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.

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.

IBM to acquire Truven Health Analytics

IBM announced its intent to buy Truven Health Analytics for a whopping $2.6 Million. It is the fourth major purchase for Watson health since the unit was established in 2014. Watson Health was formed when IBM purchased Phytel and Explorys in April 2014. Both companies had the common denominator of being data driven health companies.

The unit added Merge Healthcare for another billion dollars last August to give the company access to a huge store of imaging data. With this purchase, IBM gets access to Truven Cloud based data repository, 2500 employees and 8500 clients, including US Federal and state government agencies, employers, health plans, hospitals, clinicians, and life science companies.

The Truven data will be integrated with Watson data, used to identify health cost savings, improve healthcare outcomes, fight fraud and make operations more efficient. With this acquisition, IBM will be world’s leading health data, analytics and insights company. Truven was previously acquired by Veritas Capital Management Fund LLC from Thomson Reuters Corp for $1.25 Billion in 2012.  

IBM launches new Email service Verse

Last week IBM launched its new e-mail application for business that integrates social media and analytics to help organizations and employees increase productivity. The new email ‘IBM Verse’, which is a part of company’s strategy to shift from hardware services to cloud computing and data analytics, is the first application to come out from company‘s USD 100 Million investment in design innovation.

It is the first messaging system to feature ‘faceted search’. Adding this will enable users to pinpoint and retrieve specific information they are seeking across all the various types of content within their email. Verse uses built-in analytics to provide an ‘at a glance’ view that intelligently surfaces an individual’s most critical actions for the day. Over time, it can provide instant context about a given project as well as the people and teams collaborating on it.

IBM verse gives enterprise customers, small businesses, and individuals a scalable, cloud based social collaboration environment optimized for mobile and web environments. The company has currently launched the beta version, while a freemium version – a model where basic version is free while features that are more elaborate need to be purchased will be available from the first quarter of next year.

IBM presently has 30,000 active support customers globally for its enterprise mail service named Notes. IT industry analysts estimate that 108 Billion work emails are sent daily, requiring employees to check their inboxes an average of 36 times an hour. It is also estimated that only 14% of those emails are of critical importance. Email will remain the single most widely used collaboration tool, with worldwide revenue for enterprise email expected to reach USD 4.7 Billion in 2017.

IBM to support online startups

The International Business Machine is an American multinational consulting and technology corporation. IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware and software, and offers infrastructure, hosting, and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to technology. It was founded 103 years ago in New York. IBM now joined the bandwagon by announcing a similar programme to give startups and entrepreneurs around the world up to $1, 20,000 worth of credits to use its cloud computing technology and take advantage of its global network of enterprise clients, consultants, and innovation centres.

IBM has launched BlueMix in India. It is a free platform for startups to develop and host mobile applications within minutes. Google, MS, and Amazon are rapidly growing online startup community in India and across the globe by offering free software credits, mentorship, marketing support, investor introduction, and even funding.

IBM BlueMix will add to the already growing ecosystem of the platforms like Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine, Citrix Xen App Environment, Sales Force Heroku, and Amazon Elastic Bean Stalk all of which are being pushed by corporations through their startup accelerators and entrepreneurship program to Indian Developers. Entrepreneurs will get access to IBM cloud infrastructure from SoftLayer, one of its subsidiaries, and its cloud platform called BlueMix for app development.

As part of programme called 10,000 startups launched by software lobby Nasscom in March 2013, Google offers up to $20,000 total credits for its Google cloud platform. Startups can use Google apps for six months. Microsoft offers Azure Credits, and BizSpark subscribers are eligible to a $150 monthly amount of cloud computing resources through Microsoft developer network subscription benefits, free from the Windows Azure Platform. While these announcements are good for startups, they caution the use of cloud to the technology solutions or platforms of the companies that offer them.

Apple and IBM partnership

There are new waves sent in tech world. Partnership of Apple and IBM can be the start of new era in technology. Last time, Apple and IBM teamed up was in early 1990s to advance a rival to Intel chips. That partnership ultimately fell flat. However, this partnership is looking better on paper. Apple partnership with IBM may deliver more value to Apple than just expanding the iPad and iPhone generation in the business world.

Although the partnership will certainly focus on creating business apps, the focus on creating industry-specific apps may boost Apple’s fortunes in one of the fields that it is actively seeking to disrupt-health care. Apple and IBM shared vision for this partnership is to put in the hands of business professionals everywhere the unique capabilities of iPad’s and iPhone’s with a company knowledge, data, analytics and workflows. The companies are planning to release more than 100 industry-specific enterprise solutions including apps developed for the iOS platform, along with IBM cloud services, security, and analytics. IBM will also sell Apple products tailored to specific industries.

Apple will create a new service and support offering tailored help, while IBM will manage some of the functions like device activation and security. This deal also includes a private app catalog, and helps business customers transform IBM services for mobile devices. The new offerings will be pushed through Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 8, which was launched in June.

IBM has a long history of providing enterprise IT solutions across the spectrum of healthcare organizations. That experience and IBM’s relationship with health-related organizations is a huge entry point for Apple into the health IT market for its devices, and could also give Apple’s Health kit APIs and Health application. IBM will also provide cloud functionality and services for business use on iOS based mobile platforms, helping to bring AppleCare customer service to the business segment. Microsoft gave new emphasis on a cloud first, mobile first structure, the teaming of two tech giants should be very worrying for Microsoft.