Timothy Prickett Morgan
-
Desktop OS Sales Outpace Servers in 2010; IBM i Shows Growth
May 9, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt doesn’t take any insight at all to figure out who is the largest operating system supplier in the world. It is Microsoft, of course. But who is number two, three, and four? And who is the fastest growing maker of operating systems? The answers might surprise you.
Through the magic of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems last January, Oracle was able to grow its operating system revenues by 7,683 percent, to $780 million, making it the fastest grower. Of course, Oracle had only a tiny OS business, selling a clone of Red Hat‘s Enterprise Linux. Gartner said
-
IBM Names Eight New (Jolly Good Technical) Fellows
May 9, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt’s that time of the year again, when IBM‘s top brass bestows the virtual knighthood of IBM Fellow on its best and brightest geeks, techies, and nerds.
I have actually been to IBM Research this year, and while everyone was looking at demos and waiting for the meeting to begin, I walked along the wall of fame and looked at all of the IBM Research directors and the Fellows they have helped foster. A lot of very interesting technologies have come out of IBM’s labs, but the number of Fellows is relatively small. Since IBM Tom Watson, Jr., started
-
The IT Sector Adds Jobs In April, But We Must Do Better
May 9, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreCompanies in the United States ended 2010 with $1.9 trillion in cash on their books, I just heard on the PBS Newshour as I sit here working overtime–as if a salaried employee or business owner, of which I am both, actually gets overtime in the 21st century–so I can get my work done. And guess what almost none of those companies are doing? Hiring people in sufficient quantifies to make a dent in the unemployment rate.
While I was initially happy about the fact that the private sector in America added 268,000 net new jobs in April, according to the
-
CAD Vendor PTC Has Designs on ALM Vendor MKS
May 9, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreHere’s an acquisition deal you probably didn’t see coming, that might seem a bit odd at first, but then makes perfect sense once you think about it for a few seconds. Computer-aided design (CAD) software maker Parametric Technology, which has expanded through a slew of acquisitions since 1998, has added one more: application lifecycle management (ALM) software maker MKS.
Last month, PTC said it would pay $292.5 million (that’s in Loonies, or Canadian dollars) to take over MKS, which is a publicly held company that is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. PTC is traded on the NASDAQ
-
Q&A With Power Systems Top Brass, Part One
May 9, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreQ&A With Power Systems Top Brass, Part One
The editorial team from The Four Hundred had a pow-wow with the top brass in the Power and z Systems division within IBM‘s converged Systems and Software Group. Tom Rosamilia, who was tapped to run both the Power and mainframe lines at IBM last August, had been running the mainframe line before that July 2010 reorganization and was in charge of the WebSphere line of middleware within Software Group before that.
Rosamilia brought along his lieutenants, Ian Jarman, Colin Parris, and Linda Grigoleit, and I brought along Alex Woodie and Dan
-
Software Sales Rebound at ERP Giant SAP
May 2, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe recovery in IT spending seems to be coming along if the sales at ERP software juggernaut SAP are any indication. But the company is spending more money to make more money, and that means its profits are not keeping pace, much less growing faster than revenues as investors like to see. The profit pressure might mean, however, that SAP is giving customers some good deals to make deals, and that is good for customers.
In the first quarter of 2011 ended in March, SAP’s software license revenues rose by 26 percent, to €583m; software and related services revenues increased
-
Business Booming, IBM Jacks Dividend, Share Buybacks
May 2, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe IBM money machine continues to perform as it has been engineered to do, and predictably at Big Blue’s annual shareholder meeting last week in St. Louis, Missouri, the company announced that the board of directors had bumped up the company’s quarterly dividend as well as authorized the company to spend another $8 billion buying up its own shares down on the New York Stock Exchange.
The dividend was bumped up to 75 cents per share per quarter, a 15 percent rise since the dividend was increased almost exactly a year ago to 60 cents. IBM was bragging that this
-
Some Insight Into the HMC-to-SDMC Transition
May 2, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreTwo weeks ago, I told you about how IBM was replacing the Hardware Management Console (HMC) for rack and tower Power-based servers with a new console called the Systems Director Management Console (SDMC) that would add BladeCenter chassis and Power-based blades to the mix with converged Systems Director-HMC functionality.
I received an interesting comment on the SDMC from a reader of The Four Hundred and also stumbled on a roadmap for the HMC-to-SDMC transition that spreads a little more light on Big Blue’s plans that its announcement April 12 did.
First, the reader comment:
Is it just me or is
-
Reader Feedback on As I See It: ‘He Kindly Stopped for Me’
May 2, 2011 Victor
… Read moreI just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your insightful, thought-provoking articles. Today’s article, As I See It: ‘He Kindly Stopped for Me’, is another great one. I am very much like Richard in that I don’t think about death. But I know I need to in order to appreciate life and prioritize. Thanks.
–Doug
Thank you for that article. Insightful and meaningful. We all need a reminder for us to evaluate what is important in life. Thank you.
–Paula
Victor, your columns are always moving and thought-provoking.
Today’s column put things in perspective for me
-
Lawson Accepts Golden Gate Takeover, Bucked Down to Private
May 2, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAll of those shareholders of Lawson Software who had been hoping that perpetually hungry software giant Oracle might take a run at its much smaller software rival are no doubt sorely disappointed–and perhaps have lost a bit of money–now that Lawson last week accepted the original and unsolicited offer that Golden Gate Capital and its ERP software brand, Infor, made back in March.
Golden Gate offered $11.25 per share to take over Lawson. The reason for disappointment, if there is any, is that Lawson shares were trading as high as $13.06 a pop when people thought that someone might