[Beowulf] Oh.. IBM eats Red Hat

Tue Oct 30 08:58:52 PDT 2018

> On Mon, 29 Oct 2018, Douglas Eadline wrote:
>
>> Those alleged problems could have been solved for far less than $34B
>
> The big question these days is -- what the hell DOES IBM make money
> from?

A good question indeed. Tthree things they have been pushing lately

1) Watson - for use in the medical and service industries
2) Hadoop/Spark - Analytics at scale
3) Blockchain - not cryptocurrencies but other uses

All of these have a "cloud" vibe and they may be
able to back end these with Power. I was thinking
IBM may make (at some point) a Hadoop play since
Cloudera and Hortonworks are merging. There is a
developing real market for scalable analytics, not
quite as big as was projected, however.

As far as blockchain, who knows, I suppose
there are areas where a slow distributed
write once ledger fits, but I don't know
of many right now.

As for Watson, I'm impressed with the technology
mostly because while the rest of the big kids are
all about neural networks (sorry deep learning)
IBM has taken a more symbolic approach. I think they
could replace first level support people with Watson,
they are mostly reading from a screen anyway. And
Watson's ability to know/scan more information
than a human ever could can provide better support.

Now back to SC18 prep, ugh...

--
Doug

> This is not the IBM of my youth, making "all" the mainframe
> computers in the world (as well as all of the awesomest electric
> typewriters:-).  This is not the IBM of my middle years, which made the
> IBM PC and hence laid the ground for the dissolution of its mainframe
> business, taking a tiny garage-basd software company iun the process and
> transforming it into one of the richest corporations in the world as a
> mere side effect.  This isn't even the IBM of my later years, which
> still dominated desktop and laptops, sold the most reliable hard drives
> and server hardware, and provided key corporate middleware.
>
> I see their ads, but who buys?  What are they selling?  AI?  Very Large
> Scale corporate server racks?  Consulting?  Software?  Hardware?  For
> most of my life one literally couldn't go into an office without seeing
> stuff made and sold by IBM.  At this point, I can't recall the last time
> I DID see IBM stuff in ANY office, or for that matter server room -- it
> has been maybe a decade or more since I did.
>
> I suspect that they DO in fact need to buy RH, even for $34 \times 10^9.
> RH represents two things for them.  An absolute wealth of technology
> that they can sieve through and uplift in key places, and some of the
> brightest young minds in the world of computing.  This isn't JUST about
> "the cloud", because the cloud is still a fuzzy thing with unclear cost
> benefit ratio, especially given the enormous security issues associated
> with cloud based services for the major customers for this kind of
> computing -- banks, the entire medical establishment, and the
> government.  Duke still has serious issues with people putting any kind
> of privileged or protected information on ANY cloud, for good reason.
> Is the data truly secure?  How about while it is in transit?  Who holds
> the bag in the event of a major theft of private data?  And IS IT EVEN
> CHEAPER than keeping it locally, with disk costing what, $30 per
> TERABYTE or even less (I found 8 TB drives for less than $180 without
> working particularly hard just now).  One can buy one of these drives
> every month for what renting a similar amount of cloud space costs from
> many vendors. The market is almost insane at the moment.
>
> I think IBM is at long last thinking of remaking the entire company -- I
> don't know exactly how -- maybe they will go straight up against google,
> or amazon, or microsoft, or apple.  Maybe they will release their own
> direct competition for Android, and their own phone and tablet.  Maybe
> they will turn RH and their own software base and the huge coder base
> they are buying into AI that actually works in actual devices, the next
> killer appliance.  All I know is that IBM is one of the companies which
> historically has shown the vision (and which still in its comparative
> dotage has the resources) to become a player -- again -- over and over
> again over its history, and it is dangerous to write them off.  Buying
> RH isn't about the software, and honestly I doubt it is about buying the
> cloud presence even though that's how it is being marketed to the stock
> market.  I think it is about buying the people.  I just don't think they
> have been successful at attracting the cream of the programming world
> for twenty plus years now, focusing on hardware after OS/2 collapsed and
> pretty much ended their bid to become "the" dominant computing company
> -- again, from a software point of view.
>
> That could change, especially if they DO avoid breaking RH's corporate
> culture, if they woo the bright young minds with the promise of doing
> exciting work, well compensated, the way Google has been enormously
> successful at doing.  If anybody on the planet could tackle Google or
> Apple, it would be IBM.  IBM made a fortune by not being Apple, by
> CREATING the open source world for PCs, once before (until M$ took it
> over).  I think they have the opportunity to not be Apple once again,
> and eat Apple's core as they do (sorry:-).  With Linux, they are
> guaranteed a fair fight -- NOBODY can pull a M$ on the market, not M$
> itself, not Apple, not even Google.  But if they own and are funding
> what is arguably "the" premier corporate Linux, they are going to be
> able to ride the bleeding edge of it, open source or not.
>
> It may sound crazy, but they may have bought the company to get Fedora
> as much as for any other reason.  Fedora is where it is at, not RHEL.
> RHEL is for corporate wonks and server rooms, and it is valuable enough
> there.  But imagine fedora, truly transformed into a single common
> platform from the server room down to the cell phone and supported with
> real money from top to bottom.
>
> Wild and crazy?  Sure, maybe.  We'll see.  But if they are SMART, this
> is at least as likely as them cutting off fedora and throwing it away as
> "not profitable".
>
>     rgb
>
>>
>> --
>> Doug
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Prentice
>>>
>>> On 10/29/2018 02:43 PM, J??rg Sa??mannshausen wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> it is not only that, but I saw something about Mellanox today as well.
>>>>
>>>> Not good news in my humble opinion. :-(
>>>>
>>>> All the best
>>>>
>>>> J??rg
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Am Montag, 29. Oktober 2018, 07:42:48 GMT schrieb Tony Brian Albers:
>>>>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.reuters.com_article_us-2Dred-2Dhat-2Dm-2Da-2Dibm_ibm-2Dto-2Dacquire-2Dsoftw&d=DwIGaQ&c=imBPVzF25OnBgGmVOlcsiEgHoG1i6YHLR0Sj_gZ4adc&r=VjN6W5gT-iXGupU3t6I7tA&m=hqT1obt4t8WtOLutOWI8VLgjdnqTbcnHF302fuB598o&s=b5sHY0YU4fFrM64NZNTpBv9pu4I9rXaljimumTQg4Gk&e=
>>>>> are-company-red-hat-for-34-billion-idUSKCN1N20N3
>>>>>
>>>>> I wonder where that places us in the not too distant future..
>>>>>
>>>>> I've worked for Big Blue, and I'm not sure the company cultures are
>>>>> compatible to say the least.
>>>>>
>>>>> /tony
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Doug
>>
>> --
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>
> Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
> Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
> Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
> Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu
>
>
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-- 
Doug

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