Michael Dell made an interesting comment this week stating that he does not plan to sell of EMC products or split the company up. It also doesn’t sound like he is going to sell of existing Dell assets either…makes you wonder how they are going to pay down that $49B in debt.
IBM wants you to use Watson to buy your children’s holiday gifts (and give them more information to learn about your own buying habits). They are also quietly focusing on processor chip sets.
HPE is trying to make a few friends while the Splunk CEO says goodbye to his.
IBM
- I was going to avoid posting this one, but there are so many articles about it:
Watson can help you find Christmas gifts…
The iOS app IBM Watson works by analysing millions of reviews, blogs and social media conversations on sites like Twitter to curate lists of the top trending products in gift categories such as toys, electronics, health and fitness.
- Is It Time to Buy IBM, or Is Big Blue Cutting Too Deeply?
The company has repurchased about 40% of its shares since 2005 and implemented numerous cost reduction efforts, including substantial layoffs in recent years, to grow earnings. For a while, these actions looked to be working. Diluted earnings per share nearly tripled from 2005 through 2013 and operating margins doubled to hit 20%. Even IBM’s stock was a winner, significantly outpacing the S&P 500 from 2005 through 2011.
Gauging innovation and company culture is difficult, but a Web site called Glassdoor.com aggregates employee reviews for thousands of companies. As seen below, IBM ranks low in overall stars, the percentage of employees who would recommend the company to a friend, and the percentage of employees who approve of the CEO.
- IBM Taps Nvidia Tesla GPUs to Speed Up Watson
IBM said that by using the Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs—the flagship offering of the Nvidia Tesla Computing Platform—coupled with Watson’s Power-based architecture, Watson’s retrieve and rank API capabilities increased by 1.7 times its normal speed. This speed-up can further improve the cost/performance of Watson’s cloud-based services, IBM said.
http://www.eweek.com/database/ibm-taps-nvidia-tesla-gpus-to-speed-up-watson.html
- IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration With Xilinx To Take On Intel
The two companies have signed a private multi-year agreement through OpenPOWER Foundation, which will enable Xilinx programmable chips known as FPGAs to work with IBM’s Power processors and hence promote the IBM product. The move will also help develop open acceleration infrastructure, software and middleware, high performance computing (HPC), network functions virtualization (NFV) and big data analytics.
EMC/Dell
- Dells says there will be no EMC sell-off
“The portfolios of products are highly complementary. There are some overlaps in storage, but Dell product lines and EMC storage product lines are somewhat different. We are going from seven to nine [product lines], which is not a problem, and we’ll continue to enhance them.”
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/39265-dells-says-there-will-be-no-emc-sell-off
- How VMWare and EMC could dictate Dell’s federal future
This report reinforces what is already known: This merger has very little to do with Dell’s federal business. EMC and VMWare provide an almost infinitesimally small contribution to Dell’s contract mix and offer Dell no compelling reason to retain the services side it inherited when it bought Perot Systems in 2009.
What it does go onto reveal is that while Dell adds virtually nothing to its federal services offering with the merger and likely wouldn’t affect a decision to spinoff, it does open Dell up to broader federal market opportunity to sell products and solutions.
- Dell-EMC deal will ‘set back innovation,’ Sun co-founder Vinod Khosla says
EMC and Dell merging is a really good financial move for Michael, but it will set back innovation and distract from innovation,” said Khosla, now a prominent venture capitalist, in an onstage interview at the Structure conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Asked about the future for old-line technology companies like Cisco, IBM and Dell, Khosla was pessimistic. In his view, only about half of those tech titans will stick around in the future. What’s more, he said, innovation from those companies has been seriously lacking.
Hewlett Packard Enterprises
- Microsoft And HPE Team Up, Announce CPM Offerings
The tech giants announced the availability of their Cloud Productivity and Mobility Solution Offerings (CPM), which will create transformational consulting services and business applications for Windows 10. In particular, CPM will provide consulting services for Windows 10, new cloud and mobility consulting services and industry-specific vertical applications.
http://www.econotimes.com/Microsoft-And-HP-Team-Up-Announce-CPM-Offerings-118600
This is interesting: HPE is the business arm moving away from the desktop experience, yet they get the consulting partnership instead of HP Inc who is building machines with Windows 10. - HP Enterprise, Intel come together to deliver IoT solutions
Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s IoT solutions combined with the Intel IoT Platform and product portfolio will deliver new products that will sit at the edge and collect, process, as well as analyse data from sensors and devices. These new systems are designed to sit outside of the traditional data centre and will feature Intel Core” i5 and Intel Atom. processors.
- HP Enterprise launches all-flash datacentre storage
HP Enterprise claimed the new line-up can improve Oracle workload database performance by up to 75 per cent without the need for companies to switch architecture, making it a flexible addition to a company’s network. Additionally, HP Enterprise said the new tools will cost half the amount of some unnamed rival products, making them an attractive option for businesses wanting to make the move to all-flash arrays without high outlays.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/server/25607/hp-enterprise-launches-all-flash-datacentre-storage
Other
- Splunk CEO resigns on back of strong Q3
Godfrey Sullivan has resigned as Splunk CEO. Sullivan ends his seven year reign in charge of the Big Data software company on the back of its Q3 2015 financial results. Although he is stepping down as CEO, he will remain nonexecutive chairman, with Douglas Merrit operating as its new president and CEO.
http://www.cbronline.com/news/big-data/software/splunk-ceo-resigns-on-back-of-strong-q3-4733124