Tag: Microsoft

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Supplier Report: 4/23/2016

sn_traffic_Khara Woods

Q1 earning reports seemed to set the tone for this week’s news.  IBM had another quarter of decline as did Microsoft and EMC.

HP Inc sold off troubled assets while EMC and Dell ponder what else they can sell to pay of their debt.

IBM

Microsoft

  • How Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella plans to beat Amazon in the cloud

    Where our differentiation lies: The first one is hybrid. Every server product of ours has cloud enrollment rights whether that be Windows Server or SQL Server,” he said, meaning that if you buy the software, you don’t need to pay for it again to use it on Microsoft’s cloud. That saves a company money.

    And he said, the reverse is true, too, that Microsoft’s cloud Azure works particularly well with all of the company’s own server products. This is “unique to Microsoft.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/how-microsoft-will-beat-amazon-in-the-cloud-2016-4

  • Microsoft Misses Profit Estimates With Slowing PC Market

    Microsoft devices and PC business were a mixed bag. The division – called “More Personal Computing” — grew only 1% to $9.5 billion. While the Surface device business grew 61% (primarily from the new Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book devices), the phone revenue declined 46%. Licensing the Windows operating system to PC makers declined 2%, but Microsoft pointed out that the decline was still better than the overall PC market. 2015 was one of the worst declines in PC sales ever and 2016 doesn’t look like it’s shaping up any better:Research firm Gartner said PC shipments declined 9.6% year-over-year for the first quarter. Microsoft said that Windows 10 is now active on more than 270 million devices.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/04/21/microsoft-misses-profit-estimates-with-slowing-pc-market/#5039969e1b42

  • Microsoft touts free stuff to lure server-leaning IT pros to its cloud

    To entice them to join, Microsoft is offering up Azure credits, free online training, free tech support and extended trials of Office 365 and its BYOD product, Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS)

    http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-touts-free-stuff-to-lure-server-leaning-it-pros-to-its-cloud/

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • OpenText Enters Into Definitive Agreement with HP Inc. to Acquire Certain Software Assets

    OpenText Corporation, a forerunner in enterprise information management, has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with HP Inc. to acquire certain parts of its customer experience software and service assets. The software assets, which OpenText Corporation has acquired includes HP Media Bin, a digital asset management solution, HP TeamSite, a multichannel digital experience management platform, HP Qfiniti, a workforce optimization platform, HP Optimost, HP Explore, and HP Aurasma.

    http://www.martechadvisor.com/news/opentext-enters-into-definitive-agreement-with-hp-inc-to-acquire-certain-software-assets/
    More:

    The company, a Canada-based content management company, expects to generate between $85 million and $95 million of revenue in the first year. If those numbers are correct, OpenText could make back the cost of the acquisition in just two years.

    http://www.ciodive.com/news/opentext-buys-bundle-of-hp-content-management-products-for-170m/417654/
    More:

    Interestingly these pieces weren’t included in the HPE part of the company during the split, where it would have made more sense. Perhaps that’s because HPI intended to sell these pieces all along, says Scott Liewehr, principal at Digital Clarity Group.

    “Why pair it with printers? In our view at DCG, we assumed this meant they’d be selling it off as soon as they could find a buyer. It’s been pretty public knowledge that HP has had buyer’s remorse from the Interwoven acquisition for quite some time,” Liewehr said.

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/18/opentext-acquires-hp-customer-experience-content-management-for-170-million/
    More:

    “TeamSite once held a dominant market position, but a series of poor decisions during the Autonomy era led to its demise. Staying ahead of innovative competitors requires more than just issuing press releases. But there are a number of large global enterprises still using TeamSite, and I’m sure the sales teams at Adobe, Sitecore, and Acquia are going to quickly capitalize on today’s news.”

    The news to sell the CX software to OpenText confirms the new HP Inc. had the plan to divest all along, according to Tony Byrne, founder of the Real Story Group.

    “It’s clearer HP was prepping these tools for ready divestment,” Byrne blogged today. “And today comes news that TeamSite, MediaBin, and Optimost have gone to rest at everyone’s favorite graveyard for unloved content technologies: OpenText.”

