Many IT architects are discovering that technical and economic incentives are mounting for exploiting alternatives to mainframe computing applications and systems. As enterprises seek to cut their total IT costs, they examine alternatives to hard-to-change and -manage legacy systems. There are a growing number of technical and economic incentives for modernizing and transforming applications -- and the data center infrastructure that support them. Here with us now to examine alternatives to mainframe computing, is John Pickett, Worldwide Mainframe Modernization Program manager at HP; Les Wilson, America's Mainframe Modernization director at HP, and Paul Evans, worldwide marketing lead on Applications Transformation at HP. The panel is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Here are some excerpts: Evans: We have seen o... (more)

No Real Recovery with Europe Still in the Tank: HP

HP, which pre-announced relatively happy results a couple of weeks ago when it said it was buying 3Com, came in exactly on target with earnings of $2.4 billion, or 99 cents a share, up 14%, on revenues of $30.8 billion, down 8.4% year-over-year from $33.6 billion. And the company reiterated that it should do $29.6 billion to $29.9 billion this quarter and earn 90 to 92 cents a share. Its full-year outlook is for $118 billion-$119 billion and EPS of $4.25-$4.35. In a statement CEO Mark Hurd, who still finds the economy "challenging" despite signs of recovery and projections of growth next year, said services, aided by HP's EDS acquisition and so up 8% to $8.9 billion, drove the record profits but Hurd-style cost cutting had an awful lot to do with it too. He expects to outperform the market because of HP's scale and range of offerings. But then he also expects to mak... (more)

Oracle Named Exclusive Diamond Sponsor of Cloud Expo 2010

Oracle Keynote at Cloud Expo SYS-CON Events announced today that Oracle was named exclusive "Diamond Sponsor" of Cloud Expo 2010. Cloud Expo was announced on February 24, 2007, the day the term "cloud computing" was coined. That same year, the first Cloud Expo took place in New York City with 450 delegates. Next April, Cloud Expo is returning to New York City with more than 5,000 delegates and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors. An Exclusive Interview with Oracle's Richard Sarwal "Cloud" has become synonymous with "computing" and "software" in two short years. Cloud Expo is the new PC Expo, Comdex, and InternetWorld of our decade. By 2012, more than 50,000 delegates per year will participate in Cloud Expo worldwide. Oracle Maps Its Cloud Computing Strategy The cloud is certainly a compelling alternative to running all applications within a traditional corporate data... (more)

HP To Cut 9,000 Jobs Building Cloud Infrastructure

HP said first thing Tuesday morning that it will cut another 9,000 jobs over the next three years, take a billion dollars in restructuring charges, invest another billion dollars in its EDS-swollen services business and hire 6,000 people in sales and delivery. The job losses, part of the second phase of its integration of EDS, will come from creating fully automated state-of-the-art commercial data centers, the basis of enterprise cloud services. Theses data centers, where corporate clients will be encouraged to migrate their applications, will be built on what HP calls its Converged Infrastructure and operated by its management software. The company claims users will see efficiency gains and says automating services in cloud computing will dictate the next 10 years. It means to take half the charges in the third quarter and whatever remains by the end of fiscal 20... (more)

Dell Tops HP's Bid for 3PAR – Just Barely

If nothing else, HP Thursday morning made Dell's proposed acquisition of 3PAR more expensive. That was when Dell sweetened HP's unexpected $24-a-share bid on Monday for the virtualized storage house by 30 cents to $1.53 billion, up from the $1.15 billion that 3PAR accepted from Dell last week. HP now has to decide whether to raise again, a move that would presumably be conditioned on getting any advance to stick. See, Dell's got perpetual matching rights. Anyway, Dell says 3PAR has accepted its amended offer and that if the obscure little company walks away this time it's going to cost its suitor $72 million, up from the $53.5 million termination fee in their original agreement. HP and Dell are chasing the unprofitable $200 million-a-year 3PAR for its cloud potential. Wall Street evidently expects HP to counter because at $26 and change 3PAR's stock price remain... (more)

Mark Hurd and Steve Mills

This is more like a long Tweet than a short blog entry. Personal issues aside Mark Hurd was a brilliant CEO for HP and he will be remembered as one of the greatest CEOs HP ever had. Like the rest of the world, we were curious and watched him from the beginning. I knew he was off to a brilliant start when - within days of getting the job - he put together an internal group of PhD economists specialized in game theory who developed a system that saved HP billions of dollars in purchases. Wikipedia defines game theory as "attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, or games, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others." Hurd got up early every morning watching Armonk like a hawk. Steve Mills via satellite with Jonathan Schwartz during the opening keynote of JavaOne. (Photo copyright: Fuat Kircaali - Ulitzer... (more)

