Tag: Oracle

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/5/2016

sn_globes_Lena Bell

IBM is like an elevator at the moment… going both up and down.  The company announced job cuts and job growth. IBM’s transformation is becoming more tangible as we can see the humans being impacted (10,000 jobs eliminated in GTS) and growth in others (Watson, Explorys, BI).

We can also see changes at EMC and Dell.  The companies announced their combined leadership team post-acquisition as well as some changes in leadership for VMWare.

After HP INC’s bad news last week, the stock market offers some hope to Hewlett Packard Enterprise.  Oracle’s hopes of being a solid #2 in the cloud space is evaporating with SAP coming on strong.

IBM

  • Explorys added 80 people after IBM deal, expects more growth

    Explorys has added about 80 new positions since it was acquired by IBM last May. Now the health care data analytics software company employs about 220 people.

    That number is still growing: Explorys had 48 open positions as of Feb. 24, the vast majority of which will be based in Northeast Ohio. The company plans to hire at least 80 people this year, according to CEO Stephen McHale.

    http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20160228/NEWS/160229846/explorys-added-80-people-after-ibm-deal-expects-more-growth

  • IBM Cuts Jobs In ‘Workforce Rebalancing’

    On March 2, he said he began getting hundreds of emails and hundreds of Facebook messages from employees that the layoff had begun. He said the messages conveyed that cuts were hitting GTS and the Global Business Services group, with some additional reports of cuts from the software group and the cloud business. The reports of cuts are coming from workers in the US, France, and the UK. Conrad said he expects to hear more about international layoffs next week, including some from Australia.

    Also:

    Job cuts are nothing new for IBM. The company was rumored to have engaged in a gigantic job-cut effort in early 2015, too, though no actual numbers were ever confirmed. IBM reduced its 2014 workforce by 12%, from 431,212 in 2013 to 379,592 in 2014, according to numbers provided in its 10-K report.

    http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/software-platforms/ibm-cuts-jobs-in-workforce-rebalancing/d/d-id/1324561

  • IBM Plans to Sell ~$150M Worth of Lenovo Stock

    Specifically, IBM will offer 182 million Lenovo shares with a price range of HK$6.26 – HK$6.42. The price is a 6.4 percent discount to Lenovo’s last closing price.

    http://www.streetinsider.com/Insider+Trades/IBM+(IBM)+Plans+to+Sell+~$150M+Worth+of+Lenovo+Stock/11380301.html

  • IBM Creates Breach Response Team With Resilient Systems Acquisition
    Last week it was a rumor, this week it is reality…

    IBM said it plans to use Resilient and its roughly 100 staff – among them security expert Bruce Schneier – as the cornerstone of a new unit called X-Force Incident Response Services, which is to help organisations plan for, manage and respond to cyberattacks, drawing on the skills of about 3,000 consultants and security researchers worldwide.

    http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/security/ibm-breach-response-resilient-acquisition-187098

  • IBM’s Watson Provides Brainpower to Turner

    “This solution addresses one of the timeless objectives of marketing leaders—infusing new levels of data and science into advertising decisions,” said Adam Steinberg, VP, IBM Cognitive Business Solutions. “Armed with deep, fact-based recommendations, Turner will hone the precision of every advertising recommendation, and in turn, lift the impact of the customers who place advertising on Turner’s award-winning programming.”

    http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/ibms-watson-provides-brainpower-turner/154189

  • Buffett Did Not Call IBM A Mistake
    I wasn’t going to cover this, but there are so many posts saying Buffett called IBM a mistake.

    If there was anything of value said about IBM, it was that Buffett still thinks it will be worth more in 10 years than it is worth today and that he generally believes the turnaround effort will pan out. It’s worth noting that Charlie Munger, his erstwhile partner, isn’t particularly convinced of that outcome, though it sounds like he’s a far cry from saying IBM was a mistake, too.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3940386-buffett-call-ibm-mistake

  • Did IBM Just Go ‘Full Patent Troll’?

