Specifically, MicroStrategy has certified Hortonworks Data Platform 1.3 with MicroStrategy 9.3.1. Hortonworks will also join MicroStrategy's technology partner program to get access to resources and tech support.

These deals are likely to proliferate as business intelligence and data warehouse vendors are increasingly hooking into Hadoop to connect to big data projects. These partnerships are also landing as Hadoop 2.0 is about to land at the end of June. The new version of Hadoop will have more analytics capabilities and could threaten data warehouse vendors.

Hortonworks said it plans to partner with a number of analytics vendors to connect Hadoop to front end systems. The two parties said they will continue to optimize Hadoop with their software.

The datacenter world has hit an inflection point so sharp that it will demand serious changes for the way IT gets done -- starting with the acceptance that the one-size-fits-all server CPU just won't cut it anymore, according to AMD general manager Andrew Feldman.

Speaking at GigaOm's annual Structure summit on Wednesday morning, Feldman outlined a number of these changes coming, including embracing open source technology.

"We need to invent more efficient servers -- not just the CPUs," said Feldman, "For a long time in this industry, we just sat around for a more efficient processor to come out and put that on a motherboard. Those days are over."

But he started off by demonstrating just how much the datacenter touches each consumer without him or her necessarily realizing it on a daily (if not minute-to-minute) basis.

Feldman instructed each person in the audience to turn off their phone. Whether they did so or not, he explained that this cuts them off from the cloud, quipping that their smartphones and tablets were then just glorified "Angry Birds" players.

"That's the point. What you want to do with that device is get to the cloud," said Feldman.

What is even more interesting, Feldman continued, is that these mobile devices "are very good at displaying the work done elsewhere."

He explained that when you look at the client side of the datacenter it is pushing the demand for compute to datacenter, which enables client side devices to do "anything you want."

"On the client side, it is not about CPU performance," Feldman observed, arguing that by looking at the number of tablets scattered throughout the keynote hall, that's proof of this claim.

Feldman posited that the client side is about interaction, graphics and experience. He suggested that this is why Apple promotes design aspects such as the Retina Display over other internal parts because that has the biggest impact on the experience, driving the product forward.

On the server side, this is creating tremendous change as well.

But Feldman pointed out that starts with not only transforming the machines but also the buildings that house them.

Feldman described that we used to put datacenters near urban environments, but now they're in places such as Eastern Washington and rural Oregon to conserve power in these "extremely engineered buildings."

"The vast majority of the work [the datacenter] is doing is simple, paralyzed work that was generated on the client side," Feldman said, explaining this is what Google, Facebook, and eBay do -- they generate work for servers.

He asserted that work both provides and requires a different kind of server, such as HP's Moonshot or Dell's Viking technologies.

Feldman reiterated that requires a whole number of new machines -- but not the same old architecture.

"We need to invent more efficient servers -- not just the CPUs," said Feldman, "For a long time in this industry, we just sat around for a more efficient processor to come out and put that on a motherboard. Those days are over."

"We know how we're going to get to the rest of the world. We're going to get to them on their phone," Feldman predicted, "But we know the phone doesn't have a ton of compute on it."

Nevertheless, Feldman still noted this requires a new, more efficient processor as we start to match workloads to processor types.

At AMD, Feldman said that the chip maker believes this calls for a single-socket processor. In the future, AMD believes it's going to be an ARM processor.

The growing demand on the datacenter isn't going to stop, with Feldman citing that a third of the global population is already connected to the Internet.

As for the other two thirds?

"We know how we're going to get to the rest of the world. We're going to get to them on their phone," Feldman predicted, "But we know the phone doesn't have a ton of compute on it."

The bottom line, according to Feldman, is that the content will be delivered to the phone wirelessly -- but the work will be done in the datacenter.

Screenshots via GigaOm Structure (Livestream)

Welcome to the new IT world order. Outsourcing used to be in. Now automation and cloud computing may just undo the outsourcing boom of the early 2000s.

One of the likely areas for IBM to cut jobs would be in strategic outsourcing where the Big Blue acquires assets and people from another company and then runs the infrastructure. Those deals, which often feature losses in the early years of an outsourcing agreement, are increasingly risky for IBM. Those deals also happen to be labor intensive.

If IBM is cutting more manual technical positions offshore it's likely a bevy of others — HP, Perot Systems, Accenture etc. — will follow. Why? Offshore outsourcing is cheaper than U.S. labor, but automation, virtualization and orchestration is even cheaper. Why use a human when you can automate? Indian IT companies see the future and are increasingly trying to move up the stack to more high-value tasks. 

Add it up and we may just be starting to see the labor equation shift. IT kills jobs just as much as it creates them. So far, emerging markets have largely used technology to create jobs based on labor arbitrage. Going forward, emerging markets like China and India are going to have to face a stark reality: They will have hundreds of millions of people that will ultimately be automated out of the picture.

