Tag: Apple

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Supplier Report: 8/13/2016

sn_australia_KalebNimz

IBM has managed to agitate an entire continent this week by being at the center of IT problems occurring with Australia’s online census.  The Prime Minister has gone on record saying “heads will roll”…

Acquisitions are still going strong: HPE bought SGI, Randstad bought Monster.com, Apple purchased Turi, and IBM might buy Imperva.

Oracle and Microsoft are both dealing with potential information breaches while EMC is facing an existential crisis… can they compete with AWS?

IBM

  • IBM’s Watson won Jeopardy, but can it win business from banks?

    IBM’s pitch to banks is that Watson can do everything from answering customers’ questions in retail branches to detecting credit card fraud to helping wealth managers make better investment recommendations for their clients.

    Bank technology executives said the minimum cost of using software like Watson, including due diligence and training, could reach a few million dollars. It is not uncommon for a full-scale implementation to cost in the tens of millions of dollars, said the executives, who were not authorized to talk to the media.

    An IBM spokeswoman noted companies can develop their own applications using Watson’s underlying code if they do not want to pay for a full-scale implementation. The company declined to give details of the software’s costs.

    http://www.streetinsider.com/Reuters/IBMs+Watson+won+Jeopardy,+but+can+it+win+business+from+banks%3F/11927178.html

  • Will IBM buy Imperva?

    IBM is the top potential suitor for Imperva (NYSE:IMPV), but big blue may have to outbid both Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Juniper (NYSE:JNPR). Imperva is working with Qatalyst on a sale after succumbing to pressure from Paul Singer’s Elliott Management.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3997245-ibm-bidding-war-brewing
    What is Imperva?

    Imperva is a leading provider of data and application security solutions that protect business-critical information in the cloud and on-premises. Founded in 2002, we have enjoyed a steady history of growth and success, generating $234 million in 2015, with over 4,500 customers and 300 partners in more than 90 countries worldwide.

  • IBM under fire as census blame game starts

    Information has begun to emerge about the confluence of events that led the ABS and IBM to take the site down on census night, which show IBM and ABS staff misinterpreted data and were spooked by fears of a damaging data breach following a fairly standard security threat known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

    The website problems were initially blamed on the DDoS attack, which would have made the site inaccessible to users by bombarding it with thousands of logins at once.

    However, it was later confirmed that the ABS and IBM decided to take the site down due to security concerns

    http://www.afr.com/technology/ibm-under-fire-as-census-blame-game-starts-20160811-gqqkdu
    australia

  • What IBM Doesn’t Want You To Know

    My takeaway from this interview is merely more solidarity in my original thought on IBM: Great company, awful management. Are these concepts mutually exclusive? No, but they are correlated.

    For investors who have unanswered questions on IBM’s cloud competitiveness, perhaps this interview was unsatisfying. I also was expecting more information, as I would like to add to my analysis on my comparison of worthy cloud investments. But for now, we must wait until IBM’s next earnings report.

    For now, investors must decide whether to support the shell or the ghost inside. I think that a good enough machine can run decently even with a poor operator. Even if you were to attempt to bring IBM down from the inside, you would have quite a task on your hands.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3997717-ibm-want-know

  • IBM finally renews with Vodaphone

    Vodafone has renewed its system intergration deal with IBM. The system integration deal is valued at around USD 900 million. The system integration is likely to be outsourced further with small vendors also taking a small part in the deal.

    http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/vodafone-renews-system-integration-dealibm-sources_7238501.html

Microsoft

Storage

  • This former EMC exec says Amazon ate his old business and it will never recover

    That traditional storage market, where companies buy specialized hardware called storage arrays to hold and manage corporate data, is never coming back, says Mark Lewis, a longtime storage exec, who was once EMC’s CTO and chief strategy officer.

    There are two reasons for the death spiral, he says:
    1. Storage technology continually gets faster and cheaper.
    2. Amazon changed the game.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ate-emc-says-former-emc-exec-2016-8

  • Dell squashes rumors that EMC’s Ambulos is leaving

    It said in a statement to CRN: “It is categorically false that Gregg Ambulos will leave Dell after the completion of the merger. Gregg will be key player in the future organisation, a proven industry leader with deep and trusted relationships with channel partners, and will be an important executive as we build the channel business for Dell EMC.”

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2467703/dell-squashes-rumours-that-emcs-ambulos-is-leaving

Oracle

  • Russian hackers appear to have infiltrated up to 330,000 computer cash registers sold by Oracle

    “Oracle Security has detected and addressed malicious code in certain legacy MICROS systems. Oracle’s Corporate network and Oracle’s other cloud and service offerings were not impacted by this code. Payment card data is encrypted both at rest and in transit in the MICROS hosted environment.

    “To prevent a recurrence, Oracle implemented additional security measures for the legacy MICROS systems. Consistent with standard security remediation protocols, Oracle is requiring MICROS customers to change the passwords for all MICROS accounts.

    “Information for customers on how to change your passwords has been published on My Oracle Support (Doc ID 2165744.1). We also recommend that you change the password for any account that was used by a MICROS representative to access your on-premises systems.”

    http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-hackers-attack-oracles-cash-registers-2016-8
    Oracle CSO Mary Ann Davidson on Security: Oracle, still clueless about security

    In 2012, for example, Davidson lambasted the Payment Card Industry Security (PCI) Standards Council for requiring “vendors to disclose (dare we say ‘tell all?’) to PCI any known security vulnerabilities and associated security breaches.” Or, as she put it more succinctly, “tell your customers that you have to rat them out to PCI.”

    She added, just to make it perfectly clear where she’s coming from, that information on security vulnerabilities at Oracle is on a “need to know” basis.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/2975780/security/oracle-still-clueless-about-security.html

  • Oracle’s Data Breach May Explain Spate of Retail Hacks

    The MICROS system compromise could explain why so many shops, hotels, and retail outlets have been suffered breaches at their point of sale systems in the past months, said Avivah Litan, an analyst in Gartner IT -0.03% . Asked whether she believed that this breach has something to do with a recent spate of stolen payment card data in retail andhotel hacks, Litan told Fortune, “I think it’s very likely.”

    http://fortune.com/2016/08/08/oracle-data-breach-retail-hacks/

  • Oracle says it didn’t ask employee to cook cloud accounts

    The software and cloud computing giant appears to be fleshing out its original stand that the employee had been terminated for poor performance and not as a whistleblower, which would give her a number of protections under securities laws.

