Tag: AWS

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Supplier Report: 10/22/2016

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Big IT firms are clearly focused on the cloud, but as these companies grow out their infrastructure, we will focus on the differences between the cloud providers and try to find sweet spots.

SalesForce had some very sensitive M&A information leaked.  Will Pega Systems and Tableau get bought or was this some kind of trick to drive up stock prices?

And are the days of the Chinese factory workers numbered?

Acquisitions

  • Wipro To Buy Salesforce Superstar Appirio for $500 Million

    Business process services goliath Wipro says it will spend half a billion dollars to purchase cloud services powerhouse Appirio so it can improve its market share and position around Salesforce and Workday.

    The $500 million all-cash acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year, according to a statement. Wipro did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

    http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/300082500/wipro-to-buy-salesforce-superstar-appirio-for-500-million.htm

  • Salesforce.Com, Inc To Buy Tableau Software Inc (NYSE:DATA) Shortly After Declining Twitter Inc Buyout

    Tableau Software Inc. explored a potential sale in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter, as technology companies scramble for partners amid a wave of mergers in the industry.

    The Seattle company was working on a potential sale as recently as this summer before the effort stalled, the people said.

    The Wall Street Journal reported on the document in a front-page article Wednesday that pushed up shares of Tableau as much as 7%, giving it a market value of nearly $4 billion.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/software-maker-tableau-explored-a-sale–wsj-20161020-00076

  • HP Enterprise services merger with CSC could ‘mean more churn’ for company’s federal contractors

    “The combination of these two companies will create a new company with billions in global revenue, including a sizable U.S. federal government business,” it added. “However, the government sector of the new, yet unnamed company may be impacted by the cost take-outs planned by the merger and the distraction of yet another major company reorganization.”

    http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2016/10/20/report-hp-enterprise-services-merger-with-csc.html

  • Salesforce’s M&A Target List Had 14 Names, But Not Twitter Inc

    Citing an internal presentation allegedly obtained from former Secretary of State and Salesforce Director Colin Powell the WSJ lists 14 companies, including Marketo, Adobe Systems, Hubspot, PegaSystems, Demandware, Tableau, and LinkedIn, as possible candidates.

    According to the presentation, Box and Zendesk were mentioned as well, but their chief executives had less interest. The presentation, which was marked “draft and confidential” and titled “M&A Target Review,” is a 60-slide document which identified 14 possible acquisition targets.

    http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/10/salesforces-list-14-names-not-twitter/

Artificial Intelligence

  • DeepMind’s differentiable neural computer helps you navigate the subway with its memory

    DeepMind’s technique merges notions of memory with more traditional neural networks using a “controller.” The controller saves information by either storing it in a new location or overwriting a previously occupied location. Throughout this process, an association between the information is formed via the timeline of when new data was written in.

    The controller uses that same chronology along with the actual content of what has been saved to retrieve information. The framework created is navigable and proves itself effective for drawing insights from graph data structures.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/13/__trashed-2/

  • Fighting Diabetes with Watson: Medtronic and IBM Health
  • No More Humans: Foxconn Deploys 40,000 Robots In China

    Dai said currently Foxconn can produce 10,000 robots annually. In the future, those robots are all potential replacements for human labor. For the Kunshan factory alone, Foxconn has cut 60,000 employees.

    Prior to this, labor costs in mainland China were lower than robots; therefore, Foxconn maintained nearly one million workers. However, with the increase of labor costs and the younger generation’s lack of interest in production line work, many companies have launched huge investments in automation.

    https://www.chinatechnews.com/2016/10/13/24329-no-more-humans-foxconn-deploys-40000-robots-in-china
    What I predicted in this post is starting to come true

  • IBM Watson Will Run On IBM and IBM Alone

    You’ve got to give UBS analyst Steven Milunovich major props. During IBM’s earnings call on Monday, he asked whether IBM Watson, the company’s golden child, will run on rival Amazon Web Services—and he was promptly shot down. “No. Watson runs on our cloud, and our technology will run on IBM’s cloud,” IBM chief financial officer Martin Schroeter responded tersely.

