Tag Archives: hardware

Hyperconverged Appliances Are The Next Front For Control Of Enterprise Data Centers

By | February 21, 2016
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A version of this column was originally published on Diginomica as EMC-VMware, Nutanix Battle For Enterprise Virtualization Platform Supremacy Vendors and analysis regularly wax enthusiastic about the cloud, and for good reason when you consider the phenomenal growth rates at AWS and Microsoft Azure. Yet most enterprise workloads still run on internal systems. Indeed, spending on public cloud… Read More »

Intel CES Keynote Is Long On Disjointed Ideas, But Missing A Big Trend: Autos

By | January 11, 2016
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Intel CEO Brian Krzanich had the leadoff spot in the lineup of big name CES 2016 keynotes and used the opportunity to highlight Intel’s work with just about everything except PCs. However, absent from Krzanich’s presentation was any mention of car tech, which is notable since the transformation of cars into self-driving, mobile entertainment centers is a major… Read More »

Nutanix IPO Analysis: Suspect Timing, Significant Risks, But Thriving Business

By | December 30, 2015
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Coming a couple days before Christmas, the timing of Nutanix’s IPO filing, a document that’s undoubtedly been in preparation for months, was more than a little suspect. What was the company trying to hide while everyone else was distracted by holiday festivities? As I detail in this column, a thorough analysis doesn’t uncover any smoking guns or even… Read More »

Picking the Best iPad Pro Keyboard: Apple’s Smart Keyboard Not the Smartest Choice

By | December 5, 2015
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Unless you recently came into an inheritance, or that special someone has been extraordinarily good this year, the iPad Pro is a bit pricey for most holiday gift lists. However for those Apple fans in your life that have already upsized to the Pro, there are plenty of accessories that make nice gifts. For business users and students,… Read More »

Micron Has a Rosy Future, But Faces Bumpy Product Transition

By | August 18, 2015
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Micron Technology provided its view of the memory market, technology trends and company strategy at an analyst conference where executives stressed the company’s R&D investments and product roadmaps designed to exploit changing customer requirements and new memory applications. The company has a thorough understanding of the memory business, a compelling vision and strong product roadmap, however its near-term… Read More »

Intel Sees Future of FPGA-Accelerated Hardware, But it Requires New Software

By | June 9, 2015
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With last week’s big Altera acquisition Intel made an expensive bet on a future of data center hardware that uses significantly more customized designs than today’s monolithic racks of commodity x86 servers. As I wrote at the time, “The only justification for Intel’s move can be its perception of a secular technology shift from commodity processors to custom… Read More »

Intel’s Big Bet: Will Altera Assure Its Dominance Or Waste Its Money?

By | June 3, 2015
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Intel isn’t a company known for being a spendthrift, but it just spent more on Altera than the combined total for all previous acquisitions. Intel isn’t know for placing big bets on anything other than its own R&D and fabs. It’s  acquisition strategy has been more like Apple’s, surgical buys and acqui-hires designed to fill defined technology gaps. Unlike HP,… Read More »

What’s a Personal ‘Computer’? It’s Complicated. Changing Technology and Usage Upset PC Hegemony

By | January 19, 2015
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Every quarter tech watchers and Wall Street traders pour over the latest shipment figures from the big technology analysis firms looking for signs of renewal in the moribund PC business. The latest numbers for Q4 2o14 show an industry coming off the ‘sugar high’ induced by upgrades from Windows XP refugees needing hardware capable of running a modern OS,… Read More »

Intel Still Rules the Cloud: Haswell Puts the Squeeze on ARM’s Server Plans

By | December 9, 2014
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Update: A rewritten and condensed version of this report appeared as a Forbes column, available here. Cloud software stacks, like those used at Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other hyper scale operations, have radically altered how system architects design and build data centers. Out are big, gold-plated integrated hardware systems like fault-tolerant x86 boxes, mainframes and enterprise storage arrays. In… Read More »

Private Clouds Come Down To Earth

By | September 24, 2014
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Intrigued by the concept of a converged infrastructure but worry you lack the expertise to DIY? Big IT vendors see big business building insta-cloud infrastructure  For IT organizations wondering how to actually build a private cloud, my latest report is for you. Plenty of CIOs like the idea of a converged data center but get headaches thinking about the complexity. Even given… Read More »