    Byrne said old Interwoven customers went through a sale to a “pathologically destructive” Autonomy, then went through an “ugly and litigious acquisition” by HP, then “calved off into near oblivion with the HP printer group.”

    http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/hp-sells-cx-assets-to-opentext-for-170m/

Storage (EMC | Dell | NetApp | Infinidat )

  • Dell looking at higher debt mountain to buy EMC

    The WSJ reports the weakish quarterly results at Intel and the “poorly received debt sale by disk-drive maker Western Digital Corp. are building expectations of higher yields for Dell’s coming debt issuance.”

    sn_dell_emc_overlap_2
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/22/dell_looking_at_higher_debt_mountain_to_buy_emc/

  • EMC Q1 soft as orders slip

    The storage giant reported first quarter earnings of $603 million, or 14 cents a share on revenue of $5.5 billion, down 2 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 31 cents a share.

    Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP earnings of 33 cents a share on revenue of $5.6 billion.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/emc-q1-soft-as-orders-slip/

  • VMware Shares Surge on Talk of Stock Buyback

    The stock repurchase is expected to take place after the EMC shareholder vote on the Dell deal, slated for May 12. By taking shares out of circulation, VMware hopes to increase their value.

    http://fortune.com/2016/04/20/vmware-shares-surge-on-talk-of-stock-buyback/
    More:
    VMware plans $1.2B buyback to ease Dell takeover

    VMware’s stock surged over 9% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the company reported solid quarterly results and said it would begin a $1.2 billion stock buyback. The repurchase is set to begin after EMC shareholders vote on the Dell acquisition, an event expected six weeks after Dell files its final SEC paperwork on the transaction.

    The buyback is good news to EMC shareholders because Dell’s parent company, Denali Holding Inc., is offering them $24.05 in cash, plus a tracking stock valued at 0.111 the value of VMware’s shares. By reacquiring its stock, VMware will reduce the number of shares outstanding for sale, likely increasing their market value.

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/vmware-plans-12b-buyback-to-ease-dell-takeover-2016-04-19

Oracle

  • Oracle? Who Might Be Eating Their Porridge?

    Why might I say something so harsh? Simple really, Oracle derives 52% of its revenues from maintenance. Those revenues have operating margins of 94%. The cloud accounts for 8% of revenues and has gross margins (gross not operating) of 48%. I really do think that at scale, cloud gross margins will be higher than today, but still lower than the operating margins reaped by “selling” maintenance contracts. To the extent that Oracle is replacing a revenue stream with 94% margins with one that has margins of 75% – hopefully. Needless to say, that is not the best of trades.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3965635-oracle-might-eating-porridge
    More:

    One serious challenge that Oracle faces is flexibility. Most users perceive that Oracle’s pricing is draconian and its audits… well lots of users have been known to cheat here and there in order to achieve their budgets and lots of sales people aid and abet those kinds of things. In addition to the pricing, the inflexible “Ts&Cs” there is the subject of vendor lock-in. Oracle has loads of other things they want to sell users and if users choose the Oracle cloud and then want an in-memory database, their choice is Oracle Exadata and nothing else. No rewards for guessing what that means to the prices paid by users.

Other

  • Healthcare IT, Big Data Investments Surge in Q1

    Market researcher Mercom Capital Group reported that venture funding for healthcare IT and “digital health” soared 27 percent over the previous quarter during the first three months of this year. A total of 146 deals involving private equity and corporate venture capital generated quarterly investments totaling $1.4 billion, Mercom said. Investments totaled $1.1 billion in the previous quarter.

    http://www.datanami.com/2016/04/20/healthcare-big-data-investments-surge-q1/

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Supplier Report: 4/16/2016

 

sn_fruit_Jeffrey Betts

IBM continues to tout their involvement and goals in the healthcare arena. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty was a keynote speaker for the World Health Care Congress and reinforced their progress and aspirations in medical analysis reiterating that cognitive computing is the future of the field.

Seeking Alpha thinks that Oracle’s outlook is less bright due to their overall attitude towards cloud and what that means for their future against competitors.

EMC’s future is looking lighter with new rumors that they are looking to sell off Documentum.

IBM

  • What to expect from IBM earnings

    IBM had a tough 2015 given the ongoing and heavily time consuming business model transition to cloud. Further, sluggish IT spending particularly on on-premise and data center hardware along with foreign exchange volatility remain added concerns.

    We believe that revenues will continue to be affected in the near term as the company is currently transitioning to higher-growth markets that are not yielding enough to offset declines in traditional segments. Also, intensifying competition in the industry is a major headwind.

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-to-expect-from-ibm-earnings-2016-04-14
    More:
    IBM: Revenue Will Be Hurt By Cloud Through 2018, Says Credit Suisse

    Credit Suisse’s Kulbinder Garcha reiterates an Underperform rating, and a $110 price target, projecting results in line with consensus on top and bottom line.