    http://fortune.com/2016/10/17/ibm-watson-belongs-to-ibm/

Cloud

Datacenter

  • IBM and other giants to reform servers and make them faster

    Servers current circuitry is not fast enough, and International Business Machines Corp. has promised to speed the data transfer in servers up to ten times. The group hopes more companies will be part of the team to improve servers speed. Standard microprocessors are getting faster, but their performance is usually delayed because they need to fetch data from nearby memory chips, graphic chips or other elements used to handle certain tasks.

    http://www.pulseheadlines.com/ibm-giants-reform-servers-faster/52692/

  • Lenovo’s attack plan against Dell EMC? A partnership with Nimble Storage

    The Chinese company, which has what it calls its “dual” headquarters in Morrisville and its server division in Research Triangle Park, just signed a deal with Nimble that allows it to sell Nimble’s all-flash array technology, as well as to use the firm’s predictive analytics capabilities.

    Also:

    And it’s a segment of the business that has seen major change, particularly as its relationship with longtime partner EMC severed completely when rival technology firm Dell acquired it. Since Dell announced the buy last year, Lenovo has been working to fill the gap. McRae says it’s been a systematic effort.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2016/10/17/lenovo-nimble-storage-partnership.html

Other

  • IBM Shares Fall Despite Higher-Than-Expected Sales

    Revenue from those areas, which the company calls “strategic imperatives,” rose 16% to $8 billion in the third quarter. Cloud revenue jumped 44% compared with a 30% rise in the second quarter, it said. However, shares of IBM, which reported its 18th straight quarter of declining revenue, were down 3.1% at $150.60 in after-market trading.

    http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/ibm-shares-fall-beat-estimates/
    sn_ibm_realist_2016_10

  • HP: We’ll Put Laid-Off Workers on Contract

    In light of massive job cuts, HP Inc. has indicated to Business Insider that it may offer affected workers the opportunity to continue their roles as employees at contract agencies. The company stated, “HP has a strong record of success in placing employees in outsourced roles to mitigate the headcount number.” HP has a track record of shifting employees to positions as contract workers from before its 2015 split with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

    http://www.investopedia.com/news/hp-well-put-laidoff-workers-contract-hpq/

  • HP Enterprise announces more layoffs as cloud business struggles

    The layoffs in the Stackato may indicate HPE is further retreating from the ultra-competitive cloud market amidst tough competition from AWS and Microsoft. Last year, HPE pulled the plug on its Helion hybrid cloud offering. In August, Bill Hilf, HPE’s current cloud leader,announced he was leaving the company to “pursue other opportunities.”

    http://www.ciodive.com/news/hp-enterprise-announces-more-layoffs-as-cloud-business-struggles/428563/

  • Microsoft employees love Satya Nadella a lot more than they did Steve Ballmer

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella looks especially good, by the report’s reckoning. At the close of 2013, the final days of former chief executive Steve Ballmer’s reign, Microsoft only gave a 51% rating for CEO approval. Nadella took the reigns in February 2014, and the CEO approval rating hit 88% by the end of 2015.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-employees-love-satya-nadella-2016-10

  • Broadcom, Harris Vet Bill Miller Joins NetApp as CIO

    Bill Miller, former senior vice president and chief information officer at Broadcom, has joined NetApp in the same role of CIO and will be responsible for both the company’s information technology organization and ongoing transformation initiatives.

    http://www.govconexecutive.com/2016/10/broadcom-harris-vet-bill-miller-joins-netapp-as-cio/

Photo: Rob Roy

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Supplier Report: 10/15/2016

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Large IT companies are running into some M&A trouble. Verizon wants a discount on their Yahoo acquisition, Saleforce is trying to block the Microsoft’s purchase of Linkedin, and Oracle is struggling to make their purchase of Netsuite a reality.

Cloud was a big topic this week – Google has officially rebranded their cloud offerings as “Google Cloud” due to customer confusion (good move), IBM CEO Ginni Rometty explains her company’s position on blockchain (and discusses if AI can replace her), and VMWare is available on AWS.

HP Inc is cutting 4,000 jobs but former EMC CEO Joe Tucci found one!