• For India, automation and self-healing IT will be a threat.
• For China, all that low-cost labor in technology manufacturing plants could ultimately be completed by robots in the U.S.
• For call center-centric areas, people could be replaced by IBM's Watson.

In any case, you get the idea: Global sourcing of labor was a nice ride. In the future, that labor pool will be automated too.

Related:

• Message received: Taking action on American job loss
• Here's what is really worrying CIOs, right now
• China IT outsourcing to be 'next India'
• Infosys replacing workers with software robots
• Global forces changing rules of India's outsourcing game
• More to India IT outsourcing than cost, scalability

In a blog post on Tuesday, Shim says that although Android tablets are often 7- or 10-inch models, 8-inch tablets represent the best balance between larger smartphones and the tablet PC.

According to the analysis firm, supply chain indications point to the additional production of 8-inch tablet models with 1280 x 800 displays this year. Acer, Asus, Dell and Lenovo are all expected to produce 8-inch variations, and "8-inch tablets will make up between 5 to 10 percent of the total tablet PC market by the end of the year."

The market research firm believes that tablet shipments should see a 67 percent increase year-on-year to 256.5 million units in 2013 from 153.6 million in 2012, whereas PC shipments will decline five percent year-on-year from 214 million units in 2012 to 203 million units in 2013.

DisplaySearch says that as tablet sales strengthen and PC shipments sag, 9-inch and larger tablet models have dominated sales, accounting for 60 percent of shipments in 2012. In 2013, the company estimates that smaller tablets will account for this rate. Tablets equipped with 7 and 7-9 inch screen sizes are expected to take 35 and 15 percent of the market this year respectively.

The 8-inch tablet trend is touted as a means to drive further adoption and entice consumers who want to part with less than $200 per device. In addition, Apple's planned refresh of the iPad Mini in the fourth quarter is believed to be a catalyst for production changes. Shim writes that "Brands are hoping to expand this “middle class,” gaining some share and slightly better margins than 7-inch tablet PCs."

The company is expected to report fiscal fourth quarter earnings of 87 cents a share on revenue of $11.12 billion. Most analysts expect Oracle do well in the fourth quarter or at least meet expectations, but questions about the company's future remain.

Can Oracle fight multiple wars at once? Oracle executives are likely to pooh pooh worries about little things like open source database migration, software as a service vendors and whether hardware will ever bottom, but the company faces more challenges than ever. On the database side, enterprises are moving to open source rivals such as PostgreSQL. On applications, Oracle has the likes of Salesforce and Workday, two companies bulking up their sales teams, along with SAP. As for maintenance, Rimini Street continues to be a threat. "We continue to believe that virtually every product line at Oracle is under increasing competitive pressure and heading into fiscal 14, many historically smaller threats will continue to grow and have an increasingly negative impact on Oracle," said Cowen & Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher.

Hardware and Mark Hurd. Co-president Mark Hurd has been the front man for Oracle's hardware strategy. The problem: Hardware revenue has been trending down since Oracle bought Sun. The company is going to talk Exadata successes, but at some point revenue has to bottom out. It's also unclear whether technology buyers are broadening out pilots of Exadata systems. If not, Hurd could take the blame. After all, Oracle should show some benefits from new server launches. In addition, Hurd is in charge of sales at Oracle. Sales execution has also been lacking.

Cannacord Genuity analyst Richard Davis summed the Hurd and hardware connection up well:

We were quite laudatory when Oracle snagged Hurd from HP. After all, Oracle was pivoting quickly into hardware and the fact was that the firm had no real account relationships on this side of the customer base. We suppose the first sign of trouble was when Oracle kept missing its revenue estimate for hardware (although doing fine on the margin front)... We are now more neutral on the execution of Oracle’s sales management. Indeed, some investors have asked us if Oracle shares would go up if Hurd left. Our answer is “yes” if Oracle misses another quarter, and “no” if the May quarter results indicate that the recent scuffles were simply product transition growing pains.

What is the state of IT spending? Oracle's third quarter was a disappointment, but the company said deals closed late and bled into the third quarter. Oracle also positioned its miscues on internal issues and not the broader economy. Other vendors, however, have noted a slowdown in enterprise demand. Where will Oracle fall this time? Davis noted that IT spending may not be as bleak as forecast and boost Oracle results in upcoming quarters. Wedbush analyst Steve Koenig said:

We continue to see a risk that a difficult macroeconomic climate could impact near-term results. Software vendors have been generally seeing license deceleration in the last several quarters, as enterprise buyers exercise caution in the face of an uncertain U.S. economy and longer-running factors such as the European sovereign debt crisis.

Fusion as revenue driver? A few analysts noted that software demand looked solid for Oracle. That thinking was based on various reseller surveys and channel checks. Koenig noted that he "heard from integrators this quarter that Fusion applications have stabilized and Oracle is winning more HCM deals."

