Supplier Report: 12/6/2014
IBM
- IBM scores a $1.25B cloud deal in Europe (Thank you Ray for this find):
Late on Tuesday, IBM announced the third in a string of billion dollar plus contracts, saying it had won a seven-year, $1.25 billion deal with WPP, the world’s top advertising firm, to run WPP operations in the cloud
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-signs-1-25-billion-wpp-cloud-deal-001452843–finance.html
Note: They also did a deal with Dockers
Note 2: They got an IT services deal with Thompson Reuters
Note 3: Here is a post saying don’t be fooled by the new business (These are “outsourcing” contracts, not real cloud deals. They are replacement revenue)
- Interesting idea: Old laptop batteries could power slums:
An IBM study analysed a sample of discarded batteries and found 70% had enough power to keep an LED light on more than four hours a day for a year. Researchers said using discarded batteries is cheaper than existing power options, and also helps deal with the mounting e-waste problem.
- IBM partners with Cisco on storage (Cisco is also partnering with EMC and Netapp)
http://thevarguy.com/business-technology-solution-sales/120514/it-infrastructure-alliances-it-s-complicated - IBM tried to sue the US government over losing a bid to E&Y (they lost)
IBM, according to court records, scored higher than Ernst & Young on evaluations before the award decision. The company pitched about $85 million for the audit contract—$30 million higher than E&Y’s offer.
- Employment will be cut at IBM sites in Rochester and across the nation as the computer giant trims its work force by about 10,000 through a voluntary retirement program designed to cut costs. Early retirement offers will include one week’s pay for each six months of service up to a maximum of one year’s salary. The company employs 223,000 people in the United States.
http://www.postbulletin.com/news/local/day-in-history-ibm-to-cut-employment/article_a7ed49cc-4536-5846-874c-08dca4fa8152.html
Oracle
- Oracle understands their customers don’t like them and what they plan to do about it…
Talking to a number of Oracle people, it is clear that this transformation is really underway and that this is not just rhetoric. Ebbeck has been out listening to customers, partners, suppliers and staff and having come in from the outside is not wedded to the legacy way of “being Oracle”.
- Oracle and HP execs selling off their stocks (not really an exclusive Oracle story – take a look at the HP exec mentioned)
http://www.bidnessetc.com/30222-insider-selling-at-hewlettpackard-hpq-oracle-orcl-cisco-csco/
HP
- HP is going after Splunk because they are eating into their ArcSight business with their product offerings. (Note to self)
http://www.crn.com/news/security/300074975/hewlett-packard-battling-splunk-ibm-to-maintain-arcsight-dominance.htm - 5 things Meg Whitman wants customers to know:
For perspective, remember three months ago Whitman told investors HP was ready to consider acquisitions, but only if such purchases fulfill a purpose HP can’t achieve organically through its own core R&D. As a result, when HP announced its Eucalyptus acquisition in mid-September, it spoke volumes regarding the strength of the cloud-based enterprise technology it was bringing into the fold.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/02/5-things-hewlett-packard-companys-ceo-wants-you-to.aspx
Note: They are also starting to buy back stocks too. - HP’s big data platform is now on the cloud and is called Haven:
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/data-storage/business-intelligence/hp-big-data-cloud-service-haven-ondemand-156920
Other
- How much did Microsoft lose on the BN Nook deal?
That aside, the deal was announced 977 days ago, and an un-adjusted $180.4 million loss over that period works out to $188,331 per day. That is both a lot of money, and not much money at all. In real terms, burning nearly $200,000 per day is quite expensive. For Microsoft, however, the total loss amounts to a minute percentage of its ready cash, not to mention its quarterly net income, making the figure inconsequential.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/04/heres-how-much-money-microsoft-lost-per-day-on-the-nook-deal/
- How one woman helped Lenovo go global (story how they picked up desktop IBM business and a nice story about learning to do business with other cultures)
http://fortune.com/2014/12/01/the-woman-who-helped-lenovo-go-global/ - 2015 acquisition predictions (they are still calling for an HP-EMC merger)
http://www.zdnet.com/article/2015-it-vendor-upheaval-ahead/ - Tableau to spend 28% of revenue on research. CEO Christian Chabot on their direction:
Here’s an amazing thing you can do with Tableau Online [the company’s first cloud foray]. You can just be at your desk. Let’s say you’re a teacher or a nurse or a journalist—you’re some inspired and critical-thinking person, but you definitely wouldn’t call yourself an analyst and you definitely wouldn’t call yourself an IT person. There you are, sitting with a spreadsheet full of data, with every article, or every student with every test they’ve ever taken, or every patient and every shift and every covering nurse. You can open Tableau’s software, and you can create an interactive, visual summary of everything going on. How patients are falling in and out of beds. Which students appear to be at risk. Or which articles on which days are producing the highest click-through rates.
http://fortune.com/2014/12/02/tableau-software-ceo-research/
Video: David Allen: Getting in control
Supplier Report: 11/29/2014
IBM
- IBM’s top 10 tips for moving to the cloud:
http://www.cbronline.com/news/tech/cio-agenda/the-boardroom/ibms-ten-top-tips-for-cios-moving-to-the-cloud-4454773 - A cost breakdown of cloud services (excellent):
https://gigaom.com/2014/11/28/its-black-friday-so-who-has-the-lowest-cloud-prices/ - IBM adds mobile-as-desktop offering:
IBM said its Mobile Infrastructure Analytics Services can deliver a true end-to-end view into a business’s entire mobile environment. The SaaS analytics applications provide instant visibility into how a company’s mobile applications are being used, whether by their own employees or customers. The service then delivers insights into any issues that may exist with a business’s infrastructure, which could affect the performance of mobile devices.
