Friday 03 September 2010
AMD reported a net loss of US$330 million, or $0.49 per share, during the quarter that ended on June 27. That compares to a net loss of $1.195 billion a year ago and a net loss of $416 million in the first quarter of 2009. In an effort to reach profitability, AMD in the first quarter spun off its manufacturing assets into a separate company called GlobalFoundries, which unloaded close to $1.1 billion in debt from AMD’s books. GlobalFoundries is a joint venture with investment firm Advanced Technology Investment Company, which is owned by the Abu Dhabi government. The company reported revenue for the second quarter of 2009 of $1.184 billion, which decreased 13 percent compared to the second quarter of 2008 and was flat compared to $1.177 billion during the first quarter of 2009. Revenue beat analyst expectations of $1.13 billion.
One promising product for upcoming quarters is the six-core Istanbul chip, which was released on June 1. Istanbul chips are designed for cloud computing installations, which Meyer expects to be one of the bright spots in the struggling enterprise market. Many lightweight laptops with AMD’s low-power Athlon Neo chips are due in the third quarter. AMD also plans to launch the Tigris platform for mainstream laptops in the second half of the year. Meyer said it was hard to predict whether Windows 7 would be a big driver of chip demand in the near term. It might provide an opportunity to sell more expensive systems with separate graphics cards
Rackspace Hosting Inc.’s (RAX) flight into cloud computing has hit some turbulence, as a couple recent service outages have knocked down the high-flying stock, but the manager of corporate data is seen resuming its ascension. Since early last year, the San Antonio-based company has spent nearly $290 million, or more than half its 2008 revenue, on equipment to build up its hosting and cloud computing services, which allow companies to access computing tasks through the Web. The spending has put Rackspace in a favorable position, even against bigger rivals, in an increasingly competitive market and has contributed.
Delivering an application as a pre-installed, pre-configured virtual application appliance with zero OS component shrinks install, set-up, and configure time to minutes. Yes, even large German ERP applications. Zero install’s effect of reducing POC duration by 20% can go to straight cost savings or to increased time spent actually working with the client and application. It can go to more POCs conducted a year per SE. In all scenarios, it goes to increased revenue. For example, they may sell back office manufacturing applications to the likes of the automobile industry. Fun, huh? Well, in North America, the ones that are using the cloud for their POCs have revenue up 5-6% compared to last year. The others? They are all down for the comparable period.”
Even more reason to run POCs in the cloud and it’s good for marriages. “Honey, I’m going to run down to the ball bearing factory to check on the POC. I know first-hand how hard it is to start a business, create a new product from a blank sheet of paper, create a new category that Gartner eventually buys into, raise money, But I can not imagine how hard it is to sell ERP to manufacturers that sell into the auto industry right now. That has got to be tough to the 10th power.
What’s unique about the Windows Azure platform is that Microsoft manages the complexity, which allows partners to focus on what matters most for their business - building innovative services solutions and driving new revenue.” With those words, Bob Muglia (pictured), president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, today announced how Microsoft’s entry into the cloud computing marketplace aims to drive down total cost of ownership by up to 60 percent for certain workloads during a three-year period.
Today at its annual partner conference, Microsoft Corp. announced new details of the company’s cloud computing offerings and shared its vision for how software plus services will help enable partners to generate new revenue opportunities and provide enhanced customer value in today’s changing economic landscape. Our partners play a critical role in delivering software plus services solutions that provide the combination of choice and flexibility that businesses are looking for,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “In the process of delivering these solutions, partners are seizing the opportunity to strengthen relationships with customers, provide new experiences and deliver more business value.
In his keynote address, Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, announced the business and partner model for the company’s Windows Azure platform. He also discussed in his keynote address how Microsoft will enable partners to generate new revenue opportunities through the development of innovative cloud services. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-14WPCAzurePR.mspx. The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, July 13-16 in New Orleans, is the company’s premier event for the more than 640,000 business partners that sell, customize, build upon, implement and support Microsoft solutions, generating more than 95 percent of Microsoft’s revenue.
