Supplier Report: 7/4/2015
As the nation celebrates its birthday, most companies are taking a break from major news (although some didn’t). It is more of the same as we enjoy a long weekend.
IBM’s big data is transcending the hype and people are expecting great things, so great that Watson and his automated cousins could eliminate 47% of US jobs over the coming decades (because that’s not an alarmist factoid to get more readers).
Oracle is still talking about deep cost reductions to compete with Amazon, while HP keeps singing their breakup song (and released a monstrous 316 page exchange commission report). Speaking of reports, there are more stating EMC had a good Q1 in traditional storage (which has been consistent with reports over the last few weeks).
There was an office chat about how SAS is beloved by their employees and I found an article discussing that culture. Xerox apparently has the opposite situation…recently being named the 5th worst company to work for.
IBM
- Watson’s next feat? Taking on cancer
Among the most ambitious projects is a partnership with 14 cancer centers to use Watson to help choose therapies based on a tumor’s genetic fingerprints. Doctors have known for years that some treatments work miraculously on some patients but not at all on others due to genetics. But the expense and complexity in identifying genetic mutations and matching them up with potential therapies has made it difficult for more than a handful of patients to benefit from this new approach. The service is scheduled to launch later this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/27/watsons-next-feat-taking-on-cancer/
- But it isn’t all wonder and good news, the same article states:
While there’s much debate about the extent to which technology is destroying jobs, recent research has driven concern. A 2013 paper by economists at the University of Oxford calculated the probability of 702 occupations being automated or “roboticized” out of existence and found that a startling 47 percent of American jobs — from paralegals to taxi drivers — could disappear in coming years. Similar research by MIT business professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee has shown that this trend may be accelerating and that we are at the dawn of a “second machine age.”
- New Report Shows the Internet of Things’ Economic Impact Could Surpass Its Hype — But There’s Just One Problem
While a host of devices such as smartphones, wearable technologies, connected industrial equipment, automobiles, and smart agriculture sensors can collect massive amounts of data, the McKinsey report notes that most of the information currently being collected isn’t being put to use: “Most IoT data collected today are not used, and the data that are used are not fully exploited. A critical challenge is to use the flood of big data generated by IoT devices for prediction and optimization.” McKinsey isn’t the only organization to discover this. IBM (NYSE:IBM) says 90% of data collected by smart IoT devices goes completely unused, and that the data starts losing its value just a few seconds after being gathered.
- IBM explains its new (mobile) philosophy
Matt Candy, managing partner, Europe IBM Interactive Experience, global business services, is one of the brand’s major spokespeople on the topic, and he believes that digital media is changing the way in which businesses and consumers interact: ‘The last, best experience that anyone has becomes the minimum expectation for the experiences they have everywhere. These experiences transcend industry – this shift is changing the challenge that brands face when interacting with the customer. Traditional boundaries are dead, it’s time for businesses to focus on human-to-human interactions. This makes experience the new competitive battleground in which businesses will have to work.
http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/news/b2b/36371/-ibm-explains-its-new-philosophy.aspx#.VZXhfPlVhBc
- GlobalFoundries Takeover of IBM Chip Unit Is Official
The two companies announced last October that IBM would pay GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to take over its money-losing chip unit, which includes the plant in Essex. But the deal had to clear hurdles first. Because GlobalFoundries is owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, it needed to obtain clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency panel charged with reviewing major business deals to safeguard national security. The companies announced Monday that the committee had approved the deal.
Oracle
- Will Oracle Corporation’s New Cloud Push Pay-Off?
A few days ago, Ellison and a few other Oracle execs announced the introduction of the company’s new, comprehensive “PaaS [Platform-as-a-Service] Launch and Cloud File Sharing and Collaboration” suite of services. Ellison didn’t hold back when asked what the objective of Oracle’s new Cloud Platform hopes to accomplish, saying “Our new archive storage service goes head-to-head with Amazon Glacier and it’s one-tenth their price.”
Hewlett Packard
- HP says channel crucial post-split, outlines potential risks
In the document, HP said the successful execution of its indirect strategy is integral to the financial performance of both companies. HP said in both its fiscal 2013 and 2014, its top-ten global disties and resellers collectively accounted for 12 percent and eight percent of HP’s sales. “Our financial results could be materially adversely affected due to distribution channel conflicts or if the financial conditions of our channel partners were to weaken,” the document states. “Our results of operations may be adversely affected by any conflicts that might arise between our various distribution channels or the loss or deterioration of any alliance or distribution arrangement.
