XSi's Blog: The Alternative in IT Maintenance & Services

CONTINUANT WINS ANOTHER VICTORY IN AVAYA LAWSUIT; ANTITRUST CLAIMS TO BE ALLOWED AT TRIAL

On Wednesday afternoon, SGI stocks plunged a whopping 12% and were down $1.09.  They continued to fall and reached a low Thursday night at $8 a share.  The stock has continued to drop and is now around $5.50 a share, an all-time low for the year.  This comes just a few short months after they had reached an all-time high of $21.72 as SGI announced the selling of two of its shared memory Altix UV Systems to Atomic Weapons Establishment of UK. 

We are often found ragging on Cisco for its dirty big business antics, but this time the tables are turned and we applaud them.  Cisco will be alive and well at the Olympics this summer in London.  Cisco is a key sponsor and the proud supporter and network infrastructure provider for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.  And from the looks of what they’ve accomplished so far, Cisco has been hard at work for a while getting London ready for the games.

In what seems to be a battle to the end, Oracle and HP are going to trial in the Itanium lawsuit at the end of this month.  Both sides attempted to convince Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge, James Kleinberg, to hand them a win before trial. But Kleinberg denied those motions in a tentative ruling on Tuesday, May 1st.  He urged both sides to “give serious consideration to settlement,” and called the case, “extremely challenging,” adding that he did not know how it would turn out.  Oracle lawyer Dan Wall said at a court hearing that a settlement “isn’t going to happen.”

Silicon Valley’s own SGI (Silicon Graphics International) announced that CFO, Jim Wheat, has turned in his resignation papers and will be leaving SGI.   This major change comes just less than 90 days from SGI hiring new CEO and President Jorge Titinger.  The company has been going through a reorganization since Titinger came in as CEO and announced, "I am excited to be part of the new SGI, building on one of Silicon Valley's great brands and fully exploiting the opportunities in HPC, Big Data and the Cloud."

Cisco this week unveiled an updated line of Ethernet switches at the Hanover Messe Industrial Automation trade fair in Germany this week.  Cisco has reinforced its commitment to the industrialization of the Internet with this new series of switches aimed squarely at the industrial market.  The IE 2000 series is an extension of Cisco's current industrial Ethernet product lines, the Catalyst 2955 and the IE 3000 series. They are intended to address the expansion of machine-to-machine communications on factory floors and in other industrial environments.

Brocade Communications Systems is known as an IT networking company, but that may all change. Thanks to a deal with the San Francisco 49ers, they may quickly become better known to football fans!  Brocade, based in San Jose, has signed a deal to provide the wireless technology for the new 49ers stadium, which is to be built on Tasman Drive in the heart of Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara.

Facebook opened their second data center yesterday, April 19^th, in red carpet style in Forest City, North Carolina.  Facebook’s Vice President of Site Operations Tom Furlong and Data Center Manager George Henry joined NC Deputy Commerce Secretary Dale Carroll, members of the legislative delegation, Rutherford County Commission Chair Julius Owens, Forest City Mayor Dennis Tarlton, and more than 300 “friends” for a celebration at the facility.

Cisco notified by memo its employees that it has funded yet another advanced networking startup.  Cisco funded the startup, Insieme, for $100 million with the right to buy the company for as much as $750 million in the future. Insieme is led by three Cisco engineers: Mario Mazzola, Luca Cafiero and Prem Jain.  The three have deep roots in Cisco's Ethernet switching business, dating back to 1993, and they were all involved in two other Cisco spin-in start-ups - Andiamo Systems, which made storage-area network switches, and Nuova Systems, which developed Cisco's Nexus 5000 series data center switches.  These companies were designed to be purchased by Cisco, a creation known as a “spin in” company.

IBM rolled out a game changer in the IT arena this week with the unveiling  a new line of integrated systems called PureSystems.  PureSystems is designed to centralize the management of IT infrastructure.  This is IBM’s first offering in a brand new system category from IBM — a new class of systems known as "Expert Integrated Systems."