Tag: HP

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Supplier News: 8/29/2015

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An interesting week with suppliers in light of the market turbulence .  One would assume that there would be a great deal of financial performance information this week, but that was not the case (okay, there were a few interesting tidbits, see below).

IBM had a heavy cloud/IoT news cycle this week, the topic of containers come up in a few different media outlets.  EMC is starting to push back on OpenStack cloud concepts they adopted along with the other tech firms a few months ago.  Meanwhile, HP is just trying to make this split work.

IBM

  • IBM Invests $3 Billion and Hires 2,000 for IoT Unit
    Now there is number on how much they are willing to spend to start using data from mobile devices (via their deal with Apple), twitter communications with devices, and wearables to funnel that information into Watson and their analytics engines.

    Plans are to use resources to accelerate IoT deployments across a wide variety of verticals and closely collaborate between business groups such as Analytics; Systems and Technology (STG); the Watson Business Unit; and its Cloud and Services groups.

    http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/5666/ibm-invests-3-billion-and-hires-2-000-for-iot-unit

  • IBM takes on tough task of deploying containers across clouds

    Sets or clusters of containers can be scheduled and run on a given cloud with tools like the newly available Google Container Engine as well as Google-backed Kubernetes or the Amazon Container Service. But now developers have their eye on the next frontier: Deploying container clusters across different clouds—something IBM says it has accomplished. A team at IBM Research working with Moustafa AbdelBaky, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University’s Discovery Informatics Institute, used open-source technology called CometCloud as the basis of this work, which he calls C-Ports.

    http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/ibm-deploys-containers-across-clouds/
    Note: See what the IBM developers have to say about containers in the Reddit post below. 

  • IBM Watson, Using Speech Analysis Techniques, Correctly Identifies Patients At-Risk For Psychosis

    Having previously collaborated with Dr. Guillermo Cecchi in analyzing speech transcripts of patients high on ecstasy and meth, Dr. Gillinder Bedi wanted to do a similar study of psychotic patients. So Bedi, who is a research scientist at NY State Psychiatric Institute, asked Columbia Medical School researchers if they had any transcripts of people at high-risk for psychosis. In fact, they did have records for 34 at risk people (between the ages of 14 and 27). These 34 patients had been followed for two and a half years, during which time five had developed psychosis. Next, Cecchi applied machine learning and natural language processing analyses to the transcripts from the 34 patients to identify specific features that might predict psychosis.

    http://www.medicaldaily.com/ibm-watson-using-speech-analysis-techniques-correctly-identifies-patients-risk-349794

  • IBM launches Blue Box Cloud in data-centers

    Blue Box means IT departments can manage their OpenStack-based private clouds wherever the company (or offices, for a multi-location organisation) is based, to boost their public, private and hybrid infrastuctures. “Implementing Cloudsoft AMP on Blue Box Cloud across IBM Cloud datacentres will allow us to meet the increased demand from customers for hybrid cloud solutions built on OpenStack,” Duncan Johnston-Watt, chief executive of Cloudsoft, which is now taking advantage of Blue Box, said.

    http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/it-infrastructure/5312/ibm-launches-blue-box-cloud-in-datacentres

  • IBM developers get brutalized on a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA)
    I was reading this one in real time, and I felt bad for the guys.  It is interesting (when they were actually answering questions and not defending Lotus Notes – wow btw -there is substantial amount of hate for Lotus on the internet) to hear about their development priorities and some of the cultural aspects of working for the company.  
    https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3ilzey/were_a_bunch_of_developers_from_ibm_ask_us/

EMC

  • EMC and Intel clash over OpenStack’s future direction

    Bias, who is also a director of the OpenStack Foundation, warned that the platform has so many different configuration options that it risked becoming fragmented and losing interoperability among different implementations of OpenStack. His recommendation is that OpenStack should have a base reference architecture against which specific implementations can be tested and verified, one of several steps he said that the platform needs to take.

    http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2423761/openstack-s-future-direction-causes-heated-community-debate

  • Pivotal appoints new CEO

    Pivotal, the cloud-computing spinout of EMC Corp. and VMware Inc., promoted Rob Mee as chief executive officer to replace Paul Maritz, who was appointed executive chairman of Pivotal’s board. Pivotal, backed by EMC, VMware and General Electric Co., was set up in 2012 to tap surging demand for Internet-based programs, after EMC acquired Pivotal Labs the same year. Mee co-founded the original entity, which specialized in developing tools to change how engineers build software. The technology has become a critical component of Pivotal’s business, which involves carrying out complex projects with customers, while training their engineers to write software in a more modern way.

