Blog Archives
HP says goodbye to EDS name
By David Needle | September 23, 2009The name EDS, long synonymous with high end, IT outsourcing and consulting services, is going away. Today HP brought the consulting giant further into its fold with the announcement that EDS has been renamed HP Enterprise Services.
Hewlett-Packard bought EDS in May, 2008 in a [blockbuster $13.9 billion deal](/bus-news/article.php/3746436/Services+Giant+HP+Buying+EDS.htm).
Before the HP purchase, EDS itself had changed its name from the Electronic Data Systems.
The name change marks the next major step in a year-long integration of EDS into HP and emphasizes the growing global role of enterprise technology services in HP's portfolio, the company said in a release.
HP also announced its Technology Solutions Group will be renamed the HP Enterprise Business. HP said Enterprise Business will focus on business and government organizations of all sizes. In addition to enterprise services, its portfolio includes servers, storage, software, networking and technology services.
The news comes in the wake of [Dell's mega-purchase](/bus-news/article.php/3840406/DellPerot+Its+Not+HPEDS+All+Over+Again.htm) (not EDS-size, but $3.9 billion is still a lot of money) of Perot Systems. While HP's renaming doesn't appear to change anything operationally, it may serve to underscore that HP has completed the long, painful process of integrating EDS following its acquisition, while Dell's work with Perot has just begun. HP cut 24,000 jobs at EDS post-acquistion.
"Customers are facing tough challenges in their technology environments," said Ann Livermore, HP's executive vice president.
"Challenges such as a rigid infrastructure, increasing applications and information complexity are restricting the speed in which IT can add value to the business. HP is the best at helping customers manage and transform their technology environments to deliver better business outcomes."
All of HP's Enterprise Business units will continue to report to Livermore, the company said.
Joe Eazor, senior vice president and general manager of HP Enterprise Services, credited the strength of EDS's services brand, but indicated it will do better under the HP banner.
"Today we are combining the strong services brand equity that EDS has built over the last 47 years with HP's technology leadership to become the leading IT services provider," Eazor said in a statement. "We will continue to deliver the same service excellence that our clients have come to expect."
Oracle's Larry Ellison unplugged, part deux
By David Needle | September 22, 2009Too much good stuff for even a lengthy blog post about last night's Larry Ellison's event.
[In my earlier blog](http://blog.internetnews.com/dneedle/2009/09/ellison-sun-losing-100-million.html) I focused on his comments regarding Oracle's purchase of Sun. "We're keeping everything," Ellison said in rousing affirmation of his plan to leverage Sun's technology to transform Oracle into a systems company beyond just software.
He later called Sun "a national treasure" for its many technology advances. Gush Larry, gush.
In response to some witty, if occasionally snide comments and direct questions on stage by former Sun president Ed Zander, Ellison got a few things off his chest. Want to get him agitated? Just mention cloud computing.
"The cloud is water vapor. My objection to cloud computing is that it's not only the future of computing, but the present and the entire past, fumed Ellison. "Salesforce.com has been around for a decade and Netsuite longer and people say that's cloud computing, now Google is too. Everyone looks around and says 'Oh like yeah, I've always been doing cloud computing' even though the term is only about four years old."
The reason Ellison is touchy on the subject is because Oracle's been criticized in some circles for not having a cloud strategy.
"Yeah, we're dead if there's no software in the cloud. All the cloud is, is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about?" he exclaimed, shouting the question every time he made a point to show Oracle already is in the cloud.
He recalled how last decade he was one of the prime movers, along with Sun, of a concept called the network computer that treated computing more like a utility any number of devices and systems could plug in to. The NC never got anywhere because we didn't have anything close to the broadband infrastructure we have today.
Oracle doesn't know the cloud? "What are you talking about?"
Ellison said Oracle has offered ERP systems as a service for a monthly fee for the past decade. "You want to call it cloud computing? Fine."
Ellison: 'Sun losing $100 million a month'
By David Needle | September 22, 2009SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Larry Ellison was on fire Monday night. Steve Jobs is the unquestioned master of the pre-rehearsed, carefully choreographed event speech complete with new technology props, but for off-the-cuff, tell 'em like I see 'em, entertaining bluster, Oracle's CEO gets my vote.
Ellison spoke before a packed hall at the Fairmont Hotel here Monday night "in conversation" with Silicon Valley veteran Ed Zander at a [Churchill Club](http://churchillclub.com) event.
Zander, now an investor and advisor to various tech companies, has worn many high level hats over his career including president of Sun Microsystems and CEO of Motorola.
*(Photos by David Needle)*
And since Oracle and Sun had a fairly chummy relationship during Zander's tenure, I expected mostly softball Q&A banter.
Wrong. Zander was great. He preceded the key question of the night, Oracle's acquisition of Sun, by asking:
"What could you possibly be thinking, why didn't you call me first?" Zander went on to detail reasons why the acquisition didn't seem to make sense. For one, Oracle's success over the past thirty years has been about a steady drumbeat of software, software and more software available on multiple platforms.
With Sun, said Zander, Oracle's getting a struggling hardware company that's losing market share.
Ellison gave Zander an "are you finished?" look and defended the deal.
