1TB Drives for Arrays

IBM is also using 1TB drives for it’s storage arrays now. Think about what this could mean for the data storage needs for large data centers. You can read more on this at this eWeek link:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Storage/IBM-Moves-to-1TB-Drives-for-New-Arrays/

New Development in the MSFT/Yahoo Deal

A few days back, we had blogged the news of MSFT’s bid to buy Yahoo, today there were more developments in this area and it seems that Yahoo is not so keen on the offer. You can read more on that here:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/02/11/daily1.html

Yet another big Acquisition: MSFT bids $44.6 billion for Yahoo

Microsoft made a $44.6 billion dollar bid for the acquisition of Yahoo today. This is not the first time that they have made a bid for Yahoo. You can read more on this in this cnn post:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/01/technology/microsoft_yahoo/index.htm?cnn=yes

More acquisitions

Two important acquisitions took place recently:

1) Sun announced that their plans to buy MySQL AB.  You can read more on this from these posts:

http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/01/16/sun-acquires-mysql/

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-01/sunflash.20080116.1.xml

2) Oracle finally got BEA Systems: If you remember, last year Oracle had put an offer of $17 per share to BEA Systems and BEA had backed out of that offer stating that atleast $21 per share is needed for the purchase. News is that Oracle has agreed to pay $19.38 per share for the acquisition. You can read more about this acquisition news in these posts:

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080116/beasystems_oracle.html?.v=4

Last day of Bill Gates at MSFT

This is a very funny video - a spoof on Bill Gates last day at MSFT:

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/corporate/bill_gates_last_day_at_microsoft.html

IBM buys COGNOS

After SAP bought Business Objects, now it’s IBM’s turn to make an acquisition of another great Business Intelligence vendor in the market: COGNOS. eWeek had an interesting post on the topic of how this fits into the IBM offerings - you can read more on that here:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2215825,00.asp?kc=EWWHNEMNL111507EOAD?kc=EWWHNEMNL111507STR2

and

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2215685,00.asp?kc=EWWHNEMNL111507EOAD

The deal was worth $5 billion.

BEA declines Oracle’s bid

The speculations of the buy-out came to an end with the announcement from BEA’s board members that the bid was too low. You can read more on this in this eweek.com’s coverage:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2195343,00.asp

Different Kind of an acquisition

Bangalore based, Indian Software company Infosys is all set to to acquire the French IT consulting company Cap Gemini. You can read more about this potential takeover at the article on Market Watch. This is the first time an Indian software company is ever going to acquire a company that has so deep roots in the USA.

Best Places to work in IT?

ComputerWorld had an excellent article on the best places to work for in the IT arena. The key thing to look for would be the same company that shows up in different categories and here is the link for the overall rankings of the companies.  Check to see whether your company’s name is in the list and if not, what can you do in order to get there in the following years - after all, it is the people, the work culture and management that are the key assets of an IT company.

More acquisitions by Google

Google has acquired feedburner - the chicago based company that provides media distribution services for blogs and RSS feeds. Our RSS feeds also go through feedburner. Here is the announcement post on their site.

They also acquired another company called Zenter - this company provides software for creating online presentations. If you recall,Google had previously bought Tonic Systems which also works in the same area but more on the backend technology. Google should now have a complete set of online applications suite - documents, spreadsheets, presentations, mail and calender/events. In order to be a real threat to MS-Office though, Google will need to figure out a way to do seamless integration between these different applications. The usability and the interface of these applications is another cause of concern for them - it still has a long way to go. Google is not the only one looking at the online office application market - other players in this line are: Zoho, Zimbra, MS Office Live and thinkfree. Read/Write Web had an interesting post with a comparison between these different application suites.