Can Oracle deliver and sell cloud services? Oracle boasts that it has the most cloud applications via acquisitions and internal development, but the company faces a core channel conflict internally. The problem: Oracle's sales army makes more money from hefty licensing and maintenance deals. Cloud deals deliver returns to the company over time. Eliot Colon, president of Miro Consulting and an Oracle licensing , recently noted on a Macquarie conference call that Oracle has put together dedicated cloud sales teams and they're going after smaller accounts. However, Oracle doesn't have its pitch down yet. Colon said:

We’re still seeing proposals going out to clients with software agreements attached to them with also a software rep on tow, then trying to upsell software to go along with a Taleo offering as an example. So we’re still seeing kinks being worked out there. So far we haven’t seen much traction in those offerings at all though because even in the, say, half dozen clients who looked seriously at those offerings in Q4 that we had, not one pulled the trigger.

Speaking at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday, Nvidia chief Jen-Hsun Huang said that he will be introducing a new side to the company's business: graphics technology licensing to other firms.

Licensing will allow Nvidia to further exploit the mobile device market as the company's core PC business slides in favor of tablets and smartphones.

Such licensing deals may potentially also include working in the future with tech giants Apple and Samsung, although the electronics makers are more often using their own processors in smartphones and tablets. In addition, the shift in business model will pit Nvidia against U.K.-based Imagination Technologies, which supplies graphics technology for devices including Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy S4.

Huang commented:

"The bottom line is the world has changed and we're expanding our business model to serve markets that we historically could not serve by selling chips alone. We will target customers where their capacity and desire to build their own application processors is great.

This is a way for us to engage customers who don't like to buy chips because they like to create their own, because they have the capacity, creativity and now the scale to build their own."

Graphics core licenses and visual patent deals are ways to tap markets that cannot currently be reached by the sale of branded chips alone, although this will put Nvidia in competition with rival companies including the much larger Qualcomm. To try and compete with the company, Nvidia recently outlined plans to roll out the 4G LTE processor Tegra 4i, which has kept Nvidia out of the high-end smartphone market dominated by U.S.-based Qualcomm.

Nvidia's Tegra 4i has 60 cores, a quad-core CPU with ARM's R4 Cortex-A9, an integrated modem and better battery life than previous chips.

When asked at the summit if Nvidia could eventually rely solely on royalties and licensing, the chief executive noted:

"I think the shape of companies in the future will look increasingly hybrid. Microsoft licenses software, they sell devices, they have services. All of the above. I think you'll see more and more companies that are like that."

The Rochester, New York-based company said that creditors have agreed to support an offering worth $406 million based on 34 million common shares at $11.94 each. If approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court, then the offering will equate to 85 percent of the company once it leaves Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to Reuters.

"This agreement, which serves as a critical component of the capital structure for the emerging Kodak, positions us to comprehensively settle our obligations with our various key creditor constituencies," Kodak Chief Executive Antonio Perez said in a statement.

Kodak hopes to come out of Chapter 11 in Q3 this year.

The firm entered bankruptcy proceedings which included creditor protection last year amid high pension costs and falling profits after failing to jump in to the digital photography market as quickly as its rivals. Since coming under Chapter 11 (which allows U.S. firms to reorganize business affairs and assets and 'start again' as long as restructuring conditions are met), the photography firm has sold a number of assets to pay off debts.

In April, Kodak announced plans to sell off its Document Imaging unit to printing solutions provider Brother, which will pay roughly $210 million for the division. The business includes scanners, capture software and services aimed at the enterprise market. However, Brother will also assume deferred service revenue liability of $67 million through the transaction.

In January, courts approved the sale of 1,100 Kodak patents to a number of technology giants including Apple, Google and Microsoft. The collection sold for $525 million, a disappointing result based on the portfolio's reported value of $2.5 billion.

Kodak has disclosed plans to remerge as a commercial imaging business while settling with $2.8 billion in claims made by Kodak's largest creditor, the U.K. Kodak Pension Plan.

In a statement, Dish said:

While DISH continues to see strategic value in a merger with Sprint, the decisions made by Sprint to prematurely terminate our due diligence process and accept extreme deal protections in its revised agreement with SoftBank, among other things, have made it impracticable for DISH to submit a revised offer by the June 18th deadline imposed by Sprint. We will consider our options with respect to Sprint, and focus our efforts and resources on completing the Clearwire tender offer.

Last week, a Clearwire committee said it preferred a Dish proposal to take the company over. Softbank sweetened its bid for Sprint to $21.6 billion.

Given the stand off, it's unclear whether Softbank and/or Dish can achieve their synergy projections without Clearwire, which counts Sprint as its largest shareholder. Dish was projecting a unicast vision that revolved around a hybrid network. Needless to say Clearwire played a big role in the LTE mobile network plans for Dish.

Softbank also was hoping Clearwire's LTE network would bolster its master plan for Sprint.

Should Dish get Clearwire and Softbank officially lands Sprint both sides may wind up with a semi-hollow victory just based on wireless spectrum.

