Tag: EMC

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Supplier Report: 5/23/2015

sn_sparklers

Several companies are moving into the OpenStack cloud platform. In last week’s report, I covered Oracle’s openstack plans, this week both IBM and EMC released offerings as well.

HP’s recent performance earnings indicate that the company is in a slump.   Down 21% from this time last year, the company seems to be in a daze before its historical split.

The rumors of Salesforce being purchased reached a peak with reports that Microsoft making a $55B offer for the company, which was rejected due to SalesForce wanting something closer to $70B.

IBM

  • Unusual IBM Breach Could Make Coverage Ruling An Outlier

    In a closely watched case, the Connecticut high court unanimously found Monday that Federal Insurance Co. and Scottsdale Insurance Co. don’t have to cover losses stemming from a data breach that occurred when a cart holding computer tapes with IBM employees’ sensitive information fell out of the back of a transportation contractor’s van near a highway exit ramp. About 130 of the tapes, which contained the Social Security numbers, birth dates and contact information of 500,000 past and present IBM workers, were taken from the roadside by an unknown person.

    http://www.law360.com/articles/657168/unusual-ibm-breach-could-make-coverage-case-an-outlier

  • IBM is bringing OpenStack to SoftLayer (Oracle last week and IBM this week)

    Rather than using a single cloud provider, enterprises want to hedge their bets and spread workloads across multiple providers, or between a cloud provider and an in-house deployment. This year, 82 percent of organizations will adopt a multi-cloud strategy, up from 74 percent in 2014, according to a survey from cloud management services provider RightScale.

    http://www.cio.com.au/article/575370/ibm-brings-openstack-its-softlayer-cloud/

  • Around 90 Inverclyde jobs axed as IBM moves roles to Bulgaria

    Most of the affected workers are employed by agency Manpower on behalf of IBM, which refused to comment on the employees facing the cuts.

    http://news.stv.tv/west-central/1321243-around-90-inverclyde-jobs-axed-as-ibm-moves-roles-to-bulgaria/

  • Dubuque officials say national IBM article was a ‘hatchet job’

    Both articles cited the decline in workers from a peak of 1,300 to 625, as well as the state and local incentives offered prior to the company’s arrival. The articles also referenced a recent letter from U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that questioned company leaders’ request to hire workers on temporary foreign visas while laying off other employees.

    http://www.thonline.com/news/dubuque/article_433b7c36-0015-11e5-8fae-0b042e6f27ae.html

  • And so it begins: The first IBM/Apple iWatch app:

    Hospital RN is an app that allows nurses to do their jobs more efficiently by providing them with on-the-go data and alerts.

    http://www.techradar.com/us/news/wearables/apple-and-ibm-mobilefirst-apps-hit-the-apple-watch-1294759

EMC

  • EMC also offers two OpenStack solutions

    EMC’s rapid acceleration into the OpenStack community and open source communities in general is in part due to its OpenStack Cloud reference architectures, its new software defined storage controller CoprHD, EMC {Code}, its newly launched EMC CloudFoundry Dojo, and EMC’s recent OPNFV Sponsorship. EMC also recently releases two new driers for the Kilo release, Cinder and Manila.

    http://www.storagereview.com/emc_announces_two_new_openstack_solutions

HP

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Supplier Report: 5/16/2015

sn_theprisoner2

IBM news continues to be dominated by Watson Health.  Nothing new was announced this week, but analysts are catching up with the news and highlighting the trends.

Oracle and EMC continue their less-than-graceful transition to the cloud.  Oracle is looking at lower cost (from their own hardware) Open Stack framework, while EMC also focuses on bringing a more flexible cloud solution to market.

And just because… Verizon buys AOL (for their content like Huffington Post and TechCrunch…probably).

IBM

Oracle

  • Oracle Trying On OpenStack For Size

    Still, even if Oracle can define $7 billion of its revenue as “cloud” this year, it would still represent less than 20% of last year’s $38.3 billion in revenue. Having its own true cloud, built on an open source infrastructure like OpenStack, would accelerate the move to true cloud economics. So might buying a profitable, growing OpenStack cloud provider like Rackspace(NYSE:RAX), but that’s purely speculation

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3183236-oracle-trying-on-openstack-for-size

  • The incredible rags-to-riches story of Oracle founder Larry Ellison

    “The very first version was Oracle Version 2,” he admitted at a customer conference last year. Their ploy worked. Oracle’s first customer was a big one: the CIA. It later became the most popular database ever sold. That success paid off for Ellison — according to the Wall Street Journal, he was the highest paid executive in the US before he stepped down as CEO in 2014.