    But Garcha thinks the company will miss its $13.50 earnings goal this year, instead delivering instead $13.30, and “We believe top line won’t stabilize until 2018, with the commentary on Japan tax benefit adding confusion on the EPS guidance.”

    http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2016/04/13/ibm-revenue-will-be-hurt-by-cloud-through-2018-says-credit-suisse/

  • IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: “Cognitive Computing Is the Future of Healthcare”

    Importantly, Rometty said, “That invisible data will now be visible. And when you combine those together,” she said, transformative capabilities will be possible. To name just two examples, she noted that “Weather influences asthma. Exposure to crime influences your mental and physical health. This is why we’ve created the Watson cloud,” she noted, adding that “We’ve spent $4 billion to acquire Phytel, Explorys, Merge, Truven, plus the Apple Research Kit,” and other entities, to help fuel the acquisition and analytics of data as part of that broader process.

    http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/ibm-ceo-ginni-rometty-cognitive-computing-future-healthcare
    More:
    New IBM partnership will create the ultimate Cancer Advisor

    IBM and the American Cancer Society will launch a new partnership to combine IBM’s Big Blue cognitive computing platform (Watson) with the non-profit organisation’s cancer research and patient support services.

    Every year 1.6 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer, patients that require accurate information as quickly as possible. Kyu Rhee, the chief health officer of IBM, said: “Watson has read of oncology literature, but this phase is now about learning all the cancer advocacy literature and how to support cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers in their journey.”

    http://www.sourcingfocus.com/site/newsitem/9192/
    More:
    Rometty’s Keynote Speech at the World Health Care Congress:
    https://sn.joeylombardi.com/?p=1599

  • IBM Scores Server Chip Coup at Google

    These efforts over the past few years appear to finally be paying off. On April 6, Google announced that it was co-developing an open server architecture based on IBM’s upcoming POWER9 processors with fellow cloud computing company Rackspace. POWER is now completely supported across Google’s toolchain, allowing Google’s data centers to mix and match Intel’s x86 and IBM’s POWER processors.

    POWER9 isn’t due until 2017, but Intel should certainly be concerned.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/12/ibm-scores-server-chip-coup-at-google.aspx

Storage [EMC | Dell | Infinidat ]

Microsoft

  • Microsoft just took a big stand against the government over user privacy

    Apple isn’t the only company that’s fighting with the government over user privacy these days. Via GeekWire, Microsoft has sued the United States Department of Justice and has asked a court to declare the government’s secrecy orders as unconstitutional. Microsoft says it objects to orders issued by the DOJ that say the company cannot inform customers when law enforcement officials are seeking access to customer information and data.

    http://bgr.com/2016/04/14/microsoft-vs-doj-secrecy-orders/

  • Microsoft and Facebook Say They Have No Gender Pay Gap

    “Today, for every $1 earned by men, our female employees in the U.S. earn 99.8 cents at the same job title and level,” wrote Kathleen Hogan, executive vice president of human resources for Microsoft in a post on the company’s site. She also shared information about the differences (or lack thereof) in compensation for minority employees, who actually slightly out-earned their white counterparts by 0.004 cents.

    http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/microsoft-facebook-equal-pay/

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • HPE the big dog in booming cloud infrastructure market

    HPE is currently the runaway market leader after selling $4.55bn (£3.2bn) of kit destined for public or private cloud environments last year, up 27 per cent on 2014.

    Dell and Cisco were a distant second and third place on 10.6 and 9.6 per cent market share respectively, compared with HPE’s 15.7 per cent, with EMC and IBM rounding out the top five.

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2454094/hpe-the-big-dog-in-booming-cloud-infrastructure-market
    However:
    Dell-EMC set to snatch HPE’s crown in $29bn cloud market

    After Dell completes its acquisition of EMC, the merged company looks set to outstrip Hewlett Packard Enterprise as the top earner in cloud IT infrastructure.

