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I.T. Spending On The Rise
Worldwide IT spending remains on track to increase by 6% in 2012 despite the grim economic conditions in Europe, thanks to strong software, storage, smartphone and tablet sales, according to IDC.
While 2012 has been a tough year for many IT vendors, they have done better overall than many expected in the first half of the year, IDC said.
For example, software spending has been robust, even in parts of the world where the economy has been weakest, as businesses hope software tools and applications will help them implement cost-reduction strategies.
The 6% growth compares to a 7% increase in worldwide IT spending last year. IDC expects 6% growth in 2013.
Software, storage, enterprise network and mobile device markets have offset weaker sales in servers, peripherals and PCs. However, the launch of Windows 8 during the fourth quarter should help the PC market recover next year, IDC said.
U.S. IT spending will grow by 5.9% in 2012, compared to 8.5% last year. However, the strength of the dollar during the first six months of the year means that IT spending in dollar terms will grow just 4% for the full year.
Oracle Agrees To Support Itanium
Oracle has committed to supporting the Intel Itanium processor on servers, ending what has been a long running feud with HP.
Oracle’s announcement is well timed because it was just a few weeks ago that a court ordered it to do just that. It did say however, that it will appeal the court’s judgment.
This should put an end to what has been a rather grubby row between Oracle and HP that centered around whether or not the two firms have an agreement about developing software for the IA-64 architecture.
The row, which was not helped by former HP CEO Mark Hurd’s abrupt firing from HP and hiring at Oracle, pulled in Intel and saw Oracle force HP into admitting that it had a secretive deal with Intel for development.
Upon hearing the court’s decision in August, Oracle couldn’t resist taking another dig at HP and its insistence that Oracle continue supporting a processor that as far as it was concerned could die.
“We know that Oracle did not give up its fundamental right to make platform engineering decisions in the 27 words HP cites from the settlement of an unrelated employment agreement. HP’s argument turns the concept of Silicon Valley ‘partnerships’ upside down,” said Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger then. “We plan to appeal the Court’s ruling while fully litigating our cross claims that HP misled both its partners and customers.”
It looks like Oracle has no choice however, and in a statement it said that it will abide by the decision of the court.
“Previously, Oracle announced that it would stop developing new versions of its software on Itanium microprocessors. For example, that meant version 12c of the Oracle database due out in early 2013 would not be available on Itanium,” it said.
Samsung Goes HSA
It seems that the IFA 2012 show in Berlin was a good show for AMD as well, or to be precise, it was good for the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation founded by AMD, ARM, Texas Instruments, Imagination and Mediatek. Samsung has joined up alongside six new members.
The HSA Foundation was created back in June at AMD’s Fusion Developer Summit as a foundation that will deliver new user experiences through advances in computing architectures in order to improve power efficiency, performance, programmability, portability across computing devices and general support of software across a broad spectrum of devices in order to remove the need for code rewriting for various different platforms.
Senior Manager of Technology Marketing at AMD, Sasa Marinkovic, noted on the AMD blog that there is no doubt that the HSA Foundation is off to a good start and in addition to Samsung, they are more than happy to welcome six additional companies including Apical, Arteris, MulticoreWare, Sonics, Symbio and Vivante.
Oracle Wants More Money From SAP
Oracle is appealing the damages awarded from SAP that it was granted and is pushing for more.
The news has disappointed SAP, according to a German newspaper, and the firm is worried that the appeal will draw out the five year long legal battle even longer.
“We are disappointed that the lawsuit Oracle pulls further out,” said a SAP spokesman to the German newspaper Mannheimer Morgen.
“We had agreed on a sensible arrangement, because we believe that this case has gone on long enough. We remain committed to bring this dispute to an end.”
Neither firm has commented yet, but the appeal follows SAP’s admission of liability in the Tomorrownow affair.
SAP pleaded guilty last year and acknowledged that its Tomorrownow subsidiary had done wrong. Tomorrownow was accused of downloading information belonging to Oracle, including software and customer information related to Peoplesoft users.
Oracle was initially awarded $1.3bn in damages but this was knocked down to $306m by a judge who told it that it had two options, accept that sum or take SAP back to court.
AMD Details Vishera
AMD will launch three eight-core processors led by the AMD FX 8350 but it also plans to launch two six-core processors for people who like to spend a bit less.
The AMD FX6350 is a 125W six-core with a 3.9GHz base clock and 4.2 maximum turbo core clock. It comes with 14MB of cache, supports DDR 3 1866 and comes in AM3+. Naturally this is a 32nm SOI product just as its predecessor as AMD is not ready for 22nm fun yet.
The runner up is a 3.5GHz clocked six core that turbos to 4.1GHz, all that while staying in 95W TDP envelope. The name is FX 6300 and these two boys should launch together. The rest of the specification is the same as with faster brother. These two processors will replace the Zambezi based FX 6120 and FX 6100. These parts as well as FX 6200 that is also a part of Zambezi legacy are all selling between $190 and $250 which is definitely not a lot of money for quite powerful processors.