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • Could Watson Replace Ginni Rometty? What She’s Not Saying About AI, Jobs & Disruption

    IBM has bet it’s future on AI, cloud computing and data/information/knowledge management. All three areas are about reducing costs and improving productivity by decreasing human labor.Cloud computing, for example, could easily be described as the technology delivery model that kills software developers, applications support professionals and data center managers. There’s a straight line from the number of jobs IBM eliminates and its stock price. If Watsonbecomes a friendly assistant that charges for its pedantic services, IBM will fail. But if Watson enables large-scale labor replacement, IBM’s stock will rise.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveandriole/2016/10/10/could-watson-replace-ginni-rometty-what-shes-not-saying-about-ai-jobs-disruption/2/#60361b211579

  • Artificial intelligence positioned to be a game-changer (follow link for the video)

    One of the technologies just hatched is called Gabriel. It uses Google Glass to gather data about your surroundings and advises you how to react. It’s like an angel on your shoulder whispering advice or instructions. In this case trying to direct us how to win a game of ping pong but the possibilities go beyond bragging rights.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-artificial-intelligence-charlie-rose-robot-sofia/

Cloud

  • IBM wins $62 million contract to run private cloud pilot at Army’s Redstone Arsenal

    IBM won the work as a task order under the Army’s Private Cloud II indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract. The $62 million award includes one base year and four option years, during which the company will build, then own and operate a data center on Army property at Redstone Arsenal, near Huntsville, Alabama.

    http://federalnewsradio.com/army/2016/10/ibm-wins-62-million-contract-run-private-cloud-pilot-armys-redstone-arsenal/

  • VMware and AWS Announce New Hybrid Cloud Service, “VMware Cloud on AWS”

    Amazon and VMWare today announced a strategic alliance to build and deliver a seamlessly integrated hybrid offering that will give customers the full software-defined data center (SDDC) experience from the leader in the private cloud, running on the world’s most popular, trusted, and robust public cloud. VMware Cloud™ on AWS will enable customers to run applications across VMware vSphere®-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. Delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service, VMware Cloud on AWS will allow VMware customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics, and more

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161013006574/en/VMware-AWS-Announce-Hybrid-Cloud-Service-%E2%80%9CVMware

  • IBM CEO Rometty’s position on blockchain

    Good to hear IBM’s direct stance on the platform and what their vision is
  • IBM’s Cleversafe storage platform is becoming a cloud service

    Cleversafe’s innovation in object storage was to combine encryption with erasure coding and geographic dispersal of data. SecureSlice encrypts unstructured data, stores the key with the data, and then breaks up that data and puts it on several different storage nodes. In IBM Cloud Object Storage, those nodes can be in data centers spread across an entire continent.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3130792/ibms-cleversafe-storage-platform-is-becoming-a-cloud-service.html

  • Google’s Diane Greene providing a status on Google’s cloud platform:
  • IBM says its new Cloud Object Storage allows easily moving and splitting data

    The service is built on technology dubbed SecureSlice, which combines encryption, erasure coding and geographic dispersal of data. Erasure coding is a form of data protection. IBM acquired the SecureSlice technology when it bought Cleversafe last year for $1.3 billion. The technology automatically encrypts each segment of data before it’s erasure-coded and dispersed, and the data can only be reassembled where it was originally received.

    http://www.geekwire.com/2016/ibm-says-new-cloud-object-storage-allows-easily-moving-splitting-data/

  • Amazon cloud boss Andy Jassy fires back at Oracle’s Larry Ellison, says stats were ‘made up’

    Instead, Jassy pointed to what analysts are saying about AWS. For example, Gartner said in its Magic Quadrant report last year that AWS is 10-times bigger than its next 14 competitors combined, while putting it at the top of the list against this year.

    Deutsche Bank also wrote in a recent note, “Oracle talked up its ‘next-gen’ infrastructure as a cheaper rival to AWS, but we don’t believe it will be competitive anytime soon.

    http://www.ctpost.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Amazon-cloud-boss-Andy-Jassy-fires-back-at-9970490.php

Datacenter

  • IBM, Google, others to unveil new open interface to take on Intel

    The new standard, called Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI), is an open forum to provide a high bandwidth, low latency open interface design specification.

    The open interface will help corporate and cloud data centers to speed up big data, machine learning, analytics and other emerging workloads.

    The consortium plans to make the OpenCAPI specification available to the public before the end of the year and expects servers and related products based on the new standard in the second half of 2017, it said in a statement.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-consortium-idUSKCN12E0C5

  • Dell shows off new logo…

    This looks like something Silicon Valley would do to make fun of an IT company.

