IBM’s Power8 servers are less than meets the eye

ibm-nvidiaTwo weeks ago IBM told the IT world it was taking on Intel in the battle for server chips with new Power8 processors incorporating advanced interconnection and GPU technology from NVIDIA. This followed an announcement earlier in the year that Google was using Power8 processors in some of its homemade servers. All this bodes well for IBM’s chip unit, right?

Not so fast.

Some product announcements are more real than others. While it’s true that IBM announced the imminent availability of its first servers equipped with optional Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), most of the other products announced are up to two years in the future. The real sizzle here is the NVlink and CAPi stuff that won’t really […]

By |October 12th, 2014|2014, cloud computing, Companies, Internet, Software, Technology|19 Comments
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To stop data theft, pull the plug

moneyBack in the 1980s, when I was the networking editor at InfoWorld, one of my jobs was to write profiles of corporate networks. One of those profiles was of the Adolph Coors Brewing Company of Golden, Colorado, now known as Molson Coors Brewing. I visited the company’s one brewery at the time, interviewed the head of IT and the top network guy, then asked for a copy of the very impressive network map they had on the wall.

“Sorry, we can’t give you that,” they said. “It’s private.”

“But we always print a map of the company network,” I explained.

“Fine, then make one up.”

And so I invented my own map for the Coors network.

There’s a lesson here, trust […]

By |October 9th, 2014|2014, Internet, Privacy and Security|98 Comments
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One way (maybe the only way) Yahoo can succeed

marissamayerAlibaba’s IPO has come and gone and with it Yahoo has lost the role of Alibaba proxy and its shares have begun to slide. Yahoo’s Wall Street honeymoon, if there ever was one, is over, leaving the company trying almost anything it can to avoid sliding into oblivion. Having covered Yahoo continuously since its founding 20 years ago it is clear Y! has little chance of managing its way out of this latest of many crises despite all the associated cash. But — if it will — Yahoo could invest its way to even greater success.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, thinking like Type A CEOs nearly always seem to think, wants to take some of the […]

By |September 30th, 2014|2014, Business, Companies, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Industry, Internet, strategy, Technology, Venture Capital|52 Comments
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Home Depot and the smoking zip-zap machine

VigodaI was at Home Depot on Sunday, buying flower pots and some lumber to repair the fence where Sadie the Dog has been plotting her escape. Checking-out of the Garden Department I handed my credit card to the cashier, who promptly dragged out an old zip-zap machine (that’s the technical term coined by BankAmeriCard 50 years ago) and took an impression of my card.

“You’ve been hacked,” I said.

“No, it’s just that my terminal is down so I have to do it the old fashion way,” said the cheery cashier.

“Don’t give me that, you’ve been hacked,” I said.

The lady behind me with fertilizer and a Jack Russell Terrier began to […]

By |September 2nd, 2014|2014, Breaking News, cloud computing, Internet, mobile technology, Privacy and Security|82 Comments
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Refresh mobile hits the desktop

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 1.16.26 PMI’ve been away on a secret mission, which must remain secret for awhile longer.

Somehow this summer my so-called career had a revival of sorts. My earnest and heartfelt book, The Decline and Fall of IBM, is doing well and will shortly appear in a number of foreign language editions coming from actual book publishers. In a week or two I’ll publish here a general IBM update that’s mainly material to bring those foreign editions up to the present. The short version is it still sucks being Big Blue.

But wait, there’s more! Suddenly I have four (four!) television projects in the works, two of them literally back […]

By |August 29th, 2014|2014, Books, Companies, Industry, Internet, Media, mobile technology, Social Media, Television|34 Comments
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