Tag: Red Hat

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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

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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

Posted on

Supplier Report: 11/14/2015

sn_shoreline_The Pic Pac

EMC and Dell are in some rough waters with the IRS.  Will their creative use of “tracking shares” be able to keep their deal afloat or will it crash and sink the mega-purchase?

On the topic of purchases, IBM finalized the acquisition of two companies:  Meteorix & Cleversafe.  Outside of that news, it was a fairly quiet week for big blue, with standard articles (at this point) of the medical research potential of Watson.

Oracle is getting good press about their cloud attempts and the fact that they are going after Amazon hard.  Will they win?  Who knows, but the spectators are excited to see this fight happen.

IBM

  • IBM adds two new company acquisitions
    They finalized Meteorix:

    Yesterday, IBM announced that it has closed a deal to acquire Meteorix LLC, a premier Workday services partner.

    They also finalized the acquisition of Cleversafe

    Last week, IBM announced that it closed a deal to acquire Cleversafe, Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of object-based storage software and appliances. According to a statement from IBM, the acquisition will strengthen IBM’s leadership positions in storage and hybrid cloud and support clients’ drive to next generation mobile, social and analytics applications.

    http://wraltechwire.com/ibm-adds-two-new-company-acquisitions/15102318/

  • Watson to help kids battling rare diseases

    IBM’s cognitive learning platform will be integrated into Boston Children’s Hospital to help researchers at the Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research in their study of steroid-resistant neophrotic syndrome (SRNS), a rare genetic form of kidney disease. Watson will first scour all available literature and related information on SRNS, then be used to process genomic data from patients at Boston Children’s to help researchers identify and develop treatment options for the disease.

    http://www.mhealthnews.com/news/watson-help-kids-battling-rare-diseases

  • More Partners Sign On to IBM Cloud

    Meanwhile, IBM said HCL would use its Bluemix to develop IoT sensors deployed to collect and exchange data from networks of sensors. HCL is developing IoT networks as an adjunct to its flagship IT services and “enterprise digitalization” businesses.

    http://www.enterprisetech.com/2015/11/12/more-partners-sign-on-to-ibm-cloud/

  • IBM, Apple, and Watson: You are about to become obsolete
    I like this post due to the insights of a former employee versus his thoughts about their current state.

    As this first set of sessions ended we had the guy running Watson speak on the fact that—for many professions—the professionals don’t know what they need to know. For instance, even attorneys that specialize don’t know the majority of the laws that define their specialty, let alone all of them. At the core of the IBM Watson effort and its general analytics push is to fix that problem. The time is coming when any professional that doesn’t have access to, and know how to use a tool like Watson will have inadequate skills to gain employment in the developed world.

    http://techspective.net/2015/11/13/ibm-apple-and-watson-you-are-about-to-become-obsolete/

  • Switch to Macs from PCs reportedly saves IBM US$270 per user

    While 40 percent of IBM’s PC users call the helpdesk for troubleshooting, on average only 5 percent of the company’s Mac user do the same, according to Previn. “The longer this program runs, the more compelling the business case becomes,” he says. “I can confidently say that every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money.”

    http://www.mis-asia.com/tech/mobile-and-wireless/switch-to-macs-from-pcs-reportedly-saves-ibm-us270-per-user/

EMC

  • Dell targets simpler cloud experience with EMC

    Kelly points out that many of Dell’s and EMC’s businesses are complementary. For example, EMC storage and Dell servers aid the adoption of converged infrastructure and hybrid cloud; EMC’s RSA controls for identity assurance, fraud detection and data protection; security analytics; and GRC capabilities with Dell’s SecureWorks network security and managed security services; AirWatch mobile device, application and content management with KACE systems and device management; and the Pivotal open cloud platform and agile software development tools with the Boomi platform as a service.

    http://www.networksasia.net/article/dell-targets-simpler-cloud-experience-emc.1447295769

  • Dell’s EMC Acquisition In Danger Over Tax Problems – ($9B Tax Bill)

    The use of this ‘tracking stock’ is intended to offset the amount of debt Dell would have to take on, and also help it avoid avoid a heavy tax bill. But it depends on the American IRS interprets the use of this tracking stock. According to the report, tracking stocks were commonly used during the dot.com boom years in the 1990s, and its use in the deal could invite scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service.

