IBM makes big mobile push with ThinkMobile
Forget the ThinkPad, IBM is now all about ThinkMobile.
IBM is making a renewed push into the burgeoning market for all things mobile, saying it can help its corporate customers grow revenue and become more competitive through mobile app development.
The effort pulls together a raft of IBM products and services, some recently acquired, under a new umbrella brand: ThinkMobile. It's aimed at a market that many view as ripe for expansion -- helping business turn the proliferation of smartphones and tablets from a management headache into an advantage. Read more...
IBM rolls out Power7+ in high-end Unix servers
IBM has started to roll out a new processor for its Power family of servers, a staggered affair that will start with higher-end systems and eventually reach the midrange and low-end boxes.
The new Power7+ chip has a higher clock speed than its predecessor, at up to 4.4GHz, but the biggest change is in the Level 3 on-chip memory cache, which IBM has expanded to a sizeable 80MB, from 32MB on the Power7.
The bigger cache means more of the data being used for calculations -- the "working set" -- can be stored on the chip close to the CPU cores, which helps to speed operations. With a smaller cache, data has to be fetched more frequently from main memory. Read more...
Office 365 turns Lotus eater
Microsoft has licensed Lotus-to-anything migration software from Binary Tree, and plans to use its partner's wares to lure Lotus customers away from IBM and into the cloud.
Kevin Allison, Microsoft's general manager of Office 365. has declared the deal a tremendous idea as it “... helps simplify the onboarding process and reduce Lotus migration costs.” Binary Tree, where the balance sheet presumably looks nicely healthy since the deal, is even more effusive in its praise of the very notion that Microsoft might encourage messaging migrations. Read more...
IBM and Oracle present rival chips for ‘big iron’ servers
IBM and Oracle shared more details this week about new RISC chips they're building for server customers, the Power7+ in the case of IBM and the T5 for Oracle.
The Unix server market continues to contract as x86-based systems gain more capabilities, but the Unix category still generated US$2.3 billion in revenue last quarter, or about one-fifth of the overall server market, according to IDC. And if there's money to be made, vendors will keep investing, at least for the time being.
IBM's new, eight-core Power7+, expected before the end of the year, is being manufactured on a 32-nanometer process, compared with 45 nanometers for the Power7. The more advanced process enables smaller transistors, which means IBM could fit several new features on the chip while keeping it about the same size. Read more...
IBM wants RIM’s crown jewel — its enterprise business, report says
IBM has shown interest in acquiring the vital enterprise services business of struggling smartphone maker Research in Motion, according to a Bloomberg report on Friday.
The report cites two unnamed sources, including one person who said IBM has informally approached RIM about buying the unit. The unit is valued at at around $2 billion, industry experts say.
Officials from IBM and RIM declined to comment on the report.
However, one person with knowledge of the situation told Computerworld today that the report is "not true" and that IBM is not interested in buying RIM's crown jewel. Read more...
IBM database strategy chief on DB2: Devs are people too
Developers are exerting greater influence on new versions of IBM’s DB2 database, according to one of Big Blue's information management strategy chiefs.
Bernie Spang, director of strategy and marketing for database software and systems, said while IBM has historically consulted DBAs on new features they’d like in IBM’s mighty database, that has changed.
In an interview with El Reg, Spang said IBM is now taking a more balanced approach. “It’s not shifted from one to the other, it’s got to be both,” he told us.
Driving the change is a need to make DB2 more comfortable for developers building web and big data apps that suck on the DB2 data store.
One recent consequence of the shifting approach was the addition of tripled graph-store capabilities for graph analytics in DB2 10.1, which was released in April.
Graph stores find connections between data, so you don’t have to search through piles of relational tables or raw info using Hadoop. Graphs are popular with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn trying to establish connections between individuals on their sites. Read more...
IBM, lab join hands to boost U.S. competitiveness
IBM is joining hands with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop new technology, products and processes critical to the U.S. infrastructure in an effort to boost the global competitiveness of the country.
LLNL, which is in Livermore, California, and IBM's research unit will work together and provide researchers and high-performance computing resources to solve complex technical problems facing businesses in the U.S. today. The goal is to make "wholesale" changes to business processes and execution, and also to make U.S. companies competitive on a global stage, said Frederick Streitz, the director of the Livermore HPC innovation center, in a video posted on YouTube regarding the project. Read more...
IBM doesn’t just block Siri, it restricts iCloud use too (but likes BlackBerry and Android devices)
IBM may have placed a ban on Apple’s voice-assistant Siri but it has various policies for the use of smartphones accessing and connecting to its networks, ensuring that devices on its internal networks aren’t subject to security issues and don’t disclose company secrets.