    http://www.marketswired.com/emc-corp-nyseemc-appointed-new-ceo/225401/

Oracle

  • Oracle, still clueless about security

    Oracle’s chief security officer, Mary Ann Davidson, recently ticked off almost everyone in the security business. She proclaimed that you had to do security “expertise in-house because security is a core element of software development and you cannot outsource it.” She continued, “Whom do you think is more trustworthy? Who has a greater incentive to do the job right — someone who builds something, or someone who builds FUD around what others build?”

    http://www.cio.com/article/2975920/security/oracle-still-clueless-about-security.html#tk.rss_all

  • IBM And Oracle: A Comparison Of Economic Earnings
    Relative valuations
    As of writing, the market was valuing the two companies at:IBM: $138 billion
    Oracle: $154 billion.

    Now Oracle has a net cash position of about $10 billion, so backing this out, the market is valuing Oracle at $145 billion at about 11x economic earnings.

    On the other hand, IBM has net debt of about $6 billion (this excludes the financing segment; financing functions like a bank and debt in it is offset by loan/lease receivables; of course, a reader will point out that in the end debt is debt, however, in my opinion it is reasonable to exclude financing debt for the purposes of this discussion). So factoring this in, the market is valuing IBM at about $144 billion, or about 9.5x economic earnings.

    That is, there’s about a 10% difference in relative valuations.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3468516-ibm-and-oracle-a-comparison-of-economic-earnings

Hewlett Packard

  • PCs not dead despite difficulties ahead: HP chief

    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/21/pcs-not-dead-despite-difficulties-ahead-hp-chief.html
  • Cisco Goes After HP in Contract Fight

    Cisco sued Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court after HP missed an Aug. 1 payment deadline. HP claims it doesn’t owe Cisco anything, according to the suit, and in fact, has demanded a refund.Cisco, represented by Winston & Strawn partners Krista Enns and J. Erik Connolly, is suing for breach of contract and declaratory relief. An attorney hasn’t entered an appearance for HP, but the company was represented by McKool Smith principal Robert Elkin in pre-litigation negotiations that began last year and have grown increasingly contentious, according to Cisco’s complaint.

    http://www.therecorder.com/id=1202735796401/Cisco-Goes-After-HP-in-Contract-Fight?slreturn=20150728135546

  • HP Already Operating as Two Companies, More Restructuring (Layoffs?) Coming

    Following a self-imposed three-day shutdown earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has divided its internal systems to effectively operate as two separate companies–one focused on PCs and printers and another on enterprise business–more than two months ahead of its November 1 formal split date. HP chief executive Meg Whitman, speaking on the vendor’s earnings call late last week, said the operations and IT systems were “successfully split,” as of August 1 and included the input of customers and partners.

    http://thevarguy.com/business-technology-solution-sales/082415/hp-already-operating-two-companies-more-restructuring-layoffs-com

  • HP to Cut More Jobs

    Hewlett-Packard (HP) plans to reduce a further 5% of its workforce in addition to the 55,000 jobs it already plans to eliminate.

    http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/5645/hp-to-cut-more-jobs

  • What happened to HP?
    [Interesting breakdown of their business decisions over the last 15 years]

    2010- Five years of revenue gains and a hefty increase in stock growth over this period helped lead the technology firm into a brighter era. In the annual report for HP’s 2009 fiscal year Hurd wrote, “Over the last five years, HP has become a much more agile company, able to adapt and benefit from changing market conditions. In fiscal 2009, we gained share in key markets and continued to invest for growth in research and development, acquisitions, and sales coverage.” But it did not last. Hurd was accused of sexual harassment. While he was cleared of wrongdoing for that accusation, Hurd was found to have submitted false expense reports to hide a relationship.

    http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/what-happened-to-hp–1302804

Other

  • The Onion Router is being cut up and making security pros cry

    IBM claims there were around 180,000 malicious traffic “events” in the USA between January 1 and May 10 this year, with 150,000 in the Netherlands, and more than 50,000 in each of Romania, France, Luxembourg and Uruguay. While the rise of ransom-ware is worrying, the biggest attacks emanating from TOR exit nodes are familiar old favorites: SQL injection, vulnerability scanning, and denial-of-service.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/26/big_blue_biz_better_block_tor/