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/ibm-adds-mobile-desktop-as-a-service-offering–1051629
- IBM developing a new 5G antenna with Ericsson:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ibm-ericsson-to-design-5g-antennas-as-bandwidth-needs-skyrocket-2014-11-24
Oracle
Slow news week for Oracle. There were a couple of terrible press releases for work overseas, but that is about it.
HP
- HP leveraging the IBM model will be a mistake:
http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/hewlett-packard-company-hpqs-meg-whitman-relying-on-international-business-machines-corp-ibm-already-sputtered-growth-model-336155/ - HP cuts 66 jobs in Houston location:
HP has been cutting thousands of jobs companywide over the past year. In May, it announced it would eliminate another 11,000 to 16,000 jobs, bringing the total number of planned cuts to 40,000 to 50,000— or about 15 percent of its global workforce.
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/morning_call/2014/11/hp-cuts-jobs-in-houston.html
- It is still a long road to recovery for HP:
And there was little comfort in a new forecast issued Tuesday by the market research firm IDC. Although the firm says total PC sales by all makers should level out in the next few years, “no significant growth” is expected. The only “good” news is that the global PC market won’t shrink as much this year. IDC now expects the decline to be 2.7% rather than 3.7%, as forecast earlier
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/HP-Its-long-road-ahead/articleshow/45307570.cms
- Whitman’s memo to the HP staff:
http://www.crn.com.au/News/398107,full-text-of-meg-whitmans-memo-to-staff.aspx
Other
- Can you run a business from a mobile phone?
There’s no question that the mobile phone has become an essential tool for decision makers at all levels. But can it serve as the only tool? A survey of 511 executives conducted by Forbes Insights for Google last year found found that nine out of ten executives used smartphones for business, even while they were in the office. And here’s the clincher: 10 percent said smartphones were their exclusive device for day-to-day basis for decision making.
- Concerns about Splunk’s earnings:
Splunk differs from the traditional sense of big data in that it’s analyzing machines rather than businesses and industries. Splunk’s software gathers and analyzes data found on websites, servers, networks, mobile devices, and so on. It then sells that data to enterprise customers for the purpose of mitigating security risk, preventing fraud, improving service performance, and reducing operating costs.
Meanwhile, big data peer Tableau trades at less than 15 times trailing-12-month sales, and roughly 10 times next year’s expected sales of $551 million. In addition to being a cheaper stock relative to sales, Tableau is growing faster. During Tableau’s last quarter, it grew revenue 71% year over year and is expected to grow revenue by 41% in 2015, both of which are greater than Splunk’s year-over-year performance.
- Tableau software showing serious gains:
Tableau also announced it has reached more than 5,000 customer accounts in the EMEA region. Customer accounts include Audi AG, Switzerland Global Enterprise, St. George´s Healthcare NHS Trust, and French banking firm BNP Paribas.
http://www.financial-news.co.uk/25389/2014/11/tableau-software-grows-100-in-emea-20141128082500/
Productivity Bulletin: 11/28/2014
Happy Black Friday readers – go buy something and help the economy, but when you are done – here is something educational.
- Increase employee satisfaction by recognizing hard work
The obvious first two incentives are monetary and paid time off. These are also some of the most expensive for the company and usually are reserved for the highest achievers on a managerial or sales force, or are distributed evenly across a company that is showing stellar lateral performance. While this kind of incentive is great at riling up a storm on the sales floor or in the bullpen: if a company uses this too much, it could suffer huge financial loss after a while…
- Productive people never have “free time”
Productive people are never “free.” They don’t have 15 minutes on their lunch break to “have a quick call.” They don’t “kill time”—a terrible phrase. You can always put a window of time to good use if you work for it. Productive people schedule their priorities—not always their time, but always their priorities. When they don’t have something to do, they find something to do.
http://lifehacker.com/productive-people-are-never-free-1661375021
- Kick @$$ at work:
This isn’t the best example in the article, but it is something to consider and reflect upon (seriously, read this article):Remember names: At one job interview, the interviewer introduced himself and then announced that he was going to ‘ask me a bunch of tough technical questions.’ He did and I aced it. I was thrilled with my performance. He then announced that he had one more question for me. My smug self thought, ‘Throw it at me! I just killed all the other ones. Here is what it was:
What is my name?
I didn’t have a clue what his name was and felt like a complete idiot.