While many loathe writing off Palm, the company responsible for creating the first generation of PDAs, the prognosis isn't looking too good. At the moment, those predicting Palm's demise seem to be heavily outweighing those who believe the company is going to regain its former glory.
Palm's sustainability came into deeper scrutiny late last week when the company said it shipped 960,000 units and only sold 408,000 of them. That suggests the company has stuffed its channel with a ton of unsold inventory. The news caused its shares to drop 30 percent Friday. Though the shares rallied early on the news that AT&T would start selling its devices, the company's shares closed down half a point.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on March 23, 20104 comments
A week after trying to sell customers on its "we're all in" campaign to the cloud, Microsoft is now trying to bring its vast network of partners onboard.
Allison Watson, the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Group, made her pitch Wednesday in a prepared and edited video presented via a 10-minute webcast.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on March 11, 20100 comments
In more than two decades of following Novell, I've had many conversations with experts about who might someday acquire the company. In my mind, it was never a question of "if" but "when" Novell would be snapped up. But the company just chugged along.
Could that acquisition finally be arriving?
New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates LP on Tuesday made a bid for Novell for $2 billion -- a 49 percent premium over Novell's share price Tuesday night before it catapulted yesterday by 28 percent. Elliott already holds an 8.5 percent stake in the common stock of Novell. The hedge fund was vague about its intentions with Novell but believes the company is underperforming.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on March 4, 20100 comments
With today's deadline to sign off of the Windows 7 RC, many users have to decide whether to go back to Windows XP or Vista, or whether to pony up and upgrade to Windows 7.
Providers of PC migration software like Laplink and Detto Technologies can capitalize on that decision either way. In my news story, I described how I used Laplink's PCmover to upgrade to Windows 7 from the release candidate, but the software is really intended for those with XP or even older versions of Windows looking to a) migrate those systems to brand-new ones, or b) do in-place upgrades of existing PCs from older versions of Windows to Windows 7.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on March 1, 20101 comments
Microsoft channel chief Allison Watson last week joined the Twitterati and has launched a new blog called Redmond View.
Watson, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Group, has invited partners to follow her on Twiiter @Allison_Watson or on Facebook "so I can get your feedback and chat with you about what's going on in the marketplace and in your business," she wrote in her inaugural blog post.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on February 24, 20101 comments
Cisco's decision to pull the plug on its partnership with HP was a major salvo in tensions that have been brewing between the two companies over the past year. Cisco last week said that it's cutting HP off as a Certified Channel and Global Service Alliance partner, a move that could force the companies' respective partners to make some tough choices.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on February 22, 20100 comments
Small and medium-size businesses have long been the salvation of IT recoveries, but this time that conventional wisdom may be falling flat.
The good news, as I reported earlier this month, is the economy surged last quarter by 5.7 percent, the largest such expansion in six years. Adding to that optimism, the Federal Reserve yesterday said business equipment output was up 0.9 percent in January, slightly higher that December's 0.7 percent.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on February 18, 20105 comments
It's been a dramatic week for SAP, whose software runs the operational underpinnings of some of the largest enterprises. The company shook up its executive suite, replacing CEO Leo Apotheker with co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. SAP today also disclosed the departure of former SAP CEO John Schwarz.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on February 11, 20100 comments
Google's latest stab at social networking is creating a lot of "buzz," but it remains to be seen whether it will become as dominant as Facebook or Twitter. Based on initial reactions, it doesn't appear to be a threat. The real question, though, is whether it will make Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) a stronger contender in the enterprise.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on February 10, 20100 comments
Microsoft has removed a job posting seeking a manager for a new hosted offering intended to bring e-mail and collaboration services to SMBs.
The service is code-named "BPOS-Lite," according to text of the posting, which was revealed Monday by ZDNet.com and Redmond columnist Mary Jo Foley. "BPOS 'Lite'...is part of the 'next wave' of services targeting professional individuals and smaller organizations, offering Microsoft's best collaboration, communications and productivity services," the now-removed posting said.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on February 2, 20100 comments
While there's no shortage of opinions as to whether Apple will catch lightning in a bottle for a third time with its new iPad, there's a good case to be made that the initial entry could be a boon to those developing PC-based slates.
As media critic David Carr reports today in The New York Times, the iPad "is a device for consuming media, not creating it." That's not to suggest that future releases won't raise the bar, but as many observers suggest, Apple also has to make sure not to offer too much and risk cannibalizing its MacBook product line.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on February 1, 20100 comments
When Accenture last week ditched Tiger Woods as its sole pitchman, it served as a key reminder of what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket.
Accenture is one of the largest independent providers of IT consulting, integration and outsourcing services with annual revenues of $21.58 in fiscal year 2009. The company, which had blanketed Woods across all media in its "We Know What it Takes to be a Tiger" campaign last week scrubbed all vestiges of Woods from its Web site and removed all posters and other collateral from its offices, according to a front page story in The New York Times.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on December 21, 20090 comments
Of course that's a question critics have been asking since Sun Microsystems agreed to be acquired by Oracle earlier this year for $7.4 billion. Sun founder and chairman Scott McNealy looked to reassure his faith that Oracle will be good for Java. Speaking in a keynote address at this week's Oracle OpenWorld 2009 conference in San Francisco, McNealy gave his blessing and then called on VP and Sun Fellow James Gosling, known as the "father of Java" to give his take.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on October 13, 20090 comments
The Industry Association of Software Architects conference is set to take place later this month in New York.
