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The Supply Chain: 3/4/2015

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  • The Western procurement issue in China (Yes, the US did have some kind of back-door spying equipment installed in American-branded equipment but China isn’t an innocent party – they have been ripping off US patents and designs for years to get their manufacturers competitive.  )

    Yes, the US did have some kind of back-door spying equipment installed in American-branded equipment but China isn’t an innocent party – they have been ripping off US patents and designs for years to get their manufacturers competitive.

    http://www.techworm.net/2015/02/leading-western-technology-brands-like-apple-intelmcafee-shunned-from-chinas-approved-tech-listing.html

  • SAP: Welcome to the new era of procurement:

    Procurement can and will play an increasingly strategic role in managing this virtual enterprise, leveraging technology to simplify the way complex business gets done and manage their operations in a new and dynamic way that keeps their companies ahead of the competition. Procurement is evolving from service to a function. And with increasing frequency, it is focused on business value and enabling supplier innovations as opposed to just driving procurement savings through cost reductions.

    http://www.news-sap.com/procurement-2015-evolution-continues/

  • Four ways to access the strength of suppliers:

    A company with a high proportion of long-term contract agreements in its order book is likely to be more secure than a firm completing work on a shorter term basis. However, a retained contract should not prompt reckless overconfidence; it is often a good idea to look over notice periods and analyse the probability of changes in market conditions or demand which could reduce a client’s requirement for the business’ goods or services.

    http://www.supplymanagement.com/blog/2015/02/four-ways-to-assess-the-strength-of-suppliers

  • Failure to Work With Minority Owned Businesses a Challenge in the Private and Public Sector

    Last month, the NAACP Florida State Conference led by President Adora Obi Nweze released an Economic Development Report Card on the records of targeted cities, counties, school districts and private corporations in the State of Florida. What stood out amidst all of the findings were the poor minority procurement practices that were consistent through the public and private sector. In summary, most local governments spent less than two percent with veteran, minority and women -owned businesses.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dedrick-muhammad/failure-to-work-with-mino_b_6736984.html

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Supplier Report: 2/28/2015

Sony World Photography Competition Shortlist

Sony World Photography Competition Shortlist

IBM

  • IBM Pumps $4 Billion Into Cloud and Mobile Initiatives (thank you Kevin, huge story with hundreds of similar posts this week)…

    Among its new priorities, IBM has put particular emphasis on online, or cloud, services. It has said it invested $1.2 billion in data centers to augment those it acquired with SoftLayer Technologies in 2013. It also invested $1 billion to accelerate commercialization of its Watson data-analytics technology.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-pumps-4-billion-into-strategic-imperatives-1424959681

  • WebSphere (IBM) offers 31% better performance over WebLogic (Oracle)

    Enterprise IT vendor IBM today said its WebSphere Application Server 8.5.5.4 running on dual Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 v3 demonstrated 31 percent better performance on per core basis against 18800.76 SPECjEnterprise20101 EjOPS result from Oracle using WebLogic 12.1.3 Server running on Oracle Server X5-2 with dual Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 v3.

    http://www.infotechlead.com/networking/ibm-websphere-server-offers-31-best-performance-against-oracle-weblogic-28413

  • Jim Cramer: Don’t write off IBM, but I like SalesForce better

    TheStreet’s Jim Cramer says you can’t write off IBM because they’ve managed to reinvent themselves so many times. On Thursday the company announced it will spend $4 billion in 2015 on analytics, mobility, cloud computing and security. Cramer says IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is laying out a vision about the idea of social, mobile, media, and cloud computing becoming a larger part of the company. Right now it’s about 27 percent of the company and they want to take it to 40. But Cramer says if you take it to 40 it can’t be because the rest of IBM is doing so poorly. He says IBM is looking increasingly like an Accenture with a social/mobile component. Warren Buffett is a fan of IBM and while Cramer says he wouldn’t write IBM off, he certainly likes Salesforce a lot more than IBM

    http://www.thestreet.com/video/13060589/jim-cramer-i-dont-want-to-write-off-ibm-but-i-like-salesforce-better.html

  • IBM has out “mega-deal’ed” HP

    In December IBM announced a $1bn (£644m) deal with German airline Lufthansa, a win with global comms company WPP for $1.25bn (£800m), and said it had scored undisclosed deals thought to be worth more than £500m with media org Thomson Reuters and Dutch bank ABN AMRO.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/26/hp_can_eat_ibms_dust_says_anlalyst_report/

  • IBM Advances SoftLayer for Hybrid Cloud Growth

    Connected to the initial $1.2 billion investment in cloud services that IBM announced in 2014, the new computing capacity broadens the company’s cloud footprint in both Australia and Canada, bringing the SoftLayer portfolio to local doorsteps. The new cloud centers are each the second of their kind to be opened in their respective countries, giving customers the option for in-country data redundancy.

    http://www.eweek.com/cloud/ibm-advances-softlayer-for-hybrid-cloud-growth.html

Oracle

HP

  • The Battle of Two Tech Giants (HP vs. IBM)