    In a filing in June in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Svetlana Blackburn, a senior finance manager for North America SaaS/Cloud Revenue, alleged that her superiors had instructed her to “to add millions of dollars in accruals to financial reports, with no concrete or foreseeable billing to support the numbers,” an act that she had warned was improper and suspect accounting.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3105985/oracle-says-it-didn-t-ask-employee-to-cook-cloud-accounts.html

Other

  • Apple acquires Turi, a machine learning company

    Apple declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal, but Geekwiresuggests that it was upwards of $200 million.

    This isn’t the first acquisition Apple has made in the AI/machine-learning space. It acquired Perceptio, a company that specialized in machine learning and image recognition, back in September 2015.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/05/apple-acquires-turi-a-machine-learning-company/?ncid=rss

  • Salesforce CEO Sees News Of Oracle’s NetSuite Deal As Mere Drop In Pond

    “We would not expect the combination of these companies to create any meaningful technology/product synergies,” he said.

    http://www.breathecast.com/articles/salesforce-ceo-sees-news-of-oracle-s-netsuite-deal-as-mere-drop-in-pond-35168/
    sn_throwing_shade

  • Will Meg Whitman pick head or heart?

    Whitman is continuing to shrink the house that Hewlett and Packard built and that her predecessors Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd greatly expanded. That would make it easier to swallow up. In May, the company announced plans to merge its services arm into rival CSC in a deal worth $8.5 billion. (Hewlett-Packard had bought EDS, the heart of the division that’s now being sold off, for $13.9 billion in 2008.)

    Richard Kugele, an analyst with Needham & Co., estimates that a buyer would need to pay nearly $50 billion for the company, a 40 percent premium over its current market value.

    http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Will-Meg-Whitman-pick-head-or-heart-9135032.php

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquires high-performance computer company SGI in $275 million deal

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is to acquire SGI, the company formerly known as Silicon Graphics, for $275 million in cash and debt, equal to around $7.75 per share. HPE says the move will help its push into the big data analytics and high-performance computing (HPC) markets.

    SGI has approximately 1100 employees worldwide and brought in $533 million in revenue in its 2016 fiscal year, according to the statement – a drop from the $767 million it made in 2013. Its HPC and big data analytics products are used in the scientific, technical, business and government communities.

    http://www.techspot.com/news/65950-hewlett-packard-enterprise-acquires-high-performance-company-sgi.html

  • Randstad To Acquire Monster For $429 Million

    My colleague John Zappe, who has covered the company for years, said in 2011 Monster was a “takeover target” and noted that there’d been 20 or so rumors of a sale. Then, he said the company’s market cap was about a billion dollars, after decreasing by billions. Randstad, which has about 30,000 employees in 39 countries, will pay $429 million for Monster now.

    http://www.eremedia.com/sourcecon/randstad-to-acquire-monster-for-429-million/

Photo: Kale Nimz

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/23/2016

sn_danger_Nicolas Cool

IBM had another down quarter but is reporting 30% growth in cloud and their “critical initiatives”, while they are growing the future of Big Blue, are they turning friends into enemies? What does IBM and Microsoft’s deal for their Surface devices means for Apple in the long run?

Salesforce purchased a datacenter analytics company while there are rumors that Oracle might buy cloud computing company Netsuite.

HPE failed to get an Oracle lawsuit dismissed and also seems to be failing to pay their sales teams.

Can Google use AI to cut datacenter energy costs by 40%? (Yes… with a big BUT)

IBM

  • IBM grows in cloud and data analytics but overall revenue slides

    The Armonk, New York, company said Monday that revenue from its new “strategic imperatives” like cloud, analytics and security increased by 12 percent year-on-year to US$8.3 billion. That increase was, however, lower than the growth the company had reported in these businesses in the first quarter.

    Cloud revenue – public, private and hybrid – grew 30 percent in the second quarter, while revenue from analytics grew 4 percent, revenue from mobile increased 43 percent and the security business grew 18 percent.

    Additionally:

    IBM’s systems revenue, for example, was down 23 percent in the quarter to $2 billion, while its Global Business Services, including consulting, global process services and application management, brought in revenue of $4.3 billion, down 3.0 percent from a year earlier. Revenue for the company’s z Systems mainframes was down 40 percent in the quarter while margins improved, “consistent with where we are in the product cycle.” Schroeter said. IBM acquired EZSource in the quarter to help developers quickly and easily update mainframe applications.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3097273/ibm-grows-in-cloud-and-data-analytics-but-overall-revenue-slides.html

  • IBM: A Hodgepodge Going Nowhere

    I’m going to pick on Truven here because I’m a bit familiar with the company from the past. Truven basically owns a bunch of data on patients and licenses it out to companies so they can try and analyze it. IBM’s plan is to essentially plug all that data into Watson and hope it can come up with some clever insights to better treat patients. But is it really worth $2.6 billion? While IBM could certainly be onto something with all its healthcare-related acquisitions, since the industry is ripe for reform, chances are probably just as high that the company is acquiring as much as it can in the hopes that something turns into a homerun.

    My friends at Seeking Alpha really don’t like IBM (even when there is positive news). 
    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3989255-ibm-hodgepodge-going-nowhere
    Also from SA: IBM May Not Be A Hopeless Disaster After All

    In the past, I’ve stated repeatedly that IBM was too far away from growing its imperatives revenue quickly enough to make up for the losses in its legacy businesses but it seems that is no longer the case. What started as a small proportion of revenue is now a significant piece of the business and at the rate it is growing, IBM could potentially see top line growth in the relatively near future if it can stop the hemorrhaging elsewhere. Can it do that? Maybe; we’ll just have to wait and see. But at least the conversation can happen now whereas that was certainly not the case in the relatively recent past.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3989381-ibm-may-hopeless-disaster

  • CSC and IBM Expand Strategic Alliance with Collaboration Utilizing IBM Cloud for z to Enable Clients’ Move to Cloud

    CSC and IBM today announced a collaboration in which IBM will provide its Cloud Managed Services for z Systems — IBM Cloud for z — and associated mainframe hardware, software, monitoring and governance support to CSC clients who are moving to the cloud and want a more secure, scalable, flexible information technology infrastructure at significantly reduced operational costs.

