IBM's archive
Unisys Offers Enterprises a Security Blanket in the Cloud
Unisys, the IT services company, today became the latest with a set of products aimed at helping customers create their own internal clouds. And in a month it will offer a true Infrastructure-as-a-Service product that will deliver computing and storage on demand and on a per-instance basis. Like many of the traditional IT vendors, Unisys […]
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IBM Throws $100 Million at Mobile
Realizing that the phone is now a computer, or possibly that ubiquitous wireless networks mean that computers can go anywhere, IBM said today it would spend $100 million on research over the next five years to improve mobile communications for businesses and consumers worldwide. This is a piddling amount for IBM (it spent $1 billion […]
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IBM Tries to Sell Enterprises on Workload-Specific Clouds
IBM’s first true cloud computing products, announced today, consists of workload-specific clouds that can be run by an enterprise on special-purpose IBM gear, Big Blue building that same cloud on its special-purpose gear running inside a firewall, or running the workload on IBM’s hosted cloud. The offering seems like a crippled compromise between the scalability […]
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With a Big Push, IBM Gives Cloud Computing Its Blessing
When it comes to upstart technologies, IBM is a kingmaker, says The New York Times. Thanks to its dominant position in selling IT services to mega-corporations, the company can turn nascent efforts such as personal computers (in the 1980s) and Linux (in 2000) into major technology trends, the Times says. And now, it is endorsing […]
5 Companies That Should Be on Dell’s Shopping List
Since Dell keeps telling folks it wants to buy some companies, we’ve written out a list that Michael Dell should consult as he expands his eponymous empire. Second-hand sources quoted in the Wall Street Journal today said that the company was seeking deals in data storage and tech services. The article also noted that Dell […]
HP Finally Boards the Mega Data Center Bandwagon
Hewlett Packard today announced a new line of servers, a data center mapping program and some consulting and financing services aimed at companies that build out mega data centers. Potential purchasers of the new HP machines include those building cloud computing offerings and enterprise customers trying to build their own clouds or high-performance computing clusters.
Problem […]
Ray Ozzie: Cloud Platforms Are Less Profitable
Cloud services, such as Microsoft’s Azure platform, will be less profitable for the company than its software sales, said Ray Ozzie, Redmond’s chief software architect. He said the same thing back in a March 2008 interview with Om as well. Ozzie made his latest comments at an event in Silicon Valley on Thursday, adding that […]
CSC Cloud Strategy Revolves Around Security for the Enterprise
Computer Sciences Corp., the IT service organization, today laid out its strategy for the cloud. Unsurprisingly, CSC’s cloud products will focus on being reliable and secure enough for enterprises and the federal government. CSC will continue providing its managed hosting business, but later this year will launch an infrastructure-as-a-service product that will provide secure cloud […]
How the Cloud Will Disrupt the IT Status Quo
The transition to delivering software, services and compute infrastructure via the web will change the dynamics of the IT industry, shifting power away from the services players such as IBM and HP and toward companies running monolithic data center operations such as Salesforce.com, Amazon or Microsoft, according to three Forrester analysts I spoke with […]
Cisco’s Chambers Sees the End of Business Machines
When it comes to the way people interact with technology, the lines between business and personal have been erased, according to Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers. Speaking on his third-quarter earnings conference call yesterday, Chambers said:
I carry the same two devices in my business life and my personal life. A PDA and my Flip. […]
IBM Shows Telco CEOs Struggling to Adapt
The people running the world’s telecommunications carriers are facing a threat to their core businesses due to convergence and a perception of their networks as dumb pipes, according to a report from IBM. As a result, 70 percent of telecom CEOs are concentrating on defending their core business, compared with just 25 percent of […]
SpringSource Buys Hyperic for Enterprise Push
SpringSource, an open-source development platform provider, said today it’s purchased Hyperic, a move that will allow it to offer its corporate customers the ability to build, run and manage their applications together. The companies share the same investors — Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital — but Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic, says the deal, the […]
NSF Grants $5M for Research on Google-IBM Cloud
University researchers from around the country today received nearly $5 million from the National Science Foundation to help them run their high-performance projects on the Google-IBMCloud Computing University Initiative infrastructure. Among the 14 universities receiving funds are leading research institutions like Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, San Diego; MIT, Yale and the […]
Our Full Analysis of the $7.4B Oracle-Sun Deal
Oracle’s decision to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion is not only going to shake up the database business — it’s likely to energize the Java community, too. And of course, the deal puts the insurgent MySQL database in the hands of incumbent Oracle. Whatever the long-term implications, in the short term expect massive layoffs as Oracle tries to squeeze profits out of Sun. 
