Tag: Google

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Supplier Report: 7/16/2016

sn_beach_JoshuaNess

The fight between Google, Microsoft, and AWS (with IBM and Oracle fighting for scraps) is the major news trend of the week.

Microsoft announced a partnership with GE that will introduce their Predix IoT engine into the Azure cloud. Meanwhile, Google’s Diane Greene says Google can beat AWS and Microsoft in almost any RFP because they know cloud the best.  Amazon said the origins of their cloud infrastructure was a reaction to legacy IT providers “not caring”, especially once the sale was inked.

While cloud was a major topic, HPE once again is making headlines for exploring the possibility of selling off some of their enterprise software (seriously… this again?).

IBM

  • Inside IBM’s New App-Building Training Ground

    While the New York garage is similar to the others IBM has in cities like Toronto, San Francisco, and London, IBM is specifically making an open pitch to blockchain developers. Blockchain is a technology made famous by bitcoin, which has a public digital ledger for every transaction performed that can be shared among a distributed network. Many companies are tinkering with blockchain because it could change the way digital transactions are performed. IBM says this is because it sees an increased need for training and leadership when it comes to this burgeoning technology. Financial services—along with multiple other industries—are trying to figure out ways they can use this new system (which was introduced to the world thanks to bitcoin), and implement it into their system. Many New York-based companies are trying to figure out what they can do. While there’s a blockchain focus in the New York garage, the space isn’t exclusively for that technology.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3061668/the-future-of-work/inside-ibms-new-app-building-training-ground

  • OpenText CEO Takes Aim at IBM Watson #OTEW

    “Our path on software is pure openness: open standards and open algorithms,” Barrenechea said. “IBM’s platform is closed. Our hardware is built open standard x86. You can chose your vendor, and you can choose your design. With IBM Watson, it’s closed. You use the Watson mainframe when you’re there.”

    http://www.cmswire.com/information-management/opentext-ceo-takes-aim-at-ibm-watson-otew/
    IBM Responds:

    Reached by CMSWire after Barrenechea’s comments, IBM Watson Chief Technology Officer Rob High said the cognitive APIs and services on the Watson platform are available to any developer who wants to build a Watson application.

    “These APIs are available to the public on our Watson Developer Cloud,” he said, “but we’re expanding to other platforms as well.”

  • Microsoft and IBM in a deal to push Surface devices to enterprises
    I wonder how IBM’s buddies at Apple feel about this… not well I imagine.

    For IBM, the deal is much like the one it struck with Apple in 2014 to develop apps for iPhones and iPads. IBM will acquire more enterprise software customers, and it won’t have to worry about supporting the hardware.

    The IBM custom software will take advantage of unique Surface features, Microsoft said. The applications will revolve around analytics, reporting, employee productivity, management and forecasting.

    http://www.itworld.com/article/3094383/microsoft-and-ibm-in-a-deal-to-push-surface-devices-to-enterprises.html

Microsoft

  • Microsoft wins landmark data storage case

    A unanimous decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Microsoft did not have to turn over documents from an email account stored in an Irish data center despite a 2013 warrant.

    “We have little trouble concluding that execution of the Warrant would constitute an unlawful extraterritorial application of [the U.S. authority],” wrote Circuit Judge Susan L. Carney in the official opinion.

    http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/287763-microsoft-wins-landmark-data-storage-case

  • Yes, Windows 10 subscriptions are coming, at least for enterprise

    Beginning this fall, Microsoft will offer Windows 10 Enterprise E3, a special enterprise tier of Windows 10 that will cost $7 per user per month. Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of the Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft, said cloud providers would now be able to offer three premier Microsoft services on a subscription basis: Microsoft’s Azure, Office 365, and now Windows 10.

    “For the price of a cup of coffee and a donut per day, you can get enterprise-class security on a per-user subscription basis,” Mehdi said onstage at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, Canada. “If you’re a cloud provider, this is now phenomenal.”

    I love the “cup of coffee” line… it is a total diversion tactic.
    machoman_cream
    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3094785/windows/yes-windows-10-subscriptions-are-coming-at-least-for-enterprise.html

  • Instant Analysis: GE Brings Its Predix Industrial Software to Microsoft’s Cloud

    Predix is one of GE’s major investments in the Internet of Things, and it allows companies to manage and analyze industrial equipment (jet engines, factory machines, etc.) to improve their efficiency and reduce downtime.