"We have no interest in being in the hardware business," said Ellison.
That brought a hush to the room. Here it comes, the conspiracy theorists were right, Oracle is going to jettison Sun's hardware business.
Team wins $1 million for helping Netflix
By David Needle | September 21, 2009When Netflix decided to try and make significant improvements to the system it uses to recommend movies, the company took a unique approach to getting the job done. Rather than hire more staff, it banked on a unusual form of outsourcing.
The movie rental giant announced [the Netflix Prize](http://www.netflixprize.com/), promising to award $1 million to anyone who could help it reach at least a 10 percent improvement in the accuracy of its movie recommendation.
That was 2006, three years later we have a winner. A team of engineers, statisticians and researchers cashed into today at an awards ceremony hosted by Netflix. The team "BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos" is actually the result of merging of three teams that had previously competed against one another in the contest.
After three years of competing it all came down to a kind of crazy 'We are the World' finish. The winning team is comprised of software and electrical engineers, statisticians and machine learning researchers from Austria, Canada, Israel and the United States.
Tech Insider Says Plan B is a Good Thing
By David Needle | September 18, 2009Imagine you're a tech startup with a great new Web service or product idea. You get enough funding to build out the staff and start developing the product in earnest. A year later, you realize the market's changed; another company already offers 90 percent of the functionality of your SuperWebWonderWidget along with a bunch of features you don't have.
It's time to go to Plan B, but guess what? B doesn't need to mean 'Beaten', rather it can be Beautiful. That's according to Randy Komisar, co-author with John Mullins of the new book "[Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model](http://press.harvardbusiness.org/getting-to-plan-b)."
Komisar spoke earlier this week at a Churchill Club event "in conversation" with New York Times reporter John Markoff. As a venture capitalist, virtual CEO and executive of a number of Silicon Valley tech companies (WebTV, TiVo, GlobalGiving, senior counsel at Apple), Komisar has seen his share of firms that had to change business plans quickly.
*(Photo by David Needle)*
For example, he recalls when he was a director at Tivo in the company's early days when its focus was on home networking and licensing its technology to companies like Sony and Philips. "That was in the late 1990s when they hadn't figured out entertainment was the opportunity," he recalls.
A more recent example that Komisar is involved in is [Cooliris](/bus-news/article.php/3790741/Browser+AddOns+an+Emerging+Force.htm), a Web service that's been out a few years, but hasn't found its footing despite changes to its original model. Cool Iris is designed to bring a more visual navigation to the Web, its latest iteration is a nifty "3D Wall" for [speedier image searching ](http://www.cooliris.com)of Google, YouTube, Flicker and other services.
Komisar says it brings an "Apple-like elegance" to surfing the Web. "My guess is there will be a Plan C, " said Komisar.
Oracle goes on a Sun offensive
By David Needle | September 14, 2009Enough already. After being bashed by vulture-like competitors for months about its commitment to Sun, Oracle is starting to fight back. As my colleague [Andy Patrizio noted](/bus-news/article.php/3832666/Defections+Batter+Sun+Microsystems.htm) in several recent articles, HP and IBM have rolled out the red carpet for Sun customers to migrate their way, while aggressively questioning whether the Sun hardware line has any future at all.
Oracle's acquisition of Sun recently won U.S. regulatory approval but now is hung up by the EU's regulatory arm. The EU is eyeballing a relatively small part of the deal, namely the fate of Sun's mySQL as an open source alternative to commercial databases like Oracle's and others.
This stands to hold up the deal's approval into early next year, presumably leaving Sun to twist in the wind that much longer as the vulture's circle.
Not so fast, says Ellison. Over the weekend, Oracle made the surprise announcement it plans to introduce "the world's first OLTP Database machine with Sun FlashFire Technology" on Tuesday. Sun's FlashFire is Sold State Disk (SSD) technology that presumably will speed up Oracle's database performance significantly.
The event at Oracle's headquarters will feature Ellison and Sun's executive vice president of systems John Fowler. It [will also be Webcast](http://www.oracle.com/features/larry-ellison-webcast.html).
The Android announcement you might have missed
By David Needle | September 14, 2009SAN FRANCISCO -- Motorola and T-Mobile had [the big news](/mobility/article.php/3838651/Cliq+Motorola+Finally+Makes+Its+Android+Play.htm) at last week's Gigaom Mobilize conference. Motorola finally unveiled its strategy for a line of Android-based mobile devices and T-Mobile unveiled the first model, the Cliq, due out in the next few months.
But [upstart mobile provider INQ,](http://www.inqmobile.com/lang/en/phones/) made a bit of Android news of its own. During an onstage interview, INQ's feisty CEO Frank Meehan, announced his company is going to use Android for devices in the works for release next year.
He didn't provide many other details other than to indicate his company, whose phones are available in a handful of countries outside the US (the UK, Ireland, Australia, Italy and Hong Kong), will continue to target what he says is the 85 percent of the market the more expensive smartphone makers ignore.
While lauding the iPhone as "a beautiful consumer device" Meeham claims in Europe it's primarily sold to consumers over 35. "The under-35 is an iPod market, but they can't afford the iPhone, particularly in the UK. That's a market that's extremely hungry that we serve."