More:

• Clearwire committee gives nod to Dish takeover bid over Sprint
• SoftBank sweetens deal for Sprint, offers $21.6 billion
• Dish rejects Sprint law claims over Clearwire deal
• Softbank, Sprint, Clearwire, Dish: Figuring out this merger mess
• Dish and Sprint: Can they really deliver on a 'unicast' vision?
• Softbank as Sprint's savior: What $20.1 billion does, doesn't do

Last week, Google penned an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for the federal agencies to lift a gag order on national security requests, as did a few other tech giants involved in the NSA-PRISM revelations.

The U.S. Government loosened up a bit by letting some companies publish more data about how many requests they have received and how they have been handled.

But Google is pushing the envelope further on Tuesday.

As reported by The Washington Post, Google filed a petition with the FISC, citing the First Amendment protects the internet giant's right to publicly discuss information it has been forced to share with the federal government.

For reference, the FISC was established by U.S. Congress in 1978 as a special federal court to review applications for surveillance warrants related to national security investigations.

Here is a copy of a memo from Mountain View, published to Google+ on Tuesday afternoon, in full:

We have long pushed for transparency so users can better understand the extent to which governments request their data — and Google was the first company to release numbers for National Security Letters. However, greater transparency is needed, so today we have petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow us to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately. Lumping national security requests together with criminal requests — as some companies have been permitted to do — would be a backward step for our users.

For starters, current chief executive officer Mike Olson is stepping down as CEO. But don't worry as he's not leaving the Apache Hadoop software provider.

Instead, Olson will be serving as both chief strategy officer as well as chairman of Cloudera's Board of Directors.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company already has a new CEO lined up: former ArcSight chief Tom Reilly.

Reilly comes to Cloudera from Hewlett-Packard, which acquired the SIEM technology company back in 2010.

Prior to ArcSight, he served as vice president of business information services at IBM, following the acquisition of master data management company, Trigo Technologies Inc., where he was CEO. Reilly is also a board member at Jive Software.

As for Olson, he will be responsible for leading Cloudera's engagement, engineering, and open source leadership strategies in delivering Hadoop solutions to market.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Olson briefly outlined his future role as well as the rationale behind hiring Reilly:

Tom led Arcsight through its IPO to industry leadership in mission-critical, bet-the-business security. He knows the enterprise. He’s a been-there, done-that executive. He’s run very successful enterprise software companies at global scale.

Tom’s appointment as CEO allows me to concentrate my time with key constituents: Our product and engineering teams, our partners, our sales force, our customer-facing technical teams and – most importantly – our customers themselves.

Both placements are effective on Monday, July 8.

The software giant posted a second quarter net income of $76.5 million, or 15 cents per share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 36 cents a share on a revenue of $1.011 billion.

Wall Street expected Adobe to report first quarter earnings of 34 cents a share on revenue of $1.01 billion.

While the big focus last quarter was the Creative Cloud software unit as a whole, Adobe is touting record figures for its Digital Publishing Suite in particular this time.

The San Jose-headquartered company also revealed on Tuesday afternoon that there have been more than 100 million digital downloads of digital content made with the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite in two years.

That includes magazines, newspapers, apps and other digital content from the likes of Hearst, Time Inc., Renault, Sotheby's and U.S. Soccer.

Pointing towards the growth of the tablet market as a key driver, Adobe added that the number of brands using the DPS for mobile marketing especially has surged by 30 percent during the last six months alone.

CEO Shantanu Narayen reflected on the digital publishing stats in prepared remarks:

Our Q2 results reflect our leadership position in Digital Media and Digital Marketing. Creative Cloud is revolutionizing the creative process, and Adobe Marketing Cloud is quickly becoming the platform of choice for the world's leading brands, advertising agencies and media companies.

While it didn't hog the spotlight this time, the Creative Cloud was still a highlight on the second quarter report.

Adobe ended the quarter with approximately 700,000 paid subscriptions, up from just under 500,000 last quarter. The Marketing Cloud revenue also grew by 25 percent to $229.6 million.

For the outlook, analysts aren't raising the forecast too much. Wall Street is expecting a third quarter revenue of $1.01 billion again with slightly higher earnings of 35 cents per share.

Adobe is taking more liberties with its outlook, aiming for revenue within the range of $975 million to $1.25 billion with non-GAAP earnings of 29 to 35 cents a share.

For fiscal 2013, Adobe is projecting an annual revenue of roughly $4.1 billion with earnings of $1.45 per share.

Company execs are also promising to continue adding more Creative Cloud subscriptions, although they have not published any exact estimates or goals yet.

UPDATED: During the quarterly conference call with analysts and investors on Tuesday, Narayen touched a bit more on the Creative Cloud, offering a glimpse at the customer feedback generated by Adobe's jump from the desktop:

Since we launched Creative Cloud, the overwhelming majority of customers buying on Adobe.com have selected Creative Cloud rather than CS6. Customer satisfaction rates are high, and the top reasons customers site for their love of Creative Cloud [include] having access to everything in the product portfolio enabling them to try new tools and build new skills, always being up-to-date with latest features and capabilities, and the affordable monthly membership fee. These benefits are compelling to our existing customer base and are helping us achieve our goal of bringing in new customers.

