Tag: HP

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Supplier Report: 10/3/2015

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IBM’s long term plan of IoT, Big Data, and Analytics seems to be getting some traction even during a rough Q3.  HP is fighting the ghosts of old decisions as they finalize their big split.  While HP celebrates their split, EMC is telling the world they have no intention to follow that strategy.

IBM

  • IBM Is Fading Back Toward Major Support

    As October begins, it appears IBM is headed for its third straight lower monthly low. This current downtrend, which began on July 21 with a huge downside gap, has dropped shares nearly 20%. Late last month, the initial down leg of the post-earnings breakdown found support near $140. IBM began to rebound on Aug. 26, but the upside was well-contained. With very light bullish interest, despite the steep decline from the summer highs, the stock was unable to move past its massive Aug. 24 opening gap. Shares have been trading in a tight range since while the major indices went on to recover most of the mid-August selloff. The significant lagging action continues to weigh on Big Blue and will likely drive it lower in the near term.

    http://www.thestreet.com/story/13309491/1/ibm-is-fading-back-toward-major-support.html

  • IBM’s IoT Investments Are About To Pay Off

    A recent IDC survey found that nearly 75% of IoT market makers are planning to deploy or have already deployed IoT systems in the next year. This proves that IoT is moving from the planning stage to the action stage, bringing the technology to life. The survey also found that of all industries tied to IoT, transportation and healthcare are furthest along, ready to deploy IoT technologies soonest.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3536076-ibms-iot-investments-are-about-to-pay-off

  • IBM acquires Meteorix to expand HR service offering

    Acquiring Meteorix will make IBM one of the most experienced Workday service providers in the world, the company said, allowing it to better implement the services on behalf of customers thanks to the firm’s team of 200 consultants who specialise in delivering high-value services, while IBM will continue to focus on boosting the sales of Workday.

    http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/hr/5397/ibm-acquires-meteorix-to-expand-hr-service-offering

  • Analytics are better with shared storage and not scale-out, says IBM

    [With] Spectrum Scale Native RAID, the cluster data is managed using higher-level erasure codes to protect against multiple disk failures while offering significant disk savings over the 3x replication found in typical HDFS installations. ESS stores data using declustered RAID6 with support for either 2-fault or 3-fault disk fault tolerance… ESS distributes the data and parity information evenly across all disks in the system [which] allows for storage rebuilds triggered by a disk failure to complete faster than traditional RAID rebuilds by distributing the work across many disks rather than just a few.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/02/ibm_analytics_better_shared_storage_not_scaleout/

  • IBM: Nanotube Breakthrough Will Create Low Power, Faster CPUs

    Big Blue is claiming it can not only build carbon nanotube transistors, a claim widely acknowledged as feasible, but it can also connect the nanotubes to other processor components and circuitry, a claim no one else has made so far.

    http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/ibm-nanotube-breakthrough-will-create-low-power-faster-cpus/d/d-id/1322455

Hewlett Packard

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Photo: Aaron Burden, StockSnap

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Supplier Report: 9/26/2015

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It was another big week for IBM and Watson with the announcement of Watson offices moving to Silicon Valley.  IBM wants to be close to the disruptions and maybe cause a few.  But as businesses expand into the unfamiliar world of AI, cloud, and SaaS, are they locking themselves into environment they can’t get out of easily?

As datacenters and server budgets shrink, is there an exit strategy to the externally hosted ecosystem?