  • Podcast: Industry Leaders on the Promise & Peril of NSCI

    Five senior executives from Cray, HP, IBM, Intel and SGI weigh in on the new National Strategic Computing Initiative’s (NSCI) prospects in this exclusive HPCwire podcast. Discussion ranged widely from the need for long-term funding for leading edge technology, to the software industry’s past slowness to get involved with advancing hardware technology development, to fostering new HPC talent – even on whether the creation of a U.S. Department of IT makes sense.

    http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/08/27/podcast-industry-leaders-on-the-promise-peril-of-nsci/

  • SAS named a leader in 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools

    The report’s authors note that, “Gartner estimates that the data integration tool market was worth approximately $2.4 billion in constant currency at the end of 2014, an increase of 6.9% from 2013. The growth rate is above the average for the enterprise software market as a whole, as data integration capability continues to be considered of critical importance for addressing the diversity of problems and emerging requirements. A projected five-year compound annual growth rate of approximately 7.7% will bring the total to more than $3.4 billion by 2019.

    http://ameinfo.com/technology/innovation/sas-named-a-leader-in-2015-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-data-integration-tools/

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Supplier News: 8/22/2015

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There is chatter about big purchases: the never-ending tale about EMC and HP, IBM is looking to buy CyberArk (maybe), Oracle bought Maxymiser, and CA completed their Xceedium deal.

As people are talking about purchases, SalesForce CEO Mark Benioff continues to talk smack about IBM and Oracle.  Meanwhile, IBM expands their  systems that can emulate organic thought process.

IBM

  • IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system LinuxONE

    IBM’s continued expanding support of Linux and Open Source projects makes sense given that these platforms and tools provide much of today’s connected infrastructure. And, the move away from in-house servers to cloud-based ones is a direct threat to IBM’s mainframe business. The company’s claim that it can provide a fast, reliable, and secure alternative at half the cost of cloud-based solutions is bound to get the attention of those with large-scale projects who want to control costs.

    http://www.extremetech.com/computing/212410-can-ibms-linuxone-mainframe-compete-with-cloud-computing

  • IBM Creates ‘Neuromorphic Chip’ That Is As Powerful As A Rodent’s Brain

    The network that IBM unveiled today uses around 48 million connections, which is the same computing power as a rat’s brain. The system is designed to be able to run “deep-learning” algorithms, similar to the facial recognition system being used by Facebook or the instant translate mode in Skype. However, IBM’s deep-learning algorithms are much cheaper to run, draw less electricity and are not the size of an entire data center. TrueNorth essentially contains 5.4 billion transistors and uses a tiny 70 mw of power. As a comparison, an Intel processor with 1.4 billion transistors draws between 35 and 140 watts.

    http://www.techtimes.com/articles/77610/20150818/ibm-creates-neuromorphic-chip-powerful-rodents-brain.htm

  • Buffett Loves IBM. That’s Bad for Innovation, and Investors

    IBM still develops many things, but not on the scale or with the profundity it did in decades past. It has been nurturing select investments for years, and pruning the losers. The company has shed multiple underperforming businesses in the past two decades, a tradition continued by current chief Virginia “Ginni” Rometty. First was the personal computer, a business it got out of in 2005, then last year’s sale of server computers based on Intel’s x86 chip, followed by this year’s divestiture of its chip-making operations.

    http://www.barrons.com/articles/buffett-loves-ibm-thats-bad-for-tech-innovation-and-ibm-1439617268

  • IBM and FireEye Possible Candidates to Acquire CyberArk, Centrify
    http://www.thestreet.com/story/13260085/1/ibm-and-fireeye-possible-candidates-to-acquire-cyberark-centrify.html

EMC

  • Why EMC’s ‘federation’ could unify (Yes, we are still talking about this)

    EMC’s decision to control VMware but at arm’s length was brilliant. It allowed the faster-growing acquired company to trade at a much higher relative valuation than its parent. Now both companies are slowing, and at least one prominent Wall Street analyst believes EMC will bring all the companies into the fold. “A stand-alone EMC, a stand-alone VMware, and a stand-alone Pivotal would, in our opinion find it difficult to compete,” writes Maynard Um of Wells Fargo Securities . Whereas VMware thrived by selling to EMC competitors like HP and Cisco, those companies increasingly are competing with both companies now, removing one of the benefits of separation.