    In the suit, IBM accuses Groupon’s website and app of using technology built by Prodigy to display content, specifically ads, as well as client tracking technology that monitors “service selections while the client is shopping and then use that information when the client decides to make a purchase,”according to PC World.

    http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2016/03/03/ibm-lawsuit-patent-trolls-groupon-over-prodigy-ip/

Dell | EMC

  • VMware leadership changes continue as Dell-EMC deal looms

    VMware announced Tuesday that its Chief Operating Officer Carl Eschenbach will resign. According to a Fortune report, Eschenbach is moving to become a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. VMware representatives said Eschenbach’s duties will be distributed among several executives. Zane Rowe, EMC’s CFO, took the reins as VMware’s financial lead Tuesday. CFO Jonathan Chadwick, also co-COO, left VMware at the end of January, the same time the company announced plans to cut 800 jobs by the end of March or mid-April.

    http://www.ciodive.com/news/vmware-leadership-changes-continue-as-dell-emc-deal-looms/414844/

  • Michael Dell unveils leadership line-up for merged Dell-EMC

    • Jeremy Burton, chief marketing officer
    • Jeff Clarke, vice chairman of operations and client solutions
    • Howard Elias and Rory Read, co-chief integration officers
    • David Goulden, president of Enterprise Systems Group
    • Marius Haas, chief commercial officer
    • Steve Price, chief human resources officer
    • Karen Quintos, chief customer officer
    • Rich Rothberg, general counsel
    • John Swainson, president of Dell Software
    • Tom Sweet, chief financial officer
    • Suresh Vaswani, president of Dell Services

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2449287/michael-dell-unveils-leadership-line-up-for-merged-dell-emc

  • EU clears Dell’s purchase of EMC

HP Inc | Hewlett Packard Enterprise

  • Why HP Is Suffering A Slow Death

    The first mistake was extreme outsourcing, which was supposed to cut cost and limit corporate size. But instead it ended up giving old HPQ’s advantage away to Asian PC and printer makes, piece-by-piece.

    Then came a string of bad acquisitions– in an attempt to fight ‘the last war’ in a number of segments of the technology industry — which drained Hewlett-Packard’s resources. The purchase of Compaq Computer in 2001 was supposed to provide HP with a scale advantage in the PC market and allow it to compete effectively against Dell Computer, IBM, and all sorts of emerging Asian competitors. The purchase of near-bankrupt Palm in 2010 was supposed to help the company enter the fast growing mobile devices market, which began to replace PCs. And the acquisition of enterprise software maker Autonomy in 2011 (at a hefty price of $10.3 billion) pitted the company against three major competitors – Salesforce.com, Oracle, and IBM.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2016/02/27/why-hp-is-suffering-a-slow-death/#1ece80ca44c2

  • HP Enterprise rises on reassuring demand

    The Silicon Valley company, reporting its first quarterly results since it split in November from printer and personal computer maker HP Inc., on Thursday said net income in its first fiscal quarter fell 52%, including restructuring costs. Revenue declined 2.5%. Excluding the effects of a stronger dollar, however, the company said revenue rose 4%–the third consecutive quarter of growth on a constant currency basis–and both revenue and adjusted profit beat Wall Street expectations.

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hp-enterprise-rises-on-reassuring-demand-2016-03-03

Oracle

  • Oracle CEO Safra Catz advises ‘don’t eat dog food’

    Larry is fond of saying we should eat our own dog food. First of all, don’t eat dog food. It’s bad for you. It’s dangerous. We eat our own cooking. That’s correct. We have to eat our own cooking. You know why? Because the entire scale of our business is to the point where I cannot meet the demands of all our customers unless I transform myself, meaning Oracle.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-advises-dont-eat-dog-food-2016-2

  • Oracle Corporation Falls Victim to Hubris as SAP Overtakes Its Cloud Business

    Not only has SAP outperformed Oracle recently, but since Bill McDermott took the CEO reigns in February 2010, SAP stock has increased 77%, outpacing Oracle which is up about 60% over the same period.