Our decision to discontinue perpetual licensing of new versions of our desktop products has caused concern with some customers. While we will still continue to offer CS6 on a perpetual basis, the feedback from our community is important, and we are evaluating additional options that will help them with the transition. Our goal is to over-deliver on customer expectations, which we believe will make the entire community ultimately embrace Creative Cloud.

Slides via Adobe Investor Relations

Dell's plans to revert to being a private company has been stalled once again.

American business magnate and Dell investor Carl Icahn has proposed a new alternative that could derail another potential plan spearheaded by the company's founder and CEO Michael Dell.

According to Icahn's new proposal, the financier is pressing for the company to now offer $14 for each of its approximately 1.1 billion shares.

As of June 5, the Round Rock, Texas-based corporation had two options on the table:

• An all cash deal from Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners for $13.65 per share
• An alternative from Icahn that leverages the company to pay a $12 special dividend

To recall, Blackstone was previously involved in the mix but later dropped out amid the global PC market meltdown.

Icahn's ongoing plan to prevent Dell from going private has long been supported by Southeastern Asset Management Inc., one of the largest Dell shareholders.

But he might have another major ally now too.

In a letter to Dell shareholders this week, Icahn asserted that he also had support from another large investment bank -- without revealing any names.

CNBC reported via Twitter on Tuesday that banking firm is Jefferies.

ALERT: Jefferies is "major bank" mentioned by Icahn in letter to shareholders - Source to CNBC

— CNBC (@CNBC) June 18, 2013

UPDATE: Reiterating its stance against Icahn's proposal earlier this month, Dell's special committee has reportedly rebuffed the new $14-per-share idea.

The group is sticking by its original $13.65 deal for now.

via Bloomberg

Huawei would consider snapping up Nokia, which could help it boost its smartphone gains in Europe and the U.S., a company executive said on Tuesday.

According to the Financial Times of London (paywall), Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's consumer business group, said at the launch of its latest smartphone offering, the Ascend P6, in London: "We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia."

"We are open minded," Yu told reporters.

Read this

BlackBerry, Nokia: Recovering or collapsing? By the numbers

• Read more

Nokia would have to be a willing participant in a buyout discussion, but its remains mum on whether or not its even in discussions with Huawei, or any other company for that matter. A Nokia spokesperson said the company "does not comment on market speculation."

Or, should Huawei consider a hostile takeover, it could bypass the need for the Chinese phone maker to deal with the pesky problem of Nokia's stubborn management. Nokia shareholders are getting twitchy over the company's Windows Phone strategy — ergo, it's entire strategy moving forward. If Huawei goes straight to Nokia shareholders, they could take the offer and run while the Finnish phone maker is still afloat.

Currently, Huawei has a burgeoning base of users in China, taking the third slot in the Chinese volume shipment space behind Samsung and Apple, but it wants to move away from feature phones into the smartphone space. And no better candidate than ailing smartphone maker Nokia, which has its range of high-quality Lumia smartphones that just aren't selling as well as they could be.

Based on comments to the London-based publication, Yu hinted that should Nokia succumb to a buyout deal, Huawei might ditch Windows Phone altogether in favor of "free" Android.

It comes after at least a year of speculation on who might buy Nokia. From Intel to Microsoft, even Lenovo at one point, based on comments made by Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop that he is sticking to his guns, at least with its Windows Phone strategy. Whether or not that extends to being bailed out by another company remains unclear.

Shares in Nokia (according to Barrons.

BlackBerry ($BBRY) was also up by 4 percent on the news, considering the firm has yet to pick itself up from the floor of the boxing ring, after having ten bells kicked out of it by the rival smartphone market, and could also be a suitable acquisition target for Huawei.

We've put in questions to Huawei but did not hear back at the time of writing.

Layoffs have been front and center as an IBM employee concern since April. IBM reported a disappointing first quarter and said it would move quickly to preserve profit margins and hit its earnings target. "By taking the bulk of our workforce rebalancing actions in the second quarter, we'll start to get the benefits from those actions earlier in the second half," said CFO Mark Loughridge. Typically, IBM has cut workers throughout the year.

Given it's June 18 and the quarter ends June 30, unions seeking to represent IBM workers are noting layoffs. Specifically, the Communications Workers of America have tallied 3,000 cuts and are keeping a running tab of units affected. We're getting numerous reports that IBM is cutting more workers than expected and global business services is a big target. The problem is that IBM employees don't have confirmation on the number of job cuts and whether there are 6,000 cuts or 12,000.

Needless to say the stress levels are rising among the IBM rank and file. An IBM spokesman said that the company's core competency and strength is transformation and that it needs to "remix our skills" to focus on segments such as social business, mobile, cloud and big data. IBM won't comment on specific restructuring numbers or percentage of workforce being trimmed. IT buyers need to monitor the situation given employee morale often affects delivery. 