    http://fortune.com/2015/08/19/emc-vmware-pivotal-federation/

  • EMC management trio jump ship to competitors

    Isabelle Guis, a product marketing VP and head of cloud strategy at EMC, joins Egnyte in September to become its chief strategy officer. Egnyte is a file sync ‘n sharer for enterprises, now saying it’s involved in adaptive enterprise file services. As such it competed with EMC’s Syncplicity business. This was sold to Skyview Capital in July. Syncplicity’s CEO in EMC days was Jeetu Patel. He moved to Box earlier this month to become an SVP and its chief strategy officer. These two moves, when added to that of EMC’s chief marketing officer Jonathan Martin, who went to a similar CMO spot at fierce EMC competitor Pure Storage in July, add up to… what exactly?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/18/emc_execs_exit/

Oracle

  • Oracle snags Maxymiser to goose its marketing push

    Maxymiser specializes in what is called A/B testing, in which marketing professionals offer a couple of options to prospects to see which gets the best response. In theory, great A/B testing means that customers or would-be customers get pitches that actually interest them, rather than irritate them.

    http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/oracle-buys-maxymiser/

  • The epic 30-year bromance of billionaire CEOs Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff

    But their relationship took a quick turn in 2000 when Benioff found out that Oracle had secretly started its own CRM service that directly competed with Salesforce. Benioff wanted Ellison to leave Salesforce’s board immediately, but Ellison refused to quit. Ellison told Benioff, “It would be much cooler if you fired me.” (because that way Ellison would get to keep his Salesforce shares).

    http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-marc-benioff-relationship-2015-8

  • Adobe, IBM on top for enterprise digital marketing platforms; Oracle, Salesforce increasingly threaten

    A new report by global analyst firm Ovum has found Adobe to be the overall market leader for digital marketing platforms, followed closely by IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce. SAS and Teradata are the market challengers and new market entrant Marketo is a follower. These vendors share three-quarters of the annual US$5bn global market spend on digital marketing platforms.

    http://www.firstpost.com/business/adobe-ibm-top-enterprise-digital-marketing-platforms-oracle-salesforce-increasingly-threaten-2392362.html

Hewlett Packard

  • Why big data will be a big deal for the new HP

    HP’s big data offerings fall under the umbrella of its Haven product, which includes the company’s Hadoop distribution (which it works with partners like Hortonworks to deliver), along with Vertica (a SQL analytics platform), IDOL (for analyzing unstructured data) and HP’s Distributed R (for large-scale predictive analytics).

    http://www.networkworld.com/article/2973046/cloud-computing/why-big-data-will-be-a-big-deal-for-the-new-hp.html
    Comment: This is a fine thing to say, but HP seems to be late to the party (really late).  Do they have the ability to catch up and entice customers away from the other platforms?

  • HP CEO Whitman On The Odds Of A Blockbuster Acquisition And How HP Enterprise Stacks Up Against EMC, IBM

    You never say never. But I think probably not. We are really pleased with our portfolio. We think we are incredibly well positioned. We have got some nice growth in our businesses. I would rather look to the future and what we are going to do on a go-forward basis. But you never say never. Who knows what is going to happen. We have been very disciplined, and we have been smart about it, and I think we have been on the right side of right so far. EMC looks a little bit more like HP, but they don’t have our big technology services arm and they don’t have our Enterprise Services arm. Listen, they have some great technology, but we are doing very well in storage. Our all-flash storage array was up 400 percent year-over-year. We are really cranking on all-flash storage array.

    http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/300077859/crn-exclusive-hp-ceo-whitman-on-the-odds-of-a-blockbuster-acquisition-and-how-hp-enterprise-stacks-up-against-emc-ibm.htm

Other

  • How the cloud will devour open source

    Take MySQL, for example. The database has changed hands a few times, with Sun acquiring MySQL AB in 2008, then Oracle picking up the asset through its acquisition of Sun the following year. But MySQL, Sun, and Oracle have collectively made a heck of a lot less — orders of magnitude less — by selling MySQL-related services than Amazon Web Services has made by selling MySQL ­as­ a­ service (that is, Relational Database Service).

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/2970866/open-source-tools/how-the-cloud-will-devour-open-source.html

  • Don’t be IBM! Benioff goads the ‘dinosaurs’ as Salesforce beats Wall St expectations

    The way to understand the future is to look at the past, and you can look at IBM with the mainframe business. I think we all know IBM still sells a lot of mainframes. That doesn’t mean that IBM is innovating, that doesn’t mean that IBM is creating value for customers or helping them to transform customers’ businesses or align them with modern trends. It just means they’re selling them old technology and upgrading it. That’s what you see with companies like Oracle and SAP. These are old technology bases that are kind of meandering along like mainframes. And I think that is reflected in their license revenue growth, which has been poor, and then their movement to the cloud has been stunted because they don’t want to shift those customers into new models.

    http://diginomica.com/2015/08/21/dont-be-ibm-benioff-goads-the-dinosaurs-as-salesforce-beats-wall-street-expectations/

  • CA Technologies Completes Acquisition of Xceedium, Inc.

