James Niccolai

Author Archives: James Niccolai

Intel’s five (not very) big announcements from IDF this week

If you’ve paid any attention to Intel’s developer event in San Francisco this week, you’ve probably gathered already that there’s almost no chip news at the show. Intel has moved up the food chain, so to speak, and is showing developers what they can build with its technologies rather than focusing on new components.It makes sense, since with PCs on the wane Intel needs developers to get creative with its products. It can no longer flash a faster Core i7 chip and expect them to go do something interesting with it, because PCs nowadays just aren’t that interesting. Instead, it needs to show them what else they can do with its latest chips.+ ALSO FROM THE SHOW: IDF 2015's coolest demos | Intel’s big plan to seed the private cloud market +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco’s new CEO hints at deals in software and security

Chuck Robbins has only been in the job three weeks but the new CEO of Cisco Systems is already dropping hints about acquisitions.On Wednesday, Cisco reported growth in its revenue and profits for the quarter just ended, and in a conference call to discuss the results Robbins was asked about Cisco’s plans for long term growth.“We’ll continue to be very acquisitive going forward, especially in areas like software and security,” he said.They’re two of the areas Cisco has flagged as growth opportunities in the past. They’re also areas where it can generate recurring revenue from subscriptions, something it wants to do more of.Cisco has already been on something of an acquisitions streak, with six purchases announced in less than five months. They include Internet security provider OpenDNS, which it’s buying for $635 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US court says ‘pocket-dialed’ calls are not private

A federal appeals court in Ohio has ruled that a person who accidentally “pocket dials” someone shouldn’t expect any overheard conversation to be considered private.The case involves the chairman of the Airport Board in Kenton, Kentucky, which oversees the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The chairman, James Huff, was on a business trip in Italy with his wife and a colleague when he accidentally pocket-dialed the secretary of the airport’s CEO back in the U.S.The secretary, Carol Spaw, said “hello” a few times and soon figured out the call wasn’t meant for her. But she overheard Huff and his colleague talking about personnel matters, including the possibility that the airport’s CEO—Spaw’s boss—might be replaced. The inadvertent call continued after Huff got back to his hotel room with his wife.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s Q2 sales slide 13 percent on sale of low-end server unit

IBM has reported another quarter of declining revenue and profit, though sales of its new mainframe gave it a lift.Revenue for its second quarter was $20.8 billion, down from $24 billion a year earlier, IBM announced Monday.The big drop is partly from IBM selling its x86 server business to Lenovo, as well as the impact of the strong U.S. dollar. Without those factors, revenue would have declined one percent, IBM said.Net income was $3.45 billion, down 16.6 percent.Revenue from IBM’s giant Global Technology Services segment were down 10 percent to $8.1 billion. Factoring out the currency effect and the sale of the x86 server business, revenues were up one percent, IBM said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel profit falls as PC slump continues

Intel’s revenue and profit both dropped last quarter as people held off on buying new PCs ahead of the Windows 10 launch later this year.Revenue from Intel’s Client Computing Group, which sells processors for desktops, laptops and smartphones, fell 14 percent from this time last year to $7.5 billion, the chip maker said Wednesday.Its Data Center Group, which makes the Xeon server processors, performed better, but not well enough to offset the ongoing slump in the PC industry.Intel’s total revenue for the quarter ended June 27 was $13.2 billion, down 5 percent from a year earlier. Net income was $2.7 billion, down 3 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle gets September trial date against Rimini Street

Oracle has been given a September trial date for its lawsuit against Rimini Street, which sells cut-price maintenance and support services to Oracle software customers.Oracle is seeking US$200 million in damages from the lawsuit, which targets Rimini Street and its CEO, Seth Ravin. A federal court judge in Nevada set the trial date last week, Oracle said Tuesday.The two sides are fighting over whether Rimini Street’s business model is legal, and observers say the case could establish ground rules for companies that provide maintenance services for other vendors’ software.The case is important for Oracle because the company gets a big chunk of its revenue from software maintenance contracts. Rimini Street provides services to customers of both Oracle and SAP for about half the rates they normally charge.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP enterprise chief Bill Veghte to depart before company split