IBM's full statement:

IBM is investing in growth areas for the future: big data, cloud computing, social business and the growing mobile computing opportunity. The company has always invested in transformational areas, and as a result, we need to remix our skills so IBM can lead in these higher-value segments in both emerging markets and in more mature economies.

Change is constant in the technology industry and transformation is an essential feature of our business model. Consequently, some level of workforce remix is a constant requirement for our business. Given the competitive nature of our industry, we do not publicly discuss the details of staffing plans.

One thing is clear: IBM is looking to rebalance its business away from weak businesses and markets that don't hold a long-term payoff. Shortly after IBM's quarterly results, reports surfaced that Lenovo was interested in buying Big Blue's commodity server business. That move would free IBM to focus on higher-end integrated systems designed for cloud computing, analytics and big data.

IT jobs: A specialist economy or reign of the polymath?

It's possible that IBM would need to pare down its server unit before Lenovo was really serious about a purchase. Other likely areas for IBM to cut would be in strategic outsourcing where the Big Blue acquires assets and people from another company and then runs the infrastructure. Those deals, which often feature losses in the early years of an outsourcing agreement, are increasingly risky for IBM. Many of these job cuts would be overseas as well as in the U.S. For instance, Europe, Middle East and Africa workers are likely to get hit, IBM employees are saying.

In other words, IBM's cuts appear to be going beyond the usual sales, marketing and distribution targets.

The bottom line is that many IT jobs can be automated away and IBM is most likely looking to keep architects and cut data center integration and migration labor. As IBM moves more into cloud, analytics and big data it needs fewer workers---or at least a different type of employee.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Big data is growing at a pace that might scare off some global businesses (even within the technology sector), but General Electric executives pointed the multi-billion dollar opportunity here.

See also: EMC's Pivotal Initiative takes off with enterprise PaaS debut | EMC's Pivotal Initiative launches: Now comes the execution part | EMC's Q1 falls short, customers cautious on IT spending

Thus, in partnership with Amazon Web Services, Accenture, and EMC's Pivotal initiative, GE has introduced what it is boasting as the first data analytics platform that can manage large-scale industrial machines in the cloud.

Enter the Industrial Internet, which GE executives described as a "cloud agnostic" platform that provides industrial operators with a common architecture for linking up smart machines, sensors and analytics.

Stressing the need to tackle big data before it gets out of control (if it hasn't already), Bill Ruh, vice president of GE's Global Software Center, cited research from the Wikibon Project during a media presentation on Tuesday that 90 percent of the data in the world today was created within the last two years.

Ruh added that industrial data, in particular, is growing two times faster than data in any segment of industry.

He added that industrial data, in particular, is growing two times faster than data in any segment of industry.

"That's a great opportunity," posited Ruh, "That tells us our ability to generate data is going to increase substantially to capture that power of one."

Ruh highlighted the biggest opportunity here: Technology spend is expected to reach at least $514 million by 2020.

GE is also touting that the value of the Industrial Internet scheme will reach nearly $1.3 trillion by that year too.

Pivotal CEO Paul Maritz described that, historically-speaking, most of the innovation in information technology has been planted in the financial services industry, adding that it wasn't until the last 10 years when the shift has been pushed by "consumer Internet giants."

Maritz argued that now we're seeing innovation sprout up more in the industrial space, which he said is taking data to "a whole new level."

"It's not just about recognizing insights in the data. At the end of the day, it's about automation," Maritz said.

"It's not just about recognizing insights in the data. At the end of the day, it's about automation," Maritz said.

Like many other big data schemes that have debuted in the last few months (including from partner EMC), GE is tapping into the Hadoop open source frame work for running the Industrial Internet cloud operations.

Dubbed Proficy Historian HD, the management software is the backbone for this platform by maintaining machine-to-machine operations with a predictive (rather than reactive) approach to data management.

However, with enterprise clientele in mind, GE asserted that the software offers a secure, closed-loop architecture.

Again, GE won't be doing all of this alone. Here's the game plan:

• Amazon Web Services has been enlisted as the first cloud provider for the Industrial Internet platform. It will run on the AWS public cloud.
• Accenture will develop analytics applications for the data churned out by Industrial Internet solutions.
• Pivotal will be responsible for helping deliver these solutions to market through its Hadoop, Cloud Foundry, and in-memory technologies.

"Public clouds will play an important part in the delivery of these capabilities," Ruh remarked.

Promising results in real-time (or at "millisecond" rates) , GE is targeting global industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, energy, aviation and other transportation agencies with this offering.

Arguably the easiest (and maybe best) way to get the attention of everyone from chief supply chain officers to the CEO is proving the dollar value the cloud can offer.

Thus, much of IBM's new suite of products focus on social media, big data, and how the two work together to improve business results.

To get this done, IBM is already tapping into the resources that came with its recent acquisition of on-demand cloud hosting firm SoftLayer.

