Chicken Little got everyone upset by spreading the rumor that the sky was falling. Apple and IBM both reported their earnings yesterday, and there were immediate calls for a Chicken-Little-like response. Duck and cover? It’s not that simple. Both Apple and IBM beat estimates, for starters. It’s nothing new for Wall Street to sell off…
We’re coming into the heart of earnings season and also into a new round of economic numbers this week, which will give us a better idea of just where things might be headed for the economy. So far it looks like recovery is on track even though employment is lagging in the US in particular,…
It’s always fascinating to listen to network operators and even large enterprises talk about their infrastructure projects, and I’m just starting to analyze the first round of our fall strategy survey so I’m getting that chance on a large scale. It’s too early to say how everything is going to come out, but one thing…
The rumor that AOL and some private equity firms have been in talks with Yahoo regarding an acquisition seems to be most rooted in the WSJ, but some insiders tell us that it’s true. They also say there are still some significant points of dispute on the proposed deal, and that the odds against success…
Microsoft has launched its Phone 7 initiative, and from what’s been revealed so far and how operators have reacted in conversations with us, the new mobile strategy is fatally flawed. In fact, unless Microsoft makes truly radical changes or has some literally unprecedented success, it’s probably the end of Microsoft in the mobile space. With…
With its new implementation of Groups, Facebook has revamped its way of mapping relationships into something multi-dimensional instead of the classical “star” configuration. At least they’ve offered the option of doing that; whether users will bother is another matter. What’s more interesting to us is the drivers to make the change in the first place,…
Cisco released its expected home videoconference solution with the somewhat cutsey name of Umi, which to make things worse is supposed to have a horizontal accent line over the “U” to indicate a “you” pronunciation. Whatever the spelling and character set, it’s potentially a significant product. Umi brings HD videoconferencing to the home TV, and…
Alcatel-Lucent had an invitation event for industry analysts yesterday, and since the group was small relative to normal events there was a good opportunity for discussion and engagement. The goal was to give us an idea of where Alcatel-Lucent was going in the near term and in a more strategic sense, and I think they…
Verizon said it would be making a major investment in data centers for, among other things, cloud computing. The result will be an addition of space for over 5 thousand servers and an expansion to about 200 data centers worldwide, including sites in Australia and the UK. While “the cloud” gets a lot of play…
HP picked former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker as its new CEO, a move that surprised many in the industry but that doesn’t particularly surprise us. The criticism of Apotheker stems largely from the fact that his tenure at SAP was hardly stellar; the company lost market share to Oracle throughout and he was unable to…