Tag: Red Hat

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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

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/26/2016

sn_firebreather_Donald Tong

It was not a peaceful week for IT suppliers.

Lawsuits are plentiful at the moment: IBM lost a case with Indiana, HPE is getting sued by Oracle, and EMC is suing Pure. Microsoft had to take down one of their AI experiments because users (very quickly) figured out a way to make it say inappropriate things on Twitter.

RedHat has good news… they are the first open source subscription company to hit $2 Billion in value.

IBM

  • Opportunity knocks for IBM customers, but will they answer?

    With IBM’s substantial workforce rebalancing and strategic business transformation ongoing, it is a perfect time to meet with IBM to conduct a personal assessment of their transformation and strategic direction by having them explain how these developments can benefit your organization.  This inquiry meeting can serve as the platform for a subsequent meeting to re-negotiate your current relationship across all of IBM’s business units (Hardware, Software, and Services), including any new spend initiatives.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3045285/it-strategy/opportunity-knocks-for-ibm-customers-but-will-they-answer.html

  • Indiana court: IBM breached contract, still due $50M

    The high court’s four other justices unanimously found Tuesday that IBM had breached its contract by failing to meet “timeliness metrics” and to “assist the State in achieving its policy objectives” – thus reversing a 2012 Marion County trial court finding – and said the state can seek damages. However, the justices also affirmed the trial court’s award of nearly $50 million to IBM in assignment and equipment fees.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/22/indiana-court-finds-ibm-breached-contract-but-due-/

  • IBM creating 250 cybersecurity jobs in New Brunswick over next three years

    New Brunswick is already home to a natural cybersecurity cluster that dates back 25 years, with the establishment of Canada’s first faculty of computer science in 1989. IBM’s Security QRadar analyzes data across an organization’s information technology infrastructure to identify potential security threats, acting as support for IBM’s 10 global security centres.

    http://www.cantechletter.com/2016/03/ibm-creating-250-cybersecurity-jobs-in-new-brunswick-over-next-three-years/

  • IBM Takes Stand Against Controversial North Carolina Law

    Big Blue, North Carolina’s largest employer, posted a statement on Thursday that expressed disappointment with the new law, which LBGT rights supporters widely view a setback. The law short-circuited a Charlotte ordinance that would have let transgender men who identify as women use the women’s bathroom.

    http://fortune.com/2016/03/24/ibm-north-carolina-transgender/

Microsoft

Oracle

  • Oracle Is Suing Hewlett-Packard for Selling Its Proprietary Updates

    Oracle says HP “falsely represented to customers that HP and Terix could lawfully provide Solaris Updates and other support services at a lower cost than Oracle, and then worked with Terix to improperly access and provide Oracle’s proprietary Solaris Updates to customers,” according to the suit.

    http://fortune.com/2016/03/23/oracle-suing-hewlett-packard/

  • Workday: An Oracle Slayer Or An Also-Ran Competitor?

    For several years now, dating back to at least 2012, before Workday even became a publicly traded company, Oracle’s management in general and Larry Ellison in particular have articulated strong negative sentiments regarding Workday and what it was trying to achieve. In those long-ago years, Workday had subscription revenues of less than $90 million while Oracle was selling more than $10 billion of software. And yet, here is a quote from the Oracle earnings press release that was issued at the end of its fiscal 2013 year (ended May 31), “Furthermore, in Q4, our HCM cloud alone generated more SaaS revenue and added more new Fusion HCM customers than Workday added HCM and ERP customers combined in their most recent quarter.” There are many, many things that might be said about a company with literally 100X more revenues comparing itself to an upstart that Workday was at that point. At this writing, Workday has grown something more than tenfold and Oracle has shrunk, but the rhetoric is still the same. If it wasn’t accurate all the way back then and hasn’t been accurate since that time, why should anyone choose to believe Oracle’s forecast for Workday at this point?

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3960035-workday-oracle-slayer-also-ran-competitor

Storage ( Dell | EMC )

Other

  • Red Hat Becomes World’s First Ever $2 billion Open Source Company

    Subscription revenue hit $480 million (£338m), up 18 percent year-over-year, accounting for around 88 percent of Red Hat’s total revenue. The growth in subscription revenues was seen by analysts as a particularly encouraging trend, indicating that Red Hat’s business is stabilizing and gaining more predictability.

    Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said increased adoption of Red Hat’s hybrid cloud and open source technologies were chiefly responsible for the growth. He added that Red Hat closed the year with a record backlog, which Abhey Lamba of Mizuho Securities told The Wall Street Journal “is a good indication of its growing strategic importance.”

    http://www.techworm.net/2016/03/red-hat-becomes-worlds-first-ever-2-billion-open-source-company.html

  • Google Just Showed Up Amazon And IBM

    Now, Google has decided to commercialize pretty much all of this AND also to become a much bigger player in the cloud hosting business and software-as-a-service business. This is a truly massive shift. See, Amazon has the most mature virtual machine hosting platform with tons of services around it e.g., virtual private clouds, caches, proxies, DNS services, databases and so forth, but it does not have the machine learning know-how and services Google has. IBM has lots of natural language processing and computer vision services in its Watson Cloud product as well as hosting in its SoftLayer product, but it does not integrate them into one smooth platform like Google. This is because IBM has obtained much of its technology in that space from acquisitions.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3960633-google-just-showed-amazon-ibm

  • Docker, not production-ready? Not so, says Docker

    It seems safe to assume that Docker isn’t being used to containerize existing enterprise applications. Instead, developers are bringing in Docker for new application deployments, greenfield opportunities that aren’t dependent on yesterday’s infrastructure.

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/3046464/application-development/docker-not-production-ready-not-so-says-docker.html

Photo: Donald Tong

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/9/2016

sn_sky_Thomas Ulrich

We are back to work and the news is flowing!  It is a new year and that means changes.  IBM announced the departure of three long-time executives while Oracle quietly snapped up two companies.

The realities of the Dell/EMC merger are hitting EMC with the announcement of job eliminations.  IBM is also expected to announce job reductions in the GTS space.

Meanwhile, HPE is opening a private bar in London…

IBM

  • Why IBM just lost three key executives

    That, in fact, is just what apparently happened at IBM in December, when it reportedly lost Steve Mills, the 43-year company veteran who was most recently executive vice president of IBM Software and Systems, along with Danny Sabbah, its chief technology officer for cloud, and Brendan Hannigan, general manager of IBM Security.

    Bottom line? “Keep an eye on these three,” Enderle said. “The fact they left together suggests they have something else they want to do together, and given their powerful skillset, that ‘something’ could be really interesting.”

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3020616/why-ibm-just-lost-three-key-executives.html
    More on Steve Mills:
    http://fortune.com/2016/01/06/ibms-steve-mills-retires/

  • More IBM job cuts to services unit expected by Alliance

    In one form or another, the workers group Alliance@IBM is bracing for downsizing in the Global Technology Services unit at IBM Corp. “We’re hearing rumors of (GTS) being sold off,” said Lee Conrad, national coordinator of Alliance@IBM. “As with everything inside IBM, we don’t get confirmation until just before it happens. If the company says anything, they will wait until the last moment.” Sale or not, Conrad said cuts to the GTS units most likely will happen sometime this month.

    http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/money/2016/01/07/more-ibm-job-cuts-services-unit-expected-alliance/78405848/
    More on Alliance who is also folding:

    After trying since 1999 to turn IBM into a union shop, the Alliance@IBM, a Communications Workers of America local, is “suspending” its organizing efforts. The Alliance, which had 400 dues-paying members at its peak, now has about 200.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3019552/it-industry/ibm-union-calls-it-quits.html

  • IBM cuts new Watson deals that push it deeper into health
    Medtronics:

    IBM and Medtronic are using Watson’s analytics as the back-end for an app which they say could help the roughly 400 million people in the world with diabetes.

    SoftBank:

    Rometti was also joined by the president of Softbank, to talk about how the companies will combine Watson’s analytics with Softbank’s Pepper robot to market services to businesses.