    SAP beating Oracle in the cloud, it is doing so by taking a page out of Oracle’s own playbook — making savvy acquisitions. Over the past five years, the software giant has spent $16 billion acquiring SuccessFactors, Ariba, and most recently, Concur Technologies, a travel and expense software provider. All three company’s solutions already do or will run on HANA, SAP’s application server that includes an in-memory database management solution.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/01/oracle-corporation-falls-victim-to-hubris-as-sap-o.aspx

Other

Photo: Lena Bell

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/20/2016

sn_drphone_Luis Llerena

We made jokes last week when IBM didn’t buy a company, I guess we can’t make the same joke twice.  With their purchase of Truven, IBM has has solidified its place in the medical analysis world. The market is reacting well to the news, with IBM up 5% on the day of the announcement.

While IBM (finally) gets some good financial news, Dell is still in a waiting pattern for funding.  News that the EU is set to approve the deal is looming as Michael Dell finalizes the loans from mostly Chinese financial institutions.  Loans are not the only source of funds as Dell is looking to sell off assets, namely Perot Systems.

IBM

  • IBM buying healthcare analytics firm Truven for $2.6B

    Truven has over 8,500 clients, and will boost the size of Watson Health to over 5,000 employees. IBM: “Upon completion of the acquisition, IBM’s health cloud will house one of the world’s largest and most diverse collections of health-related data, representing an aggregate of approximately 300 million patient lives acquired from three companies. IBM plans to integrate Truven’s extensive cloud-based data set spanning hundreds of different types of cost, claims, quality and outcomes information with its existing data sets.”

    As a reminder of the health-related companies IBM has purchased in the last year:

    The deal comes six months after one to buy top medical imaging software firm Merge Healthcare, and ten months after the purchases of patient data analysis software firm Phytel and clinical database provider Explorys. The Phytel/Explorys deals coincided with the launch of Watson Health, which aims to provide software/services that can deliver insights from large volumes of anonymized patient data.

    http://seekingalpha.com/news/3118536-ibm-buying-healthcare-analytics-firm-truven-2_6b
    Side Note: The street is reacting favorably to the news – IBM was up 5%. 

  • IBM dangles $5 million prize for major breakthroughs using Watson

    And by grand challenges, it’s thinking big — it lists past achievements like the moon landing, mapping the human genome, and addressing climate change. (That last one might still be up for grabs, by the way).

    The contest is being launched Wednesday at the TED conference in Vancouver by Peter Diamandis, founder of XPrize, which is partnering with IBM on the project.

    The winners will be announced at TED 2020 (assuming the event is still around then). Three winning teams will split $4.5 million of the prize money, an IBM spokeswoman said, meaning they could each pick up $1.5 million. The other $500,000 will help fund projects along the way. IBM is the one putting up all the cash.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3034221/ibm-dangles-5-million-prize-for-major-breakthroughs-using-watson.html#tk.rss_all

  • IBM Embraces Blockchain with New Bluemix Cloud Services and Code

    Blockchain is a type of distributed database. It’s designed in a way that ensures that all transactions are public, yet no centralized party has exclusive control over them. The technology has become explosively popular because it powers Bitcoin, the open source, peer-to-peer payment system — although it can be used for much more than that.

    IBM’s visions of blockchain are centered around IoT:

    IBM is also promoting integration of blockchain apps with IoT devices for purposes that extend beyond payment. “Devices will be able to communicate to blockchain-based ledgers to update or validate smart contracts,” IBM says. “For example, as an IoT-connected package moves along multiple distribution points, the package location and temperature information could be updated on a blockchain. This allows all parties to share information and status of the package as it moves among multiple parties to ensure the terms of a contract are met.”

    http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-companies/ibm-embraces-blockchain-new-bluemix-cloud-services-and-co

  • IBM launchs z13 Mainframe computers with advanced cryptography functions

    The z13s includes new cryptography hardware that can encrypt and decrypt data twice as fast as its predecessors for example. To speed up the z13s’ cryptography functions, the mainframe now features a faster cryptography co-processor card with more memory than IBM’s previous mid-range machines.