IBM

  • IBM Watson sharpens its cognitive skills: New APIs help make it more ‘human’

    As part of this announcement, IBM also said it will expand the company’s presence in Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area with a new Watson Hub, South of Market in San Francisco. IBM believes it will put them closer to, and increase collaboration with, the local start ups, developers, venture capital groups, established businesses and academic experts the company is currently working with to take cognitive computing into new markets. The location will also serve as the new global headquarters for IBM Commerce, a high-growth industry opportunity for IBM and Watson. The facility is scheduled to open in early 2016.

    http://www.firstpost.com/business/ibm-watson-sharpens-its-cognitive-skills-new-apis-help-make-it-more-human-2445566.html

  • Watson to become a huge sales engine…

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-24/ibm-s-watson-said-to-become-huge-engine-for-sales
  • Massachusetts gives IBM a $2.5M tax break for absolutely no reason whatsoever

    IBM has promised to create 500 new jobs in exchange for its tax break. If they don’t, there will be hell to pay … or at least they’ll have to give back some of the $2.5 million.

    http://www.networkworld.com/article/2986116/big-data-business-intelligence/massachusetts-gives-ibm-a-2-5m-tax-break-for-absolutely-no-reason-whatsoever.html

  • IBM boosts security of bring your own cloud apps

    The technology helps a company discover the cloud-based apps its employees are using on their computers and mobile devices and then helps roll out a safer way of using them, without impacting productivity. Hosted on IBM Cloud, the solution scans a company’s network to find the apps being used, which are then analysed using deep threat analytics from IBM X-Force.

    http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/it-infrastructure/security/5376/ibm-boosts-security-of-bring-your-own-cloud-apps

EMC

  • Cloud takes a bite out of backup boss EMC’s top line in Q2

    The storage titan saw its quarterly sales drop 16.9 per cent annually to $414.4m, and its share of the market came in more than six points lower than in the corresponding period last year. Second-placed Symantec – whose $104.5m revenue accounted for 14.4 per cent of the worldwide total – endured a decline of a comparatively modest 3.7 per cent

    They added:

    “Focus continues to shift away from hardware-centric, on-premise PBBA systems to hybrid/gateway systems,” she said. “The results [of this] are greater emphasis on backup and deduplication software, the ability to tier or push data to the cloud, and the increasing commoditisation of hardware, all of which require market participants to adjust product portfolios accordingly.”

    http://www.channelnomics.eu/channelnomics-eu/news/2426707/cloud-takes-a-bite-out-of-backup-boss-emcs-top-line-in-q2

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Supplier Report: 9/19/2015

sn_oldtv_Pablo GarciaSaldaña

The news this week seem to be reacting to HP’s announcement that they are cutting 33,000 jobs over 3 years.  Journalists are looking at HP, IBM, and EMC and re-stating the now-familiar critique of “these companies are bloated and not nimble”.

Are the critics right?  Time will tell.  Today, three companies are trying to transform and become more responsive to the market.  IBM is focused on the emerging internet of things and supporting that entire eco-system of devices.  HP is trying to slim down and become more reactive (with an offshore consulting team).  EMC has been struggling with their own potential reorganization.

Can companies that have enough employees to fill a mid-sized American city find a way to compete with companies that can support 900 million users with 60 employees? And are the sales models that those large companies rely upon still relevant in the age of open source software and ad-driven profits?

IBM

  • IBM working on blockchain technology

    Krishna told the publication house that “they are modifying the original bitcoin ideas to build a blockchain that operates without currency, ensures that contract details remain private and makes it easier for companies to embed business rules into their smart contracts”.

    http://www.econotimes.com/IBM-working-on-blockchain-technology-91011
    What is blockchain?

    The blockchain is seen as the main technological innovation of Bitcoin, since it stands as proof of all the transactions on the network. A block is the ‘current’ part of a blockchain which records some or all of the recent transactions, and once completed goes into the blockchain as permanent database.

  • HCL, IBM team up to jointly develop IoT solutions

    As part of the partnership, HCL and IBM will combine their technical knowhow and manpower to enable seamless integration of device, connectivity, data platform and analytics for organisations to address some of the most complex enterprise and industrial IoT challenges.

    http://www.firstpost.com/business/hcl-ibm-team-up-to-jointly-develop-iot-solutions-2438274.html
    Additionally, IBM opens IoT & Big Data units, appoints Harriet Green as GM

    Harriet Green, now VP and GM at IBM said: “The Internet of Things will help enterprises and governments at every level unlock entirely new areas of opportunity and growth, and no company is better positioned than IBM to be the partner of choice as these organizations embrace its potential.

