Supplier Report: 10/3/2015

sn_pumpkin_AaronBurden

IBM’s long term plan of IoT, Big Data, and Analytics seems to be getting some traction even during a rough Q3.  HP is fighting the ghosts of old decisions as they finalize their big split.  While HP celebrates their split, EMC is telling the world they have no intention to follow that strategy.

IBM

  • IBM Is Fading Back Toward Major Support

    As October begins, it appears IBM is headed for its third straight lower monthly low. This current downtrend, which began on July 21 with a huge downside gap, has dropped shares nearly 20%. Late last month, the initial down leg of the post-earnings breakdown found support near $140. IBM began to rebound on Aug. 26, but the upside was well-contained. With very light bullish interest, despite the steep decline from the summer highs, the stock was unable to move past its massive Aug. 24 opening gap. Shares have been trading in a tight range since while the major indices went on to recover most of the mid-August selloff. The significant lagging action continues to weigh on Big Blue and will likely drive it lower in the near term.

    http://www.thestreet.com/story/13309491/1/ibm-is-fading-back-toward-major-support.html

  • IBM’s IoT Investments Are About To Pay Off

    A recent IDC survey found that nearly 75% of IoT market makers are planning to deploy or have already deployed IoT systems in the next year. This proves that IoT is moving from the planning stage to the action stage, bringing the technology to life. The survey also found that of all industries tied to IoT, transportation and healthcare are furthest along, ready to deploy IoT technologies soonest.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3536076-ibms-iot-investments-are-about-to-pay-off

  • IBM acquires Meteorix to expand HR service offering

    Acquiring Meteorix will make IBM one of the most experienced Workday service providers in the world, the company said, allowing it to better implement the services on behalf of customers thanks to the firm’s team of 200 consultants who specialise in delivering high-value services, while IBM will continue to focus on boosting the sales of Workday.

    http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/hr/5397/ibm-acquires-meteorix-to-expand-hr-service-offering

  • Analytics are better with shared storage and not scale-out, says IBM

    [With] Spectrum Scale Native RAID, the cluster data is managed using higher-level erasure codes to protect against multiple disk failures while offering significant disk savings over the 3x replication found in typical HDFS installations. ESS stores data using declustered RAID6 with support for either 2-fault or 3-fault disk fault tolerance… ESS distributes the data and parity information evenly across all disks in the system [which] allows for storage rebuilds triggered by a disk failure to complete faster than traditional RAID rebuilds by distributing the work across many disks rather than just a few.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/02/ibm_analytics_better_shared_storage_not_scaleout/

  • IBM: Nanotube Breakthrough Will Create Low Power, Faster CPUs

    Big Blue is claiming it can not only build carbon nanotube transistors, a claim widely acknowledged as feasible, but it can also connect the nanotubes to other processor components and circuitry, a claim no one else has made so far.

    http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/ibm-nanotube-breakthrough-will-create-low-power-faster-cpus/d/d-id/1322455

Hewlett Packard

EMC

Oracle

Other

Photo: Aaron Burden, StockSnap

Supplier Report: 9/26/2015

sn_leaf_Ales Krivec

It was another big week for IBM and Watson with the announcement of Watson offices moving to Silicon Valley.  IBM wants to be close to the disruptions and maybe cause a few.  But as businesses expand into the unfamiliar world of AI, cloud, and SaaS, are they locking themselves into environment they can’t get out of easily?

As datacenters and server budgets shrink, is there an exit strategy to the externally hosted ecosystem?

IBM

  • IBM Watson sharpens its cognitive skills: New APIs help make it more ‘human’

    As part of this announcement, IBM also said it will expand the company’s presence in Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area with a new Watson Hub, South of Market in San Francisco. IBM believes it will put them closer to, and increase collaboration with, the local start ups, developers, venture capital groups, established businesses and academic experts the company is currently working with to take cognitive computing into new markets. The location will also serve as the new global headquarters for IBM Commerce, a high-growth industry opportunity for IBM and Watson. The facility is scheduled to open in early 2016.

    http://www.firstpost.com/business/ibm-watson-sharpens-its-cognitive-skills-new-apis-help-make-it-more-human-2445566.html

  • Watson to become a huge sales engine…

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-24/ibm-s-watson-said-to-become-huge-engine-for-sales
  • Massachusetts gives IBM a $2.5M tax break for absolutely no reason whatsoever