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/rags-to-riches-story-of-larry-ellison-2015-5

  • In Google Versus Oracle, Obama’s Administration is Torn

    It’s a complicated and very technical issue, something that is not necessarily the forte of the Supreme Court. The fight over what is defensible as copyrighted work or not is far from resolved at any level, this is just the most high-profile manifestation of it. If the Supreme Court does take the case and rule on it one way or another, it could have a lot of long-term implications for how patents and trademarks on API code are treated. If Oracle wins, expect plenty more claims of ownership and a lot of litigation to come, at least in the short term. If Google wins, there will be less of that. That’s why Google’s argument includes the idea that without that code, the company wouldn’t have succeeded, meaning that innovation would be slowed if Oracle were to win.

    http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2015/05/15/obama-torn-over-google-googl-vs-oracle-orcl-court-fight/

EMC

  • Why ‘Project Horizon’ spells long-term gains for EMC

    According to Clarke, Project Horizon is a “big departure” for EMC from the extensive ECM platform it has become associated with over the past few years. “With one of the largest portfolios of ECM capabilities, its platform has often been criticized as being too complex and expensive to implement,” Clarke claims. “By contrast, Project Horizon is built on Pivotal Cloud Foundry and will offer a choice of cloud deployments.

    http://www.reseller.co.nz/article/575000/insight-why-project-horizon-spells-long-term-gains-emc/

  • EMC “eating its young” to survive say analysts

    Above all, Furrier suggested, “They need to take care of their current situation — they need to get out of the box business.” In the current competitive market, Furrier advocated that EMC “build an OS for the data center and enterprise,” despite the disruption this might cause. Furthermore, Furrier put forward the notion that “EMC has to become a utility platform with a business model that can compete in the current era.” The “game-changing moves” that EMC needs to make, said Furrier, should be “real-time, API-based” and include “unlimited compute.”

    http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/05/11/emc-eating-its-young-to-survive-say-analysts-emcworld/

  • EMC: Rise of third platform could spell end for businesses unwilling to adapt

    As alluded to by Goulden, the rise of the Information Generation and their preference for third-platform apps and services poses a major challenge for enterprises, which will need to adapt the way they work to the way this group of users likes to consume services.

    http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500246008/EMC-claims-rise-of-third-platform-could-spell-end-for-businesses-unwilling-to-adapt

Other

 

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Supplier Report: 5/9/2015

sn_nileriver

IBM made headlines this week with the news that they are selling off Rivermine to Tangoe, allowing the company to focus on big data and strengthening Tangoe’s market-share in the TEM space. Big data and analysis continues to be the major theme with IBM at the moment with news of a partnership with Facebook to improve targeted ads to users. More importantly, it was announced that cancer centers will be using Watson to scan genetic reports for cancer trends.

EMC is starting to think about a post physical storage world while HP can’t move past their Autonomy purchase.

IBM

  • More on the IBM selling Rivermine to Tangoe:

    From an IBM perspective, it will be curious to see if the divestiture allows a refocusing of developing on the other Emptoris assets, including what Spend Matters believes would be a helpful re-platforming of the Emptoris product line to more effectively compete with where other competitive upstream suite solutions (e.g., BravoSolution, Iasta/Selectica, SciQuest, Ivalua, GEP) have headed or are going. For generic sourcing suites, single stack – and ideally a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model – is the future; spanning sourcing, supplier management, contract management, analytics and more.

    http://spendmatters.com/2015/05/08/ibmemptoris-divests-rivermine-tangoe-picks-up-10m-tem-business-vendor-and-market-analysis/

    PS: There is another important point in the post:

    Now, it appears that a single provider will have the upper hand in terms of market share if not breadth of solution (it will also likely create less pricing pressure on TEM solutions generally, although IBM was never in the business of lowering prices).

  • IBM and Facebook just partnered up:

    Marketers and brand managers will be able to leverage Facebook’s customer insights from its rich user base and Custom Audience (an ad targeting feature) along with IBM’s marketing cloud and analytics capabilities to offer more personalized and targeted advertisements for users. Furthermore, the combined capabilities of Facebook and IBM will allow brands to strategically select users that are more likely to respond to advertisements thereby allowing them to communicate more effectively.

    http://www.investing.com/analysis/facebook—ibm-join-forces-to-develop-marketing-solutions-251078

  • 14 Centers to Use IBM Watson for Cancer Genetics

    Oncologists will upload the DNA fingerprint of a patient’s tumor, which indicates which genes are mutated and possibly driving the malignancy. Watson will then look for actionable targets, matching them to approved and experimental cancer drugs and even non-cancer drugs (if Watson decides the latter interface with a biological pathway driving a malignancy). The centers will pay a subscription fee for Watson, which IBM did not disclose.

