It is a dynamic time in the world of IT. Nothing is assured, nothing stays the same.
Dell Technologies announced a sell off of their enterprise content management unit to help pay off the massive debt incurred purchasing EMC. What does this mean for Documentum and the other products? Some experts think OpenText will invest in the product, more seem to think it is DOA.
As artificial intelligence becomes more wide-spread, IBM and Google, who at the moment are not really in competition with each other, will most likely find themselves as rivals. Not only in AI, but also in cloud hosting and blockchain solutions.
HP Inc had themselves a good week. They purchased Samsung’s print division for $1.05B and also switched to a Microsoft CRM solution which the press can’t seem to stop talking about. How will Microsoft reward HPI for such an act?
Acquisitions
- OpenText to buy Dell EMC’s enterprise content unit for $1.62B
Canadian business software maker OpenText Corp said it agreed to buy Dell-EMC’s enterprise content division for $1.62 billion to beef up its offerings for large businesses.
Barclays, which acted as a financial adviser, has provided a $1 billion debt commitment for the deal, OpenText said on Monday.
The deal is expected to immediately add to earnings, the company said.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3785394/OpenText-buy-Dell-EMCs-enterprise-content-unit-1-62-bln.html
Documentum’s Fate at OpenText: New Life or Certain Death?That doesn’t seem to be the case. According to an informal CMSWire’s poll, more than 60 percent of responders believe OpenText is interested in product revenues only and won’t be investing in further development.
- Salesforce to Acquire Cambridge Messaging Startup HeyWire
This time it’s HeyWire, a Cambridge-based messaging startup that lets businesses receive text messages through 1-800 numbers and other business lines from customers.
HeyWire CEO and co-founder Meredith Flynn-Ripley wrote in a Wednesday blog post that Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the company. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2016/09/07/salesforce-to-acquire-cambridge-messaging-startup-heywire/
- Salesforce (CRM) on an Acquisition Spree, Buys Gravitytank
Salesforce’s latest acquisition is Gravitytank, a Chicago-based consulting agency. The deal was announced through Gravitytank’s website.
A Salesforce representative confirmed the transaction but declined to disclose the price.
http://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-buys-gravitytank-2016-9
- Verizon buys Sensity and launches farm pilot with sensor tech
Sensity, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has focused on using energy-efficient LED lighting to help cities build an IoT platform on city streetlights. The platform can include the use of various sensors on a streetlight pole to monitor weather and city services ranging from parking to public safety.
- Is Google Eyeing An Acquisition Of Box After Forming A New Partnership?
Recode also highlighted a part of the what was included in Google and Box’s press release. The two companies will “work together to develop and deliver next-generation intelligence to Box users searching for content on Google Springboard.”
Google Springboard is Google’s new search engine built specifically for enterprise customers.
As such, investors should be questioning if the partnership is a precursor to a Google acquisition of Box. According to Recode, the answer isn’t just a “maybe” but “probably not.”
Artificial Intelligence
- The Growing Rivalry Between Google And IBM
Today, IBM and Google are very different businesses. While Google offers products directly to consumers, IBM mostly designs powerful systems for enterprises. Google makes the bulk of its money through advertising, while IBM has a large and highly qualified sales force that can service demanding customers.
To be sure, in many ways, IBM and Google are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to focus, business model and operational structure. Still in conversations with both companies, I can’t help but feel them eyeing each other somewhat warily. After all, while their businesses may be far apart, they are both competing for the same technological high ground.
- War for Artificial Intelligence: IBM’s Blockchain Push May Anticipate Google’s Ambush
The vocal advocacy of IBM in the Blockchain space stands in stark contrast to Google’s almost complete silence on the subject. Prussian military theorist Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz in his treatise ‘On War’ wrote that “surprise plays a much greater role in strategy than in tactics,” and of course the famous 孙子 (Sun Tzu) is remembered by the words “when the enemy is close at hand and remains quiet, he is relying on the natural strength of his position.” To assume that Google is doing nothing in the Semantic Blockchain space is naïve. Let us look forward with anticipation, and, for some, perhaps dread, to what eventually Google plans to roll out.
