Displaying items by tag: IBM

Monday, 14 January 2013 15:13

IBM gets the most patents again...

IBM logo

IBM has now been the leading company according to the number of patented technologies for 20 years in a row. Since 1993 IBM in the United States has received a total of nearly 67,000 patents. Even though you most often hear names like Samsung or Apple, recently even Ericsson, when talking about patents, the big daddy IBM wipes all of the competition.

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Wednesday, 19 December 2012 06:39

IBM's five in five

ibm5in5

IBM has released its eighth annual "5 in 5" report or five technologies that they believe will change the world in the next five years. This year, IBM talks about the five senses and how we can make our computers operate more like a human being. The senses of touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell are the subject of IBM's predictions this year and IBM researchers are already examining how they will use these senses with computers in the coming years.

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800px-IBM PC 5150

Since the rebirth of Apple in 1997 the PC market has had to listen to the constant drone of analysts foretelling the “post PC” world is upon us. It is a common statement made by Analysts that really do not even know what a “PC” is anymore. Well to help some of them do their jobs a little better let’s go back and define some of this for them and then take a look at where the market is and why claims of a post PC era are quite simply a falsehood.

Published in Editorials

250px-Ardre_Odin_SleipnirIn our articles and editorials you have heard us use some interesting terms that are not commonly used in marketing or PR. One of these is the Corporate Personality another is the Corporate Mythology. Now, you are never going to hear PR or Marketing people use these terms as they are not always positive. However we feel they are accurate. In fact my first exposure to the term Corporate Mythology was in a class on economics and its impact in military strategy. In it the instructor asked us to identify certain key people in a corporate economy and describe their function in the business and how they affected the whole. When we were done he showed us how these central people formed the corporate mythology by comparing them directly to Norse, Greek and Roman Mythology. It was an amazing thing to see in practice.

Published in Editorials

News_manstealingdataTwo days ago we wrote an article that stated quite plainly that confidence in cloud services is actually beginning to fade as security and privacy concerns mount. At the time we talked very briefly about one of the leading reasons for the push to the cloud. That is “ownership” of your data in all of its forms. We are not just talking about files here though. We are talking about ALL of your data. This includes companies like Facebook, Google, Bing, and more. They want your information because it is worth money to them.

Published in News
Thursday, 10 November 2011 18:47

Just where is AMD headed?

despdAMD has faced some rough time recently. After their ATi purchase back in 2006 AMD has had one poor leader after another. Under Hector Ruiz we ended up with the ill-fated $5.4 Billion buyout of ATi. This was a purchase that caused AMD to not have a profitable quarter for almost 5 years. In fact if AMD had not gotten a settlement from Intel in late 2010 they would still be operating in the red. Hector Ruiz was also responsible for the shedding of AMD’s foundries.  This split created Global Foundries and forced AMD as a CPU and GPU manufacturer into a Fabless state. They now have to pay to have their processors made by another company.

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17There was a time when IBM was the largest patent holder in the tech world. In fact the joke was that IBM did not have to actually make anything anymore. They could sit back and maintain their profitability with their licensing and royalty fees. Of course this was exaggeration, but IBM did have a massive portfolio and the revenue to back it up. Now, it seems that Microsoft is looking to take IBM’s top spot. They have been busy pressuring and perhaps bullying companies that make Android and Chrome mobile devices to sign agreements with them. The agreements sound a lot like the old Mobster movies. “Hey you pay me 10 (million) dollars a week and we will make sure,… you know, that nothing bad will happen to you.”

In short Microsoft is offering protection from patent litigation in return for a small cut of the manufacturing profits from Android and Chrome devices. Now you may think this is all very unethical and you would be right. However, there is no law against this. Just like there is no law against patenting the look and feel of something. To be honest, this is a last ditch effort on the part of Microsoft. They know they are losing the mobile war and that Windows Phone will be a thing of the past in a few short years. Right now they are just trying to replace the income they know they are going to lose with a little extra from someone else’s pocket.

Source Fudzilla

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Friday, 26 August 2011 22:30

IBM builds largest disk array ever

Hard-Disk-Drive-1There is RAID and then there is RAID!. Well IBM has the latter that is a conglomerate of 200,000 disk drives combined together to make up a 120 Petabyte (not to be confused with Pedabite which has to do with chewing on feet) drive array. IBM built this to accumulate data for weather simulations. We imagine that these would be more than answering what the temp will be on Monday but will likely be for long-term forecast models and of course everyone favorite; global warming.

The array is going to an as yet unnamed client of IBM’s but IBM did say that one day (in the far far future maybe) cloud systems would all have similar storage arrays. For those interested this is not a giant JBOD or even RAID 50 array. This is something new called GPFS that allows the system to almost self-heal. If a single disk begins to fail the system can move the data slowly to a ready spare without the normal rebuild times you expect from other arrays. It can also spread files across multiple disks allow extremely fast read/write/index times.

I wonder if I can put something like this together in the garage…

Dsicuss in our Forum

Published in News
Thursday, 25 August 2011 18:39

AMD finally has a new CEO

Rory-01AMD finally has a new CEO, after multiple ups and downs and more than a few replacements we find former Lenovo President and Chief Operating Officer Rory Read as the number one guy.  According to IBM Rory has an impressive resume that includes 23-year at IBM holding a number of management positions.

AMD’s CEO history has been somewhat murky since Hector Ruiz (the man most people loved to hate) transferred (for lack of a better word) from AMD proper to Global Foundries under the Asset Lite program and AMD put together to lower overhead costs. After Ruiz left Dirk Meyer (one of the men responsible for the Athlon CPU) took over. It was felt that AMD needed to return to its winning roots and that perhaps Myer would be the one to do it. However, legal bills and the after effects of the ATi acquisition hurt AMD who did not return to having a profitable quarter until after Meyer worked out a $1.25 Billion settlement with Intel over their extended Anti-Trust litigation. Meyer left the company in January of this year. Since that time Thomas Seifert has been the acting CEO. Thomas will return to the post of Chief Financial Officer.

We wish Mr. Read well and luck in brining AMD around and hope that he does have the skills to make headway. Still when we see him we will always remember Lenovo’s LePhone…
Rory-02

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Thursday, 18 August 2011 20:58

HP Ditches WebOS and Spins off PC Business

HP_TouchPadLess than a year ago HP bought Palm for their WebOS and Mobile business. At the time HP made the claim that they were going to move forward with Palm and maintain the mobile side of things. Now they want to shut down the WebOS business and (if the announcement is to be believed) either spin off or close down their PC business. Reading the announcement from HP it sounds like they are cutting some dead weight and cleaning up after some disappointing losses. However, if you dig a little deeper you will find that HP is looking to make a business shift. It is no secret that the consumer market (at least the PC and software market) is something of a loss-leader. This means that you expect to lose a little money on your PC systems while making it back in service, and support costs. The problem is that companies like HP are losing their support money to people like Best Buy, Staples, and others who now have their own service departments that they make money off of.

This leaves companies like HP (who bought up Compaq thinking that would help sales) out of touch and losing more money than they should on their PCs. So what do you do when this happens? Well you take a leaf from IBM’s book. You sell off your PC business and shift back to the Enterprise. Here you can sell a support contract for $3-4,000 per unit (and more in some cases). Corporations that purchase servers and server accessories demand these and pay for them willingly. So HPs announcements today are nothing more than a way of saying to the community at large “Hey, wanna buy our PC and Mobile divisions? We do not want them anymore”. I would not be surprised to hear about offers for both departments soon.

Now the question is; can HP really compete with IBM and Dell? If a recent shift in enterprise purchases is any indication HP is in for a rough year.

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