    “This means clients can process twice as many high-volume, cryptographically-protected transactions as before without compromising performance,” the company says. “This equates to processing twice as many online or mobile device purchases

    http://www.albanydailystar.com/technology/ibm-launchs-z13-mainframe-computers-with-advanced-cryptography-functions-16515.html

  • IBM’s Rometty Slams Competitors With ‘Yesterday’s Business Model,’ Spotlights Cognitive Era As Future Disruptor

    “You see two of them coming together on yesterday’s business model, and you see another one breaking up on yesterday’s business model,” Rometty said in a thinly veiled reference to the pending merger of Dell and EMC, and last year’s split of Hewlett-Packard into two companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.

    http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300079711/ibms-rometty-slams-dell-emc-hpe-as-yesterdays-business-model-spotlights-cognitive-era-as-future-disruptor.htm

Microsoft

  • Microsoft Azure continues open source love affair

    Following its earlier announcement of a partnership with Red Hat, Microsoft added Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6.7 and 7.2 to the Azure Marketplace. That means developers who want to use the popular operating system now have an easy and Microsoft-approved path to get it running on Azure.

    A majority of Azure Marketplace workloads are Linux-based, which is an interesting position for Microsoft’s cloud platform, considering the company’s previously dim view of the open source OS.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3034269/microsoft-azure-continues-open-source-love-affair.html#tk.rss_all

Dell | EMC

  • ​Apparently $45 billion doesn’t just grow on trees

    “Between the date the merger agreement was entered into and the date of this proxy statement/prospectus, the market value of the VMware Class A common stock has declined, thereby reducing the implied value of the stock portion of the merger consideration,” the letter said.

    “Changes in the market value of the VMware Class A common stock also will impact the amount of cash that holders of EMC common stock will receive in the merger in lieu of fractional shares of Class V Common Stock,” the letter continued.

    http://www.networkworld.com/article/3034359/cloud-computing/the-dell-emc-merger-hits-some-snags.html

  • EU set to clear Dell’s US$67 billion deal to buy EMC (sources)

    Dell Inc, the world’s third-biggest maker of computers, is set to gain unconditional EU antitrust approval for its US$67 billion bid for data storage company EMC Corp, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso declined to comment on Thursday. The Commission is scheduled to give its ruling on the deal by Feb. 29.

    http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/technology/eu-set-to-clear-dell-s-us/2528382.html

  • Dell in talks to offload key assets, report says

    Dell Inc. is in negotiations to sell Perot Systems Corp. to NTT Data Corp. of Japan, Reuters reports.

    Round Rock-based Dell is trying to sell the IT consulting business to raise money to fund its $67 billion buyout of Massachusetts-based EMC Corp. Dell has asked for $5 billion for Perot Systems but worldwide market jitters appear to have dampened companies’ appetite for tech acquisitions.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/techflash/2016/02/dell-in-talks-to-offload-key-assets-report-says.html

Oracle

  • Oracle to invest $400 million in India, says global CEO Safra Catz

    It will be the largest campus outside the US and will seat 11,000 employees, which will be ready in the next five years, BusinessLine reports.

    The company will also launch incubation centres. “I am particularly excited about the incubation centres which will house substantial software and technology capabilities, tools, and training to help launch new technology start-ups built utilising Java and the Oracle platform,” Catz added.

    http://www.ibtimes.co.in/oracle-invest-400-million-india-says-global-ceo-safra-catz-666849

Other

  • The CIO’s playbook for managing an SAP relationship

    Too often I have witnessed companies prematurely forced into a negotiation as a result of an event created by SAP (e.g. audit) or their company (e.g. merger). These organizations are compelled to operate in a reactionary manner, and challenged to fully understand their existing relationship with SAP, resulting in uncertainty and doubt. In most cases, these situations result in below market commercial agreements, increased risk and strained relationships, both internally and with SAP.