    The expanded alliance further advances CSC’s vision of the “Service-Enabled Enterprise” and IBM’s “as-a-service” strategy, both designed to increase client choice and innovation in adopting emerging technologies. The as-a-service strategy provides consumption-based pricing for the IBM z Systems environment to give clients’ greater capital investment flexibility.

    So… IBM cuts their consulting force, CSC merges with HPE’s, and now there is this “collaboration”.  Interesting.
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/csc-and-ibm-expand-strategic-alliance-with-collaboration-utilizing-ibm-cloud-for-z-to-enable-clients-move-to-cloud-300300377.html

  • IBM Watson Wants to Be Your New Salesperson at Macy’s

    Customers can type in questions, and Macy’s On Call will return the top answer for that question along with location-specific details. For example, a customer could type, “Where are the ladies shoes?” or ask to find a specific brand of a dress, and the assistant will inform the shopper as to where the shoes are located in the store and where the exact dress is located.

    http://fortune.com/2016/07/20/ibm-watson-macys/

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

Oracle

  • Oracle could be about to buy NetSuite

    Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) is on the brink of announcing its buyout of cloud computing rival NetSuite Inc (NYSE:N), according to unconfirmed market rumors on Thursday.

    Gossips reckoned NetSuite has delayed publication of financial results due this week until next week because the pair want to unveil the deal beforehand.

    http://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/128488/oracle-could-be-about-to-buy-netsuite-128488.html

  • Oracle Wins Round in Copyright Suit With HPE

    U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar on Friday largely denied HPE’s motion to dismiss the suit, which accuses the company of participating in a scheme to use pilfered intellectual property to win customer-service contracts away. Friday’s decision was filed under seal, but at a Thursday afternoon hearing Tigar outlined his tentative ruling. He indicated he would partially dismiss Oracle’s claim under California’s unfair competition law but allow the core copyright claims to proceed.

    Oracle sued HPE in March, accusing its rival of pairing with Terix Computer Co. Inc. to sell hardware and software support services for Oracle’s Sun-branded computers running the Solaris operating system. Oracle’s lawyers, led by Christopher Yates of Latham & Watkins, have alleged that HPE officials knew Terix illegally used Oracle customer credentials to access copyrighted Solaris updates for servers. Oracle claims that only servers covered by valid Oracle support contracts had a license to the updates.

    http://www.therecorder.com/litigation-news/id=1202762942712/Oracle-Wins-Round-in-Copyright-Suit-With-HPE

  • Exclusive: Oracle to reboot Java EE for the cloud

    Rumored to have put the project on the back burner, Oracle has weathered a storm of complaints over its stewardship of enterprise Java, with two separate organizations considering plans to move Java EE forward without Oracle. Rather than let Java EE wither, Oracle is instead looking to reboot the platform to better accommodate where enterprises are headed, particularly to the cloud, said a high-ranking Oracle official in response to recent criticism.

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/3098007/java/oracle-to-reboot-java-ee-for-the-cloud.html

Storage (EMC | Dell )

  • EMC Exec: No Competition Between Dell-Nutanix Appliance And EMC Hyper-Convergence Portfolio

    “If I buy into the [EMC] ‘blocks, racks and rails’ story, it’s not really competitive against Nutanix,” Miller said. The Nutanix-based Dell XC appliance, “is for a smaller play, or someone who hasn’t completely bought into [the hyper-convergence] methodology,” he said.

    http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300081365/emc-exec-no-competition-between-dell-nutanix-appliance-and-emc-hyper-convergence-portfolio.htm

  • EMC, Dell merger approved by shareholders in 98% vote

    From Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman and CEO: “Today’s resoundingly favorable shareholder vote clearly supports our view that combining Dell and EMC will create a powerhouse in the technology industry. The Board and I care very deeply about, and have worked diligently to represent, what we believe is the best outcome for all stakeholders. I want to thank our shareholders for their support, as well as our customers and partners.  My special thanks to the talented people of EMC for their hard work, dedication and passion.”

    http://seekingalpha.com/news/3194069-emc-dell-merger-approved-shareholders-98-percent-vote

Microsoft

  • What will it take to turn Microsoft back to growth?

    Wall Street analysts on average expect the tech giant to post fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $22.14 billion on earnings per share of 58 cents, according to a Thomson Reuters survey of 23 analyst estimates. This would mark the smallest year-over-year drop in quarterly revenue since the fourth quarter of last year.

    Overall, revenue is expected to decline 2 percent for fiscal 2016, but the company is headed in the right direction: Revenue growth is expected to return next quarter. Analysts project Microsoft to report 2 percent growth in the September quarter and 4 percent growth for fiscal 2017.

    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/18/what-it-will-take-for-microsoft-to-return-to-growth.html

Other

  • Salesforce Takes Measures Against Google Android Fragmentation-Related Issues

    Salesforce announced on its official support page that it will only support Google Nexus and Samsung Galaxy devices. The firm released a statement saying that the decision to support a limited number of devices regardless of the many Android devices on the market was so that it can improve its services on the devices supported. This will allow Android users on supported devices to have a better user experience.

    http://marketexclusive.com/salesforce-com-inc-nysecrm-takes-measures-alphabet-inc-nasdaqgoogl-google-android-fragmentation-related-issues/9249/

  • Google unleashes DeepMind on energy-hungry datacenter, cutting cooling bill by 40 percent

    We accomplished this by taking the historical data that had already been collected by thousands of sensors within the data centre — data such as temperatures, power, pump speeds, setpoints, etc. — and using it to train an ensemble of deep neural networks. Since our objective was to improve data centre energy efficiency, we trained the neural networks on the average future PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness), which is defined as the ratio of the total building energy usage to the IT energy usage. We then trained two additional ensembles of deep neural networks to predict the future temperature and pressure of the data centre over the next hour. The purpose of these predictions is to simulate the recommended actions from the PUE model, to ensure that we do not go beyond any operating constraints.

    https://deepmind.com/blog?t=1
    sn_unlimitedpower

  • Microsoft, IBM and SAP’s Impressive Cloud Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

    Moreover, a shift from on-premise to cloud revenue streams is pressuring the margins of many firms, as hosting cloud apps and services brings with it expenses that don’t exist with regular software sales. While Microsoft’s revenue rose 2% in the June quarter, the company’s cost of revenue rose 7%, with cloud and search ad expense growth more than offsetting the impact of plunging phone sales. Meanwhile, IBM’s gross margin fell 190 basis points in the second quarter to 49%.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13646457/2/microsoft-ibm-and-sap-report-impressive-cloud-numbers-but-they-don-t-tell-the-whole-story.html

  • Should Apple worry about Microsoft-IBM deal?

