September 30, 2008
[update: video added]
I read several stories today (here, here and here to name a few) reporting Microsoft’s CEO “concession”, “change of mind”, “backing away” or “flip flopping” from his last week comments at the Churchill Club about how the Redmond, Wash., company might not be impacted by the financial crisis.
Well it’s all gibberish really. I had a front row seat at the event last week, courtesy of the SAP executive team!, and Ballmer comments still apply inspite of some of the nonsense that has been reported today. Here’s what Ballmer really said in Silicon Valley last week:
“Our industry is not immune in what goes on in the global economy. There’s no question about that. And yet as I travel and talk to people in the industry, in the tech side, in the telecom side. I would say given the current circumstances people still see a certain buoyancy in the market. Part of that comes from the fact the U.S. is harder hit than other parts of the world. The market is global. Some of that probably comes from the fact that consumer side of the market has been less hard hit so far than business side. Part of it comes from the fact that nobody is quite sure about bad the fall out will be either from the credit crisis or from the improve situation whatever it may look like as a consequence of the bailout…
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Posted by TechPulse 360
September 30, 2008
Hatchet Is Falling
It is not just Wall Street and over stretch homeowners who are feeling the brunt of the market crash of 2008. Venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are sharing the pain.
Venture-funded startups generated just $4.57 billion from IPOs, and mergers and acquisitions in the third quarter, a drop of 66 percent from a year ago, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
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Leave a Comment » | computers, life-science, news, software, venture capital | Tagged: IPO, M&A, Market Crash of 2008, venture capital | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
September 30, 2008
Warner Bros
In a sign of things to come, a major Hollywood movie studio decided Tuesday the Internet is a better place to distribute movies than DVD.
Warner Bros. said its video-on-demand releases would be available two weeks ahead of DVDs. Of course, this is in Korea, where networks are many times faster than in the pokey U.S.
(U.S. network speeds have lost ground to many developed nations during the 8 years of the Bush Administration. But this is another story.)
Typically movies hit the theater before rental shops, DVDs and video-on-demand.
The studio said it would kick off a test in coming weeks. “Korea is the ideal market for us to expand our digital distribution strategy,” said Thomas Gewecke, president of digital distribution. More than 94 percent of Korean households have broadband.
1 Comment | news, web 2.0 | Tagged: Korea, Video-On-Demand, Warner | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
September 30, 2008
Virtualization was one of the main topics discussed this morning at AMD’s “Shanghai” media briefing in San Francisco.
First, was the key issue of moving virtual machines using VMware’s VMotion administration tool between AMD and Intel servers. Unable to do so, companies will then have to decide very early on whether to choose between AMD or Intel hardware platforms.
“It’s possible but under certain conditions [AMD promised to "get back to us" with more details. Comments Margareth?]. But there are also issues in moving virtual machines from Intel to Intel servers”, said AMD’s server and workstation division general manager, Patrick Patla.
AMD’s executive also confirmed that virtualization and virtualized I/O was the #1 driver for the company’s push into the server chipset business. Effectively competing with partners like Broadcom or Nvidia that had so far supplied the chipsets for AMD’s server processors.
“Virtualization is now in our DNA and when we do silicon design or we’re thinking of enhancements we always think about what we can do for virtualization
… We need it [the chipset] to make sure that it’s done right, that we bring the feature [virtualized I/O] to market when we think it needs to be there”, explains Patla.
Leave a Comment » | chips, news | Tagged: AMD, broadcom, Intel, nvidia, opteron, patla, virtualization, vmware | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360
September 30, 2008
AMD "Shanghai" media briefing
In a briefing this morning in San Francisco, Patrick Patla, the new general manager of AMD’s server and workstation division, confirmed that the Silicon Valley company is already shipping the latest iteration of its Opteron server processor dubbed “Shanghai”. The “standard” Shanghai chip will be in OEM machines by year end, but the faster and more power efficient ones will ship in the first quarter of next year.
“It’s going to be 35% more power efficient than the current generation. It has more memory cache and a faster communications bus [HyperTransport version 3]“, explained Patla.
The fact that AMD is shipping Shanghai earlier also means that there will only be 6 months at most between the current generation of Opteron and the next one. That tells you how screwed up the Barcelona launch was, leaving AMD less than 6 months to recoup its investment versus the usual year or so.