- AI can make your money work for you
Advances in AI will create a robo-accountant that knows your spending better than you do. By analyzing your purchase history, it will constantly move money between your checking, savings, investments and credit cards. This way, your checking account’s balance is always in the narrow “sweet spot:” high enough to avoid fees, but not so high that you miss out on investment yield.
Right now, finding that sweet spot is time-consuming and anxiety-inducing. In time, the robo-accountant will know when you’re likely to splurge. It will know when your car will need a repair, when your electric bill will spike. It will know when you’re actually better off carrying a balance on your credit card than paying your bank’s minimum-balance fee.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/08/ai-can-make-your-money-work-for-you/?ncid=rss
Cloud
- Blockchain: Transformational Technology for Health Care
Take a standard health plan/provider agreement, or in risk-based relationships, provider/provider agreements, where each provides the other with a paper contract. Each entity loads the agreement into their separate systems, and it defines their relationship. The payor also has a contract with each person who has purchased a health plan. Using Blockchain, the health plan and provider could translate the wide variety of agreements needed to contracts on the Blockchain so everyone has visibility, and clarity exists for both the provider and the member. So when a transaction is processed, the Blockchain checks the authorization, and everyone can view the status, history and next steps. This transaction payment information could also be connected with the clinical service details to provide a holistic view of the patient’s interaction. Storing the information to create this holistic view in Blockchain would create a foundation that enables interoperability and innovation across the industry.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blockchain-transformational-technology-health-care-bruce-broussard
- How Microsoft Is Winning the War in the Cloud
In fact, it’s Microsoft’s forays into the cloud that will continue to generate its profit growth as things like traditional software and computer hardware sales fall by the wayside. The company has made big investments — as much as $10 billion on a data center for the development of its Azure cloud system. And these investments are going to pay off as the cloud continues to redefine how the world does business and stores its data.
https://www.thestreet.com/story/13726671/1/how-microsoft-is-winning-the-war-in-the-cloud.html
- Comparing Cloud Vendors: A Primer For IT
But the Forrester authors, without commenting on the nature of the Google cloud (which launches two billion containers a week), said most enterprise developers “are not yet ready to ‘run like Google.’ They need more packaged data and database migration services, and more confidence that their core business apps are ready to run on the Google Cloud Platform.”
- Does Oracle’s Cloud Growth Come at a Cost?
On the flip side of the strong growth in cloud, the company has been seeing a slowdown in its software licensing business. So the question in investors’ minds that management will have to answer is whether the company is sacrificing the higher-margin licensing business with the focus on growing its cloud business. If so, will cloud margins down the road be sufficient to offset the declines in licensing? If not, why is licensing slowing as cloud picks up? Tough spot for Oracle management, any way one looks at it.
http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/09/15/2016/does-oracles-cloud-growth-come-cost
Datacenter
- Oracle Killer, New Threat Face Database King
Oracle was initially slow to jump into the cloud industry because it contradicted what it was doing, which was offering businesses the hardware and software solutions to manage their own IT infrastructures. Cloud is essentially antithetical to that business model – even antagonistic, one might say. But after it realized its mistake it quickly ramped up its cloud business and is now strongly in the SaaS and PaaS segment, although not as much in the infrastructure game where Amazon is the undisputed leader.
But Amazon was having none of that. Consequently, it launched Amazon Aurora in late 2014, also known as the Oracle Killer. Aurora is a relational database engine that directly competes with Oracle’s database products. If Oracle is the king of databases, then Aurora is the mysterious assassin whose only job is to take the king’s life.
To make Aurora’s job easier, Amazon structured the service so no upfront license fee needs to be paid. In effect, it made it a pay as-you-go service.
http://www.gurufocus.com/news/441918/oracle-killer-new-threat-face-database-king
- Chinese Giant Huawei to Attack Server Market
To be fair, Huawei is not “new” to servers: it’s been building them for years and is ranked as the fourth largest server provider as measured by units sold by Gartner IT . What’s different now is that, on August 31, the company said it will build servers targeting the public and private clouds, as well as telecom-focused data centers.
http://fortune.com/2016/09/12/huawei-to-attack-server-market/
- Dell Technologies ‘to cut up to 3,000 jobs after $67 billion EMC deal’
PC and cloud vendor Dell will reportedly slash between 2,000 to 3,000 jobs after acquiring data storage company EMC.