The head of Hewlett-Packard’s enterprise division will leave the company ahead of HP’s planned split later this year.Bill Veghte, a former Microsoft executive who joined HP five years ago, will leave the company later this summer to “pursue a new opportunity,” HP said in a statement on Tuesday. It’s not clear what he’ll do next and Veghte couldn’t be reached for comment.Veghte is executive vice president of the HP Enterprise Group, a $28 billion division that sells the company’s servers, network and storage gear. He’s been leading the effort to separate the group into a new company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US personnel agency takes system offline after hack

Problems for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management aren’t letting up. The government agency said Monday it had suspended a system used for background checks after a security flaw was discovered in the Web-based app.The agency said there’s no evidence the system was hacked. It discovered the vulnerability during an ongoing review of its IT systems, it said, which is being carried out in the wake of at least two serious security breaches.Still, it’s a big inconvenience. The system, called E-QIP, is used by multiple agencies to carry out background checks on potential new hires, and it will be offline for four to six weeks, the OPM said.“The actions OPM has taken are not the direct result of malicious activity on this network, and there is no evidence that the vulnerability in question has been exploited,” the agency said, calling the decision to take E-QIP offline a proactive measure to ensure ‘the ongoing security of its network.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle profit slides 24 percent as customers move to the cloud

Oracle has reported a sharp drop in profit for the quarter just ended, with customers spending more on its cloud services but less on software that runs in their own data centers.Chairman Larry Ellison portrayed the shift as a positive one and said Oracle can make more money selling cloud services over the long term. But the change didn’t seem to help it much last quarter, when its results were also battered by the strong U.S. dollar.Oracle’s revenue and profit for the quarter, the fourth of its fiscal year, missed the forecasts of financial analysts, and its stock fell almost 7 percent after the results were announced Wednesday.Oracle’s cloud business seems to be growing strongly. Revenue from software sold as a service climbed 29 percent from this time last year, to $416 million, the company said. But that’s a relatively small part of Oracle’s business, and it wasn’t enough to offset mediocre performance elsewhere.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US reports massive breach of government personnel data

The U.S. is investigating a massive data breach that exposed personal information on around 4 million federal government workers, according to news reports Thursday.China is suspected of having a hand in the attack, described by an unnamed official as “one of the largest thefts of government data ever seen,” the Wall Street Journal reported.The attack targeted the Office of Personnel Management, a government agency tasked with hiring and retaining government workers. The same agency was breached last year, but this was apparently a separate attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US reports massive breach of government personnel data

The U.S. is investigating a massive data breach that exposed personal information on around 4 million federal government workers, according to news reports Thursday.China is suspected of having a hand in the attack, described by an unnamed official as “one of the largest thefts of government data ever seen,” the Wall Street Journal reported.APOLOGIES: Sorriest Technology Companies of 2014To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The HP split by the numbers: 2,800 apps and 75,000 APIs

Hewlett-Packard has given a glimpse of what the company’s separation looks like from an internal IT perspective, and not surprisingly, there are some big numbers involved.The ongoing task involves dividing up or retooling 2,800 applications and 75,000 APIs (application programming interfaces) before the company becomes Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. on Nov. 1.Before the transformation began, HP had 50,000 servers in six data centers. Five thousand IT staff are working on the transition at any given time, said John Hinshaw, head of HP technology and operations, at the HP Discover conference Wednesday.HP has been preparing for the split since it was announced last October. The work is 80 percent complete, according to Hinshaw, and HP will actually start to operate as two companies on Aug. 1, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Prototype of HP’s futuristic ‘Machine’ coming next year

A prototype of Hewlett-Packard’s futuristic Machine computer will be ready for partners to develop software on by next year, though the finished product is still half a decade away.The single-rack prototype will have 2,500 CPU cores and an impressive 320TB of main memory, CTO and HP Labs Director Martin Fink told reporters at the HP Discover conference Wednesday. This is more than 20 times the amount of any server on the market today, he claimed.But there’s a catch: the prototype will use current DRAM memory chips, because the advanced memristor technology that HP eventually plans to use is still under development—one of the big reasons The Machine remains several years away.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP’s profit slips 21 percent as services business stumbles

