Tag: Splunk

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Supplier Report: 8/30/2019


Photo by Priya Berks on Unsplash

August was a hot month for M&A. There is even more purchasing activity by Microsoft, Splunk, and WordPress (reinforcing how inept Yahoo leadership was during their last few years of independence).

Oracle is facing a revolt from their shareholders over the 2016 acquisition of NetSuite (which Oracle founder Larry Ellison had a significant personal stake in). Oracle isn’t making the strides they need to in the cloud space and NetSuite has not yet become the sales driver it was promised to be.

President Trump (and the rest of the US) and China seem destined for a trade war.  Cisco and Apple have cited China as a cause for sales projections to drop.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Splunk acquires cloud monitoring service SignalFx for $1.05B

    SignalFx, which emerged from stealth in 2015, provides real-time cloud monitoring solutions, predictive analytics and more. Upon close, Splunk argues, this acquisition will allow it to become a leader “in observability and APM for organizations at every stage of their cloud journey, from cloud-native apps to homegrown on-premises applications.”

    Indeed, the acquisition will likely make Splunk a far stronger player in the cloud space as it expands its support for cloud-native applications and the modern infrastructures and architectures those rely on.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/21/splunk-acquires-cloud-monitoring-service-signalfx-for-1-05b/

  • Microsoft acquires jClarity, a Java performance tuning tool

    Microsoft announced this morning that it was acquiring jClarity, a service designed to tune the performance of Java applications. It will be doing that on Azure from now on. In addition, the company has been offering a flavor of Java called AdoptOpenJDK, which they bill as a free alternative to Oracle Java. The companies did not discuss the terms of the deal.

    As Microsoft pointed out in a blog post announcing the acquisition, they are seeing increasing use of large-scale Java installations on Azure, both internally with platforms like Minecraft and externally with large customers, including Daimler and Adobe.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/microsoft-acquires-jclarity-an-open-source-java-performance-tuning-tool/

  • Verizon to Sell Tumblr to WordPress.com Owner

    Verizon Communications Inc.  has agreed to sell its blogging website Tumblr to the owner of popular online-publishing tool WordPress.com, unloading for a nominal amount a site that once fetched a purchase price of more than $1 billion.

    Automattic Inc. will buy Tumblr for an undisclosed sum and take on about 200 staffers, the companies said. Tumblr is a free service that hosts millions of blogs where users can upload photos, music and art, but it has been dwarfed by Facebook , Reddit and other services.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-sell-tumblr-to-wordpress-owner-11565640000

    Does anybody want to guess how much Automattic is actually paying? I would say less than $100M. Yahoo was insane to pay $1B for this platform, and Verizon was insane to ban the thing that made people use it.

    Update: Tumbler was reportedly purchased for $3M

  • Oracle is suing Larry Ellison and Safra Catz over the $9 billion

    The subject of the lawsuit is Oracle’s $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite in 2016, a deal in which a company that Ellison controls — Oracle — paid a premium price to buy a company that Ellison owned. Ellison was NetSuite’s founder and largest shareholder, with a roughly 40% stake.

    The lead lawyer for Firemen’s Retirement System, Joel Friedlander, also said in a hearing in June “We’re seeking multiple billions of dollars in damages.”

    While tossing a multi-billion figure around a hearing is sometimes just lawyerly bravado, in this case, there’s some meat to that number. The NetSuite deal put about $3.5 billion in cash from Oracle’s coffers into Ellison’s pocket.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-board-members-support-lawsuit-against-larry-ellison-safra-catz-2019-8

  • VMware says it’s looking to acquire Pivotal

    VMware today confirmed that it is in talks to acquire software development platform Pivotal Software, the service best known for commercializing the open-source Cloud Foundry platform. The proposed transaction would see VMware acquire all outstanding Pivotal Class A stock for $15 per share, a significant markup over Pivotal’s current share price (which unsurprisingly shot up right after the announcement).

    Pivotal’s shares have struggled since the company’s IPO in April 2018. The company was originally spun out of EMC Corporation (now DellEMC) and VMware in 2012 to focus on Cloud Foundry, an open-source software development platform that is currently in use by the majority of Fortune 500 companies.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/14/vmware-says-its-looking-to-acquire-pivotal/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Amazon’s AI Can Now Identify Fear

    For those who haven’t heard of the Big Brother-esque Rekognition software, it’s basically a system of neural nets trained on big data (i.e. a ton of photographs and videos) to identify and label objects such as text, activities, “inappropriate behavior,” people, and faces. And if you think Big Brother-esque is a bit of a stretch to describe Rekognition, keep in mind that it’s already being deployed by law enforcement to identify people’s faces. Which isn’t necessarily a bad application in itself, but let your imagination run wild and things could quickly evolve into a Philip K. Dick novel.

    While fear was specifically noted by Amazon as a new emotion that Rekognition can identify, it’s actually only one addition to a number of improvements the AI is making. Along with identifying emotions, Amazon says that Rekognition is now also better at spotting gender and age range. Combined with the aforementioned list of other objects that Rekognition can identify, it’s clear that Amazon wants this software to be able detect and label absolutely any type of image you throw at it.

    https://nerdist.com/article/amazon-rekognition-ai-identify-fear/

  • IBM joins Linux Foundation AI to promote open source trusted AI workflows

    As a Linux Foundation project, the LF AI Foundation provides a vendor-neutral space for the promotion of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) open source projects. It’s backed by major organizations like AT&T, Baidu, Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei.

