Oracle Cloud subscription revenue increases 25% and hardware rebounds, but Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com, and Workday threats loom large. Oracle put the correct face on third-quarter gains in cloud computing and hardware sales reported late Tuesday, however the increases weren’t quite enough to maintain pace with fast-growing competitors or Wall Street expectations. Oracle reported total revenues of $9.31 billion for the third quarter ended February 28, up 4% from the prior-year quarter. Profits totaled 68 cents per share. The entire performance was nearly according to the $9.36 billion in revenues and 70 cents-per-share expected by financial analysts, but shares fell in after-hours trading. The most positive news at the quarter was a 25% increase in cloud software subscription revenues and an 8% increase in hardware revenues. It was the primary growth seen in Oracle’s hardware business because it acquired Sun Microsystems nearly four years ago. Oracle executives tied the cloud gains partially to “tripple-digit” Oracle Fusion Cloud growth while the hardware rebound was attributed to a... Read More »

Open source developer adds container certification for Enterprise Linux apps, aims to enhance workload portability and simplicity maintenance burden. Red Hat has announced a service that tests whether Enterprise Linux applications are correctly formatted to run in a containerized form. Linux containers are a favored new mechanism for developers to package and move applications and their middleware. The self-contained units will be run without reconfiguration, so long as the host environment is container aware and container ready. Developers anticipate that they’ll allow workloads to head easily between different cloud services. Containers provide many of the attributes of virtualization, but without the hypervisor. The applying runs in an outlined and isolated space at the server and might run alongside several other containerized applications. As well as lacking a hypervisor, multiple containerized applications share one operating system at the host. With virtual machines, compared, each workload provides its own operating system and wishes a hypervisor to pass the application’s service calls through to the hardware. Containers offer... Read More »

From innovations for athletes to unprecedented surveillance tools for authorities, examine the technologies to be able to shape the Sochi Olympics. The 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled to start out Feb. 7 in Sochi, Russia, will test both athletes and technology. For the competitors, the character of the contest remains much because it always have been: an extreme physical and mental challenge. However the athletes’ tools could be different, because of ongoing research and new approaches to many of the winter sports on the games. Competitors might be trying to their equipment for a performance edge. Uniforms and other gear were designed and engineered to lessen friction and aerodynamic drag. And efforts to maintain athletes healthy and to fix their injuries are pushing the bounds of medical technology. For Olympic officials, their Russian hosts, security personnel, representatives of media organizations, and individuals attending the games, technology may even shape the development. Sochi 2014 would be the surveillance Olympics. Attendees “will face many of the most invasive... Read More »

Android developers can now adapt their apps to send information to forthcoming Android smartwatches. 10 Wearables To look at At CES 2014 (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Google on Tuesday introduced Android Wear, an extension of its Android mobile operating system for wearable devices. Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP of Android, Chrome, and Apps said in a blog post that Google has only just begun to explore the chances of mobile technology. “That’s why we’re so all in favour of wearables — they understand the context of the arena around you, and you’ll interact with them simply and efficiently, with only a glance or a spoken word,” he said. Pichai said Google is starting with the foremost familiar wearable device: the watch. Google isn’t the first major company to go into the smartwatch market — the Samsung Gear debuted last year to mediocre reviews and Sony has released similarly undistinguished models — however it has managed to wade into the market before Apple introduces... Read More »

SAP tells financial analysts cloud growth will make it the fastest-growing mega-cap company in IT. If the investment community had any doubt about SAP’s commitment to becoming a cloud-driven company, co-CEO Bill McDermott tried to erase it on Tuesday in a speech before greater than 100 financial analysts in Big apple, not faraway from Wall Street. “We’re formidable on every measure,” McDermott declared, after reviewing the company’s position in on-premises applications, analytics, data management, and more, “however the cloud is where we’re taking the corporate.” Echoing themes shared during SAP’s last quarterly conference call, McDermott said cloud computing is the cure for one of the most intractable issue faced by CEOs today: complexity. “Customers are attempting to get complexity out in their lives,” he said. “They’re seeking an organization which could help them simplify a good way to execute on their plans and grow.” [Want more on Oracle’s cloud ambitions? Read Oracle’s Hurd: A ‘Once-In-A-Career Opportunity’.] Pointing to 50% growth in cloud billings and a... Read More »