    Dell’s and EMC’s combined cloud IT infrastructure revenues for 2015 total $5.3bn, ahead of HP Enterprise’s $4.5bn, according to IDC’s latest vendor revenue figures.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-emc-set-to-snatch-hpes-crown-in-29bn-cloud-market/

Oracle

  • Oracle’s Rite Of Passage Has Come

    Microsoft and Amazon’s AWS have both been taking steps to snatch business away from Oracle. Of the “Cloud Fource” or “Cloud 4ce” companies (names I’ve coined for the top four players in the cloud space comprising Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL)), Microsoft and Amazon are taking important steps to wean the world away from Oracle database systems.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3964707-oracles-rite-passage-come
    sn_MSsql_sa

Other

  • Box: It Makes No Sense For Us To Build Data Centers When IBM Can Do It At Scale

    “Some parts of our architecture have been on AWS over the years,” Levie said in response to TechWeekEurope’s question. “There was already a lot of familiarity with the platform. The partnership we announced with IBM last June encompasses a lot of things as well as cloud. “We had a bit of headway because of previous work with AWS, but we have a much more significant partnership with IBM.

    http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/cloud/box-zones-cloud-data-centres-189947

  • Yes, Badlock bug was shamelessly hyped, but the threat is real

    In a nutshell, Badlock refers to a defect in a security component contained in just about every version of the Windows and Linux operating systems. Known as the Distributed Computing Environment/Remote Procedure Call (DCE/RPC), it’s used by administrators around the world to access the most valuable asset on any Windows network—the Active Directory, which acts as a network’s digital security guard, allowing, for instance, an organization’s CFO to log in to an accounting server, while locking out the janitor or the groundskeeper. Because Active Directories enforce security policies and contain password data and other crucial credentials, they are almost always the first asset hackers access once they gain a limited foothold into a targeted network.

    http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/yes-badlock-bug-was-shamelessly-hyped-but-the-threat-is-real/

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Supplier Report: 4/9/2016

There is alot of talk this week.

HPE’s Meg Whitman is talking about IBM’s Watson, EMC, and what you need to know about HPE’s success. Meanwhile, IBM is pushing out information about Watson this week.  Specifically, what cognitive uses might be in store for big blue’s poster child.  The storage industry is showing what happens to companies like NetApp with ever tightening margins.

IBM

  • IBM Watson CTO on What’s Ahead for Cognitive Computing

    “This notion of creating ideas and inspiring new thoughts and new ways of asking questions is critical to so many things people do in the professional world with this. We got exposed to a lot of demand in healthcare in particular, especially around treatments for things like cancer.” For a complex disease like cancer, particularly one where the literature base is of staggering volume, there is no way for healthcare providers to keep pace with the latest research. It is here that Watson shines, High says. For doctors to keep pace with what is being published, it would take them 160 hours each week, just to keep pace with what’s new. Ultimately, he says, for this field, Watson is looking for new patterns, solutions, and treatments, and serving as an engine for doctors

    http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/07/ibm-watson-cto-whats-ahead-cognitive-computing/

  • IBM partners with Pfizer to measure patents Parkinson’s symptoms in the home

    A series of sensors have been developed by the team to give them 24/7 data on the day-to-day impact of living with the disease, improving on the partial diagnosis doctors can achieve through only partial observation whilst also eliminating the subjective nature of the people’s own experiences.

    http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/04/07/ibm-partners-pfizer-measure-patents-parkinson-s-symptoms-home

  • IBM Combines Blockchain Technology With Artificial Intelligence To Virtually Turn Back Time

    One of the potential applications of the technology would be to create a register of IoT devices based on the blockchain, with artificial intelligence programs then used to perform automated self-diagnoses and more advanced functions, which could eventually lead to the ability of engineers and regulators to virtually rewind the clock to go back in time and see at what point a smart device failed and see exactly what went wrong.

    http://www.ibtimes.com/ibm-combines-blockchain-technology-artificial-intelligence-virtually-turn-back-time-2349130

  • IBM partners with DocuSign to drive trust in the cloud

    DocuSign is working with IBM Cloud – with a 47-data centre footprint – to provide customers with access to public, private, and hybrid cloud services. DocuSign’s APIs will also be available through Bluemix, which will be key to embedding eSignature and DTM functionalities within IBM’s Cloud platform.

    http://www.itproportal.com/2016/04/07/ibm-partners-with-docusign-to-drive-trust-in-the-cloud/

  • IBM Hires AOL Vet Bob Lord as Chief Digital Officer

    His experience on both the agency and technology side of advertising was likely a big selling point for IBM. Over the past few months, Big Blue’s been on a bit of a shopping spree, snapping up shops Aperto, ecx.io and Resource/Ammirati. The tech giant also owns The Weather Channel’s data and analytics assets.

    http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/ibm-hires-aol-vet-bob-lord-chief-digital-officer-170591

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Meg Whitman tells IT leaders everything they need to know about HP Enterprise

