IBM announced its Q1 2013 earnings today, reporting net revenues of $23.4 billion and earnings per share of $3.00. EPS was an improvement over last year’s numbers (of 8 percent), while revenue was down 5 percent, or 3 percent adjusting for currency. Flat software revenue and down service revenue is what led to the overall shortfall in terms of analyst expectations. Since IBM divested… → Read More
IBM plans to invest $1 billion in research to design, create and integrate Flash into its servers, storage systems and middleware, a reflection of the changing requirements needed for companies to manage massive amounts of data. As part of the news, IBM also announced a new line of Flash appliances. These storage appliances are based on technology acquired from Texas Memory Systems. IBM says… → Read More
I am not one to write about award recipients but I find it pretty awesome that the founders of Mo De, a mobile micro finance company from Kenya, won the IBM SmartCamp entrepreneur of the year award this week in New York.
Julian Kyula and Josphat K. Kinyua started Mo De to fill a need that impacts the millions of African customers who buy mobile service by the minute. Often, people will run out… → Read More
Microsoft is pinching CIOs by not providing an easy way to run the just released Microsoft Office 2013 on anything except Windows RT. With little cross-platform integration, Microsoft is creating an opening for vendors that have a more clear path for accessing documents on a mobile device. → Read More
Last week I stopped by the offices of FMYI, a small Portland-based company that is one of the first enterprise social networks to use Twitter Bootstrap. → Read More
IBM Connect started tonight here in Orlando. And the story is all about the chief marketing officer and that high-ranking executive in human resources. For marketing it means reaching customers and prospects. For HR — it’s about tools for the pros and the ones who are still learning the ways of social business. → Read More
IBM just released its Q4 2012 financials. The company’s GAAP net income came in at $5.8 billion, up 6% from last year. Non-GAAP net income was $6.1 billion. Overall, the company reported revenue of $29.3 billion, down 1%. Earnings per share were $5.39 compared to $4.71 per share in the fourth quarter of 2011, an increase of 14 percent. → Read More
The enterprise — I get a sideways glance when I tell people it’s what I cover. People want to know why I find it so compelling. They ask because truly they have no goddamn clue what the hell the enterprise is in the first place. → Read More
Amazon Web Services has added a new storage instance for data intensive applications. The new storage instances are designed for applications that require high storage depth and I/O performance. → Read More
Michael Dell said onstage at his Dell World keynote today that Dell is No. 1 in market share for servers in North America and Asia and 64,000 servers from the number one spot worldwide. Dell did not cite a source for the number one spot claim. There is no public statement about the total. I was told to ask IDC Analyst Matt Eastwood about the numbers. So I did. Eastwood replied to me on Twitter… → Read More
ScaleIO has raised $12 million in a Series A round from Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Greylock Partners, and private investors for its software defined storage technology.
ScaleIO is one of a new breed of storage providers that use software to scale across thousands of servers. → Read More
After a record-breaking Black Friday, retailers may be in for a big Cyber Monday as well. Early results for Cyber Monday, from IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark, show a 25.6 percent jump in online sales from this same time period over Cyber Monday 2011. → Read More
ComScore yesterday predicted that e-commerce sales would jump by 14% this holiday season compared to last year, to $42 billion, and some numbers just out from IBM’s Benchmark service – an ongoing measurement that covers some 500 of the largest online retailers in the U.S. — indicate that consumers are getting a head start today. Online sales, it says, are already up by 14.3% on last year… → Read More
The Rainmaker Group, a company founded in 1998, has accepted its first investment — $33.8 million from Norwest Venture Partners that the Atlanta-based company will use to extend its profit and price optimization technology to different markets. → Read More
Big Switch, one of the hottest startups in the fast-growing software defined networking (SDN) market, has named Jason Matlof as its new vice president of marketing after he left Battery Ventures as a partner in September. The move is noteworthy, because it illustrates how fast the new networking space is emerging, as data becomes ever more difficult to manage on traditional physical… → Read More
Larry Ellison said today that Oracle does not plan to do any acquisitions in the next few years but would not rule one out down the road. He made the remarks in a CNBC interview at OracleOpenWorld in San Francisco. Ellison was also asked about a successor to the company he has run for the past three decades. He only said there are several who could take his place. → Read More
IBM has scooped up talent management and HR software maker Kenexa. The price? A hefty $1.3 billion, or $46.00 per share in cash.
