Tag: Microsoft

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Supplier Report: 7/16/2016

sn_beach_JoshuaNess

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

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

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

IBM

  • Inside IBM’s New App-Building Training Ground

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

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

  • OpenText CEO Takes Aim at IBM Watson #OTEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microsoft

  • Microsoft wins landmark data storage case

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

Oracle

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

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

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

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

Storage (EMC | Dell )

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Why Teradata Corporation Fell 11.5% in June

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

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

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

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

Photo: Joshua Ness

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/9/2016

sn_sparkle_Matt Hoffman

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

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

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

IBM

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

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

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

  • Healthcare Supply Chain to Get the Watson Treatment

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

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

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

  • IBM to hire Microsoft veteran Karan Bajwa

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

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

  • Better Buy: HP vs. IBM

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

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

Microsoft

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

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

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

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

  • Microsoft leadership shake-up as veteran exec departs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Storage (EMC | Dell )

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

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

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

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

Oracle

  • Java EE followers devise plan to seize control from Oracle

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Matt Hoffman

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/2/2016

sn_throwrock_Felix Russell-Saw

This week the various arms of HP have caught my attention.  They successfully defeated Oracle over their Itanium dispute and have been awarded $3B.

In the wake of that news, HPE CEO Meg Whitman announced a massive restructuring (again) as their long time CTO Martin Fink is on his way out along with their COO. Meanwhile, HP Inc announced the purchase of a 3D scanning company.

With the sell off of the Autonomy products, the divestiture of their consulting services to CSC, and now with this $3B win, both HP companies have some cash, and I want to know what their grand strategy is.

In other news, IBM is doubling down on block-chain technology with their Bluemix Garage initiative, Microsoft has 350 million windows 10 devices active, and Oracle is trying their hardest to kill Java.

IBM

  • IBM and Cisco to combine collaboration tools

    IBM’s Verse email platform and Connections collaboration suite are a good match for Cisco products like the Spark messaging app and WebEx conferencing service, so the two vendors have found ways to integrate them, company officials say. All this will happen in the cloud. They’ll demonstrate the first examples next month at the Cisco Live conference.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3090100/ibm-and-cisco-will-make-watson-into-a-virtual-workmate.html
    IBM and Cisco team up on enterprise collaboration to stave off rivals like Slack and Microsoft

    The bigger picture in this latest IBM and Cisco deal is that both companies are feeling the heat of competition from a wide range of rivals, some big and some actually quite small.

    They include standalone services from popular startups like Slack, Quip, Trello and Asana; as well as those offered by large companies like Microsoft and Citrix, which not only build their own solutions but have been aggressive acquirers of those startups that have built popular enterprise productivity tools.

    It’s a mark of how far we’ve come in the tech world that some of these products from much smaller outfits can give huge IT businesses a run for their money.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/30/ibm-and-cisco-team-up-on-enterprise-collaboration-to-stave-off-rivals-like-slack-microsoft-and-more/

  • IBM storage has a new boss: The same one it had six years ago

    At IBM Walsh has a disparate set of products to look after, including FlashSystem, SVC, Storwize, XIV and the DS8000 line. FlashSystem is popular, while the others could be characterised unkindly as fading stars – or, more sympathetically, as long-lived survivors facing the challenges of public cloud storage, software-defined storage, server SANs and hyper-converged systems.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/01/ibm_storage_new_boss_ed_walsh/

  • IBM Launches NYC Bluemix Garage With Former Azure Exec

    The design element is what made a difference for Murray. For example, one of the Bluemix Garage engagements Murray sat in on was a small startup out of San Francisco that had a complete idea and knew exactly what it wanted to build. IBM had the company come to the garage for a design thinking workshop to help it visualize what it was trying to solve and what experience it wanted its end users to have. And the design workshop, the startup abandoned the idea it initially had because it realized that what it was trying to build wasn’t really what it was trying to solve.

    http://www.eweek.com/developer/ibm-launches-nyc-bluemix-garage-with-former-azure-exec.html
    Can IBM Really Make a Business Out of Blockchain?