- Here is the full 316 page Form 10 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission
http://h30261.www3.hp.com/~/media/Files/H/HP-IR/documents/reports/2015/01-07-2015-form-10.pdf - HP LOSES ITS ENTERPRISE CHIEF
Now, it seems that even more changes are ahead for the company, and they may directly affect the new HP Enterprise unit. Reports on Tuesday (June 30) revealed that the company’s current head of its Enterprise Group, Bill Veghte, has stepped down from his post to “pursue a new opportunity,” according to a statement from the company.
http://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2015/hp-loses-its-enterprise-chief/#.VZXorvlVhBc
EMC
- Snapshot: EMC Leads Disk Storage Systems in Q1 Sales
http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/07/02/snapshot-emc-leads-disk-storage-systems–in-q1-sales.aspx
Other
- Marc Benioff blasts SAP CEO: “He’s scared of Salesforce”
On Thursday, during an event in SAP’s home country Germany, Benioff said Bill McDermott, the CEO of the $US90 billion German software maker, recently snubbed Benioff’s outreach efforts. “We offered an olive branch to them. I’ve told Bill I’ve wanted to have a deeper relationship with them. Yes we’re competitors, we should also be partners,” Benioff said, according to Bloomberg. “He’s scared of Salesforce.”
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-on-sap-ceo-bill-mcdermott-2015-7
- Xerox is the 5th worst company to work for
Under Burns’ leadership, the company’s earnings have declined from more than $1.3 billion in 2011 to $992 million in 2014, a 25% drop. These figures support recurring employee complaints about leadership — only 32% of surveyed employees approved of Burns. Many employees also complained about a culture of favoritism in the company, saying that personal relationships are more important than work ethic when it comes to promotions and raises. Another recurring complaint was related to compensation. Employees cited low pay and years without cost of living raises as reasons for the company’s high turnover. Less than a third of Xerox employees would recommend a job at the company to a friend.
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/06/29/the-worst-companies-to-work-for/3/
- Xerox Is Not the Problem, the Whole IT Services Industry Is
If we look at it from a labor perspective (Xerox should be pretty bad considering it is the fifth worst company to work for), we do see that the company does have low expenses per employee. Annualizing results from last quarter, Xerox pays about $7,100 per employee per quarter, and squeezes out about $5 in revenue for every dollar spent on labor (including general expenses). Accenture, surprisingly, spends even less per employee per quarter at about $4,100, earning about $5.56 per dollar spent on labor.
http://247wallst.com/services/2015/07/02/xerox-is-not-the-problem-the-whole-it-services-industry-is/
- What’s Wrong With Software Licensing Models?
http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/video/300077310/whats-wrong-with-software-licensing-models.htm - This is an old article that Bobby C mentioned this week, but considering how customers are down on SAS, I thought I would find it:
HOW SAS BECAME THE WORLD’S BEST PLACE TO WORK
At 70 years old, Goodnight holds the conviction that “what makes his organization work are the new ideas that come out of his employee’s brains.” He therefore holds his employees in the highest esteem. So while he fully anticipated that the recession would constrain the firm’s short-term revenues, he instinctively knew that his team would produce breakthrough products while his competitors were cutting costs.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3004953/how-sas-became-worlds-best-place-work
Supplier Report: 6/27/2015
Playing well together seems to be the common theme of the week. Several companies are investing in a company called Docker that is developing a SaaS “container” system. The container is an open platform for building, shipping and running distributed applications. It gives programmers, development teams and operations engineers the common toolbox they need to take advantage of the distributed and networked nature of modern applications. IBM, RedHat, and EMC are all working with the company.
In addition to the Docker investment, IBM made friends with storage company Box to offer IBM’s bluemix on Box storage platforms. Speaking of platforms, Oracle released good growth news in their cloud space while it ramps up for another fight with Google.