    “Bringing Predix to Azure means those same customers will now have access to additional capabilities such as natural language technology, artificial intelligence, advanced data visualization and enterprise application integration,” Microsoft and GE said in a press release.

    The companies said Predix will also be integrated with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Suite, Cortana Intelligence Suite, Office 365, and other services, so that Predix customers can access industrial data in their business software.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/12/instant-analysis-ge-brings-its-predix-industrial-s.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004

  • Kevin Turner’s departure from Microsoft generates cries of happiness from employees

    Microsoft’s Executive Vice President for its Windows and Devices group also received negative opinions from some of its employees. Over 60% of the employees believe Turner was fired, although that wasn’t the case, and a mini-poll shows that 93 out of 95 of them felt “crazy happy” about this. Only two seemed to feel “crying sad”. Turner was known for being pretty rough, similar to ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, who was also known for being quick to throw anger around, especially as Turner was brought in whilst Ballmer was at the throne.

    http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2464435/microsoft-employees-have-almighty-bitchfest-over-executives-turner-and-myerson

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

Oracle

  • Oracle’s $9B Lawsuit with Google Sees New Development

    Per media reports, last Wednesday Oracle appealed to the San Francisco U.S. District Court to reconsider the verdict. The filing stated that “Google’s financial rewards are as ‘conspicuous’ as they come, and unprecedented in the case law.” Oracle claims that Google has gained over $42 billion from Android powered by its Java APIs and therefore demanded a share of its profit.

    However, Google had earlier defended itself saying that the Java code was free and open and there have been no copyright infringements. In fact, Google’s stance was also supported by a majority of the Java programming community (including most of Silicon Valley) which believed that a decision in Oracle’s favor could prove detrimental to innovation as programmers use open source APIs across various interfaces for developing codes.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oracles-9b-lawsuit-google-sees-150603905.html

Storage (EMC | Dell )

  • John Byrne becomes president of Dell and EMC unified global channel

    John Byrne an ex Advanced 3D, ATI, AMD executive has just got promoted again at Dell. He is now president of the Dell and EMC global channel. Mike Magee and Fudo have known John Byrne for close to two decades, but now is not the time for kiss and tell.

    This is a huge success for Byrne who started at Dell as global vice president of Sales Strategy and Operations in July 2015, then got promoted to be global vice president of Sales Strategy, Operations and Channels at Dell in October.

    http://www.fudzilla.com/news/41103-john-byrne-is-president-dell-and-emc-global-channel

Other

  • AWS says tech legacy vendors ‘don’t care’ about enterprise customers

    In contrast, he accused legacy IT vendors of “extortionist techniques” to hit that revenue, saying: “They forced you to pay upfront even if you are not going to use [what you buy].”

    Amazon went on to reference a stream of enterprise customers using its software, after UK MD, Gavin Jackson, recognised that many in the audience were not serious AWS users, but people interested in hearing more of what the company has to offer their businesses.

    While AWS claims to have more than one million customers worldwide, and the largest number of start-ups (including behemoths like Spotify and Netflix) on its books, it wants more enterprise customers to start using its platform.

    http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/leadership/cloud-essentials/6145/aws-says-tech-legacy-vendors-don-t-care-about-enterprise-customers

  • Google cloud boss Diane Greene: We’re winning against AWS and Microsoft

    “We can actually win an RFP pretty much every time against AWS or Azure. Our growth is great,” Greene told attendees of the Fortune Brainstorm Tech show in Aspen, Colorado on Monday.

    “We have the best infrastructure, our own network backbone, our own fiber, a very cost-effective data centers, very automated.”

    http://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-boss-on-aws-and-microsoft-2016-7

  • Why Teradata Corporation Fell 11.5% in June

    Plenty of stocks plunged on the outcome of the Brexit vote, but Teradata suffered more than most. The U.K. has been a solid growth market for Teradata’s data and analytics products in recent quarters, so the prospect of slower orders from that hamstrung economy can be scary to Teradata investors.

    Then, analyst firm CLSA posted a report, explaining that a low-cost bulk storage product known as Amazon Redshift is growing much faster than its traditional rivals. The data warehousing package more than tripled its revenue in 2015 while Teradata and other traditional providers posted shrinking sales.