Cisco’s Unified Server Takes Memory to the Max
A month after Cisco unveiled its Unified Computing System, it has finally released pricing, processing power and memory details. The bottom line is this: the performance of the servers and overall system seem to be in line with competing products from HP and IBM built on Intel’s latest Xeon 5500 chips, but Cisco’s offerings have […]
What’s Next, Now That The Sun-IBM Merger Is Off
Updated: Late last night, The New York Times reported that the IBM’s rumored $7 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems is off. The doubts about the deal were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal said thatSun’s board is divided on the wisdom of this deal.
A faction led by CEO Jonathan Schwartz wants to […]
The Open Cloud Manifesto is Nothing But a Vapor Tiger
Late last week, we watched the big names in the IT industry play their little reindeer games over a proposed Open Cloud Manifesto put forth by IBM. I have to say, it wasn’t worth it. As far as Manifestos go, this one is pretty benign. Who cares if it was agreed to or drafted in […]
Thunder in the Cloud Over Openness
Microsoft’s Steve Martin, senior director of developer platform management at the Redmond giant, posted an inflammatory blog post last night about the creation of open standards for the cloud. In it, he touts Microsoft’s openness, proposes a wiki for the creation of open standards in the cloud, and points to a shadowy cabal of tech companies that are developing […]
Dell Ties Servers and Services Even Closer
Dell today launched several enterprise products aimed at cutting back on one of the more stubborn costs in an IT department — the IT professionals. Its new lines of servers include features such as ImageDirect, which eliminates the IT professional’s role in installing an image on a server. From CNet:
It’s all part of the “new […]
Cisco’s Data Center Moves to Spark More M&A
Last week Cisco announced its move into the data center (something Om prophesied a year ago) with what it called a Unified Computing System that will compete with offerings primarily from HP and IBM. A few days later, rumors circulated that IBM might buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion (or that maybe Cisco should). And […]
As Clouds Reach the Enterprise, Opportunities Are Clear
It’s been about three years since Amazon made its risky bet on delivering computing and storage via the cloud. It started by offering commitment-free, pay-as-you-go storage, enabling startups to start scaling their businesses without significant investment in capital equipment. It later added compute cycles to its services and today has a host of other offerings, […]
Why Cisco, Not IBM, Should Buy Sun
With IBM rumored to have made a $6.5 billion buyout offer for Sun Microsystems, it appears the company that coined the phrase “The Network is the Computer” is in play. But no one should allow IBM to walk away with Sun — which is still rich with talent, technology and engineering chops — at that […]
Why IBM Should Buy Sun: Cloud Services
This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion in cash. The deal makes sense given Sun’s distressed share price, and because both companies appear to be pursuing cloud computing — the next big computing opportunity — in a similar manner. Let’s see how each plans […]
IBM Thinks Its Cloud Role Will Be in Services and Software
IBM has gotten more and more serious about the cloud. A little over a year ago, Drew Clark, director of strategy for IBM’s venture capital group, started paying attention to the fact that an entire network of startups were raising venture capital to build services tied to Amazon’s Web Services or other cloud platforms. Today, […]
Cisco’s Data Center Moves: Who Wins, Who Loses?
Cisco Systems today announced its new blade server, first reported by us in March 2008, along with a Unified Computing strategy that converges storage, compute and networking into a single layer (thanks to virtualization technologies) that is managed by a specialized piece of software. Stacey has captured the intricate details of the news, while […]
Cisco’s Data Center Play Reinvents The Server
Today Cisco announced its much awaited data center play with what it calls its Unified Computing System. Om does a great job explaining why the networking giant is moving into the data center as the demands of digital data tax the current three-part IT infrastructure of servers, networks and storage.