    On the other hand, I have also partnered with IT executives who recognize the need to anticipate such events and proactively undertake a detailed baseline and assessment of their SAP relationship well in advance of entertaining a commercial discussion.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3031283/it-strategy/the-cios-playbook-for-managing-an-sap-relationship.html#tk.rss_all

  • CIOs aren’t ready for Docker and container technology

    Virtualization made computing more efficient by enabling companies to run multiple operating systems on a single server. But VMs only support one application per OS. Containers take server resource utilization much further by allowing developers to run an app in its own container, and run multiple containers on the same OS. Developers can also move containers between Linux servers or virtual machines (VMs) and make changes to apps or portions of apps, called microservices, without breaking the software and risking downtime. Proponents say containers facilitates greater agility in the age of constantly updated mobile and Web apps.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3033167/virtualization/cios-aren-t-ready-for-docker-and-container-technology.html#tk.rss_all

 Photo: Luis Llerena

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/13/2016

sn_dice_Pierre Rougier

Mark your calendars, a week has gone by and IBM has not purchased a marketing company!

But they have started blocking citizens living in sanctioned countries from accessing their cloud services.  Speaking of blocking, Microsoft is preventing new Lumia phones from seeing the light of day.  Microsoft is expected to kill the brand in the coming months.

Dell is struggling with securing finances for the EMC acquisition.  However, EMC’s William Green stated that only an “act of God” would prevent the deal from taking place.

IBM

  • IBM Aims To Make Enterprises Agile With Cloud Data Services

    The introduction marks an expansion of the company’s Cloud Data Services with more than 25 services and 150 publicly available datasets available to help developers build, deploy, and manage Web and mobile applications, and enable data scientists to discover hidden trends using data and analytics in the cloud, IBM said in a Feb. 4 statement announcing the marketplace.

    This new marketplace comprises several existing IBM services, including IBM Compose Enterprise, IBM Graph, IBM Predictive Analytics, and IBM Analytics Exchange.

    http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/ibm-aims-to-make-enterprises-agile-with-cloud-data-services/d/d-id/1324199

  • IBM Has Blocked SoftLayer Cloud Users In Iran
    Via a letter to customers posted on Reddit:

    “Currently, at customer sign-up, SoftLayer blocks IP addresses that originate from countries that are subject to U.S. trade and economic sanctions,” read the email, according to Reddit user Borayeris.

    “At this time, these countries are Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Starting February 1, 2016, SoftLayer will implement network-wide blocking of these IP addresses.”

    http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-regulation/ibm-block-softlayer-cloud-iran-185733

  • IBM Rolls Out a Slew of New Cloud Data Services for IBM Cloud

    “Data is the common thread within the enterprise, regardless of where its source might be,” said Derek Schoettle, general manager of analytics platform and cloud data services at IBM, in a statement. “In the past, data handlers have relied on disparate systems for data needs, but our goal is to move data into the future by providing a one-stop shop to access, build, develop and explore data.”

    http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=020000BXV9EW

Microsoft

  • Is Microsoft Corporation About to Kill One of Its Major Brands?

    The end of Lumia may not mean the end of Windows Phone, however. Microsoft could consolidate its smartphone efforts under its Surface brand instead. Rumors of a “Surface Phone” have been around for months. They gained new steam late last month, when a poster on Reddit discovered that surfacephone.com redirected to Microsoft’s general Surface page.

    The Surface remains a modest contributor to Microsoft’s financials, but has enjoyed growth in recent quarters. Last quarter, Surface devices generated $1.35 billion, up more than 20% on an annual basis. With the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book, Microsoft is slowly establishing a brand of high-end, innovative Windows devices.

    http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/fool/article/Is-Microsoft-Corporation-About-to-Kill-One-of-Its-6813440.php

  • Cloud now makes up one third of Microsoft revenues as Azure soars

    Cloud services are going so well for Microsoft that Business Insider suggests it is growing faster than Amazon’s reported 127% in revenue gain.

    On the other side, revenue for Windows Surface devices increased 29 percent driven by the launch of Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book while online gaming “Xbox Live” monthly active users grew 30 percent year-over-year to a record 48 million.

    http://cops2point0.com/2016/02/cloud-now-makes-up-one-third-of-microsoft-revenues-as-azure/

  • Microsoft Lays Off ‘Dozens’ as It Cuts Costs in Mobile Division: Report

    The report comes courtesy Finnish publication Helsigin Sanomat, which says that dozens of employees have been let go from the company. The report claims that the company is handing out pink slips to employees in an attempt to curtail the expenses in its mobile division. The division saw a significant drop in the revenue last quarter.

