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News You Can Use: 6/24/2015

sn_johnsnow

  • Clear Storytelling Boosts Value of Analytics (the boss shared this one, in case you didn’t read it last week).

    Those credentials do not, however, make them great storytellers. Ms. Peele noticed several years ago that the team was making great progress at creating new knowledge from data and analytics, but wasn’t having the impact on organizational initiatives and policies that she had hoped. “We were just flinging out the insights so fast that people just couldn’t consume them,” she noted. “And when you have a statistician write a report, it may not be fit for consumption by C-suite executives.”

    http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/06/17/better-analytical-storytelling-by-people-and-machines/

  • MailChimp’s Founder on How to Get Your Business from ‘Startup to Grown Up’

    As it grows, your business will go through several stages and each stage requires a different kind of leader. When you feel like you’ve mastered the stage you’re in and can finally feel comfortable with yourself and proud of your capabilities, you’re already falling behind. Time to move to the next stage!

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247535?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly

  • 10 Reasons You Should Absolutely Not Work This Weekend

    3. Your business doesn’t love you: Even if you’re the owner, there may come a day when you’re unceremoniously kicked to the curb. If you’re not the owner, you can be laid off at any time. Don’t fool yourself into thinking your company will always be there for you. They won’t be.

    http://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/10-reasons-you-should-absolutely-not-work-this-weekend.html

  • What Companies Can Learn From ‘Game of Thrones’ When Hiring Their Next Chief Information Officer

    Spendthrift IT (House Lannister) As the richest house in Westeros, the Lannisters “always pay their debts.” They can afford to, as they literally sit on top of a gold mine. They have been known to buy friends from among their enemies and fund armies of mercenaries with Lannister gold. Similarly, Lannister CIOs will choose to spend their way out of their problems and would never hesitate to outsource. The only problem for a Lannister CIO – and the Lannisters – is what happens when the money runs out?

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247456?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly

  • Why Calling Out Someone in Your Group Can Strengthen It

    The most powerful thing we can do to earn respect from those around us, though, is to call out one of our own when he crosses the line. “People like us, we don’t do things like that.” This is when real change starts to happen, and when others start to believe that we really care about something more than scoring points.

    http://lifehacker.com/why-calling-out-insiders-in-your-group-can-strengthen-i-1712501969

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Supplier Report: 6/20/2015

sn_GordonGekko

It was relatively quiet this week in supplier news.  No acquisitions, no mergers.  The major news coming out of the suppliers was stock performance.

Oracle had a weak Q4 due to a strong US dollar.   Red Hat moved up based on good performance news while Teradata is downgraded.

IBM continues clear messaging around data management, cloud, and mobile.  They expand their support of open source platforms while growing their cloud offerings internationally.

IBM

  • TCS and IBM lead race for Volvo’s $500 million IT contract

    “The deal should be finalised within a month—at the moment Volvo is facing a lot of heat to cut costs and any business which is non-core and not making money for the company is under the pump right now,” one of the persons quoted earlier said. “Volvo IT is more of a cost centre for the company, and for them it makes sense to hand it out to professional outsourcing firms.”

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/tcs-and-ibm-lead-race-for-volvos-500-million-it-contract/articleshow/47698785.cms

  • IBM inks Bluemix cloud deal with Capgemini’s Sogeti

    By connecting sensors that use different protocols and data formats on Bluemix, Sogeti can provide clients with insights on the performance of their heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, lighting and other energy-producing processes. Sogeti will use the same combination of its smartEngine and IBM’s Internet of Things service on Bluemix to provide insights on data for clients in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, utilities management and more.

    http://www.firstpost.com/business/ibm-inks-bluemix-cloud-deal-capgeminis-sogeti-2303166.html

  • It sounds like IBM layoffs are still going on (Australia)

    While it doesn’t sound like IBM is targeting a massive number of employees right now, its layoffs tend to occur in dribbles and drabs, laid-off employees report. IBM won’t disclose the number of people it cuts and doesn’t have to report that figure under the WARN act unless it conducts a layoff that cuts 500 people or more at once.