    IBM has a long history of supporting open source, and Moore explained why it’s the right way to quickly raise the bar when it comes to building trustworthy AI. “To get all of us working together, iterating quickly, can cover a lot more ground than any single company can,” he said.

    On top of that, supporting open source projects has the added benefit of expanding the market opportunity for AI vendors like IBM. The goal, Moore said, is to build tools that improve the credibility of AI — and “to do it together, in a way that everybody can inspect and contribute to.”

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-joins-linux-foundation-ai-to-promote-open-source-trusted-ai-workflows/

Cloud

  • IBM updates cloud-native software with Red Hat OpenShift

    Overall, IBM has unveiled more than 100 new and/or updated software products and services across its Red Hat OpenShift-optimized software portfolio. These new solutions will be delivered on IBM’s hybrid multicloud platform, which is built using open source technologies just like Red Hat OpenShift.

    Some of the new services that are optimized for this open source environment include Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z and LinuxONE. Additionally, IBM has unveiled new consulting and technology services delivered by Red Hat certified consultants and application services practitioners. These services are designed to help users better move, build, and manage their workloads in various cloud environments, while also providing a consistent and simplified experience across clouds.

    http://techgenix.com/red-hat-openshift/

Security/Privacy

  • Huawei employees reportedly aided African governments in spying

    The report cites unnamed senior surveillance officers. The paper adds that an investigation didn’t confirm a direct tie between the Chinese government or Huawei executives. It did, however, appear to confirm that employees for the tech giant played a part in intercepting communications.

    The list includes encrypted messages, the use of apps like WhatsApp and Skype and tracking opponents using cellular data.

    A representative for Zambia’s ruling party confirmed with the paper that Huawei technicians have helped in the fight against news sites with opposing stances in the country, stating, “Whenever we want to track down perpetrators of fake news, we ask Zicta, which is the lead agency. They work with Huawei to ensure that people don’t use our telecommunications space to spread fake news.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/14/huawei-employees-reportedly-aided-african-governments-in-spying/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Cisco drops on poor guidance, says China business dropped 25%

    “What we’ve seen is in the state on enterprises … we’re just being — we’re being uninvited to bid,” Robbins said. “We’re not being allowed to even participate anymore.” Sales to carriers declined more forcefully as well, he said.

    The majority of Cisco’s revenue comes from sales of data center networking products, including switches and routers. That business is represented by Cisco’s Infrastructure Platforms segment, which came up with quarterly revenue of $7.88 billion, above the $7.84 billion consensus among analyst polled by FactSet.

    The Applications segment had $1.49 billion in revenue, in line with the $1.49 billion FactSet analyst consensus. Cisco’s Security business contributed $714 million in revenue, less than $739.9 million FactSet consensus estimate.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/14/cisco-falls-on-soft-guidance.html

Other

  • How Facebook Is Changing to Deal With Scrutiny of Its Power

    Late last year, Facebook halted acquisition talks with Houseparty, a video-focused social network in Silicon Valley, for fear of inciting antitrust concerns, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Acquiring another social network after Facebook was already such a dominant player in that market was too risky, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be identified because the discussions were confidential.

    Facebook has also begun internal changes that make itself harder to break up. The company has been knitting together the messaging systems of Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and has reorganized the departments so that Facebook is more clearly in charge, said two people briefed on the matter. Executives have also worked on rebranding Instagram and WhatsApp to more prominently associate them with Facebook.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/technology/facebook-antitrust.html

  • Trump retaliates in trade war by escalating tariffs on Chinese imports and demanding companies cut ties with China

    Trump initially directed his ire at Powell in Friday tweets, painting the Fed’s lack of monetary easing as a greater threat to American workers and businesses. “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” he tweeted.

    Moments later, he demanded American companies cut ties with China.

    “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA,” Trump tweeted.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/23/china-hits-us-with-tariffs-billion-worth-goods-reinstates-auto-levies-state-media-report/

  • HP CEO steps down, citing ‘family health matter’

    HP Inc. announced this afternoon that Dion Weisler is stepping down as president and CEO. The executive cited a “family health matter” in his decision, noting that he will be returning home to Australia.

    The company already has a successor lined up, as its president of Imaging, Printing and Solutions, Enrique Lores, got unanimous approval from its board of directors. Lores will be assuming the top spot on November 1.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/hp-ceo-steps-down-citing-family-health-matter/

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Supplier Report: 6/15/2018

The DOJ said it would not block AT&T’s $85B acquisition of Time Warner on Thursday, within hours the acquisition was deemed complete. AT&T wasn’t the only company making moves… Workday bought TWO companies and data analytics companies Slack and Tableau both announced acquisitions this week.

Amazon was in the press for poor labor conditions in their Alexa supply chain. Foxconn workers making the devices have been found to be mistreated and underpaid. Amazon’s own audit of the situation confirms the report.

Oracle shares dropped due to a JP Morgan CIO report documenting a decrease of purchasing interest of Oracle products and services from IT executives.

Acquisitions

  • AT&T Completes Acquisition of Time Warner Inc.