    “The job reductions were spread across more than one business area and country and reflect adaptations to business needs. We go through this process in the most thoughtful manner possible, with the deepest respect for affected individuals,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet in a statement. We’ve reached out to the company to check whether employees at Microsoft India are also being let go.

    http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/microsoft-lays-off-dozens-as-it-cuts-costs-in-mobile-division-report-801109

EMC | Dell

Oracle

  • Will 2016 Be Oracle Corporation’s Best or Worst Year Yet?

    To generate fresh cloud growth, Oracle might need to make more acquisitions. In January, Oracle agreed to acquire AddThis, a provider of social sharing, content recommendation, personalized marketing tools, and analytics services for web publishers. Industry sources told TechCrunch that Oracle paid $100 million to $200 million for the company.

    Oracle suggests that AddThis’ tools, which power 15 million sites, will be integrated into its Data Cloud platform. The acquisition of AddThis complements Oracle’s previous acquisitions of online-to-offline provider Datalogix, cloud marketing services provider BlueKai, online ad campaign firm Maxymiser, and cloud marketing automation firms Eloqua and Responsys. In addition to boosting its SaaS revenues, those acquisitions can widen Oracle’s moat against other major players in the marketing cloud space, like Adobe, Salesforce, and IBM.

    Oracle finished last quarter with $17.4 billion in cash and equivalents and $34.9 billion in marketable securities, so it still has the firepower to keep growing its cloud business inorganically.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/07/will-2016-be-oracle-corporations-best-or-worst-yea.aspx

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman’s Total Pay Drops 13%

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. Chief Executive Meg Whitman’s total compensation was valued at $17.1 million last year, down 13% from 2014.

    Ms. Whitman’s base salary remained at $1.5 million, but she received a smaller bonus. Her nonequity incentive compensation declined to $2.5 million from $4.3 million a year earlier.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/hewlett-packard-enterprise-ceo-meg-whitmans-total-pay-drops-13-20160212-00258

  • A PR’s perspective on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise/Financial Times spat: The medium is not your messageSo HPE got into a fight with a Financial Times writer:

    Kellaway received an email from Gomez objecting to an article she had written the previous week which criticised Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s chief executive, Meg Whitman. In the article Kellaway repeated the advice Whitman gave to an audience at Davos — “You can always go faster than you think you can” — and made light of the assertion by saying that “sometimes, when you go faster you fall flat on your face.”

    The writer goes on to call the HPE Rep a bully:

    His full letter, released this morning by the HP comms team, shows how easy it is to wade too deep. “Obviously”, he writes, “you and the FT are free to write about the topics you select. I’ve read your bio and respect your right to ‘poke fun’ at management. But you still have an obligation to get it right. And FT management should consider the impact of unacceptable biases on its relationships with advertisers.”

    Unfortunately, even prefaced by a declaration of respect for editorial independence, the last line has a hard time distancing itself from a veiled threat. A little too Tucker-ish, perhaps.

    http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/02/08/prs-perspective-hewlett-packard-enterprisefinancial-times-spat-medium-not-your

Other

  • Tableau Struggling To Keep Up With Market Expectations

    Recently there has been increasing competition in the Big Data analytics space that is hurting Tableau. Qlik Technologies (NASDAQ:QLIK) launched its version of a data analytics software Qlik Sense. The product is getting positive reviews from enterprise and mid-market consumers, especially since the Sense Desktop is available for free. Additionally, bigger vendors are offering a similar product. Of note is Microsoft’s Power BI data-analytics software that is offered for free and compares with Tableau’s premium priced offering. Additionally, Microsoft’s Power BI is more likely to attract its existing Excel users – a market that Tableau targets. Other bigger competitors include Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) which are coming up with similar offerings of their own. Market research suggests that among the available data visualization solutions, Tableau has the most expensive product.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3889526-tableau-struggling-keep-market-expectations