    Apple’s role in the enterprise has been and, for the foreseeable future, will be anchored to workers and consumers, not big businesses, says Aaron Gette, CIO of Bay Club, a lifestyle and fitness company. “Microsoft might not be first to market, but they come prepared and well versed,” he says. “Microsoft’s Azure is beginning to win in the enterprise cloud marketplace, so the role of IBM’s ability to deliver apps to the Surface users in the enterprise is a great play.”

    http://www.cio.com/article/3098267/it-industry/should-apple-worry-about-microsoft-ibm-deal.html

  • Salesforce acquires crowd-sourced data analytics solution Coolan

    Coolan is a data analytics platform that monitors the performance of data centers, that helps predict server failure, reduce downtime, and lower the cost of infrastructure. Their cloud analytics platform is aimed at predicting the flaws in a data center and helping the hardware community build a reliable and efficient infrastructure.

    http://thetechportal.com/2016/07/22/salesforce-acquires-coolan/
    Why Salesforce Is Buying This Little-Known Startup

    “If you’re a company buying, say 100 Dell servers this year, and another 100 in six months and another 100 next year, you really don’t know what the components in all those servers are,” said a source close to Coolan, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the deal. “Some may have Western Digital hard drives, others may have Seagate, some server lots will have memory from this supplier, others from someone else. Coolan goes in and tells you what all those components are, how they all perform over time and what their failure rates are.”

    http://fortune.com/2016/07/22/salesforce-coolan-data-centers/

Photo: Nicolas Cool

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/4/2016

sn_darkwalk_Tony Webster

The tables have turned for Oracle. A month ago they were suing Google for $8.8B dollars and now they are being sued by HPE for failure to comply with a contractual support commitment AND for potentially cooking their books in the cloud space.

SalesForce and IBM both announced that they are purchasing companies this week. But are these companies taking on too much debt?  SaleForce is already being called out for paying too much for DemandWare ($2.8B), but is cheap credit causing a bigger issue in the tech-world?

IBM

Microsoft

  • Microsoft and Facebook to build subsea cable across Atlantic

    MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic – featuring eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system, to be operated and managed by Telxius, will also be the first to connect the United States to southern Europe: from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain and then beyond to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This route is south of existing transatlantic cable systems that primarily land in the New York/New Jersey region. Being physically separate from these other cables helps ensure more resilient and reliable connections for our customers in the United States, Europe, and beyond.

    https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/2016/05/26/microsoft-and-facebook-to-build-subsea-cable-across-atlantic/

  • Microsoft faces blowback in China over unwanted Windows 10 upgrades

    Posts critical of Microsoft on microblog site Weibo relating to the Windows 10 upgrade, which Microsoft users must switch to, have grown to over 1.2 million in number, it said. “The company has abused its dominant market position and broken the market order for fair play,” Xinhua quoted Zhao Zhanling, a legal adviser with the Internet Society of China, as saying. He said users or consumer protection organizations had the right to file lawsuits against the company as Microsoft had not respected users’ right to know and choose, and may eventually profit from the unwanted upgrades.

    http://www.windowscentral.com/many-chinese-users-complain-about-unwanted-windows-10-upgrades-despite-massive-piracy

  • Microsoft just BANNED all your terrible passwords (there were hundreds of articles about this)

    The US technology firm has created a dynamically-updated list of terrible passwords, which it will not let you use when registering for an account online.

    Rather than provide some loose guidelines about password length and complexity, the Redmond firm will not let you use any of the commonly used passwords.

    The list of offenders will be continually updated based on new leaks, so when people start to shift to other easy-to-guess passwords – these will also be banned.

    http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/674107/Microsoft-Bans-Terrible-Insecure-Password

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • What Will HPE Sell Next?

    I’d say the smart money was on servers. When IBM sold off PCs, it couldn’t sustain its Intel-based server business and had to sell it to Lenovo — the firm that bought the PC business. So I guess HPE could try to sell servers to HP Inc., but HP Inc. is up to its eyeballs in debt already, thanks to being gifted with all of the company debt in the divestiture, so I doubt it has the resources to buy it.

    Next in line would be Oracle, because Mark Hurd knows the business and it would strengthen Oracle’s offering. However, Hurd also knows what it is worth, and I’ll bet it is less than Whitman is willing to accept.

    This is interesting:

    Maybe this should be titled “Death by CEO.” If you don’t buy it, just take a look at HP Inc.’s executive team.

    You’ll see two people who likely have the strongest inside knowledge of Meg Whitman’s plan: HP’s old CFO Cathie Lesjak, who is rather famous for either stopping or trying to stop some of HP’s biggest mistakes; and HP’s old head of HR, Tracy Keogh, who is out of Harvard and arguably the most qualified HR director in tech. Both of them left HPE, and probably not because they thought Whitman was a brilliant CEO. Just saying.

    http://www.technewsworld.com/story/83552.html?rss=1

  • Is There More Upside for Computer Sciences?

    HP Enterprise (ticker: HPE) gets to unload its slowly shrinking business of managing computer networks and focus on its growing business of selling networking hardware and software, along with specialized services. Computer Sciences (CSC) gets something big to squeeze costs out of. It has plenty of recent experience. Barron’s recommended shares of Computer Sciences nearly three years ago based on new chief Mike Lawrie’s work letting go of money-losing contracts and consolidating scattered departments to bring down costs (“Jockeying for Position in the Cloud,” Sept. 14, 2013). Shares have more than doubled since then, factoring in the spinoff of a government-services unit last year and dividends, including a $10.50 a share special.

    http://www.barrons.com/articles/is-there-more-upside-for-computer-sciences-1464409150

  • HP Enterprise takes Oracle to court, demands $3B

    In spite of the Itanium’s reputation, a 2010 settlement agreement between HP and Oracle obligated Oracle to offer its products on HP’s Itanium-based server platforms until HP discontinued them. Yet not long after that, Oracle announced it would no longer support the Itanium platform because HP was planning to shut it down eventually.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/hp-enterprise-takes-oracle-to-court-demands-3b/