    Pepper is already being used by Nestle in about a hundred of its stores, where it greets customers, asks them what type of coffee they like and makes recommendations for the type of coffee machine they might want to buy. But Pepper can gather all kinds of data, including how many people interact with it, their gender, and even their emotion. The idea is to take all that data and use it to hone marketing and sales strategies.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3020001/ibm-cuts-new-watson-deals-that-push-it-deeper-into-health.html

  • IBM’s Watson flexes muscles with Under Armour partnership

    Powered by Watson technology, Under Armour’s application, UA Record, aggregates and analyzes an individual’s health and fitness data to provide personalized coaching and advice. A few examples include the app telling a user the average steps taken daily and bed time for a person their age.

    http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160107/TECHNOLOGY/160109923/ibms-watson-flexes-muscles-with-under-armour-partnership

  • Ginni Rometty 2016 CES Keynote speech

    What exactly is that leather “thing” she is wearing? That isn’t a jacket.
    http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/07/ibm-ceo-artificially-intelligent-computers-will-change-who-you/21293693/

Oracle

  • Oracle purchases AddThis for $200M

    Oracle continues to ramp up its business in the area of marketing tech. Today the enterprise software giant announced that it has acquired AddThis, which makes sharing features (i.e., those buttons on web pages that let you share stories or follow accounts on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and audience tracking technology for online publishers and marketers. AddThis says it currently covers activity data for 1.9 billion monthly unique visitors and over 15 million mobile and desktop web domains.

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/oracle-addthis/
    I want to make a connection. Two months ago, we covered the news that TeraData is getting out of the marketing cloud space, with Oracle looking to purchase more marketing assets, could they be a possible buyer?

  • Oracle also quietly purchased StackEngine two weeks ago…

    StackEngine was founded just last year by a couple of industry veterans. In fact, it emerged from stealth in October, 2014 with a plan to operationalize Docker, the open source container system. While Docker has been a hot commodity for the last several years, StackEngine recognized that it lacked an administrative layer for IT pros to manage their containers.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/22/oracle-stackengine-acquisition-part-of-expanding-cloud-strategy/

  • Is Oracle’s ‘supergraphic’ a super problem?
    Oracle has a giant sight up on their building in San Jose just in time for the Super Bowl, city officials are not pleased:

    “They will have to take the sign down,” Cheryl Wessling, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Planning, Building and Code Enforcement, said Friday after this newspaper contacted her department about the colorful sign that can be seen as far away as Interstate 280.

    http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_29361163/oracles-new-super-bowl-sign-is-illegal-san

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

EMC | Dell

  • EMC tightens grip on converged infrastructure subsidiary VCE as job cuts loom

    According to sources cited by The Register, VCE is also expected to announce job cuts with around 250 staff likely to be let go this week.

    According to the source, the cuts will hit all levels including some senior managers; this move would make sense as EMC brings VCE closer to its own operations, perhaps believing that it can cut costs.

    http://www.cbronline.com/news/verticals/the-boardroom/emc-tightens-grip-on-converged-infrastructure-subsidiary-vce-as-job-cuts-loom-4770275

  • Feeling jitters as Dell-EMC marriage approaches

    How will the two cultures mesh? “EMC was built on engineering innovation and high-touch sales” that require lots of personal attention, says Peter Bell, who spent a decade at the company and is now a venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in California. (EMC chief executive Joe Tucci is known to keep the last day of every quarter free so that he can make phone calls to customers and help personally close deals that are hanging in the balance.) That meant fat profit margins for EMC, and hefty earnings for its workers.

    In contrast, “Michael Dell knows how to run a big business in a low-cost way. He knows how to compete in a commodity business, and he knows there’s a lot of cost to be taken out of EMC,” Bell says. Not surprisingly, that has created a lot of anxiety among EMC employees.

    http://www.betaboston.com/news/2016/01/08/feeling-jitters-as-dell-emc-marriage-approaches-2/

Other

Photo: Thomas Ulrich

Posted on

Supplier Report: 12/26/2015

ThinkstockPhotos-516115823

We are half-way through the holidays, and our favorite suppliers (thankfully) didn’t make too much noise going into the break.

The tone of the articles are shifting away from “what we did” and are focused on “what we are going to do”.

IBM is going leverage BlockChain, HPE is going make some awesome computer called “The Machine”, Dell is going to figure out a way to pay for EMC (maybe)… and Amazon is going to take over your house?

IBM

  • IBM’s Opportunity In The Telecom Industry And Rivalry With Intel

    IBM is targeting the CSPs (communication service providers), such as telecom operators, cable service providers, satellite broadcasting operators, content and applications service providers and cloud service providers, to help them generate revenue from the big data value chain. Internal telecom data combined with third-party data has tremendous potential that CSPs can exploit to drive their revenues with the help of advanced analytics. Third-party data include data from various social media like Facebook and Twitter.