Other

  • Joe Tucci Named Chairman of Bridge Growth Partners

    Bridge Growth Partners, LLC, a sector-focused, growth-oriented private equity firm, today announced that Joseph M. Tucci, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EMC Corporation and former Chairman of VMWare, has been named Chairman of the firm. Tucci has served on the firm’s Investment Committee and Advisory Board since Bridge Growth Partners was established in late 2013.

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161011005926/en/Joe-Tucci-Named-Chairman-Bridge-Growth-Partners

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise will have approximately $9 billion in net cash at the end of FY17

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise is expected to host analyst meeting event on October 18, and according to Mr. Hosseini, the management will surely divulge information regarding the high level of cash in the company’s balance sheet. Furthermore, the analyst expects insight regarding growth initiatives and the strategy used by the company in order to promote secular growth trends in key areas of business.

    http://www.thecountrycaller.com/22995-hewlett-packard-enterprise-co-hpe-liquidity-situation-continues-to-improve/

  • HP Inc will cut up to 4,000 jobs by 2019

    The world’s second-largest PC supplier has struggled in a dwindling market, and hopes the cutbacks will save the company between $200 to $300 million annually by 2020.

    However, HP will also incur an estimated $350 million to $500 million in restructuring costs.

    The announcement comes during a global decline in PC sales, dropping 5.7% in the third quarter compared to last year according to a report by Gartner. This represents the longest period of decline in the history of the PC industry.

    http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/27410/hp-will-cut-up-to-4000-jobs-by-2019

Photo: Tao Wen

Posted on

Supplier Report: 8/13/2016

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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/
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  • 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: 8/6/2016

Drowning

Yet another week where M&A dominates the news.

Verizon bought another company (Fleetmatics), SalesForce purchased Quip, and there are rumors that HPE might be up for sale (all of it or some of it). IBM is showing interest in purchasing point of sale company Revel.

IBM is also actually responsible for some technology news this week.  Their health AI systems are starting to target cancer symptoms as a means of early detection. They also maybe created an artificial neuron for super computers.

IBM

  • IBM IC detects cancer before symptoms appear

    “The societal impact of this research is that it could enable physicians to detect cancer early…when there are more possibilities of being cured,” Stolovitzky said. “We wanted this research to be in the area of cancer and also the area of detecting DNA and viruses like Zika. Everything reduces down to the same thing: being able to have a small and affordable diagnostic tool that can detect minute quantities of biomarker particles that tell physicians something about a person’s health.”scale of biology

    http://www.electronicsweekly.com/market-sectors/medical-electronics/ibm-ic-detects-cancer-before-symptoms-appear-2016-08/

  • IBM is reportedly in talks to buy point-of-sale software firm Revel Systems

    Bloomberg reports IBM (IBM) is in early talks to acquire Revel Systems, provider of an iPad-based point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software system for merchants.

    Revel competes with Square, PayPal (PYPL) , NCR (NCR) and others in the iPad POS market; its customers include Cinnabon, Chobani, and Popeyes. It has 750 employees, and was valued at more than $500 million in a $13.5 million 2015 funding round.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13660304/1/verizon-makes-a-telematics-acquisition-ibm-reportedly-mulls-a-retail-acquisition.html
    Is IBM Setting Up To Buy Revel Systems?

    With a Revel acquisition, IBM could theoretically refill a hole in its product line that has existed since the firm sold its point-of-sale business to Toshiba for $800 million in 2012. Revel, on the other hand, could possibly find itself with a soft exit from a market where funding rounds are getting fewer and further between.

    http://www.pymnts.com/news/point-of-sale/2016/ibm-acquire-revel-rumors/

  • IBM creates first-ever artificial neurons that behave like the real thing

    IBM researchers in Switzerland have created an artificial neuron that behaves just like the real thing. For the first time in history, artificial phase-change neurons have been grouped together (in a population of 500 synthesized in a lab) to process a neurological signal in more or less the same way that biological neurons transmit messages. They can be made exceptionally small and are similar in power and energy usage to biological neurons, and can even produce results with random variations, also just like biological neurons.

    http://inhabitat.com/ibm-creates-first-ever-artificial-neurons-that-behave-like-the-real-thing/

  • IBM’s Wager on Open Source Is Still Paying Off

    “It became apparent that open source could be the de facto standards we needed to be the engine to go out and drive things,” Moore said in his keynote at ApacheCon. “[The contributions] were bets; we didn’t know how this was going to come out, and we didn’t know if open source would grow, we knew there would be roadblocks and things we’d have to overcome along the way, but it had promise. We thought this would be the way of the future.”

    https://www.linux.com/news/ibms-wager-open-source-still-paying

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Is Hewlett Packard Enterprise up for sale?