  • HPE hunkers down on data center hardware

    What is interesting to us here at The Next Platform is that HPE is focusing down on the most core datacenter products it has, including servers, storage, switches, systems software (including operating systems and a smattering of management tools, databases, and other selected middleware), plus financing for the whole kit and caboodle for those customers who want to use other people’s money to fund their IT infrastructure. The resulting HPE after the spinout of Enterprise Services to CSC is going to be considerably smaller than the HPE that was just separated from the PC and printer business last year – about $33 billion in annual sales – but it is a good guess that this leaner HPE will be a lot more profitable. HPE will also not be going through round after round of restructurings in the services business, which it has endured since buying Compaq in 2001 and which accelerated in the wake of the acquisition of EDS in 2008.

    http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/05/27/hpe-hunkers-datacenter-hardware/

Oracle

  • Oracle Shares Fall After a Lawsuit Related to Cloud Computing Business

    Svetlana Blackburn, in a suit filed Wednesday in federal court in the Northern District of California, alleges her finance job in Oracle’s cloud-computing business “came to an abrupt end because she resisted, refused to engage in and threatened to blow the whistle on accounting practices she reasonably believed to be unlawful.”

    Also:

    Later on Thursday, Oracle was hit with another suit, this time a class-action case that cites Ms. Blackburn’s litigation and says the stock drop caused “significant losses and damages” to class members.

    An Oracle investor, Grover M. Klarfeld, sued on behalf of himself and “all others similarly situated.” His complaint accuses the company of violating federal securities laws by using “improper accounting practices to inflate the company’s cloud-computing revenues by millions of dollars.”

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-shares-fall-after-a-lawsuit-related-to-cloud-computing-business-1464908394

  • Oracle Says It Will Sue Former Employee Who Sued It
    Because… of course they will!

    The problem for Oracle, and other large enterprise technology companies, is that no one really believes their cloud sales figures. Reported numbers typically include lots of software and even hardware that most companies would not consider cloud at all, complicating comparisons between growth businesses and legacy businesses.

    http://fortune.com/2016/06/02/oracle-employee-lawsuit-cloud-sales/

Other

  • Google goes after Microsoft, Tableau, and others with a new free analytics tool

    The company has launched Data Studio, a free version of the data visualization tool it introduced as part of an analytics suite it unveiled earlier this year. It includes a wide variety of data connectors to let customers visualize data from Google AdWords, Google Sheets, and other Google products.

    It also integrates with BigQuery, and the company plans to launch a connector for SQL databases later this year.

    http://www.networksasia.net/article/google-goes-after-microsoft-tableau-and-others-new-free-analytics-tool.1464401634

  • Apple is working on an AI system that wipes the floor with Google and everyone else

    For example, imagine asking a computer to “Find a nearby Chinese restaurant with open parking and Wi-Fi that’s kid-friendly.” That’d trip up most assistants, but VocalIQ could handle it. The result? VocalIQ’s success rate was over 90%, while Google Now, Siri, and Cortana were only successful about 20% of the time, according to one source.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apples-vocaliq-ai-works-2016-5?&platform=bi-androidapp

  • The Debt Problem Is Bigger Than You Think

    There’s two problems here, though. First, debt has been growing faster than cash. For example, over the last year, cash balances rose 1.8% while debt due in the next five years expanded by 17%, according to Bloomberg. S&P pegged those numbers at 1% and 15% for its sample. But the direction is the same, more debt growth than cash growth. This discrepancy can only go on for so long before it becomes a notable problem – if it hasn’t already.

    Second, all that new debt isn’t getting put to productive use. Indeed, capital spending has hardly been a bright spot in recent quarters, including the relatively weak first quarter of this year. True, a lot of the cash is being pushed toward stock buybacks, which makes sense in some situations. But certainly not in all situations. Dividend increases are another place some cash has been put to work, which makes a dividend investor like me happy. However for some companies, the cost of a dividend hike might not be worth the risk of the debt.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3978849-debt-problem-bigger-think

  • Salesforce Acquires Demandware for $2.8 Billion

    Demandware offers a variety of enterprise services through the cloud, including digital commerce, order management, predictive intelligence and point of sale. Prior to the acquisition, the company had counted several global brands among its clients, including Design Within Reach, Lands’ End, L’Oreal, and Marks & Spencer.

    http://www.toptechnews.com/article/index.php?story_id=0010000LHSIA
    Also:
    Salesforce: Overpaying For Demandware

    The only reason for a firm to pay a premium over the market value for another firm is if the acquiring firm believes there are significant synergies attainable through acquisition. As the deal is constructed, Salesforce is paying a premium of $27.01/share (from 5/31/16 close price), or slightly over $1 billion above market price. Salesforce has yet to make any mention of the dollar value of synergies between the two companies.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3979432-salesforce-overpaying-demandware

Photo: Tony Webster

Posted on

Supplier Report: 5/28/2016

sn_boatdogs_JesseOrrico

Google wins their big fight against all-seeing Sauron…err… Oracle. On the heels of defeat, Oracle vows to appeal.  While there is a party among developers, HPE is apparently celebrating yet ANOTHER split of their company…

This week HPE announced they are splitting their consulting services (formerly HP Enterprise Services, formerly Electronic Data Systems) and then merging that portion of the company with rivals CSC to form a new company.  That move is called a “spin merger” if you were wondering.

Rumor has it that SaleForce is being woo’ed by Amazon and IBM is still eliminating domestic jobs.

IBM

  • ‘No-one is safe’ as fresh round of job cuts hits Big Blue

    According to the Wall Street Journal, the latest cuts started as IBM quietly laid off staff from US offices in North Carolina, New York City and Colorado. Meanwhile, in the UK, staff from the firm’s Global Technology Services (GTS) have been informed that the corporate axe is expected to swing throughout the month of June, which will be the second round of redundancies to hit UK shores within three months. Additionally, in Australia, reports indicate nearly a dozen jobs were recently slashed from a Sales and Distribution (S&D) department.

    Additionally:

    The problem now faced by IBM, our source added, is that potential staff members in the targeted countries likely “don’t have the skills” equivalent to their US-UK counterparts. The source added: “Almost everyone believes they are on the next RA list. People are so busy looking for other jobs I would assume productivity has dropped overall by 10%. Its just crazy right now.”