Cloud Computing: Bidding for 3PAR Hits $30 a Share

The bidding for 3PAR now stands at $30 a share. That's like two billion bucks, pushing passed what appeared to be hysterical speculation about how far into the clouds the offers could go just days ago. Dell this morning rolled out of bed and matched HP's price late yesterday of $27 a share, $1.8 billion. HP immediately countered with $30 returning the puck to Dell, which thought it had the apparently priceless storage operation in the bag a week ago Monday at only 18 bucks a share until HP upset the apple cart Monday with a surprise bid of $24 a share on Monday. Dell Thursday morning sweetened HP's $24 offer by 30 cents and HP then went to $27. Wall Street is betting the price will go higher still and had boosted 3PAR's stock price to $3.68 mid-morning Friday. Shortly before noon New York time Dell indicated it was taking a breather to consider "what was best for its... (more)

HP Launches CloudStart to Private Clouds

HP (NYSE:HPQ) on Monday announced HP CloudStart, the industry's first all-in-one solution for deploying an open and flexible private cloud environment within 30 days. Built on an HP Converged Infrastructure, HP CloudStart simplifies and speeds private cloud deployments. Consisting of hardware, software and services, HP CloudStart empowers businesses to deliver pay-per-use services reliably and securely from a common portal, and it offers the ability to scale and deploy new services automatically. Real-time access to consumption and chargeback reports allows clients to operate their private clouds in the same fashion as a public cloud. With HP's open architecture approach, clients are able to integrate their private clouds with third-party enterprise portals, public cloud services, usage billing packages and multiplatform resource management. "To better serve the n... (more)

Chuck Phillips Reportedly Surprised To Be Out

Who's kidding whom? Oracle co-president Chuck Phillips was fired. Not only is that utterly obvious through the thin veneer of the "resignation" twaddle Oracle handed out but a source proverbially close to the situation says he was asked for his resignation on Saturday. Reportedly Phillips was sandbagged, gulled into believing that ex-HP CEO Mark Hurd was going to come into Oracle as some kind of triumvir alongside him and his fellow president Safra Catz until he was unceremoniously pushed out, stunned to hear Oracle say that he had asked to leave in December and was importuned to stay through the Sun integration. "Asked," huh. "His decision" to leave, huh. Apparently he learned nothing about his former boss Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's psyche during his seven years working for the man. Phillips cut his own throat when he was disloyal enough to secretly plan on going t... (more)

Hurd Reportedly Leaked EDS Deal

An allegation of disclosing inside information has now been added to the otherwise flimsy story of why the HP board asked for the resignation of its star CEO Mark Hurd in August. It's the first thing that makes any sense in this whole benighted tale. According to a story that appeared Friday night in the Wall Street Journal - weekends being famous for people not reading newspapers - the supposedly closely held letter sent to Hurd on June 29 by Gloria Allred, the publicity-hound lawyer hired by HP contractor Jodie Fisher, accused him not only of sexually harassing her client, it claimed that he told Fisher that HP planned to buy EDS weeks before the deal was locked and loaded. HP never mentioned such an accusation when it ousted Hurd. (Pause here and reflect on HP protecting its stock price. It took a nasty enough hit with Hurd just leaving the company.) Since Frida... (more)

Three Down: Another HP Director To Leave Board

HP told the SEC Monday that long-time board member Lawrence Babbio won’t be standing for re-election at the stockholders meeting in March. Babbio’s been on the notoriously dysfunctional HP board since the divisive Compaq acquisition, made over accusations of vote-buying, there through the pretexting spying scandal, the fallout resignation of chairwoman Pat Dunn; the Mark Hurd ouster; the questionable Léo Apotheker hire, the Apotheker ouster 10 months later; the shopping of the HP PC unit; the repudiation of the $1.2 billion Palm acquisition; the unpopular ~$12 billion Autonomy acquisition and assorted other overpriced board-approved acquisitions. Babbio was vice-chairman and president of Verizon and currently advises Warburg Pincus. Sari Baldauf, an ex-Nokia exec, and Dominique Senequier, CEO of AXA Private Equity, have already said they’re had enough. Shareholders ... (more)