Today’s topics include new servers from HP and Lenovo, Google’s acquisition of Timeful, confirmation from Apple of a problem involving Apple Watch and wrist tattoos along with a new set of integrated Power System packages from IBM and SAP.
Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo are rolling out new and enhanced high-end servers aimed at compute-intensive workloads such as SAP’s HANA in-memory platform.
The new systems, announced May 5, coincide with Intel’s launch of its latest high-end server chip, the Xeon E7 v3 processor, which officials with the giant chip maker said offers six times the performance of its predecessor and can scale up to 18 cores and 12TB of memory.
Google recently revealed that it acquired Timeful, a vendor of an iOS-only time-management application, for an undisclosed sum. The purchase gives Google access to technology designed to let people organize and schedule daily activities more efficiently.
The software’s key feature is its ability to intelligently suggest times during the day or week for users to accomplish tasks on their to-do lists based on their habits and other scheduled events on their calendar.
Apple is now confirming that some kinds of wrist tattoos can interfere with the sensors on the back of Apple Watches, causing errant watch functions for affected users.
Reports of the problems began in late April just after the April 24 release of the first devices, when some users began reporting their experiences online on various Websites.
The incidents apparently caused Apple to update its online support pages for Apple Watch users on April 29 so the company could add details about possible interference when wearing a Watch on a wrist that is covered with a tattoo.
IBM and SAP tightened up their existing technology partnership with a new set of integrated Power Systems Solutions designed to help clients process volumes of data at high speed for both transactional and analytics workloads.
IBM tested the systems with customers during a trial period last year and today announced a series of Power Systems Solution Editions for the SAP HANA platform. The new Power System packages will enable the latest-generation POWER8 systems to run SAP HANA, allowing clients to quickly deploy the technology on a server platform.
