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/