Tag: IBM

Microsoft reveals cloud roadmap

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeSoftware company Microsoft said it has introduced a web site that reveals details of its roadmap for its Cloud Platform.
Microsoft has been aiming to move to the cloud as fast as it can and now offers cloud services including Azure, Intone, Visual Studio and server platforms including Windows Server, SQL Server.  It also has covered system appliance offerings including Analytics and Stor System.
Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of the cloud and enterprise marketing group at Microsoft said the company wanted to be transparent about its cloud strategy.
He said that the web site, which you can find here, is intended to show what technology it’s developing and what’s coming in the next few months.
It also will include products in public preview.
Microsoft isn’t the only company struggling to re-invent itself as a cloud player.  Others in the game include SAP, Oracle and IBM.
Analysts predict that over the next few years the majority of enterprise IT users will use cloud computing and services more and more.

 

IBM gives cash to top suits

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

44ce1d7353cc797d6d0ad093f04f32c7Big Blue might be seeing its profits drop down the loo, but that has not stopped it paying bonuses to its top suits.

IBM has brought back annual performance bonuses for its chief executive and her top lieutenants for 2014 despite falling profits and a tumbling stock price.

According to a regulatory filing, the outfit withheld annual bonuses in 2013 at the executives’ own request.  The company has had more than 11 quarters of falling profits and is still trying to lose staff.

The bonuses returned as a feature of IBM’s executive compensation for 2014, according to a document filed with securities regulators on Friday, despite the fact that IBM’s net profit from continuing operations fell 7 percent last year and its stock shed about 14 percent.

IBM CEO Virginia Rometty will get a $3.6 million annual incentive payout for 2014, according to the filing. Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeter and three other executives or advisers were also listed as getting smaller annual incentive payouts.

Rometty will receive a base salary of $1.6 million for 2015. This is her first rise in pay from the $1.5 million she got each of the last three years after taking up the post of CEO at the beginning of 2012.

She will also get a target annual incentive award of $5 million for 2015 and a long-term stock grant worth $13.3 million, which would be payable in 2018, according to the filing.

IBM last year withdrew its long-term plan to hit $20 per share in operating earnings for 2015 as it failed to get the sort of focus on higher-margin businesses such as security software and cloud services.

IBM has been divesting underperforming businesses in an attempt to move into the new era of cloud computing, a struggle shared by other established technology leaders.

No bonuses for the lesser suits, but at least they are not being fired.

IBM opens UK services centre

Posted on January 30, 2015 by - News

IBM logoBig Blue said it will open a services centre for its clients that will generate 300 IT jobs.
The centre will be based in Leicester and will supply application development and maintenance, and test and system management services.
IBM is pushing services for the cloud, for big data analytics, and for mobile, social and security technologies.
As well as the full time jobs, IBM said it will also offer internships and apprenticeships at the centre.
IBM is inviting interested candidates to submit their CVs to recruitment-isc@uk.ibm.com
David Stokes, CEO of IBM UK and Ireland commented: “The investment in job creation aims to inspire the next generation workforce from local technical colleges and universities.”

 

IBM announces personal cloud security

Posted on January 28, 2015 by - News

ibm-officeBig Blue said it has announced a cloud technology that will help ordinary people protect themselves online.
The tech, dubbed Identity Mixer, has a cryptographic algorithm which will protect age, nationality, address and credit card numbers.
Mixer acts as an agent between somebody buying a product and a vendor – it means that the vendor won’t hold the actual details, just the authentication.
IBM said it is offering Identity Mixer to developers as part of its platform as a service (PaaS) cloud.
It means developers will be able to use Identity Mixer in their own apps and in conjunction with their services.
IBM is already testing the technology in two major projects across Europe.

 

IBM denies gutting its suits

Posted on January 27, 2015 by - News

mary-meyer-flip-flops-perry-penguinBig Blue has denied claims that it is about to fire 26 per cent of its workforce.

The dark satanic rumour mill manufactured a hell on earth rumour which tipped up in  Forbes magazine. If the rumour was right, 112,000 employees could be laid off.

IBM admitted that it is cutting jobs, and said as much in its latest earnings report last week, but those reductions will affect “several thousand” employees, a “small fraction” of what Forbes reported.

The technology giant has been steadily reshaping its 400,000-plus staff for several years, laying off workers in some areas and hiring in new growth businesses.

The source of the rumour was pseudonymous Silicon Valley technology gossip columnist Robert Cringely who claimed that Biggish Blue was going to break with that gradual approach and suddenly lay off 26 percent of its global workforce.

IBM did not issue a formal denial of the report, but strongly suggested it was inaccurate.

A spokesperson said that if anyone had checked the information in IBM’s public earnings statements, or had simply asked it, she or he would know that IBM has already announced the company has just taken a $600 million charge for workforce rebalancing. This equates to several thousand people.