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/inside-ibm-no-one-safe-fresh-round-job-cuts-hits-big-blue-1561781

  • IBM’s Big Problem: It’s Too Busy To Listen To Its Customers

    IBM has lost major contracts due to its inability to deliver what customers want. I’ve previously referenced the embarrassing CIA contract loss to Amazon, and besides the fact that IBM’s technology was woefully inadequate, one of the other factors that caused the company to lose was that it didn’t properly follow the bidding process.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3977286-ibms-big-problem-busy-listen-customers
    Also:
    Amazon Again Beats IBM For CIA Cloud Contract

    During the case, IBM lawyers had strongly objected to the representation that it had manipulated the bidding process to create a protest issue. But the court “does not see any other explanation for IBM’s final pricing strategy,” the ruling said.

    http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/amazon-again-beats-ibm-for-cia-cloud-contract/d/d-id/1112211?

  • What IBM Bought With $155 Billion

    Had IBM forgone its buybacks, one thing it might still have would be the aforementioned massive $155 billion pile of cash. If IBM had used its cash to pay down debt rather than repurchase shares, what might the company’s balance sheet look like? IBM’s debt is comprised mainly of Global Financing and Non-Global Financing debt. The Global Financing segment provides funding for IBM’s external customers, and charges customers a higher interest rate than the interest rates on its own borrowings. This borrowing is done knowing that it will be eventually repaid with interest. The non-Global Financing debt, “core debt,” makes up a much smaller portion of IBM’s total debt.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3977909-ibm-bought-155-billion

  • IBM May Never Catch Amazon in the Cloud, and That’s OK

    SoftLayer, IBM’s IaaS business, is dwarfed by AWS. The company has a goal of reaching $1 billion in IaaS revenue this year, but that would still make Amazon’s cloud-computing business about 10 times larger. Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler, who rates IBM stock a hold due to growth concerns, believes that IBM will never catch up with Amazon, or even Microsoft, in the cloud. In the public IaaS market, Sandler believes that IBM doesn’t have a chance.

    Additionally:

    While Amazon focuses on being the low-cost provider of IaaS services, IBM is going after the highest-value portions of the cloud computing market. The company’s cloud strategy is summed up well by what CEO Virginia Rometty said during a conference last year:
    “What’s important is that we grow in the right areas. Tech is littered with areas that you can have high growth and make no money. That’s not us.”

    http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/05/24/ibm-may-never-catch-amazon-in-the-cloud-and-thats.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004

Microsoft

  • Why Microsoft Corporation Sold Its Feature Phone Business

    Microsoft recently announced that it will sell its feature phone business for $350 million to Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile and a newly founded company called HMD Global. Microsoft originally obtained the unit through its $9.5 billion acquisition of Nokia’s handset unit in 2014.

    Additionally:

    Nonetheless, customers in certain markets still buy Nokia’s feature phones, which require monthly data fees and can last for weeks on a single charge. Research firm eMarketer estimates that only about 30% of mobile users in India use smartphones. Pew Research Center estimates that almost two-thirds of people across seven sub-Saharan African nations still use feature phones.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/20/why-microsoft-corporation-sold-its-feature-phone-b.aspx

Oracle

  • Google and Oracle’s Android copyright fight is up to a jury now

    The federal jury in San Francisco is now deciding whether Google’s use of copyrighted Java code constitutes fair use, an exemption that would free the company from having to pay Oracle damages.

    At issue is “declaring code” that’s part of 37 Java APIs Google used. Google says it simply used selected parts of Java to create something new in the form of Android.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3074413/google-and-oracles-android-copyright-fight-is-up-to-a-jury-now.html
    Update: Google Won!

    “Overall, this is a win for software development,” said Mitch Stoltz, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who focuses on copyright issues. “I think it’ll give software developers a bit more confidence that reimplementing APIs is not something that’s going to get them sued.” However, Stoltz pointed out that the appellate ruling still stands, and small developers could still face copyright lawsuits from tech behemoths.

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/jury-finds-googles-implementation-of-java-in-android-was-fair-use/
    Also:
    Tech World Hails Google’s Copyright Victory – As It Should

    The cause for celebration is the fair use finding, which does a lot to undo the damage from an appeals court ruling in 2014. That ruling, which overturned a judge’s finding that APIs cannot be copyrighted in the first place, triggered shock and disbelief among many in the tech community. They feared that giving Oracle rights to control the APIs would create a chilling effect as developers would be unsure about what they could and could not do to write code.

    http://fortune.com/2016/05/26/google-oracle-reaction/

Note: Oracle is expected to appeal this decision (again).  So this isn’t over. 

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • HP Enterprise to Spin Off, Merge Services Business (the whole thing is being called a “spin merger”)

    The deal is expected to deliver $8.5 billion to HP Enterprise shareholders, which includes a 50% stake in the new company, a dividend of $1.5 billion, and the assumption of $2.5 billion in debt and other liabilities.

    Additionally:

    HP Enterprise said its enterprise services revenue was $4.7 billion in the quarter ended April 30, down 2% from a year ago. The enterprise services segment represented about 37% of HP Enterprise’s total revenue for the quarter.

    Ms. Whitman said on a conference call that the Computer Sciences deal would remove about two-thirds of its workforce, or about 100,000 employees. HP Enterprise’s services businesses include the former Electronic Data Systems businesses that Hewlett-Packard bought in 2008 for $13.9 billion.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/hp-enterprise-to-spin-off-merge-services-business-1464121433
    Additionally:

    Completion of the merger is anticipated by the end of March 2017, subject to shareholder and regulatory reviews and approvals. Following the transaction, CSC and HPE shareholders each will own approximately 50% of the new company’s shares. The transaction between CSC and HPE is anticipated to provide close to $8.5 billion to HPE’s shareholders on an after-tax basis. This includes an equity stake in the newly combined company valued at more than $4.5 billion, a cash dividend of $1.5 billion, and the assumption of $2.5 billion of debt and other liabilities related to the HPE Enterprise Services segment.

    http://www.appstechnews.com/news/2016/may/26/hpe-enterprise-services-segment-merge-csc/

  • But didn’t CSC just spin off a government IT focused business? (Yes)
    What to expect when the CSC-SRA International spinoff debuts on the New York Stock Exchange

    A combination of Falls Church-based Computer Sciences Corp.’s (NYSE: CSC) $4.06 billion North American Public Sector business spun off from the parent and the $1.39 billion Fairfax-based SRA International Inc., CSRA will be a next-generation, purely federal IT company devoted to migrating government agencies to cloud-based data center infrastructure and building advanced applications for its federal clients.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2015/11/what-to-expect-when-the-csc-sra-international.html
    But doesn’t HPE/EDS do government contracts? (Yes)

    “HP Enterprise Services has a very strong business in the federal government and what I’d say is post-close all options — and I underscore the word ‘all options’ — would be on the table,” Lawrie told analysts. “But that decision will be approached and looked at after we close the transaction.”