    http://www.cbronline.com/news/verticals/the-boardroom/ibm-opens-iot-big-data-units-appoints-harriet-green-as-gm-4670303

  • Leadership Depends on Clarity and Agility: IBM’s CIO

    “As [organizations] get bigger, we tend to isolate roles so people’s skills get too segmented,” Smith said. “We’re working to give people broader roles where people are expected to do role rotations and gain skills that enable them to get better and hone their craft. We have a concept that we’re going to take large teams and keep breaking them down so we know the purpose of each team.”

    http://daily.financialexecutives.org/leadership-depends-on-clarity-and-agility-ibms-cio/

Hewlett Packard

  • HP’s Job Cuts Reflect EDS Legacy
    HP announced 33,000 job cuts over three years this week…

    Most from the technology services group it had built from Electronic Data Systems Corp., a $13.9 billion acquisition. The job cuts are H-P’s way of creating a more nimble business that can better match customer needs for help with cloud-based computing, or off-loading computing and software to the Internet. It is also a recognition of how badly H-P miscalculated developments in the information technology services market.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/h-ps-job-cuts-reflect-eds-legacy-1442447023

  • Hewlett-Packard Company Plans offshoring 60% of Enterprise Service

    In fact, Enterprise Services division is not an organic segment of the larger HP group. In 2008 HP acquired the H. Ross Perot founded Electronic Data Systems for $13.9 billion. At that time, HP’s CEO, Mark Hurd was intent on pushing HP towards enterprise IT services. IBM had by then a sizeable market share in this segment due to some strategic acquisitions such as PriceWaterhouseCooper’s for $3.5 billion in 2002. Hurd in 2008 wanted HPQ to acquire a big-revenue earner in enterprise-level IT services segment. The result was the expensive purchase of EDS.

    http://www.wallstreetscope.com/hewlett-packard-company-nysehpq-plans-offshoring-60-of-enterprise-service/25429003/

  • HP Plans To Keep The Struggling Enterprise Services Unit Contrary To Common Belief

    According to Whitman, Enterprise Services is essential to the success of the greater HPE as it starts a life of its own, separate from the parent. For example, she envisions a situation where companies will be hiring HPE’s consultants to help with their cloud implementations, digitization of paper processes and so on. Such consulting works perfectly fit in the domain of Enterprise Service, and that explains why Whitman believes the unit is essential to the overall success of HPE.

    http://investcorrectly.com/20150917/hewlett-packard-company-nysehpq-plans-keep-struggling-enterprise-services-unit-contrary-common-belief/

  • HP Has Enough Workers to Fill a City—And It Needs Them All

    The HPs and IBMs of the world have responded to these shifts by offering cloud services and ready-made business applications of their own. That’s a big part of why HP and IBM are shedding jobs right now. “In general software companies are better for owners than services businesses are,” Burris explains. “In a software business, a programmer can write a piece of code that can be used by millions of different customers and users. That intellectual property, that information about a problem, is now made available to a whole pile of people at the same time.”

    http://www.wired.com/2015/09/hp-enough-workers-fill-cityand-needs/

Other

  • Age-old question: Can commercial software succeed in an open-source world?

    Now, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff’s dream of taking on not just Oracle but SAP in other enterprise software categories puts it at risk, according to the story. That may be why Salesforce is building up its skills in PostgreSQL, an open-source database favored by many companies that are increasingly wary of relying on pricey databases from Oracle, SAP, and even Microsoft.

    http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/open-source-software-threat/
    Additionally:

    As one data point, note that Red Hat, which sells support and service for Linux, is arguably the most successful company built on open-source. It became the first $1 billion open source company three years ago and closed its last fiscal year in February at almost $1.8 billion in revenue. That is not chump change, but it’s a far cry from the run rates proprietary software companies tout. Here’s guessing that the new normal for software companies in the open-source era will look a lot more like Red Hat and a lot less like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft. And that has to be a sobering thought.

  • Can GE buy IBM or EMC?