IBM
- IBM suffers in integrated platforms market
IBM retained its spot in second place in the market, but a 44.2 per cent sales slump to $42.35m saw its share shrink from 9.8 per cent last year to 5.6 per cent. HP fared much better in the quarter, with its sales jumping by more than half (53.7 per cent) annually to $23.79m, taking its share from two per cent to 3.1 per cent.
http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2415121/ibm-suffers-in-infrastructure-market
- IBM, Box Team Up to Conquer the Cloud
The two will offer customers IBM analytics and social solutions, IBM security technologies, the IBM cloud, and Box’s cloud content collaboration platform. They will develop joint content management solutions and incorporate Box technology into select IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps, which is the result of IBM’s teaming up with Apple.
- Another interesting Watson application: Internet of Things Turning New York’s Lake George Into “World’s Smartest Lake”
The potential impact of these new developments extends well beyond the shores of Lake George. By capturing and pooling data from all sorts of sensors and swiftly analyzing it, scientists, policy makers, and environmental groups around the globe could soon accurately predict how weather, contaminants, invasive species, and other threats might affect a lake’s natural environment. Armed with these new insights and a growing body of best practices, corrective actions could be taken in advance to protect fresh water sources anywhere in the world.
http://news.rpi.edu/content/2015/06/26/internet-things-technology-worlds-smartest-lake
Protecting fresh water is important because: - As I was thinking of the theme of this week’s post, I saw this – IBM’s cooperate not dominate strategy:
This comes despite IBM’s efforts to develop its own backup and storage platforms. The Spectrum Project is aimed at optimizing backup for physical, storage and cloud environments as a way to support unified, hybrid infrastructure in the enterprise. And by, again, tapping third-party cloud providers like CenterGrid, the system can be tailored to a broad range of industry verticals that are utilizing Big Data and mobile apps for services like parking-spot location in increasingly crowded urban areas.
- IBM Storage Named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-storage-named-a-leader-in-gartners-magic-quadrant-for-enterprise-backup-software-and-integrated-appliances-300105295.html - IBM Bluemix and word press don’t mix
IBM is encouraging developers to host a WordPress blog on BlueMix but it doesn’t natively support the plugins. The article calls out that IBM missed an opportunity for developers and hobbyists (like me) learn their platform.
http://diginomica.com/2015/06/23/wordpress-on-ibm-bluemix-doesnt-quite-compute/
Oracle
- Oracle leads integrated infrastructure and platforms market revenue in 1Q15
http://www.firstpost.com/business/oracle-leads-integrated-infrastructure-platforms-market-revenue-1q15-2313970.html - Oracle Vs. Google Is Coming Up…Again
According to a research note from Patrick Walravens at JMP Securities, a decision in favor of Oracle would mean that Oracle can “demand a royalty from Google for each mobile device sold using the Android platform.” Additionally, it could “potentially” complicate the “API economy with a new set of legal concerns.”
http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/179747/oracle-ups-cloud-investment-plans-data-center-in-sao-paulo
- Oracle Has ‘Plethora’ Of New Iaas, Paas…And Cantor Analyst Loves It
In the report Cantor Fitzgerald noted, “Oracle focused on its ability to offer services across all three layers of the cloud relative to a more IaaS-focused approach at AWS, while provisioning faster (e.g., 4x) compared to AWS, requiring less time managing (e.g., zero command-line interfaces with Oracle vs. 155 for AWS) and offering a lower cost archive cloud storage service (e.g., 10x lower cost than Amazon Glacier for a 20PB archive).” White believes that Oracle continues to be “unique in the IT world” since it is the only leading IT vendor “with a broad offering across all three layers of the cloud.”
- Oracle SaaS earnings rattle SalesForce
Last Wednesday (June 17), Oracle released its quarterly earnings report, closely watched by the market waiting to see if Oracle could live up to its own hype. Indeed, Oracle did. “We dramatically overachieved in the cloud,” said the firm’s CEO Safra Catz during the earnings call. According to the figures, during the last quarter of the fiscal year ended May 31, Oracle’s SaaS and Platform-as-a-Service units saw a 29 percent increase in revenue compared with the same period one year prior. According to reports, SaaS revenue hit $416 million – more than $125 million more than Oracle had forecasted for itself at the beginning of the quarter.
http://www.pymnts.com/in-depth/2015/oracle-saas-earnings-rattle-salesforce/
EMC
- EMC Embraces Docker (as well) for Private Cloud Storage
Like many IT vendors, EMC is taking advantage of Docker containers to essentially make support for any given server platform a non-issue. As a container, Docker provides a lighter-weight approach to virtualization that enables applications running on top of Docker to be deployed on top of any virtual or physical server.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/it-unmasked/emc-embraces-docker-for-private-cloud-storage.html
- EMC has been very busy on twitter, they just released this white paper on selecting all-flash arrays:
http://info.xtremio.com/rs/xtremio/images/20_Questions_About_%20All-Flash_Arrays.pdf
Other
- Why are tech giants like Google, Intel and IBM backing a startup from San Francisco?