    According to Jerry Cuomo, vice president of blockchain and cloud at IBM, the plan will succeed because the company offers a full-suite of tools that allow developers to get up and running quickly while also benefiting from a mentoring environment at the Bluemix Garage. The garage moniker is supposed to exude a Silicon Valley-esque vibe, where people throw around ideas with markers on whiteboards and Post-It Notes.

    http://fortune.com/2016/06/28/ibm-blockchain/?iid=leftrail

  • Why IBM Will Soar While Apple Stumbles

    Unfortunately, these great strengths may have become toxic. Its culture has become highly secretive. Suppliers may only refer to Apple by a specially assigned code name. They win new contracts without knowing why and what Apple plans to do with their technology and then lose them again without knowing what they did wrong.

    http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/ibm-apple-soar-stumble/

Microsoft

Oracle

  • Oracle (ORCL) Loses Itanium Lawsuit Worth $3 Billion to HPE

    Oracle and HPE have been embroiled in a legal tangle involving software for Itanium chip-based servers over the last five years. HP Enterprise had asked for $3 billion in compensation from Oracle for allegedly causing a decline in the demand for its Itanium based products.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oracle-orcl-loses-itanium-lawsuit-141002455.html
    Of course, Oracle vows to contest the ruling…

  • How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

    Oracle employees that worked on Java EE have told others in the community that they have been ordered to work on other things. There has also been open talk of some Java EE developers “forking” the Java platform, breaking off with their own implementation and abandoning compatibility with the 20-year-old software platform acquired by Oracle with the takeover of Sun Microsystems six years ago. Yet Oracle remains silent about its plans for Java EE even as members of the governing body overseeing the Java standard have demanded a statement from the company.

    http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/07/oracle-killing-java-ee/
    bye_felicia

Storage ( EMC | Dell )

  • Why states like Massachusetts are trying to curb noncompete pacts

    Noncompete pacts were only one ingredient in the recipe that worked against Massachusetts and to the advantage of Silicon Valley, where employees can depart and start their own companies mostly without fear of a lawsuit. But they mattered. In California, companies are generally prohibited from enforcing noncompete agreements because of a worker-friendly statute from the 19th century.

    https://www.boston.com/jobs/jobs-news/2016/06/28/states-like-massachusetts-trying-curb-noncompete-pacts

  • Dell Promises ‘Seamless’ Deal Registration For Partners On First Day After EMC Merger

    In a letter to partners Tuesday, Marius Haas, Dell chief commercial officer and president of enterprise solutions, said the company is “driving to maintain the partner and customer experience you have come to expect today, and at the onset of day one, provide seamless deal registration and intact sales coverage plans.”

    “I do not think it will be seamless,” said a top executive at one large Dell and EMC solution provider, who did not want to be named. “Nothing in life ever is.”

    http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/300081182/dell-promises-seamless-deal-registration-for-partners-on-first-day-after-emc-merger.htm

  • Data Protection: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

    The key findings of the survey of IT decision makers at 2,200 organizations included:

    • incidents of traditional data loss and disruption are down since 2014, but new challenges mean 13% more businesses experienced loss overall;
    • over half of businesses fail to protect data in the cloud despite more than 80% indicating they will rely on SaaS-based business applications;
    • 36% have lost data in the last year as the result of a security breach;
    • 73% are not very confident they can protect flash storage environments;
    • the average cost of data loss is more than $914,000.

    http://it-tna.com/2016/06/29/data-protection-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Whitman lifts lid on big HPE reorganization
    The CTO and COO are leaving as part of this reorg…

    Whitman also said that HPE would merge its Hewlett Packard Labs research arm into its enterprise group, which is focused on selling data center gear. The idea is to better align research projects with products and services that can eventually be sold, she explained. Antonio Neri, executive vice president and general manager of the HPE enterprise group, will lead Hewlett Packard Labs.