With a deal that was said to be worth roughly $2 billion, SoftLayer will be operating both as a standalone unit but also closely in conjunction with IBM's SmartCloud unit.

The cloud suites for the C-level executives fall under the SmartCloud umbrella.

A full list of the new services is available from IBM. Products range from internal housekeeping measures around human resources recruitment (in line with IBM's Smarter Workforce initiative) to CRM tools tapping into IBM's Watson supercomputer.

IBM is especially reaching out to chief marketing officers, many of whom are working far more closely with chief information and chief technology officers as social platforms from the likes of IBM, Adobe, Salesforce and others continue to build platforms that bridge the two departments.

Thus, Big Blue is targeting CMOs with its new Social Media Analytics platform that taps into Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social media forums to gain visibility of consumer perception. CMOs can then turn around and refine products for better targeting.

Bradley's new title will be executive vice president of strategic growth initiatives. The move is interesting since Bradley was supposed to meld printing and PCs and find synergies between the two businesses. Both product lines are challenged by slower growth going forward and the PC business has to reinvent to focus on mobility. In HP's second quarter results in May, personal systems sales were down 20 percent and printing fell 1 percent from a year ago. 

Specifically, Bradley, who will report to CEO Meg Whitman, has the following tasks:

1. Grow China, which has been a sore spot for HP in recent quarters.
2. Find "partnership opportunities with early-stage companies" to fuel growth and perhaps pursue a Cisco-ish R&D via acquisition strategy.
3. Develop channel partnerships.

HP is the top PC vendor, but is increasingly challenged by Lenovo on the global front. Bradley, who is familiar with China, needs to challenge Lenovo on its home turf. Lenovo is also moving into servers and storage in China and has a partnership with EMC. In other words, Lenovo and HP will bump heads more in the future.

As for the PC and printer unit, Dion Weisler, senior vice president of the division's Asia Pacific and Japan business, will take over for Bradley. Weisler will report to Whitman. Weisler, who has been with HP since January 2012, had been chief operating officer of Lenovo's mobile and digital home groups. Before Lenovo, Weisler was an exec at Acer.

The connective tissue here is obvious. HP needs a better position in Asia. By moving Bradley to focus on China and Weisler in a role to directly compete with Lenovo, HP is at least putting its executive ducks in a row to make a move in the future.

Jive Software is rolling out what it is describing as its biggest update to its mobile portfolio yet.

While Jive does provide apps for BlackBerry, these upgrades (along with a new mobile SDK) appear to focus primarily on the two biggest mobile operating systems permeating both the consumer and enterprise markets: iOS and Android.

The big focus for these new versions is really to push as much content to mobile devices as possible for actual editing and collaboration rather than just viewing while on the go.

Here's a rundown of what to expect:

• Jive for iPhone 2.0: The upgrade includes a new slide-out side menu, a customizable news feed, and a more intuitive navigation menu for streamlining the Q&A process as well as working in dedicated internal communities with colleagues. On the security side, the iPhone app offers more options for preventing local storage capabilities and the ability to remotely revoke access to network content. The app is also supposed to run 50 percent faster now.
• Jive for iPad: A newbie for Jive, this is another medium for Jive Software users to keep tabs on projects while in transit. Some of the key features include a rich-text editor for making new content (i.e. documents, blog posts, taking notes, etc.) and a visual search filter.
• Jive Present 2.0: Targeted towards field sales teams in particular, this mobile app is designed to set up a link between said teams and content creators. It also offers control over who can read, receive and then share that content with others.

While the iPad version is already available, Present 2.0 for Android is scheduled to debut in July.

Screenshots via Jive Software

Jackson took this approach because he couldn't stand Microsoft. The irony is that many experts over the years believe that had Jackson been allowed to break the company up into "Baby Bills," Microsoft actually would have done better.

Certainly, Microsoft in the last few years has been on a decline and there have been frequent calls to break the company up into more agile, responsive divisions. These plans usually involved dividing it into a desktop and a server side. That wasn't what Jackson had in mind. 

Jackson's plan would have led to two Microsofts. Let's call them Microsoft Blue, which would have stayed in operating systems business and, Microsoft Red, which would have retained Microsoft's software programs and products such as Outlook, Internet Explorer, Office, and the Microsoft Network (MSN).

In this alternative reality, Blue would have been forced to be more efficient. I doubt we would have seen operating system flops such as Vista and Windows 8. Blue couldn't afford such blunders. They would have to have listened to their customers more closely.

At the same time, since Blue's entire focus would have been on operating systems, Blue would have been more innovative and more aggressive about supporting its new inventions. So, instead of Apple creating the mass-market tablet with the iPad in April 2010, perhaps Blue would have started it with the Haiku. In the real world of tablets, Microsoft lags far behind Google's Android and Apple's iPad.

On the desktop Blue would probably still dominate, but Apple with Mac OS X probably would have a larger market share, say low double digits. I suspect other alternatives, such as Ubuntu Linux, would also have a bigger share of the market, say two or three Linux distributions with single digit marker-shares. Or, perhaps Red Hat could have gained a significant business desktop market share with Red Hat Enterprise Desktop. 