    http://hitconsultant.net/2015/05/08/14-centers-use-ibm-watson-cancer-genetics/

    Also in Watson news, IBM is planning more cloud capabilities for the system:

    Watson Hybrid Cloud will use Watson Explorer—a cognitive computing exploration capability for the enterprise—as the on-premises platform for the application development, combining enterprise data sources into the application through a scalable environment that keeps utilized data local, private and secure, IBM said.

    http://www.eweek.com/cloud/ibm-gives-watson-new-hybrid-cloud-capabilities.html

  • SAP, IBM to integrate their HR solutions

    With availability planned for mid-2015, the first offering from this alliance includes a planned integration between the SuccessFactors Employee Central solution and IBM Kenexa’s cloud-based HR software Talent Acquisition Suite. This integration is expected to enable IBM customers to move their HR information systems (HRIS) to the cloud with the leading core HR solution from SuccessFactors, an SAP company, while helping to protect their recruiting investments, and provide customers of SuccessFactors Employee Central with a broader set of options for recruiting, assessment and onboarding of candidates.

    http://www.firstpost.com/business/sap-ibm-integrate-hr-solutions-2234852.html

  • How IBM is monetizing Watson:

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/102643778

EMC

HP

Here is a funny footnote about HP the last few weeks: I build this report on saved Google alerts dumped to RSS feeds.  For HP, Carly Fiorina’s presidential hopes have dominated the news cycle (thousands of articles), completely choking out actual business news. 

  • Thought this story was going away?  Wrong.  HP sues Autonomy founder for $5bn

    What’s striking about all of this is that when news of HP’s Autonomy quest surfaced—the plan leaked before the announcement—the near-universal reaction was that HP, which was struggling with a low-margin PC business and trying to bulk up its software and systems portfolios, was overpaying for interesting but perhaps not world-beating technology. Autonomy’s multi-media search technology worked across audio, and video, not just text, for example. It also had an augmented reality business.

    http://fortune.com/2015/05/05/hp-autonomy-legal-war/?xid=timehp-popular

Other

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Supplier Report: 5/2/2015

sn_steak

The big news this week is SalesForce potentially being up for sale.  There were hundreds of articles discussing potential buyers with IBM, Oracle, HP, and Microsoft being the only viable contenders.

Speaking of Oracle and HP, outside of the Saleforce news, there wasn’t much new information posted (same recycled stories).  Sometimes you are looking for the sizzle and the steak, so focus was shifted to other suppliers this week like EMC and Red Hat.

IBM

  • Apple and IBM are looking to get iPads in the hands of the elderly:

    The collaboration calls for Apple to provide iPads and IBM to deliver apps and analytics software to connect millions of Japanese seniors with services, healthcare, community and their families under the national Post Office Watch service. IBM will write software that alerts Post Office Watch customers to take their medicine, provide them with exercise and diet information and assist with tasks such as grocery shopping.

    http://thevarguy.com/business-technology-solution-sales/050115/apple-ibm-japan-post-supply-tablets-elderly-japanese

  • IBM introduces new quantum computing chip:

    IBM’s new chip is the first to integrate the basic devices needed to build a quantum computer, known as qubits, into a 2-D grid. Researchers think one of the best routes to making a practical quantum computer would involve creating grids of hundreds or thousands of qubits working together. The circuits of IBM’s chip are made from metals that become superconducting when cooled to extremely low temperatures. The chip operates at only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

    http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537041/ibm-shows-off-a-quantum-computing-chip/

  • IBM boosts divident by 18%

    The increase will cost the company an extra $197.7 million a quarter and brings the dividend yield to about 3%.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-boosts-quarterly-dividend-18-1430232709

  • Cloud is not a high margin business:

    AWS, which many thought was running at break-even or possibly at a loss, turns out to be for Amazon a $5 billion business generating a third of the company’s total profits. That’s good, right? Not if it establishes a benchmark for typical-to-good cloud service provider performance. In fact it suggests that some companies — IBM especially — are going to have a very difficult time finding success in the cloud.

    http://betanews.com/2015/04/28/aws-shows-cloud-is-not-a-high-margin-business/

  • Interesting “what if” post of IBM buying TCS…

    It’s simple – make a move on the largest, most aggressive and dynamic of the Indian-heritage providers:  TCS.   Together, they would crush the market across all aspects of delivery, all verticals, all technologies because their individual forays in the As-a-Service world could play off each other and get scale even quicker.  They would have skill at massive scale and could undercut the competition on key deals – almost at will – if they needed to.

    http://www.horsesforsources.com/ibm-tcs_042515

EMC

Other

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Supplier Report: 4/25/2015

amazon_bot

Amazon Web Service’s announcement of their value and performance is forcing the other suppliers to react.  There was a substantial amount of articles for each supplier this week comparing their performance and strategy against Amazon’s.

