Enterprise Headlines and Highlights, 2012-06-30

As of 11:21 PM EST Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud in North Virginia went down, due to severe thunder storms in the area. The Washington Post reports torrential rains, “scary winds,” lightning and massive power outages in the D.C. area.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Netflix, Pinterest were back up, but as of early Saturday Instagram was still down.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Reid Hoffman, co-founder executive chairman of LinkedIn, partner, Greylock.

Hoffman has been ridiculously successful for so many years that he’s powerful in every area of tech, including enterprise. He lands on this list for LinkedIn and how it completely altered how companies find employees, how employees find jobs and how business people stay connected.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Meg Whitman, CEO, HP.

HP has been stuck in muck of its own making for about a decade. All eyes are on Whitman as she tries to clean it up. It’s important that she does. HP employees over 300,000 people worldwide and its tech is used in just about every large enterprise on the planet.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Samuel Palmisano, chairman of the board, IBM.

Palmisano honored IBM’s tradition and retired as CEO at age 60. But he only handed one reign over to new CEO Ginny Rometty. She is executing his vision outlined in a document called Roadmap 2015. It promises to spend $20 billion on acquisitions and increase shareholder EPS to $20. In other words, Palmisano is still calling the shots.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Zach Nelson, CEO NetSuite.

NetSuite was founded in 1998 with backing from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, way back before the average Joe ever heard the term “cloud.” Nelson has been its CEO for most that time (since 2002) and has emerged as one of the leaders in the software-as-a-service area, particularly for mid-sized companies.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Virginia Rometty, president, CEO, IBM.

IBM is the tech industry’s oldest, more revered company and all eyes are on Rometty as its first female CEO. She’s keeping IBM on the course set for it through 2015 by chairman and previous CEO Sam Palmisano. Culturally, she’s helping IBM to finally loosen up its uptight, stuffy corporate culture.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Amit Singh, VP Enterprise, Google.

If Google’s Sundar Pichai is responsible for the whole kit-and-caboodle of Google’s enterprise businesses, Singh is responsible for execution and evangelizing. Singh was previously a long-time Oracle exec. So he knows the enterprise and is helping Google win customers and developers for Apps.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s President, Server and Tools Business.

Nadella is a member of Steve Ballmer’s key brain trust. If Windows is the heart of Microsoft, then Server and Tools is its soul. It makes tools that serve Windows developers and enterprises. He’s also leading Microsoft’s Amazon-killer cloud.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com.

Vogels is an IT visionary that brought us cloud computing. He didn’t build Amazon’s first-generation cloud, but he’s known as the architect of Amazon’s strategy. He keeps Amazon.com two-steps ahead. Before Amazon, Vogels was a computer scientist at Cornell University.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Godfrey Sullivan, CEO, Splunk.

Lots of eyes are watching Sullivan and Splunk. Big data will build the next crop of giant companies and Splunk was the first of the lot to go public. His success is encouraging a whole new crop of entrepreneurs.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Ray Lane, executive chairman, HP.

Lane has become the new kingmaker at HP. He’s also a Kleiner partner and an infamous former Oracle exec. You can argue whether his moves at HP have been effective or disastrous, but no doubt he’s powerful.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft.

Since Bill Gates retired from daily work at Microsoft in 2008, Ballmer has really come into his own as CEO. He’s making big changes that could rock the tech world by revamping Windows 8 and entering the tablet hardware business.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Chambers has been CEO of bellweather Cisco Systems since 1995. He flies around in his private jet consorting with heads of state and the CEOs of the world’s largest companies. Thanks to him, Cisco has been the most powerful company in enterprise networks for decades.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

In light and shifty winds, Spithill’s crew won the fleet race to lead off a four-day regatta in Newport, R.I., the sixth and final leg in the inaugural World Series.

