Tag: IBM

Big Blue’s Big Data Lab reveals the Big Unknowns

Posted on October 10, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeEver had the feeling there were things afoot that were unknown to you? You’re not alone. But fear not, for the good folk of IBM have pulled a Big Blue Rabbit out of the Big Data Hat for you.

The world’s favourite international business machines have opened a new lab called the Accelerated Discovery Lab. One of the most remarkable things about it might even be its name, which – unlike so much of what goes on in the technology sector – seems related to what it does.

The lab will offer “diverse data sources, unique research capabilities for analytics such as domain models, text analytics and natural language processing capabilities derived from Watson, a powerful hardware and software infrastructure, and broad domain expertise including biology, medicine, finance, weather modeling, mathematics, computer science and information technology,” said IBM, presumably just before it passed out. Don’t forget to breath, dear.

By making it possible for organisations to take their data and mix it with these vast and disparate data sources, the Accelerated Discovery Lab will make it possible to start to identify hitherto unknown relationships among the data.

That could be to find seasonal patterns in purchasing behaviour that go beyond the obvious, such as people buy ice cream and shorts in summer. Or it could be combining social media insights with psychology data in an attempt to create meaningful customer profiling. Or it might be finding statistically robust segmentation that takes you further than ‘our target market is men in the 35-50 age bracket.’

At the moment, analysing Big Data can mean relying on a fairly manual approach to the massive amounts of data, gathered from a broad variety of channels. Whether you’re a business or a researcher, this is a testing and expensive process with precious little in the way of meaning or value waiting for you at the end.

There is obvious appeal in being able to accelerate that process.

“If we think about Big Data today, we mostly use it to find answers and correlations to ideas that are already known. Increasingly what we need to do is figure out ways to find things that aren’t known within that data,” said Jeff Welser, Director, Strategy and Program Development, IBM Research Accelerated Discovery Lab.

And to think how people laughed at Donald Rumsfeld when he said something not too dissimilar.

IBM buys Xtify

Posted on October 3, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeIBM has bought cloud based mobile messaging company Xtify for an undisclosed amount.

Big Blue hopes the buy will help it further push its capabilities in mobile towards digital advertising, as well as helping shape its public sector offerings, through cloud services.

Xtify, IBM promises, will provide campaign creation, personalised content, and real time analytics for mobile devices and browsers. It was built to retain mobile app users and site visitors. Campaign management also tells users when new promos or content are available.

IBM veep for digital marketing, Kevin Bishop, pointed out there’s profit to be had in selling technology to companies trying to figure out mobile. “The acquisition of Xtify provides new ways for our clients to foster a direct, one-to-one communication channel with their customers,” Bishop said.

Big Blue wheeled out some figures of its own to highlight just how important mobile strategy can be, claiming 73 percent of those surveyed in an IBM Business Value study “experienced measurable results” from mobile initiatives. It cites companies like Disney Stores and 20th Century Fox as among those using Xtify push notifications on mobile to boost sales.

IBM buys into Irish Big Data

Posted on October 1, 2013 by - News, Products

IBM logoAmerican behemoth IBM said it has bought Dublin based company the Now Factory but didn’t say how much it paid for it.

The privately held firm makes analytics software targeted at communication service providers (CSPs).

IBM said that the software complements its own range of products – IBM Mobile First. These products are intended to help organisations analyse mobile device usage.

The Now Factory’s stuff analyses large quantities of business data and networks data, and that provides better management of outages.

IBM claims that people create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day, whether its healthcare, social media, climactic information and the rest.

Big Blue wants to position itself as the leader in the Big Data field. The buy will be completed in the fourth quarter, and the company borged into  the IBM mother ship.

Lenovo “at crossroads” in servers

Posted on September 30, 2013 by - News

lenovo_hqA report from Patrick Moorhead’s Moor Insights & Strategy has asserted that, although the server market is dominated by Dell, HP and IBM at present, Lenovo is well positioned to break out of the “other” category and start making a serious dent in market share.

Players like Cisco and Fujitsu, 4th and 5th in the server market respectively, could even be overtaken by Lenovo in the near future. But it has some hurdles to leap and if it is to do so, Lenovo will have to prioritise servers.

