This week feels like yesterday’s news. Many of the major IBM stories are updates and rehash from the last few weeks – however they did release news on a breakthrough in tape storage. 64-year-old tape storage technology.
Bad week for HP. PC sales are down and they are exiting the public cloud sector due to not wanting to go head to head with Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM.
IBM
- More insight into IBM’s $3B investing into the Internet of Things (IoT):
The “things” in the Internet of Things represent just the tip of the iceberg. The heavy lifting is obviously done by backend infrastructure. The data generated by the sensors and devices needs to be ingested in real-time. Industrial IoT requires massive infrastructure running powerful compute and storage engines. IBM’s investment in SoftLayer instantly turned it into an IaaS player giving the company the muscle to compete with Amazon and Microsoft MSFT +0.58%. SoftLayer’s bare metal compute infrastructure, object storage, and CDN become the backbone of IoT. All IBM has to do is to add real-time streaming and high volume data ingestion capabilities to SoftLayer to turn it into a viable backend infrastructure for storing and processing massive datasets.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2015/04/09/can-the-elephant-dance-to-the-iot-tune/
- 17 IBM Rock Stars: Listicle hat focuses on the people of IBM
This is an interesting post in light of the criticisms that IBM has an aging workforce. Nobody in this article looks older than 40.
http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-rock-star-employees-2015-4 - Speaking of aging workforce, IBM had a tape storage innovation this week…
IBM scientists have demonstrated an areal recording density of 123 billion bits of uncompressed data per square inch on low cost, particulate magnetic tape – a breakthrough that represents the equivalent of a 220 terabyte tape cartridge that could fit in the palm of your hand.
- IBM is working with the US Army on cloud powered logistics: (it is bigger than the stock exchange)
The system is a hybrid model comprising IBM’s cloud and the US military’s on-premise servers to power the Army Logistics Support Activity (LOGSA) system, which provides integrated logistical support for worldwide operations.
Oracle
- Stock: Oracle projecting large revenue growth
Regardless of margin impact triggered by cloud shift, the sell-side firm expects accretion in earnings. Revenue will benefit in terms of growth attributed by “12c refresh”, while adding $2.8 billion in new revenue from multitenant – a software architecture in which a single instance of a software runs on a server and serves multiple tenants – and in-memory add-on modules. The increased usage of hardware attached to the server will optimize performance of in-memory modules and assist Oracle to support its growth rate.
- Here is an interview with Shawn Price (Oracle Sr. VP) on their cloud strategy (it is nice to hear from someone other than Hurd)http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/oracle-will-be-the-world-largest-cloud-company-shawn-price/1/217949.html
HP
- HP is backing off public cloud:
On Tuesday, Bill Hilf, HP SVP of cloud product management, told The New York Times that “it makes no sense for us to go head-to-head” with the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the battle to sell on-demand computing to businesses.
- PC Sales are slumping again
Worldwide shipments totaled 68.5 million during the first quarter of the year, down 6.7 percent from the first quarter of 2014, according to IDC. Gartner reported a smaller year-on-year decline of 5.2 percent to 71.7 million units. (The two firms count differently: IDC includes Chromebooks, for example, while Gartner excludes them.)
http://recode.net/2015/04/09/dont-look-now-but-the-pc-market-is-going-south-again/
Other
- Amazon is going after IBM’s Watson:
Unveiled on Thursday, Amazon Machine Learning gives developers the chance to extract much more meaningful insights from their Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted data without needing a background in data science and it is charged on a pay-as-you-go basis.
- The other side of the shoe: Hypocrisy of Big Companies Practicing Inconsistent Moral Outrage
http://guardianlv.com/2015/04/hypocrisy-of-big-companies-practicing-inconsistent-moral-outrage/ - Splunk getting an influx of money
http://www.tradejourno.com/high-inflow-of-money-witnessed-in-splunk-inc/36168/They also were awarded business by Lockheed to monitor F-35’s:
Splunk has provided Lockheed Martin with Splunk Enterprise to monitor and analyze IT systems and network behavior for the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), which supports the F-35 Lightning II, a 5th generation fighter jet.
http://www.defenseworld.net/news/12655/Lockheed_Chooses_Splunk_Software_To_Monitor_F_35___s_ALIS
- Tableau in healthcare analytics partnership with Cerner
The solution pairs Tableau’s data visualization tools (widely praised for having an intuitive UI that non-IT personnel can work with) with Cerner’s healthcare analytics and data warehousing software. Tableau: “Combining Cerner’s leading health care [IT] expertise with Tableau’s advanced data discovery capabilities will support organizations in making data-driven decisions through face-up, meaningful information.”
http://seekingalpha.com/news/2416646-tableau-cerner-strike-healthcare-analytics-partnership
- Intel can’t sell their chips to China:
In a notice published online the US Department of Commerce said it refused Intel’s application to export the chips for Tianhe-2 and three other Chinese supercomputers because the machines were being used for “nuclear explosive activities”. The relevant section of US export regulations reveals that this covers technologies used in the “design, development or fabrication” of nuclear weapons.