Chris Preimesberger

SAP, reinvigorated in the last two years due to new interest in its HANA in-memory database and mobile application management, closed a deal Aug. 6 to acquire privately held customer-engagement software maker Hybris. The German-based enterprise database and middleware maker had announced its intention to acquire Switzerland-based Hybris back in June. SAP didn’t divulge terms […]

Two days after John W. Henry, billionaire majority owner of the Boston Red Sox, bought the Boston Globe from The New York Times Co. for $70 million, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos revealed Aug. 5 that he is buying the Washington Post for $250 million in cash. A pair of events this similar may […]

Hewlett-Packard revealed Aug. 5 that it is planning to shut down Snapfish, its Web-based photo storage, sharing and printing service, in India and three other countries—Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain—within the next several weeks. Snapfish India said on its Website that HP is halting the service to “invest in the development of core markets.” Snapfish […]

Enterprise Networks Are Much Slower Than Home Systems: 10 Reasons Why by Chris Preimesberger Too Little Bandwidth to Start Most companies start out in a hole by provisioning too little bandwidth on their Internet connections. Whether due to budget limits or poor planning—not understanding users’ real Internet habits and needs—most companies don’t offer enough bandwidth […]

Ken Brill, founder of the Uptime Institute and Upsite Technologies and an IT pioneer who led standards-setting for modern data center design, died July 30 as the result of cancer. He was 69. Brill’s thought leadership, through many writings and the Uptime Institute’s work over the last three decades, has led to increased power efficiencies […]

If Yahoo keeps up its current pace in buying other Web services companies, there soon might not be any of them left. The pioneering Web search and services provider Aug. 2 made its 20th acquisition in the last 12 months and second in three days when it announced the annexation of new-gen social-networking browser maker […]

Business process application provider Kofax made a move to the big data cloud analytics space July 31, revealing that it has acquired privately held data integration and analytics software maker Kapow Technologies for $47.5 million in cash. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Kapow–yes, it is pronounced “kuh-POW”–produces, among other products, the Katalyst self-service analytics tool into which […]

Solid-state semiconductor maker Micron Technology is building out its manufacturing arm in a big way in the Far East. The Boise, Idaho-based chip maker announced July 31 that it has closed the acquisition of the assets of Japan’s bankrupt Elpida Memory by about $2 billion. In a second—and related—transaction, Micron also announced the acquisition of […]

Weathering Hurricanes, Other Disasters: 10 Enterprise Best Practices by Chris Preimesberger Take Care of Employees First and foremost, your employees should know evacuation procedures, including where to meet and whom to contact after an evacuations. Offices also should have a basic emergency supply kit on hand. FEMA’s Website shows what to include in your kit. […]

Virtualization Has Changed Disaster Recovery: 15 Data Points by Chris Preimesberger Basic Protection Easier to Obtain Traditional physical computers have become virtual machine containers—they are essentially files on a disk and fully abstracted from the physical hardware layer. Because we are no longer dealing with complex things like complete volumes, system states and boot sectors, […]

The data center trend around buying converged infrastructure — preintegrated/prevalidated stacks of computing, storage and networking hardware and software — isn’t just a meeting topic any more. It’s become a line item in budgets and now has its own projected marketshare reports. Technology Business Research’s Converged Infrastructure Landscape Report came out July 31 with the […]

Yahoo made a move toward the small-business sector July 31 by acquiring four-year-old Web services provider Lexity, founded by one of its former employees, Amit Kumar. Terms of the transaction were not released. When the deal closes, Lexity will become the 19th company acquired by Yahoo since Marissa Mayer became CEO a year ago. Lexity […]