    That one-two punch lowered Teradata shares more than 14% in just two days.

    http://www.pantagraph.com/business/investment/markets-and-stocks/why-teradata-corporation-fell-in-june/article_417c9709-6078-570f-a7b7-48355263a7ec.html

Photo: Joshua Ness

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/9/2016

sn_sparkle_Matt Hoffman

Nothing Earth-shattering occurred this week in IT supplier news, but that did give the news media time to collect their thoughts on the last few weeks of massive news stories.

One interesting tidbit is news that IBM formed a new company with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to address medical supply chain costs.

There is also a follow-up to a news item from this week’s podcast regarding a potential open source fork in Java EE.

IBM

  • Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation versus International Business Machines Corporation Head to Head Compare

    Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation has a substantially higher fundamental rating then International Business Machines Corporation which has an impact on the head-to-head comparison. The CML Star Rating is an objective, quantifiable measure of a company’s operating and financial condition. The rating is computed by measuring numerous elements of the company’s current financial data and their associated changes over time.

    http://news.cmlviz.com/2016/07/08/cognizant-technology-solutions-corporation-and-international-business-machines-corporation-head-to-head-compare.html
    sn_cog_ibm_compare_2016

  • Healthcare Supply Chain to Get the Watson Treatment

    The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and IBM announced on Thursday the formation of an independent company, Pensiamo, to tackle one of healthcare’s fastest-growing expenses, supply chain costs.

    Under pressure to control costs, a vital element of the move to value-based care, providers need to understand costs down to individual patients the companies said.

    http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/technology/healthcare-supply-chain-get-watson-treatment

  • IBM to hire Microsoft veteran Karan Bajwa

    Karan Bajwa was instrumental in establishing Microsoft’s Azure and Office 365 business in India. IBM aims to enhance transformational deals in India with the appointment of Karan Bajwa. Earlier, Karan Bajwa had a stint with IBM and was based out of Singapore.

    http://www.infotechlead.com/hr/ibm-hire-microsoft-veteran-karan-bajwa-40890

  • Better Buy: HP vs. IBM

    HP is overly reliant on PCs and printers, both dying industries in their current form. HP’s innovative tablets and 3D printers should give shareholders some hope, but there remain too many uncertainties and obstacles to overcome. Second, IBM’s migration into cloud, AI, and IoT analytics sales offers limitless upside, as each category is further along the growth curve than HP’s tablets or 3D printers. Investor patience is necessary in either case, but IBM will reward that patience before HP manages to.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/04/better-buy-hp-vs-ibm.aspx

Microsoft

  • Jhonsa: Microsoft’s Latest Moves Ought to Make SAP and Oracle a Little Nervous

    On Wednesday, the company said it’s doubling down on its business app efforts by putting all of its apps into one product line, launching new business apps and integrating the products with other Microsoft offerings, including the widely-used Office 365.

    While the solution isn’t going to eat SAP and Oracle’s lunch, it should make the enterprise software giants a little nervous, as it leaves Microsoft well-positioned to add to recent share gains.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13631263/1/jhonsa-microsoft-rsquo-s-latest-moves-ought-to-make-sap-and-oracle-a-little-nervous.html

  • Microsoft leadership shake-up as veteran exec departs

    Microsoft on Thursday announced a shake-up in its top ranks, including the departure of longtime chief operating officer Kevin Turner for a new job.

    Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said that five executives will divide the duties held by Turner, who played a pivotal role over the past decade as Microsoft shifted from packaged software to programs offered as services in the internet cloud to a gamut of connected devices.

    Turner will remain at Microsoft to aid with the transition through this month, then leave to become chief executive officer at global financial firm Citadel Securities, according to Nadella.

    https://www.yahoo.com/tech/microsoft-leadership-shake-veteran-exec-departs-171217916.html
    Microsoft’s Nadella Reshapes Top Management as Turner Leaves

    Other executives already reporting to Nadella will take on parts of Turner’s job, with Chris Capossela leading worldwide marketing, Kurt DelBene leading IT and Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood taking over the sales and marketing team’s finance group, which had been separate.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/microsoft-s-nadella-reshapes-management-team-as-turner-leaves

  • Microsoft’s biggest acquisitions: from disaster to so-so

    Most recently, that meant buying LinkedIn in a shocker of a $26.2 billion deal that also ranks as Microsoft’s biggest ever. Before that, Microsoft made huge purchases in the form of Nokia, “Minecraft” developer Mojang, Skype, and lots of others.