Most of the job cuts will be in the United States and will happen later this year, according to Bloomberg, which cites people familiar with the company’s plans.
Dell did tell sister site Channel Pro this week that it would merge its sales channel with that of EMC’s. Tim Griffin, VP & GM UK at Dell EMC, said: “Today we have two channel programmes. The intent is to have a single channel for February 2017.”
Dell is hoping the cuts will help create cost savings of about $1.7 billion in the first 18 months after the transaction, but is largely focused on using the deal to boost sales by several times that amount.
The new company has 140,000 employees.
- Cisco exec churn: Enterprise chief Soderbery out
Soderbery said he has no current plans and Cisco said of his departure: “We thank Rob for his important role helping Cisco identify Enterprise needs and address them with world-class networking products and solutions, and we wish him all the best for the future.”
- Why Meg Whitman is breaking the one-time symbol of Silicon Valley into pieces
These spinoffs have provided needed capital as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise realigns itself with a narrower focus. Last year it bolstered its hardware business by acquiring for $3 billion Aruba Networks, the second-largest provider of company Wi-Fi networks behind Cisco. And last month HPE announced a $275 million purchase of Silicon Graphics, which sells fast servers and storage systems.
Software/SaaS
- Microsoft Beats Out Rivals for HP Software Deal
As part of a six-year contract—the dollar value of which they would not disclose—HP HPQ 0.17% plans to roll out the product to about 6,500 HP salespeople and 20,000 support personnel. Total HP headcount is about 50,000 (plus another 6,000 coming aboard as part of its just-signed deal to buy Samsung’s printer unit).
http://fortune.com/2016/09/12/microsoft-beats-rivals-for-hp-software-deal/
What is HP Inc going to get from Microsoft for this deal?
Other
- Despite all the trash-talking, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he still loves Larry Ellison
“Business is a lot like tennis. You get on the court with your friends, you play as hard as you can, you get really upset, you say crazy things, you go off the court, you go and have lunch and have a glass of wine and remember how much you love them.
I love Larry Ellison, he’s a great mentor to me, he’s been a great friend, and probably there is no one in the industry who has done more for me than Larry Ellison, and I’m very grateful to him.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/marc-benioff-loves-larry-ellison-2016-9
- It is official: HP buying Samsung Electronics’ printer business for $1.05B
HP Inc. said Monday that it is the largest print acquisition in the company’s history and will help it go from traditional copiers to multifunction printers. HP also said the deal will strengthen its position in laser printing, which it established with Canon.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/HP-buying-Samsung-Electronics-printer-business-9216916.php
Samsung had a printer unit? And does HPI really need to buy their 4% market share?
Oh wait… CRN has an answer for me:An HP acquisition of the Samsung printer business would take out a competitor and give HP strength in different geographies, said Martin Wolf, president of martinwolf M&A Advisors of Walnut Creek, Calif., one of the top channel investment advisory deal makers.
http://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/300082020/report-samsung-is-considering-selling-printer-business-to-hp-in-1-8b-deal.htm
And then there is this news…
HP Inc. Goes Old School With Plans to Sell Copy MachinesStill, Enrique Lores, HP’s president of imaging and printing, voiced optimism for the initiative. Copy machines still account for $55 billion in annual sales, which could be lucrative if the company gained a sizable share.
- Wells Fargo fires 5,300 employees for opening 2M fake accounts in customers’ names
Wells Fargo says that it has been rooting out employees who ran this con for the past two years, having caught 5,300 of them so far (the bank employs 265,000 people). The fake accounts — savings, checking, credit/debit cards — were opened in the names of existing Wells Fargo customers, who had their accounts raided to create balances in the new accounts, and were then hit with fees that cleaned them out.
http://boingboing.net/2016/09/09/wells-fargo-fires-5300-employ.html
Photo: Ryan Johnston