An interesting week with suppliers in light of the market turbulence . One would assume that there would be a great deal of financial performance information this week, but that was not the case (okay, there were a few interesting tidbits, see below).
IBM had a heavy cloud/IoT news cycle this week, the topic of containers come up in a few different media outlets. EMC is starting to push back on OpenStack cloud concepts they adopted along with the other tech firms a few months ago. Meanwhile, HP is just trying to make this split work.
IBM
- IBM Invests $3 Billion and Hires 2,000 for IoT Unit
Now there is number on how much they are willing to spend to start using data from mobile devices (via their deal with Apple), twitter communications with devices, and wearables to funnel that information into Watson and their analytics engines.Plans are to use resources to accelerate IoT deployments across a wide variety of verticals and closely collaborate between business groups such as Analytics; Systems and Technology (STG); the Watson Business Unit; and its Cloud and Services groups.
http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/5666/ibm-invests-3-billion-and-hires-2-000-for-iot-unit
- IBM takes on tough task of deploying containers across clouds
Sets or clusters of containers can be scheduled and run on a given cloud with tools like the newly available Google Container Engine as well as Google-backed Kubernetes or the Amazon Container Service. But now developers have their eye on the next frontier: Deploying container clusters across different clouds—something IBM says it has accomplished. A team at IBM Research working with Moustafa AbdelBaky, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University’s Discovery Informatics Institute, used open-source technology called CometCloud as the basis of this work, which he calls C-Ports.
http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/ibm-deploys-containers-across-clouds/
Note: See what the IBM developers have to say about containers in the Reddit post below. - IBM Watson, Using Speech Analysis Techniques, Correctly Identifies Patients At-Risk For Psychosis
Having previously collaborated with Dr. Guillermo Cecchi in analyzing speech transcripts of patients high on ecstasy and meth, Dr. Gillinder Bedi wanted to do a similar study of psychotic patients. So Bedi, who is a research scientist at NY State Psychiatric Institute, asked Columbia Medical School researchers if they had any transcripts of people at high-risk for psychosis. In fact, they did have records for 34 at risk people (between the ages of 14 and 27). These 34 patients had been followed for two and a half years, during which time five had developed psychosis. Next, Cecchi applied machine learning and natural language processing analyses to the transcripts from the 34 patients to identify specific features that might predict psychosis.
- IBM launches Blue Box Cloud in data-centers
Blue Box means IT departments can manage their OpenStack-based private clouds wherever the company (or offices, for a multi-location organisation) is based, to boost their public, private and hybrid infrastuctures. “Implementing Cloudsoft AMP on Blue Box Cloud across IBM Cloud datacentres will allow us to meet the increased demand from customers for hybrid cloud solutions built on OpenStack,” Duncan Johnston-Watt, chief executive of Cloudsoft, which is now taking advantage of Blue Box, said.
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/it-infrastructure/5312/ibm-launches-blue-box-cloud-in-datacentres
- IBM developers get brutalized on a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA)
I was reading this one in real time, and I felt bad for the guys. It is interesting (when they were actually answering questions and not defending Lotus Notes – wow btw -there is substantial amount of hate for Lotus on the internet) to hear about their development priorities and some of the cultural aspects of working for the company.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3ilzey/were_a_bunch_of_developers_from_ibm_ask_us/
EMC
- EMC and Intel clash over OpenStack’s future direction
Bias, who is also a director of the OpenStack Foundation, warned that the platform has so many different configuration options that it risked becoming fragmented and losing interoperability among different implementations of OpenStack. His recommendation is that OpenStack should have a base reference architecture against which specific implementations can be tested and verified, one of several steps he said that the platform needs to take.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2423761/openstack-s-future-direction-causes-heated-community-debate
- Pivotal appoints new CEO
Pivotal, the cloud-computing spinout of EMC Corp. and VMware Inc., promoted Rob Mee as chief executive officer to replace Paul Maritz, who was appointed executive chairman of Pivotal’s board. Pivotal, backed by EMC, VMware and General Electric Co., was set up in 2012 to tap surging demand for Internet-based programs, after EMC acquired Pivotal Labs the same year. Mee co-founded the original entity, which specialized in developing tools to change how engineers build software. The technology has become a critical component of Pivotal’s business, which involves carrying out complex projects with customers, while training their engineers to write software in a more modern way.
http://www.marketswired.com/emc-corp-nyseemc-appointed-new-ceo/225401/
Oracle
- Oracle, still clueless about security
Oracle’s chief security officer, Mary Ann Davidson, recently ticked off almost everyone in the security business. She proclaimed that you had to do security “expertise in-house because security is a core element of software development and you cannot outsource it.” She continued, “Whom do you think is more trustworthy? Who has a greater incentive to do the job right — someone who builds something, or someone who builds FUD around what others build?”
http://www.cio.com/article/2975920/security/oracle-still-clueless-about-security.html#tk.rss_all
- IBM And Oracle: A Comparison Of Economic Earnings
Relative valuations
As of writing, the market was valuing the two companies at:IBM: $138 billion
Oracle: $154 billion.Now Oracle has a net cash position of about $10 billion, so backing this out, the market is valuing Oracle at $145 billion at about 11x economic earnings.
