Playing well together seems to be the common theme of the week. Several companies are investing in a company called Docker that is developing a SaaS “container” system. The container is an open platform for building, shipping and running distributed applications. It gives programmers, development teams and operations engineers the common toolbox they need to take advantage of the distributed and networked nature of modern applications. IBM, RedHat, and EMC are all working with the company.
In addition to the Docker investment, IBM made friends with storage company Box to offer IBM’s bluemix on Box storage platforms. Speaking of platforms, Oracle released good growth news in their cloud space while it ramps up for another fight with Google.
IBM
- IBM suffers in integrated platforms market
IBM retained its spot in second place in the market, but a 44.2 per cent sales slump to $42.35m saw its share shrink from 9.8 per cent last year to 5.6 per cent. HP fared much better in the quarter, with its sales jumping by more than half (53.7 per cent) annually to $23.79m, taking its share from two per cent to 3.1 per cent.
http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2415121/ibm-suffers-in-infrastructure-market
- IBM, Box Team Up to Conquer the Cloud
The two will offer customers IBM analytics and social solutions, IBM security technologies, the IBM cloud, and Box’s cloud content collaboration platform. They will develop joint content management solutions and incorporate Box technology into select IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps, which is the result of IBM’s teaming up with Apple.
- Another interesting Watson application: Internet of Things Turning New York’s Lake George Into “World’s Smartest Lake”
The potential impact of these new developments extends well beyond the shores of Lake George. By capturing and pooling data from all sorts of sensors and swiftly analyzing it, scientists, policy makers, and environmental groups around the globe could soon accurately predict how weather, contaminants, invasive species, and other threats might affect a lake’s natural environment. Armed with these new insights and a growing body of best practices, corrective actions could be taken in advance to protect fresh water sources anywhere in the world.
http://news.rpi.edu/content/2015/06/26/internet-things-technology-worlds-smartest-lake
Protecting fresh water is important because: - As I was thinking of the theme of this week’s post, I saw this – IBM’s cooperate not dominate strategy:
This comes despite IBM’s efforts to develop its own backup and storage platforms. The Spectrum Project is aimed at optimizing backup for physical, storage and cloud environments as a way to support unified, hybrid infrastructure in the enterprise. And by, again, tapping third-party cloud providers like CenterGrid, the system can be tailored to a broad range of industry verticals that are utilizing Big Data and mobile apps for services like parking-spot location in increasingly crowded urban areas.
- IBM Storage Named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-storage-named-a-leader-in-gartners-magic-quadrant-for-enterprise-backup-software-and-integrated-appliances-300105295.html - IBM Bluemix and word press don’t mix
IBM is encouraging developers to host a WordPress blog on BlueMix but it doesn’t natively support the plugins. The article calls out that IBM missed an opportunity for developers and hobbyists (like me) learn their platform.
http://diginomica.com/2015/06/23/wordpress-on-ibm-bluemix-doesnt-quite-compute/
Oracle
- Oracle leads integrated infrastructure and platforms market revenue in 1Q15
http://www.firstpost.com/business/oracle-leads-integrated-infrastructure-platforms-market-revenue-1q15-2313970.html - Oracle Vs. Google Is Coming Up…Again
According to a research note from Patrick Walravens at JMP Securities, a decision in favor of Oracle would mean that Oracle can “demand a royalty from Google for each mobile device sold using the Android platform.” Additionally, it could “potentially” complicate the “API economy with a new set of legal concerns.”
http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/179747/oracle-ups-cloud-investment-plans-data-center-in-sao-paulo
- Oracle Has ‘Plethora’ Of New Iaas, Paas…And Cantor Analyst Loves It
In the report Cantor Fitzgerald noted, “Oracle focused on its ability to offer services across all three layers of the cloud relative to a more IaaS-focused approach at AWS, while provisioning faster (e.g., 4x) compared to AWS, requiring less time managing (e.g., zero command-line interfaces with Oracle vs. 155 for AWS) and offering a lower cost archive cloud storage service (e.g., 10x lower cost than Amazon Glacier for a 20PB archive).” White believes that Oracle continues to be “unique in the IT world” since it is the only leading IT vendor “with a broad offering across all three layers of the cloud.”
- Oracle SaaS earnings rattle SalesForce
Last Wednesday (June 17), Oracle released its quarterly earnings report, closely watched by the market waiting to see if Oracle could live up to its own hype. Indeed, Oracle did. “We dramatically overachieved in the cloud,” said the firm’s CEO Safra Catz during the earnings call. According to the figures, during the last quarter of the fiscal year ended May 31, Oracle’s SaaS and Platform-as-a-Service units saw a 29 percent increase in revenue compared with the same period one year prior. According to reports, SaaS revenue hit $416 million – more than $125 million more than Oracle had forecasted for itself at the beginning of the quarter.
http://www.pymnts.com/in-depth/2015/oracle-saas-earnings-rattle-salesforce/
EMC
- EMC Embraces Docker (as well) for Private Cloud Storage
Like many IT vendors, EMC is taking advantage of Docker containers to essentially make support for any given server platform a non-issue. As a container, Docker provides a lighter-weight approach to virtualization that enables applications running on top of Docker to be deployed on top of any virtual or physical server.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/it-unmasked/emc-embraces-docker-for-private-cloud-storage.html
- EMC has been very busy on twitter, they just released this white paper on selecting all-flash arrays:
http://info.xtremio.com/rs/xtremio/images/20_Questions_About_%20All-Flash_Arrays.pdf
Other
- Why are tech giants like Google, Intel and IBM backing a startup from San Francisco?
Docker, a startup from San Francisco, is the one to popularize container tech in the last year has cited companies like Yelp, eBay and BBC News as users of its service. But there isn’t a universal standard which will allow containers to be used across different environments, for example, data centers of separate cloud computing providers. But with this new standard, containers will be available for all.
- Samsung, Red Hat team to build enterprise apps
While Samsung will “optimize” the applications to work with its own Android devices, businesses will be able to use Red Hat’s BaaS platform to enable the apps to run native and hybrid/HTML5 across other Android devices, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry, a Red Hat spokesman said.
http://www.fiercemobileit.com/story/samsung-red-hat-team-build-enterprise-apps/2015-06-23
- Can Red Hat keep climbing?
- Red Hat expands OpenStack support
Via a new alliances with Vantrix, a provider of storage systems optimized for video content, and an expansion of its relationship with Super Micro Computer, Red Hat is now making greater use of OEM partnerships to bring open source storage technologies such as Ceph and Gluster to market.
- Will Red Hat Acquire Docker?
Every CEO, needs to make a buy-versus-build decision when it comes to gaining new technology assets. Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, has never been afraid of making a strategic acquisition to bolster his company, and he hasn’t hesitated to build either. So when it comes to Docker container technology, the big question many have been asking is—will Red Hat acquire Docker Inc.?
http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/will-red-hat-acquire-docker.html
- How much the Teradata executive team is making:
http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/blog/morning_call/2015/06/heres-how-much-the-6-highest-paid-executives-at.html