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Today’s topics include Oracle’s latest legal dispute with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, ownCloud’s discontinuation of its U.S. operations, Windows’ release of a mobile build of Windows 10 that allows Cortana-based interactions between smartphones and PCs and AMD’s unveiling of its latest generation of APUs for PCs.
Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010 opened a lot of doors for the enterprise applications vendor, but the deal has led Oracle into the courtroom. Soon after buying Sun in 2010, Oracle sued Google, claiming the search giant violated copyright laws when it used some 11,000 lines of Java code in its Android mobile operating system. After six years of litigation, in which Oracle officials said they planned to ask for $9.3 billion in damages, a federal district court jury in San Francisco on May 26 ruled in favor of Google, handing Oracle a stunning defeat.
Just days after that ruling, Oracle found itself back in court. This time, however, it was with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. HPE officials are seeking $3 billion in damages resulting from Oracle’s threat in 2011 to discontinue supporting Intel’s Itanium chip platform with its database technologies.
Open-source cloud file storage, sharing and synchronization vendor ownCloud Inc. is shutting down in the United States amid internal turmoil. At the same time, Frank Karlitschek, founder of the ownCloud project, is forking the code to create a new company called Nextcloud. Karlitschek started the ownCloud project in 2010 to enable users to set up their own cloud storage services in a manner similar to what Dropbox enables. In 2011, ownCloud Inc. was formed with the support of Karlitschek and CEO Markus Rex, in a bid to build a business around the ownCloud technology.
Microsoft released Windows 10 Mobile build 14356 to the Windows Insider fast ring last week, allowing participants in the early-access program to test some of Cortana’s new cross-device capabilities.
“Cortana will now surface your phone notifications and critical alerts, including messages from messaging services, SMS or social media as well as missed calls from any Windows 10 phone or Android device, to your PC, so you never miss a beat while staying focused on your PC,” announced Dona Sarkar, the new head of the Windows Insider Program.
Build 14356 is an early step in enabling seamless Cortana-based interactions between Windows 10 smartphones and PCs.
Advanced Micro Devices and Intel both came to the Computex 2016 show last week in Taipei, Taiwan, with the PC in mind despite efforts to grow their respective businesses in emerging areas in hopes of reducing their dependence on the contracting market.
Officials with both chip makers said that despite several years of declines in PC shipments globally, the systems are still core to what they do now and their roadmaps for the future. For their part, AMD officials came equipped with a full lineup of the company’s 7th-generation A-Series chips, which they said bring significant performance and power efficiency improvements over their “Kaveri” predecessors and can challenge Intel’s Core processors in the PC space.