The current infrastructure is showing its […]
With a New Server, Cisco Pushes “Comm-puting” Strategy
In a matter of hours, Cisco Systems will announce its much awaited lineup of server products, furthering its theme of unified computing. The move is part of an ongoing effort at Cisco to find new revenue opportunities that go beyond switches, routers and wireless devices. 
Hybrid Computers Will Hide in the Cloud
Heterogeneous computing, where hardware vendors mix a variety of processors (graphics processors, CPUs, embedded chips or DSPs) on a server to increase energy efficiency and processing speed, will become a reality in the data center in the next decade, says an IBM executive. Such arrangements increase complexity and can cause headaches for developers and customers, […]
Rackspace Offers Cloud Computing for Cautious Customers
Rackspace today is expected to announce its own on-demand computing product, CloudServers. The service is built on the company’s acqusition of Slicehost last year and will offer the same services as Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud. It’s also a cornerstone of Rackspace’s attempts to build out a cloud computing environment that will rival those […]
Telstra’s Planned App Store Is a Shift for Carriers
Australian carrier Telstra says it will open a mobile application store much like Apple’s App Store, joining the frenzy surrounding such mobile app marketplaces (Microsoft, Research in Motion and Nokia all have stores in the works as well). What’s noteworthy is that Telstra is a carrier, so its app store could become the mobile equivalent […]
HP Confines the Cloud for Enterprises
Eventually the idea of cloud computing will become an accepted part of the information technology ecosystem — but it will be just one of many tools in the IT arsenal, according to HP. To stake its claim on the idea of pooled commodity computing resources, HP is hosting a series of webinars for its customers […]
Move Over Touch: Voice Recognition Grows Up
Nuance Communications said today it’s offering an upgrade to its line of speech recognition software aimed at carriers and handset makers. The new software includes a combination of on-handset speech recognition and server-based transcription that means it can do far more than navigate an address book. It’s also a sign that carriers are interested in […]
IBM Scorns Cisco and Gets Serious About Clouds
IBM yesterday trumpeted its cloud computing strategy with a demonstration at its Silicon Valley campus and a press release touting new customers, products and other tidbits we are going to ignore (you can read the release here). Amidst it all, however, IBM did announce two important things. The first was via an internal memo that […]
Why Does Cisco Need $4 Billion in Debt?
Why does a company that has nearly $30 billion sitting in its coffers need another $4 billion in debt? When Cisco Systems announced that it was raising $4 billion from the debt market earlier today, it led to speculation that it might be loading up in order to buy a company or two.
The new […]
IBM Beefs Up Tivoli for the Cloud
Today IBM announced that six universities are using its cloud computing expertise to set up and manage clouds located in Qatar, Africa and in Japan. It is using Hadoop for allocating resources in the cloud — something it first began doing in 2007 when it teamed up with Google for its first cloud project. Since […]
Semiconductor Ink Could Drive Computing Demand
Chemical giant BASF and a small specialty chemicals company in Skokie, Ill., called Polyera Corp. have come up with a new type of semiconductor ink they plan to market under the name ActivInk. The ink is based on a new molecule that allows printed ink to carry a negative charge. Flexible circuits carrying a positive […]
With Servers, Now Cisco Fights Partners
It’s nice to see The New York Times and others finally catching up to us by reporting that Cisco Systems is working on a new kind of server. We first reported the development of these new servers back in March 2008, essentially a lifetime on the web, which has short memories but (almost) everlasting […]
Skype and IBM add LotusLive Integration via IBM Cloud Services
According to a Skype spokesperson, at Lotusphere 2009 in Orlando, FL, IBM and Skype previewed the planned integration of Skype functionality with LotusLive, IBM’s new cloud services which are designed to “help individuals build communities to work smarter, more effectively and more efficiently across and beyond their own companies.” To be honsest, I’m not familiar with LotusLive, but effectively this sounds like collaborative cloud computing with 
Skype capabilities thrown into the mix. Skype’s voice & video capabilities will be added to the Borg LotusLive Collective.