    GE could easily sell those parts of IBM it didn’t want, or spin them off into a new company, and get back most of the cash needed to do this deal. By installing new management and focusing on the Internet of Things, GE would give IBM a new story to tell and, in the process, dramatically increase its value to investors. Buying IBM would also cement Immelt’s own industrial strategy into place, making it nearly impossible for a successor to do to his company what he did to Jack Welch’s outfit.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3510876-ge-could-buy-ibm

  • Key Takeaways from the Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference: Johnson and Johnson

    “Five years ago, our pharmaceutical division at that time was about $24 billion in annual sales, and we lost $8.5 billion to patent expiry, literally over about a 18 month to 24 month period, and you know the margins in that business, you know the challenges that something like that presents. And we made a real decision not to go out and do a major acquisition, which I think would be a challenge to demonstrate value creation for many, if not most of those…We continue to invest in R&D. We’ve got much more focus in our therapeutic categories. And today, literally, five, six years later, we launch 14 compounds, seven of which have been $1 billion brand and things are really making a difference and things like prostate cancer, thrombosis, Type 2 diabetes, range of conditions, and there’s no way we could have done that, if it was an only a pharma business, because it wouldn’t have survived. We had a strong MD&E and strong consumer business. So financially, we think it’s important.”

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3508116-johnson-and-johnson-3-key-takeaways-from-the-wells-fargo-healthcare-conference

Photo: Pablo GarciaSaldaña

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Supplier News: 9/12/2015

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Considering summer is unofficially over, it was a slow news week from suppliers.  IBM did make an interesting move by picking up software developer StrongLoop.  This continues their strategy on cloud and mobile.   IBM also announced the opening of Watson Health Center in Boston.

Oracle is quietly cutting their Java experts while HP overtakes Cisco in providing cloud infrastructure.   Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst details how his company makes money on services when the software is free.

IBM

  • IBM Opens Watson Health HQ, Expands Watson Health Cloud
    It reads like a press release, but interesting information…

    IBM opened its new IBM Watson Health global headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., and announced that Deborah DiSanzo is joining the company as the business unit’s general manager. The IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance will help biomedical companies bring medical innovations to market more efficiently. This solution will help the companies fast-track the deployment of a GxP-compliant infrastructure and applications while adhering to stringent requirements for hosting, accessing and sharing regulated data.

    http://www.eweek.com/it-management/ibm-opens-watson-health-hq-expands-watson-health-cloud.html
    More on the office they are opening in Boston:
    http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/09/10/ibm-announces-watson-health-office-space-in-kendall-square/

  • IBM Has Been A Terrible Steward Of Shareholders’ Capital

    One company that hasn’t shown an ability to innovate in the way that it competes in the market – especially in cloud – compared to someone like Microsoft, who is a chief competitor, is IBM. Like Apple, IBM has also been a slave to a dividend and buyback program. Like Apple, IBM has spent over $100 billion on its buyback program. And, like Apple, IBM’s stock price has lagged the overall market in the last three years.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2015/09/11/ibm-has-been-a-terrible-steward-of-shareholders-capital/

  • IBM Acquires Node.js Developer StrongLoop (no word on price yet)

    StrongLoop is as startup based in San Mateo, California. The company focuses on the creation and development of software for enterprises by using the open-source JavaScript programming language Node.js. Software built by StrongLoop allow companies to create cloud and mobile based apps which are equipped with APIs that allows them to handle massive amounts of data through mobile, web and Internet of Things apps.

    http://en.yibada.com/articles/62707/20150911/ibm-acquires-node-js-developer-strongloop.htm

  • Box shows how a single deal with IBM can move the needle for any $2 billion company

    The partnership, announced in June, allows both companies to plug-in to each other’s technologies, while working on joint apps and sales strategies. Box benefits by gaining access to IBM’s wide array of technologies and client network. IBM gets to tap into Box’s advanced cloud storage offerings.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/box-earnings-ibm-partnership-2015-9