    Under the terms of the merger, Time Warner Inc. shareholders received 1.4 shares of AT&T common stock, in addition to $53.75 in cash, per share of Time Warner Inc. As a result, AT&T issued 1,185M shares of common stock and paid $42.5B in cash. Including net debt from Time Warner, we now have $180.4B in net debt.

    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180614006343/en/ATT-Completes-Acquisition-Time-Warner

  • Workday acquires Rallyteam to fuel machine learning efforts

    In this case, Workday appears to be acquiring the talent. It wants to take the Rallyteam team and incorporate it into the company’s engineering unit to beef up its machine learning efforts, while taking advantage of the expertise it has built up over the years connecting employees with interesting internal projects.

    “With Rallyteam, we gain incredible team members who created a talent mobility platform that uses machine learning to help companies better understand and optimize their workforces by matching a worker’s interests, skills and connections with relevant jobs, projects, tasks and people,” Workday’s Cristina Goldt wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/workday-acquires-rallyteam-to-fuel-machine-learning-efforts/

  • Workday acquires financial modelling startup Adaptive Insights for $1.55B

    Workday, the cloud-based platform that offers HR and other back-office apps for businesses, is making an acquisition to expand its portfolio of services: It’s buying Adaptive Insights, a provider of cloud-based business planning and financial modelling tools, for $1.55 billion. The acquisition is notable because Adaptive Insights had filed for an IPO as recently as May 17.

    Workday says that the $1.55 billion price tag includes “the assumption of approximately $150 million in unvested equity issued to Adaptive Insights employees” related to that IPO. This deal is expected to close in Q3 of this year.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/workday-acquires-financial-modelling-startup-adaptive-insights-for-1-55b/

  • Tableau gets AI shot in the arm with Empirical Systems acquisition

    The startup was born just two years ago from research on automated statistics at the MIT Probabilistic Computing Project. According to the company website, “Empirical is an analytics engine that automatically models structured, tabular data (such as spreadsheets, tables, or csv files) and allows those models to be queried to uncover statistical insights in data.”

    The product was still in private Beta when Tableau bought the company. It is delivered currently as an engine embedded inside other applications. That sounds like something that could slip in nicely into the Tableau analytics platform. What’s more, it will be bringing the engineering team on board for some AI knowledge, while taking advantage of this underlying advanced technology.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/13/tableau-gets-ai-shot-in-the-arm-with-empirical-systems-acquisition/

  • Splunk to Acquire Software Problem-Solver VictorOps for $120 Million

    Big data-cruncher Splunk is acquiring VictorOps, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup whose tools help software developers collaborate and resolve engineering issues, for $120 million mostly in cash with some stock equity. The deal is expected to close before August.

    VictorOps’ tech brings together software engineers so they can overcome technical issues as they arise. The system generates notifications, pulls relevant parties into chat groups, presents pertinent documents, and keeps detailed records as teams work through coding problems.

    http://fortune.com/2018/06/11/splunk-acquire-software-startup-victorops/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Accenture wants to beat unfair AI with a professional toolkit

    “We’re seeing increasing focus on algorithmic bias, fairness. Just this past week we’ve had Singapore announce an AI ethics board. Korea announce an AI ethics board. In the US we already have industry creating different groups — such as The Partnership on AI. Google just released their ethical guidelines… So I think industry leaders, as well as non-tech companies, are looking for guidance. They are looking for standards and protocols and something to adhere to because they want to know that they are safe in creating products.

    “It’s not an easy task to think about these things. Not every organization or company has the resources to. So how might we better enable that to happen? Through good legislation, through enabling trust, communication. And also through developing these kinds of tools to help the process along.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/09/accenture-wants-to-beat-unfair-ai-with-a-professional-toolkit/

Cloud

  • Oracle shares drop after JP Morgan downgrades on lost business to Amazon and Microsoft

    Oracle’s “specific metrics in our large-scale CIO survey have arced over into negative territory, which makes us uncomfortable because the results of our CIO surveys over the years have been highly predictive,” analyst Mark Murphy said in a note to clients Thursday. “Oracle spending intentions have only looked lukewarm in our CIO survey work in the recent past, but the data takes a dive in the current survey. … In our discussions, CIOs have clarified that they are migrating Oracle databases to Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon databases and PostgreSQL.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/14/oracle-shares-drop-after-jp-morgan-downgrades-on-lost-business-to-amazon-and-microsoft.html

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO

    “We are buying GitHub because we like GitHub; our plan is to continue to invest in the GitHub roadmap, and make GitHub better at being GitHub,” Friedman wrote.

    That means no ads in public repos, because Friedman said Sourceforge became “a swamp of banner ads and pop ups and delayed downloads to expose users to more ads”. He added that “GitHub’s clean interface and developer-centric approach can be seen in part as a reaction against Sourceforge” and suggested GitHub’s ascendency shows a no-ads approach has proven the correct approach.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/08/nat_friedman_github_ceo_elect_ama_session/

  • Yahoo Messenger is shutting down on July 17, redirects users to group messaging app Squirrel

    “There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).” Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo started testing last month. You can request access to the beta here.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/yahoo-messenger-is-shutting-down-on-july-17-redirects-users-to-group-messaging-app-squirrel/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IBM and the DoE launch the world’s fastest supercomputer