Here’s the full details:
Skype and IBM collaborate on LotusLive Integration for the Enterprise
Skype voice and video calling to be available for global businesses via IBM Cloud Services
Skype today announced it will integrate Skype™ functionality with LotusLive (www.lotuslive.com), IBM’s new cloud services which are designed to help individuals build communities to work smarter, more effectively and more efficiently across and beyond their own companies. Skype’s voice and video calling will add rich, real-time communications capabilities to LotusLive, making it even easier for enterprises to collaborate in the cloud.
This planned integration, which was previewed at IBM Lotusphere 2009 in Orlando, FL, will join LotusLive collaborative services with Skype Internet communications to create a seamless communications experience for our mutual customers. Employees of companies using LotusLive will be able to use Skype to initiate voice and video calls, simply by clicking on their contacts’ Skype names or phone numbers within LotusLive. Future possibilities include the ability to import Skype contact information into IBM cloud services to enhance online collaboration.
“Our relationship with IBM demonstrates how serious Skype is about bringing the benefits of ‘anytime, anywhere, any mode’ Internet communications to the enterprise environment,” said Scott Durchslag, Skype’s Chief Operating Officer. “During tough economic times, every business is seeking to cut costs while enhancing competitiveness and we look forward to broader, long-term cooperation between IBM and Skype to help businesses of all sizes around the globe save money, save time, and stay ahead.”
“We recognize that communications is an integral component of collaboration in an Internet-enabled world and that many small businesses have already adopted Skype,” said Sean Poulley, vice president of online collaboration, IBM Lotus. “This integration will simplify and improve the way businesses interact with their customers and partners.”
For more information, please visit www.lotuslive.com. To manage multiple Skype accounts, purchase and allocate Skype Credit or subscriptions, as well as manage calling activity, businesses can also access the Skype for Business Control Panel (BCP), a free web-based tool, at www.skype.biz.
Tags: borg, borg collective, cloud computing, collaboration, ibm, IBM Cloud Services, LotusLive, skype, voip
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Nuance Takes On Microsoft and Google With IBM Deal
Nuance Communications said today it’s bought several patents related to IBM’s speech recognition technology, joining Microsoft as one of the two the largest licensors of such technology. IBM, Nuance and Microsoft all provide speech-to-text and voice recognition products, an industry that’s growing in importance as devices makers seek more intuitive user interfaces. Even Google is trying […]
IBM Gives Cloud Computing a Seal of Approval
IBM wants to corner the market on cloud computing, from providing the physical servers that make up a cloud to offering services for those unwilling to build out their own. Today it announced plans to move further into the fog by creating a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for cloud computing. IBM calls it the Resilient Cloud Validation program. Big Blue hopes to work with cloud providers to offer a program that reassures businesses that a cloud doesn’t go down often as well as helping answer other questions that keep businesses from trusting in the cloud model.
Coincidentally (yeah, right) companies hoping to gain that seal of approval will need to work with IBM’s cloud consulting practice. IBM is also announcing as part of that practice that it can help answer a question I’ve long bothered cloud providers with — When is it most cost effective to outsource your application to a cloud and when should you build your own, or at least buy your own, servers?
IBM has been pretty quiet about its cloud efforts. In part because it didn’t want to hack off large customers buying a ton of IBM servers by competing with them. The computing giant hasn’t been pushing its own cloud business until a half-hearted announcement at the end of July, about a month and half after a company exec had told me IBM didn’t really want to advertise its cloud services.
While I may have doubted if IBM really “got” cloud computing in the past, a project it detailed in a press release today about a research project in China has me convinced that IBM knows exactly what the cloud is, and plans to capitalize on its name and experience to compete with Amazon for enterprise business. Check it out:
IBM’s China Research Lab is piloting a newly developed cloud computing platform, codenamed Project Yun which is Chinese for “cloud,” for companies to access business services, designed to make the selection and implementation of new cloud services as easy as selecting an item from a drop-down menu. With no need for back-end provisioning, the IBM platform stands to cut the time required to deliver new services dramatically. The Yun platform allocates storage, server and network resources for the customer application with zero human input, achieving top performance, availability and power utilization.