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ibm-watchdog-more-layoffs-this-month-2015-6

  • IBM commits to open source Spark

    As data and analytics are embedded into the fabric of business and society –from popular apps to the Internet of Things (IoT) –Spark brings essential advances to large-scale data processing. First, it dramatically improves the performance of data dependent apps. Second, it radically simplifies the process of developing intelligent apps, which are fuelled by data.

    http://it-online.co.za/2015/06/18/ibm-commits-to-open-source-spark/
    Andrew Brust says Spark won’t replace Hadoop:

    Spark is best known as a sort of in-memory analytics replacement for iterative computation frameworks like MapReduce; both employ massively parallel compute and then shuffle interim results, with the difference being that Spark caches in memory while MapReduce writes to disk. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Spark offers a simpler programming model, better fault tolerance, and it’s far more extensible than MapReduce. Spark is any form of iterative computation, and it was designed to support specific extensions; among the most popular are machine learning, microbatch stream processing, graph computing, and even SQL.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/hadoop-and-spark-a-tale-of-two-cities/

  • IBM Debuts New Cloud Data Center in Italy

    The new data center helps businesses in Italy fast track their cloud migration plan without having to host their data outside of their own country. Businesses in Italy will now be able to use IBM’s award winning cloud infrastructure while simultaneously being compliant with local data sovereignty regulations.

    http://www.cloudwedge.com/ibms-debuts-new-cloud-data-center-in-italy-1985/

Oracle

 

Hewlett Packard

Other

  • Red Hat Profit Rises 28%

    “Our solid start to fiscal year 2016 was evidenced by strong constant currency revenue growth of over 20%,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat. “This strong growth reflects in part the demand for our open, hybrid cloud technologies across four footprints: bare metal, virtualization, private cloud and public cloud deployments.”

    http://www.rttnews.com/2513835/red-hat-profit-rises-28.aspx

  • Teradata Downgraded by JMP Securities (TDC)

    Teradata (NYSE:TDC) last released its earnings data on Thursday, May 7th. The company reported $0.30 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.42 by $0.12. The company had revenue of $605.80 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $605.80 million. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.54 earnings per share. Teradata’s revenue was down 7.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts predict that Teradata will post $2.44 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

    http://www.wkrb13.com/markets/638731/teradata-downgraded-by-jmp-securities-tdc/

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News You Can Use: 6/15/2015

sn_productive_woman

  • Generation Y: A New Challenge For Travel Procurement

    When it comes to business travel, these digitally-savvy employees expect a sleek, consumer-like experience from corporate booking tools: when they don’t get it they turn to the consumer applications they already have to hand, and book outside the corporate environment. Not only can this lead to irresponsible spending, and weaker negotiated rates in the future, but it poses significant risks to a company’s “duty of care” responsibility towards its employees. If you don’t know where they are, you can’t help them in an emergency. So how can procurement help to bring Generation Y back into the fold?

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/generation-y-a-new-challenge-for-travel-procurement-542624

  • IBM and Procurement Transformation: By the Numbers, Risk Management and More
    [While this is interesting, I really want to know more about the AI/Watson solutions that IBM just started talking about]

    From a numbers perspective, IBM’s procurement performance KPIs and performance improvement metrics are more than impressive. Michael noted IBM saved $6.9B in approved and measured savings targets in 2014 compared to before the program was put into place. Payment terms now stand at close to 60 days rather than 30 days. Spend and contract compliance has increased from 50% to over 90%. Sourcing experts now look at 100% of spend compared to less than 10%. Electronic invoicing has increased from 20% to 90%. And 83% of POs never touch a buyer.

    http://spendmatters.com/2015/06/04/ibm-and-procurement-transformation-by-the-numbers-risk-management-and-more/

  • The Basics of making small talk:
  • This Calculator Will Tell You If A Robot Is Coming For Your Job

    For now, those with the highest-skill, highest-paid jobs are probably safe, and low-skill workers are not. “Inequality is probably the foremost challenge,” says Osborne. “It’s not going to be a problem of there not being enough wealth. We’re fairly confident that all of these technologies will continue to generate vast amounts of wealth—we’ll be generating a cornucopia of increasingly cheap and wonderful goods that will be able to be produced for next to zero marginal cost. But those benefits we’ll see as consumers might not necessarily be realized by workers.”

    http://www.fastcoexist.com/3047269/this-calculator-will-tell-you-if-a-robot-is-coming-for-your-job?partner=rss

  • 3 Reasons ‘Casual Flex’ at Work Doesn’t Work

    What’s more, one-third of workers worldwide feel stressed about work-life issues, according to a study by Ernst & Young about work-life challenges. And flexible-work policies that are merely informal may cause other systemic problems: A Boston University study found employees at a Boston consulting firm faking their 80-hour work weeks over fears that asking to use flexible-work options would cause negative reactions from management. These fears were well founded, it turns out. Employees who faked 80-hour workweeks were given excellent performance reviews, while those who openly asked for flexibility were negatively reviewed, even though they worked the same number of hours as their faking colleagues. That sort of scenario undermines trust and confidence in working relationships, to say the least.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246802?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly