Posted on by Joey Lombardi

Supplier Report: 1/9/2016

sn_sky_Thomas Ulrich

We are back to work and the news is flowing!  It is a new year and that means changes.  IBM announced the departure of three long-time executives while Oracle quietly snapped up two companies.

The realities of the Dell/EMC merger are hitting EMC with the announcement of job eliminations.  IBM is also expected to announce job reductions in the GTS space.

Meanwhile, HPE is opening a private bar in London…

IBM

  • Why IBM just lost three key executives

    That, in fact, is just what apparently happened at IBM in December, when it reportedly lost Steve Mills, the 43-year company veteran who was most recently executive vice president of IBM Software and Systems, along with Danny Sabbah, its chief technology officer for cloud, and Brendan Hannigan, general manager of IBM Security.

    Bottom line? “Keep an eye on these three,” Enderle said. “The fact they left together suggests they have something else they want to do together, and given their powerful skillset, that ‘something’ could be really interesting.”

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3020616/why-ibm-just-lost-three-key-executives.html
    More on Steve Mills:
    http://fortune.com/2016/01/06/ibms-steve-mills-retires/

  • More IBM job cuts to services unit expected by Alliance

    In one form or another, the workers group Alliance@IBM is bracing for downsizing in the Global Technology Services unit at IBM Corp. “We’re hearing rumors of (GTS) being sold off,” said Lee Conrad, national coordinator of Alliance@IBM. “As with everything inside IBM, we don’t get confirmation until just before it happens. If the company says anything, they will wait until the last moment.” Sale or not, Conrad said cuts to the GTS units most likely will happen sometime this month.

    http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/money/2016/01/07/more-ibm-job-cuts-services-unit-expected-alliance/78405848/
    More on Alliance who is also folding:

    After trying since 1999 to turn IBM into a union shop, the Alliance@IBM, a Communications Workers of America local, is “suspending” its organizing efforts. The Alliance, which had 400 dues-paying members at its peak, now has about 200.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3019552/it-industry/ibm-union-calls-it-quits.html

  • IBM cuts new Watson deals that push it deeper into health
    Medtronics:

    IBM and Medtronic are using Watson’s analytics as the back-end for an app which they say could help the roughly 400 million people in the world with diabetes.

    SoftBank:

    Rometti was also joined by the president of Softbank, to talk about how the companies will combine Watson’s analytics with Softbank’s Pepper robot to market services to businesses.

    Pepper is already being used by Nestle in about a hundred of its stores, where it greets customers, asks them what type of coffee they like and makes recommendations for the type of coffee machine they might want to buy. But Pepper can gather all kinds of data, including how many people interact with it, their gender, and even their emotion. The idea is to take all that data and use it to hone marketing and sales strategies.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3020001/ibm-cuts-new-watson-deals-that-push-it-deeper-into-health.html

  • IBM’s Watson flexes muscles with Under Armour partnership

    Powered by Watson technology, Under Armour’s application, UA Record, aggregates and analyzes an individual’s health and fitness data to provide personalized coaching and advice. A few examples include the app telling a user the average steps taken daily and bed time for a person their age.

    http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160107/TECHNOLOGY/160109923/ibms-watson-flexes-muscles-with-under-armour-partnership

  • Ginni Rometty 2016 CES Keynote speech

    What exactly is that leather “thing” she is wearing? That isn’t a jacket.
    http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/07/ibm-ceo-artificially-intelligent-computers-will-change-who-you/21293693/

Oracle

  • Oracle purchases AddThis for $200M

    Oracle continues to ramp up its business in the area of marketing tech. Today the enterprise software giant announced that it has acquired AddThis, which makes sharing features (i.e., those buttons on web pages that let you share stories or follow accounts on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and audience tracking technology for online publishers and marketers. AddThis says it currently covers activity data for 1.9 billion monthly unique visitors and over 15 million mobile and desktop web domains.

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/oracle-addthis/
    I want to make a connection. Two months ago, we covered the news that TeraData is getting out of the marketing cloud space, with Oracle looking to purchase more marketing assets, could they be a possible buyer?

  • Oracle also quietly purchased StackEngine two weeks ago…

    StackEngine was founded just last year by a couple of industry veterans. In fact, it emerged from stealth in October, 2014 with a plan to operationalize Docker, the open source container system. While Docker has been a hot commodity for the last several years, StackEngine recognized that it lacked an administrative layer for IT pros to manage their containers.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/22/oracle-stackengine-acquisition-part-of-expanding-cloud-strategy/

  • Is Oracle’s ‘supergraphic’ a super problem?
    Oracle has a giant sight up on their building in San Jose just in time for the Super Bowl, city officials are not pleased:

    “They will have to take the sign down,” Cheryl Wessling, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Planning, Building and Code Enforcement, said Friday after this newspaper contacted her department about the colorful sign that can be seen as far away as Interstate 280.

    http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_29361163/oracles-new-super-bowl-sign-is-illegal-san

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

EMC | Dell

  • EMC tightens grip on converged infrastructure subsidiary VCE as job cuts loom

    According to sources cited by The Register, VCE is also expected to announce job cuts with around 250 staff likely to be let go this week.

    According to the source, the cuts will hit all levels including some senior managers; this move would make sense as EMC brings VCE closer to its own operations, perhaps believing that it can cut costs.

    http://www.cbronline.com/news/verticals/the-boardroom/emc-tightens-grip-on-converged-infrastructure-subsidiary-vce-as-job-cuts-loom-4770275

  • Feeling jitters as Dell-EMC marriage approaches

    How will the two cultures mesh? “EMC was built on engineering innovation and high-touch sales” that require lots of personal attention, says Peter Bell, who spent a decade at the company and is now a venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in California. (EMC chief executive Joe Tucci is known to keep the last day of every quarter free so that he can make phone calls to customers and help personally close deals that are hanging in the balance.) That meant fat profit margins for EMC, and hefty earnings for its workers.

    In contrast, “Michael Dell knows how to run a big business in a low-cost way. He knows how to compete in a commodity business, and he knows there’s a lot of cost to be taken out of EMC,” Bell says. Not surprisingly, that has created a lot of anxiety among EMC employees.

    http://www.betaboston.com/news/2016/01/08/feeling-jitters-as-dell-emc-marriage-approaches-2/

Other

Photo: Thomas Ulrich