    BUT…

    Add to that the fact that CSC is legally prohibited from competing against CSRA for federal business over the next two years as a part of the split and it becomes hard to believe that CSC is going to hold on to this public sector asset. Public sector work would only make up about 11 percent of the total $26 billion new combined entity.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2016/05/csc-says-all-options-are-on-the-table-for-hps.html

  • HPE employees were ‘shocked’ but ‘glad to be rid of that boat anchor’

    HP ES was formed when HP bought EDS in 2008 for $13.9 billion. Many HP employees we talked to said the two companies, HP and EDS were never a good culture fit.

    As the person we talked to described it, “In my own experience, they were difficult to work with and never were fully integrated into HP.”

    http://www.businessinsider.in/Hewlett-Packard-Enterprise-employees-were-shocked-but-glad-to-be-rid-of-that-boat-anchor/articleshow/52440927.cms

Other

  • Is Amazon buying SalesForce?
    Follow-up to last week’s blog and podcast:

    Now if you put on your investment banker hat and look at strategic M&A options for Amazon to keep its AWS market share, there are not that many. It’s unlikely that Microsoft would slow down its efforts and of course merging with Amazon would be almost impossible. IBM has its own cloud ambitions, as does Google, and neither of them would be viable for M&A. So who is left? Yes, only one cloud play – Salesforce.com, which also happens to have the same deferred revenue model as Amazon.

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazon-buying-salesforce-jiri-kram?trk=hp-feed-article-title
    Additionally:
    Marc Benioff responds to questions about a Microsoft takeover bid

    This is an incredible moment in history and as you can see Salesforce’s growth continues to accelerate and grow. I’ve now been working on this company for almost 18 years and I think that we’ve delivered fantastic results. As part of that, of course, I’m also making personal decisions as that goes and that’s what’s happening there.

    Sounds like they are willing to sell to SOMEONE – like a company they just signed an international hosting deal with perhaps?
    http://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-responds-to-questions-about-a-microsoft-takeover-bid-2016-5

  • No, Apple isn’t the next BlackBerry — it’s the next Microsoft
    Last week they called Apple the next IBM, now it is the next Microsoft

    The lesson for Apple, and Apple shareholders, is that it’s not enough to have a ton of money and just throw around cash to solve every problem. It takes real vision, strategy, and execution, and a first-mover advantage is nice, too.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-is-the-next-microsoft-2016-5

  • Foxconn replaces ‘60,000 factory workers with robots’

    One factory has “reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots”, a government official told the South China Morning Post.

    Since September 2014, 505 factories across Dongguan, in the Guangdong province, have invested 4.2bn yuan (£430m) in robots, aiming to replace thousands of workers.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

  • Verizon workers declare end to 44-day strike, claim “big gains”

    While there were about 165 Verizon Wireless employees involved in the strike, the vast majority of the union members are in Verizon’s wireline division. Verizon today said that the company “look[s] forward to having all of our employees soon back at work in their regular positions and doing what they do best—serving our customers.” Verizon also said it was able to obtain “meaningful changes and enhancements to the contracts that will better enable our wireline business unit to compete and succeed in the digital world.”

    http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/verizon-workers-declare-end-to-44-day-strike-claim-big-gains/

Photo: Jesse Orrico

Posted on

Supplier Report: 5/21/2016

sn_dog_Stefan Stefancik

IBM announced a breakthrough in computer memory that could make RAM 50x faster with marginal cost increase.  Big Blue may have also developed a molecule that could help fight viruses.

While IBM fights viruses, Oracle is fighting Google. Oracle stated that they didn’t buy Sun just to sue Google, they also wanted to keep the company out of the hands of IBM. Oracle also told the courts that they discounted Java 97.5% to Amazon so the company would continue to use the language on their Kindle Readers (because it is so hard to compete with free).

EMC is raising at least $20B in bonds (maybe much more) while Swift was hacked (again) and is Apple the new IBM?

IBM

  • IBM says it’s designed a molecule that could fight off any human virus

    It’s exciting stuff: a macromolecule – a giant molecule made up of smaller units – has now been developed that could have the potential to block multiple types of viruses, despite the many variations involved. It’s still early days yet, but the results could lead to drugs that aren’t tricked by mutating virus strains.

    http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-have-designed-a-molecule-that-could-fight-off-any-virus

  • IBM Makes Memory Breakthrough

    IBM researchers found a way to reliably store three bits of data per cell, up from previously being able to store just one bit per cell. According to Dr. eHaris Pozidis, manager of non-volatile memory research at IBM Research, Zurich, this progress is a big deal. “Reaching 3 bits per cell is a significant milestone because at this density the cost of PCM will be significantly less than DRAM and closer to flash.”

    IBM’s phase-change memory is not a commercial product at this point, and no timeline was given by the company for its potential release as such. Phase-change memory could eventually be used in mobile devices, potentially replacing both DRAM and NAND. In the data center, phase-change memory could be used to store databases, boosting performance compared to flash memory and lowering cost compared to DRAM.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/19/instant-analysis-ibm-makes-memory-breakthrough.aspx
    Here is the headline I was looking for (take note Fool.com):
    IBM’s new memory is over 50 times faster than flash and could soon be just as cheap
    http://www.sciencealert.com/ibm-s-new-memory-is-over-50-times-faster-than-flash-and-could-soon-be-just-as-cheap

  • A professor built an AI bot to make teaching easier. Will it replace him someday?

