Timothy Prickett Morgan covers servers, operating systems, virtualization, networking, data centers, big data and data warehousing, and high performance computing for The Register. He enthusiastically monkeys around with systems from time to time, but knows that he is a hack, not a hacker.
For more than two decades, he has been an editor focused on these areas for publications on both sides of the Pond, including BusinessWeek Newsletter for Information Executives, Computer Systems News, IBM System User, Midrange Computing, Computerwire, Unigram, and The Four Hundred.
When not being a hack, TPM is an avid homebrewer, concocting strange beers, meads, and hard ciders for friends and family because, let's face it, we all need a drink. At the very least, and as soon as the work is done.HPC server sales spike: Buyers get chops around juicy cheap flops
ISC 2013 Big Data-supercomputing mash up, coprocessors included
The plain vanilla server racket may have struggled in the first quarter, but sales of machinery aimed at high performance computing workloads -both traditional simulation workloads and new-fangled "Big Data" jobs - bucked the downward trends in the first quarter, according to the latest research from IDC.
And, not even remotely …
IBM's $1bn layoffs latest: Now axe swings in US, Canada - reports
Union claims 121 storage bods canned after dismal sales
Scores of workers have been made redundant at IBM's Systems and Technology Group in the US, according to a union, soon after the tech titan warned of sweeping job cuts worldwide.
Following a $400m shortfall in mainframe and software sales in the first quarter of 2013, employees were warned that a "workforce rebalancing" act (a …
Lenovo sets sights on server, storage incumbents
If not IBM's System x and BladeCenter, then what?
Chinese PC maker and server and storage wannabe Lenovo Group has an appetite to buy itself some market share in the systems racket, say the company's top brass. In fact, it wants to double its market share in this space.
That seems like a less ambitious goal than acquiring IBM's System x and BladeCenter x86-based server business …
Big Blue blows big green in SoftLayer public cloud gobble
If you can't beat them, eat them. And make them move to OpenStack
So much for that whole strategy that cloud biz SoftLayer came up with (of building its own cloud controller and basing its server fleet entirely on Super Micro iron): because Big Blue bought SoftLayer today for an undisclosed sum.
Rumors were going around back in March that both IBM and EMC were sniffing around SoftLayer - a …
Server racket 'challenging' in Q1, says IDC
Windows takes a dip, RISC/Unix cannonballs, Linux defies gravity
It is not a fun time to be peddling servers, but it is probably a great time to be buying them, according to the box-counting wizards at IDC.
Both server revenues and shipments were down in the first quarter, marking the fifth of the past six quarters where revenues took a dip. There are so many different kinds of transitions …
Cisco gobbles cloud power meter biz JouleX for $107m
Data center energy control-freak snapped up
The cash-laden and ever-acquisitive Cisco Systems is at it again, and has snapped up JouleX, which has created a set of cloudy software tools to monitor and manage power consumption in the data center.
Cisco is shelling out $107m to acquire JouleX, and said in a statement that this price included cash and retention-based …
ODMs and DIYs chomp x86 server racket
Shipments and revenues take a dive in Q1 – thanks a lot, EMEA
If the server market is an indicator of the health – or lack thereof – of the global economy, then we're not quite out of the woods of the Great Recession, despite the exuberance on the global stock markets.
According to the box counters at Gartner, server revenue worldwide were down 5 points to $11.83bn in the first quarter …
SAP shuffles execs to chase cloud success
Former SuccessFactors CEO says Auf Wiedersehen
It is time for musical chairs at SAP, and the desire to ramp-up products that run on the cloud and sell more of them is calling the tune to which the executives are dancing.
The German software giant said in a statement that Lars Dalgaard, head of its entire cloud operations and the founder and CEO of SuccessFactors, was leaving …
HP: Hey, it could easily have been so much worse
'Turnaround won't be linear' - did I really say that?