Docker, a startup from San Francisco, is the one to popularize container tech in the last year has cited companies like Yelp, eBay and BBC News as users of its service. But there isn’t a universal standard which will allow containers to be used across different environments, for example, data centers of separate cloud computing providers. But with this new standard, containers will be available for all.
- Samsung, Red Hat team to build enterprise apps
While Samsung will “optimize” the applications to work with its own Android devices, businesses will be able to use Red Hat’s BaaS platform to enable the apps to run native and hybrid/HTML5 across other Android devices, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry, a Red Hat spokesman said.
http://www.fiercemobileit.com/story/samsung-red-hat-team-build-enterprise-apps/2015-06-23
- Can Red Hat keep climbing?
- Red Hat expands OpenStack support
Via a new alliances with Vantrix, a provider of storage systems optimized for video content, and an expansion of its relationship with Super Micro Computer, Red Hat is now making greater use of OEM partnerships to bring open source storage technologies such as Ceph and Gluster to market.
- Will Red Hat Acquire Docker?
Every CEO, needs to make a buy-versus-build decision when it comes to gaining new technology assets. Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, has never been afraid of making a strategic acquisition to bolster his company, and he hasn’t hesitated to build either. So when it comes to Docker container technology, the big question many have been asking is—will Red Hat acquire Docker Inc.?
http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/will-red-hat-acquire-docker.html
- How much the Teradata executive team is making:
http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/blog/morning_call/2015/06/heres-how-much-the-6-highest-paid-executives-at.html
Supplier Report: 6/20/2015
It was relatively quiet this week in supplier news. No acquisitions, no mergers. The major news coming out of the suppliers was stock performance.
Oracle had a weak Q4 due to a strong US dollar. Red Hat moved up based on good performance news while Teradata is downgraded.
IBM continues clear messaging around data management, cloud, and mobile. They expand their support of open source platforms while growing their cloud offerings internationally.
IBM
- TCS and IBM lead race for Volvo’s $500 million IT contract
“The deal should be finalised within a month—at the moment Volvo is facing a lot of heat to cut costs and any business which is non-core and not making money for the company is under the pump right now,” one of the persons quoted earlier said. “Volvo IT is more of a cost centre for the company, and for them it makes sense to hand it out to professional outsourcing firms.”
- IBM inks Bluemix cloud deal with Capgemini’s Sogeti
By connecting sensors that use different protocols and data formats on Bluemix, Sogeti can provide clients with insights on the performance of their heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, lighting and other energy-producing processes. Sogeti will use the same combination of its smartEngine and IBM’s Internet of Things service on Bluemix to provide insights on data for clients in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, utilities management and more.
http://www.firstpost.com/business/ibm-inks-bluemix-cloud-deal-capgeminis-sogeti-2303166.html
- It sounds like IBM layoffs are still going on (Australia)
While it doesn’t sound like IBM is targeting a massive number of employees right now, its layoffs tend to occur in dribbles and drabs, laid-off employees report. IBM won’t disclose the number of people it cuts and doesn’t have to report that figure under the WARN act unless it conducts a layoff that cuts 500 people or more at once.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ibm-watchdog-more-layoffs-this-month-2015-6
- IBM commits to open source Spark
As data and analytics are embedded into the fabric of business and society –from popular apps to the Internet of Things (IoT) –Spark brings essential advances to large-scale data processing. First, it dramatically improves the performance of data dependent apps. Second, it radically simplifies the process of developing intelligent apps, which are fuelled by data.