The other Oracle boat, with Russell Coutts back in the skipper’s role for the first time since September, finished second. Both Oracle boats also won in the quarterfinals of the match racing on Narragansett Bay.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The deal also includes control of the island’s major economic driver, tourism, which sustains the vast majority of the roughly 3,200 residents who live there…The closing comes the same week state officials approved the transfer of three utilities on the island to Ellison. The state Public Utilities Commission then asked Castle & Cooke’s lawyers for confirmation the deal went through.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

In fact, the story of how–and even more so, why–NASA has taken a leadership role in the cloud is a fascinating example of our tax dollars well spent, and a prime example of the government’s new mantra to do more with less.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The Redmond, Washington-based software maker is in talks with major record companies for the needed rights, and plans to begin service later this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions aren’t complete.

By combining the best features of competing services, Microsoft seeks to build a digital product that lets customers consume music any way they like. The maker of the Xbox console is building the new music business after its unsuccessful effort with the Zune service, which will close and move customers to Xbox Music, the company said on its website.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The problem began in Salesforce.com’s NA2 instance in North America, according to a notice on the page. A subsequent note blamed a “fault” in Salesforce.com’s storage tier for the issue and said it was preventing customers from accessing the service.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Summary: Microsoft seeks to demolish the 30-year-old industry that it worked so hard to create, and to return to its monopolist roots.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Whitehurst spoke to IDG News Service on a variety of topics, including his company’s role as a “commoditizer” of technologies, why Red Hat is staying away from the applications business, and his view of how Oracle is handling the stewardship of Java.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

European court on Wednesday upheld most of a massive fine levied against Microsoft by the European Commission’s competition watchdog, closing a case against the software giant that began in 1998.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The update, which will first become available as an over-the-air download next month for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S, brings a lot of nice improvements and some cool enhancements to search, notifications, and navigation.

There’s nothing earth-shattering, but with more than half of the market, Google just needs to keep refining the platform and to stay competitive with Apple (APPL). One of the biggest questions will be how long it will take for existing Android users to get 4.1, since only about 7 percent of them are on Ice Cream Sandwich.

The update does help Android compete better with Apple’s iOS, offering some cool features that stack up well against Siri. It also makes Android more of a one-stop shop for users, who don’t have to turn to other apps in some cases.

Here’s a rundown of the biggest improvements:

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Citing “telemetry” obtained by the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program, Sareen said the company found more users relying on the Windows taskbar for pinning and accessing their favorite software instead of going through the Start menu.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

9:35 am PDT : Trust.salesforce.com Performance Degradation ~ Resolved

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Remember the movie “Back To the Future”? Remember the scene when Doc sets the DeLorean to a future date? That date is TODAY!

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[Catalog of the event -DBM]

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

A number of sessions will also feature case studies told by early Fusion adopters, something that has been somewhat lacking in previous OpenWorld conferences.

While the OpenWorld slate is well-stocked with Fusion Applications events and sessions, significantly more are planned for E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel, highlighting the fact that it will be quite some time before Fusion Applications overtakes those product lines in sales and prominence.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Hit:
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
Miss:
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
Hit:
Google Project Glass Demo
Miss:
Google Project Glass Release Date
Hit:
Google+ app for iPad and Android tablets
Miss:
No Google Drive for iPhone and iPad, No Google TV Announcements
Hit:
Freebies for Attendees
Miss:
Nexus Q
Hit:
Android PDK
Miss:
Google I/O Keynote Itself

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

This year’s release, available as of June 27, is the largest ever—with 72 projects being released representing 55 million lines of code coming from 445 open-source committers. By comparison, last year’s Indigo release had 62 projects and 46 million lines of code.

The Eclipse release train has become something of a phenomenon in the open-source software industry and a tradition for the end of June. More than 40 Eclipse member companies contributed to the Juno release, which makes the Eclipse platform more stable while delivering greater productivity for developers.

Perhaps the biggest change with Juno is that it is based on the Eclipse 4.x platform, which the foundation has been working on for the last few years. Eclipse 4.2 in now the mainstream platform for the Eclipse community. The existing Eclipse 3.x code stream is being put into maintenance mode. Eclipse 4.2 includes a compatibility layer that allows existing Eclipse plug-ins and Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications to wor

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Today we’re pleased to share the “Community Edition” code.