Looking at Lenovo’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT), it’s clear the company can compete on price and has a robust supply chain behind it. The company is leading in the growing China market, performing well with SMBs, and there remains a perceived tie with IBM when Big Blue sold off a chunk of its hardware.

However, Lenovo doesn’t offer cloud services or a complete product line outside of its home turf and is somewhat lacking on the ineternational enterprise stage. It has no small core direction, according to Moor Insights, a weak storage offering, and no apparent network switch or fabric offering.

Moor Insights & Strategy believes Lenovo will have the opportunity, although not without challenges, to pick up IBM’s x86 server business, which could address some of the above concerns. There is also a window for Lenovo to expand its SMB offerings within EMEA, particularly western Europe, where small to medium businesses are highly concentrated.

If Lenovo decided to buy IBM’s x86 business, Moor thinks it’s likely it’d go for the whole lot, while IBM could minimise damage to its own bottom line by maintaining blade IP, which it could then license to Lenovo. An acquisition would propel Lenovo to #3 in the server charts, way ahead of Fujitsu and Cisco, but the buy would have to be twinned with serious efforts to maintain previous IBM customers to prevent seduction over to rivals like HP or Dell.

Moor Insights suggests Lenovo focus on the cloud, where it is underrepresented, as well as building a portfolio it can extend to the large business market.  It must also underline its “message” – although it’s understood Lenovo performs well in client devices, the message is “not translating in the server market,” according to Moor. Lenovo needs to reinforce its position to potential enterprise customers.

Lenovo, the report says, is “at an interesting crossroads in the server market”. While there is ample opportunity for the company to really cement its position and overtake some of the competition, it will need to invest heavily.

“Lenovo has an opportunity to break out of its position and quickly move up in the market, as well it remains a company that could disrupt the market the way that Dell did years ago. But in order to do that, it needs to get into the market in a serious way,” the report concludes.

x86 revenues, market share down

Posted on September 4, 2013 by - News

8086According to the latest IDC statistics for EMEA, x86 server revenues are down 4.5 percent in Q2 2013, year on year.

x86 sales still held 71.3 percent of the total EMEA server market – a fall from 80.4 percent in the quarter before. The previous quarter saw a revenue decline of 1.5 percent. It’s not all doom and gloom: IDC’s Giorgio Nebuloni in the enterprise server group said product refreshes head for Q4 were the main reason for leaning on server spending for Q2, particularly in volume SMB.

IDC expects stabilisation for x86 spending next year, and perhaps some growth, with local cloud service projects and broader product refreshes contributing. But IDC also hopes for a “less negative macroeconomic scenario” – which is not entirely a given.

Mainframe performance did well for the quarter, however, with strong demand in western Europe – especially in the UK, France and Germany. Refreshes on previous generation mainframes helped, and IBM’s decision to release zEC12 in Q3 2012 helped.

“Mainframes are increasingly being deployed on Linux operating systems and high-availability needs remain a primary market engine in some industries,” IDC enterprise server group’s Beatriz Valle said.

In terms of vendors, HP was top for Q2 2013 – even with an annual revenue drop of 13.2 percent thanks to weaker demand for the x86 ProLiant servers. IBM was second, and Dell third, reports Digitimes.

 

SAP about to get a good kicking from AS/400

Posted on September 4, 2013 by - News

ESPRINET01__CUSTOM_SAP is too inflexible and is being defeated by an AS400 legacy ERP software which is soon to be open sourced.

While the esoteric software outfit, which makes software that no one really understands, is jolly popular with distributors, it might actually be holding them back.

A top Italian distributor Esprinet has saved a fortune by owning the source code for an AS-400 legacy ERP system.

Speaking exclusively to ChannelEye , the CEO of Esprinet Alessandro Cattani said his company provided services to suppliers who were using his company’s services because they were hooked on SAP software.

He said that his company sells them services because the AS-400 legacy code is faster and more flexible than anything the distributors who use SAP ERP systems can write.

“SAP software is less flexible and is difficult and expensive for businesses to write specific code for what they want,” Cattani said.

Esprinet owns the source code for the code and has a team which can churn out code when ever it is needed.