    Some of them added valuable new business software to Microsoft’s portfolio. Some of them flamed out, big-time. At least once, a police raid was involved.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-biggest-acquisitions-ever-2016-7

  • Microsoft challenges Google Hangouts with free ‘Skype Meetings’ service
    When are we going to see Skype and Lync merge so enterprise users have access to these features?

    Microsoft today released a new free tool called Skype Meetings that allows small businesses and others to have audio and video meetings, challenging Google Hangouts and other free videoconference services.

    Skype Meetings is for businesses that do not already have an Office 365 subscription and is basically a light version of Skype for Business. The program allows virtual meetings of up to 10 people initially and three people after the first 60 days. Skype for Business can support as many as 250 people in a meeting.

    http://www.geekwire.com/2016/skype-meetings/

Storage (EMC | Dell )

  • EMC-Dell deal gets thumbs-up from key shareholder group

    EMC Corp. picked up an important endorsement for its proposed merger with Dell this week when the proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis advised EMC shareholders to vote in favor of the deal.

    Glass Lewis is a powerful voice among shareholders, as the second-largest proxy advisory firm in the world. It provides guidance to its clients, large institutional investors managing more than $25 trillion in assets, on how they should vote on corporate governance issues.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/07/07/emc-dell-deal-gets-thumbs-up-from-key-shareholder.html

Oracle

  • Java EE followers devise plan to seize control from Oracle

    The main reason behind this split according to Java EE advocates is Oracle’s perceived disinterest in the platform. According to them, lack of support from Oracle will leave them with no option but to move forward with their own improvements.

    Java EE 8 with HTTP 2.0 and HTML5 support is reportedly being readied for June 2017 release. But the Java EE advocates say that Oracle will miss this date. So they have formed two groups to enhance Java EE on their own, outside of the jurisdiction of Oracle and the formal JCP (Java Community Process).

    The two groups are Java EE Guardians and MicroProfile.io, will work independently from Oracle and will build extensions to accommodate microservices in Java EE. Red Hat and IBM have joined in as contributors to MicroProfile.io. Payara, which has built a drop-in replacement for the open-source GlassFish Java EE application server that Oracle has reduced its attention to, is participating as well.

    http://www.techworm.net/2016/07/java-ee-followers-devise-plan-seize-control-oracle.html

Other

  • Inside Google And Microsoft’s Race To Catch Amazon In The Trillion-Dollar Cloud

    Google did not have the DNA to create a giant new operation focused solely on selling technology services to other businesses.

    That’s why Greene’s name kept coming up. As Google came to terms with the opportunity, Page asked her to take over the company’s cloud computing efforts. She demurred. Soon enough, other executives and fellow board members followed up with her. It was finally Urs Hölzle, one of Google’s earliest engineers and the man most responsible for building Google’s computing infrastructure, who persuaded Greene to take the job, as the two of them walked their dogs together in the Stanford hills.

    There was one wrinkle: Greene was busy with a new, secretive startup called Bebop, which was developing tech to power easy-to-use business-software applications. So in November of last year, Google acquired Bebop for $380 million and named Greene the head of Google Cloud Platform, giving her the reins to build a salesforce and revamp a unit that spent $10 billion on growth in 2015. The appointment thrust Greene into an unusual role: As an Alphabet board member, she is, in some sense, Page’s boss. As head of cloud computing, she works for Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who reports to Page.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/07/06/trillion-dollar-race-for-the-cloud/#3f38ebc06080

Photo: Matt Hoffman

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/22/2016

sn_horses_Isabella Jusková

  • Cable and telecom companies just lost a huge court battle on net neutrality

    The court verdict puts to rest — for now — a key question: Whether the Internet represents a vital communications platform that deserves to be regulated with the same scrutiny as the common networks of the past, such as the telephone system. Writing for the court, Judges David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan held that despite advances in technology, the underlying importance of the Internet to everyday communications and commerce makes it more similar to the phone system than not. Today, for example, consumers are accustomed to using not just the email accounts that their broadband provider gave them, but also using third-party services such as Gmail as well as Netflix, Amazon and Uber.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/14/the-fcc-just-won-a-sweeping-victory-on-net-neutrality-in-federal-court/

  • What’s going on with IT hiring?

    CompTIA, an industry group, said about 96,000 IT jobs were lost last month across all industries, not just the technology sector. That figure includes the impact of the approximately 37,000 telecommunications jobs sidelined by the Verizon strike, which was settled this month. But it was a rough month, by some estimates.