    As explained by author Kevin McLaughlin, “a buyout would allow HPE, currently the world’s largest seller of servers and storage systems, to streamline outside the glare of public scrutiny.”

    Following McLaughlin’s claims, shares in the company spiked seven percent on the stock exchange, yet closed around 3.5 percent as more details of the potential deal emerged.

    According to Reuters, the firms are focused on acquiring certain software assets from the vendor, worth somewhere between $US6 billion and $US8 billion, rather than the entire company.

    http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/604318/hewlett-packard-enterprise-up-sale/
    HPE Reportedly Considers Going Private

    Reuters reported last week that sources familiar with the HPE private equity discussion said that buyout firms are focused on acquiring some software assets that HPE has been considering divesting, and that those are worth between $6 billion and $8 billion.

    The Reuters report added that the deal was for just the software assets and not the entire company. HPE’s software assets include technology gained in acquisitions such as Vertica Systems, Autonomy, and Mercury. The technologies include data analytics, cloud orchestration, and systems management. That group hasn’t been paying off as strongly as the company’s hardware business has.

    http://www.informationweek.com/software/hpe-reportedly-considers-going-private/d/d-id/1326467
    $40 billion buyout rumour persists as HPE cloud chief and storage boss leave company

    A number of key executives are to leave Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with the top-level departures coming at a time when rumours abound that the company is subject to a $40 billion takeover attempt.

    Head of Cloud Bill Hilf, along with Manish Goel, HPE’s storage boss, are set to leave the company for pastures new. However, the reshuffle did not stop there, with Robert Vriji, managing director of sales for the Americas also set to leave, as well as the high-profile retirement of Martin Fink, CTO and head of HP Labs. Fink will retire at the end of the year.

    http://www.cbronline.com/news/verticals/the-boardroom/40-billion-buyout-rumour-persists-as-hpe-cloud-chief-and-storage-boss-leave-company-4966767

  • PE Firms Looking to Acquire Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software Assets Worth $6B-$8B

    Private equity firms, including KKR NYSEKK, Apollo and Carlyle Group are seeking to acquire certain software assets from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, according to sources reported by Reuters on Friday. Earlier in the day, The Information reported those firms might make a bid for all of HPE.

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise declined comment on the report, while KKR, Apollo and Carlyle did not comment.

    http://www.benzinga.com/news/16/07/8282979/bemzingas-weekend-m-a-chatter

Storage

  • INFINIDAT Reports 60% Quarter Over Quarter Growth in Q2

    INFINIDAT continued to achieve significant sales traction in key vertical markets in Q2, reporting that 32 percent of sales was to leading firms in the finance sector, 28 percent was in technology, telecommunications and cloud services, and 24 percent was in healthcare and life sciences. INFINIDAT added several new customers in Q2, including BT (world-leading communications services provider), HMSA/Hawaii Medical Service Association (health insurer), Triple C (cloud services provider), and Credit Andorra (financial services).

    http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/27834/infinidat-reports-60-quarter-over-quarter-growth/

  • How Dell Raised $67 Billion for the Biggest Tech Deal Ever

    Some of Dell’s own potential banks balked early on, arguing that they simply could not sell enough junk bonds to finance the deal, and other lenders refused to participate if they could not easily resell some of the loans to other investors.