Cattani said that he recently had the chance to benchmark his AS-400 applications against and an SAP equivalent. They cleaned SAP’s clock managing to be 50 percent more efficient and cheaper, he said.

While SAP might not be too concerned that one company is doing rather well ignoring its software, it might be concerned that an Italian firm called SME-UP is planning to open source the software.

That means that some of the bigger suppliers would be wondering why they would shackle themselves to expensive ERP installations when with some nice old IBM box they could be as free as a bird.

 

IBM tops server charts, revenues fall

Posted on August 28, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeIDC’s latest worldwide server market figures are out, and IBM was top dog yet again despite a 10 percent yearly decline in factory revenue, and soft demand for System x and Power Systems.

Factory revenue overall worldwide decreased by 6.2 percent – but still netted $11.9 billion for the second quarter of 2013 alone. This was the second consecutive year of revenue decline as demand weakened in most regions around the world, while server unit shipments dropped 1.2 percent to 2.0 million units, the third consecutive quarterly decline.

Volume systems dropped 2.4 percent, while midrange system demand decreased a chunky 22.3 percent. High end systems decreased 9.5 percent.

HP was just behind IBM with 25.9 percent of the market. HP also experienced a 17.5 percent decline in factory revenue, as well as poor demand for the x86 ProLiant servers and continued declines in HP Integrity demand.

Dell came in third with 18.8 percent factory market share for the quarter, but factory revenues were up 10.3 percent compared to the same time last year, pitching Dell at its highest ever market share.

Oracle stayed at number four, holding six percent market share, with factory revenue decreases of 5.7 percent compared to the same time last year. Cisco was fifth with 4.5 percent share, but experienced a 42.6 percent yearly revenue growth, putting it above last quarter’s tie with Fujitsu.

IDC’s GM for enterprise platforms, Matt Eastwood, said: “Mainstream SMB and enterprise server customers around the world continue to focus on consolidation, virtualization, and migration initiatives aimed at increasing efficiency and lowering datacenter infrastructure costs. At the same time, challenging economic conditions are dampening demand for new IT projects necessary to grow the server market globally”.

“It is clear that the competitive dynamics in the server market remain fierce as the leading server vendors work to offset weak demand for generally higher margin Unix and blade servers with lower margin rack and density optimised servers,” Eastwood said.

IBM to buy Trusteer

Posted on August 15, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeIBM has coughed up the readies to acquire IT security company Trusteer, which it hopes will help boost its portfolio in advanced threat management and application security.

Big Blue is putting together a cybersecurity software lab in Tel Aviv, Israel comprised of over 200 IBM and Trusteer researchers, in addition to the company’s existing R&D in Israel. Together, they will focus specifically on mobile and application security, advanced threat, counter fraud, malware, and financial crime.

IBM security will take advantage of Trusteer’s knowledge in security as a service through the cloud, as well as counter-fraud and advanced persistent threat protection. Additionally, Trusteer points out in a statement, that half of the top 25 US financial institutions offer mobile finance management, meaning advanced security needs to be in place to protect the institutions and their customers.

IBM wants to roll Trusteer’s expertise into its own range of software and services, such as QRadar, i2, SPSS, InfoSphere, and Enterprise Content Management.

In a statement, Trusteer’s CEO Mickey Boodaei said the way organisations are protecting data is quickly evolving. “As attacks become more sophisticated, traditional approaches to securing enterprise and mobile data are no longer valid,” Boodaei said, adding that Trusteer already has large banks as customers.

Macro 4 to host UK IBM mainframe open day

Posted on July 29, 2013 by - Events, News

ibm-officeSoftware and services company Macro 4 is hosting an open day for the UK’s IBM mainframe users to discuss plans for the next generation of users.

The open day will be held on 26 September, 2013, for mainframe customers looking to plan strategies around the next generation of mainframe development and support staff.

Panel sessions, demonstrations, workshops, and an IBM keynote are all planned, with Peter Siddell, IBM UK Technical Specialist for CICS Tools on z/OS CICS Tools Development and Dr. Herbert Daly, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science University of Bedfordshire both speaking.

