IBM

IBM's end-to-end security play

One of the things that distinguishes security from other IT disciplines is its massive scope.

In simple terms, if you own the corporate network, you care about switches, routers, and traffic going from Point A to Point B. If you own security, you have to look up and down the old "technology stack" while keeping an eye of physical security and cross-company business processes. Little wonder why so many companies experience so many data breaches.

For years, the security industry seemed to disregard the broad scope of problems faced by enterprise organizations. Instead, even the biggest security firms … Read more

Google makes three: Tech heavyweights still bullish

The American economy may be teetering on the edge of recession, but it appears for now that the high-tech economy is not.

Google Thursday afternoon joined the list of tech bellwethers reporting healthy first-quarter earnings and signaling confidence in the rest of 2008.

Tuesday, Intel was positively bullish in its forecast for the rest of year. Wednesday, IBM was the same. Now you have the most important company in PCs and servers, the most important business tech company, and the most important Internet company all saying the same thing: We're confident in the rest of the year, "regardless … Read more

Open source and the instant baseline

I am still cruising through the Standish Group report that claims "Free Open Source Software Is Costing Vendors $60 Billion" and I came across one very interesting gem that I think helps to explain some of my previous thoughts on why IBM isn't pushing any open source for SOA.

I theorized that IBM is threatened by open source SOA tools as many of them meet the full requirements that enterprises look for.

I still think that's true and I think a big part of that is because open source products have improved so dramatically they set … Read more

IBM posts strong first quarter

IBM blew past first-quarter earnings estimates Wednesday, posting earnings of $1.65 per share.

Wall Street had expected Big Blue to post earnings of $1.45 a share on revenue of $23.7 billion for the quarter, according to Thomson Financial. Instead, IBM posted an 11 percent increase in first quarter revenue to $24.5 billion, compared with the same period last year.

IBM, cited strong performances in its Global Technology Services unit, which posted a 17 percent increase in revenue to $9.7 billion, as well as double-digit growth with its Global Business Services, also up 17 percent to $… Read more

IBM considering giving Microsoft the boot?

IBM Research is running a pilot program to gauge the interest in and feasibility of moving its employees from PCs to Macs. So far, the response appears to be an enthusiastic, "Yes, please! Is this PC recyclable, or should I just dump it out back?"

Why is IBM doing this? An internal document gives several reasons:

Alternative to Microsoft Windows (IBM, like many enterprises, is concerned about being locked into Microsoft) Less prone to security issues Widely used in the academic world, with which (IBM) Research has close ties Many new hires are more comfortable with the Mac … Read more

It was 20 years ago today: Not Sgt. Pepper, but my PCjr

Everyone remembers their first computer. Well mine was a PCjr and I don't care how history remembers it. The piece of junk stole my heart.

I wouldn't push the analogy too hard, but your first computer's a lot like your first love in one respect: years later, the memory does not fade with the passing of the seasons.

So it was that I was reading Jonathan Zittrain's excellent new book, The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It (more about that in a future post), when I paged across his disquisition on the early PC … Read more

IBM: Faster, not hotter, 32-nanometer chips coming

Chips in 2009 will run faster but not necessarily hotter. That's the gist of what IBM, along with its joint development partners such as Samsung Electronics and Toshiba, announced Monday.

The IBM alliance is using "high-k/metal gate" technology to achieve this, the same category of process technology that Intel currently uses in its 45-nanometer processors. The alliance says it is seeing performance improvements of up to 35 percent over 45nm technology at the same "operating voltage" or power levels.

This allows alliance chipmakers such as Samsung, Toshiba, and Freescale Semiconductor (formerly an arm of … Read more

The '500,000-song' iPod isn't surprising

IBM researchers have reportedly demonstrated technology that will increase hard drive capacity 100-fold, as well as offer major improvements in energy consumption (leading to much longer battery life) and better reliability. Production is estimated in seven to ten years.

The reports summarizing the researchers' findings, which were published in Science (subscription required), use the shorthand "500,000 songs on a portable MP3 player" to describe the advance.

Today's iPod lineup contains no product advertised to hold 5,000 songs, so I'm not sure where the 500,000 figure came from. In fact, the current highest-capacity iPod is 160GB, … Read more

Sun shows off its proximity communication silicon

Proximity communication--an interconnect technology being devised by Sun Microsystems that lets two devices swap data just by being near each other--isn't ready for commercial release, but the company is showing off samples.

At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Las Vegas this week, David Douglas of Sun Labs showed off silicon that embodies the concept. Here is a link to a video on his talk on ZDNet. Douglas is holding the chips, which he didn't demonstrate in action.

In proximity communication, two capacitors sit near each other. When data is sent to capacitor one, it gets charged. The charge … Read more