We have been working closely with WebOS Internals to bring this to fruition. WebOS Internals has set up a dedicated team for providing support for legacy TouchPad devices using the webOS Community Edition release. Going forward they also plan to support Open webOS 1.0 on well-documented mobile devices with readily available hardware drivers. The WebOS Internals team is called WebOS Ports and is led by Tom King (ka6sox).

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The code can be used to modify TouchPads in order to let developers learn how the OS works and prepare them to apply that knowledge to Open webOS 1.0 in the future, the team said on their website. Developers can use the Community Edition release to modify the card view, launcher and notifications among other things, they said.

The source code was made available online for download and can be used under the Apache License, Version 2.0, which is one of the more permissive licenses, allowing developers to mix open-source code with their own inventions and sell products using the combined code.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Gunmen rammed a van packed with gas canisters into Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) Greek headquarters in Athens and then set the vehicle on fire, causing damage but no injuries, police said on Wednesday.

At least two people wielding pistols and a machine gun kept security guards away as they carried out the attack at about 0145 GMT, police said.

Arson attacks against banks, foreign firms and local politicians have become more frequent in Greece in recent years as the country battles soaring unemployment and struggles through a recession deepened by austerity policies imposed by foreign lenders.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The judgment today in London reversed a Court of Appeal ruling in favor of M-Tech Data Ltd., which was sued by Sun Microsystems Inc. in 2009 for importing Sun disk drives into the EU after Sun sold them in China, Chile and the U.S. Sun, purchased in 2010 by Oracle, may be first to market its goods in the EU under an “economically controversial, but legally well- established policy,” even if it had previously sold the products elsewhere, the Supreme Court ruled.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

My hope is Oracle and Microsoft help “social” grow up – by focusing on specific customer experience or collaboration themes rather than the high-falutin’ “Enterprise 2.0” or “change the world” talk.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

It’s now expected that social software have activity streams, rich user profiles, groups, blogs, wikis, microblogs, forums,analytics, connection to common business apps, security features, APIs for integration, seamless external/internal functionality, and much more. This has finally led to an arms race that only the more established vendors may ultimately be able to keep up with.

The second factor is that the number of use cases for social software in important verticals and business functions keeps proliferating. Social media can now be used effectively for marketing, customer care, workforce collaboration, product development, supply chain, and so much more to reduce costs, increase effectiveness, and improve innovation. It can be used in financial services, insurance, manufacturing, and healthcare (and that’s just a partial list.)

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The company unveiled the tablet at a developer conference Wednesday alongside other hardware it designed for the first time—a $299 home-entertainment player called Nexus Q and futuristic eyewear dubbed Google Glass that embeds a computer display in a glasses-like device.

For Google, the transition to hardwar¥e has become necessary as Apple continues to encroach on the Internet-search giant’s territory with major software applications.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Lesson 1: Recruiters rely exclusively upon LinkedIn

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“There’s no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,” Rob Lord, the first general manager of Winamp, and its first-ever hire, told Ars.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The second difference is I think that there is a much more sustainable, scalable, profitable business model behind successful products and services that can sustain these companies. And the third difference that goes along with the first two is that Silicon Valley, the culture and the entrepreneurs have grown up. Even the younger ones show so much more maturity than 12 years ago. You see the companies that are growing up today want to build long-term, sustainable consumer brands and franchises.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

RHEL 6.3 does include enhancements to take advantage of the most recent advancement from hardware originial equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This includes updated device drivers for a multitude of peripherals, and also various features like compiler optimization for the Intel Xeon E5 processor family.

It also includes the following new features:

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

For its fiscal first-quarter, Red Hat reported a profit of $37.5 million, or 19 cents share, on revenue of $314.7 million, up from earnings of $32.5 million, or 17 cents a share, on $264.7 million in revenue in the same period a year ago. Excluding one-time items, the open-source software provider would have earned $58 million, or 30 cents a share.

