by William M. Bulkeley, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
As companies look for new ways to squeeze costs out of their technology budgets, some are deciding that the next PC they purchase need not be a PC at all.
Instead, they are rolling out virtual desktops–a set-up consisting of a screen, keyboard and small connector box that ties into a powerful server in the computer room that has all the software, storage and processing capabilities that each desktop user needs.
At a table in Las Vegas, a town fueled by big bets, IBM software chief Steve Mills outlined one he doesn’t want to make: Buying application provider SAP.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Business at Sun Microsystems continues to, well, stink.
For the fiscal third quarter ended March 29, the server, storage and software company posted revenue of $2.614 billion, down 20 percent from a year ago, off 18.8 percent sequentially, and well short of the Street consensus of $2.86 billion.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
IBM posted first-quarter earnings of $2.3 billion, down 1 percent from its profit a year earlier, while revenue fell 11 percent to $21.71 billion.
Highlights from the company’s conference call with analysts:
4:33: CFO Mark Loughridge will be flying solo on the call today.
There’s a hot formula for hardware start-ups these days: Take standard components that are declining steadily in price, and offer proprietary chips and software that make them work much better.
One of the goals of the software coder is parsimoniousness. Because every line, even every character, of code places a demand on the computer processor, the pruning of instructions to their essence makes for faster, more efficient programs and an optimized system.
Old computer products, like old soldiers, never die. They stay on the market–even though they haven’t been updated in eons. Or their names get slapped on new products–available only outside the U.S. Or obsessive fans refuse to accept that they’re obsolete–long after the rest of the world has moved on.
Dell CEO Michael Dell has done little to dispel rumors that his company is working on a mobile computing device. In fact, he all but confirmed them while traveling in Japan on March 24 when he said: “It is true that we are exploring smaller-screen devices.” What form those devices will take remains a matter of heated debate.
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