    As I said above, the challenges telcos are facing today are resulting in softer revenue growth and decreasing profit margin. The only way to boost revenue growth and profit margin is adopting business-focused big data initiatives. Well, what is a business-focused big data initiative? The answer is building customer focus and improving operational efficiencies for expanding revenue and profitability via prudent use of big data analytics and other solutions.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3768996-ibms-opportunity-in-the-telecom-industry-and-rivalry-with-intel

  • Why Box Needs Friends Like IBM And Salesforce

    Things must be going pretty well: Last Friday, the two announced a “long-term commitment” that could last at least a decade. Box hasn’t actually generated much in the way of new revenue from its IBM  relationship yet, but it has at least 100 deals in the pipeline and could close some of them during its current quarter (which ends January 2016).

    http://fortune.com/2015/12/21/box-ibm-salesforce/

  • Blockchain – Goldman and IBM care, should you?

    Why is this even a topic for a DCD conference that focuses solely on infrastructure? Because “it points to two important factors: first, it demonstrates how quickly technology innovation can go from largely unheard of to attracting business start-ups and investors,” says Bruce Taylor, DCD executive vice president. “That has an impact on full-stack infrastructure planning – even if small right now. Secondly, it suggests a new cloud model that wasn’t even in the lexicon two years ago, but may be a massive boost in decentralized computing productivity.”

    http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/events/blockchain-goldman-and-ibm-care-should-you/95402.article

  • TCS, Cognizant at top of outsourcing industry; snatch market share from IBM, Accenture

    More significantly, the performances Cognizant, which is US based but has most of its 219,000 employees in India, and TCS also comfortably eclipsed that of global technology behemoths such as IBM and Accenture during the same period, according to data compiled from company reports and regulatory filings. “India’s Top 5 providers have been gaining market share over the last several years. Within the set, there are growth variations with some growing faster. That said, the battle is now shifting to who can adapt faster to ‘as a service economy’. This is such a potent shift that can tilt the scales and create a new set of winners in services industry,” said Dinesh Goel, partner and India head at outsourcing advisory and research firm ISG.

    http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/tcs-cognizant-at-top-of-outsourcing-industry-snatch-market-share-from-ibm-accenture/50319165

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Can HPE’s “The Machine” Deliver?

    When HP announced The Machine in Las Vegas in 2014, it presented the project as a near-complete overhaul of traditional computer architecture. Gone were the CPU-centric architecture, the slow copper communications, and the messy hierarchy of traditional memory. In their place, specialized computing cores, speedy light-carrying photonic connections, and a massive store of dense, energy-efficient memristor memory. The resulting computer, its designers say, will be efficient enough to manipulate petabyte-scale data sets in an unprecedented fashion, expanding what companies and scientists can accomplish in areas such as graph theory, predictive analytics, and deep learning in a way that could improve our daily lives.

    http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/can-hpes-the-machine-deliver

EMC | Dell

  • Dell filing shows why it really needs the EMC merger — it lost money last year and revenue is shrinking

    Annual revenues went from $56.9 billion in its fiscal year ended February 1, 2013, to $58.1 billion in its fiscal year ended January 30, 2015. But they haven’t bounced back to the 2012 peak of $62.1 billion in the fiscal year ended February 3, 2012.

    For the six months ended July 31, 2015, revenues were down about 6% compared to the year-ago quarter, from $29.5 billion to $27.5 billion.

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/dell-reveals-losses-revenue-shrinking-2015-12

  • Dell to Spin Off Security Division (more on SecureWorks)

    “While SecureWorks has shown both expansion in its top line, and gross margin, it also posted increasing losses,” TechCrunch noted. “Investors have shown smaller appetite for company’s going public that fail to show falling losses and increasing revenues.”

    People familiar with the matter have said the business could be valued at $2 billion because of the healthy growth rate, the WSJ said.

    http://ww2.cfo.com/credit-capital/2015/12/dell-spin-off-security-division/

Oracle

  • Oracle to build new cloud campus in Austin, Texas

    Oracle plans to build a 295-unit apartment complex next to the new campus to give employees affordable living options. The company has also acquired an Austin-based startup called StackEngine Inc. for developing its Oracle Public Cloud domain.

