Technology Industry Archive

IBM, said to be in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems, is showing that it will not be left behind in the battle for control of the data center, which is fast becoming the center of the IT universe. And it’s becoming equally clear that the Armageddon in the data center will be winner-take-all. IBM is at this moment the only member of the club of diversified computing companies, that also...

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There are many reasons why IBM would be interested in purchasing Sun. But one of the biggest is the color of money. When you go through the numbers, a Sun deal would not only be lucrative, but dirt cheap. According to Sun’s most recent 10-Q, as of the end of December, the company had about $1.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand, lowering the effective price to $5.4 billion at...

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Today’s Wall Street Journal story about acquisition talks between IBM and Sun may be surprising because of its suddenness. But on another, this is just another of the shakeups that will be happening because of underlying conditions in the tech industry. The result will be new alliances, former partners turning on each other, and uncertainty for vendors and buyers alike. A big statement?...

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While most chief marketing officers say they plan to spend more money on marketing, or at least keep spending levels flat, CMOs in technology companies are cutting marketing spend. According to a survey of over 650 CMOs conducted by the 4,000-member Chief Marketing Officer Council, 62% of marketing executives expect to either increase or maintain spending levels; in contrast, 55% of CMOs at...

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Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), introduced today, looks like an attempt to lock up the data center in much the same way that Microsoft tried to establish hegemony over the software stack. UCS promises to unite computing, networking, storage, and virtualization resources in order to give customers a more energy-efficient system, reducing IT infrastructure costs and complexity,...

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Microsoft to add IE off switch to keep EU off its back — Some bloggers have found that the Windows 7 beta has a setting to allow users to turn off Internet Explorer. This is likely Microsoft’s way of avoiding additional antitrust charges by the European Union. Does anyone remember how Microsoft claimed in the past that IE was too interwoven into the structure of Windows to make it...

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Back in August, I suggested that Amazon was strategically pushing far past its retailing business model. If you include any sort of electronic retailing, some new business areas that the company is undertaking provide additional support of the view. Two of the latest are downloadable games and selling webinars. But it also seems logical to ask if be long before the natural outcome of...

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The next big Internet land-grab is about to begin, and the fight between big business fearing trademark infringement and new companies poised to exploit virgin territory is heating up. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is planning to issue new top-level domains (TLDs) as early as 2010, authorizing the likes of .eco, .nyc and dot-just-about-anything-under-the-sun....

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AOL’s new soon-to-be CEO Tim Armstrong will be in for quite a sea change from his previous gig at Google. The lingering question: Why would you leave Google for AOL? It’s an interesting question raised by Sam Diaz offline. For all the talk (Techmeme) about Armstrong’s enthusiasm about a “great opportunity” AOL’s new chief is bound to have a few headaches. The biggest one: Time...

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Google is going after Skype, eBay’s voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone service and, more importantly, PayPal, its online payment business. Google announced that it’s releasing Google Voice to registered users of Grand Central, the VoIP company it acquired in June 2007, and will release it to the general public “soon.” Google denies it’s going after eBay’s business,...

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