IBM acquires Red Hat

IBM closed its $34 Billion purchase of Red Hat, sealing the world’s second-largest technology deal ever and setting up the iconic U.S. company on a path to try to compete with top software purveyors in the cloud.

The 108-year-old International Business Machines Corp., once synonymous with mainframe computing, has been struggling to adopt cloud-related technologies. It’s playing catch-up to market leaders Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in offering computing and other software and services over the internet.

Having already fallen behind in the public cloud, IBM is betting big on the so-called hybrid cloud, which allows companies to simultaneously run programs on both their own internal servers and the big public cloud providers, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure.

Through Red Hat, IBM will offer clients the chance to merge their private and public clouds -- regardless of which provider they use. Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies will be matched with IBM’s industry expertise and sales teams in more than 175 countries. The platform will allow companies to run and manage their data and applications both on-site and on private and multiple public clouds.

IBM bought Red Hat

IBM’s purchase of Red Hat Inc. is a $33 Billion bid aimed at catapulting the company into the ranks of the top cloud software competitors. The cash deal, IBM’s biggest ever by far, boosts the 107-year-old computer-services giant’s credentials overnight in the fast-growing and lucrative cloud market — and gives it much-needed potential for real revenue growth.

The company once synonymous with mainframe computing has been slow to adopt cloud-related technologies and has had to play catch-up to market leaders Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in offering computing and other software and services over the internet.

IBM has seen revenue decline by almost a quarter. While some of that has been from divestitures, most is from declining sales in existing hardware, software and services offerings, as the company has struggled to compete with younger technology companies.

Revenue at Red Hat, which sells software and services based on the open-source Linux operating system, is expected to top $3 billion for the first time this year as the company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux product attracts business from large customers. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lazard Ltd. advised IBM on the deal. Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners were financial advisers to Red Hat, while Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom provided legal advice.

Oracle buys Vocado

Oracle has acquired Vocado, a California based firm that offers student-centric, cloud based financial aid solution for higher education institutions. Post-acquisition, Vocado will be integrated with Oracle Student cloud platform.

Vocado works with thousands of financial aid sources to optimize funding for any type of higher education learning model. The solution helps students identify eligibility and obtain financing so they can achieve their academic goals. Vocado integrates its financial aid solution with both cloud and on-premise Student Information Systems (SIS).

Oracle Student Cloud is the software major’s next-generation, cloud-based SIS designed for all academic models across every stage of the modern student lifecycle. Vocado adds the most advanced financial aid solution with a highly-automated and scalable platform. Together, their solution offers institutions the most complete SaaS solution suite in higher education, the company said in the statement.

This is Oracle’s second acquisition in the month of April. Just a week back the firm announced the acquisition of Grapeshot, an intelligent software solution for the marketers that help them decide their ad inventories. Grapeshot’s Contextual Intelligence Platform enables the rapid creation of highly-customized segments that allow marketers and their agencies to confidently avoid unsafe content that will damage brand equity, and close the loop via Moat Measurement. The platform also helps marketers extend global audience reach by targeting the most relevant context, including late-breaking news and trending themes, to complement Oracle Data Cloud’s custom audience segments.

IBM acquires Sanovi

Global computer services major IBM has signed a deal to acquire Bengaluru based cloud recovery and migration software Sanovi for an undisclosed sum. IBM said that the acquisition will help to assure its clients of business continuity and disaster recovery, when they shift their applications to cloud.

As a cloud-native company, Sanovi will strengthen IBM resiliency portfolio to manage the broad range of applications, data, and IT systems of our clients balancing digital and hybrid cloud transformation with increased regulatory compliance.  IBM plans to also license the Sanovi disaster recovery management software as a stand-alone platform to customers.

Adding these capabilities along with advanced analytics will better enable IBM to bolster its Software Defined Resiliency strategy and delivery of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services for clients undergoing digital and hybrid Cloud transformation, the company said in a statement. IBM plans to integrate the Sanovi capabilities into the IBM Global Technology Services unit by the end of 2016.

Hybrid Cloud solutions are turning out to be the preferred choice for enterprises in India for an enhanced efficiency, productivity and cyber security. A Hybrid Cloud is an integrated Cloud service utilizing both private and public Clouds to perform distinct functions within the same organization. With Sanovi's software, IBM will further empower clients to redefine their disaster recovery strategy in the face of unprecedented industry change.

Mindtree to buy Magnet 360

Mid-size IT services firm Mindtree Ltd has inked a definitive agreement to acquire Magnet 360, a Salesforce.com platinum consulting partner, for $50 Million in cash, in a move at addressing the cloud based services market. The deal amount includes an upfront payment of $37 Million and earns out and additional payout of up to $13 Million over the next two years.

With the acquisition of Magnet 360, Mindtree will add more than 100 certified Salesforce experts and help clients digitize back end values chains. This acquisition will strengthen their offerings in digitizing the value chain and building sense and respond systems. Founded in 2008, Magnet 360 specializes in Multi-clouded solutions providing consulting services and implementation, mainly to media/entertainment, manufacturing and finance industries. It is operational mainly in the US.

The company has been a Salesforce partner since 2004. Salesforce, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and others are trademarks of Salesforce.com. Magnet 360 works with companies across Salesforce solutions such as CRM, branded sites and communities, social campaign strategy and management and marketing automation. Salesforce had invested in Magnet 360 along with StarTec Investments and Gage Group.

The company is headquartered in Minneapolis with Offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Its revenue was about $25 Million in calendar year 2015. Bangalore based Mindtree counts Nalanda Capital, Global Technology Ventures and V G Siddhartha led café Coffee Day Group as its shareholders.