    Analysts have been generally cautious this year about IT hiring trends. Although the unemployment rate for IT professionals is about half the national average of 4.7%, said CompTIA, some analysts use terms ranging from “modest” to “pre-recession” to describe IT hiring.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3080825/it-careers/what-s-going-on-with-it-hiring.html?nsdr=true

  • The Psychology of Solitude: Being Alone Can Maximize Productivity, with Scott Barry Kaufman
  • 4 Steps to Avoid ‘Death by Meeting’

    Whether your meetings are derailed by the shiny object syndrome, or you get stuck in the weeds, the only person who can save you is you! That’s why, when I’m facilitating team events, I make sure that our agendas include business items as well as elements relevant to the team. That way, we weave in learning with business needs, giving team members an opportunity to practice and apply the skills they are learning.

    What often happens, when a team gets stuck in the weeds or off track, is that team members start making eye contact with me: raising an eyebrow, in effect begging me to, “Get us out of here — we are stuck!” It always strikes me that it’s me, the guest facilitator, who is asked to save the day.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/275194

  • Doth thou protest too much?

    Many will applaud this effort to reign in what is seen as an out of control protest process. After all, the protest rate has grown some 45 percent during a period of time that total federal spending has dropped 25 percent. In 2001 there were about 700 individual protests filed with the GAO; in 2015 that number was over 2,500. Interestingly, of those protests on which GAO ultimately ruled, its “sustain rate” had dropped to 12 percent—from 18 percent just a few years earlier and 22 percent in 2001.

    https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2016/06/03/insights-soloway-bid-protests.aspx

  • How Google killed Nest and why acquisitions fail

    I think the real problem is that when most companies do an acquisition they treat it almost like you and I would buy a car. They focus on the price and closing the deal after becoming interested in the firm’s products and/or services. But you don’t buy people, and a firm without the employees who made it a success is a failure in the making and worth a fraction of its assessed value. Part of the real cost of the acquisition is critical employee retention, and retention packages do a poor job of making people want to stay.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3082033/mergers-acquisitions/how-google-killed-nest-and-why-acquisitions-fail.html

  • Verizon to bid $3B for Yahoo’s core Internet business
    First Verizon buys AOL, and now they are looking into buying Yahoo. Verizon is where all of your old embarrasing email addresses like (mustang_guy_1972_xx@yahoo.com) go to die. 
    http://www.cio.com/article/3080025/verizon-to-bid-3b-for-yahoo-s-core-internet-business.html

Photo: Isabella Jusková

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/11/2016

sn_lightening_Torsten Dettlaff

IBM scored a 10 year, $300M deal with Emirate Airlines. While they may be celebrating, HPE is hot on big blue’s AI heels with their Hexis platform.

Oracle is still dealing with last week’s lawsuit news. Investors haven’t overreacted to the possibility of false cloud sales…yet. However, the government is said to be eager to process Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance issues.

IBM

  • IBM Lands $300 Million Deal with Emirates Airline

    Under the new, enhanced-IT managed-services arrangement, IBM will “provide IT Infrastructure delivered as a service, allowing the airline to improve efficiency on its passenger support systems and functions.” The deal calls for fully managed services utilizing IBM’s mainframe, data storage, and the capability to encrypt data in near real-time.

    http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/060716/ibm-lands-300-million-deal-emirates-airline-ibm.aspx

  • IBM Shifts Spark Development to its Cloud

    IBM said it is expanding access to the data analytics development tools available on its Bluemix cloud platform, giving data scientists working in the R programming language faster access to more data along with new contributions to SparkR, SparkSQL and Apache SparkML.

    http://www.enterprisetech.com/2016/06/07/ibm-shifts-spark-development-cloud/

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

  • HPE Discover 2016: Meg Whitman keynote
  • HPE’s Whitman Says Open to Cloud Deals With Amazon, Google

    “We may do something over time with Google and Amazon,” Whitman said Tuesday during an interview at her company’s annual event, Discover 2016, in Las Vegas. “They are not enterprise companies for the most part. They may get there. I know that is their ambition.”