Instant provisioning with no human intervention. Right now it sounds like vaporware, but if IBM pulls it off, its cloud offerings will move from so much vapor to a competitive business.
Nvidia Machine Takes a Spot on the Top Supercomputer List
For the first time ever, a supercomputer using Nvidia chips has achieved a spot on the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The Nvidia-containing machine is ranked No. 29 on the list that was released late Friday; it’s a cluster built by NEC and Sun Microsystems that uses chips from Nvidia, Intel and AMD. As Nvidia and AMD, which bought graphics chipmaker ATI in 2005, push graphics processors for scientific computing, this is a big milestone. The rest of the list was pretty anticlimactic, with IBM’s Roadrunner computer narrowly beating Cray’s Jaguar computer to stay on top of the twice-annual Top 500 list. Both machines are petaflop computers, meaning they can achieve a quadrillion floating point operations a second — a record that was broken by Roadrunner back in June.
Microsoft and IBM Announce Sametime and Microsoft OCS integration
As one of my sources told me a few days ago, IBM and Microsoft planned on offering Sametime and OCS 2007 integration to be announced at VoiceCon. Three days ago I wrote:
Rumor has it that Microsoft and/or IBM will announce integration between Office Communications Server 2007 and IBM’s Lotus Sametime “Unified Telephony” platform at this week’s VoiceCon show. If true, this would combine approximately 20 million Sametime users with Microsoft’s fast growing OCS 2007 user base creating the largest unified communications user base.
Well, it just hit the newswires. At Voicecon, IBM and Microsoft announced that IBM Sametime and OCS will offer Interdomain Federation in Q4 of 2008, using SIP/SIMPLE.
The support will require an update to the Sametime Gateway 8.0.2. It will support OCS 2007 and OCE 2007 R2.
Tags: IBM, Microsoft, Microsoft OCS, OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2, Sametime, unified communications, voip
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IBM’s New Foundry Service Takes on Intel
IBM today said it will offer a new foundry service that could enable a startup to compete on the same level as Intel. IBM says it will make 45-nanometer, silicon-on-insulator chips designed by other other semiconductor companies as a contract manufacturer. This means everyone from startups to Texas Instruments can now design high-performance chips that can consume less power — ushering in new designs for consumer electronics, cell phones and maybe even servers.
As it becomes ever more expensive for semiconductor companies to build manufacturing plants to make their own chips, there are plenty of foundry services out there. However, IBM has combined two important manufacturing technologies to make this offering unique. One is the process node, which affects how many chips can be crammed onto a wafer. Smaller process nodes, such as 45 nanometer, offer better power efficiency (or performance) and better economies of scale. The other technology is silicon-on-insulator (SOI), which is more expensive than the traditional CMOS process. Foundries offering SOI technology typically do so at larger nodes, such as at 90 nanometers, where it’s hard to justify the higher cost of SOI when a chipmaker may be able to get the same cost efficiencies or performance and power gains by going to a smaller process node with CMOS chips.
If it’s an apples-to-apples comparison at 45 nanometers, it can be worth it to pay more for SOI, because a processor gains more performance, with certain types of power advantages provided by SOI that help make devices smarter and more energy efficient. ARM — the design and intellectual property firm behind many of the chips that act as the brains for cell phones, including the iPhone– has signed a partnership with IBM to offer some of its IP libraries as part of this foundry offering.
This foundry service will provide a compelling service for companies building cell phone applications processors, embedded chips for networking equipment and gaming chips, but it may not be the only offering out there for long. AMD also has the ability to make 45-nanometer SOI chips, which means as it spins out its fabs, the newly formed Foundry Co. may also sell such capacity to all comers. An AMD spokesman said he didn’t know when I asked.
This also heightens the divide in the semiconductor world between Intel and everyone else. Intel had resisted SOI technology for years — although it appears to be coming around for later generations of chips. However, by offering such cutting-edge foundry services, IBM and its partners are making it possible for other firms to keep up with Intel without worrying about manufacturing R&D. This means Intel is running two races — one in manufacturing and the other with its design. How long it can keep this up is anyone’s guess.
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