If you were expecting HP to bring good news to the IT industry when it reported its financial results for the fiscal second quarter, you are no doubt sorely disappointed. Well, unless you consider that in terms of profit declines it could have been a lot worse.
In the quarter ended April 30, HP was down on all fronts, and CEO …
VMware taps ex-Ciscoer as channel chief
The channel is the key to Virtzilla's impending vCloud Hybrid Service
Just ahead of the formal launch of VMware's "Project Zephyr" vCloud Hybrid Service public cloud on Tuesday, the company has appointed a new channel chief. And the timing is not accidental, with VMware's channel being a key component of its hybrid cloud strategy.
It's easy to see why VMware wants to build its own public cloud …
Dell's server, net bizzes do well, but PCs slammed as expected
Wannabe software unit loses money in fiscal Q1
If Michael Dell and his partners had hoped to turn in a bad quarter to help justify the relatively low price the Dell & Friends consortium wants to pay to take the IT giant private, Dell's sales force in the enterprise server, networking, and services units did not do their part to help. The PC business did – but not as much as …
Cisco boosts sales and profits despite softness in switching and routing
Servers and video help fill in the gaps
Cisco Systems took a big bet more than four years ago when it jumped into the server market with its Unified Computing System blade and rack servers and started peddling converged Nexus switches at the same time. Those bets have paid off, and rising sales of these products are filling in the revenue gaps in the quarter ended in …
IBM to push Linux apps on Power iron in China, then elsewhere
If you want to peddle boxes, you have to sell the ISVs first
IBM is opening a Power Systems Linux Center in Beijing, China, in the hopes of getting more local ISVs interested in its Power Systems iron and luring them away from x86-based systems. With the Power Systems business taking it on the chin in IBM's first quarter – revenues fell 32 per cent compared to a year ago – you can bet …
Icahn, SAM to give MickeyD the boot if they take over Dell
Dell board very politely says 'Put up or shut up'
Michael Dell wants to take his company the company that bears his name private, but he might be polishing up his resume instead in a few months.
Activist investor Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management made it clear last Friday that they were not happy with the proposed $24.4bn takeover of Dell by the company's founder, …
Nvidia sales and profits rise despite PC slump
Gamers, high-end notebooks, and supercomputers fill the gaps
Graphics and ARM chip maker Nvidia is sailing smartly through the shrinking PC market, boosting both sales and profits – and doing so despite its transitions to Tegra4 and Tegra4i processors for smartphones, tablets, and other devices.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2014 ended on April 28, Nvidia's overall sales rose by 3.2 per …
Price cuts, OpenStack transition make Rackspace miss in Q1
Revenues and profits up, but Wall Street will freak out
Rackspace Hosting did not turn in the kind of first quarter it wanted for the period ending in March, so expect knee-jerk reactions and hyperventilating from investors who think it can't stay in the cloud game against the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
Its results did not meet Wall Street's expectations, with only 20.2 …
Dell snaps up Enstratius for cloud wrangling
Big Mike is getting agnostic about heavenly infrastructure
Having bought a slew of management tools for server virtualization and clouds either directly or through its acquisition of Quest Software, the last thing you might think IT giant Dell needs is another cloud management tool. Wrong. Dell has just inhaled Enstratius to give it a SaaSy cloud control freak to complement its existing …
Report: Icahn spoiling for a proxy fight with Dell over buyout deal
Enlisting Southeastern Asset Management as ally against Big Mike
Activist investor (we hesitate to use the term vulture capitalist because it gives vultures a bad name) Carl Icahn has said that Michael Dell and the consortium of partners he has put together to take his eponymous company private for $24.4bn is not paying enough for the company. According to reports, Icahn is now getting ready …
Report: IBM, Lenovo x86 server deal hits the skids
Or, maybe the Great Wall of China
Only late last week, the scuttlebutt was that IBM and Lenovo Group were moving along at a rapid pace so Big Blue could offload all or part of its System x x86 server business to the Chinese builder. Now, the latest word is that the deal has stalled as the two companies are haggling about the price.