Talking in general about mobile trends, Meehan said he expects devices that feature more interactivity and advances in touch input.
It's innovate or die in the mobile space, according to Meehan. "You have to have a hit product every year and be forward thinking," he said.
INQ's approach is to think application rather than generic mobile device. INQ gained attention when it launched the so-called "Skype phone," a mobile device that featured low-cost Skype calling as well as Facebook and Windows and Live Messenger built in. (*Photo by David Needle*)
Two other devices in the INQ stable are the Mini 3G "The pocket communicator for everyone" with Twitter and Facebook built in, Skype integration and application switching. There's also the INQ Chat 3G, featuring free push Google GMail, integrated Twitter along with Facebook, Skype and IM.
Apple's iPhone phishing expedition comes up short?
By David Needle | September 11, 2009Security researchers are warning that the recent 3.1 update to Apple's iPhone software doesn't prevent phishing attacks consistently or as well as the company's desktop version of the Safari browser. The anti-phishing feature should warn users when they may be visiting known phishing sites designed to illegally capture user's personal information.
But researchers at both ZScaler and Intego say they were able to visit a number of known phishing sites using an iPhone and the Mobile Safari browser without any warning.
Conversely, the desktop version of Safari blocked access to those same sites. Both companies listed examples in blog posts of phishing sites they were able to visit unimpeded. In one example, [Intego says](http://blog.intego.com/2009/09/10/apple-adds-safari-anti-phishing-feature-that-doesnt-work-to-iphone/) it was able to visit a phony PayPal site on the iPhone that was blocked by Safari on Mac OS X.
"Apple released iPhone OS 3.1 and once again specifically called out phishing protection," said Zscaler's Michael Sutton in [a blog post](http://). "In fact, within the Safari settings, there is now a Security section with a Fraud Warning option.
"By selecting this option, which is on by default, you will be "warn[ed] when visiting fraudulent websites". Sounds great. The problem? It doesn't work."
Apple's iPhone guy speaks -- again
By David Needle | September 11, 2009You remember Bob Borchers. What's that, name doesn't ring a bell? Borchers' was the anonymous Apple marketing guy who hosted the original, 24-minute [iPhone guided tour video](http://www.metacafe.com/watch/684438/iphone_a_guided_tour/) back in June of 2007 when the device first came out.
Yes, it was only a few years ago, long before "There's an app for that," that Apple felt compelled to do a rather lengthy promo video to explain just what the heck the iPhone was.
Borchers jokes now that he was "the ugly mug" in the video, but he was far more than just a talking head.
In addition to heading worldwide product marketing for the iPhone, Borchers also spearheaded the Nike+iPod partnership and Apple's iPod integration efforts with major auto companies. His almost five year tenure at Apple continued up through the recent launch of the iPhone 3GS. Earlier he held senior marketing positions at Nokia and Nike.
Now he's a partner at venture firm [Opus Capital](http://opuscapital.com/). I caught up with him at the GigaOm Mobilize conference where, unleashed from Apple's traditional stranglehold on employee's speaking to the media, he was happy to discuss his time there and trends in the marketplace.
Even his hiring was tinged with secrecy. Borchers says he had no idea what he was being hired to work on. But after he got there, Apple let him know they were working on a new device, the iPhone.
So what was it like working for Steve Jobs? Borchers wouldn't comment on Jobs' dictatorial reputation, but he did say Jobs was open to push back on his ideas as long as they were well-reasoned and defendable.
"The good news is that you came away from every meeting with decisions being made; there was no paralysis by analysis."
Facebook status message: 'Help, I'm about to drown'
By David Needle | September 09, 2009Actually, the exact status message hasn't been released, and I doubt it was as dire as my headline. Still, this story could well have turned out to be too tragic to joke about.
Here's the deal. The UK's Telegraph newspaper site reported earlier this week on the plight of two girls lost in a storm drain in a suburb of Adelaide, Australia.
So what did the girls, aged 10 and 12 do? They quickly changed their status updates on Facebook using their mobile phones to alert friends and family of their plight. The girls were rescued Sunday night after a friend who was online at the time decided it wasn't some weird gag and called the police.
Fortunately, an ambulance crew arrived on the scene in time and the girls were rescued unharmed. The Telegraph quotes a fire department spokesman as saying the storm drains are prone to flash flooding and it's a good thing someone saw the status updates and started the rescue effort.
The spokesman also said that if the girls could access Facebook, they could just as easily have dialed the Australian equivalent of 911 to get to the police directly "and we could have got there quicker than relying on someone being online and replying to them and eventually having to call us" anyway, he said.
It's been clear for some time the younger generation sees e-mail as old school, apparently using a phone to make phone calls is also rapidly becoming so "yesterday."
"For these kids, by the sounds of it, being on Facebook is just such a pervasive part of their lives that it seems the first line of response if they need to communicate a message to others," the Telegraph quotes Terry Flew, professor of Media and Communications at the Queensland University of Technology.
In this very dangerous case, social networking saved the day. But I hope it's not put to the test again when there are quicker, albeit old school, options.