Those results topped the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet Research, who had forecast Red Hat to earn 27 cents a share on $310.8 million in revenue.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

For many foreigners, working in an Indian IT company is now seen as a big plus on their CVs. But minor irritants in day-to-day operations exacerbate the challenge of holding back high-powered expats and foreigners.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“The most likely result is either near-zero growth or economic recession in 2012, depending on the country,” Forrester analyst and lead report author Andrew Bartels wrote. “The worse case is a possible collapse of the euro and a resulting depression.”

It is likely that European officials will “do just enough” policy-wise to avoid that worst-case scenario, Bartels added. Under those circumstances, IT spending growth will still only amount to 0.3 percent this year.

But if the euro collapses, tech spending in Europe will fall dramatically, Bartels said. “CIOs need to match IT spending plans with this bleak outlook for 2012 while preparing contingency plans for a euro collapse and hoping for somewhat better prospects in 2013,” he added.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle Team USA, based in San Francisco and the defending America’s Cup champion, comes into the finale in first place in the series and hopes to wrap up the overall championship. Then it’s back to San Francisco, where next season’s America’s Cup World Series will begin with racing Aug. 21-26 and Oct. 2-7 (Fleet Week), followed by regattas in Italy in April (Venice) and May (Naples).

It’s all part of the overall run-up to the 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco. And if you’ve been waiting for a time to start following the sport, and its participants, this weekend on Narragansett Bay would be great.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

2. Facebook is impacting a seventh of the world’s population, and it has fantastic culture.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

3. LinkedIn is starting to feel like a big company, but it’s still the most transparent and fun place out there

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

5. Google is, well… Google.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

7. Apple still makes some of the best products in the world, if you can handle the competitive culture.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Bottom Line: After basically jump-starting the cloud computing revolution, Marc Benioff has spent his time building a fast-paced company that hires aggressively. Jerks are “not allowed” at Salesforce.com.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Bottom Line: A provider of IT and other technology services, Accenture is a massive company that tackles a lot of interesting problems and provides a lot of flexibility. But like most huge companies, it’s growing slowly and your work isn’t always noticed.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Bottom Line: Intel is a solid company with a long, storied history of building great products. It’s an open, collaborative work environment with decent compensation and benefits compared to other tech companies. Still, it’s a big company — so it can take some time for the company to execute on key decisions.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Bottom Line: Adobe produces a lot of software that most publishers use today, like Photoshop. It’s also not a bad place to work either — the work/life balance is great and there are plenty of opportunities to switch career path.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Bottom Line: Once the top technology company in the world, Microsoft has made several missteps in its attempts to compete with Google and Apple. That being said, Microsoft employees still impact millions of people on a daily basis and there are a lot of resources for career development. And we’re pretty sure having Microsoft on your resume looks great.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Bottom Line: A sales-driven company, the enterprise software provider has good work-life balance and you can work from pretty much anywhere in the world. But the company is still German centric.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

However, it is not the CIO’s fault if bank policies dictate layoffs and offshoring that result in lost skills. These are management issues with consequences across the organization, including in IT.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Working-class residents on Lanai want stable jobs. Affordable housing. No onerous restrictions on hunting or fishing. A return to agriculture. Improved transportation to Maui, Oahu and other islands, given the Lanai airport’s limited flight offerings. Even simple things like the reopening of the community pool.