In particular, the event will focus on alternatives to the 3270 green screen interfaces – with a view to making accessing the mainframe platform easier and more intuitive, especially considering how many were brought up on Microsoft and Apple GUIs.

Macro 4 plans to show off mainframe interfaces running on Eclipse IDE, especially looking at how Eclipse can feel more ‘modern’ to the latest crop of developers and support staff, as well as providing gains in productivity and usability compared to the conventional alternatives – for existing and new mainframe users.

The event will be held at Macro 4’s Crawley HQ, a short trip from Gatwick.

Macro 4’s commercial and technical director, Jim Allum, said a key focus for development over the last few years has been providing flexible access to mainframe products, and “in general to the mainframe environment in which they operate”.

 

IBM shows off zEnterprise BC12

Posted on July 23, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeIBM has announced the zEnterprise BC12 – the zBC12 mainframe, built with analytics, cloud, and mobile computing in mind.

Big Blue claims this server, priced at a cool $75,000, is one of the most secure and technologically advanced of its kind. It’s got a 4.2 GHz processor and twice the memory of its predecessor, the z114. IBM boasts it’s cheaper at the acquisition point than the closest competitor.

The zBC12 can handle 40 virtual servers per core or 520 in a single footprint, possibly for as little as $1 per day per server.

There will be a Linux-only version, too, called the Enterprise Linux Server. It includes hardware, a z/VM Hypervisor, three years of maintenance, and can be extended with ELS for Analytics and Cloud-Ready for Linux on System z. IBM says it can run a portfolio of more than 3,000 Linux applications.

IBM has included new hardware functions on the zBC12, such as providing CPU and storage savings by compressing data on the server. Management, IBM says, is simplified through z/OSMF.

The z/OS 2.1 operating system has improvements in performance and scalability. The OS now sports what IBM calls Crypto as a Service, meaning Linux applications can use z/OS to encrypt data.

General manager of IMB System z, Patrick Toole, said analytics, cloud and mobile are changing the way businesses operate.

“IBM’s zEnterprise technologies address these challenges by providing clients with a powerful and highly secure platform to manage new and emerging workloads,” Toole said, “helping speed time to market, reduce costs and stimulate business growth by making stronger connections with customers.”

 

Avnet picks up huge IBM training contract

Posted on July 12, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeMonstrous distie Avnet has been picked by IBM as a Global Training Provider, opening up training to its partners around the world.

Avnet’s starting its training operations worldwide as of today, beginning with Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK, Ireland, and the USA, before planning to open its centres in the Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe and Latin America regions.

The company will be offering over 2,500 IBM training courses, which will be available directly to IBM employees, resellers, and other customers around the world, through its network of IBM Training Partners.

Global prez at Avnet Technology Solutions, Phil Gallagher, boasted the enormous contract will really boost the recent launch of Avnet Services. ”

Veep for IBM Training Bob McDonald said in a statement that Avnet is the company for the job, noting its worldwide reach.

Red Hat EMEA channel conf details announced

Posted on July 4, 2013 by - Events, News

redhatOpen source profiteer Red Hat has announced dates for the fifth Red Hat Europe EMEA Partner Conference in Madrid this year.

The event will run from 29 September to 2 October 2013 and will open with keynotes from top executive veep in sales and services, Arun Oberoi, and CTO Brian Stevens. Veep of partners for Red Hat EMEA, Petra Heinrich, will also be speaking about general partner strategy.

There will be a series of panel discussions on current and future trends in open hybrid cloud, middleware, platform offerings and product strategies. As is expected from this sort of thing, there will also be breakout sessions and talks on best practices about enterprise IT, specifically focusing on using open source tech and making the shift from physical to virtual and cloud platforms.

Red Hat is calling on distributors, ISVs, OEMs, system integrators and other partners, potential or existing, to discuss with each other and gain access to Red Hat’s top execs. Platinum and gold plus sponsors, IBM and HP respectively, will also be attending.

The company asserts, in a tone which would not sound out of place read by Genesis P Orridge over an abrasive and menacing tape loop: “The Red Hat EMEA Partner Conference will be comprised of three pillars. Pillar one is built on datacentre integration with the key themes of partner enablement and IT modernization. Pillar two is built around middleware and the requirement to migrate legacy applications in an open environment. The third pillar focuses on solving the new workload challenges inherent in open hybrid cloud and big data environments.”