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-07/hpe-s-whitman-says-open-to-cloud-deals-with-amazon-google

  • HPE vs IBM Watson: Machine learning is ‘more than an opportunity for expensive consulting’ says software GM

    HPE has maintained an aggressive stance on the company’s proposed future in machine learning and AI at this week’s Discover 2016 conference in Las Vegas. Today, HP Software general manager Robert Youngjohn took another glove off, slyly describing IBM’s Watson as “expensive consulting with a smaller technology platform”.

    http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2460943/hpe-vs-ibm-watson-machine-learning-is-more-than-an-opportunity-for-expensive-consulting-says-software-gm

  • HPE Leads Contracting Server Market As Cloud Popularity Grows

    “The real driver of global growth continues to be the hyperscale data center segment. The enterprise and small or midsize business (SMB) segments remain relatively flat as end users in these segments accommodated their increased application requirements through virtualization and considered cloud alternatives.” Total sector revenues reached £13 billion during the first quarter of 2016, of which HPE secured $3.3 billion – a quarter of the whole market and an increase of 3.3 percent.

    http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/cloud/gartner-server-market-cloud-growth-193198

Oracle

  • Oracle’s New Legal Challenge: Of Companies And Culture

    While companies are not people, companies can have cultures. What’s at stake in all of these matters, regardless of their ultimate disposition, is what impact they might have on Oracle’s culture and how changes in that culture could potentially lead to conduct that slows the company’s growth and leads to weaker than current valuation metrics. There’s little doubt that Oracle or at least its senior executives have one of the more macho and competitive cultures in corporate America. Larry Ellison, Chairman of the Board and CTO of the company, competes in just about every way he can and against everyone that he can. Mark Hurd, co-president of Oracle, enjoys or is credited with a similar macho personality. It is part of who they are.

    Also:

    The Fortune article about the “redemption” of Mark Hurd said that although Hurd didn’t always care for the niceties of making employees feel good, he always got results. A brief walk down memory lane or conversations with ex-HPE employees might challenge the accuracy of that statement. Talking of things about which I do have first-hand knowledge, Mark Hurd and his colleagues ruined HPE’s software business and destroyed a significant amount of shareholder value in the process.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3981044-oracles-new-legal-challenge-companies-culture

  • Why Oracle’s Fiscal 4Q16 Results Will Likely Miss Expectations

    Oracle’s Software segment reported revenues of $6.4 billion in fiscal 3Q16, which was flat on a constant currency basis. Oracle’s cloud revenues, which include SaaS (software-as-a-service), PaaS (platform-as-a-service), and IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), grew to $735 million. The segment grew by 44% on a YoY constant currency basis.

    Oracle’s Hardware and Services segments reported revenues of $1.1 billion and $793 million, respectively. Hardware revenues fell by 2% while services revenues grew a meager 1%

    sn_oracle-saas-and-paas
    http://marketrealist.com/2016/06/why-oracles-fiscal-4q16-results-will-likely-miss-expectations/

Dell | EMC

  • Dell to offload $3.25 billion in junk bonds to further fund EMC buyout

    Denali Holding, the parent company of Dell, is offering $3.25bn of senior notes to finance, in part, the acquisition of EMC. Dell has already sold $20bn of investment-grade secured bonds and $5bn of institutional loans to fund the $67bn EMC takeover. Under the deal, EMC shareholders will receive $24.05 per share in cash in addition to tracking stock linked to a portion of EMC’s economic interest in the VMware business.

    http://www.cbronline.com/news/verticals/tmt/dell-to-offload-325-billion-in-junk-bonds-to-further-fund-emc-buyout-4918338

Other

  • Google’s DeepMind Is Developing An AI Kill Switch To Prevent A Skynet Apocalypse

    Fortunately, some of the major players are actually also working on systems and methods to help maintain control of super-intelligent AI agents. In fact, a team of researchers at Google-owned DeepMind (the team that built Alpha Go, the machine that beat Lee Sedol handily) , along with University of Oxford scientists, are developing a proverbial kill switch of sorts for AI. Google acquired artificial intelligence startup DeepMind back in 2014 for $580 million or so, and back in the day Google CEO Eric Schmidt called it “an important bet.” Together with U. Oxford, the team has released a paper entitled “Safely Interruptible Agents.”

    The paper details the following in abstract: “Reinforcement learning agents interacting with a complex environment like the real world are unlikely to behave optimally all the time. If such an agent is operating in real-time under human supervision, now and then it may be necessary for a human operator to press the big red button to prevent the agent from continuing a harmful sequence of actions—harmful either for the agent or for the environment—and lead the agent into a safer situation.”

    http://hothardware.com/news/google-ai-kill-switch-could-prevent-skynet-takeover

Photo: Torsten Dettlaff

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