    Then Dell, Silver Lake and the bankers came up with an idea, pushed hard by Mr. Durban: Sell more high-rated loans and bonds, a questionable idea for a junk-rated company like Dell.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/business/dealbook/how-dell-pieced-together-67-billion-to-buy-emc.html

Other

  • Oracle’s Latest Purchase Opens the Door for More Pricey Tech Deals

    Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies like Salesforce, which deliver software over the Internet, are of particular interest because that sales delivery model is becoming more successful with corporate customers. Neeraj Agrawal, a general partner with Battery Ventures, estimates that SaaS—as hot as it’s been—still represents just 15% of current software market, but he suggests that won’t be the case for long.

    http://fortune.com/2016/07/29/oracle-netsuite-tech-mergers/

  • Verizon buys Fleetmatics for $2.4B in cash to step up in telematics

    More generally, the acquisition of Fleetmatics points to ways that Verizon is continuing to use its balance sheet to finance investments into newer areas to offset continuing declines in its core, legacy business of basic phone services. As that market has become increasingly commoditized and people turn to other, digitised forms of communication away from traditional voice services, Verizon is hoping to invest into newer areas to move beyond “dumb pipe” status to keep its margins up, and revenues growing.

    While its acquisition of AOL (and now Yahoo) will help Verizon scale up its media, advertising and content operations, Fleetmatics is pointing straight to Verizon’s ambitions in enterprise services, and specifically enterprise mobility.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/01/verizon-buys-fleetmatics-for-2-4b-in-cash-to-step-up-in-telematics
    sn_ryback_fmm

  • Salesforce buys word processing app Quip for $750M

    It’s not clear why Quip — which was growing and in the enviable position of being very selective about taking funding from VCs — decided to sell up to Salesforce. But it’s an interesting turn in the ongoing consolidation that we’ve seen in the enterprise market, and how that is transforming the bigger companies that are doing the buying.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/01/salesforce-buys-word-processing-app-quip-for-750m/

  • AWS prints money for Amazon, but can Microsoft, Google and IBM catch up?

    As revealed last week, the AWS division of Amazon reported 58 percent year-to-year growth to almost $US2.9 billion, supported by continued operating efficiency that enabled the business to reach $US718 million in operating profit.

    Worldwide Cloud infrastructure services expenditure grew 52.3 percent year on year in Q2 2016, with Canalys findings pitching AWS as the leading Cloud infrastructure services provider, accounting for 30.4 percent of total spend.

    http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/604414/aws-prints-money-amazon-can-microsoft-google-ibm-catch-up/

  • Is the End Near for Tableau Software Inc?

    Data visualization company, Tableau is scheduled to report second quarter earnings tonight, after the market closes. The stock is perpetually one of the most beaten down during earnings season. After Q4 earnings, shares dropped nearly 50%, only to drop an additional 10% following Q1 earnings. Early indications appear as if they are heading in the same direction ahead of tonight’s report. Just this week Deutsche Bank downgraded the stock to “hold” from “buy” on concerns of slow margin growth. For Tableau to stop the slow bleed, it will have to convince investors that this and future quarters can generate sustainable growth.

    http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/08/tableau-software-inc-data-shortsell-earnings/

  • Teradata: Could This Be The Start Of Something Big?

    At this point, TDC has more than $7.20/share in cash although 98% of the cash is offshore. It also has long-term debt of $552 million. The current enterprise value is $3.44 billion which produces an EV/S for the current year of 1.49X. Based on the company’s current projection, the free cash flow yield for TDC will be 8% or so. The company indicated that there is potential upside to the free cash flow estimate based on the year-ending profile of assets and liabilities, particularly A/R. The company has a P/E of 12X current year non-GAAP earnings. Stock-based comp is quite low at around 10% of reported non-GAAP earnings. The other adjusting items have to do with one-time charges related to the disposition of the company’s marketing assets business as well as reorganization costs. With those kind of valuation metrics, there is plenty of upside if the company’s efforts to re-invent itself are even marginally successful. With that level of valuation, the company presents a very attractive acquisition target to both strategic and private equity investors. In the wake of the company’s guidance for the next two quarters, I think downside exposure is very limited as well.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3994915-teradata-start-something-big
    Big Data acquisitions: All about the enterprise

    Why would Teradata execute a services play not just once, but twice? Ultimately, it would seem to come down to Enterprise sales. Implementing big data — and doing it successfully — is still hard, and experienced consulting shops/Systems Integrators (SIs) can make enterprise customers feel a lot more confident moving forward with it. That puts them in the perfect position to recommend tools and technologies. So, having a manageably small, but geographically distributed, services organization can be very helpful to Teradata indeed.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/big-data-acquisitions-all-about-the-enterprise/

Photo: Phoebe Dill