    As for the restructurings, Whitman wrote that it would consolidate its sales teams into one big global sales unit under its enterprise group. HPE will do a similar reshuffling with its marketing departments and will consolidate staff from e-commerce, product marketing, and customer relations group into one big marketing unit.

    http://fortune.com/2016/06/27/hewlett-packard-enterprise-martin-fink-meg-whitman/

  • HP launches PC as a service, buys 3D scanning specialists

    HP Inc said it has launched PCs as a service, simplifying PC lifecycle management. HP Device as a Service (DaaS) is designed to help take the stress out of acquiring, deploying and managing technology, with one single contract across devices and services, and no upfront investment. The programme is globally scalable, meaning customers can easily evolve their hardware infrastructure to adapt to changing workforces.

    Separately, HP is buying German companies David Vision Systems and David 3D Solutions, which make 3-D scanning technology, the Wall Street Journal reported. No financial terms were disclosed.

    http://www.telecompaper.com/news/hp-launches-pc-as-a-service-buys-3d-scanning-specialists–1151217

  • HP, Apple top list of tech companies fighting forced labor risk

    Forced laborers may be charged high recruitment fees to get jobs, be trapped in debt servitude, deprived of their passports or other documents, or made to work excessive hours for low pay, the report said.

    HP, Apple, Intel Corp, Cisco Systems Inc and Microsoft scored highest on the list of 20 publicly traded ICT companies. At the bottom were Keyence, BOE Technology and Canon.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hp-apple-top-list-tech-181308055.html

Other

  • What sets Red Hat apart from the Valley

    The Red Hat Summit marked 10 years since Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss, and today it remains a cornerstone of the company’s offerings. Last year, Red Hat purchased Ansible, the provisioning system that competes with Chef and Puppet. In both the case of Ansible and of 3scale, Red Hat seized a smaller firm that was doing quite well, yet hadn’t taken over the market mindshare the way their public and near-public competitors had.

    Why is it that Red Hat seems to be more successful with technology acquisitions than, say, an HPE, which took on companies like Mercury, Autonomy and even Compaq? Red Hat CFO Frank Calderoni said that these successes come from disciplined acquisitions goals.

    http://sdtimes.com/sd-times-blog-sets-red-hat-apart-valley/

  • Salesforce is way behind Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP in one important area of its business

    Market-research firm Cowen Group pointed out in a note published on Thursday that Salesforce generates a substantially lower percentage of revenue from international regions compared to other software makers.

    As seen in the chart below, Salesforce gets only 32% of its revenue from outside the US, lagging behind SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, which all generate over half of their sales from overseas.

    sn_salesforce_intern
    http://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-overseas-sales-lags-oracle-microsoft-and-sap-2016-6?r=UK&IR=T

Photo: Felix Russell-Saw

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/25/2016

sn_rose_Craig Dennis

“Sell, Sell, Sell!” is the theme of the week. Dell is selling off Quest and SonicWall while HP Inc finishes the job they started in April and sold off their Extreme platform to OpenText.

Microsoft bought a text app company named Wand while RedHat purchased 3scale.

We also look at IBM’s purchases over the last 6 months and go deeper into understanding their future direction.

IBM

  • What Do IBM’s Acquisitions over The Past Six Months Indicate?