Last week, Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeter told investors on IBM’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call that the company was taking restructuring charges of around $580 million, but he did not specify the number of jobs affected.

But Schroeter said in the same meeting that IBM was not going to replicate the same level of restructuring that we had last year… “It will be a lower amount.”

All this seems to suggest that IBM will fire about 8,000 people this year, in line with recent years.

 

IBM to slash and burn staff – report

Posted on January 26, 2015 by - News

IBM logoFollowing lukewarm quarterly financial results last week, reports claim IBM is set to cut over a quarter of its workforce this week.
IBM has currently a workforce of 431,000 people, but Sky News claims  that Forbes’ reporter Robert X Cringely is forecasting the job cuts.
According to Cringely, around 26 percent of IBM will get calls from their managers telling them their jobs are surplus to Big Blue’s requirements.
IBM has neither confirmed nor denied the rumours.
The report claims that the reorganisation is called Project Chrome, and the majority of people losing their jobs will be in the USA.
IBM has been re-engineering its business and last year sold its X86 server business to Chinese giant Lenovo.
It has also been focusing more and more on cloud computing, in an attempt to trim costs and position itself as a market leader.

 

IBM revenues, profits fall

Posted on January 21, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-01-21 at 10.57.32Major services company IBM turned in its financial fourth quarter figures last night, and the news wasn’t all that good.
IBM made net profit in its fourth quarter of $5.5 billion, compared to $6.2 billion in the same quarter of 2013.  That’s a fall of 11 percent.
Revenues in the fourth quarter amounted to $24.1 billion, down 12 percent compared to the year before.
However, if this figure includes divestments including customer care outsourcing and System x businesses, as well as currency fluctuations, IBM calculus the decrease is two percent.
Gini Rometty, IBM chairman and CEO, claimed her company had made significant progress in changing its business to higher value services.
Global services fell by eight percent, while technology services also fell by eight percent.  Business services revenues also fell by eight percent.  Revenues from its software fell seven percent.

 

Insurers to spend, spend, spend on IT

Posted on January 15, 2015 by - News

shut-up-and-take-my-moneyInsurers with a worldwide presence are set to spend over $100 billion this year on IT. That will gladden the hearts of vendors.
This is the view of IDC Financial Investments, which says that the number is an increase of 4.4 percent compared to 2014.
The global insurers want to spend this money to boost “efficiencies”, meaning that they will invest in data warehousing, claims and policy administration systems.
Li-May Chew, lead director for IDC’s Financial Insights division, said that the insurers need to act.
She said: “Replacements or refreshes are required as legacy IT systems become increasingly complex, inflexible and archaic, to the point of negatively affecting technology integration and interoperability.”
In other words, they’re out of date.
The insurers want to modernise their systems and use the cloud to cut costs – and customers want the insurers to do that too.
They want to make sure their customers use PCs, mobile devices and social networks.
They need to protect themselves against fraud.
Li-May didn’t say which vendors would benefit from the increased spend – but the emphasis is on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking and big data analytics.
So the usual suspects – that is to say IBM, HP, Dell, Oracle and others will be sitting patiently waiting for the phone to ring so they can pick up the orders.

 

IBM predicts future of the car

Posted on January 15, 2015 by - News

IBM logoInternational Business Machines (IBM) has commissioned a survey which predicts what cars will be like in 2025.
And unlike other IT companies, such as Google, IBM doesn’t think we’ll have fully automated or autonomous driving.
However, after surveying 175 executives from car manufacturers and other sectors, we will see some pretty big changes when we’re driving up the A34 out of Oxford.
For example, by 2025, a car will configure itself to a driver and passengers.  In addition, it “will learn, heal, drive and socialise” not only with other cars but with the environment too.
Fifty seven percent of those surveyed believe vehicles will be part of a social network sharing weather and traffic conditions, as well as communicating with other vehicles of the same kind if problems develop.
Despite optimistic claims for driverless cars, only eight percent of those surveyed think it will be commonplace by 2025.
But partially automated driving will be pretty common.

 

IBM intros big mainframe

Posted on January 14, 2015 by - News

IBM Z13Big Blue said it has built a mainframe which is the most powerful and secure system ever.
The Z13 can churn 2.5 billion transactions a day,  and includes embedded analytics.
IBM said the system took five years to develop costing $1 billion, includes 500 new patents and is a collaborative venture with over 60 of its customers.
The machine allows real time encryption of mobile transactions that uses some of these patents.
The Z13 embedded analytics allows it to give real time insights on transactions including fraud protection.
IBM said that the Z13 also includes the fastest microprocessor in the world, is twice as fas as Intel microprocessors and 300 percent more memory.
The Z13 also includes native support for Hadoop and includes improvements to the IBM DB2 analytics accelerator.