I think Red would have had a more difficult path. Blocked from working hand-in-glove with Blue, programs like Microsoft Office would have had a far harder time remaining the default office application. Software such as Lotus SmartSuite, OpenOffice, and WordPerfect would have had a real shot at remaining viable office programs. 

IE, on the other hand, had already beaten Netscape into the ground by the time the courts ruled against Microsoft. I'm sure IE  would have continued to be the dominant Web browser. Netscape might have made able to stage a comeback. Had it done so, though, Firefox -- which was built from Netscape's code -- might not exist at all. 

Without Firefox to spur Web browser innovation, I find it very hard to see how the Web browser wars for the last ten years would have worked out. There would have been others, but instead of Firefox and Chrome being IE's main contenders, perhaps it would have been Opera and Safari. 

Still, Red would have had  a far harder time of it on the desktop since it could no longer be developed in sync with Windows. Red would have had to work harder on back-office programs and servers. As it happens, I've long thought that Microsoft produced far better back-end products than end-user programs so I'm not sure how much better they could have done. I suspect that they would have been more open to alternatives.

What do I mean by that? Well, today, Microsoft has finally gotten more open-source friendly than it would have.

For example, on Azure, its cloud platform, you can run Ubuntu, CentOS, and SUSE Linux. It took years, but they're in there. But, Red might well have embraced Linux and open-source software far earlier. For example, I could easily imagine Active Directory being made available as a service on Linux by as early as 2003. After that, who knows...

Like Blue, Red would also been forced to be more innovative. Perhaps instead of being a follower in cloud and search technologies, Microsoft might have been a leader.

Presuming that Gates and Ballmer would have stayed with Windows and Microsoft Blue, perhaps Red would have been more forceful with Internet and Web innovations and acquisitions. Say, for example, that Red would have brought Yahoo. In this Mirror, Mirror world, the stumbling blocks that tripped this deal would no longer exist.

So, in this other world some sample ZDNet headlines for June 2013 might read:

Windows 8's great reviews leads it to commanding lead over latest Mac OS X
Torvalds introduces Microsoft Red Linux Server
Microsoft Red Web Services Cloud beats Amazon again
Microhoo strong number two in Web search
New Apple iPad almost as good as MSFT Blue Haiku 5

I find it all too easy to see a world where Microsoft would actually have been better off if Gates and friends had simply let the company be broken up into more manageable and agile companies than the stumbling dinosaur it is today.

Related Stories:

• CNET: Thomas Penfield Jackson, judge in DOJ-Microsoft case, dies at 76
• Former judge defends his bid to break up Microsoft
• Microsoft mitosis: how breaking up the company makes sense
• How a decade of antitrust oversight has changed your PC

Andrew Feldman, vice president of AMD's server business unit, indicated that the chipmaker is betting heavily on ARM processors and its server and systems know-how to become a larger enterprise player. Feldman also made an ARM server prediction: By 2016 and 2017, ARM servers will have double digit market shares.

Should ARM servers get that much traction in data centers, it would be a boon to AMD. After all, Nvidia is the only other large ARM player talking about servers right now. If you take the current ARM server pecking order and apply it to the future, you'd have to assume that AMD, Nvidia and a few startups would drive market share gains. In other words, it's a bit unclear whether there are enough large horses to make ARM servers commonplace. AMD has the most enterprise experience.

However, Feldman said he expects Samsung and maybe Qualcomm to step up into the ARM server game. The Samsung possibilities are worth pondering. To wit:

• Samsung already makes PCs so it has manufacturing scale to some degree 
• It has its Exynos mobile applications processor
• Samsung has the memory manufacturing operations
• The company also is a semiconductor fabrication player
• Samsung has a lot of experience with ARM
• And the company does hit the enterprise in a few areas

Add it up and Samsung could either provide ARM chips for servers or it could make the systems. In any case, the theory that ARM servers will become a data center staple would be greatly helped by Samsung.

The game for ARM servers would also depend on a large data center player, say Google, Facebook or Amazon, porting applications to an ARM architecture. If the big guns went to ARM servers, enterprises would at least look at the option. Enterprises may take a long look though, since porting applications to ARM would be tricky. ARM servers are likely to be the domain of cloud providers for a while.

It's likely that Samsung would become an ARM server processor player over a systems maker. To make systems, the Korean conglomerate would have to partner with the likes of VMware and others. Samsung approaches business customers from a bring-your-own-device perspective. Data centers may be out of focus for Samsung.

On the chip front, Samsung could be a dangerous counterweight to Intel by partnering with players such as Lenovo, Dell and HP. The likely move would be to tackle servers in Korea, then China and then mature markets. Instead of Intel Inside, you'd have Samsung inside.

In the ARM processor game, Samsung has all the parts to change the server market dynamics. What's unclear is whether the company has the will.