News and analysis to 25th April 2007
Blackberry users get cold turkey
Thousands of North American Blackberry users experienced
cold turkey recently when they were unable to access their emails for several
hours. The Blackberry service provider, RIM leapt into action when the problem
occurred by immediately recording an apologetic voice message for those calling
in search of help. Post problem, to explain the outage, RIM tersely informed
distressed users that “a server disruption occurred on Tuesday night”. Not
understanding the root cause of the problem will make many users nervous and
may pave the way for alternative solution providers.
Clippy gets nasty
We are all familiar with that low EQ Microsoft Office paper
clip that shows up from time to (irritating) time trying to be helpful. Well
it’s no more Mr Nice Guy as Clippy can now take control of your PC on behalf of
a hacker. This is one of a number of vulnerabilities that have come to light
recently. It would also appear that the MS Windows desktop cursor is fed up of
being pushed around and it too has gone to the dark side. Those with animated
cursors beware. What next? Searching in XP will never be the same again.
Imagine the animated puppy turning into a rabid Rottweiler that ‘fouls’ your
hard disk whenever you attempt a search.
Green grow the servers ho
Dell and IBM are looking to grow their green credentials by
bringing energy efficient servers to market. Improved power and heat management
are emerging themes not just in reducing the overall cost of IT ownership, but
also in enabling the IT department to deliver content to the organisation’s
Corporate Social Responsibility report. The carbon-neutral IT department theme
is starting to dominate the IT leadership agenda. Outsourcers that can offer carbon-reduction as part of their
offering are more likely to get the attention of senior buyers than simply
waving low price tags. Surely PCs and mobile phones made out of recycled user
manuals cannot be far behind?
Oracle ConFusion
Software giant Oracle has announced Project X, its new
applications integration initiative. This may be an indication that its Fusion
strategy is not working. Project Fusion is an initiative to wean customers away
from their existing non-Oracle applications to Oracle’s core product line.
Clearly these acquired customers do not want to follow that plan and so have
pressed Oracle into providing a way forward that allows them to stick with
their non-Oracle solutions, which is what Project X is all about. This will
have a big impact on Oracle’s cost base, as it will have to continue to support
the non-Oracle products and it will also stunt Oracle’s new product licence
revenues. Oracle appears to be suffering from some serious indigestion.
DooooubleClick
The online advertising world took a step closer to the end
game with Google’s $3.1bn bid for banner advertising specialist DoubleClick.
Microsoft was keen to acquire DoubleClick, but Google felt that no price was
too much if it led to its competitors being disadvantaged. Microsoft is feeling
sore about this and wants the regulators to stop the acquisition. I am
delighted that Microsoft is starting to see the value that regulators can bring
to the market.
Good Kumar
Disgraced ex CA CEO Sanjay Kumar is looking forward to an
eleven-year prison sentence for his leadership role in a major accounting
scandal. To help him rebalance the bad karma he created for CA’s shareholders,
he has been asked to pay at least $52m over the next two years to the victims
(which is approximately $750m short of full restitution). Should he ever get a
job again once he is out of prison, he will also have to pay 20% of his income
towards full restitution. He may have to delay his retirement date considerably
if he plans to pay back all that he owes. In parallel with this, CA founder
Charles Wang is also being accused of playing a role in this fraudulent
activity. Mr Wang is vehemently protecting his name and is insistent that he
has always acted in the interests of all the shareholders. In short: Wang
cares.
HP Sachs
Investment bank Goldman Sachs likes to take the pulse of the
IT market from time to time. Its latest survey shows that there is a slight
softening in the IT market place, ie there is a reduction in the rate of market
growth. Those surveyed indicated that IBM and Dell will get bigger slices of
the data centre pie, with HP and Sun Microsystems losing out. In the storage
space IBM and EMC will grow, whereas Dell, Sun and HP will shrink. There is no
need to grab a life jacket just yet. Though some of HP’s enterprise sales staff
may consider reading the emergency landing instructions.
From Java beans to coffee beans
One of the IT industry’s founding fathers NCR is set to lose
its CFO to Starbucks. The cash point machine to data warehousing specialist has
29,300 staff with most recent annual revenues of $6.1bn. Peter Bocian is an NCR
veteran of 25 years. He would have been useful to have around if NCR decides to
spin off their Teradata data warehouse division. Mind you his arrival at
Starbucks might see the introduction of the bigger than ever ‘Mainframe
cappuccino’. And for those that need a caffeine-fix in the early hours we might
even see the arrival of the Starbucks skinny-latte (thin-client) automated
coffee point machine.