As I reported last month, this month's IASA IT Architect Regional Conference is being billed as the largest gathering of IT architects because such luminaries as Grady Booch, Len Bass, John Zachman, Eric Evans, Rob High and Angela Yochem are slated to speak.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on October 1, 20090 comments
The fate of MySQL has been top of mind since Oracle agreed to acquire Sun Microsystems earlier this year for $7.4 billion. Will Oracle spin it off, treat it as a strategic asset or let it die a slow death?
Well, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison this week finally shed some light on that question during an interview by none other than Ed Zander, who was once president and COO of Sun. Ellison made his remarks during the interview, at The Churchill Club, a non-profit Silicon Valley forum.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on September 25, 20090 comments
When Microsoft announced that it is seeding the new CodePlex Foundation, as reported last week, many critics began questioning the real intentions in Redmond.
Two key questions: why did Microsoft need to go out and establish yet another foundation in the open source world, when there are numerous ones such as Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation, SourceForge or even the Apache Foundation, among others?
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on September 15, 20090 comments
The United States Department of Justice has given the green light for Oracle to proceed with its $7.4 billion deal to acquire Sun Microsystems, Oracle announced Thursday. The European Commission is expected to make its ruling by September 3.
Apparently DOJ brushed aside concerns over the fate of the Java Community Process (JCP), despite inquiring about it last month. That inquiry was not expected to be a deal breaker, noted Burton Group analyst Ann Thomas Mannes at the time.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on August 21, 20090 comments
I attended an event for analysts and media on Tuesday at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, N.Y., where the company launched its Smart Analytics System.
However the news of its new offering and future roadmap was drowned out when IBM announced that it has agreed to acquire SPSS, a leading provider of real time predictive analytics software, for $1.2 billion (see original story here). Pending shareholder and regulatory approval, the deal is slated to close by year's end.
Chicago based SPSS is regarded as the leading provider of real-time predictive analytics software. With 1,200 employees, its technology is widely used by enterprises worldwide. During the event, I sat down with Forrester analyst James Kobielus, who said this is a significant move by IBM. "The SPSS acquisition is strategic for IBM," Kobielus said.
While IBM last year gained a leading business intelligence and analytics portfolio via its $4.9 billion acquisition of Cognos, the key component IBM lacked in its Information on Demand (IOD) offering was a best of breed data minding offering. "This fills out the portfolio," Kobielus said. In a blog posting, he described the deal as a "bold move has already sent shockwaves throughout the analytics market." You can read his entire reaction to the SPSS deal here.
SPSS is the second largest provider of predictive analytics data mining statistical analytics tools, he noted. The largest is SAS Institute. He pointed to few overlaps with SPSS such as IBM's DB2 Intelligent Miner within the InfoSphere portfolio, though he predicts that will be phased out as IBM builds out the SPSS brand within its IOD portfolio.
"Fundamentally their technology is componentized so we can embed it anywhere," said Amuj Goyal, general manager of IBM Software’s information management software organization.
It remains to be seen whether IBM will continue SPSS integration with other data warehouse providers including Oracle, Microsoft, Sybase, and Teradata. "I doubt IBM will rock the boat," Kobielus told me, saying its in its interest to keep SPSS offerings heterogeneous.
Meanwhile, the news that got drowned out by the deal was the launch of the IBM Smart Analytics System (IAS).
The system consists of an IBM pSeries server based running AIX, that includes storage, networking, various other services and a suite of IBM’s data mining tools including its DB2 database, Cognos BI and InfoSphere Warehouse. It will be available in September with a starting configuration of 4 terabytes and up to 200 Tbytes. Pricing was not disclosed.
Kobielus said IAS extends IBM's existing portfolio of data warehousing appliances. "What it adds is pre-integrated business content geared to particular vertical and horizontal markets. So it includes DB2, the data warehouse appliance, IBM Information Server, data integration and design tools plus the application specific or vertical specific dashboards and workflows and meta data and cleansing tools."
What does IAS mean if you're a developer? "IBM is very much turning its data warehouse portfolio into an application server in that they are pre bundling all of these solution components and providing application development interfaces to allow ISVs to build targeted applications on top of IAS," Kobielus said. "It's really a development platform, and ties into a services oriented architecture. IBM hasn't really called out that theme but it's undoubtedly part of their road map."
IBM said it will release by year's end technology it calls an Analytics Optimizer, which combines hardware and software to perform even faster analytic queries. "We are doing in-memory exploitation, we are exploiting vector processing inside this predictive optimizer, we are evaluating predicates in parallel using new scanning technologies," Goyal explained.
The goal, said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive for IBM Software Group, is much faster queries with the target of real time business automation "One hour queries for many people don’t cut it," Mills said. "Five second queries all of a sudden start to open up the aperture to more creative thinking."
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on July 30, 20090 comments
When Oracle late last month said the Department of Justice wanted more information on how Java is licensed before signing off on its agreement to acquire Sun Microsystems, it mainly went under the radar.
Oracle indicated in its disclosure that it doesn't see the inquiry as a barrier to closing the deal later this summer. Burton Group analyst Ann Thomas Manes agrees. "It just means they are not on the fast path, it will just delay things -- that's all," she said.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on July 13, 20090 comments
When a reporter accosted Bill Gates last week at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Idaho to solicit his reaction to the Google's announcement that it will launch an operating system targeted at netbooks, he said "no comment."
At that moment, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who was just a few feet away from Gates, said, "it would be better if you didn't make that comment." While that widely reported sidebar described the two as laughing following the awkward encounter, the main story has generated some serious questions and debate.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on July 12, 20090 comments