    IBM has promised to create 500 new jobs in exchange for its tax break. If they don’t, there will be hell to pay … or at least they’ll have to give back some of the $2.5 million.

    http://www.networkworld.com/article/2986116/big-data-business-intelligence/massachusetts-gives-ibm-a-2-5m-tax-break-for-absolutely-no-reason-whatsoever.html

  • IBM boosts security of bring your own cloud apps

    The technology helps a company discover the cloud-based apps its employees are using on their computers and mobile devices and then helps roll out a safer way of using them, without impacting productivity. Hosted on IBM Cloud, the solution scans a company’s network to find the apps being used, which are then analysed using deep threat analytics from IBM X-Force.

    http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/it-infrastructure/security/5376/ibm-boosts-security-of-bring-your-own-cloud-apps

EMC

  • Cloud takes a bite out of backup boss EMC’s top line in Q2

    The storage titan saw its quarterly sales drop 16.9 per cent annually to $414.4m, and its share of the market came in more than six points lower than in the corresponding period last year. Second-placed Symantec – whose $104.5m revenue accounted for 14.4 per cent of the worldwide total – endured a decline of a comparatively modest 3.7 per cent

    They added:

    “Focus continues to shift away from hardware-centric, on-premise PBBA systems to hybrid/gateway systems,” she said. “The results [of this] are greater emphasis on backup and deduplication software, the ability to tier or push data to the cloud, and the increasing commoditisation of hardware, all of which require market participants to adjust product portfolios accordingly.”

    http://www.channelnomics.eu/channelnomics-eu/news/2426707/cloud-takes-a-bite-out-of-backup-boss-emcs-top-line-in-q2

Hewlett Packard

Other

Supplier News: 9/12/2015

sn_cat_ClemOnojeghuo

Considering summer is unofficially over, it was a slow news week from suppliers.  IBM did make an interesting move by picking up software developer StrongLoop.  This continues their strategy on cloud and mobile.   IBM also announced the opening of Watson Health Center in Boston.

Oracle is quietly cutting their Java experts while HP overtakes Cisco in providing cloud infrastructure.   Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst details how his company makes money on services when the software is free.

IBM

  • IBM Opens Watson Health HQ, Expands Watson Health Cloud
    It reads like a press release, but interesting information…

    IBM opened its new IBM Watson Health global headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., and announced that Deborah DiSanzo is joining the company as the business unit’s general manager. The IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance will help biomedical companies bring medical innovations to market more efficiently. This solution will help the companies fast-track the deployment of a GxP-compliant infrastructure and applications while adhering to stringent requirements for hosting, accessing and sharing regulated data.

    http://www.eweek.com/it-management/ibm-opens-watson-health-hq-expands-watson-health-cloud.html
    More on the office they are opening in Boston:
    http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/09/10/ibm-announces-watson-health-office-space-in-kendall-square/

  • IBM Has Been A Terrible Steward Of Shareholders’ Capital

    One company that hasn’t shown an ability to innovate in the way that it competes in the market – especially in cloud – compared to someone like Microsoft, who is a chief competitor, is IBM. Like Apple, IBM has also been a slave to a dividend and buyback program. Like Apple, IBM has spent over $100 billion on its buyback program. And, like Apple, IBM’s stock price has lagged the overall market in the last three years.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2015/09/11/ibm-has-been-a-terrible-steward-of-shareholders-capital/

  • IBM Acquires Node.js Developer StrongLoop (no word on price yet)

    StrongLoop is as startup based in San Mateo, California. The company focuses on the creation and development of software for enterprises by using the open-source JavaScript programming language Node.js. Software built by StrongLoop allow companies to create cloud and mobile based apps which are equipped with APIs that allows them to handle massive amounts of data through mobile, web and Internet of Things apps.

    http://en.yibada.com/articles/62707/20150911/ibm-acquires-node-js-developer-strongloop.htm

  • Box shows how a single deal with IBM can move the needle for any $2 billion company

    The partnership, announced in June, allows both companies to plug-in to each other’s technologies, while working on joint apps and sales strategies. Box benefits by gaining access to IBM’s wide array of technologies and client network. IBM gets to tap into Box’s advanced cloud storage offerings.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/box-earnings-ibm-partnership-2015-9