    Summit, which has been in the works for a few years now, features 4,608 compute servers with two 22-core IBM Power9 chips and six Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs each. In total, the system also features over 10 petabytes of memory. Given the presence of the Nvidia GPUs, it’s no surprise that the system is meant to be used for machine learning and deep learning applications, as well as the usual high performance computing workloads for research in energy and advanced materials that you would expect to happen at Oak Ridge.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/ibms-new-summit-supercomputer-for-the-doe-delivers-200-petaflops/

  • Qualcomm Is Cutting Up to Half of Jobs in Data-Center Unit

    The company will eliminate 241 positions at its design center in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 43 in California, according to notices filed with those states. The total number of cuts, including those not covered by such notices, will represent a third to half of the server-chip unit’s employees, according to a person familiar with the process. The reduction comes on top of the previously announced elimination of about 1,500 workers across the company.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-14/qualcomm-is-said-to-cut-up-to-half-of-jobs-in-data-center-unit

Other

  • Verizon CEO to Retire, Succeeded by a Newcomer

    Verizon Communications Inc. VZ 0.35% named Hans Vestberg as its next chief executive, choosing a relative newcomer to run the wireless giant at a time when its industry is being reshaped by megadeals.

    Mr. Vestberg, who joined the company about a year ago and is its chief technology officer, will succeed longtime CEO Lowell McAdam on Aug. 1. Mr. McAdam will remain executive chairman until the end of the year and then become nonexecutive chairman.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-ceo-to-retire-replaced-by-a-newcomer-1528455600?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • After report on ‘appalling’ conditions, Foxconn will investigate plant that makes Amazon devices

    Though regular workers were better compensated in terms of wages and benefits, China Labor Watch says both groups were subjected to long hours and low wages, with workers putting in more than 100 overtime hours during peak season, even though the legal limit is 36 hours, and some working consecutively for 14 days. Workers on average earned wages between 2000 to 3000 RMB ($312.12 to $468.19), significantly less than Hengyang’s monthly average wage of 4,647 RMB ($725.22), but often had their overtime hours as punishment for taking leave or having unexcused absences.

    The report also claimed that the factory had poor fire safety in its dormitories, lack of sufficiently protective equipment, verbally abusive managers and the “absence of a functioning labor union.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/10/after-report-on-appalling-conditions-foxconn-will-investigate-plant-that-makes-amazon-devices/
    Workers not paid legally by Amazon contractor in China

    Amazon disclosed that its own auditors visited the Foxconn factory in March and found that it had hired an illegally high number of agency workers and was not paying them properly for working overtime.

    Agency staff – known as dispatch workers in China – do not get sick pay or holiday pay and can be laid off without wages during lulls in production. China changed its labour laws in 2014 to limit their use to 10% of any workforce in an attempt to stop companies exploiting them to cut costs.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/09/amazon-contractor-foxconn-pay-workers-illegally

Photo by Michael Prewett on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/27/2016

sn_vulture_Мартин Тасев

IBM is making friends again. During their InterConnect conference, they announced a new partnership with VMWare, introducing their products on IBM’s cloud services. They also renewed their partnership with Apple, helping the company make progress towards enterprise customers.

Dell is making progress on their acquisition of EMC. The FTC finally approved the merger and the banks lending Dell the money are shopping around portions of the loans (which is seen as a good sign).

HP Inc had a very bad week. PC sales are down over 10% (blaming Windows 10), the stock is down, and they announced an additional 1800 job eliminations.

IBM

  • IBM makes major strategic alliance with VMware

    VMware and IBM have had a reseller agreement in place until now, with today’s announcement being the first strategic partnership between the two technology firms. It marries together the infrastructure management capabilities of VMware’s products with IBM’s real estate to create a hybrid cloud infrastructure solution that should benefit both companies.

    http://www.computerdealernews.com/news/ibm-makes-major-strategic-alliance-with-vmware/46665
    VMware undermines its own public cloud with IBM arrangement

    It’s easy to see how this is good for IBM, since it brings the large base of VMware shops to IBM’s cloud. But it’s not totally ideal for VMware. With this agreement VMware makes it easy for its customers to use IBM’s cloud rather than its own. However, the arrangement continues to rely on VMware products under the hood so VMware still has a role to play.

    http://www.fiercecio.com/story/vmware-undermines-its-own-public-cloud-ibm-arrangement/2016-02-22

  • IBM poised to gobble Resilient Systems, says report

    The vendor, which helps firms respond to cyber attacks, touched down in Europe a year ago when it went by the name CO3 Systems, and counts Nebulas and NTT Com Security among its UK partners.

    Citing two sources with knowledge of the deal, the report said IBM is buying the Massachusetts-based outfit, with one of the two sources putting the acquisition price at more than $100m.

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2448320/ibm-poised-to-gobble-resilient-systems-says-report

  • Through Machine Learning, IBM Braintrust Sees Better Days Ahead

    John Kelly, IBM’s senior vice president of cognitive solutions and research said most of that $2 trillion will come from eliminating waste in supply chain, research and development, and other processes across industries.

