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 beat us all in Jeopardy and our phones can understand us to an extent unimagined even a decade ago), it was an important turning point in the climb down into the uncanny valley.
Deep Blue, in short, made computers personable. → 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 more” model of reimbursement that is rapidly being replaced by a value and outcomes based – a 180 shift in focus.
It’s hard to argue with modernizing the record-keeping in healthcare that isn’t far beyond how medicine was recorded in the time of Hippocrates. Thousands of lives are saved as a result of this modernization (e.g., avoiding frequent, deadly prescription errors). On the other hand, most companies benefiting from the stimulus have two massive gaps that will need to be addressed for health systems to thrive in the new environment they are facing. → 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 site visits, down to the page-by-page, browser-level experience. By capturing every single customer’s visit, as well as the reaction of the site in response to the customer’s requests, Tealeaf captures both the quantitative and qualitative details of every single interaction. This data is then used towards optimizing the customer experience. → Read More
It wasn’t that long ago that I complained about cloud fragmentation issues. There were some interesting observations in the comments on that post. Now word comes that the Linux Foundation is hosting CloudOpen, a “new conference to advance openness in the cloud.”
Most of the major players are already committed to participating at CloudOpen: Canonical, Citrix, Dell, Eucalyptus, HP, IBM, Intel, OpenStack, Red Hat and SUSE. From the press release: “Designed for software developers and IT managers responsible for deploying and developing cloud solutions, CloudOpen will feature technical content that includes … big data strategies and open cloud platforms and tools. This conference will also cover open source best practices and how they relate to topics such as company data and APIs.” → Read More
On the heels of acquiring sales data analytics company Varicent last week, Big Blue is making another buy in the data space today— Vivisimo. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Vivisimo, which has raised $6 million in funding, launched as a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon and applies clustering technology to enterprise search. Vivisimo provides enterprises with search software that helps organizations access and analyze big data across the enterprise. Vivisimo products are available for standalone search applications or as OEM versions embedded within partner applications and solutions. The software automates the discovery of data and helps employees navigate it with a single view across the enterprise. → Read More
IBM just reported mixed first quarter earnings for 2012. GAAP earnings came in at $2.61, up 13 percent with non-GAAP earnings at $2.78, up 15 percent. Revenue was flat for the quarter coming in at $24.7 billion, up 1 percent adjusting for currency. Analysts expected $2.66 a share and $24.82 billion in revenue.
Net income for the quarter came in at $3.1 billion, up 7 percent from last year. “In the first quarter, we drove strong profit and earnings per share growth. We delivered another excellent software performance, expanded services margins, and continued the momentum in our growth initiatives,” said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. “Our investments in growth market countries continued to generate strong revenue growth across software, hardware and services while contributing to the company’s ongoing margin expansion. → Read More
Big Blue has made a purchase today—IBM has acquired Varicent Software, a company that creates a sales analytics software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Varicent, which has raised $35 million in funding, analyzes sales data from businesses to help organizations to streamline compensation processes for employees, improve sales performance, and more. Varicent’s software automates and analyzes sales data across a number of sectors of an organization including the finance, sales, human resources and IT departments and can uncover trends that could lead to better sales and revenue for a company. → Read More
People like to kick up a fuss about sexism in tech and how this contributes to a lack of women in the field, whether that’s through badly promoted “perks” at hackathons, over-abundance of alcohol at events or scantily clad women in promo videos, etc.
But do you want to know why there’s sexism in tech? Because it comes from society at large, and even at the very top, we allow it to happen.
Traditionally, the Augusta National Golf Club has bestowed honorary green jackets representing membership to the club upon the CEOs of its three main television sponsors for the U.S. Masters – except for this year. Virginia Rometty is the current CEO of IBM, and so far has not been given membership – like every other CEO before her, solely because she is a woman. → Read More
Facebook, according to reports, is buying up a boatload of patents from IBM — 750 in all — that will help the company shore up against potential attacks from other companies claiming the huge social network infringes on their intellectual property.