    International Business Machines has acquired nine companies in the last six months. The acquisitions indicate that the company is focused on rebuilding its business around digital marketing, Software as a Service (SaaS) verticals and business intelligence verticals

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/06/22/what-do-ibms-acquisitions-over-the-past-six-months-indicate/#19252dafe44a

  • Inside IBM’s plan to become a cloud broker and even resell AWS, Microsoft Azure

    While cloudMatrix is a cloud broker, the term is a bit of a misnomer. CloudMatrix is priced as a subscription based on the number of virtual machines used. What IBM is really going for is to be the proverbial one pane of glass for IT infrastructure with a financial engine to gauge costs on the fly. CloudMatrix supports AWS, Azure and SoftLayer on the cloud side and VMware vCloud Director and vRealize. OpenStack and Google Cloud Platform will be added in the months to come.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/inside-ibms-plan-to-become-a-cloud-broker-and-even-resell-aws-microsoft-azure/

  • IBM unveils serverless-computing, simplifies IoT app development

    IBM has unveiled its new Bluemix OpenWhisk, allowing developers to build feature-rich, intuitive applications which easily connect to the Internet of Things and tap into advanced services such as cognitive and analytics without the need to deploy and manage extra infrastructure. Bluemix OpenWhisk has been positioned as a serverless computing platform that leverages Docker and features new user interface updates that claims to drive efficiency for developers.

    http://techseen.com/2016/06/22/ibm-serverless-computing-iot-app/

  • IBM Named a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service
    Oh how I love press releases…

    “We believe IBM’s recognition in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service report is due to the strength and reach of our resiliency services portfolio, and the results our clients are experiencing on a daily basis,” said Laurence Guihard-Joly, General Manager, IBM Resiliency Services. “Given the range of risks surrounding businesses today, we are dedicated to continue delivering the most advanced, secure solutions in the industry so clients – no matter how hybrid their IT environments are – can focus first and foremost on keeping their businesses up and running for long term growth.”

    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-named-a-leader-in-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-disaster-recovery-as-a-service-300287917.html

  • IBM promises 200 petaflop supercomputer

    The US is clearly embarrassed the Chinese Sunway TiahuLight system is leading the supercomputer arms race. Now the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced that is having a new IBM system, named Summit, delivered in early 2018 that will now be capable of 200 peak petaflops.

    That would make it almost twice as fast as TaihuLight. The Summit will be based around IBM Power9 and Nvidia Volta GPUs. Summit use only about 3,400 nodes. Each node will have “over half a terabyte” of coherent memory (HBM + DDR4), plus 800GB of non-volatile RAM that serves as a burst buffer or extended memory.

    http://www.fudzilla.com/news/40970-ibm-promises-200-petaflop-supercomputer

Microsoft

  • Microsoft buys Wand to improve chat capabilities

    The Wand team will be joining Bing’s engineering and platform group, Corporate Vice President David Ku wrote in a post announcing the deal Thursday. The company’s team members will be working primarily on Microsoft’s push to enable the creation of intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants.

    It’s a natural fit for Wand, which had been working since 2013 on apps that let users chat with one another and add outside information from sources like Yelp. Users could share music and let other people access their smart home devices using Wand, too.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3085151/microsoft-buys-wand-to-improve-chat-capabilities.html

  • Psst, want to flog a turkey like LinkedIn? Well, phone up Microsoft

    In that sense, the purchase of LinkedIn reminds one of Microsoft’s acquisition in September 2013 of the mobile phone assets of Nokia, the Finnish telecoms giant. That deal was masterminded (if that is the right word) by Nadella’s predecessor, Steve Ballmer, and likewise represented a desperate attempt to rectify an earlier strategic blunder, namely Microsoft’s failure to spot the smartphone revolution that had been launched by Apple in 2007. The Nokia venture turned out to be an unmitigated disaster and led to Microsoft writing off a loss of $7.9bn in July last year.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/19/microsoft-linkedin-acquisition-social-networking-expensive-turkey
    Also:

    Acquiring LinkedIn would have provided Salesforce with a vast amount of data on users all around the world. This would have helped Salesforce develop tools and enabled customers to finalize sales deals. Users’ profiles on LinkedIn provide an insight into a range of information, including users’ skills, responsibilities in previous jobs, and contact details.

    sn_sf_threat
    http://marketrealist.com/2016/06/microsoft-make-linkedin-offer-thwart-salesforces-bid/

  • Microsoft is marketing software to help state governments keep track of legal marijuana