  • Tumultuous Times for BI and Analytic Tool Vendors

    Last year’s report featured nine vendors in the Leader’s Quadrant, but only three made the cut this year. Sent packing from the prestigious perch were MicroStrategy, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and SAS, each of which you can now find in the Visionaries’ quadrant, thanks to lower abilities to execute compared to last year. And Info Builders lost even more cred, falling into the Niche Players category after scoring lower in ability to execute (Y axis) and completeness of vision (X axis).

    sn_bi_2016_magquad
    http://www.datanami.com/2016/02/10/tumultuous-times-for-bi-and-analytic-tool-vendors/

Photo: Pierre Rougier

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/30/2016

sn_window_Julien Sister

Another week, another IBM acquisition. IBM announced that they are purchasing marketing firm Resource/Ammirati to “address surging client demand for the next great customer experience”… how noble of them.  While IBM is picking up new companies, rumor has it that they are planning to let go of employees in the GTS space.  The job eliminations could be up to 30,000 positions (but  there is no way that they will cut that many heads in one year… right?).

EMC/VMWare announced up to 800 staff cuts in the VMWare space while they are attempting to assure banks and investors that the Dell acquisition is on target.

Oracle is doing what Oracle does best… trolling other companies.  Oracle released Google’s sensitive financial data to the news which Google is (rightly) quite upset about.  Oracle’s attorney said Google should blame themselves.  Oh yeah they also finally killed off the Java plug in.

Finally… Xerox is pulling a HP and announced a split/spinoff due to pressure from Carl Icahn.

IBM

  • IBM Dishes on Acquisition Plans for Digital Marketing Company

    The objective of the move, we’re told, is to combine the companies’ strategic, creative and technology talents to address rising demand from businesses seeking to “reinvent themselves for the digital economy and provide differentiated experiences to their customers.”

    http://mobilemarketingwatch.com/ibm-dishes-on-acquisition-plans-for-digital-marketing-company-64986/
    More Information on the acquisition:
    IBM Plans to Acquire Resource/Ammirati to Address Surging Client Demand for the Next Great Customer Experience

    As one of the top, digitally-led creative agencies in the US, Columbus, Ohio-based Resource/Ammirati will help IBM build on the success in North America and join over 10,000 IBM iX employees to support demand for its services in this fast-growing market. Resource/Ammirati’s 300+ associates across its offices in Columbus, Chicago and New York will continue to serve a diverse roster of clients spanning consumer goods, retail and financial services companies such as Birchbox, DSW, Nationwide, Nestlé, Newell Rubbermaid, North American Breweries, Shaw Industries, Sherwin Williams, Toys “R”Us and White Castle, among others.

    http://www.finchannel.com/index.php/technology/item/53862-ibm-plans-to-acquire-resource-ammirati-to-address-surging-client-demand-for-the-next-great-customer-experience
    Comments:
    I find this buy very interesting… considering some of the marketing moves Oracle made last week and the fact that Teradata is looking to sell of their marketing platform, this is an area to watch in the next few months.

  • IBM CEO Rometty Getting $4.5 Million Bonus for 2015

    Ms. Rometty’s total earnings for the year won’t be clear until IBM discloses the value of certain equity grants, but her bonus was $900,000 more than the $3.6 million she earned last year. The IBM CEO’s base pay for 2016 remains unchanged at $1.6 million, with $13.3 million in long-term incentive stock awards, the company said Thursday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/01/29/ibm-ceo-rometty-getting-4-5m-bonus-for-2015.html

  • Axe to fall on staff at IBM’s Global Technology Services ‘this Friday’

    Global Technology Services, which builds networking infrastructure and provides high-availability systems among other things, is part of the IT titan’s Global Services division, which employs about 190,000 people worldwide.