Hewlett-Packard has reported another drop in quarterly revenue and profit, with a notable 16 percent slide in its enterprise services business.The company said it’s on track to divide itself into two companies later this year, but made a last minute change to its leadership plans: CFO Cathie Lesjak will move to HP Inc., the division that will sell PCs and printers, and not to HP Enterprise, as originally planned.HP has been trying to expand its business for a few years without success, and the split is a bold gambit to see if can perform better as two companies. Revenue slipped 7 percent in the quarter ended April 30, to $25.5 billion—its 15th straight quarter of declining sales.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This well-funded startup could turn bitcoin mining – and the chip industry – on its head

A startup company with some very big-name backers has just come out of stealth mode and revealed a business plan that could turn bitcoin mining—and even the economics of selling chips and smartphones—on its head.The first thing to know about the company, which calls itself 21, is that it has designed an embedded chip for bitcoin mining—the process of running complex algorithms that are required to solve an equation to generate, or mine, new coins in the digital currency.Bitcoin mining initially was done by individuals on home PCs, but the work has gradually been taken over by mining collectives and large compute clusters that are now needed to solve the increasingly complex Bitcoin algorithms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft results get a lift from Office 365 and Azure

Microsoft has reported better-than-expected financial results for the quarter just ended, helped by strong sales of cloud services like Office 365 and Azure.Commercial cloud revenue more than doubled from a year earlier, the company announced Thursday, and online services like Bing and Xbox Live performed well.The results were hurt by the weak PC market, however, with sales of Microsoft’s Windows and Office software both declining. That meant that while sales were strong, profits declined from last year.In a statement, CEO Satya Nadella talked of “incredible growth across our cloud services.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM sales dip 12 percent despite lift from new mainframe

IBM reported a 12 percent drop in revenue for the last quarter despite a big boost from its new z13 mainframe, which went on sale last month.Revenue for the quarter ended March 31 was $19.6 billion, with profit down 5 percent to $2.4 billion, IBM announced Monday.Two-thirds of the company’s business comes from overseas, and the strong U.S. dollar weighed on its results. Without the currency impact, and adjusting for businesses that IBM recently sold off, revenue would have been flat from a year ago, CFO Martin Schroeter said on IBM’s earnings call.Like its rival Hewlett-Packard, IBM has been watching its business shrink for several quarters as customers spend less on expensive hardware and IT services and devote more to cloud computing and mobile.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AMD withdraws from high-density server business

AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its acquisition of SeaMicro.AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million, the company said.AMD paid $334 million to buy SeaMicro, which had developed a new type of high-density server aimed at large-scale cloud and Internet service providers.The purchase was made under former CEO Rory Read, and has now been reversed by Lisa Su, who took over the CEO job last October.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AMD withdraws from high-density server business

AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its acquisition of SeaMicro.AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million, the company said.AMD paid $334 million to buy SeaMicro, which developed a new type of high-density server aimed at large-scale cloud and Internet service providers. The purchase was made under former CEO Rory Read, and has now been reversed by Lisa Su, who took over the CEO job last October.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Forever 21 denies pirating Adobe software, strikes back

Retail chain Forever 21 has denied making illegal copies of Adobe’s software, as the Photoshop maker alleged in a lawsuit, and shot back that Adobe tries to bully customers who are accused of piracy into paying exorbitant license fees.Adobe sued Forever 21 in January, in a copyright lawsuit filed along with software makers Corel and Autodesk. All three companies claim that Forever 21 “wilfully, maliciously and intentionally” used their software without proper licenses.The retailer skirted copy protection technologies to illegally install software on its computers, they said. And it continued the behavior after it was alerted by Adobe to its infringement, according to the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Northern California. The companies want a jury trial to determine financial damages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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