EMC

Hewlett Packard

  • More HP Involvement at SurveyMonkey… Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) CEO Joins SurveyMonkey Board

    Whitman, 59, was appointed to run the computer giant in Sep 2011. She will lead the new H-P Enterprise business group post the spilt in Nov 1 this year. Whitman stated that this is the right time for her to join the board of SurveyMonkey. She looks at the offer as an attractive one as it’s her first external board appointment since she joined H-P in 2011.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/hewlett-packards-hpq-ceo-joins-surveymonkey-board-cm519157

  • HP overtakes Cisco in cloud infrastructure battle – finally

    After nipping at Cisco’s heels for two years, HP finally overtook arch rival Cisco in the cloud infrastructure equipment battle in Q2, albeit by the slimmest of margins. Synergy Research Group says after tying in Q1 with 13%, HP finally wrestled top spot from Cisco which declined by half a percentage point, while HP remained consistent on 13%.

    http://channellife.co.nz/story/hp-overtakes-cisco-cloud-infrastructure-battle-finally/

Other

  • Oracle cuts Java execs

    Cameron Purdy, a senior vice president for development and a noted Java evangelist, left Oracle in August after more than 8 years at the company, according to his LinkedIn bio. In a few tweets, he indicated that this was Oracle’s decision.

    http://fortune.com/2015/09/07/oracle-cuts-java-execs/

  • SAP Finance Chief Says Company Done With Big M&A Deals for Now

    “I see no need in the foreseeable future for big acquisitions,” Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic said at a meeting with reporters Thursday at the company’s headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. “If you talk about big acquisitions, what is left in the market?”Salesforce.com Inc. is too expensive and Workday Inc. would overlap with SAP’s product line, Mucic said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-10/sap-finance-chief-says-company-done-with-big-m-a-deals-for-now

  • Red Hat: How One CEO Uses Extreme Openness To Lead 8,000 People

    Adams: I have to ask: How do you make money on free software? Whitehurst: It’s very hard. The source code to all our software is indeed free. We offer services and support. You can download random Linux or open source software. But if you’re running nuclear submarines, major stock exchanges, or big banks, you want to make sure they’re secure and that you have support. We’re a business-to-business company.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2015/09/10/how-one-ceo-uses-extreme-openness-to-lead-8000-people/

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Supplier News: 9/5/2015

Death_to_stock_above_5S

IBM is ensuring they are the major player for internet of things by helping create a standardized ecosystem.  HP is looking to sell off a company and move some of their employees to staffing firms.  VMWare continues to be presented as the future of EMC. Meanwhile, Oracle is trying to avoid having their executives sued.

IBM

  • IBM and ARM Collaborate to Accelerate Delivery of Internet of Things

    IBM today announced an expansion of its Internet of Things (IoT) platform called IBM IoT Foundation – through an integration with ARM, providing out of the box connectivity with ARM® mbed”-enabled devices to analytics services. This fusion will allow huge quantities of data from devices such as industrial appliances, weather sensors and wearable monitoring devices to be gathered, analyzed and acted upon.

    http://seekingalpha.com/pr/14575766-ibm-and-arm-collaborate-to-accelerate-delivery-of-internet-of-things
    More on the partnership:

    There are plenty of clouds that want to store your connected data, but IBM is making the case that it has everything developers need in one reputable cloud. IoT Foundations has the IBM brand, new capabilities announced Thursday to handle data analytics (it uses a variation of the Spark real-time data processing standard) and device management capabilities. The link with ARM should help the engineers at a big name company or startup so they don’t have to worry about the mechanics of connecting their device to the Internet and offloading the data. Instead, they can just make it happen with a few clicks on a cloud dashboard.

    http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/arm-ibm-iot/

  • IBM partners PH firm Ionics Inc to create Internet-of-Things platform

    The Philippine listed firm disclosed that one of its units Ionics EMS Inc, a local electronics manufacturing services provider, is working with IBM as “a key design partner” to launch the IBM IoT Platform. The latter is meant to enable organizations across industries to improve engagement with clients, accelerate technology innovation and enhance business operations.