    To do this, Microsoft is partnering with Kind a company who built software to track legal marijuana from “seed to sale” for local and state government agencies. Kind’s government solutions department says their mission is to help the cannabis industry to transact safely; transact securely, and stay in compliance with the rules and regulations governing marijuana-related businesses. Microsoft will leverage their cloud platform Azure to facilitate and expand the services, and will be actively marketing it in states where marijuana is legal at some level. Microsoft will not be working with Kind’s Kiosk division or any point of sale services — this is strictly for government agencies.

    http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-marketing-software-help-state-governments-keep-track-legal-marijuana

  • Is It Time For Microsoft To Rebrand?

    But I’m not suggesting that the Microsoft brand go away completely. It does seem, though, that its role should change. Instead of serving as the corporate moniker and the lead brand for the company, Microsoft could be used as a product or category brand and a business unit name. Just as Google’s leaders adopted Alphabet as the parent company name and transitioned the Google brand away from entities “far afield” from its main Internet products, perhaps it’s time for Nadella to limit the use of the Microsoft and adopt a new name for his company.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/deniselyohn/2016/06/22/is-it-time-for-microsoft-to-rebrand/#243311d16e89

Oracle

Storage [EMC | Dell | Infinidat]

  • Dell sells data analytics unit to Francisco Partners, Elliott

    Private equity players Francisco Partners and Elliott Management have signed a definitive agreement to snap up all shares in Dell Software Group for $US2 billion, according to newswire Reuters. Terms of the deal will see the combined entity take control of both Quest and SonicWall, which provide business software to more than 180,000 customers across the world.

    http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/dell-sells-data-analytics-unit-to-francisco-partners-elliott
    Is Dell cutting too deep?

    In March, Dell sold its consultancy arm to NTT Data for $3 billion. This latest sale sees it dispose of the bulk of its software division including security to Francisco Partners and Elliot Management. The two big assets in this sale are Quest and SonicWALL. Nobody is speaking publicly about what Dell will get but Reuters has cited an insider putting the deal at over $2 billion. If that number is accurate it represents a loss for Dell who paid $2.4 billion just for Quest in 2012.

    http://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2016/06/22/dell-cutting-deep/

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Open Text to buy customer communications assets from HP for $315 million US

    The transaction includes HP Extream, HP Output Management, HP TeleForm and HP LiquidOffice – collectively used to manage customer communications.

    Open Text said the purchase will help it expand its range of customer communications management products and services.

    It estimates the acquired HP businesses will generate between $110 million and $125 million US of annualized revenue.

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/open-text-buy-communications-assets-hp-1.3644994

  • HP Inc. Plans to Use Gains From Divestiture to Invest in Print

    The company’s move will reduce revenue in the supplies category, including items like ink cartridges and toner, by about $450 million over two quarters, Chief Financial Officer Catherine Lesjak said Tuesday on a conference call with analysts. HP Inc. will gain about $285 million from the divestiture of its Marketing Optimization assets. The company said it will pay back the investment over three years.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-21/hp-inc-plans-to-use-gains-from-divestiture-to-invest-in-print

Other

  • Amazon Web Services Expanding With Artificial Intelligence

    On June 15, Smola reported he would be joining Amazon to lead its artificial intelligence initiatives mostly focused within the firm’s cloud machine learning platform business. With this effort, Amazon will be increasing its competitiveness in the infrastructure as a service artificial intelligence market. Current competitors are Microsoft Azure, IBM SmartCloud and Google Compute Engine, all offering different variations of artificial intelligence technology.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-services-expanding-artificial-intelligence-192956493.html

  • Red Hat to Acquire API Management Leader 3scale

    3scale complements our existing middleware product portfolio and Red Hat OpenShift by enabling companies to create and publish APIs with tools such as Red Hat JBoss Fuse, and then manage and drive adoption of those APIs once they have been published.

    https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-acquire-api-management-leader-3scale