AIO Blog

Texas hospitals that are IT savvy save more lives, study shows

Tina Gasperson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:51:22 +0000

Ruben Amarasingham, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, conducted a study that queried 41 Texas hospitals about their use of technology. The study looked at physicians’ interaction with IT systems and followed 167,233 patients with statistics about in-hospital deaths, complications, costs, and length of stay.

According to a report at ModernMedicine.com, the patients whose doctors made use of database records were more likely not to die in the hospital, and less likely to suffer from complications. In addition, the more involved doctors were with information technology overalls, the lower the hospitals’ costs were. Read more at ModernMedicine.com.

Egypt is poised to become the next IT outsourcing Mecca

Tina Gasperson — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 03:26:26 +0000

Dr. Tarek El-Sadany, Senior Advisor to the Minister of Communications & Information Technology of Egypt for Technology Policies, wants to expand Egypt’s IT industry. He says that Egypt is a great choice for both European countries and the United States: Egypt is GMT +2, so it’s convenient for Europe, and Egypt is closer than India to the United States. And did you know that Egypt doesn’t observe the traditional “weekend” that Americans do? Instead, Egyptian workers stay home on Thursday and Friday, which means finding people to staff call centers on the weekend is not a problem.

For a long time, Egypt wasn’t even on the radar for IT outsourcing. But recently, it made Gartner’s top 30 list of countries best suited to providing outsourcing services. Egypt is marketing itself aggressively, and big US companies are starting to sit up and take notice: Intel has announced it will open offices in Egypt.

VMworld keynote sings praises of virtualization

Tina Gasperson — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 05:26:30 +0000

At this year’s VMworld Europe keynote address, VMware CTO Stephen Herrod says that one day, thousands of virtual machines will be manageable through one management console. Herrod hopes that day won’t be too far off, what with virtual machines these days being tapped with four virtual CPUs, up to 64 GB of RAM, and 9 Gbps of bandwidth.

Harrod says that machines using up to 8 CPUs should be commonplace in the near future. Still, if you’re not convinced yet that virtualization is the norm for coming years, perhaps nothing will move you.

VMware talks about vSphere operating system

Tina Gasperson — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:07:37 +0000

Cloud computing

VMworld Europe is in full swing, and VMware is taking the opportunity to talk to its captive audience about vSphere, the virtualization operating system that’s making competitors out of companies like Microsoft and Red Hat.

VMware CEO Paul Maritz said “Our customers want the plumbing to disappear – in the datacenter, on the desktop and in the cloud – so they can focus their staff time and IT budget on delivering business value. They want cloud-like services so they can act as hosting providers to their internal customers….. The VMware vSphere generation of products, which are currently in development, will be a new class of software that delivers on this strategy. And, as customers become cloud-enabled, they will have the flexibility to securely and efficiently expand their internal clouds to tap the resources offered by external service providers through our VMware vCloud Initiative.”

If everything goes as it should, vSphere will stop being vaporware by the end of the year.

Satyam fires its auditor, Price-Waterhouse

Tina Gasperson — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:56:55 +0000

In a brow-furrowing turn of events, troubled outsourcer Satyam has asked the government to allow it to dismiss its auditor Price-Waterhouse and the government has given permission. Price-Waterhouse had been checking on Satyam for over eight years, but stepped aside recently when asked to do so by the new government appointed board of Satyam, which got into trouble for book-cooking and false profit inflation. The problem is that because the fraud went on for so long without detection, PW is now coming under scrutiny on the chance that it had some kind of role in the fraud. In fact, to date, two Price-Waterhouse staffers have been arrested, according to information published in the International Business Times. Meanwhile, according to the report, life goes on for Satyam. “Satyam’s government-appointed board said it had bagged fresh purchase orders and work extensions to the tune of $250 million since January 7, including a single order of $50 million,” the report states.

Motley Fool: VMware one of the US “top growth stocks” to watch

Tina Gasperson — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:39:09 +0000

Motley Fool columnist Matt Koppenheffer has named VMware one of his picks for top growth stocks. “They’re exciting, they have good stories, and they can make you a lot of money,” he writes regarding his affinity for growth stocks. However, he adds, “growth stocks are also the prima donnas of the market. They can be erratic, they don’t always live up to their billing, and they tend to attract a shareholder base that’s ready and willing to run at the first signs of slowdown. For those reasons, caution is certainly in order when you enter the world of growth investing.”

VMware is deserving of this title because of its reputation for helping companies save money through virtualization. Koppenheffer says that even though VMware stock has dropped like everything else, it was still up 40% in the fourth quarter of 2008, which is pretty darned good growth even in a good economy. Huzzah!

Satyam is to be sold

Tina Gasperson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:45:24 +0000

The Indian government has approved a request from the new board of Satyam that the company be sold to the highest bidder, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Satyam’s board has already received several bids from suitors interested in purchasing the beleaguered outsourcing company, including Tech Mahindra Ltd, B.K. Modi’s Spice group, the Hinduja Group, and Larsen and Toubro Ltd., which according to the WSJ already has 12% ownership in the company. This ownership doesn’t afford Larsen and Toubro any distinct advantage in purchasing Satyam, though, since all bidders must start on level ground, according to the law.

Red Hat and Microsoft team up to fight VMware

Tina Gasperson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:00:44 +0000

In a classic “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” move, natural enemies Red Hat and Microsoft are calling a truce long enough to reluctantly concede that yes, virtualization is here to stay, and yes, companies want to be able to run lots of different types operating systems all at the same time, and in fact they demand to do so, thanks to virtualization premier VMware. To compete better, Red Hat and Microsoft have agreed to test and validate each others’ operating systems when running in a virtual environment (such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V). Red Hat has joined the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation program, and Microsoft has become a Red Hat partner for virtualisation interoperability and support.

Merrill Lynch dumps Satyam for TCS

Tina Gasperson — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:38:47 +0000

The Economic Times of India (ET) is reporting that big shot Merrill Lynch has had enough of Satyam shenanigans. The $40 million account is moving to another India company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Merrill Lynch is keeping a tiny portion of its Satyam contract, though, and will not terminate the contract completely. Satyam’s chairman Kiran Karnik told ET, “IT companies win and lose contracts all the time. I do not know why the media has to report it all the time.”

Cisco pursues VMware

Tina Gasperson — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:06:08 +0000

Network equipment manufacturer Cisco is looking longingly at VMware and may make an offer to the virtualization company soon, says Reuters. While apparently Cisco has long been enamored of VMware and even went to talks last summer to explore the purchase of VMware’s parent company EMC.

If EMC decides that it could use the cash, it may put VMware on the market which would make it possible for Cisco to bring its desires to fruition. Cisco likes VMware for what it sees as a growth avenue, and who wouldn’t, since virtualization is such a natural fit with cloud computing, a tough economy, and the desire of many companies to “go green.”