EMC

Hewlett Packard

  • More HP Involvement at SurveyMonkey… Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) CEO Joins SurveyMonkey Board

    Whitman, 59, was appointed to run the computer giant in Sep 2011. She will lead the new H-P Enterprise business group post the spilt in Nov 1 this year. Whitman stated that this is the right time for her to join the board of SurveyMonkey. She looks at the offer as an attractive one as it’s her first external board appointment since she joined H-P in 2011.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/hewlett-packards-hpq-ceo-joins-surveymonkey-board-cm519157

  • HP overtakes Cisco in cloud infrastructure battle – finally

    After nipping at Cisco’s heels for two years, HP finally overtook arch rival Cisco in the cloud infrastructure equipment battle in Q2, albeit by the slimmest of margins. Synergy Research Group says after tying in Q1 with 13%, HP finally wrestled top spot from Cisco which declined by half a percentage point, while HP remained consistent on 13%.

    http://channellife.co.nz/story/hp-overtakes-cisco-cloud-infrastructure-battle-finally/

Other

  • Oracle cuts Java execs

    Cameron Purdy, a senior vice president for development and a noted Java evangelist, left Oracle in August after more than 8 years at the company, according to his LinkedIn bio. In a few tweets, he indicated that this was Oracle’s decision.

    http://fortune.com/2015/09/07/oracle-cuts-java-execs/

  • SAP Finance Chief Says Company Done With Big M&A Deals for Now

    “I see no need in the foreseeable future for big acquisitions,” Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic said at a meeting with reporters Thursday at the company’s headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. “If you talk about big acquisitions, what is left in the market?”Salesforce.com Inc. is too expensive and Workday Inc. would overlap with SAP’s product line, Mucic said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-10/sap-finance-chief-says-company-done-with-big-m-a-deals-for-now

  • Red Hat: How One CEO Uses Extreme Openness To Lead 8,000 People

    Adams: I have to ask: How do you make money on free software? Whitehurst: It’s very hard. The source code to all our software is indeed free. We offer services and support. You can download random Linux or open source software. But if you’re running nuclear submarines, major stock exchanges, or big banks, you want to make sure they’re secure and that you have support. We’re a business-to-business company.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2015/09/10/how-one-ceo-uses-extreme-openness-to-lead-8000-people/

Supplier News: 9/5/2015

Death_to_stock_above_5S

IBM is ensuring they are the major player for internet of things by helping create a standardized ecosystem.  HP is looking to sell off a company and move some of their employees to staffing firms.  VMWare continues to be presented as the future of EMC. Meanwhile, Oracle is trying to avoid having their executives sued.

IBM

  • IBM and ARM Collaborate to Accelerate Delivery of Internet of Things

    IBM today announced an expansion of its Internet of Things (IoT) platform called IBM IoT Foundation – through an integration with ARM, providing out of the box connectivity with ARM® mbed”-enabled devices to analytics services. This fusion will allow huge quantities of data from devices such as industrial appliances, weather sensors and wearable monitoring devices to be gathered, analyzed and acted upon.

    http://seekingalpha.com/pr/14575766-ibm-and-arm-collaborate-to-accelerate-delivery-of-internet-of-things
    More on the partnership:

    There are plenty of clouds that want to store your connected data, but IBM is making the case that it has everything developers need in one reputable cloud. IoT Foundations has the IBM brand, new capabilities announced Thursday to handle data analytics (it uses a variation of the Spark real-time data processing standard) and device management capabilities. The link with ARM should help the engineers at a big name company or startup so they don’t have to worry about the mechanics of connecting their device to the Internet and offloading the data. Instead, they can just make it happen with a few clicks on a cloud dashboard.

    http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/arm-ibm-iot/

  • IBM partners PH firm Ionics Inc to create Internet-of-Things platform

    The Philippine listed firm disclosed that one of its units Ionics EMS Inc, a local electronics manufacturing services provider, is working with IBM as “a key design partner” to launch the IBM IoT Platform. The latter is meant to enable organizations across industries to improve engagement with clients, accelerate technology innovation and enhance business operations.

    http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/ibm-partners-ph-firm-ionics-inc-to-create-internet-of-things-platform-11562/

  • Half a Century Later Mainframes, Together with Linux, Still Run Much of Today’s Infrastructure