    Named Jill Watson, the virtual “teaching assistant” drew from previous forum data to help answer many routine, technical queries about the course, such as where people could find a certain video lesson or how they could organize meet-ups with one another. The most astonishing part: Students had no idea Jill was an AI. Goel didn’t reveal that fact until the day after the class’s final exam.

    http://qz.com/688048/a-professor-built-an-ai-bot-to-make-teaching-easier-will-it-replace-him-someday/

  • IBM Facing Same Fate As Verizon, Union Workers In Action Again?

    The speculations started when IBM has decided to close some of its site operations. According to Patch, “IBM plans to close its operations in Somers and move everyone and everything into the Armonk campus, and the company’s plan is to consolidate in North Castle and sell the huge campus on Route 100.”

    Although the Company officials told employees about the move on Monday and how the North Castle campus will be renovated and the Somers site will be sold, according to the same post, the move has created worry and anxiety for the affected stakeholders

    http://www.jobsnhire.com/articles/43040/20160518/ibm-facing-same-fate-verizon-union-workers-action-again.htm
    If I read correctly, this is more about sub-contractors (like food services) working in these buildings. As far as I can tell, IBM doesn’t have much of a union footprint outside of that shop in NY, and that was closed up in January…
    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3019552/it-industry/ibm-union-calls-it-quits.html

Storage [EMC | Dell | Infinidat | NetApp]

  • Dell said to get $80 billion of demand on bonds for EMC deal

    The company had received more than $80 billion of orders from investors by the time its bankers closed the books on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the transaction who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. Dell had initially planned to raise about $16 billion. The company is weighing whether to increase the amount of debt it’s raising in the investment-grade bond market, one person with knowledge of the matter said Monday.

    Dell’s bond sale may be the largest since Anheuser-Busch InBev NV sold $46 billion of bonds in January to finance its takeover of SABMiller Plc, and is expected to launch on Tuesday, said one of the people. The offering comes on the heels of the busiest week for bond sales by blue-chip companies in the U.S and Europe since January. Top-rated issuers sold about $74 billion in the five-day period ending May 13, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    http://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/technology/dell-said-to-get-80-billion-of-demand-on-bonds-for-emc-deal-1.1829746
    Also:
    Dell Said to Offer Premium to Lure Buyers to EMC Bond Deal

    The longest part of the offering, debt maturing in 30 years, is being marketed at a yield of 6.25 percentage points above similar-maturity Treasuries, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. That’s three times more than the average spread on all U.S. corporate bonds of similar ratings and maturities, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch data.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-16/dell-said-to-offer-premium-to-lure-buyers-to-emc-bond-offering

Oracle

  • Oracle didn’t buy Sun just to sue Google but to keep it away from IBM, CEO says

    It bought Sun because it was afraid IBM was going to grab it, she said, as reported by Sarah Jeong, a reporter from Motherboard who is in court live tweeting the trial.

    Catz explained that Oracle bought Sun because so much of Oracle’s own product was based on Sun’s Java, and they were concerned about what would happen if someone else acquired Sun.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-bought-sun-because-of-ibm-not-google-2016-5

  • Oracle CEO claims it discounted Java by 97.5% to beat out Android on Amazon’s Paperwhite

    “Amazon… had used Java to create [the Kindle] reader for many years,” she said. “Then they had another product called the Kindle Fire and that one they used Android. They didn’t license Java at that time.

    “The way we look at different discounts and handle them with customers comes through an approval process that comes through me. I was made aware through that process that Amazon was going to [develop] the Kindle Fire with Android.

    “They were now considering a new product called the Paperwhite and they were considering whether to use Java for that or Android.

    “In order to compete with [Google], we ended up giving a 97.5 percent discount for the Paperwhite. Instead of what we would have historically offered them, because our competition was free, we had to offer them a cents on the dollar price.”

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/17/oracle-ceo-claims-it-discounted-java-by-97-5-to-beat-out-android-on-amazons-paperwhite/

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • HP Inc. CEO Dion Weisler banks on 3-D printing

    We think it actually democratizes manufacturing. Manufacturing today typically happens in faraway places, and that costs a lot of inventory, warehousing costs, costs of capital all are all tied up, and this enables you to move manufacturing much closer to where your customers are. So, companies like Nike, like BMW, like Johnson & Johnson are working with us as close technology partners and figuring out how they can build innovative products where complexity is essentially free … and bring breakthrough products to market.

    http://www.marketplace.org/2016/05/17/tech/hp-inc-ceo-dion-weisler-banks-3d-printing

  • Meg Whitman gets hands-on with $100M in Hewlett Packard Enterprise startup bets

    “By adopting companies to integrate into our solution, if another one comes along that is better for our customers, we move to that one and we’re not stuck having paid $200 million or $300 million for a company,” she said. “You can’t buy them all.”

    The $100 million HPE plans to invest in startups this year is roughly the same as it did last year. That’s about one-fifth to one-quarter what the two top Silicon Valley corporate venture units — Intel Capital and GV (formerly Google Ventures) invested last year.

    http://upstart.bizjournals.com/money/loot/2016/05/18/meg-whitman-gets-hands-on-with-100m-in-hewlett.html

Other

  • What did Google announce at 2016 I/O…
  • Apple is the new IBM

    Slowing sales of the iPhone have been driving Mr. Market’s dismay with Apple, along with a general sense that the company has become somewhat boring. Recent product launches have underwhelmed, offering iterations and optimizations of its existing portfolio rather than gadgets that create big new categories.

    Also:

    Of course, Berkshire Hathaway’s stake is actually just an acknowledgement of the direction Apple has been heading in for years under CEO Tim Cook. Since taking the helm in 2011, Cook has essentially been tasked with managing the transformation of Apple from a fast-growing company seemingly immune to the law of large numbers, to a more stately—but still incredibly profitable—corporate powerhouse that consistently showers shareholders with dividends and buybacks.

    http://qz.com/685284/apple-is-the-new-ibm/

  • Swift Is Hacked Again. The Bitcoin/Blockchain Fat Lady Sings.

    The significance of the second Swift failure is this. Trust-based systems, such as those upon which the current payments systems operate, are becoming more expensive to protect at a rapidly increasing rate. The horse race between hackers and firewall builders is being won by hackers in spite of the rapidly increasing spending on internet security.

    And these most recent hacks took banks’ money, not customer money. That is a game changer.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3975082-swift-hacked-bitcoin-blockchain-fat-lady-sings

Photo: Stefan Stefancik