Shortly after IBM CIO Jeanette Horan confirmed that Big Blue had imposed the restriction, we were approached by an employee that was able to give us more of an insight into what IBM calls its “Do’s and Dont’s” of smartphone use. Read more...
How IBM manages 80,000 bring-your-own devices
IBM CIO Jeanette Horan has plenty of IT projects and systems to worry about, but perhaps one of the most pressing and timely is Big Blue's ongoing BYOD (bring your own device) rollout, which is aimed at including all of the company's 440,000 employees over time.
The IBM workforce is "hugely mobile," with many working at client sites, home offices, and other locations outside corporate buildings, Horan said in a recent interview at IBM's office in Cambridge, Mass. IBM has long had a corporate managed mobile phone plan that historically has focused on BlackBerrys, she said. Read more...
Facebook reportedly buys IBM patents
Facebook has reportedly acquired patents from IBM, a move that could help it shore up defenses against new patent infringement lawsuits ahead of its IPO.
The social networking company confirmed the purchase, and said the patents cover software and networking technologies, The New York Times reported on Thursday. Facebook did not disclose how much it paid for the patents or the patent numbers. Bloomberg reported earlier in the day, citing an unnamed source, that Facebook acquired 750 patents from IBM. Read more...
IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. workers
IBM has laid off just over 1,000 employees so far this week, and more layoffs may be possible, according to an employee organization.
IBM never comments on the specifics of any cuts, and the only reason that the company's job action is noticeable is due to the Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701, which gathers its data directly from IBM employees.
The alliance keeps a running tally of cuts by business units while affected employees post comments on a bulletin board.
An alliance spokesman was uncertain as to how many employees will lose their jobs in this latest round of cuts. The employees are from multiple business units and locations in the U.S., and nearly half of the employees "are mobile or work from home," according to a union spokesman. Read more...
IBM puts AIX 5.3 on extended life support
Two of IBM's oldest and most popular operating systems for its Power-based servers are being put out to pasture after years of service.
Last week, IBM said that it would be offering service extension on AIX 5.3, the operating system that was announced way back in July 2007 concurrent with Power5-based System p5 and i5 iron. AIX 5.3 was the first release of IBM's homegrown Unix variant that supported logical partitions (making a virtual machine that spans cores) and micropartitions (the ability to carve one core into as many as ten virtual machines); it also offered symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) shared memory that spanned up to 32 cores. The combination of AIX 5.3, decent Power5 iron, and very aggressive pricing put Big Blue on top in the Unix business.
IBM actually stopped selling AIX 5.3 back on April 29 last year, and offers AIX 6.1, launched in September 2008, and 7.1 – which debuted in August 2010 as the Power7-based systems were being rolled out – for licensing on current and prior Power Systems iron. IBM plans to cut off standard support on AIX 5.3 on April 30 this year. After that you will need to get extended support or move your AIX 5.3 to a workload partition.
Starting with AIX 7.1, IBM allowed the Unix operating system to carve up a virtual private server, called a workload partition, and run AIX 5.2 applications inside of this unchanged. This workload partition support for AIX 5.2 was important since none of the modern Power systems support this vintage operating system. Read more...
IBM’s top network exec talks strategy
IBM reversed course on networking in 2010 when it acquired Blade Network Technologies, one of its key network suppliers. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix and Managing Editor Jim Duffy recently caught up with Vikram Mehta, founder of BNT and now vice president of IBM System Networking, for an update on IBM's network visions going forward. Read more...
Which IT vendors offer the best and worst customer service?
Tech vendors looking to bounce back from the recession might consider investing a few more dollars in improving customer service. According to a survey of IT professionals, most tech companies are offering merely an adequate customer service experience. Yet IT shops tend to steer their limited budget dollars toward vendors that offer not just the best products, but also the best customer service experiences. Even as large enterprise providers consolidate, IT still has clout -- and is using it.
The new report from Temkin Group found that only Microsoft's business application division, Microsoft's server division, Cisco, and IBM SPSS earned rankings of Excellent for customer experience they provided (a score of 71 percent of higher). Twenty companies came away with Okay ratings (a range of 61 percent to 70, including Intel, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Dell, Citrix, and Red Hat); 36 were slapped with Poor (51 percent through 60, including Salesforce.com, McAfee, Adobe, and Symantec) or Very Poor customer-experience ratings (including Capgemini, Fujitsu, Novell, ACS, Software AG, Hitachi, Alcatel-Lucent, and Open Text ). Read more...