    Yes. So if you think about new companies that are starting, they’re running their IT infrastructure completely differently, and so we have to figure out how we can remain relevant to these young companies. And I’ll give you a couple of good examples there in a minute. But the vast majority of the total available market is in legacy infrastructure. I mean by definition, if you’ve been around more than five years, you have a legacy infrastructure. I think there is a tremendous opportunity for us to help companies with legacy infrastructures migrate to a better place for them, to be able to compete with these new younger companies that maybe have an entirely different infrastructure.

    http://www.computerworld.in/interview/meg-whitman-tells-it-leaders-everything-they-need-know-about-hp-enterprise

  • Meg Whitman says IBM’s Watson is ‘not as far along’ as you might think

    Listen, they’re [IBM] doing some very interesting things. They’re buying healthcare companies and stuff, but listen, our Vertica platform is remarkable as is our Haven OnDemand platform. I put us up against Watson every day of the week here. We’re in a lot of customers where actually from a Watson perspectiveit’s not as far along in terms of real-world applications as you might imagine from the advertising.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/whitman-disses-ibms-watson-2016-4

  • EMC shrugs off HPE’s catty anti-merger ad campaign

    The copy on the advert continued: “In today’s business environment driven by rapid change, you can’t afford to miss a beat. Soon EMC and Dell will be forced to turn their attention to integrating two separate organisations with different product lines and services. Will this distraction take their focus off your business?”

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2453606/emc-shrugs-off-hpes-catty-anti-merger-ad-campaign

  • HP’s Whitman on investing in startups, particularly one Microsoft wanted to buy

    Some have warned Whitman that integrating with startups like Mesosphere could help them grow to $1 billion quickly and give HPE only a small percentage of the startup’s equity. While true, she believes that increasing HPE’s relevancy to CIOs will result in increased sales of more traditional Hewlett Packard Enterprise offerings.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/blog/techflash/2016/04/hps-whitman-on-investing-in-startups-particularly.html

  • HPE Sells Controlling Stake In Mphasis To Blackstone For $825M

    Under the terms of the deal, Blackstone has agreed to purchase at least 84 percent of HPE’s stake in Mphasis for $6.51 per share, HPE said in its statement. Blackstone will then purchase the remaining 16 percent stake that’s permitted under Indian law and subject to the outcome of a mandatory tender offer between the signing and closing of the deal, HPE said.

    http://www.crn.com/news/managed-services/300080240/hpe-sells-controlling-stake-in-mphasis-to-blackstone-for-825m.htm

Microsoft

  • Microsoft Snags Oracle’s Main Man on Linux

    Here’s a really interesting tidbit for software geeks: Wim Coekaerts, a long-time Oracle veteran who helped transform that company into a Linux power, is now a corporate vice president at Microsoft. Coekaerts started at Microsoft in March as corporate vice president of enterprise open source, according to his Linkedin profile. The news of his job change was first reported by ZDNet. Fortune reached out to Coekaerts, Oracle, and Microsoft for comment and will update this story as needed.

    http://fortune.com/2016/04/01/microsoft-snags-oracles-linux-guru/

Oracle

  • Don’t Believe Everything You Read About Cloud Adoption
    Didn’t I say this last week?

    If companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are truly making huge inroads in enticing companies away from on-premise offerings, it will impact VMware’s earnings. VMware is the undisputed number one provider of the virtualization layer and is not offered as part of either the Microsoft or Oracle Cloud offerings. Going forward, if we see the cloud numbers from Oracle and Microsoft growing rapidly, but don’t see some kind of flattening or decline with VMware (and we haven’t so far), I’d suggest that means something is not quite adding up.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3963577-believe-everything-read-cloud-adoption

Storage ( EMC | Dell | Infinidat )

  • Infinidat adds predictive analytics to Infinibox OS. But what’s it mean?

    Infinidat’s array is a hybrid, employing disk for bulk data storage and flash (SATA SSDs) for caching data. There are, Broido believes, at this point in time, no good cost and performance reasons for adopting an all-flash array architecture or a flash storage tier, not when it wins bake-offs by customers against all-flash array vendors’ products. The 10:1 to 25:1 cost/GB differential between nearline disk drives and SATA SSDs is to prevent Infinidat replacing disk with flash.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/infinidat_infinibox_os_adding_predictive_analytics/

  • Here’s What Dell and EMC Corp. Are Selling off as Acquisition Nears

    EMC acquired California-based Documentum for $1.7 billion in 2003. Documentum’s software gives corporations a secure way to file and track documents. Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that the company generated $600 million in revenue and has profit margins of 30 percent or more.

