HP, Microsoft challenge IBM with new deal
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Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have sealed a three-year, $300 million deal to jointly market their products to enterprise customers.
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By BRIAN BERGSTEIN  IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are teaming up to offer a free data-search tool for businesses, a quirky move challenging Google Inc. and other corporate-search specialists in a blossoming market.
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Announcements by Yahoo and Google show that Microsoft faces challenges to its business software franchises.
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&quot;The biggest danger to HP and IBM is a price war,&quot; said John Enck of Gartner. &quot;Blades are still premium-priced products from IBM and HP.
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Company extends partnership with open-source Java software company in effort to compete with IBM.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will be under pressure to sell its personal computer business after IBM&#39;s decision to sell its PC operations to China&#39;s
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IBM on Friday introduced high-end servers in its pSeries and iSeries lines that include virtualization features and raw power that some experts say put the products on par with offerings from rival Hewlett-Packard Co.
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The acquisition of Net Integration Technologies will help IBM challenge Microsoft in the market for small and midsize busineses.
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By Brian Bergstein  IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are teaming up to offer a free data- search tool for businesses, a quirky move challenging Google Inc. and other corporate-search specialists in a blossoming market.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N will be  under pressure to sell its personal computer business after  IBM's decision to sell its PC operations to China's top PC  manufacturer, but analysts said the No. 2 computer maker would  hold on to its $25 billion PC division for now.
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The year 2004 defied predictions: IBM sold its PC arm to a Chinese competitor, Oracle managed to swallow PeopleSoft, and -- perhaps the most dramatic of all -- Microsoft and Sun Microsystems aligned to make their products interoperate.
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Companies provide details of plan to invest $300 million to challenge IBM's dominance in the market.
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Plans by International Business   Machines Corp. IBM.N, the world's largest technology services   company, to acquire MRO Software Inc. MROI.O for $740 million   have received U.S. antitrust approval, U.S. officials said on   Wednesday.
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IT vendors are championing highly integrated and flexible systems through offerings such as IBM's 'on-demand computing' initiative and HP's 'adaptive enterprise' strategy. But what's really important, users say, is support for open standards.
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If the competition between IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. in the computer storage business were a horse race, you&#39;d need a photo to determine how they finished the first quarter. But it would only be for the second place ribbon.
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If the massive deal does go through, Google will at last face a major threat to fend off. Technical integration between Microsoft and Yahoo could be a nightmare, according to some analysts. Yet customers might stand to gain.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft and IBM executives Wednesday admitted feeling heat from Google now that the Web search giant is trying to make inroads into the enterprise market with its hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools. Google Apps, a hosted service, is gaining traction primarily in universities but is a welcome addition to enterprise software because of its simplicity and ease of use, said Rob Curry, director of Microsoft's Office business platform group, during a panel discussion today at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. "We actually see [Google] as a great competitor in this space," Curry said. "And they bring a good spirit in terms of simplicity, ease of use and things we're trying to leverage as we go forward in our development cycle." Google Apps was described as a "direct shot at Microsoft Office" by Forrester Analyst Erica Driver when Google released an enterprise version of the tool in February. For US$50 per user per year, customers get e-mail, instant messaging, a calendar tool, a Web page creator, support for e-mail on BlackBerry mobile devices and integration with Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Analysts say Google Apps offers less functionality than Office but is less expensive. IBM, which offers the Lotus Notes set of e-mail, calendaring and collaborative applications, and Lotus Sametime, an IM and Web conferencing tool, has partnered with Google but still sees the company as a potential competitor. Lotus Sametime allows IM customers to communicate with users of Google Talk. "We're a key partner of Google's," said Ken Bisconti, vice president of messaging and collaboration software for IBM, during the panel discussion. "We partner with them, and continue to partner with them, hopefully for the good of our customers. I also fully expect them to become a competitor to us in the business space." Google executives are busy trying to understand the requirements of enterprises, a learning process that will be crucial if the search company hopes to gain market traction for Google Apps outside of academia, Bisconti said. "Most of our customers tell us they're talking to the Google enterprise team," he said. "Google is doing a good job of collecting information to understand enterprise requirements. ... I don't see them as a near-term competitor but as a long-term potential substitution." No Google officials participated in the panel. The session, titled "Vendor Spotlight: Assessing IBM & Microsoft Platforms for Collaboration & Unified Communications," also gave the vendors a chance to discuss the broad trend in which employees expect the types of instant communication available to them in their personal lives. This is placing increased important on IM, Web conferencing, video and audio conferencing, and mobile communications. "The role of instant messaging has completely transformed and it has become a business expectation," said Akiba Saeedi, IBM's program director for unified communications and collaboration products. Years ago, people questioned whether e-mail would become a necessary business function. No one would question e-mail's importance today, and IM seems to be heading in a similar direction, Saeedi said. Bisconti cautioned against getting caught up in industry buzzwords such asÂ "enterprise 2.0," but said the desire for collaborative technology in general is real and has created a huge business opportunity for software vendors. "I have never seen so much senior-level interest in companies in improving the way they communicate, collaborate and improve the speed and agility of their business," he said.