    http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/ibm-partners-ph-firm-ionics-inc-to-create-internet-of-things-platform-11562/

  • Half a Century Later Mainframes, Together with Linux, Still Run Much of Today’s Infrastructure

    These platform innovations have enabled mainframes to incorporate major advances in technology and keep evolving over the years. This was the case with the transition to microprocessors and the parallel sysplex architecture, without which IBM would not have survived its near-death experience in the early 1990s. A few years later, mainframes embraced TCP/IP and just about all Internet standards, integrating seamlessly with the Internet and World Wide Web, and enabling its customers to leverage their existing transaction and data base applications in all kinds of new e-business solutions. Then came zLinux, which made it possible to easily port just about any Linux application to mainframes.

    http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/09/04/half-a-century-later-mainframes-together-with-linux-still-run-much-of-todays-infrastructure/

  • IBM Watson Health Commercial
  • Ogilvy and Watson Have Big Things Planned for IBM

    Sources close to the matter tell us that Ogilvy’s creative team has been hard at work on a larger effort set to debut later this fall. Specifics are scarce at the moment, but we hear that the new campaign will be more “corporate” than the work in this post and that its ultimate goal is a complete refresh/rebranding of the IBM name.

    http://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/ogilvy-and-watson-have-big-things-planned-for-ibm/92748

  • Did IBM Just Get Hacked at DEF CON?

    In the presentation–which Kulach says is aimed at helping users to secure an IBM i system from the perspective of an external and internal intruder–purports to show a series of techniques for compromising the system, including “privilege escalation by nested user switching, getting full system access via JDBC, bypassing the ‘green screen’ (5250) limitations,” and how to get direct access to password hashes through an undocumented API.

    http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh090215-story01.html
    There is a big “but” (the presentation is being called a red herring:

    But to pull off Kulach’s approach to hacking an IBM i server would require such a poorly configured IBM i server that it just strains the credulity of the premise.

  • ANZ signs $450m IT deal with IBM
    Time to be on the lookout for these “baseball” contracts that IBM likes to announce in the 4th Q…
    http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/583529/anz-signs-450m-it-deal-ibm/

Oracle

Hewlett Packard

EMC

Other

  • Wipro hires Ankur Prakash, another TCS executive

    TCS veteran Ankur Prakash, who was previously the COO of the company’s Latin America business, has now been mandated to lead Wipro’s emerging markets business, a role in which he will report directly to Neemuchwala, according to two people directly familiar with the development. Both of them requested anonymity.

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/wipro-hires-ankur-prakash-another-tcs-executive/articleshow/48737538.cms

  • Windows 10 Is Great, but Microsoft Can’t Save the PC

    But for device makers, the situation could be quite different. Later this year, Hewlett-Packard will cleave itself in two, creating two separate companies focused on different businesses. One of those firms — HP — will derive around half of its revenue from sales of traditional PCs. If PC shipments continue to decline, that company could be devastated. Earlier this month, when Hewlett-Packard turned in third quarter earnings, its PC-related revenue contracted more than 13%.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/08/31/windows-10-is-great-but-microsoft-cant-save-the-pc.aspx

  • Businesses are buying analytics software even if investors aren’t

    There are some wrinkles to iron out as the world adjusts to a trend toward open source and freemium business models, and to business software that individuals can buy. But there’s a huge opportunity for companies to cash in on business demand for better data analysis, and the young companies that live and breathe data seem the best positioned to cash in.

    http://fortune.com/2015/09/04/tableau-splunk-hortonworks-revenue-investors/

  • Salesforce jumps into health care with a tailored cloud platform

    Aiming to help healthcare organizations manage their relationships with patients, the company’s new Salesforce Health Cloud promises providers a complete view of each patient as well as the ability to engage them better across caregiver networks. Overall, the goal is to help providers make smarter patient-care decisions, the company said.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2979584/salesforce-jumps-into-healthcare-with-a-tailored-cloud-platform.html

Photo: Death to Stock Photos