    Additionally…

    SonicWALL, meanwhile, is a San Jose-based network security company that Dell acquired for about $1.2 billion in 2012. And Quest makes IT management software. It was acquired by Dell in 2012 for $2.36 billion.

    http://austininno.streetwise.co/2016/04/07/dell-emc-merger-selling-documentum-2-other-units-for-billions/

  • NetApp ain’t all that: Flashy figures show HPE left ’em for dust

    The disparity in revenues between HDS and EMC, Pure, IBM, HPE and NetApp is so great that HDS’ best hope may lie in acquiring an existing vendor. Ones that come to mind in the pure (no pun intended) all-flash area are Kaminario and Violin. Buying Nimble, Tegile or Tintri would bring in hybrid arrays which would muddy the waters of HDS’ existing integrated storage offerings from a marketing/product positioning perspective.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/01/extended_allflasharray_revenue_numbers/
    sn_storge_2016_04_07

Other

  • Google might adopt a key Apple technology in a big way

    Amid an ongoing legal battle with Oracle over the Android operating system, Google is considering a big shift towards Apple’s very popular Swift programming language, reports The Next Web. The report says Google is considering making Swift a “first-class” language choice for programmers making apps for Android.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/google-might-bring-swift-to-android-2016-4

  • Huge Opportunity in This ‘Future Predicting’ Sector

    Multinational consulting firm McKinsey says Big Data services can allow consumers to capture $600 billion in economic surplus. That’s probably why tech heavyweights IBM, Accenture, Oracle, Microsoft, EMC and Cisco have spent tens of billions of dollars building up their Big Data platforms.

    http://www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/huge-opportunity-in-this-future-predicting-sector-22492

Photo: Ryan McGuire

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/2/2016

sn_lights_William Santos

As IBM’s Watson finally starts to make financial traction for the company, Microsoft announced their own grand design for artificial intelligence (but their message might not have been heard since they had to apologize for last week’s  AI “incident”)

IBM also purchased another new company named Bluewolf for $200M.  Like the purchase of Optevia, this company also focuses on CRM solutions. Since IBM does not have a strong CRM tool (they have been pushing SAP), they are trying to get in on the configuration of other supplier’s CRM solutions – like Microsoft and SalesForce.

Dell officially sold off Perot Systems to NTT for $3B while Oracle continues to… troll.

IBM

Microsoft

  • Is Microsoft shifting its focus again or losing it?

    Sure, Microsoft talked about Windows and Xbox. Those key brands were an important part of the proceedings. But the biggest announcements – the ones that laid out Microsoft’s plan for the next year – were in the area of “intelligence.” Microsoft wants to build the world’s first large-scale, multiple-platform AI service. And that mission has far-reaching implications.

    http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/microsoft-is-trying-to-build-skynet-not-windows/

  • Microsoft is reportedly mulling Yahoo acquisition

    This isn’t the first time that Microsoft has shown an interest in acquiring Yahoo. Former CEO Steve Ballmer tried unsuccessfully to buy Yahoo for about $45bn in 2008. Microsoft could now buy the company for a much smaller figure. Re/codesuggested that Yahoo’s board would accept $10bn for the core internet business.

    http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2452618/microsoft-is-reportedly-mulling-yahoo-acquisition

Storage ( Dell | EMC |Infinidat |NetApp | Pure)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

Oracle

  • Google Says It Doesn’t Owe Oracle More Than $8 Billion in Damages

    The lawsuit concerns whether Google should be allowed to use parts of Oracle’s Java software under fair use. The more than $8.8 billion that Oracle is claiming was estimated from profits that Google has made from Android, which integrates Java into its operating system.

    Another quote:

    The multi-billion-dollar damages Oracle is seeking are worth even more than it cost the company to buy Sun Microsystems, which developed Java.

    http://fortune.com/2016/03/31/google-says-it-doesnt-owe-oracle-more-than-8-billion-in-damages/

  • Oracle Corporation Is Crushing the Cloud Space
    I keep hearing how Oracle is crushing it in the cloud space, but I haven’t see the list of companies jumping over to do business with them.  Do you think they are really growing at this pace or is some sales re-classification occurring?

    So, now Oracle’s the one that’s crushing. They saw over 40% growth in their cloud-based revenue, gross margins popped from 43% to 52% in one quarter, and now they’ve got $1.5 billion in recurring revenue from customers from the cloud. So, I think that Oracle came out better from this and has learned a couple things from Salesforce over the last 16, 17 years.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/25/why-oracle-corporation-is-crushing-the-cloud-space.aspx

Other

Photo: William Santos