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Leave a Comment » | chips, news | Tagged: AMD, barcelona, Intel, nehalem, opteron, patla, server, shanghai, xeon | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360
September 30, 2008
Patrick Patla, General Manager Server & Workstation Division, AMD
It seems AMD learned its lesson well from the fail launch of its last major Opteron server chip dubbed “Barcelona” last year. The chipmaker subsequently revamped the way it now tests its chips.
Barcelona was announced last September in great fanfare at the Lucasfilm Studios in San Francisco, but because of a serious “errata” flaw, AMD only shipped it in volume only by the end of Q1 of this year.
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Posted by TechPulse 360
September 30, 2008
Isilon
The prevailing wisdom has been that most young Washington State technology companies orbit around Microsoft.
Their management teams might have migrated from the software giant. Their products were often tied to the software that drives Microsoft’s business. This is clearly no longer the case.
Here are several companies from the top of the Deloitte’s Fast 50 for Washington State technology companies. The list includes technology, media, telecommunications and life-science firms ranked by revenue growth over the past five years. The businesses had to have revenue of at least $5 million in 2007.
One to 10 are: Isilon Systems (6,783 percent growth); Talyst (5,361 percent growth); nLight (3,182 percent growth); Insitu (2,999 percent growth); Attenex (2,725 percent growth); Valve (1,976 percent growth); Impinj (1,888 percent growth); Intelius (1,566 percent growth); Next IT (1,478 percent growth); Dexterra (1,355 percent growth).
Leave a Comment » | computers, life-science | Tagged: Microsoft, Washington State | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
September 29, 2008
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia is in Silicon Valley this week!
At tomorrow’s Churchill Club event, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer calls him OPK!) will not be short of topics to discuss with Wall-Street Journal columnist, Walt Mossberg.
The Nokia CEO (pictured) chose indeed one hell of a week for the Finnish cell phone maker to make his tour in Silicon Valley.
First, amid a weak global economy and competitors slashing prices, experts have raised doubts that Nokia would be able to maintain its market share and hit profit-margin targets expected for this year.
Second, the Nordic company announced today that it is spinning off its firewall/VPN security appliances business unit located in Silicon Valley – throught the acquisition of Ipsilon Networks 11 years ago for $140 million – refocusing the Nokia For Business division squarely at mobility solutions. Funny enough, it was “OPK”, then VP of Nokia Americas that spearheaded the acquisition!
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7 Comments | news, wireless | Tagged: checkpoint, firewall, nokia, push email | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360
September 29, 2008
Now in Baltimore
The WiMax commercial experiment in the U.S. begins.
Sprint Nextel’s XOHM unit announced Monday that it had launched its first wireless metropolitan network based on the WiMax technology in Baltimore.
It also unveiled monthly and weekly subscription plans that unburden users from annual long-term contracts.
WiMax has long been the brainchild of Intel. The chip maker fell in love with the technology for its broadband speeds and the ability of its network to extend for miles, or well beyond the limits of the WiFi used today in laptops. Intel expects to soon to begin installing WiMax chips in its laptop chipsets so the data-communications technology will become built into computers of the future.
However, networks have been slow to rollout. Some exist abroad, such as in Pakistan. But Sprint’s announcement represents a milestone in the U.S. Computer users who buy a WiMax modem for their current machines will be able to pay $10 for a day pass, $25 for a monthly home pass and $30 for monthly roaming service. They should expect download speeds of 2 to 4 MBPS., Sprint said.
Sprint’s XOHM unit expects to combine with WiMax service provider Clearwire in the fourth quarter.
1 Comment | news, wireless | Tagged: Clearwire, Intel, Sprint, WiMax, xohm | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
September 29, 2008
Nokia's Rumored Touch-Screen Phone
Apple’s iTunes will keep its shine.
Nokia launched its 12th online music store on Monday – a facility in Spain – but getting there, or to any of the stores, was impossible.
The Web address Nokia provided brought up a nearly blank page with the statement: “Sorry you missed us. We are currently working on the store and it will be back online shortly.
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3 Comments | news, web 2.0 | Tagged: Apple, nokia, Online Music | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