The first rumors about a …
Fujitsu sells off microcontroller and analog chip biz to Spansion
Japanese giant books a loss in 2012, optimistic about 2013
It's been a busy day at Japanese IT giant Fujitsu, with the company reporting its financial results for its fiscal 2012 year ending in March (that's not a typo) and also announcing that it has spun off its microcontroller and analog device business to the flash-memory maker Spansion.
Back in February, Fujitsu announced a massive …
Azure is Microsoft's billion-dollar baby – maybe
More like a whole lot of software sold to partners
Curt Anderson, CFO for Microsoft's Server & Tools Business, was feeling chatty during an interview with Bloomberg, bragging that in the past year Redmond topped the $1bn sales mark with Windows Azure.
Or, maybe not. The Bloomberg story doesn't quote whatever Anderson said directly, and if you read down a bit further into the …
HP mashes up ProLiant, Integrity, BladeSystem, and Moonshot server businesses
New appliance server group to peddle 'converged systems'
It's a time of transition in the systems business. And HP, the world's largest server maker in terms of volumes and possibly soon (again) in terms of sales if IBM doesn't stop the decline in mainframe and Power system sales or sells off its x86 server biz to Lenovo, is tweaking its server units and the executives who run them. …
Fat boxes keep Super Micro from slumping
Behemoths boost server ASPs in March quarter, working on Moonshot killa
Super Micro – king of the whitebox server makers – turned in a pretty good quarter ended in March, the third quarter of its fiscal 2013, not by pushing more iron, but by peddling a smaller amount of much heftier iron.
In the quarter, sales were down a bit sequentially – which was no surprise at all, given the traditional bump in …
Lenovo deal to buy IBM x86 server biz moving along fast
Time for Ginni to make a call to GloFo or TSMC for fab spinout
It is becoming increasingly clear that IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is annoyed with the performance of the company's systems business. Annoyed enough to spin off all or part of its System x server business to China's Lenovo Group, according to rumors that surfaced last week.
The US channel trade rag CRN broke the story of an impending …
Citrix hits turbulence, cuts profit outlook
Order delays in Q1
Citrix Systems is the latest big IT vendor in the Q1 earnings season to report unexpected delays in closing orders, particularly with its key XenDesktop application and desktop virtualization product. The company has cut profit expectations for Q2 and for the full year, sending shares down seven per cent to just under $63 a pop …
IBM CEO Rometty swaps heads of strategy and servers
Musical boardroom chairs – possibly related to x86 server and other spinoffs
Ginni Rometty, who has been CEO at IBM for a year and a half, is making two big changes in the upper echelons of her management teams; she is swapping the head of corporate strategy and the head of its Systems and Technology Group, and it is presumably to get better results than IBM showed in its first quarter of 2013 in its …
Juniper pushes up sales and profits in Q1
Data center switches, service provider routers start to pick up
The top brass at Juniper Networks are breathing a little bit easier as the company turned in numbers that show it is growing despite taking a big hit in sales of gear, software, and services to the US government in the first quarter.
In the quarter ended in March, Juniper nudged up revenues by 2.6 per cent to $1.03bn, and net …
VMware profits flat-line even as services revenues grow
Virtzilla launches Project Zephyr vCloud Hybrid Service on May 21
Say what you will about VMware, but it has been brilliant about extracting the most amount of profit possible out of what used to be a virtual monopoly on x86 server virtualization in the data center. But competition from Microsoft and various open source alternatives, particularly the OpenStack-KVM combo, is putting the squeeze …
The enterprise software gravy train stalled in 2012
Big data, analytics, and cloud build up a head of steam
The world spends about twice as much dough on enterprise software as it does on data center hardware, and that software is also where a lot of the profit for the IT sector comes from. So when enterprise software revenues don't grow as fast as they have in prior years, it has ripple effects on the IT industry as a whole.
The …
IBM selling x86 server business to Lenovo?