http://it-online.co.za/2015/06/18/ibm-commits-to-open-source-spark/
Andrew Brust says Spark won’t replace Hadoop:Spark is best known as a sort of in-memory analytics replacement for iterative computation frameworks like MapReduce; both employ massively parallel compute and then shuffle interim results, with the difference being that Spark caches in memory while MapReduce writes to disk. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Spark offers a simpler programming model, better fault tolerance, and it’s far more extensible than MapReduce. Spark is any form of iterative computation, and it was designed to support specific extensions; among the most popular are machine learning, microbatch stream processing, graph computing, and even SQL.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hadoop-and-spark-a-tale-of-two-cities/
- IBM Debuts New Cloud Data Center in Italy
The new data center helps businesses in Italy fast track their cloud migration plan without having to host their data outside of their own country. Businesses in Italy will now be able to use IBM’s award winning cloud infrastructure while simultaneously being compliant with local data sovereignty regulations.
http://www.cloudwedge.com/ibms-debuts-new-cloud-data-center-in-italy-1985/
Oracle
- Oracle To Report Near-Flat YoY Earnings?
In a report published Monday, Wunderlich analyst Robert Breza previewed Oracle’s results, reiterating a Hold rating and price target of $47.00 on the stock. The firm expects the tech company to deliver earnings and revenue at the high-end of the guidance, above consensus estimates
- Oracle’s disappointing Q4 blamed on US dollar
Oracle executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said: “We expect to book between $1.5 and $2 billion of new SaaS and PaaS business this fiscal year. “That means Oracle would sell more new SaaS and PaaS business than salesforce.com plans to sell in their current fiscal year – the only remaining question is how much more.
Hewlett Packard
- HP split imminent, but will it be a clean break?
Unsurprisingly, the recent HP Discover 2015 conference in Las Vegas was mainly concerned with the split but gave little away in terms of why this was happening and what the expected benefits will be, other than high-level objectives such as agility and improved industry responsiveness.
http://www.reseller.co.nz/article/577629/hp-split-imminent-will-it-clean-break/
- HP’s Acquisition Boss Exits Ahead of Split For Dell Enterprise Post
The six-year HP veteran, who is said to have shepherded the vendor’s $2.7 billion deal last month to acquire networking provider Aruba Networks (ARUN) and its buyouts of Voltage Security and software-defined networking vendor ConteXtream, will join Dell’s Enterprise Solutions group headed by Dell chief commercial officer Marius Haas, CRN reported.
- Is HP Stock Nine Times Better Than IBM Stock?
http://online.barrons.com/articles/is-hp-stock-nine-times-better-than-ibm-stock-1434641491
Other
- Red Hat Profit Rises 28%
“Our solid start to fiscal year 2016 was evidenced by strong constant currency revenue growth of over 20%,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat. “This strong growth reflects in part the demand for our open, hybrid cloud technologies across four footprints: bare metal, virtualization, private cloud and public cloud deployments.”
- Teradata Downgraded by JMP Securities (TDC)
Teradata (NYSE:TDC) last released its earnings data on Thursday, May 7th. The company reported $0.30 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.42 by $0.12. The company had revenue of $605.80 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $605.80 million. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.54 earnings per share. Teradata’s revenue was down 7.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts predict that Teradata will post $2.44 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
http://www.wkrb13.com/markets/638731/teradata-downgraded-by-jmp-securities-tdc/
Supplier Report: 6/13/2015
Rumors dominated the news again this week with talk that Oracle could buy Splunk and (once again) that HP could be purchasing EMC. IBM actually went out and bought ANOTHER company called Blue Box to add to their OpenStack offerings (this is a major trend developing).
IBM also scored new long term business while HP finally settles on past mistakes.
IBM
- IBM buys another company: IBM acquired Blue Box to retain its dominance in the hybrid cloud space
IBM said that the inclusion of Blue Box to its services portfolio will strengthen its OpenStack lineup with a remotely managed OpenStack offering. Clients can now integrate cloud-based applications and on-premise systems into OpenStack-managed clouds, thus simplifying the deployment of workloads across hybrid cloud environments.
http://marketrealist.com/2015/06/ibm-continues-acquisition-spree-blue-box/?source=google
- IBM’s Expanding Margins: Overly Aggressive Cost Cutting Or Change In Business Mix
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253235-ibms-expanding-margins-overly-aggressive-cost-cutting-or-change-in-business-mix - We Need Only Three Hadoops, And Maybe Three Systems
We are also starting to think that IBM, which is trying to revitalize and open up its Power chip architecture, might be better served if it would anoint one of the larger Hadoop distros as its preferred stack and to get it all tuned up to run on Power-based servers. Such an approach is probably necessary to take on Intel in the datacenter, which was the really the point of IBM selling off its System x server division to Lenovo Group last fall.