GloFo takes aim at China

Posted on January 12, 2015 by - News

renesas-chips (1)Abu Dhabi foundry company Global Foundries (GloFo) is seeking to make more partnerships in mainland China.
GloFo, which was spun off by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) some years ago, recently bought IBM’s foundry business, along with a large number of patents for $1.5 billion.
A report in the South China Morning Post quoted senior GloFo VP Chuck Fox as saying the firm would use IBM’s previous presence in mainland China to continue to grow its business in the country.
He said that his company is already in talks with a number of partners in China and is expected to announce deals when they happen.
Competition to win contracts from so called fabless chip companies comes from the like of Taiwanese major TSMC, mainland company SMIC, and even Intel.
Golf already has a partnership with Samsung in a bid to beat TSMC for orders to manufacture chips.

 

Crooks stole 61 million customer records

Posted on January 7, 2015 by - News

IBM logoResearch from IBM said that in 2014 cyber attackers stole 61 million records from retailers.
But that’s just in the USA.
IBM’s survey said that there had been a 50 percent decline in attacks on retail web sites in 2014.
The report said that even though the number of cyber attacks had fallen, the attacks have become much more sophisticated.
IBM’s security services analyse over 20 billion security incidents every day – presumably worldwide.
The attackers are developing sophisticated techniques to grab “massive amounts” of data with each attack.
“The threat from organised cyber crime rings remains the largest security challenge for retailers,” said Kris Lovejoy, general manager of IBM Security Services.
IBM suggested that not all cyber breaches are disclosed.
Big Blue said the primary way cyber gangs gained access was through a method called Secure Shell Brute Force, which now outweighs malicious code.
There has been a rise in attacks however in point of sale systems using malware, but most were through command injection or SQL injection.
IBM said lack of data validation in SQL databases by system administrators made retail databases a favourite spot to attack.

 

2014 a breakthrough year for the cloud

Posted on December 18, 2014 by - News

29295727Big Blue is telling the world+dog that 2014 was its breakthrough year for its cloud computing business.

IBM said it will expand the number of data centres it offers clients around the world by 25 percent to meet fast-rising demand for internet-based services.

The outfit has quadrupled the number of cloud data facilities it offers around the world to 49 in the past 18 months, responding in part to laws requiring the local retention of data following revelations over US government Web surveillance as well as increased corporate compliance rules.

The company said on Wednesday it has now struck a partnership with data centre provider Equinix for nine more cloud centres in Australia, France, Japan, Singapore, The Netherlands and the United States. It is also opening up three new cloud computer facilities of its own in Germany, Mexico and Japan.

Angel Luiz Diaz, vice president in charge of IBM’s cloud computing business, told Reuters that the company had a good year which was a “breakthrough year in cloud.”

IBM’s cloud revenue amounted to $4.4 billion in 2013 and was up by 50 percent in the first nine months of this year, it reported in October, making it one of IBM’s fastest-growing businesses, although it still accounts for only a fraction of the $94 billion in total revenues which IBM is expected by analysts to generate this year.

It looks like IBM’s multi-year deals of more than $4 billion that are fuelling the company’s expansion in data centres.

IBM also said it had reached a cloud services deal with National Express Group to enable the UK-based bus and trains operator to offer commuters up-to-the-minute train schedules and what it said would be Britain’s first postcode-to-postcode journey planner.

Apple gets into enterprise bed with IBM

Posted on December 10, 2014 by - News

ibm_appleApple and IBM have signed a deal over the Pad and the iPhone, reflecting greater use of the devices in the corporate marketplace.

Under the deal, IBM will release what it described as the first wave of IBM MobileFirst for the iOS operating system.

The applications also support web services and big data and analytic abilities to the iPad and iPhone.  IBM said  MobileFirst for iOS is aimed at enterprise sized companies in banking, retail, insurance, financial services, telecomms, governments and airlines.

Customers who have already signed up include Citi, Air Canada and Spring.

Philip Schiller, a senior VP of Apple marketing, said: “The business world has gone mobile and Apple and IBM are bringing together the.. technology with the smartest data and analytics to help businesses define how work gets done.”

The apps are intended for secure environments, linked to core enterprise processes and analytics.

Apps include Plan Flight and Passenger for airlines, Advise and Grow for the banking sector; Retention for insurance companies; Incident Aware for law enforcement; Sales Assist for Retail and Expert Tech for the telecomms market.

IBM assesses top cyber threats

Posted on December 9, 2014 by - News

ibm-officeBig Blue has assessed that 80 percent of executives in charge of security think that challenges by external threats to their enterprises are on the rise.

And IBM said 60 percent of enterprises believe they are being outgunned in the cyber war.

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) think that sophisticated external threats is their biggest challenge – with 40 percent believing that they top other challenges they face.

Data leakage prevention, cloud security and mobile security are the top three areas that CISOs believe are the areas that need addressing urgently.

Of the respondents surveyed by IBM, 90 percent have either adopted or will adopt cloud initiatives and they expect their cloud security budgets to increase over the next five years.

Only 45 percent of the CISOs think that mobile and device security is being adequately addressed.