    With the transaction complete, CA offers customers a comprehensive, flexible solution for controlling and protecting IT administrator or other privileged user accounts from external attacks or insider mistakes and malicious misuse. The combined solution provides privileged identity controls at the server and the gateway to control access and action based on identity. The proxy-based, gateway approach from Xceedium also provides privileged identity control over cloud, on-premise, virtualised and hybrid IT environments, helping to protect the systems driving the application economy.

    http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/25440/ca-technologies-completes-acquisition-of-xceedium/

Photo: Pete Slater, Flickr

Posted on

Supplier News: 8/15/2015

 

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Everybody wants to get involved with the wide open roads of big data.  IBM continues their journey to find and assimilate all medical data to feed to Watson, but not without a few bumps in the road (people are not happy about the Merge deal).

HP is attempting to get their rubber on the road with their own big data tool known as “Vertica”.  They are also trying to get traction by announcing the new boards for each company post split.

Storage is a strong topic this week with the continued rumors of EMC shifting under VMware, Box poaching an EMC VP, and Google introducing two new storage and cloud platforms for enterprise.

IBM

Hewlett Packard

EMC

Other

  • Cloud Computing Market in Healthcare Research and Development Global Industry Analysis,Growth,Trends and Forecast 2020

    The market for cloud computing in healthcare research and development is highly fragmented as none of the players operating in this market holds more than 5% to 10% share of the overall market. Some of the major companies operating in this market are Oracle Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Intel Corporation, IBM Corporation, Merge Healthcare, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Carecloud Corporation and Carestream Health, Inc.

    http://www.medgadget.com/2015/08/cloud-computing-market-in-healthcare-research-and-development-global-industry-analysisgrowthtrends-and-forecast-2020.html

  • Google launches two cloud services to compete with Amazon, Microsoft and IBM

    The Mountain View-based company’s Cloud Dataflow and Cloud Pub/Sub will handle Big Data needs. Cloud Dataflow can perform complex computations on large quantities of data in batches or in streaming mode, while Cloud Pub/Sub is a tool that can send and receive data to and from applications in the form of “messages.”

    http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/13/google-launches-two-cloud-services-to-compete-with.html

  • Vodafone’s India CIO Anthony Thomas quits ahead of $1 billion IBM deal renewal

    Thomas joined Vodafone in April 2012 and played a key role in creating a new centralized IT structure within the company during his tenure. During his stint at Vodafone, the company also rolled out several new technology initiatives including the company’s microfinancing service m-pesa and also a new data warehouse.

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/vodafones-india-cio-anthony-thomas-quits-ahead-of-1-billion-ibm-deal-renewal/articleshow/48449959.cms

  • Box’s Platform Push Targets Corporate Developers

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-13/box-s-platform-push-targets-corporate-developers

Photo: Luke Pamer, Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 8/1/2015

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IBM continues their healthcare focus with a relationship with CVS.  The more information Watson has about health behavior, the more powerful and useful it will become.  With Watson growing, IBM continues to focus on big data and segmented marketing to engage a fragmented customer base.

While IBM figures out how to leverage big data, HP is responding to negative feedback about their dress code.  As their employee’s dress is making news, key departures are also making headlines as the company starts to officially split into two.

EMC had a strong endorsement regarding VMWare this week, while a competitor has opted to remove themselves from the game.

IBM

  • IBM, CVS bring Watson to health care

    Under a deal expected to be announced Thursday, the companies will work to develop a system that would be able to provide better personalization of care, prevent the use of unneeded and costly interventions, and even predict health declines for a wide range of conditions including heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

    http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20150801/business/150809962/

