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Today’s topics include Oracle’s release of its largest ever security patch, Blackberry CEO’s explanation as to why the company doesn’t try to regain some of the huge share of smartphone market his company has lost, EMC’s shareholders vote overwhelmingly to approve Dell’s $60 billion buyout of the company, and the preview of Microsoft’s new video streaming service.
Some patch updates are larger than others, a lot larger. Such is the case with Oracle’s July Critical Patch Update, which tackles a whopping 276 vulnerabilities across multiple Oracle software products.
Oracle has had a quarterly patch cycle for its software portfolio since 2004. The list of patches has gotten considerably longer as Oracle acquired new companies, including Sun Microsystems in 2010.
Yet, during the 12 years of Oracle software updates, there have never been as many vulnerabilities patched as there are now in the July 2016 update. In April 2006, Oracle’s CPU patched a meager 36 vulnerabilities, while the most recent patch update in April 2016 fixed 136 flaws.
BlackBerry CEO and executive chairman John Chen couldn’t have made it clearer: His company doesn’t worry about its smartphone market share anymore because such statistics are not relevant to BlackBerry’s identity as a security software business.
In a Q&A interview with reporters at the third annual BlackBerry Security Summit in New York, Chen said that even as his company now gets most of its sales and revenue from software rather than mobile hardware as it did in its past, smartphones will continue to be part of its offerings until there are no more reasons to sell them.
A whopping 98 percent of EMC shareholders holding 74 percent of the outstanding shares voted “yes” July 19 for the world’s largest storage company to accept a buyout offer from Dell.
The $60 billion deal, originally announced at $67 billion Oct. 12 and finalized in a vote that took only 12 minutes, is the largest so far in the technology space.
All the necessary ownership parties are now in accord. However, a few pieces of red tape remain. The main obstacle is securing regulatory approval from China—a task that has proved a challenge for some other technology deals previously.
However, EMC said the deal is expected to be completed within the initially declared time frame sometime around the fall.
Microsoft wants businesses to upload, share and search for videos with the same ease that consumers distribute and consume content on YouTube and similar platforms.
On July 19, the company kicked off a free preview of its Microsoft Stream service. “Starting today, anyone with a business email address can sign up for the preview in seconds and begin uploading, sharing and tagging videos in their organization,” James Phillips, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Products group, said in a July 18 announcement.
“By taking the ‘work’ out of managing video storage and security, Microsoft Stream enables organizations and their employees to communicate and collaborate with video more easily.”