Infosys ties up with Hitachi, Huawei, and Microsoft

Infosys is an Indian Multinational Corporation that provides business-consulting, information technology, software engineering and outsourcing services. It is India’s second largest IT services company. Infosys is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. Vishal Sikka is the current CEO of Infosys. It had widened collaboration with Microsoft, Hitachi Data Systems, and Huawei in a bid to expand offerings in Cloud Computing, Big Data & Analytics, Communication, Infrastructure, and Data Transformation segments.

The Bangalore based firm, which is a systems integration partner of Microsoft Corp, will also establish a global ‘centre of excellence’ for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning that will train over 1,000 engineers by the end of Fiscal year 2015. This collaboration will offer enterprises easy access to an analytics platform without the need of big investments and extended time to market. A recent report said that, Infosys is strong in delivering services but lacks innovation, hinting if its areas of execution became less significant, customers might switch.

The expanded partnerships with Hitachi Data systems will add to Company infrastructure and data centre transformation solution capabilities. Infosys would set up a centre to co-create pay per use solutions with Hitachi Data Systems. The new solutions will facilitate transition of clients IT infrastructure to Cloud based environments and will be tailored to meet the refresh cycles of enterprise data centres at lower costs. China has committed $20 Billion investment in India over next five years and has agreed to provide greater market access to Indian products in farm, Pharma, gems and jewellery sectors with a view to reducing trade gap.

Under the partnership with Chinese Huawei, the two companies will jointly develop IT solutions that combine Huawei Cloud Infrastructure and Infosys IT services expertise. The solution develops under this partnership will target enterprise customers looking to modernize their operations by leveraging and infrastructure.  Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub, a solution that help firms build and manage a unified hybrid cloud environment, will be integrated with Hitachi Unified Compute Platform to reduce time to market and simplify complex migrations. The combination will enable enterprises to move to a 100 percent virtualized environment with management, orchestration, and hypervisor integration.

Free Cloud Storage

Computer hard drives are prone to failures and which is why one should not rely on keep our data safe. Apart from keeping multiple backups of essential data, one can store data in cloud. Cloud computing concept is increasing day by day. Companies and their employees are storing most of their data on cloud these days. In this way, our data is safe from theft, hard drive crashes, and even natural disasters.

Main advantage of cloud computing is that one can access their data from anywhere and any device and any time as long as one have an internet connection. With few of the free services combined, one can easily get over 200GB of online storage. Let us look at some sites, which provide free space on internet.

Surdoc - 100GB (www.surdoc.com)

The most generous is Surdoc, which offers 100 GB space on internet. There are no apps or downloads, it can be accessed using a web browser. One can also get a space of one Terabyte of additional free storage by doing few things. Referring a friend gives additional 10 GB bonus, Tweeting Surdoc or engaging with Surdoc on Facebook gives extra 1 GB. Answering a survey gives 5 GB and linking an additional device to account gives extra 5 GB.

Mega – 50GB (mega.co.nz)

Mega is a private company, which performs end-to-end encryption on all files stored on its servers. This means as one upload data it is encrypted and is decrypted when one download it on other device. There is a synchronous client for computers and apps for Android, Blackberry and iOS. Mega also offers Chrome and Firefox extensions to add Mega features right into browser.

Adrive – 50GB (www.adrive.com)

Adrive personal basic plan is always free and it offers apps for Android, iOS and easy access from a web browser from any device. It also allows one to view, edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online. It also offers cheapest premium plans in the industry. One can purchase a premium plan with 100GB of storage for just $2.50 per month or $25 per year.

Onedrive – 15GB (www.onedrive.live.com)

Previously known as Skydrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage solution is built into the latest Windows 8 computers, Xbox 360, and the upcoming Xbox one. It is also available on Android, Windows Phone and iOS. It also gives extra 500MB for referring a friend and extra 3GB when one activate camera roll backup on phone.

Dropbox – 2GB (www.dropbox.com)

It offers the lowest amount of storage. Dropbox has an excellent desktop client and full featured apps for Android, Blackberry and iOS. Data stays synchronized across all devices one use. One can auto upload smartphone photos so that they stay safe in case you lose your phone. Free space can be added by referring your friends.

Hard drives are going to be obsolete in coming years. Big companies are creating their own cloud storage servers and storing client/employee data on its servers. Microsoft is also setting up cloud data centre in India. Soon, Cloud computing will become a popular platform for storing data in India.

Microsoft to set up cloud data centre

Cloud Computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network. There are different types of clouds such as public, private and hybrid. The main benefit of cloud computing is that the device is location independent. Users can access systems from anywhere in the world.

In the recent news, Microsoft is said to be considering setting up a cloud computing data centre in India. If it does so, then Microsoft will be first MNC to set up cloud data centre in India. At present, many companies in India are employing Microsoft’s cloud computing services. All these data centres are located abroad. Their functionality is limited by the fact that the RBI guidelines prohibit the storing of customer data outside of India’s borders. This is the sole reason for limiting the adoption of cloud based services companies in India, mainly those companies that offer financial services.

Microsoft’s cloud computing is the fastest growing segment of the company. India is one of the fastest growing markets of cloud computing solutions in the world. It is growing with double and triple digits every few months. Even if Microsoft becomes the first MNC to set up a data centre in India, global competitors such as Amazon and Google are sure to follow and give them a tough fight. All three companies have cloud data centres in Asia at only one place, Singapore. Globally Microsoft has 13 data centres, Google has 12 and Amazon just 8.

It is interesting to note that even though internet users are growing at fast clip in India but none of the biggies has set up their data centres in India. It may be because of issues of infrastructure and power supply. This is the reason companies set up their cloud data centres in Malaysia or Singapore where infrastructure is good as compared to India.