  • IBM Big Data Evangelist James Kobielus Talks Analytics and Staying Flexible

    The data scientist will become the core application developer in this new order of things. The assets they build and maintain—big data clusters, statistical models, machine learning algorithms, and so on—are becoming the chief intellectual property that drives recommendation engines, decision automation, next best actions, and so forth within cloud, mobile, social, Internet of Things, marketing automation, and other business and consumer apps. Consequently, the data scientist is rapidly evolving away from a high-skilled R&D function performed by premium university-educated talent toward an operational function that will need to be scaled and automated to a high degree by less pricey data-center IT staff positions who’ll need to be on call 24×7. Data scientist skills will rapidly become commoditized, just as low-level programming and system administration jobs became years ago. Like it or not, data scientists will be grown in the future through trade schools, vocational education programs, and other channels that will certify large numbers of freshly minted personnel who won’t require a 4-year college degree in mathematics, statistics, or some highly statistically oriented domain specialty.

    https://icrunchdatanews.com/ibm-big-data-evangelist-james-kobielus-talks-analytics-staying-flexible/

  • Here is the reference article James Kobielus wrote:
    Customer Segmentation: The Fine Line Between Profiling and Personalization

    It’s the ultimate oxymoron: pigeonholing with personalization. But it’s not as if this technology is only being used to individually tweak bulk messages for maximum impact. It’s also providing tools that help people (e.g., your account reps) to listen and interact with other people (i.e., your customers) in a more human fashion. As the cited article notes, IBM customer USAA uses Watson Engagement Advisor to guide personalized interactions with returning US veterans who are trying to navigate the confusing fields of healthcare insurance options. As the article states, “In an instant, a good customer service rep identifies your personal pain and tailors a response using both institutional knowledge and their own memory, which has been built by hundreds of customer calls a day. Watson’s performance in the USAA pilot suggests that a cognitive computing system has the potential to become, in a scatter of months, what the smartest, wisest clerk in the bank becomes after a career.”

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/customer-segmentation-fine-line-between-profiling-james-kobielus

  • Will IBM acquisition boost Cloud data services?

    The cloud database arena is projected to be worth US$14 billion by 2019, with IBM claiming open source databases like MongoDB to be a significant part – “and rapidly growing portion” – of this sector. Thousands of clients across a variety of industries, including retail, IoT, higher education, marketing services and ecommerce have created over 100,000 databases with Compose.

    http://www.reseller.co.nz/article/580868/will-ibm-acquisition-boost-cloud-data-services

  • IBM Recycles 97% of End-of-Life Products

    In its other waste and recycling accomplishments, IBM sent 86 percent of the nonhazardous waste it generated worldwide in 2014 to be recycled, and purchased recycled plastics for use in products such that 12.1 percent of purchased plastic by weight were recycled resins.

    http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/07/31/ibm-recycles-97-of-end-of-life-products/

  • The death of IBM? https://soundcloud.com/drericjackson/ep-11-mike-dauber-on-venture-enterprise-investing-finding-the-next-cisco-ibm

Hewlett Packard

  • The Great Dress-Code Debate rages at HP

    “According to HP, men should avoid turning up to the office in T-shirts with no collars, faded or torn jeans, shorts, baseball caps and other headwear, sportswear, and sandals and other open shoes. Women are advised not to wear short skirts, faded or torn jeans, low-cut dresses, sandals, crazy high heels, and too much jewelry.” Not surprisingly, to have one the region’s high-tech legends issue such an uncool edict sent legions of programmers, developers, product manager, venture capitalists, founders and co-founders into a veritable tizzy. Even more embarrassing, techies took to the Twittersphere to ridicule HP’s fuddy-duddy dictum while rival companies dangled job offers before HP’s disgruntled masses, promising them they could wear whatever the heck they wanted to wear to work.

    http://www.siliconbeat.com/2015/07/31/the-great-dress-code-debate-rages-at-hp/

  • HP’s head of corporate HR responds with a video (yes I know this has nothing to do with business, but I appreciate the conversation and HP getting feisty)
    http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2015/07/hewlett-packard_video_what_dre.html
  • Paul Chapman Named as CIO of Box
    HP execs continue to flee the company…

    While at HP, Chapman was also one of the key people in defining the future for HP Enterprise, as Hewlett Packard announced that the firm will be split into two.

    http://www.cloudwards.net/news/paul-chapman-named-as-cio-of-box-9225/

  • HP scoops up cloudy app-dev platform Stackato

    Stackato consists of a Platform-as-a-Service rooted in the open source PaaS Cloud Foundry and utilizes Docker for its Linux Containers. Stackato will be incorporated into HP Development Platform, the vendor’s version of the Cloud Foundry PaaS launched in 2014.

    http://tvnewsroom.org/newslines/business/hp-scoops-up-cloudy-app-dev-platform-stackato-60827/

