Tag: IBM

Biggish Blue buys Databand.ai

A not so mobile X86 PCIBM has written a cheque for Databand.ai, an Israel-based developer of a data observability platform, which claims to catch bad data before it impacts a customer’s business.

IBM’s cunning plan is to use Databand.ai to strengthen its data, AI, and automation software portfolio to ensure trustworthy data goes to the right user at the right time. The company also expects the acquisition to help Databand.ai take advantage of IBM’s own R&D investments and other IBM acquisitions.

Observability helps not only describe a problem for engineers, but also provides the context to resolve the problem and look at ways to prevent the error from happening again, according to Databand.ai.

“The way to achieve this is to pull best practices from DevOps and apply them to Data Operations. All of that to say, data observability is the natural evolution of the data quality movement, and it’s making DataOps as a practice possible”, the company said.

IDC fears PC and tablet slump

Beancounters at IDC said COVID-19 lockdowns in China, the war in Ukraine and global inflation are slowing demand for personal computers and tablets.

The firm expects global shipments to decline 8.2 percent year over year in 2022 to 321.2 million units shipped. Tablets are expected to fall 6.2 percent in 2022.

IBM retreats from Moscow

Biggish Blue is closing its business in Russia and firing all its staff due to the country’s war on Ukraine.

The letter, which was written by IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, said the decision was made as “consequences of the war continue to mount and uncertainty about its long-term ramifications grows”.

He said the shut down process began on May 30 and will result in the separation of its Russian workforce.

IBM buys Randori

Biggish Blue is acquiring Randori to help further simplify threat detection and response, it said.

The attack management software provider (ASM) helps clients identify external facing assets that are visible to attackers – and prioritise exposures which pose the greatest risk.

IBM thinks that this move will add automation and skills to IBM X-Force’s offensive cybersecurity team and advance IBM’s Hybrid Cloud strategy and strengthens its portfolio of AI-powered cybersecurity products and services.

Randori’s ASM software will be integrated with the extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities of IBM Security QRadar.

By doing this, security teams will be able to use real-time attack surface visibility for intelligent alert triage, threat hunting, and incident response, IBM claims.

Big Blue open to new partnerships

Biggish Blue CEO Arvind Krishna told the outfit’s company’s annual Think conference this week that his outfit is open to new partnerships.

Krishna said: “You have technology, but you also have to work with an ecosystem. No one company has all of the expertise, has all of the technologies that any of our clients need to be able to scale their businesses. So you must, must work on co-creating within a large ecosystem. … We want to build an ecosystem that unleashes the full potential of hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence for your benefit.”

Computacenter takes on more IBM products

Computacenter is expanding into new areas of its partner Biggish Blue’s product portfolio.

The pair have been working together since the 1980s but it seems that Computacentre had a look at IBM’s portfolio in areas such as AI, automation and observability solutions and thought it wants some of that.

Computacenter’s director of solutions, John Beard, said the company had been putting a lot of time, energy and effort into the relationships with the public cloud providers, and modernising its “go-to market” around cloud platforms.

Red Hat offers free training

Red Hat has pledged to run its Training and Certification courses to its partners for no extra cost.

The outfit said that it really needs hybrid cloud skills at the partner level so will be offering its self-paced online courses for free to help build knowledge around technologies such as cloud computing, containers, virtualisation, and automation.

The curriculum consists of 17 courses that are available in eight languages and can provide the foundational knowledge needed to develop skills in hybrid cloud computing. These can then be used to pursue further accreditation and certification away from Red Hat.

Blue Blue snaps up cloudy Neudesic

Biggish Blue has acquired Microsoft Azure partner Neudesic to expand the tech vendor’s portfolio of hybrid multi-cloud and artificial intelligence services.

IBM said that Neudesic gives it more Azure cloud, data engineering and data analytics capabilities  The company has more than 1,500 cloud and data workers in the US and India.

IBM and Neudesic signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the statement.

Synaxon announces partnership with UFP

Channel services outfit Synaxon is teaming up with specialist print products distributor UFP.

The agreement means resellers now have access to UFP’s expansive specialist print and IT portfolio through Synaxon’s online procurement platform EGIS.

In a statement Synaxon said that UFP brings the total number of distributors on the platform to 40 and broadens the range of offerings available to resellers, retailers, and office product suppliers.

UK MD Mike Barron said that UFP was a valuable addition to EGIS. “It’s a thriving and dynamic business built on delivering the best products and services and we’re delighted to have them onboard.”

OEMs increase their chip spending

Beancounters at Gartner have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and worked out that the top ten OEMs increased their chip spending by more than 25 percent last year.

The big 10 accounted for 42.1 percent of the total market in 2021.

The price increase spending was due to global shortages which “prevented OEMs from increasing in production” and “significantly increased selling prices”, Gartner said.

IBM improves hybrid cloud with Sentaca buy out

Biggish Blue has snapped up Sentaca to enhance its hybrid cloud capabilities.

IBM Consulting vice president Steve Goetz said the acquisition will bring Sentaca’s personnel and skills into IBM Consulting, formerly known as IBM Global Business Services.

“Sentaca’s cloud-native application development, testing, and future network capabilities are a great complement to what we’ve been embarking on in the last couple of years. Sentaca specialises in cloud-native, future networking, and automation. We’ve worked in these areas and have skilled people, and have been building our own capabilities for a number of years. So Sentaca is complementary to what we are doing. We believe this will accelerate us in the marketplace.”

Capgemini makes quantum leap with Biggish Blue

Capgemini has signed a deal with Big Blue to set up a ‘IBM Quantum Hub’ with an in-house quantum technology team to develop quantum technologies.

The Quantum Lab (Q-Lab) will comprise quantum technology experts and facilities in the UK, Portugal and India.

It will coordinate research programs to develop business-driven client propositions for sectors most likely to benefit from quantum technologies in the medium future – life sciences, financial services, automotive and aerospace.

Assis named Big Blue’s EMEA GM

Ana Paula Assis has been appointed general manager for IBM Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)succeeding Marta Martínez Alonso, who is retiring from IBM after 19 years as a suit.

Assis will be responsible for the business operations, driving revenue growth, client satisfaction, and employee engagement across EMEA.

Harris snaps up Big Blue’s i2 intelligence analysis

Harris has acquired the i2 intelligence analysis product portfolio of IBM, including the i2 Analyst’s Notebook, i2 Enterprise Insight Analysis (EIA) and i2 iBase platforms. The acquisition is part of Harris’ cunning plan to get into the defence, state & local law enforcement, maritime security as well as evidence management markets.

Cloud first makes the UK grade

An Information Services Group report claims that enterprises are increasingly embracing a cloud-first approach to their IT investments.

The “2021 ISG Provider Lens Public Cloud – Services & Solutions Report for the UK” said that enterprises are looking to service providers to help them migrate more of their workloads to the public cloud.

It finds many large UK enterprises interested in hybrid cloud environments, which enable continued use of legacy IT systems, even though an increasing number of companies anticipate a time when they would migrate all of their IT assets to the cloud. Small and medium-sized enterprises, meanwhile, are looking at infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options to replace their depreciated hardware assets.

ISG partner Jan Erik Aase said that the move to the cloud is expected to be the primary driver of IT market growth in the UK in the coming years.