But for the past couple of years, Facebook has already been taking steps to build up its patent portfolio through the acquisition of patents from a host of other players, from large IT companies, to a patent troll and a defunct social network. And a few surprises. → Read More
IBM may not be the earliest mover among B2B companies offering more social features to its clients, but it is definitely trying to make sure it stays in game: today it announced that it would extend the social media features it offers through IBM Connections — roughly, the company’s enterprise equivalent of a social network for work colleagues and contacts — to include integration with Microsoft Outlook email, courtesy of a partnership with Israel-based enterprise startup harmon.ie.
The new service will see IBM Connections appear as a sidebar for those who use Outlook. That will give people the ability to do things like access SharePoint documents, see who is online and message them while still remaining in the email application.
(And to draw a line between what IBM is doing in enterprise with what’s happening in the consumer market, this is somewhat equivalent to Facebook offering a desktop messaging app to use when you’re not directly on its site.) → Read More
Barring a change of heart or a wild, consumer-driven financial upturn, it looks as if Dell is out of the consumer PC business and is turning its Sauron-like eye towards the enterprise – the one place where people upgrade their PCs at least once a year. According to PCPro, Dell will is “dramatically changing” their entire business with a focus away from “shiny boxes” and more focus on barebones server and fleet hardware.
To be fair, the statement could portend far less than we should expect. Dell has been among the walking dead in PC hardware for most of this decade, producing little of interest (the Adamo was their big consumer play and presumably Alienware will remain a consumer-facing company) but there’s still money to be made in selling commodity hardware for a few percentage points over cost. I doubt the outcry will be as vociferous as it was when HP threatened to pull its consumer business, mostly because Dell has no products of any interest to the enthusiast. The anger at HP was more about their destruction of Palm rather than the possibility that we wouldn’t be able to by a handsome, staid PC in a black/grey case. → Read More
Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture’s healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft’s Health platform business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave. Pharmaceutical companies are in trouble with ongoing patent cliffs with a clear choice facing them. They can follow the path of the railroad industry which is the path most are on right now. Alternatively, they can follow the path IBM took when its future was similarly bleak. IBM demonstrated how it’s possible for a large company to shift from a product-centric culture to a customer and service centered company. It’s clear that pharma companies will succeed or fail based not on how many drugs they sell, but on how well their offerings improve health outcomes. The marketing myopia of the railroad industry is well documented in the world of business yet industry after industry makes the same mistake. Railroad companies thought they were in the “railroad” business, rather than the “transportation” business. As a consequence, they missed out on countless opportunities to pursue growth in the auto industry. In contrast, IBM was able to use their existential threat to reinvent themselves over a critical 10 year period. The result: A 10x increase in their stock value. In contrast, most pharmaceutical companies aren’t spending enough time thinking like IBM. Looking at the 10-year stock charts of these organizations you see flat or declining stock prices. This is a clear indication that they haven’t reinvented themselves. The Key Question Pharma Must Answer Does the pharmaceutical company see themselves in the drug business or the disease management business? Or, where possible, in the disease prevention business? This is the critical questions to survive and thrive. Many of these diseases lend themselves to the use applications (mobile & web) or biometric devices. This is going to drive a greatly expanded focus on non-traditional partnerships. An example of how a pharmaceutical company could transition from being product centric to being customer centric is doing something like the company, Ambucor. Ambucor provides Ambulatory Electrocardiographic and Remote Device Monitoring services for cardiologists. Pharma companies already have deep relationships with cardiologists. Imagine them buying or partnering with a company like Ambucor to sell that service. This would provide a more complete offering where their heart-related drugs may or may not play a → Read More
IBM just announced the purchase of WorkLight, an Israeli startup that provides a mobile app development and infrastructure software. IBM says the acquisition will help expand the enterprise mobile capabilities it offers to clients. Financial terms were not disclosed but we’ve heard that the acquisition price is around $70 million, according to Israeli publication Calcalist.