    Jobs at the new campus will be primarily sales-oriented, including direct selling, lead qualification, prospecting and technical support. The company plans to hire a lot of recent university graduates and people early in their career.

    http://presstelegraph.com/2015/12/24/oracle-to-build-new-cloud-campus-in-austin-texas.html

  • Oracle Settles ‘Deceptive Java Updates’ issue with FTC

    FTC said that Oracle failed to disclose the security issue to consumers. Even if the issue was disclosed to customers, it was inadequate, the FTC added. Oracle acquired Java in 2010. The older versions of Java have been targeted by hackers as it has many security loopholes. Oracle has provided updates and plugged the security loopholes in Java. However, the older version of Java, before SE version 6, update 10, were still causing security issues. Oracle will be required to inform customers about the security risks involved with running older versions of Java SE.

    http://northerncalifornian.com/content/55471-oracle-settles-%E2%80%98deceptive-java-updates%E2%80%99-issue-ftc

Other

  • Here’s how Amazon plans to run your home — before IBM, Microsoft get there

    Amazon’s platform will compete directly with Microsoft’s, adding a dimension to the two companies’ cloud rivalry. Microsoft has had more time to work on its Internet of Things platform, but Amazon Web Services has far more cloud customers.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2015/12/22/heres-how-amazon-plans-to-run-your-home-before-ibm.html

  • NetApp buys SolidFire for $870 million in cash

    Hardware company NetApp will buy SolidFire, a startup known for selling fast all-flash storage hardware, for $870 million in cash. The deal is considered to be an important one in the storage market especially when EMC has taken up flash by acquiring XtremIO and DSSD.

    Not only EMC, Cisco has also purchased all-flash storage maker Whiptail in 2013. Though NetApp announced about its first all-flash storage hardware product two years back only, the company is not especially known for flash storage.

    http://northerncalifornian.com/content/55462-netapp-buys-solidfire-870-million-cash

  • Red Hat CEO: ‘State of the Red Hat Union is secure’

    As we think about 2016 and beyond, it’s critical to recognize that we are building tomorrow’s IT legacy today. The next generation of technologists will inherit the decisions we make now just like we are dealing now with the legacy decisions made by the generation before us. Taking short-cuts and making decisions that get you up and running today – especially if it promises to save you some money – may be tempting. But, it needs to be a balance. You don’t want to be locked into technology you can’t escape – many enterprises are now confronting this pain from decisions made many years ago.

    http://wraltechwire.com/red-hat-ceo-state-of-the-red-hat-union-is-secure-/15191748/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 12/12/2015

sn_hairdryer_Ryan McGuire

This was a big week for IBM due to the acquisition of Clearleap (this is the 12th company in 2015). Clearleap focuses on scaling video, allowing greater numbers to access/stream video.

Not all news was good.  IBM’s #HackAHairDryer campaign blew up on social media with backlash from female scientists questioning why IBM would focus on a superficial item to promote girls in science instead of… rocket ships (direct quote).

The other suppliers were quiet this week… just more details on some of the topics we have been covering over the last two weeks.

IBM

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Why It’s Time to Get Out of HP Inc. (HPQ)

    For the full year of 2016 — when I expected synergies to be reversed and some cutting-edge technology like 3D printers to potentially provide a tailwind — the company actually slashed its guidance. Management said it expects to earn $1.59 to $1.69 a share excluding items, vs. the aforementioned consensus of $1.70. The lower end of the range was 7% lower than the consensus, while the value of HPQ’s stock had gained more than 7% since I was originally bullish and snagged some shares.

    http://investorplace.com/2015/12/hp-inc-hpq-stock/

  • HP the only big firm to grow in storage market in Q3

    EMC saw its sales in the market slump eight per cent, but it managed to hang on to the top spot even though its share fell from 20.5 per cent to 18.4 per cent. In third place, Dell – which is in the process of closing a $67bn takeover of EMC – saw its sales fall 1.6 per cent, prompting its market share to fall marginally from 10.3 per cent to 9.9 per cent.

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2438055/hp-the-only-big-firm-to-grow-in-storage-market-in-q3

EMC

Other

Photo: Ryan McGuire