    And, in healthcare, a market that’s becoming a big priority for IBM as evidenced by a $4 billion string of acquisitions, there is a lot of waste from missed diagnoses, lack of drug efficacy, and staffing. “We think $200 billion of that is addressable by cognitive solutions,” Kelly said.

    http://fortune.com/2016/02/25/ibm-sees-better-days-ahead/

  • IBM: It’s Not All Gloom

    Big Blues’ “blues” are well documented recently. Questions about the CEO being overpaid and the company’s ability to produce miracles are all too common. While we agree that IBM and technology companies in general have to answer the “what next” question emphatically, the stock isn’t without its own set of positives.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3914406-ibm-gloom

  • Will Watson Health Cloud Pay off for International Business Machines Corp.?

    By 2020 healthcare analytics will be a $21 billion market. And IBM will dominate this market due to Watson. The opportunity of Watson, however, spans beyond healthcare analytics and into Big Data as a whole.

    While this is a much more crowded market, it is growing at an annualized rate of 26.5% through 2018, at which point it will be valued at $41.5 billion. Combined, this is a massive market opportunity that can add to IBM’s data, cloud and engagement businesses. Last year, these businesses accounted for 35% of total revenue according to Morgan Stanley, and grew 17% compared to 2014.

    http://investorplace.com/2016/02/ibm-stock-watson-health-cloud/

  • IBM Cements Security Standing With Redoubled Check Point Alliance

    By combining forces, IBM and Check Point aim to thwart what the United Nations estimates is the $445 billion cybercrime underworld. Check Point’s and IBM Security’s researchers will be free to cross company borders to discuss threat data. And several Check Point applications will be folded into IBM technology, Check Point’s vice president of security services, Avi Rembaum, told IBD. The alliance redoubles an 18-year relationship between IBM and Check Point.

    http://www.investors.com/news/technology/ibm-cements-security-standing-with-redoubled-check-point-alliance/

  • H.I.G. Capital Acquires Portfolio of Compensation Assets from IBM

    Todd Ofenloch, Managing Director at H.I.G., added, “We believe as a standalone, focused business with the resources to grow and expand the product offering, Salary.com is capable of furthering its leading market position and compelling potential customers to select its solutions over competitive offerings or continuing to utilize in-house options.”

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160224005213/en/H.I.G.-Capital-Acquires-Portfolio-Compensation-Assets-IBM

Microsoft

  • Here’s What Steve Ballmer Thinks About Microsoft and Satya Nadella

    Ballmer did tell BI that he spoke to the company’s CFO Amy Hood each quarter and acknowledged meeting with Nadella four or five times a year “to brainstorm something or just as a shareholder, we’ll sit down and chat.” But, he was clear to point out, because he’s not a board member or an employee, the company cannot share any information with him that is not shared with other shareholders.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/20/heres-what-steve-ballmer-thinks-about-microsoft-an.aspx

  • Microsoft Buys Xamarin To Help Developers Create Cross-Platform Apps

    Microsoft has acquired Xamarin, a cross-platform mobile app development platform provider, which will help developers create apps will easily work across iOS, Android and Windows mobile operating systems. This is part of Microsoft’s efforts to woo developers into making apps for the Windows 10 Mobile platform. Here’s what you need to know.

    Through the Xamarin platform, developers can develop, test and deliver mobile apps to any device. Xamarin had already works with the Visual Studio development environment and this acquisition will provide even more integration. With Xamarin now a part of the Microsoft family, Visual Studio developers can use a singe shared C# codebase to build native apps on iOS, Android and Windows. This would be welcome news for developers that are interested in building cross-platform native apps.

    http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/02/microsoft-buys-xamarin-to-help-developers-create-cross-platform-apps/

Dell | EMC

  • Dell-EMC Merger Gets FTC Approval, Remains On Track To Close

    IT behemoth Dell and data storage giant EMC announced this week that the waiting period for U.S. antitrust regulations regarding the proposed Dell-EMC merger had expired.  In addition to the U.S. FTC, both parties are on course to get the required EU approval at the end of the month.  Moreover, Chinese authorities are also likely to approve the merger despite the possible impact it might have on Huawei, the current market leader in the data storage space in China. With this regulatory hurdle crossed, Dell can now proceed with the merger pending approval from EMC EMC +1.97% shareholders.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/02/25/dell-emc-merger-gets-ftc-approval-remains-on-track-to-close/#2bb6f9796743

  • Banks backing Dell’s EMC deal hit reset button

    The banks underwriting the deal, including Credit Suisse, are in the process of selling the most senior portion of loans — about $7 billion — to other banks and are several weeks behind schedule. But there’s enough interest that the bank group is increasing the offering to as much as $9 billion.

    http://nypost.com/2016/02/26/banks-backing-dells-emc-deal-hit-reset-button/

Oracle

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • HP Sales Down on Weak Printer, PC Revenue

    The Palo Alto, Calif., company said earnings from continuing operations declined 16% in the first fiscal quarter ended in January, while revenue fell 12% from the year-earlier period. Total printing revenue declined 17%, with revenue from ink and other supplies down 14% and hardware unit sales off 20%. HP’s PC revenue declined 13% in the first quarter.

    http://ww2.cfo.com/technology/2016/02/hp-sales-weak-printer-pc-revenue/
    HP Inc blames Windows 10 for drop in PC sales

    “I still believe [Windows 10 is] a tremendous operating system,” Weisler told investors on conference call this week, transcribed by Seeking Alpha. However, he added: “We have not yet seen the anticipated Windows 10 stimulation of demand that we would have hoped for, and we’re carefully monitoring any sort of price developments that could further weaken demand.”