WorkLight, which has raised $18 million in funding, allows organizations develop and deliver HTML5, hybrid and native applications with, and deliver these applications with mobile middleware, security features and integrated data management and analytics. Worklight dramatically reduces time to market, cost and complexity while enabling better customer and employee user experiences across more devices. → Read More
IBM just released fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today. Non-GAAP earnings came in at $4.71, up 11 percent; GAAP earnings per share were $4.62 per share (up 11 percent) for the quarter. Net income for the quarter was $5.5 billion, up 4 percent for the quarter, with revenue coming in at $29.5 billion, up 2 percent from the previous year. Analysts expected earnings of $4.62 a share on revenue of $29.7 billion. So basically, sales missed but profits beat expectations.
Revenues from the Software segment were $7.6 billion, an increase of 9 percent. But revenues from IBM’s hardware systems and technology segment totaled $5.8 billion for the quarter, down 8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.
→ Read More
In its first acquisition of 2012, IBM has announced the purchase of cloud-based software testing platform Green Hat. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 1996, Green Hat allows developers to test software applications prior to delivery in the cloud. Developers can test TIBCO, webMethods, IBM WebSphere MQ, SOA, BPM, SOAP, REST and Cloud applications with the company’s platform as well as Virtualize unavailable applications and test application performance. → Read More
It looks like consumers in the U.S. were shopping online alongside opening presents this year. According to IBM’s Coremetrics retail data, online sales on Christmas Day grew by 16.4 percent from last year.
Similar to trends seen over the Thanksgiving holidays, more shoppers were flocking to mobile devices to complete purchases. IBM says that 18.3 percent of all online sessions on retailers’ sites were initiated from a mobile device, up from 8.4 percent in 2010 (an increase of 117.8 percent). → Read More
On the heels of purchasing merchandising software DemandTec for $440 million, Big Blue is continuing the shopping spree to advance its smarter commerce strategy. IBM has just announced the acquisition of Emptoris, a cloud and on-premise analytics software that brings more intelligence to procurement and retail supply chain operations. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Emptoris’ software helps companies maximize financial performance and optimize commercial risk when it comes to supply chain and inventory management, procurement, sourcing and more in retail environments. For example, a global oil and gas company could use Emptoris to figure out how to source operations across suppliers. Emptoris has more than 350 customers in 75 countries. → Read More
IBM has made a major purchase today in the commerce and retail world—DemandTec, a retail marketing and merchandising software company. IBM is acquiring DemandTec (which listed on the Nasdaq) in an all cash transaction at a price of $13.20 per share, or approximately $440 million.
DemandTec provides retailers and e-commerce companies with tools to transact, interact, and collaborate on core merchandising and marketing activities. DemandTec’s cloud-based analytics software allows businesses to examine different customer buying scenarios, both online and in-store, so retailers can spot trends and shopper insights to make better price, promotion, and assortment decisions that increase revenue and profitability.
→ Read More
As of yesterday afternoon, Cyber Monday online sales were up 18 percent but apparently a surge of activity yesterday evening helped push the day’s e-commerce sales to record amounts. Cyber Monday online sales, according to IBM’s Coremetrics report, were up 33 percent over 2010, and up 29.3 percent over Black Friday.
comScore is reporting that Cyber Monday sales reached a record $1.25 billion, up over 20 percent from last year, to become the heaviest online spending day in history. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is only the second time a billion dollars in online commerce has occurred in one day. For the holiday season-to-date, $15 billion has been spent online, 15 percent increase versus the same days last year. → Read More
Early results for Cyber Monday are looking good for retailers. Cyber Monday 2011 online sales are already up 20 percent for this same time period over Cyber Monday 2010, according to IBM’s Coremetrics retailer data.
IBM says that it expects most online shopping to come from laptops and PCs during the day with mobile shopping activity picking up later in the day, when consumers are purchasing from home.
→ Read More
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