Talks ongoing, likely only System x racks and towers, not FlexSystems
There are rumors swirling around, again, that IBM is looking to sell off all or a portion of its x86 server business to Chinese PC maker and server partner Lenovo Group.
US channel mag CRN caught wind of something going down between IBM and Lenovo on Thursday and referenced an anonymous source with knowledge of the talks now …
Big Blue misses Q1 targets big-time thanks to systems shortfall
$1bn in charges for "workload rebalancing" – aka layoffs – coming in Q2
Big Blue did not turn in the numbers that it expected in the first quarter thanks to more than $400m in mainframe systems, related software, and intellectual property licensing deals that rolled over into the second quarter. In the quarter ended in March, revenues were off 5.1 per cent, to $23.41bn, and net income fell by 1.1 …
Data centers can't save Intel's first quarter
But they might save 2013 if Atom and Xeon chips take off
The "Sandy Bridge" Xeon E5 replacement ramp for servers is nearly a year old now and clearly hit its stride in the first quarter for Intel, which turned in some pretty sad figures for its PC chip and chipset business. It is a pity that the Data Center and Connected Systems business was not already twice as large, as Intel hopes …
HP uses OpenStack to glue CloudSystems to public clouds
Gradually rolling out Grizzly code on the HP Cloud
Before OpenStack was even an idea, HP had cooked up an all-blade system strategy and some utility computing control software that it merged together into the BladeSystem Matrix. The software in that automated cloud-in-a-box has now evolved.
BladeSystem Matrix now includes some elements of the OpenStack cloud controller and is …
VMware sells off Shavlik patch management tools to LANDesk
Forget hardware nannying, we're all about software-defined everything
With new sheriff Pat Gelsinger now running the company for the past six months, VMware is getting more focused on its software-defined data center product line, extending up from basic server virtualization to the heavens, and is spinning off anything that is not directly supportive of its goals for virtualized data center and …
Dell ready to pay Icahn $25m to behave himself during buyout deal
Flashing cash all around to get a deal done quickly
The board of directors at Dell are so eager to look like they are doing their jobs selling off the company to the highest bidder that they are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to cover the expenses for due diligence that three different groups – one led by company founder Michael Dell, and others lead by Blackstone …
HP's 'historic' Project Moonshot servers aim at hyperscale future
First Atom nodes, then ARM and others to 'change the server market'
HP didn't invent the rack-server business, but Compaq – the company it acquired more than a decade ago – did. HP can't buy its way into the next system era, which is why it is trying to create that era itself with its second-generation Project Moonshot servers.
The initial "Redstone" Moonshot boxes were development machines …
Ellison aims his first Oracle 'mainframe' at Big Blue
T5 takes the lead from Power and x86, Big Larry claims
Larry Ellison has launched the first mainframe-class machine that he can correctly say he made sure came to market, and now he is going to take a run at IBM's mainframe and Unix server businesses.
What's more, it looks like he will to be able to make some credible arguments as to why customers running Oracle software – and …
Dell buy: Icahn puts more cash on table than Blackstone or Mike D
Beat that if you can, Mikey baby
As El Reg expected, the deals offered separately by private equity firms Blackstone Group and Icahn Enterprises to take over IT giant Dell are not as generous as some have been arguing the company is worth. And, ironically, the company backed by activist investor Carl Icahn is offering considerably less than Icahn himself had …
Icahn and Blackstone to take separate runs at Dell
Time for Big Mike to pull an EMC and spin out Dell 2.0 cloudy biz
Those who wonder just how much Michael Dell wants to take control of the struggling IT giant that bears his name don't have long to wait.
Private equity firm Blackstone Group and activist investor Carl Icahn are both reported to have tossed in bids to take control of Dell, the company, before the "go-shop" period of the …
Report: EMC, IBM sniffing around hoster SoftLayer
A quick and virty hybrid cloud for VMware?