http://www.theplatform.net/2015/06/11/we-need-only-three-hadoops-and-maybe-three-systems/
- IBM signs 5-year IT services deal with Citizens Bank
IBM will be using a hybrid IT approach to optimize the bank’s existing IT infrastructure. IBM will be integrating automation and predictive analytics technologies to standardize and streamline many of its internal IT systems and processes.
http://www.infotechlead.com/bpo/ibm-signs-5-year-it-services-deal-with-citizens-bank-31037
- Doctor Evidence to Supply IBM Watson Health with Cancer Research Data
Doctor Evidence will contribute 2 million additional data points from highly structured, peer-reviewed content, including thousands of clinical papers, conference proceedings, abstracts on remissions, patient survival cases, epidemiology, and drug label data from the U.S. and Europe. This medical information will be added to Watson’s existing corpus of health data that includes content from partners such as the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Cancer.gov, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others.
http://hitconsultant.net/2015/06/11/doctor-evidence-ibm-watson-health-cancer-data/
- IBM introduces SuperVessel open access cloud service
IBM has introduced SuperVessel, an open access cloud service created by Beijing’s IBM Research and IBM Systems Labs. The system is available to all developers who want to participate in the OpenPOWER ecosystem. The cloud acts as a virtual R&D engine for the creation, testing and pilot of emerging applications including deep analytics, machine learning and the Internet of Things.
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/ibm-introduces-supervessel-open-access-cloud-service–1086689
Oracle
- Does An Oracle-Splunk Merger Make Sense? Wall Street Split
He says that Splunk’s highly differentiated big data processing software is in high demand and thus wouldn’t be surprised if multiple large tech companies were bidding to acquire the firm. However, he’s skeptical of whether Splunk executives would see now as the correct time to sell, since they have a “very robust growth outlook ahead of them.”
Hewlett Packard Enterprises
- HP Abandons Medellin Global Center and Has No One to Blame But Itself
With triumphant platitudes and self-congratulatory praise, Hewlett-Packard made history by opening a US$14 million global services captive in Medellin, Colombia back in 2012. Plans called for employing over 1,000 professionals, with the center positioned to become the backbone for HP’s regional back-office, HR and call center operations.Three years later and the entire project is being dissolved to the utter dismay of staunch supporters in Medellin and Bogota who bent over backwards to “seduce” (the word local media used at the time) HP into selecting Medellin during a highly competitive, global selection process where several other geographies were considered.
http://www.nearshoreamericas.com/hp-kills-medellin-global-services-center-blame/
- HP pays big bucks to settle class-action lawsuit over botched deal
HP said June 9 that its insurance would pay the $100 million settlement fund to resolve the lawsuit from a Dutch pension fund PGGM Vermogensbeheer B.V. The lawsuit stems from an impairment charge after HP purchased the software company Autonomy.
EMC
- HP will stomp EMC’s disks into the dust, babble storage mystics
Networked storage array revenues are shrinking while server-SAN and hyper-scale storage revenues grow strongly, IDC said in its latest worldwide disk storage tracker. Total worldwide disk storage revenues in the first 2015 quarter were almost $8.8bn, up 6.8 per cent year-over-year, with 28.3EB shipped, which was 41.1 per cent higher year-on-year.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/08/hp_overtake_emc_in_disk_storage_revenues_says_idc/
- We think HP will buy EMC, says analyst
“While management’s messaging around the size of M&A in HP Enterprise continues to refer to Aruba as a benchmark (~$3bn), CEO Meg Whitman explained that from an academic perspective, technology hardware is an industry that should consolidate due to declining revenues and slowing growth rates. This sounds like EMC CEO Joe Tucci’s answer. Have they been talking? We think so. Pro forma financial leverage is manageable at a $32-$33 takeout price (less than 3x net debt/EBITDA). There are so many reasons this makes sense.”
http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2411970/we-think-hp-will-buy-emc-says-analyst
Other
- Mainframe Developer Workforce Shortage Seen Ahead
The latest survey, slated for release Wednesday morning, found that 39% of the respondents, who come from 10,000-employee-plus companies based worldwide, have no plans to address coming mainframe developer shortages. Yet more than 80% acknowledge that mainframes will remain a key business asset to handle ongoing operations and the growing amounts of Big Data.