    So where is the sunlight? The willingness of HP to act. Splitting your company into two pieces is a massive task. Recall what the EU wanted to do to Microsoft, and how that company reacted. But there are green shoots: The company’s guidance is weak, but we are still operating in a pre-split era, so operational performance isn’t the best barometer. Instead, the company has plenty of cash, and is making big moves: HP is said to be eyeing Aruba Networks as an acquisition and is shifting around its cloud leadership quickly after installing a new leader.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/26/who-wins-the-battle-of-the-disrupted-tech-giants-hp-or-ibm/

  • HP scores large deal (billions) with Deutsche Bank

    The 10 year deal, which mainly covers Deutsche Bank’s wholesale banking, will see HP provide dedicated data centre services with the aim of reducing infrastructure costs for the bank.

    http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/news/deutsche-bank-and-hp-announce-multi-billion-dollar-agreement

  • HP Separation to Cost $1.3 Billion in 2015

    “Recall that we are separating into two Fortune 50 companies, I mean it’s sort of hard to imagine that there are two Fortune 50 companies embedded in HP,” Whitman said. “That has included an entire organizational design and selection process the IT strategy carve out financials and many other activities.”

    http://www.datamation.com/data-center/hp-separation-to-cost-1.3-billion-in-2015.html

  • HP reportedly mulling purchase of Aruba Networks

    The move would give HP, which already offers its own “converged campus networking” gear, a bigger footprint in wireless mobile, a hot market, that could grow even hotter as more businesses and consumers use Wi-Fi to take some of the pressure off overloaded cellular networks. This acquisition would be reminiscent of Cisco’s purchase of Meraki a little over two years ago for $1.2 billion.

    https://gigaom.com/2015/02/25/hp-reportedly-mulling-purchase-of-aruba-networks/

Other

  • Splunk’s Value Is in the Clouds; Investors Should Take Profits Now

    Cloud and big-data markets are driving profits higher for many software companies, but data analytics specialist Splunk (SPLK – Get Report) has struggled to grow its bottom line. While its revenue is growing at impressive rates, Splunk’s valuation remains a concern. And investors would be wise to take some of their profits off the table ahead of the company’s fourth-quarter results Thursday.

    http://www.thestreet.com/story/13056850/1/splunks-value-is-in-the-clouds-investors-should-take-profits-now.html

  • Gartner BI Magic Quadrant 2015 Spots Market Turmoil

    “Business-centric platforms such as Tableau Software, Qlik, and other emerging vendors have a more narrow set of capabilities, but are used more broadly for a range of BI and analytics functions — including reporting, for which they are not optimal… — primarily because they are easy to use and deploy,” Gartner writes in its report. In contrast, companies using more conventional, IT-centric platforms (such as Cognos or BusinessObjects) that have a broad range of BI capabilities say they apply them to narrow use-cases.

    http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/big-data-analytics/gartner-bi-magic-quadrant-2015-spots-market-turmoil/d/d-id/1319214

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Productivity Bulletin: 2/27/2015

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Flickr

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Flickr

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The Supply Chain: 2/25/2015

sn_SupplyChainManagement_o2

  • 6 fixes for the federal procurement process (there are some points that carry over to the private sector):

     Procurement decisions are taking significantly more time than ever before. “Sliding to the Right” is a commonly used phrase these days. More are even being cancelled after proposals are submitted. Contractors spend countless hours and thousands of dollars bidding, often working late nights, holidays and weekends. Contractors often spend anywhere from 20-35 percent of a contract’s value on business development, capture, and proposal development compared to the private sector, which typically spends three to eight percent. Make decisions quicker and be respectful; it takes a lot of money and effort to respond to your RFP’s.

    http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/blog/2015/02/20/procurement-fix-legislation-rule/23754523/

  • UHC Member Hospitals Achieve More Than $450 Million in Supply Chain Savings

    The growth in member savings is attributable to many factors, including higher-volume purchasing through UHC’s supply contracting company, Novation; greater adoption of UHC’s advanced analytics; and member collaboration with UHC experts to identify savings opportunities linked to physician preference items, supply utilization, and standardization.

    http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2015/02/19/uhc-member-hospitals-achieve-more-450-million-supply-chain-savings

  • How eSCRM protects the supply chain
    http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/it/blog/2015/02/19/escrm-protects-supply-chain/23694359/
  • Talking to a Rising Supply Chain Star: Brian Dean, General Dynamics

    Being primarily a military contractor, like my company is, communication is a huge thing we use to build relationships with suppliers. A lot of times, there is little information we can share with the rest of the world but when we can share forecast or plans or anything like that it goes a long way to creating a strategic relationship with our suppliers. They can take that information and plan better on their side, which all of us want to do, and in the long run it makes things better for both of us. Also, when we find a supplier that is high performing, we want to promote them throughout the company and put them where it is a good fit. From our side, we get economies of scale, and the supplier gets more exposure into other lines of business. It’s all a give and take, working on finding ways that we can help each other meet our goals.

    http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=3219&doc_id=276651

  • Procurement Leaders offers a post that seems to refute IBM’s generational survey:

    So what, you may ask? For starters, millennials are very different from any of the previous generations. It starts with their upbringing and constantly being surrounded by mobile technology and social media. Apparently, they are also quite motivated, but not necessarily willing to compromise their personal life (we hear of more and more CPOs rethinking the 9-5 office life). And because millennials are so ambitious, they will also want to progress at a faster pace than the organisation can keep up with.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–maggie-slowik/2015/02/17/do-you-know-who-is-on-your-procurement-team-