The long-rumored data center partnership between Cisco, EMC and VMware is at last a reality. The three companies have formed a new joint venture called Acadia. Its purpose: To sell and support V-Block, an integrated data center product that combines Cisco’s Unified Computing System, EMC’s storage equipment, and VMware’s virtualization technology.
The Apple store went offline Tuesday morning and when it returned, it did so with a groaning board of new hardware, including a range of aluminum and edge-to-edge glass iMacs, new Mac Minis, a 13-inch unibody polycarbonate MacBook and a wireless, multitouch “Magic Mouse.”
The majority of Windows Mobile users have no idea what operating system is running on their phones, a recent survey from the CFI Group found. Microsoft is hoping to change that with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 and the opening of Windows Mobile Marketplace, its long-awaited answer to Apple’s iTunes App Store.
As launch dates go, the timing could not be better. Less than a week after Google’s Gmail suffered its fourth service disruption this year, IBM announced a competing Web mail service intended to undercut it. Called LotusLive iNotes, it’s an email, calendaring, and contact management system aimed squarely at the enterprise space Google has been so diligently courting.
Though some analysts claim otherwise, MySQL is an asset, not baggage, and Oracle has no plans to unload it. Nor does the company think it will be forced to win regulatory approval for its proposed purchase of Sun Microsystems. “No, we’re not going to spin [MySQL] off,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told attendees of a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley Monday evening.
Microsoft brought it’s not-so-anxiously-awaited Zune HD to market today. With its touchscreen, Wi-Fi capability and high-definition video output, the device is intended as an answer to the iPod touch, though it lacks the application marketplace that helped make Apple’s device so popular. And it’s not going to be getting one anytime soon, either.
The econalypse has been particularly unkind to Seagate Technology. The hard-drive manufacturer posted a fiscal fourth-quarter loss Tuesday, its third in a row. Weighed down by restructuring charges, Seagate reported a loss of $81 million, or 16 cents a share, compared to net income in the same quarter last year of $160 million, or 32 cents a share.
Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi has a few ideas about what Dell should do with the nearly $11 billion in cash reserves it’s sitting on and they don’t include buying Palm. Sacconaghi believes that Dell isn’t interested in a “transformational” acquisition, though its interest in the handset market might suggest otherwise. Rather, the company is mulling the acquisition of small- to medium-sized enterprise-related companies.
YouTube may be losing money, but it’s not losing nearly as much as some claim. Certainly not the $470 million that Credit Suisse projected in April, citing massive infrastructure costs. According to IT research outfit RampRate, a more realistic assessment of YouTube’s operating loss for 2009 is $174 million, nearly $300 million less than Credit Suisse’s estimate.
Palm picked a hell of a day to launch the Pre. Two days before Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference. Two days before the unveiling of the iPhone 3G S, a new version of Apple’s iconic handset that runs twice as fast as its predecessor, shoots video with an improved three megapixel camera and boasts longer battery life and greater storage. And worst of all, two days prior to the announcement of a new $99 price point for the iPhone 3G, a disruptive move that puts the device in reach of far more consumers.
Seagate is defragging its workforce again. The hard drive manufacturer said Wednesday that it plans to sack another 1,100 employees–2.5 percent of its workforce. These in addition to the nearly 3,000 workers it laid off earlier this year.
If/when Apple uncrates its next-generation iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, it will be identical to its predecessor in physical design and boast only a few modest upgrades. This according to the latest rumor making the rounds, which describes the new device as a near “repeat” of the iPhone 3G.
Time was, there was a Silicon Graphics workstation on every desk in computationally-intense industries like chemistry and film production. No longer. This morning, SGI, which recently endured a brace of layoffs, filed for bankruptcy protection for a second time and sold itself to Rackable Systems, which makes server and storage products for midsize and large data centers, for $25 million in cash.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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