Although its revenue has dipped to $27 million, Wellington-based IT services company Fronde has squeaked out a full-year profit - thanks to a series of deals based around Salesforce.com and Google’s SaaS products, and Amazon’s cloud computing platform. In the year-ago period, Fronde had higher revenue - $31 million - but made a $2.9 million loss. The company’s debt reduced from a year-ago $3.7 million to $300,000. Chief executive Ian Clarke told NBR earlier this week, “We’ve made a modest profit but a fabulous turnaround.” Part of the move out of the red came from old fashioned cost controls (headcount reduced from 200 to 170 over the year), reduced overheads and productivity gains.
Fronde has been in the business of cloud computing - and integrating cloud, and non-cloud apps - for several years. In 2009, it’s seen the technology move toward the mainstream. Other recent highlights include venture capitalist, NZTE advisor and Power-by-Proxi boss Greg Cross joining Fronde’s board during April, and a major Filipino m-commerce deal struck by its Fronde Anywhere subsidiary. An Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform implementation has kept Fronde busy at one major account, and Mr Clarke sees a lot more business cloud computing coming up. Some projects expected to start have not. Some have started with reduced budgets.
Low cost cloud computing infrastructure and managed services offering is powered in part by 3tera’s award winning AppLogic cloud computing platform and managed by Cirrhus9. The C9 CSP Platform enables Service Providers, like managed hosting companies, ASP firms, software companies and/or IT services companies, to offer Cloud solutions to their customers with minimal investment, short timelines and with reduced complexity. In addition, Cirrhus9 has configured a suite of Open Source products and management tools which provide low cost prepackaged solutions that include email, document sharing/management, collaboration, learning management and others.
AppLogic allows IT professionals to develop and deploy online applications in minutes instead of weeks, using only a browser to manage and scale on demand fully distributed systems and deliver security and business continuity for all applications, while fully controlling their cloud computing environment. Our mission is to help companies use and better understand Cloud technology to achieve measurable results,” continued Michalik. “As a Cloud Integrator, we are passionate about the success of our clients utilizing Cloud technology. For the Service Providers and Technology Companies the net result is that these features bring substantially greater efficiencies, shorter time to market and consistent high-quality infrastructure, with remarkably lower system associated costs.
The LeadMaster round-robin lead management system also provides an alternate lead distribution option to business partners and allows dynamically changing the delivery priority with each incoming lead. The LeadMaster round-robin lead management solution allows LeadMaster customers to automatically assign new sales leads to a team of sales people. The leads are distributed one per sales team member in a prescribed order. The round-robin lead management solution allows sales leads to be evenly spread out among sales representatives.
Offered via online subscription, LeadMaster’s flagship cloud computing application closes the loop between marketing and sales by tracking leads in real-time throughout the sales cycle, from demand generation to lead closure. Combining contact management, sales force automation (SFA), lead tracking and virtual call center capabilities, this powerful web-based application helps companies pinpoint where leads are quickly converting into revenue in order to increase close ratios and maximize return on investment (ROI) for marketing campaigns. LeadMaster’s products and services are available directly from its corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia and also through a global network of value-added resellers, consultants and systems integrators. For more information, please visit the LeadMaster website. That’s our goal.
Zander came to Motorola in 2004 after 15 years at Sun Microsystems. He left in 2007 after presiding over a tumultuous period marked by Motorola’s rapid ascent to the top of the mobile phone industry with the Razr handset, followed by a dramatic decline in revenue and market share when the company failed to follow-up its Razr success. “Ed’s incredible background and track record in all of these areas will bring enormous benefits to NetSuite as we bring the promise of cloud computing to business worldwide,” Nelson said. In a statement, NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson said he wanted to tap Zander’s expertise in cloud computing, data centers and Web software.