They hope he’s willing to sit down, listen to their concerns and be sensitive to the unique culture of Hawaii…
The constant fear is what happens if the owner doesn’t renew leases on rented homes, closes a hotel or decides he’s had enough and sells, community leaders say.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“He needs a whole island. How else is he going to find a place big enough to take his ego on vacation?” No truth to the rumors, by the way, that Ellison plans to tear down Lanai to give himself a better view of the Pacific from Maui.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Oracle and HP don’t have any such forward-porting agreement,” Wall said. “HP never made any serious effort to get one,” and has resorted to litigation, a “skillful use of e-emails and other documents to make it appear there was a porting agreement that manifestly does not exist.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Exastack has two levels, Ready and Optimized. Within the past year, 100 ISV applications have gained Ready status, and another 35 have reached the Optimized level, Oracle announced Tuesday…
Right now, about 200 customers are running Fusion Applications, said executive vice president of product development Thomas Kurian in a prepared presentation during the webcast. “A number” of these customers “are live,” he said, presumably meaning in full production, while “many more will go live this summer.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Check this out, it’s Android Jelly Bean mascot! Google just installed it in their Mountain View campus, right next to Ice Cream Sandwich. Clearly, the new version of the world’s most popular cellphone operating system will be announced tomorrow at Google I/O. And, since it’s getting its own mascot, it’s not going to be just any upgrade.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Google-branded tablet—built by Asus—has been one of the most pervasive and long-standing rumors surrounding I/O. The latest reports tip a 7-inch Tegra 3 device running on Android Jellybean, Google’s next-gen mobile operating system. It’s supposed to be the first piece of hardware to run on Jelly Bean. Believed to be named Nexus 7, the tablet will be priced around $200, the sweet spot for it to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

When the acquisition was announced, Constellation Research Group analysts R. “Ray” Wang and Alan Lepofsky said they were somewhat surprised that NewsGator was passed over, given that it offers a richer social platform than Yammer has delivered to date. However, Lepofsky noted that “every NewsGator customer is already a SharePoint customer,” so buying NewsGator would have brought Microsoft new technology but not new customers.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The spending spree reflects the fact that enterprise software is swiftly evolving and tech’s titans are fighting to keep up.

Going – if not quite gone – are the clunky, licensed business products once churned out by the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Up and coming are cloud-based, intuitive, software-as-a-service applications with social components created by a host of young, disruptive companies ranging from Dropbox to Asana and – until last week – Yammer.

And at stake is one whopper of a payday. According to research firm Gartner, the global enterprise software market is valued at $280 billion, roughly equivalent to Greece’s annual GDP.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

One of the biggest questions was where would the company reside in the Microsoft organization, a question that was also answered today, the Microsoft Office Division under Division President Kurt DelBene. Yammer will continue to be lead by founder / CEO David Sacks and will continue to be housed in its current San Francisco location. According to Microsoft the integration will be handled in a similar way to the Skype acquisition, with a notable exception that Skype is its own division.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Ushering in a new era for improving customer relationships, at a unique customer experience event tonight, Oracle President Mark Hurd will introduce Oracle Customer Experience, Oracle’s revolutionary customer experience strategy. — The Experience Revolution special event will feature a collaborative town hall discussion with leading enterprises, industry thought leaders and Oracle executives about the customer experience imperative and suggested strategies to help business leaders meet the challenge. — The event experience will be cataloged on several social networks where those interested in joining the conversation can actively participate by sharing stories, strategies and solutions to improve the customer experience: — Twitter – Oracle CX — Facebook – Oracle Customer Experience — YouTube – Oracle Customer Experience

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Research In Motion is a fundamentally broken company that is likely to be split up in parts and may see fiscal year 2014 revenue of about $7 billion, well short of the $12 billion Wall Street currently expects, according to Morgan Stanley…Gelblum’s working theory is that the next nine months for RIM will be total hell. First, RIM is going to get crushed in its August quarter amid aging devices, a delay of its BlackBerry 10 launch and a sluggish smartphone market ahead of the iPhone 5 launch. RIM’s first quarter of fiscal 2013 will be a mess and the second quarter outlook will be worse.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Certainly, you think of Steve in a different light than you did a week ago,” says Brad Silverberg, a former senior Microsoft exec and now a partner with the investment firm Ignition Partners. “This shows some real product leadership. It also shows vision, desire, and a willingness to take risks. I can imagine that HP, Dell, and Samsung aren’t all that happy. But when you’re willing to take those kinds of risks, people admire it. It shows guts and courage and they’re at a fork in the road. There’s really no going back.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)