    And Wiesler’s claims are supported by a Gartner report last month that found a lack of Windows 10 uptake at the end of 2015 contributed to a year-on-year drop of 8.3 per cent in the PC market.

    http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-hardware/hp-hp-inc/26108/hp-inc-blames-windows-10-for-drop-in-pc-sales

  • HP wants to “reinvent computing” with a phone called Elite x3

    One feature in particular has the company especially excited – Windows Continuum. This technology allows the smartphone operating system to turn into a desktop operating system (on a larger display) once the smartphone is plugged in to a larger display.

    http://www.slashgear.com/hp-wants-to-reinvent-computing-with-a-phone-called-elite-x3-21427943/
    TechCrunch doesn’t seem to think it will be successful…
    HP Announces Yet Another Mobile Product That Will Fail

    An industry report published earlier last week pegs Windows Phone with only a 1.1% worldwide marketshare in the fourth quarter of 2015. That’s down from 2.2% from 2014 levels. Worse yet, Microsoft’s Windows Phone shipments dropped 57% in the most recent quarter over the previous year. The company only sold 4.5 million Lumia devices compared to 10.5 million from the same time last year.

    Essentially, HP built and announced its first modern smartphone on a platform that most indicators say is dying.

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/21/hp-announces-yet-another-mobile-product-that-will-fail

  • HP Inc to cut another 1800 jobs this year

    “This move is basically HP Inc embracing the tough pricing environment and shifting their focus to building their portfolio,” says Shannon Cross, an analyst for Cross Research.

    http://www.crn.com.au/News/415634,hp-inc-to-cut-another-1800-jobs-this-year.aspx

Other

  • Verizon and Splunk are teaming up to deliver threat protection

    Verizon has enhanced its flagship Managed Security Services platform by integrating analytics from Splunk Enterprise Security solutions. The combination of Verizon’s platform and Splunk software facilitates the ingestion of data for enrichment with Verizon’s massive amount of threat context data that can be analyzed and correlated to provide more actionable security intelligence to enterprises. Verizon’s ability to manage risks is further enhanced by the visibility gained from owning and operating one of the largest global IP networks. Processing more than one million security events daily places Verizon into the unique position of being able to deliver exceptional insights into how cybercriminals attack and breach organizations.

    http://www.channelpartnersonline.com/news/2016/02/verizon-splunk-partner-to-deliver-more-threat-protection.aspx

  • Data analytics provider Splunk’s revenue forecast beats estimates

    Splunk, whose customers include Tesco Plc and the U.S. Department of State, forecast revenue of about $880 million for the year ending January 2017, well above the average analyst estimate of $650.8 million.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/splunk-results-idUSL3N1646EH

Photo: Мартин Тасев

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/23/2016

sn_snowfoot_PaulGreen

IBM has added another feather in their video stream capabilities cap with with purchase of Ustream.  Considering that they recently picked up Clearleap and we should start paying attention to what IBM is doing with video services.

Investors are paying attention to EMC due to concerns that Dell might not be able to muster up the $40-50B needed to make this acquisition a reality.

Oracle is in their own reality as they file a lawsuit against the State of Oregon for a failed healthcare portal implementation.  They are also in the news for claiming cloud market leader Amazon is not “enterprise” enough for most businesses.

Keep an eye out for something between Splunk and IBM, there are rumors floating around…

IBM

  • IBM buys Upstream to boost cloud-based video streaming services

    IBM claimed that the division will allow the firm to target the cloud-based video streaming software and services market, which is estimated to be worth a hefty $105bn.

    Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president at IBM Cloud, outlined Big Blue’s ambitions for the video streaming market, saying that video has become a “first-class data type in business that requires accelerated performance and powerful analytics that allows clients to extract meaningful insights”.

    http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2442894/ibm-buys-upstream-to-boost-cloud-based-video-streaming-services

    This comes after IBM announced the purchase of ClearLeap during the week of 12/12/2015. Clearleap that allows streaming video to scale.

    More Information:

    Coincidentally, IBM also announced the launch of its Cloud Video Services unit that includes previously acquired Clearleap, Cleversafe and Aspera along with 1,000 video related patents it has accumulated since 1995. The graphic at the top of this story explains the component parts for what IBM believes will be a $105 billion market opportunity by 2019.

    IBM and video? You have to see this in a wider context. Video is a very fast growing part of enterprise content. It is also a resource hog that requires significant data management effort. However, it has been something off a Cinderella in the enterprise. This acquisition and launch change that perception. More compelling, video is a very good use case for Watson based analytics solutions.

    https://diginomica.com/2016/01/21/ibm-acquires-ustream-expects-video-to-lose-its-cinderella-status/

  • IBM profit forecast pulls stock to 5-year low

    While sales of the new services, bundled together under the heading “strategic imperatives,” increased 16 percent to $28.9 billion in 2015, the company forecast profit this year far below analysts’ projections.

    Operating earnings will be at least $13.50 a share in 2016, chief financial officer Martin Schroeter said Tuesday. That’s less than the $15 a share predicted by analysts. Currency fluctuations will affect operating earnings by more than $1 a share, he said.