SoftLayer's public cloud business has IBM and EMC sniffing around for a reported $2bn buyout as both companies look to bolster their own networks.
IBM has made no secret of its plans to build up its cloud computing and storage business. And EMC's server virtualization and cloud controller minion VMware said earlier this week …
EMEA server market struggles to find its footing
Decline in Q4 not as bad as in Q3, at least
The austerity in Europe over the past several years is taking its toll on the server makers of the world and the companies in the region that most assuredly would love to be spending lots of dough on new software projects and the iron to support it. But they're not – and it's not just Western Europe that's putting a drag on the …
VMware and partners to build uber-vCloud to take on Amazon
Project Zephyr wasn't just whispers on the wind
Rumors have been going around since late last year that server virtualization juggernaut and cloud wannabe VMware was working on building its own infrastructure public cloud, said to be called Project Zephyr, and it turns out to be true. Mostly. Maybe.
In a financial analyst meeting held in New York by EMC, VMware's majority …
Keep calm and carry on flogging: Dell soothes troops as buyout looms
Analysis Or unravels, depending on how you look at it
While IT, finance and private-equity barons plot the fate of tech giant Dell, its employees have to get on with making, selling and supporting the company's myriad products.
And in the past month, they have had to field a lot of questions from customers asking about the proposed $24.4bn leveraged buyout deal that company founder …
Ethernet switch pitch less of a b*tch as 2012 comes to a close
10GE starts to ramp and the 40GE shows some backbone
The Ethernet switch market picked up a tiny bit as last year came to a close, according to various box counters, and the prognosticators at Infonetics Research and IDC were projecting that 2013 would see stronger growth as the move to 10 Gigabit Ethernet begins in earnest in the data center and companies start contemplating …
Fund manager says Dell board has no skin in the buyout game
SAM wants a shareholder list, possibly for a proxy fight to kill the deal
Southeastern Asset Management (SAM), the largest shareholder of Dell outside of the company's founder, Michael Dell, is complaining about the leveraged buyout deal that was announced a month ago. And the special committee of Dell's board members has fired back, saying that the deal is fair and so is the process that is being …
Pricey mainframes, hyperscale boxes boost Q4 server sales
Unix machinery, er, not so much
For the first time in five quarters, the server business saw an uptick in revenues in the final quarter of 2012, mostly thanks to burgeoning sales of dense boxes used by hyperscale web operators and a sharp appetite in IBM's mainframe shops for its new System zEnterprise EC12 boxes.
Windows and Linux boxes (about half of the …
The server racket recovers from the Great Recession
Hyperscale data center vigor makes up for enterprise skittishness
Sales and shipments of servers are both approaching levels seen in the run-up ahead of the Great Recession in late 2007.
This was thanks in large part to the voracious appetite for iron of hyperscale data center operators such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook, and despite cautious investments by enterprises outside of the cloudy …
Mellanox pumps up channel for InfiniBand, Ethernet pushes
Trying to pull in more biz to fill in revenue hole
Switch and server adapter maker Mellanox Technologies gave Wall Street a bit of a shock with some cable issues and a big revenue shortfall in its most recent quarter and a projected one for the current quarter after one of its OEM customers bought more product in the latter part of 2012 than they could sell even into the first …
Whitman: Absolutely not going to break up HP
The patient 'showed some improvement' in Q1
The rumors go 'round and 'round about HP spinning off its PC business or doing some other kinds of breakup, and CEO Meg Whitman put a stop to them – maybe for once and for all, maybe not – on a conference call today to discuss the company's financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2013 ended on January 31.
"We have …
VCE collective takes integrated systems battle down to the midrange
Cisco-EMC-sometimes-VMware converged boxes take on the tier ones
It is safe to say that the effort by Cisco Systems to break into the server racket with its Unified Computing System blade and rack servers nearly four years ago has succeeded much more than its rivals in the business had expected.
And the Virtual Computer Environment partnership between Cisco, storage juggernaut EMC, and its …
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