    These platform innovations have enabled mainframes to incorporate major advances in technology and keep evolving over the years. This was the case with the transition to microprocessors and the parallel sysplex architecture, without which IBM would not have survived its near-death experience in the early 1990s. A few years later, mainframes embraced TCP/IP and just about all Internet standards, integrating seamlessly with the Internet and World Wide Web, and enabling its customers to leverage their existing transaction and data base applications in all kinds of new e-business solutions. Then came zLinux, which made it possible to easily port just about any Linux application to mainframes.

    http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/09/04/half-a-century-later-mainframes-together-with-linux-still-run-much-of-todays-infrastructure/

  • IBM Watson Health Commercial
  • Ogilvy and Watson Have Big Things Planned for IBM

    Sources close to the matter tell us that Ogilvy’s creative team has been hard at work on a larger effort set to debut later this fall. Specifics are scarce at the moment, but we hear that the new campaign will be more “corporate” than the work in this post and that its ultimate goal is a complete refresh/rebranding of the IBM name.

    http://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/ogilvy-and-watson-have-big-things-planned-for-ibm/92748

  • Did IBM Just Get Hacked at DEF CON?

    In the presentation–which Kulach says is aimed at helping users to secure an IBM i system from the perspective of an external and internal intruder–purports to show a series of techniques for compromising the system, including “privilege escalation by nested user switching, getting full system access via JDBC, bypassing the ‘green screen’ (5250) limitations,” and how to get direct access to password hashes through an undocumented API.

    http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh090215-story01.html
    There is a big “but” (the presentation is being called a red herring:

    But to pull off Kulach’s approach to hacking an IBM i server would require such a poorly configured IBM i server that it just strains the credulity of the premise.

  • ANZ signs $450m IT deal with IBM
    Time to be on the lookout for these “baseball” contracts that IBM likes to announce in the 4th Q…
    http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/583529/anz-signs-450m-it-deal-ibm/

Oracle

Hewlett Packard

EMC

Other

  • Wipro hires Ankur Prakash, another TCS executive

    TCS veteran Ankur Prakash, who was previously the COO of the company’s Latin America business, has now been mandated to lead Wipro’s emerging markets business, a role in which he will report directly to Neemuchwala, according to two people directly familiar with the development. Both of them requested anonymity.

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/wipro-hires-ankur-prakash-another-tcs-executive/articleshow/48737538.cms

  • Windows 10 Is Great, but Microsoft Can’t Save the PC

    But for device makers, the situation could be quite different. Later this year, Hewlett-Packard will cleave itself in two, creating two separate companies focused on different businesses. One of those firms — HP — will derive around half of its revenue from sales of traditional PCs. If PC shipments continue to decline, that company could be devastated. Earlier this month, when Hewlett-Packard turned in third quarter earnings, its PC-related revenue contracted more than 13%.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/08/31/windows-10-is-great-but-microsoft-cant-save-the-pc.aspx

  • Businesses are buying analytics software even if investors aren’t

    There are some wrinkles to iron out as the world adjusts to a trend toward open source and freemium business models, and to business software that individuals can buy. But there’s a huge opportunity for companies to cash in on business demand for better data analysis, and the young companies that live and breathe data seem the best positioned to cash in.

    http://fortune.com/2015/09/04/tableau-splunk-hortonworks-revenue-investors/

  • Salesforce jumps into health care with a tailored cloud platform

    Aiming to help healthcare organizations manage their relationships with patients, the company’s new Salesforce Health Cloud promises providers a complete view of each patient as well as the ability to engage them better across caregiver networks. Overall, the goal is to help providers make smarter patient-care decisions, the company said.

    http://www.cio.com/article/2979584/salesforce-jumps-into-healthcare-with-a-tailored-cloud-platform.html

Photo: Death to Stock Photos

Supplier News: 8/29/2015

sn_brokenship_Leeroy

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

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

IBM

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

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

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

  • IBM takes on tough task of deploying containers across clouds

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

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

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

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

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

  • IBM launches Blue Box Cloud in data-centers

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

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

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

EMC

  • EMC and Intel clash over OpenStack’s future direction

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

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

  • Pivotal appoints new CEO

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

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

Oracle

  • Oracle, still clueless about security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hewlett Packard

  • PCs not dead despite difficulties ahead: HP chief

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • HP to Cut More Jobs

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

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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