IBM to invest $1bn in flash R&D

Posted on July 3, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeIBM has announced it will invest $1 billion into flash R&D as well as launching a series of SSD based systems.

Flash will be integrated into all IBM server and storage systems as well as a new flash only storage system.

Not only is flash a “key tipping point”, according to head of IBM software and systems, but eventually data centres will be completely comprised of solid state drives, reports Solid State Technology.

IBM has also announced plans to open 12 centres worldwide which will allow its customers to test flash products in various scenarios. They will be able to test flash performance in various scenarios that require heavy workloads like in stock exchange transactions and credit card processing.

Data Memory Systems has taken the announcements to mean all enterprise Tier 1 storage should be totally flash based, reasoning that the shift toward cloud and big data makes processing data quickly a necessity. Because traditional HDDs have not increased phenomenally in speed over the last years, flash can potentially increase processing speeds by 90 percent for certain tasks, for example in banking and trading where speed is critical.

It is not the end of traditional hard disks yet, as they still offer cost benefits now, but IBM’s decision to invest so much in flash storage shows the direction the industry is headed.

Sheepish Imtech beats itself up

Posted on June 18, 2013 by - News

self-flagellationRed-faced technical services giant Imtech has said sorry to its customers, suppliers and staff after an internal probe revealed a catalogue of irregularities in some of its bigger projects

Imtech bought the UK systems integrator Capula last year and IBM reseller Real Solutions in 2008, but it seems that its problems lay over the channel.

In an announcement the company said that it wanted to close a “dark chapter” in its history by making public a 96-page report detailing the “unethical and undesirable” business behaviour that led it to write off €370 million on recent projects.

The problems were first noticed across four big Polish projects and resulted in the company carrying out a more detailed investigation.

Further irregularities relating to its German operations were also found and Imtech concluded that its business controls had er… “not worked adequately” and its corporate culture was “sub-optimal and too much focused on good news only”.

The German and Polish projects resulted in a €370 million shortfall in its fiscal 2012 results, which it delayed publishing until today.

It results in a surprise €226.3 million net loss for the year. This is far more than the €100 million or so it expected to write off in relation to the original Polish contracts.

The probe has resulted in management changes in Germany and Poland, the filing of criminal complaints in German and Poland and the implementation of better business controls.

Chief executive Gerard van de Aast apologised to shareholders, customers, suppliers and partners – as well as its employees.

He said that the shareholder report was written with full transparency, since it believed that healing from this dark chapter in Imtech’s history must start with openness about the investigations and findings.

“It goes without saying that in the future this kind of conduct will not be tolerated,” he said.

 

UK outfit sells IBM in the US

Posted on June 11, 2013 by - News

slide-1-728In a “coals to Newcastle” move, Europlus Direct boss Jim Hart has said that his UK outfit is doing a roaring trade flogging IBM products in the US.

Chatting to the Yorkshire Post, Hart said that Europlus turned over £7.1m last year, with a rise to £8.2m forecast for 2013.

This year, Hart set up Europlus Direct International in Las Vegas so that it can buy IBM services very competitively in the US.

Hart said that a lot of the firm’s customers are European companies going into the US – and Europlus buys the services for them.

He said that there is huge potential in the US and he is hoping in 12-18 months the company can sell as much as $600,000- $700,000 in the US market.

His company started out as an IBM support services reseller, solely targeting the French market.

“I employed two French people and we got a contract with IBM France”, recalled Hart. “It basically provided us with a database of French IBM customers whose maintenance support was about to expire”.

He said that he was not interested in the service delivery side, he just sells. If a server goes down in Paris, it’s an IBM engineer that goes along, it’s not Europlus.

Europlus Direct’s target clients are firms which already trade internationally or which want to.

In 2010, it moved into distribution selling IBM maintenance contracts in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the firm also specialises in providing spare parts.

He said that it was dangerous for companies to only have one business model. Hart is looking at new areas with IBM, such as big data, and may become a reseller of that in the future.