The NASDAQ-listed Kenexa offers an HR, talent acquisition and talent management software. The product includes recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) that provides global recruitment services; recruitment technology solutions; onboarding solutions, which offer forms… → Read More
Apple is not the most valuable company in the history of the world. It’s not even Microsoft, which was reported to have been toppled by Apple today.
It’s IBM by a long shot.
Apple’s $661 billion market share does not account for inflation. With inflation in account, IBM remains the historic winner with a 1967 value of $1.3 trillion.
The Columbia Journalism Review put this into… → Read More
If you have ever tried to use SPSS you know the nightmare that it can be when trying to do even simple analysis. SPSS is designed for statisticians to analyze data sets. But even statisticians find it aggravating to perform such tasks as making a neat graphic to show the relationship between variables.
So here’s what happens. You hire a consultant who can do it for you. That’s why IBM, which… → Read More
The fear and loathing of RIM has been well-documented by this point. At the end of June, the company released its Q1 2013 earnings, which were more than a little disappointing, with RIM reporting its first operating loss in eight years, that it would be cutting 5K+ employees and that the release of its new BlackBerry was again being delayed — this time until the beginning of 2013.
The… → Read More
Oracle is stopping a marketing campaign attacking IBM in wake of a national advertising board‘s recomendation that the company made false claims when comparing its Exadata technology to competing IBM products.
It’s the second time in four months the National Advertising Division (NAD) has taken action against Oracle for making false claims when comparing its Exadata products to IBM’s… → Read More
GoodData has raised $25 million to continue developing its cloud-based business intelligence technology.
The funding brings GoodData’s total to $55 million. Founder and CEO Roman Stanek said the investment came from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners and Windcrest Partners also contributing to the round. → Read More
IBM has just released its second quarter 2012 financials with second quarter earnings per share (EPS) of $3.51 beating market estimate with revenue of $25.7 billion, off $500 million from what analysts had expected.
Developing… → Read More
A shining light appeared in Intel’s otherwise mediocre second quarter earnings results today. Data center revenues were up 15.1%, beating all other categories.
The news reflects the changing IT landscape. Companies are looking to get more out of their data centers in an effort to optimize what they already have. Servers are getting abstracted so technology vendors are looking to differentiate. → Read More
I am moderating an IBM tweetchat that starts in just a few minutes at 10 a.m. PST. The topic: “The Economics of IT – Cost and Benefits of Integrated Systems.” Follow the hashtag #ExpertSysChat to participate.
There is a debate about the relationship between the cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the solutions oriented offerings that you see from IBM. I expect we will… → Read More
In April, IBM rolled out a big new machine called IBM PureApplication Systems, a member of the PureSystems technology family.
At the time, I called IBM out for calling it a “PaaS in a Box.” It reminded me of Larry Ellison calling Oracle’s hardware a “cloud-in-a-box” back in 2010. Well, IBM is continuing its PaaS washing. Krishnan Subramanian just tweeted about a new IBM post that went up… → Read More
VMware announced the acquisition today of DynamicOps, a purchase that puts it in position to differentiate itself from the traditional infrastructure providers.
It’s not a sexy acquisition, but it’s practical. VMware gets a tighter story for how it plans to add value, in face of deeper competition from the likes of Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and OpenStack, the open-source environment… → Read More
It was 15 years ago today that a computer – a conglomeration of transistors, memory, and storage media – could beat a world-class chess player. Called Deep Blue, the machine was part of a mission that culminated in IBM’s creation of a supercomputer that beat chess master Garry Kasparov two wins to one. While the concept is delightfully antiquated today (after all, IBM now makes a computer that can… → Read More
This is the second part in a two-part series on strategic investors in healthcare.
Healthcare IT departments have focused much of their attention on the $19 billion portion of the stimulus bill that is providing billions of subsidies for the adoption of electronic health records. While this is logical given the available money, it is paying for health IT systems optimized for the “do more, bill… → Read More
Another week, another IBM acquisition. Big Blue has announced the purchase of Tealeaf Technology, which provides customer experience analytics software that helps organizations access information about consumer web experiences. Financial details were not disclosed.
Basically, Tealeaf’s software captures and records what each customer is doing and seeing in real-time on every page and across all… → Read More
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