For the 3rd straight week, OpenStack is a major news item. Both IBM and Cisco announced acquisitions of OpenStack firms. Acquisitions were the major news driver in general as CA also acquired Grid Tools while HP is making news for what they didn’t (and might) buy.
IBM
- IBM Acquires Managed Private OpenStack Cloud Startup Blue Box
The Seattle-based cloud provider simplifies private cloud for enterprises by offering it as a managed service. Its turnkey private clouds are hosted in customers’ data centers but managed by Blue Box, similar to Cisco’s Metacloud. Blue Box gives IBM capabilities to deliver public cloud-like experience within a data center of the client’s choice.
- When Watson meets procurement
Another example that Michael provided might best be described as the category/supplier “briefing book” on steroids. The idea behind “the complete procurement overview” is to aggregate information on a real-time basis when anyone within procurement (or outside of it) needs a briefing document or related auto-generated deliverable.
- IBM Extends Watson Platform Capabilities
IBM revealed the existence of a Tradeoff Analytics API that developers can invoke via the IBM Watson Cloud running on the IBM Bluemix cloud service. This particular API, said Vince Padua, director of the IBM Watson platform, makes it easier for developers to create applications that filter large amounts of content. Similar in concept to the filtering tools commonly used in e-commerce applications on the Web, Padua said the goal is to enable end users to weight different types of content in way that enable Watson to deliver better answers based on the personal preferences of the end user based on multiple criteria.
http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/06042015/ibm-extends-watson-platform-capabilities
- IBM has been awarded an average of 21 patents per day so far in 2015
Although the media (Quartz included) tend to focus on what wacky inventions companies like Google and Apple are patenting, IBM is still far and away the leader in patents in the US. The US Patent and Trademark Office releases its new patent awards on Tuesdays. After yesterday’s awards, IBM has been awarded an average of 152 patents a week—or 21 patents a day—in 2015, whereas Apple has only received about 42 a week, and Google about 64.
http://qz.com/418068/ibm-has-been-awarded-an-average-of-21-patents-per-day-so-far-in-2015/
- IBM is shutting Many Eyes data visualization service
Launched 8 years ago by IBM Research, the project gave people a way to crowd-source their data analysis cheaply and easily. Users could upload data sets to Many Eyes, which would then present visualizations for other people in different specialties to assess.
- IBM Targets Specific Industries with Prebuilt Analytics
The specially tailored solutions provide modeling patterns for predictive analytics — basing business decisions on Big Data gathered from different sources — and customized interfaces and dashboards so users can focus on industry-specific use cases. Data preparation capabilities are also specialized to handle unique industry-related data, collecting the information and massaging it for analytic investigations.
https://adtmag.com/articles/2015/06/01/ibm-industy-data.aspx
HP
- Is HP Backing out of Computer Sciences Acquisition Deal?
Citing people familiar with the matter, H-P was in talks with Computer Sciences for the past months and was close to signing the deal. However, the exact reason behind the change of decision is still unclear.
- HP’s Meg Whitman: More job cuts ahead
Asked how many cuts are ahead — Whitman declined to specify, but noted it will depend on how the economy fares between now and November 1. That’s when the 76-year-old company is splitting itself into two publicly-traded entities.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/04/news/economy/hp-job-cuts-meg-whitman/ - HP Discover: The 9 biggest announcements
HP revealed CloudSystem 9.0, the latest version of its cloud-in-a-box product and service which gains the addition of OpenStack and the Helion Development Platform to deliver a comprehensive private cloud for customers that can bridge the legacy and cloud native worlds.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2411308/hp-discover-the-5-biggest-announcements-so-far
- Hewlett-Packard Company EVP Tracy S. Keogh Sells 213,522 Shares
Transaction worth $7.2M
http://www.wkrb13.com/markets/625771/hewlett-packard-company-evp-tracy-s-keogh-sells-213522-shares-hpq/
EMC
- Enterprise storage share of EMC, NetApp, Dell and IBM drop, HP gains
http://www.infotechlead.com/it-statistics/enterprise-storage-share-of-emc-netapp-dell-and-ibm-drop-hp-gains-30789 - Hewlett-Packard: They’ll End up Buying EMC
HP to buy EMC? We think so. We have also held the belief that HP will ultimately buy EMC (including VMware) to strengthen its position in several key areas, including cloud (VMware and Virtustream), converged infrastructure (EMC), analytics (Pivotal), and mobility (VMware AirWatch). While management’s messaging around the size of M&A in HP Enterprise continues to refer to Aruba as a benchmark (~$3 billion), CEO Meg Whitman explained that from an academic perspective, technology hardware is an industry that should consolidate due to declining revenues and slowing growth rates. This sounds like EMC CEO Joe Tucci’s answer. Have they been talking? We think so. Pro forma financial leverage is manageable at a $32-33 takeout price (less than 3x net debt/EBITDA). There are so many reasons this makes sense. HP management has not commented specifically on acquiring EMC.
- EMC’s Management Presents at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Tech Conference
(Full Transcript)
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3231396-emcs-emc-management-presents-at-bank-of-america-merrill-lynch-global-tech-conference-transcript - Is EMC cloud strategy a victory for customer choice or just confusing?
Howard Elias: The long and short of it, is that customers really do need different cloud varieties depending on the task at hand, he said. “They may want on- or off-premises; managed or unattended; production or test-and-development; mission-critical or otherwise clouds,” Elias acknowledged that vCloud Air could run the same workloads, but “you won’t get the self-provisioning, and there’s an SLA for the underlying infrastructure capability, but not in terms of resiliency, performance etc.” That is, vCloud Air is positioned to work very well with an existing VMware workload running in-house but “you won’t get the curation and attendedness” that Virtustream provides, he added.
Other
- Cisco and IBM acquisitions highlight efforts to make OpenStack easier to use
Cisco’s target, Piston, has developed CloudOS, which manages clusters of commodity servers as a single pool of resources. The software offers features for quickly deploying OpenStack, and by using automation functionality it promises to free up IT staff from time-consuming management tasks. On average, when using more than 50 nodes, running a private cloud environment using CloudOS with OpenStack costs less than one third the amount required to do the same thing on Amazon Web Services, according to an FAQ on Piston’s website.
- Red Hat’s CEO is dead wrong about the cloud
Maybe AWS chief Andy Jassy started it all, deriding the private cloud as “archaic” and not really cloud at all. Then Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst told me that public clouds like AWS become “obscenely expensive at scale” — which, of course, sent public cloud advocates into a frothing rage.
- CA Buys Grid Tools
Information technology management software maker CA, Inc.said Thursday it has bought privately-held Grid Tools Ltd., a provider of enterprise test data management, automated test design and optimization software solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/ca-buys-grid-tools-20150604-00733