It was relatively quiet this week in supplier news. No acquisitions, no mergers. The major news coming out of the suppliers was stock performance.
Oracle had a weak Q4 due to a strong US dollar. Red Hat moved up based on good performance news while Teradata is downgraded.
IBM continues clear messaging around data management, cloud, and mobile. They expand their support of open source platforms while growing their cloud offerings internationally.
IBM
- TCS and IBM lead race for Volvo’s $500 million IT contract
“The deal should be finalised within a month—at the moment Volvo is facing a lot of heat to cut costs and any business which is non-core and not making money for the company is under the pump right now,” one of the persons quoted earlier said. “Volvo IT is more of a cost centre for the company, and for them it makes sense to hand it out to professional outsourcing firms.”
- IBM inks Bluemix cloud deal with Capgemini’s Sogeti
By connecting sensors that use different protocols and data formats on Bluemix, Sogeti can provide clients with insights on the performance of their heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, lighting and other energy-producing processes. Sogeti will use the same combination of its smartEngine and IBM’s Internet of Things service on Bluemix to provide insights on data for clients in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, utilities management and more.
http://www.firstpost.com/business/ibm-inks-bluemix-cloud-deal-capgeminis-sogeti-2303166.html
- It sounds like IBM layoffs are still going on (Australia)
While it doesn’t sound like IBM is targeting a massive number of employees right now, its layoffs tend to occur in dribbles and drabs, laid-off employees report. IBM won’t disclose the number of people it cuts and doesn’t have to report that figure under the WARN act unless it conducts a layoff that cuts 500 people or more at once.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ibm-watchdog-more-layoffs-this-month-2015-6
- IBM commits to open source Spark
As data and analytics are embedded into the fabric of business and society –from popular apps to the Internet of Things (IoT) –Spark brings essential advances to large-scale data processing. First, it dramatically improves the performance of data dependent apps. Second, it radically simplifies the process of developing intelligent apps, which are fuelled by data.
http://it-online.co.za/2015/06/18/ibm-commits-to-open-source-spark/
Andrew Brust says Spark won’t replace Hadoop:Spark is best known as a sort of in-memory analytics replacement for iterative computation frameworks like MapReduce; both employ massively parallel compute and then shuffle interim results, with the difference being that Spark caches in memory while MapReduce writes to disk. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Spark offers a simpler programming model, better fault tolerance, and it’s far more extensible than MapReduce. Spark is any form of iterative computation, and it was designed to support specific extensions; among the most popular are machine learning, microbatch stream processing, graph computing, and even SQL.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hadoop-and-spark-a-tale-of-two-cities/
- IBM Debuts New Cloud Data Center in Italy
The new data center helps businesses in Italy fast track their cloud migration plan without having to host their data outside of their own country. Businesses in Italy will now be able to use IBM’s award winning cloud infrastructure while simultaneously being compliant with local data sovereignty regulations.
http://www.cloudwedge.com/ibms-debuts-new-cloud-data-center-in-italy-1985/
Oracle
- Oracle To Report Near-Flat YoY Earnings?
In a report published Monday, Wunderlich analyst Robert Breza previewed Oracle’s results, reiterating a Hold rating and price target of $47.00 on the stock. The firm expects the tech company to deliver earnings and revenue at the high-end of the guidance, above consensus estimates
- Oracle’s disappointing Q4 blamed on US dollar
Oracle executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said: “We expect to book between $1.5 and $2 billion of new SaaS and PaaS business this fiscal year. “That means Oracle would sell more new SaaS and PaaS business than salesforce.com plans to sell in their current fiscal year – the only remaining question is how much more.
Hewlett Packard
- HP split imminent, but will it be a clean break?
Unsurprisingly, the recent HP Discover 2015 conference in Las Vegas was mainly concerned with the split but gave little away in terms of why this was happening and what the expected benefits will be, other than high-level objectives such as agility and improved industry responsiveness.
http://www.reseller.co.nz/article/577629/hp-split-imminent-will-it-clean-break/
- HP’s Acquisition Boss Exits Ahead of Split For Dell Enterprise Post
The six-year HP veteran, who is said to have shepherded the vendor’s $2.7 billion deal last month to acquire networking provider Aruba Networks (ARUN) and its buyouts of Voltage Security and software-defined networking vendor ConteXtream, will join Dell’s Enterprise Solutions group headed by Dell chief commercial officer Marius Haas, CRN reported.
- Is HP Stock Nine Times Better Than IBM Stock?
http://online.barrons.com/articles/is-hp-stock-nine-times-better-than-ibm-stock-1434641491
Other
- Red Hat Profit Rises 28%
“Our solid start to fiscal year 2016 was evidenced by strong constant currency revenue growth of over 20%,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat. “This strong growth reflects in part the demand for our open, hybrid cloud technologies across four footprints: bare metal, virtualization, private cloud and public cloud deployments.”
- Teradata Downgraded by JMP Securities (TDC)
Teradata (NYSE:TDC) last released its earnings data on Thursday, May 7th. The company reported $0.30 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.42 by $0.12. The company had revenue of $605.80 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $605.80 million. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.54 earnings per share. Teradata’s revenue was down 7.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts predict that Teradata will post $2.44 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
http://www.wkrb13.com/markets/638731/teradata-downgraded-by-jmp-securities-tdc/