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/01/20/ibm-falls-year-low-profit-forecast-misses-estimates/cnngchUC8irebscm3xLQ2O/story.html

  • Execs: Strategic shift is paying off for IBM

    That’s in spite of announcing for, the 15th consecutive quarter, falling revenue. IBM (NYSE: IBM), which was down nearly 5 percent during Wednesday morning trading, has been in a period of transition for the past few years, putting less focus on hardware and more focus (and investment dollars) into cloud, analytics, mobile, social media and security. Those strategic areas were up 26 percent for the year, making up a combined $29 billion and representing about 35 percent of the revenue. Cloud alone rose 43 percent to $10.2 billion for the year.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/blog/techflash/2016/01/execs-strategic-shift-is-paying-off-for-ibm.html

  • IBM inks $40 million deal to transform the way people withdraw from ATMs

    BTI Payments, which is a White Label ATM (WLA) operator, has entrusted IBM to transform its IT Infrastructure and deploy and manage an incremental 4,000 Automated Teller Machines (ATM) across the country.

    This IT Infrastructure transformation will help reduce operational and capital expenditure while adding business value.

    http://www.businessinsider.in/IBMinks-40-million-deal-to-transform-the-way-people-withdraw-from-ATMs/articleshow/50623231.cms

EMC | Dell

  • Two big risks could torpedo Dell-EMC deal

    Dell and its Silver Lake backers must now be worried that the deal will be dead in the water before it happens. They have to raise $40bn – $50bn in debt to finance the EMC acquisition. If that debt-raising exercise fails, because investment groups and organisations can’t see EMC shareholders accepting the tracking stock, and can’t also see why they should finance Dell/Silverlake buying EMC for 30 per cent more than it’s worth, then the whole deal could fall apart.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/21/two_big_risk_torpedoes_could_screw_dellemc_deal/

HP Inc | Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Oracle

  • Oracle Jabs Again in Legal Fight with Oregon

    Oracle responded with its own lawsuit last year that alleged certain Oregon officials purposely sabotaged the project for political reasons and shifted the blame to Oracle. The technology giant alleged in its new lawsuit that its company executives and staff members representing Oregon governor Kate Brown agreed to settle all of the lawsuits on Oct. 19.

    http://fortune.com/2016/01/20/oracle-sues-oregon-healthcare-settlement/

  • Amazon’s Cloud Is Not Enterprise-Ready, Says Oracle Exec
    I love it when Oracle talks trash…

    “My conclusion is it’s easier to add cloud tech to an enterprise company than to add enterprise stuff to a cloud company,” he said. “I’m a legitimate convert because I thought this through before I joined up here.” Before joining Oracle in late 2014, Magnusson drove development of Google GOOG 2.62% App Engine.

    http://fortune.com/2016/01/20/oracle-exec-says-aws-not-enterprise-ready/

Other

  • Why IBM and Oracle Plunged in 2015 While Microsoft Soared 19% Higher

    Ending on a positive note, we’re left with Redmond’s finest. Under Nadella, Microsoft has embraced many strategies that would have been unthinkable under Ballmer, and with good results. Despite a flagging PC market and a dead-end entry into the mobile market, Microsoft has found a way back to earnings growth and stabilizing revenues.

    Like Oracle, the company is betting heavily on cloud computing. Unlike the database giant, Microsoft has found a big winner in its Windows Azure cloud-computing platform, which is an almost unchallenged No. 2 in that fast-growing market. Oracle is not even on the radar yet. So Microsoft is getting results from Nadella’s new strategy already, giving investors a strong return in 2015.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/16/why-ibm-and-oracle-plunged-in-2015-while-microsoft.aspx

  • Google’s new managed containers are brought to you by Red Hat
    So Red Hat is in bed with Microsoft, and now Google… very interesting.

    Google and Red Hat are touting several advantages of their collaboration, including the fact that OpenShift could complement and expand the use of Kubernetes, Google’s container management and orchestration system. Kubernetes has fast become a standard-issue item on most cloud platforms with containers, and Red Hat is the No. 2 contributor to that project, behind Google.

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/3025334/cloud-computing/googles-new-managed-containers-are-brought-to-you-by-red-hat.html

  • Splunk outperforms after analyst predicts major deal with IBM

    Northland analyst Tim Klasell heard from a “few industry sources” that Splunk and IBM are “moving closer together” and could agree to a meaningful partnership over time. The analyst told investors in a research note that IBM is getting close to a “big move to improve its ties” with Splunk. While Klasell did not know the financial details, he believes such a partnership could be a “nice tailwind” for Splunk to sign larger deals. The analyst has an Outperform rating on Splunk with an $80 price target.

    http://www.thestreet.com/story/13433060/1/splunk-outperforms-after-analyst-predicts-major-deal-with-ibm.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 11/21/2015

sn_balloons_Alexandre Perotto

Michael Dell made an interesting comment this week stating that he does not plan to sell of EMC products or split the company up.  It also doesn’t sound like he is going to sell of existing Dell assets either…makes you wonder how they are going to pay down that $49B in debt.

IBM wants you to use Watson to buy your children’s holiday gifts (and give them more information to learn about your own buying habits).  They are also quietly focusing on processor chip sets.

HPE is trying to make a few friends while the Splunk CEO says goodbye to his.