    “Dell’s plan to create tracking shares in a company it does not yet own (that’s VMware) would, if successful, amount to a clever threading of a needle in US tax laws,” said Re/code. “It is intended as neither a distribution of shares nor the spinoff of a subsidiary, both of which are typically taxable events. Instead, EMC shareholders will face taxes in the range of 20 percent to 40 percent for the gains on the cash and the value of the tracking shares.”

    http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-enterprise/merger-acquisition/dell-emc-tax-problems-180378
    Read More:
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/10/emc-us-ma-dell-idUSL3N1354VS20151110

Oracle

  • Oracle’s Cloud Prospects Look Positive

    Oracle has embarked on an aggressive strategy to win market share in the cloud market. However, the company is a late entrant and questions have surfaced on whether Oracle could succeed against early entrants such as Microsoft and market leader Amazon who established themselves in the cloud market years earlier than Oracle.

    sn_oracle_wsj_2015_11_13
    Credit: Wall Street Journal
    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3675736-oracles-cloud-prospects-look-positive

  • Oracle Is About to Eat Amazon’s Lunch

    Now, Oracle is acting as much out of envy and perhaps even desperation as anything else. While AMZN stock has doubled in 2015 despite a rough market, ORCL stock is down over 11%. And longer term, Oracle stock is up just 40% or so in the last five years vs. over 290% for Amazon stock and 70% for the broader S&P 500 in the same period.

    But with some $56 billion in cash and investments and a will to roll out an ambitious suite of cloud products, AMZN investors should be looking over their shoulder at Oracle as it ramps up in the next six months.

    http://investorplace.com/2015/11/amzn-stock-amazon-web-services-oracle/

Other

  • Why Meg Whitman’s ‘Hmm …’ emails make HP managers scramble

    So she told the whole company they were to follow a new rule. If they saw an issue they were to “escalate in 24 hours and resolve it in 48 hours. If that problem is not solved in 48, everyone has the right to send me an email. I’m an expert forwarder. When I forward an email on, things get done,” she said.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/employees-fear-meg-whitman-hmm-email-2015-11

  • Red Hat enhances containers across open hybrid cloud

    “The datacenter is heterogeneous, and the cloud is hybrid”, said Paul Cormier, president of products and technologies at Red Hat. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has been there for close to two years, and many enterprise customers are finding the benefits of deploying workloads on Linux in the public cloud. These offerings help developers to build and integrate faster and adaptable applications with familiar, supported open source tools with significantly less “ramp-up” time and a unified experience across hybrid architectures.

    http://observerleader.com/2015/11/red-hat-enhances-containers-across-open-hybrid-cloud/

  • A Closer Look At Microsoft And Red Hat Partnership

    Meanwhile, Red Hat has gone through interesting times. Canonical Ubuntu gave it a tough competition as the most preferred Linux distribution in the public cloud. Minimalistic, container-optimized operating systems such as CoreOS and RancherOS started to gain popularity. Red Hat’s ambitious plan to repeat the magic with OpenStack, the open source cloud management platform, didn’t translate due to the lack of enterprise adoption. OpenShift, Red Hat’s PaaS was going through a major revamp to embrace containers and Kubernetes. The virtualization market has been shrinking, and there was enough pressure from VMware in this market. Given that Red Hat doesn’t have its own public cloud, its success comes from making RHEL a ubiquitous OS for enterprise workloads across multiple clouds. These factors forced Red Hat to consider partnering with Microsoft.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2015/11/11/a-closer-look-at-microsoft-and-red-hat-partnership/

  • Teradata Cuts Ties With The Marketing Stack

    Some speculate private equity investors will step in and divest key marketing assets, similar to the path eBay Enterprise took. Others suggest any number of enterprise companies could serve as potential acquirers.

    “Aprimo [a campaign manager Teradata bought for $525 million in 2010] was a good acquisition for them and they’ve done a lot with the marketing piece,” said Ray Wang, principal analyst and founder of Constellation Research. “If you’re a company that wants to build out marketing apps on top of a database and analytics, it would make sense for that.”

    http://adexchanger.com/digital-marketing-2/teradata-cuts-ties-with-the-marketing-stack/

Photo: The Pic Pac

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/31/2015

sn_spark_JosephYoung

Oracle World happened and as expected, Hurd and Ellison made plenty of amusing remarks about their competitors.  As Ellison remarked that IBM is not a competitor, big blue went out and bought the Weather Company… for $2B.

Hewlett Packard is officially and finally splitting this weekend.  The two companies are facing unique market conditions in light of the Dell-EMC deal.

IBM

  • IBM Will Acquire The Weather Company’s Digital Business

    IBM announced this morning it’s acquiring The Weather Company, the parent company to the The Weather Channel, as well as the company’s B2B, mobile and web properties. The deal is being valued at more than $2 billion, according to a report from The Wall St. Journal. The companies are not disclosing the financial terms, however. The deal will see The Weather Company licensing weather forecast data and analytics from IBM under a long-term contract. The Weather Channel is not included in the acquisition.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/28/ibm-will-acquire-the-weather-companys-digital-business/

  • Why does this keep happening to IBM?

    For the second time in a little over two years, Big Blue faces an investigation into how it records revenue. The company disclosed on Tuesday that the SEC is looking into the “accounting treatment of certain transactions in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland.”

    The stock dropped 4 percent to $137.86 after the revelation and was down 14 percent for the year at Tuesday’s close before bouncing back a bit Wednesday morning.