On the other hand, IBM has net debt of about $6 billion (this excludes the financing segment; financing functions like a bank and debt in it is offset by loan/lease receivables; of course, a reader will point out that in the end debt is debt, however, in my opinion it is reasonable to exclude financing debt for the purposes of this discussion). So factoring this in, the market is valuing IBM at about $144 billion, or about 9.5x economic earnings.
That is, there’s about a 10% difference in relative valuations.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3468516-ibm-and-oracle-a-comparison-of-economic-earnings
Hewlett Packard
- PCs not dead despite difficulties ahead: HP chief
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/21/pcs-not-dead-despite-difficulties-ahead-hp-chief.html - Cisco Goes After HP in Contract Fight
Cisco sued Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court after HP missed an Aug. 1 payment deadline. HP claims it doesn’t owe Cisco anything, according to the suit, and in fact, has demanded a refund.Cisco, represented by Winston & Strawn partners Krista Enns and J. Erik Connolly, is suing for breach of contract and declaratory relief. An attorney hasn’t entered an appearance for HP, but the company was represented by McKool Smith principal Robert Elkin in pre-litigation negotiations that began last year and have grown increasingly contentious, according to Cisco’s complaint.
- HP Already Operating as Two Companies, More Restructuring (Layoffs?) Coming
Following a self-imposed three-day shutdown earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has divided its internal systems to effectively operate as two separate companies–one focused on PCs and printers and another on enterprise business–more than two months ahead of its November 1 formal split date. HP chief executive Meg Whitman, speaking on the vendor’s earnings call late last week, said the operations and IT systems were “successfully split,” as of August 1 and included the input of customers and partners.
- HP to Cut More Jobs
Hewlett-Packard (HP) plans to reduce a further 5% of its workforce in addition to the 55,000 jobs it already plans to eliminate.
http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/5645/hp-to-cut-more-jobs
- What happened to HP?
[Interesting breakdown of their business decisions over the last 15 years]2010- Five years of revenue gains and a hefty increase in stock growth over this period helped lead the technology firm into a brighter era. In the annual report for HP’s 2009 fiscal year Hurd wrote, “Over the last five years, HP has become a much more agile company, able to adapt and benefit from changing market conditions. In fiscal 2009, we gained share in key markets and continued to invest for growth in research and development, acquisitions, and sales coverage.” But it did not last. Hurd was accused of sexual harassment. While he was cleared of wrongdoing for that accusation, Hurd was found to have submitted false expense reports to hide a relationship.
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/what-happened-to-hp–1302804
Other
- The Onion Router is being cut up and making security pros cry
IBM claims there were around 180,000 malicious traffic “events” in the USA between January 1 and May 10 this year, with 150,000 in the Netherlands, and more than 50,000 in each of Romania, France, Luxembourg and Uruguay. While the rise of ransom-ware is worrying, the biggest attacks emanating from TOR exit nodes are familiar old favorites: SQL injection, vulnerability scanning, and denial-of-service.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/26/big_blue_biz_better_block_tor/
- Podcast: Industry Leaders on the Promise & Peril of NSCI
Five senior executives from Cray, HP, IBM, Intel and SGI weigh in on the new National Strategic Computing Initiative’s (NSCI) prospects in this exclusive HPCwire podcast. Discussion ranged widely from the need for long-term funding for leading edge technology, to the software industry’s past slowness to get involved with advancing hardware technology development, to fostering new HPC talent – even on whether the creation of a U.S. Department of IT makes sense.
http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/08/27/podcast-industry-leaders-on-the-promise-peril-of-nsci/
- SAS named a leader in 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools
The report’s authors note that, “Gartner estimates that the data integration tool market was worth approximately $2.4 billion in constant currency at the end of 2014, an increase of 6.9% from 2013. The growth rate is above the average for the enterprise software market as a whole, as data integration capability continues to be considered of critical importance for addressing the diversity of problems and emerging requirements. A projected five-year compound annual growth rate of approximately 7.7% will bring the total to more than $3.4 billion by 2019.