EMC

  • U2 Finds What It’s Looking For in EMC Storage (this is a horrible headline – can’t let it slide)

    During its iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE concert tour, U2 decided it might be a good idea to capture every concert in a digital format. To that end, U2 engaged EMC to deploy an all-Flash array version of VNXe 3200 storage system and its Data Domain backup systems.

    http://thevarguy.com/computer-technology-hardware-solutions-and-news/073115/u2-finds-what-its-looking-emc-storage

  • Confirmed: Cisco has killed its EMC-killer product and laid off the team

    The official shuttering of Invicta confirmed an earlier report by Chris Mellor at The Register that Cisco had thrown in the towel and laid off nearly all of the Whiptail staff.  Whiptail made a flash-storage product that competed head to head with EMC’s line of flash storage. Flash storage is when data-center computer servers use the same super-fast storage used by smartphones, tablets, and thumb drives. Cisco and EMC were once close partners and had a successful joint business where they sold Cisco’s UCS computer servers blended with EMC’s storage and software from EMC’s subsidiary VMware.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/cisco-killed-its-emc-killer-product-2015-7

Other

  • Citrix CEO to Step Down as Company Considers Shedding GoTo Unit

    Citrix Systems President and CEO Mark Templeton plans to retire and officials will review what to do with the vendor’s GoTo online collaboration portfolio as activist investor Elliott Management grows its influence over the company. The company also is making changes on the board of directors, including appointing Jesse Cohn, senior portfolio manager at Elliott, as an independent member. In addition, Citrix officials will search for another independent board member who is agreeable to Elliott and who will replace another board member when appointed.

    http://www.thestreet.com/story/13240114/1/citrix-red-hat-boost-startup-culture-in-raleigh-nc.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/11/2015

sn_antman_JDHancock

Photo: JD Hancock, Flickr

IBM has created a microprocessor that has components the same size as a strand of DNA.  While IBM makes smaller chips, EMC has become a smaller company by selling off Syncplicity (a file sharing company).

Reports are coming out that Oracle is bullying customers with usage breach notices due to their missed performance goals last quarter.   Speaking of performance goals, looks like cloud costs are going up (Microsoft and IBM are raising prices in certain areas) – is the race to the bottom over?

IBM

  • IBM Just Created the World’s Smallest, Most Powerful Chip; Here’s Why You Should Care

    At the most basic level, IBM’s processor, which it worked on with GlobalFoundries, Samsung, and the State University of New York (SUNY), has far smaller transistors than any other processor on the planet. That means that when the chip eventually appears in future smartphones, computers, and other pieces of technology, those gadgets will be faster and more energy-efficient.

    https://www.yahoo.com/tech/ibm-just-created-the-worlds-smallest-most-123665085589.html

  • There are ALOT of articles about this chip.  For instance:
    The Best Thing About IBM’s Super-Chip? It’s Not From Intel
    http://www.wired.com/2015/07/ibm-seven-nanometer-chip/
  • IBM prepares software to better read an ‘intelligent grid’

    Enter Opus, which is meant to merge IBM’s long history of expertise in analytics with utility know-how into a single picture meant to project supply and demand — all with the goal of wasting less energy and helping to realize a more distributed reality that does not impair reliability or undermine industry profits.

    http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060021311

  • IBM Rolls Out Docker-Based Container Services
    This is a follow-up to a post from a few weeks back:

    Containers give developers the flexibility to build once and move applications without the need to rewrite or redeploy their code. IBM Containers, based on Docker and built on Bluemix, IBM’s platform-as-a-service, are intended to provide a more efficient environment that enables faster integration and access to analytics, big data and security services. Enterprises will now be able to use the combination of IBM, Docker, Cloud Foundry, and OpenStack to create a new generation of portable distributed applications.

    http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/IBM-Rolls-Out-Docker-Based-Container-Services-105040.aspx

  • IBM Named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays

    This inclusion comes a month after IBM was identified as the number one worldwide solid-state array vendor in unit shipments and petabytes of data delivered for 2014 in Gartner’s Market Share Analysis: SSDs and Solid-State Arrays Worldwide Report for 2014, by Joseph Unsworth and John Monroe, published May 1, 2015.2 In 2014 IBM sold more than 2,100 FlashSystems, totaling more than 62 petabytes (PB) of storage capacity, according to IBM.

    http://www.finchannel.com/index.php/technology/item/46327-ibm-named-a-leader-in-gartner-s-magic-quadrant-for-solid-state-arrays