    Lee Conrad, an ex-IBMer and national coordinator of the Alliance@IBM union, said on Monday that staff had told him that up to 20 per cent of the GTS workforce is at risk. “I have received information that a resource action will happen this Friday,” he told journalists via email.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/26/ibm_gts_layoffs/
    Additional News:

    As layoff rumors surface, IBM cuts severance pay allowance
    IBM, which has reported a loss in revenue for 15 consecutive quarters, is reportedly gearing up for layoffs this week. The move comes less that a week after Big Blue cut severance pay allowances from as much as six months pay to one month.

    http://wraltechwire.com/as-layoff-rumors-surface-ibm-cuts-severance-pay-allowance/15278005/

  • IBM Refreshes LinuxONE, Expands Platform’s Ecosystem

    IBM LinuxONE recently ported the Go programming language, which was developed by Google. Go is designed for building simple, reliable and efficient software, making it easier for developers to combine the software tools they know and love with the speed, security and scale offered by LinuxONE. IBM will begin contributing code to the Go community in the summer.

    http://www.eweek.com/cloud/ibm-refreshes-linuxone-expands-platforms-ecosystem.html

  • IBM Closes Weather Co. Purchase, Names David Kenny New Head Of Watson Platform

    As part of the deal, IBM is making some changes: First, the Weather Company’s cloud platform will now run on IBM’s Cloud data centers (recall that it once was a big client of AWS). That platform will now power all of IBM’s wider push into data services and Watson’s Internet of Things business. This will bring a massively bigger amount of data into the mix, covering what IBM describes as billions of IoT sensors.

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/29/ibm-watson-weather-company-sale/?ncid=rss

Oracle

  • Oracle Corporation (ORCL) to Kill of Java Browser Plugin – Why this is good for everyone

    “Oracle plans to deprecate the Java browser plugin in JDK 9,” the Java Platform Group said on their blog. “This technology will be removed from the Oracle JDK and JRE in a future Java SE release.” Oracle does not plan to provide additional browser-specific plugins as such plugins would require application developers to write browser-specific applets for each browser they wish to support. Moreover, without a cross-browser API, Oracle would only be able to offer a subset of the required functionality, different from one browser to the next, impacting both application developers and users.”

    http://ir.net/news/stock-news/123425/oracle-corporation-orcl-to-kill-of-java-browser-plugin-why-this-is-good-for-everyone/

  • Google Should Blame Itself for Confidential Info Leak: Atty for Oracle Corporation

    Oracle’s attorney, Annette Hurst fired back at Google after the search engine giant criticized her for disclosing extremely sensitive information during a court hearing on January 14.

    According to Google, Atty. Hurst improperly revealed “extremely sensitive information” from documents that were marked “Attorney’s Eyes Only.” The search engine giant said the “public disclosure could have significant negative effects” on its business.

    http://www.opptrends.com/2016/01/google-should-blame-itself-for-confidential-info-leak-atty-for-oracle/

EMC | Dell

  • VMware Cuts 800 Jobs As Merger Doubts Linger

    The layoffs were announced Tuesday as VMware released its fourth-quarter earnings. The company expects the cuts to cost between $55 million and $65 million.

    While VMware operates as a separate, independent company from EMC, its stock has dropped more than 40% since the Dell takeover was announced late last year. EMC has itself launched layoffs that will cost about $250 million.

    http://ww2.cfo.com/the-cloud/2016/01/vmware-cuts-800-jobs-merger-doubts-linger/

  • EMC has a shoddy year

    “I was disappointed that we fell a bit short on revenue, which was $7.01 billion essentially flat year-on-year,” Tucci said. “However, I would like to point out that it follows 24 consecutive quarters of reported year-on-year top line growth. An accomplishment that very few our technology peers matched.”

    http://www.microscope.co.uk/news/4500272044/EMC-has-a-shoddy-year

  • EMC slams concerns Dell cannot raise takeover cash

    Tucci: “We have a binding solid merger agreement in place. We are highly confident of the contractual terms we have in place [and] that we will meet those contractual terms. There are significant penalties in place both ways if this doesn’t happen. The banks are fully committed and, again, what does that mean? It means that the banks have told us they can raise the money.”

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2443771/emc-slams-concerns-dell-cannot-raise-takeover-cash

Other