Intel Partners With WMware
Intel has teamed up with Microsoft’s rival VMware to deliver a platform for “trusted cloud.”
The technology will mix Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and VMware’s vSphere 5.1, platform for building cloud infrastructures. Intel said its hardware-enhanced security capabilities integrated directly into the processor combined with vSphere 5.1 would provide a hardened and high-integrity platform to run business-critical applications in private and public cloud environments.
Intel thinks that the biggest barrier to cloud adoption is the fact that companies are worried about security. Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel’s Cloud Infrastructure Group, in a statement that Intel TXT provides hardware enforcement to help overcome some of the most challenging aspects of cloud security, including detection and prevention of bios attacks and evolving forms of stealthy malware, such as rootkits.
Microsoft Silent On Windows 8 Pricing
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With just two months remaining before the retail launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has yet to provide pricing on its new OS.
Analysts today blamed Microsoft’s attempt to accommodate both desktops and tablets with Windows 8 for the lack of information.
“The delay in releasing pricing is all about uncertainty around the PC market and competition from Apple,” argued Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. “Microsoft needs to price Windows in a way that looks smart versus Apple’s OS X, doesn’t leave money on the table with commercial PC customers, and enables OEMs to compete better with the iPad.”
The delay in pricing Windows 8 is real: During the Windows Vista and Windows 7 cycles, Microsoft unveiled retail prices weeks before each OS made the RTM, or “release to manufacturing,” milestone, and four or more months before retail sales started.
Microsoft disclosed Vista prices 58 days before that edition’s RTM, and 148 days before retail availability. Windows 7′s prices were made public 28 days before RTM and 120 days before its on-sale date.
AMD Cuts Radeon Prices
After the recent price cut back in July, that included a $50 price cut for HD 7970, HD 7950 and HD 7870 graphics cards, AMD has apparently decided to cut some of these prices even further taking the HD 7950 3GB graphics card down to $320, or just in line with Nvidia’s recently release GTX 660 Ti graphics card.
AMD has already dropped the HD 7970 from $479 to $429, HD 7950 from $399 to US $349 and the HD 7870 down from $349 to $299. The new price cut skips the HD 7970 graphics card but includes the HD 7950, HD 7870 as well as the 1 and 2GB versions of the HD 7850.
The most important is probably the price cut for the 3GB HD 7950 which battles it out with Nvidia’s recently released GTX 660 Ti. The HD 7950 3GB is, according to the report, will receive a $30 price cut placing it at $320. The HD 7870 2GB graphics card got another $50 price cut pushing it down to $250 which probably makes it one of the most interesting mid-range graphics cards on the market.
AMD also decided to drop price on 1 and 2GB version of the HD 7850 graphics card taking them down by $40 to $190 and $210, respectively.
Dell Names Chief As Sales Tank
Dell has snagged a former Hewlett-Packard executive to head up its server, networking and storage division, a critical area for Dell as it tries to expand its data center business and reduce its dependence on PCs.
Marius Haas was head of HP’s networking business before leaving two years ago to join an investment firm. On Tuesday he was named president of Dell’s enterprise solutions business, where he’ll oversee the engineering, development and marketing of Dell’s enterprise products.
Haas replaces Brad Anderson, who ran Dell’s enterprise division since 2005 and is now leaving the company.
Dell announced the news on the same day it reported financial results for its second quarter, which closed Aug. 3. Its profit for the period declined 18 percent from a year earlier, to US$732 million, while revenue fell 8 percent to $14.48 billion, Dell said.
Its server and networking sales were among the highlights for the quarter, up 14 percent from last year, while sales of storage products were down 13 percent. Together, the three product categories account for about one-fifth of Dell’s overall business.
Windows 8 ‘Grace Period’ Ends
Microsoft has halted the 30-day grace period, a trademark of Windows 7, in the retail copies of Windows 8, requiring that users provide a product key during setup.
The change runs counter to previous practice by the Redmond, Wash. developer. With Windows 7, for example, users could run the OS for 30 days before activating the copy by providing a legitimate key.
That “grace period” was used by some to evaluate the software prior to purchasing, to save up to $100 by using an “upgrade” license to install the OS on a newly-formatted hard drive, and to create physical partitions or virtual machines for quick testing purposes.
Because Windows 8 handles activation differently, the grace period has been eliminated.
As several blogs have noted, customers must enter a unique product key — a 25-character alpha-numeric string — to proceed during Windows 8 setup. Failure to do so stops the process in its tracks. The Consumer Preview and Release Preview used this technique too, although Microsoft provided users a generic key for those sneak peeks.
Once Windows 8 is installed — assuming the machine is connected to the Internet — it automatically seeks out a Microsoft server to verify that the key is valid and then activates the OS. “If the licensed computer is connected to the Internet, the software will automatically connect to Microsoft for activation,” states the end-user licensing agreement, or EULA, for Windows 8 Pro.