    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/28/why-does-this-keep-happening-to-ibm.html

  • IBM: The Line In The Sand

    One of the items that is hindering IBM from making a large acquisition is the fact that the company has $32 billion in long-term debt. This is the exact time IBM needs all of its resources to try to generate revenue growth, however they will be hindered by debt maturities in 2016. The following chart fromMorningstar shows that IBM has a large number of debt maturities coming in the next five years. Specifically next year, IBM has $5 billion in debt due and while they can easily pay off the debt, it is a drain on potential cash and cash flows that could be used to invest in the business or make an acquisition.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3609866-ibm-the-line-in-the-sand

  • IBM Cloud Opens To Apache Spark

    IBM will provide Apache Spark as a service onBluemix, IBM’s cloud platform. IBM will also be pushing Spark into BigInsights on Bluemix, as well as IBM’s Data Science Workbench and its SPSS Analytics Server and Modeler.

    http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/big-data-analytics/ibm-cloud-opens-to-apache-spark/d/d-id/1322827

  • Intel, Oracle Working Together To Take On IBM

    A few months ago, the head of engineering and products at Oracle, Thomas Kurian, and Doug Fisher from Intel’s Software and Services Group decided to set up a joint team of engineers codenamed Project Apollo near Intel’s facilities in Oregon, the report said.

    The team has been assigned the task of figuring out how massive cloud computing data centers could be set up that make use of Oracle’s hardware and Intel’s chips to take on IBM in the cloud computing hardware market. Project Apollo has successfully completed its mission, and the team members are now sharing “how to” documents to convince enterprise customers to use their technology in building data centers, the report said.

    http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/10/intel-oracle-together-take-on-ibm/

Oracle

Hewlett Packard (the split happens this weekend)

  • Meg Whitman bets that a smaller HP will be able to beat Dell

    But in the server space, Dell is waiting. With EMC, it gets the No. 1 provider of storage gear, making it a one-stop shop for corporate customers. If Dell’s strategy works, Hewlett Packard Enterprise will just continue the former HP’s fate, where sales have declined for 15 of the past 16 quarters. PC shipments, where HP is No. 2, fell 7.7 percent in the third quarter, according to Gartner. For servers, where Hewlett-Packard is the market leader, second-quarter shipments slowed to 8 percent from 13 percent in the prior period.

    http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article41966259.html

  • Why Hewlett-Packard Company’s Troubles May Not End With Breakup

    Post breakup, there is a fair chance that the resulting HP companies will acquire to compensate for their various shortcomings. While acquisitions might add some important assets (technology and talents), any kind of acquisition comes with a certain level of risk. Integration is one of the challenges that companies meet after they acquire a new asset. History shows that many of Hewlett-Packard’s past acquisitions never happened smoothly, a problem that may carry into the resulting entities.

    The other risk is that acquisitions predicated on desperation to catch up with the competition could fail to live up to expectations, be costly or unnecessarily disruptive. The two resulting HP businesses may not stay clear of these acquisition risks.

    http://investcorrectly.com/20151030/hewlett-packard-company-nysehpqs-troubles-may-not-end-breakup/

EMC

  • Dell acquisition of EMC could jostle Microsoft’s plans

    Dell, clearly, cannot risk this in the long term. It needs an operating system of its own. VMware’s Photon Stack is a great start, but it is only a start. It would not shock me at all to see Dell buy Red Hat in the next two years. It would be the final piece of the puzzle for a fully vertically integrated play.

    Microsoft doesn’t want to see that happen. And after seeing the tab for the Dell acquisition of EMC, I am sure Dell doesn’t want to spend the money either. Ample time and effort is going to be spent trying to find amicable solutions that allow both companies to coexist.

    http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/opinion/Dell-acquisition-of-EMC-could-jostle-Microsofts-plans

Other

  • Workday Inc Becoming A Cause Of Concern To Oracle Corporation’s Cloud Business

    However, Workday Inc (NYSE:WDAY) built its business on the cloud from the ground upward, giving it an edge in competition with Oracle in HR and Finance applications delivered through the cloud. Because of its nature and the steps it has already made, Workday could cause more grief for Oracle and other legacy software vendors as enterprises shift from on-premise installations to the cloud.

    http://investcorrectly.com/20151028/workday-inc-nysewday-becoming-cause-concern-oracle-corporation-nyseorcls-cloud-business/

  • Red Hat is boring — and more open source companies should emulate it

    But whether such companies like it or not, the minute they base their success on an open source project, their revenue potential is hampered compared to a proprietary competitor. Sure, companies like Cloudera, MongoDB, and DataStax sell proprietary value around an open source project, but most are still somewhat constrained by their need to compete with the free project they sponsor. None of which is to suggest these companies will hurt for revenue. Rather, it’s a reminder that the best way for an open source company to grow is like Red Hat: steady, consistent, boring.

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/2998810/open-source-tools/red-hat-is-boring-and-more-open-source-companies-should-emulate-it.html