Cloud growth and SaaS expansion is the loose theme of the week. Oracle is looking to have 95% of their products available via SaaS by October.  IBM continues to grow SoftLayer internationally and focus on methods of connecting (and gathering data from) everything.

IBM

  • IBM “pushing boundaries” of IoT with Peugeot tie up

    As part of the new partnership – which will last for seven years – IBM and PSA will work with partners to develop connected solutions and services, which they hope to take out to their business customers and consumers.”The number of cars connected worldwide is expected to grow significantly to a quarter billion by 2020,” IBM said. “Until now, however, most of the innovations available have primarily focused on smartphone apps, navigation and roadside assistance. IBM and PSA will share the responsibilities of developing, selling and marketing, as well as delivering and implementing connected services with new and existing clients.”

    http://www.channelnomics.com/channelnomics-us/news/2405305/ibm-pushing-boundaries-of-iot-with-peugeot-tie-up

  • Hortonworks, IBM and Pivotal to Support Open Data Platform in Their Big Data Solutions

    The ODP initiative is an industry effort focused on simplifying the adoption of Apache Hadoop for the enterprise, and enabling big data solutions. It will also provide a set of tools and methods for the group members to create and test their offerings based on the ODP Core platform.

    http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/04/hortonworks-odp

  • IBM is Canada’s Most Attractive Employer

    Recruitment and HR services company Randstad Canada awarded IBM with the title at a ceremony held at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.

    http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadas-most-attractive-employer-2015-04-24

  • IBM sentenced to pay 6.5 million as contractual damages for failed CRM solution (thought this would be interesting to share)

    In 2004, IBM won a call to tender launched by MAIF in relation to the rebuilding of its Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) by integrating new software. On December 14, 2004, a contract was concluded between IBM and MAIF, pursuant to which IBM was to provide, for a fixed price of €7,302,822, software that was compliant with the scope determined by the parties and a strict schedule. These commitments were defined as an obligation of result, whose breach can only be justified by an external cause such as force majeure or the other party’s default. However, the project fell behind shortly afterwards.

    http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ibm-sentenced-to-pay-65-million-as-cont-90381/

  • IBM is helping Chinese company make company and patent acquisitions:

    IBM has announced plans “to help a little-known Chinese company (Teamsun) absorb and build upon key technologies” that IBM licenses, according to the New York Times. The buyer knows what to do with that intellectual property: its advisor, Shen Changxiang, is the former supervisor of the cybersecurity of China’s strategic missile arsenal, was in charge of computer security research for China’s increasingly potent navy, and is a long-time critic of his nation’s reliance on U.S. technology. Teamsun makes no secret of its goal: eliminating the need to buy American products. IBM wants access to China’s market for its “rope”, and the price it is willing to pay is teaching China how to make its own.

    http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/lenin-was-right_928054.html

  • IBM opens a SoftLayer center in the Netherlands

    The company said the new datacentre, located in Almere just outside Amsterdam, will double SoftLayer capacity in the region and provide customers with more in-country options for data storage and geographically isolated services.

    http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2015/04/23/ibm-adds-second-softlayer-datacentre-in-the-netherlands/

Oracle

  • Oracle CEO Hurd Plans to Lift Almost All Products Into Cloud

    Around 65 percent of Oracle’s products are available on the cloud today, Hurd said in the interview, held on Thursday. That will climb to 95 percent by the time the company holds its annual Oracle OpenWorld conference in October, he said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-24/oracle-ceo-hurd-plans-to-lift-almost-all-products-into-cloud

  • Oracle CEO Mark Hurd cuts loose at Boston College executive event

    On SalesForce: “It’s just a fact: Their earnings, the reason they have a very high earnings ratio, is because they don’t make any money…. There’s no cash flow. So when you look for a category that says ‘cash flow multiplier,’ it says ‘n/a.’ What are they worth right now? $35 billion? Who cares? It’s absurd. But they’re quote-unquote, ‘cool.’ And people ask me for real numbers, they ask, ‘Well, what’s your cash flow?’… What are we worth right now, $190 billion, $180, something like that? And we have to do it with real numbers. It’s crazy, just crazy.”

    http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/bottom_line/2015/04/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-cuts-loose-at-boston-college.html

HP

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