQL engine and the company’s intuitive spreadsheet and visualizations to find data quickly and easily. On average, millions of SQL queries are run each year. With BigInsights Analyst, the efficiency of these queries has been shown in some cases to improve by up to four times on Apache Hadoop depending on the shuffle size. And the use of ANSI-compliant SQL means queries can run unchanged against Hive, HBase and relational databases.
http://www.eweek.com/database/ibm-bolsters-hadoop-offerings.html
- Another element to their recent storage push: IBM investing $1B in software defined storage solutions:
“To accelerate the development of next-generation storage software, IBM plans to invest more than $1bn in its storage software portfolio over the next five years,” Big Blue said. “With this investment, the company aims to extend its storage technology leadership. The investment will focus on research and development of new cloud storage software, object storage and open standard technologies including OpenStack.”
http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2396014/ibm-makes-usd1bn-software-defined-storage-bet
- Financial: Is the worst over for IBM? (the news seems optimistic this week)
http://www.bidnessetc.com/35072-the-worst-is-over-for-international-business-machines-corp-cantor-fitzgera/
Buffet is buying more IBM stock:
http://www.efinancehub.com/sachimo/buffett-churns-his-portfolio-more-ibm-stock-and-less-oil-stocks/1215439.html
Oracle
- Large Outflow of Money Witnessed in Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) managed to eke out gains of 0.02% in intraday trade. The share price increased by 0.01 points to $44.11. Till last observation, the net money flow was highly discomforting at a negative $(-12.61) million. The total inflow of $52.08 million in upticks was completely overshadowed by an outflow of $64.69 million in downticks, giving the up/down ratio a value of 0.81. The shares have seen a change of 0.41% in the past week.A block trade occurred in the counter in which the composite value of the upticks was $13.61 million and the composite value in downticks was $29.61 million. The resultant up/down ratio for the block exchange was 0.46. The block trade had a negative money flow of $(-16.01) million.
http://stafforddaily.com/large-outflow-of-money-witnessed-in-oracle-corporation-2/347374/
- More on Oracle’s pricing wars:
The X5 is priced at a mere $562,000, reports Forbes. This would present a 40% discount to similar offerings by VCE, which is backed by Cisco and EMC. Cisco, Oracle, and EMC are among the biggest players in the server market, according to IDC. VCE dominates Infrastructure services segment with a 24% market share, generates $1.3 billion in revenue, and is also the biggest player in the general purpose segment of the server market. Oracle’s edge comes from its strength in software with a 50% chunk of the Platform segment that helped it generate as much as $1 billion revenue in 2QFY14.
http://www.bidnessetc.com/34982-oracle-corporation-brings-aggressive-pricing-to-server-wars/
HP
- HP to release open source, white-label network switches for data centers
According to the announcement made by HP, the company has partnered with Accton Technology to develop two new software-independent network switches which will run Cumulus Networks’ Linux-based network operating system
- 4 things to look for in HP’s Q1 Results:
http://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/15/02/5251122/citis-4-things-to-look-for-in-hewlett-packards-q1-result - HP snags government contract for UK pensions: (3 years, $2.5B (pounds))
http://central-government.governmentcomputing.com/news/hp-lands-three-year-dwp-deal-to-keep-benefits-system-running-4512981
Other
- Philly 311 built on SalesForce technology:
And that front-office focus is crucial, he added. “For the last 40 years we’ve seen massive investments in [information technology] that, frankly, have not paid off, which were all in the back office,” said Kundra, former chief information officer of the United States. “Now what you’re seeing in terms of the cities is that they’re making these investments in the front office and addressing the problems that citizens actually have.”
- Enterprise and wearables:
F&S puts the market for wearables in Asia Pacific as being worth $US8.5 billion and expects it to grow to $US37 billion over the next five years, a CAGR of around 34 percent. It expects uptake of wearables in enterprises to be much faster, with “volume shipments poised to grow at a CAGR of around 75 percent in the period 2014-2018.”
- Yahoo is using Splunk for their Hadoop needs:
Splunk Enterprise and Hunk help us gain insights into all of our data, whether it is streaming in real time or historical data at rest,” said Ian Flint, monitoring architect, Yahoo. “Hunk gives Yahoo deep visibility into our massive Hadoop data stores to help us continuously optimize operational performance. Insights we gain from Hunk help us save millions of dollars per year in hardware provisioning. Splunk Enterprise helps us to maximize revenue by giving product and business teams better insight into our customers, the user experience and any looming issues.”
http://insidebigdata.com/2015/02/20/yahoo-selects-splunks-hunk-hadoop-analytics/