Second Phase of Economic Recovery
Hal Kreitzman
After good quarterly results from Microsoft, EMC, and Nokia, Cisco Systems Inc. has now released strong second quarter 2010 results and the CEO stated the results signal an economic recovery has begun. Net revenues for the quarter were $9.8 billion, an eight percent increase from $9.1 billion in the same period last year. On a GAAP basis, net income for the quarter surged 23 percent from last year's quarter of $1.5 billion to $1.85 billion. John Chambers, Cisco's CEO, predicted the world has moved into the second phase of economic recovery and capital spending increases globally. He stated he saw dramatic across-the-board acceleration and sequential improvement in Cisco's businesses in almost all areas. Cisco reported higher sales in eight of the top 15 countries it sells to, up from two out of 15 in the previous quarter. Mr. Chambers also expects a rise in video on personal computers and cell phones as part of the next phase of the Internet. In response, the company plans to hire up to 3,000 people over the next several quarters. Cisco currently employs 66,000 people worldwide.
Deutsche Telekom Looks for US Partners
Caroline Gabriel
Meanwhile, Deutsche Telekom may have hit delays to the merger of its UK unit with Orange UK, but it still seems to be pursuing new options for other wireless subsidiaries. Once again, reports are circulating that the telco will spin off or merge its T-Mobile USA arm.
The Wall Street Journal says TMo (T-Mobile) USA could be fully or partly divested, though most analysts believe a full IPO is unlikely, and that a partial spin-off could be the prelude to a merger deal. Many of the recurring rumors surround a merger with Sprint, though the third US cellco is in poor financial health and still seeking to smooth over problems resulting from its last acquisition, of Nextel. Also, the two cellcos have incompatible networks, although they could converge at the 4G stage if T-Mobile, as also speculated, joins the Clearwire WiMAX joint venture, in which Sprint is the largest shareholder.
Whichever cellco might be interested in TMo, Deutsche Telekom would get various advantages from a partial IPO or spin-off, which would reassure its nervous investors, says the WSJ. Its re-port said DT had held meetings recently with a number of banks to discuss funding an IPO, possibly of about 20% of the firm. This would raise additional funding for TMo’s 3G expansion. Or a partial spin-off would give TMo its own balance sheet. The operator controls roughly 14% of the US market, and ended the third quarter with 33.4m subscribers, reporting net income down from $442m a year earlier to $417m.
Data or Information Governance?
Dr. Bjorn Tuft
A number of companies have been addressing data governance over the past few years using a variety of different data governance models that have been developed. However, data governance implementations tend to be narrow in scope – i.e., confined to business units – and do not adequately addresses the full enterprise requirement of information governance. Clients have asked Experton Group to discuss the concepts of information governance and the information supply chain and how to get started.
Data governance is a methodology for controlling the process of managing structured enterprise data. Effective data governance should ensure the availability, integrity, and quality of a company's data. For the majority of companies, data are the raw facts within a business silo without the application of the business context.
Information governance is a methodology for controlling the process of managing information throughout the enterprise. Information consists of structured data and unstructured content combined with business context from one or more business silos. Information can have different meanings beyond the scope of the business unit that captured or created the data. Properties of information with trusted content are authenticity, authority, integrity, reliability, and usability.
While many think data and information quality issues are an IT problem, they are really business problems and cost companies money, time, and resources. According to a study of 400 business executives, 80% of the business leaders view information as a source of competitive advantage. Yet 50 percent of them do not have access to needed information across the organization so that they can make intelligent decisions.
The Bottom Line: Experton Group believes information governance must become embedded into the standard business processes of all organizations if executives expect to be able to effectively integrate all parts of the organization into a cohesive whole. Information governance will facilitate information transparency and enable executives to make better informed business decisions when responding to changing business conditions and systemic risks. IT executives should work with corporate and line of business executives to put a strategy in place for the deployment and implementation of data governance, and then information governance, processes throughout the organization.
Linux and Open Source 2010 Prediction
Dr. Hellmuth Broda
Usage of Linux and open source solutions will continue to grow and become more acceptable for business critical applications. However, the majority of Linux use will be for web front-end presentation management in web servers, as opposed to key enterprise application development. Linux will see a large growth due to its ability to work with most virtualization platforms, including the mainframe. With Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor now supporting Linux, further resistance will fade.
The move to Linux will come largely at the expense of proprietary Unix systems, with Sun Microsystems, Inc. Solaris seeing the largest erosion, with its recent acquisition by Oracle. HP will be impacted next, with the anemic adoption of Itanium and migration off of PA-RISC leading to the erosion of HP-UX to Linux platforms. IBM will end up as the dominant Unix vendor, with continued investment in its Power architecture keeping AIX viable.
The migration to Linux will be led by Red Hat Inc. for most enterprises, with Novell Inc.’s SuSE Linux continuing to chase Red Hat. Small and medium companies will be the main users of "free" Linux systems, such as Debian and Ubuntu, with large enterprises avoiding them due to lack of large scale commercial support.
Linux will continue to be the dominant operating system for appliances, with a strong growth in the cell phone/smart phone market. The Google Android system will gain popularity as a competitor to the Apple iPhone, although Google's own Droid offering, Nexus One, was off to a poor start. Moreover, the lack of applications (currently by a more than 10:1 margin), will prevent major adoption until this application imbalance is corrected. Security vendors will also continue to rely on Linux-based kernels for various security applications.
In that open source middleware is mature, stable and well-supported, Experton Group expects elements of open source technologies will further penetrate commercial and enterprise software without hesitation. Java-based middleware will compete strongly with proprietary vendor stacks such as IBM's WebSphere and Oracle's Weblogic.