IBM

  • I was going to avoid posting this one, but there are so many articles about it:
    Watson can help you find Christmas gifts…

    The iOS app IBM Watson works by analysing millions of reviews, blogs and social media conversations on sites like Twitter to curate lists of the top trending products in gift categories such as toys, electronics, health and fitness.

    http://www.thestar.com.my/Tech/Tech-News/2015/11/20/IBM-Watson-app-identifies-trending-toys-and-gadgets-for-gift-giving-season/

  • Is It Time to Buy IBM, or Is Big Blue Cutting Too Deeply?

    The company has repurchased about 40% of its shares since 2005 and implemented numerous cost reduction efforts, including substantial layoffs in recent years, to grow earnings. For a while, these actions looked to be working. Diluted earnings per share nearly tripled from 2005 through 2013 and operating margins doubled to hit 20%. Even IBM’s stock was a winner, significantly outpacing the S&P 500 from 2005 through 2011.

    Gauging innovation and company culture is difficult, but a Web site called Glassdoor.com aggregates employee reviews for thousands of companies. As seen below, IBM ranks low in overall stars, the percentage of employees who would recommend the company to a friend, and the percentage of employees who approve of the CEO.

    sn_ibm-glassdoor-reviews
    http://www.thestreet.com/story/13369779/1/is-it-time-to-buy-ibm-or-is-big-blue-cutting-too-deeply.html

  • IBM Taps Nvidia Tesla GPUs to Speed Up Watson

    IBM said that by using the Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs—the flagship offering of the Nvidia Tesla Computing Platform—coupled with Watson’s Power-based architecture, Watson’s retrieve and rank API capabilities increased by 1.7 times its normal speed. This speed-up can further improve the cost/performance of Watson’s cloud-based services, IBM said.

    http://www.eweek.com/database/ibm-taps-nvidia-tesla-gpus-to-speed-up-watson.html

  • IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration With Xilinx To Take On Intel

    The two companies have signed a private multi-year agreement through OpenPOWER Foundation, which will enable Xilinx programmable chips known as FPGAs to work with IBM’s Power processors and hence promote the IBM product. The move will also help develop open acceleration infrastructure, software and middleware, high performance computing (HPC), network functions virtualization (NFV) and big data analytics.

    http://www.businessfinancenews.com/26258-ibm-announces-strategic-collaboration-with-xilinx-to-take-on-intel/

EMC/Dell

  • Dells says there will be no EMC sell-off

    “The portfolios of products are highly complementary. There are some overlaps in storage, but Dell product lines and EMC storage product lines are somewhat different. We are going from seven to nine [product lines], which is not a problem, and we’ll continue to enhance them.”

    http://www.fudzilla.com/news/39265-dells-says-there-will-be-no-emc-sell-off

  • How VMWare and EMC could dictate Dell’s federal future

    This report reinforces what is already known: This merger has very little to do with Dell’s federal business. EMC and VMWare provide an almost infinitesimally small contribution to Dell’s contract mix and offer Dell no compelling reason to retain the services side it inherited when it bought Perot Systems in 2009.

    What it does go onto reveal is that while Dell adds virtually nothing to its federal services offering with the merger and likely wouldn’t affect a decision to spinoff, it does open Dell up to broader federal market opportunity to sell products and solutions.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2015/11/how-vmware-and-emc-could-dictate-dell-s-federal.html

  • Dell-EMC deal will ‘set back innovation,’ Sun co-founder Vinod Khosla says

    EMC and Dell merging is a really good financial move for Michael, but it will set back innovation and distract from innovation,” said Khosla, now a prominent venture capitalist, in an onstage interview at the Structure conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

    Asked about the future for old-line technology companies like Cisco, IBM and Dell, Khosla was pessimistic. In his view, only about half of those tech titans will stick around in the future. What’s more, he said, innovation from those companies has been seriously lacking.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3006519/dell-emc-deal-will-set-back-innovation-sun-cofounder-vinod-khosla-says.html

Hewlett Packard Enterprises

  • Microsoft And HPE Team Up, Announce CPM Offerings

    The tech giants announced the availability of their Cloud Productivity and Mobility Solution Offerings (CPM), which will create transformational consulting services and business applications for Windows 10. In particular, CPM will provide consulting services for Windows 10, new cloud and mobility consulting services and industry-specific vertical applications.

    http://www.econotimes.com/Microsoft-And-HP-Team-Up-Announce-CPM-Offerings-118600
    This is interesting: HPE is the business arm moving away from the desktop experience, yet they get the consulting partnership instead of HP Inc who is building machines with Windows 10.

  • HP Enterprise, Intel come together to deliver IoT solutions

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s IoT solutions combined with the Intel IoT Platform and product portfolio will deliver new products that will sit at the edge and collect, process, as well as analyse data from sensors and devices. These new systems are designed to sit outside of the traditional data centre and will feature Intel Core” i5 and Intel Atom. processors.

    http://www.firstpost.com/business/hp-enterprise-intel-come-together-to-deliver-iot-solutions-2511608.html

  • HP Enterprise launches all-flash datacentre storage

    HP Enterprise claimed the new line-up can improve Oracle workload database performance by up to 75 per cent without the need for companies to switch architecture, making it a flexible addition to a company’s network. Additionally, HP Enterprise said the new tools will cost half the amount of some unnamed rival products, making them an attractive option for businesses wanting to make the move to all-flash arrays without high outlays.

    http://www.itpro.co.uk/server/25607/hp-enterprise-launches-all-flash-datacentre-storage

Other