Oracle

  • Oracle ‘breach notice’ bullies enterprise clients into cloud service, consultant claims

    If Oracle thinks the customer is really abusing the terms, it whips out the “breach notice,” which warns a customer that they are in violation and must stop using all Oracle software in 30 days. That’s risky, because it allows the customer to walk away from its Oracle contracts.

    http://thestack.com/oracle-breach-notice-cloud-services-100715
    More on the subject:
    http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-cloud-sales-2015-7?r=UK

  • Oracle Pursuing ‘Generational’ Change In IT, Cantor Says

    Oracle conceives this “push of IT resources into the cloud as a ‘generational change’ that only comes along once every 20–25 years,” the analysts at Cantor explain. This is why management is working hard in expanding the cloud business. However, the experts believe this change will be particularly complicated for Oracle, given that it “continues to offer on-premise solutions,” and holds a broad portfolio of solutions across a wide array of product categories. Therefore, the company “does not want to provide a particular timeframe for when the headwind from the transition is over,” the analysts explain, but management is “unrelenting in its view that the shift to the cloud is positive for the long-term economics of Oracle’s business model.”

    http://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/15/07/5661493/oracle-pursuing-generational-change-in-it-cantor-says

Hewlett Packard

EMC

  • EMC offloads file-sharing business

    EMC has sold off its file-sharing arm Syncplicity just three years after it snapped the business up, claiming the technology is no longer core to its portfolio. Private investment firm Skyview Capital has bought the business from EMC, although the latter will retain “a financial interest” in the company, although it did not disclose exactly what that would be.

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2417109/emc-offloads-file-sharing-business

Other

  • Surprise! The cost of cloud is about to rise

    However, one change could cost some customers big time. In the past, a customer using an entry-level Virtual Server Instance in SoftLayer paid $35 per 5TB of outbound bandwidth. That rate is now $35 per 250GB. The charge for 5TB of outbound bandwidth now $615. That’s a hefty raise, which a source close to IBM confirmed, adding that most SoftLayer customers will likely see their costs decline. SoftLayer, unlike its rivals, does not charge for data transfer within its own private network even between zones.

    http://fortune.com/2015/07/06/cost-of-cloud-rising/

  • Why Salesforce.com Keeps Picking on SAP

    Long-term, these German ambitions look like an effort to properly diversify. Roughly 68% of Salesforce revenue is sourced in the United States versus 18.3% from all of Europe. By contrast, no territory accounts for more than a third of SAP revenue. Oracle is not quite as diversified, but it still gets less than half of its revenue from the U.S. market.

    http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/070815/why-salesforcecom-keeps-picking-sap-crm-orcl-sap.aspx

  • The worst CRM in the word is… not salesforce.
    IT IS EXCEL.  People need to stop using excel for contact management lists.
    http://www.business2community.com/sales-management/%E2%80%8Band-the-worst-crm-in-the-world-ishint-it-is-not-salesforce-01268557
  • Drought of data scientists hurting business

    Alec Gardner said, “Organisations that consider appointing a data scientist or a team of data analysts may find that they can derive much deeper and more varied insights from their data. This will let them recommend improvements in areas of the business such as supply chain and logistics, product or service development, or customer acquisition.

    http://idm.net.au/article/0010529-drought-data-scientists-hurting-business

  • Jim Whitehurst – Red Hat Summit 2015 – Keynote:
  • Is OpenStack ready for primetime?

    OpenStack was introduced in 2010 as a project of NASA, who dropped out in 2013, and Rackspace. In 2011 Ubuntu adopted OpenStack and became the first “vendor” to integrate with the platform. In 2012 Red Hat began a project to integrate with OpenStack and introduced commercial support by July 2013. Over time many other organisations have joined the foundation as sponsors and contributors. Recently released OpenStack Kilo (version 11) has approximately 400 new features and was the product of almost 1500 contributors.  However, there is a downside to the open source model: lots of developers with lots of ideas about what should be included breeds complexity.

    http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2015/jul/07/openstack-ready-prime-time/

  • Splunk Buys Security Startup Caspida For $190M

    Like everyone, Splunk has watched the growing number of breaches over the last year, and its customers have been asking for better security detection tools to help battle these threats, many of which use with compromised credentials. This kind of attack is difficult to detect with conventional security techniques looking for signatures or rules. If someone comes in through the front door using valid credentials, there are no rules or patterns. They look like a valid user, Song explained.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/09/splunk-buys-security-startup-caspida-for-190m/?ncid=rss