NFL sponsor SAP is bringing a massive data-analysis expo to ‘Super Bowl Boulevard’ on New York’s Times Square. IBM Predicts Next 5 Life-Changing Tech Innovations (Click image for larger view.) SAP is hoping to provide football fans some idea of what its technology is all about in the course of the SAP Stats Zone, an interactive exhibition set to seem on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway from January 29 through Super Bowl Sunday. SAP is one in all eight NFL sponsors bringing interactive exhibits to Super Bowl Boulevard, a 13-block stretch of Broadway from 34th Street to 47th Street that may be temporarily closed off to vehicles and packed with football-related exhibits. The NFL is hosting a league apparel shop at Macy’s Herald Square, an autograph and concert stage at 39th Street, and a field-goal kicking challenge on Times Square among other exhibits. SAP’s Stats Zone should be joined by sponsor exhibits by Papa John’s Pizza, Bridgestone tires, Pepsi, Snickers,... Read More »

Enterprises can take a key lesson from game-changing tools like Flipboard and Nest Thermostat: Disrupt but don’t break. I stay amazed by the rapid pace of innovation in virtually every technology market. At any time when you blink, it sort of feels there’s another startup taking up the old guard.  Conventional wisdom in technology is it’s essential to abandon the prevailing order when faced with a brand new bright and glossy product. However, as someone who has worked with both startups and global leaders, i do know it can’t be an either/or approach. Scrapping years or decades of investment in infrastructure is foolish, and the innovators who’re winning are building their breakthrough tools on top of proven technologies. Two great examples are products i take advantage of and love: Flipboard and Nest Thermostat. [Buying business software could be tricky business. Read: 6 Enduring Truths About Selecting Enterprise Software.] By nature, Nest and Flipboard improve upon existing products rather than looking to replace them. For instance,... Read More »

As allies and competitors line up behind the hot Cloud Foundry Foundation, where does that leave Red Hat and its support of OpenStack and Project Solum? Top 10 Cloud Fiascos (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) There’s a fight brewing over which kind of open-source platform-as-a-service should command developer loyalties and function the foundation for future cloud applications. Should or not it’s native to the major open-source cloud project, OpenStack, and work closely with OpenStack components? Or is it more than enough that it runs on top of OpenStack but has a broad mixture of powerful backers to sponsor its development? Red Hat was depending on the previous and dealing to mix its OpenShift PaaS and a brand new OpenStack project, Solum, to form a formidable new PaaS platform. Red Hat is a number one contributor to OpenStack, and a collection of Red Hat engineers jumped into Project Solum within hours of its announcement by Rackspace. The mix of OpenShift and Solum was a... Read More »

The right to free speech isn’t a license to threaten, harass, or intimidate. A protest group calling itself Counterforce on Tuesday demonstrated in front of the Berkeley, Calif., home of Google engineer Anthony Levandowski and distributed leaflets to his neighbors to bring attention to “the evil he brings into this world” through involvement in technology projects like Google’s self-driving car and investment in a neighborhood condominium development (with required low-income units). To fight this evil, the gang advocates that folk “steal from the techies you babysit for” and vandalize surveillance cameras. In a post on local news website Indybay, a presumed representative of the gang conflates several different issues into one vague, anti-capitalist platform: dissatisfaction with the buses tech companies use to shuttle workers; with real estate development, gentrification, and high tech-industry salaries; with the NSA and surveillance; with the labor conditions in Congo mines that supply the raw materials of electronics; and with the “out-of-touch and indulgent lifestyles” of Google employees. “Our... Read More »

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison predicts database consolidation, a promised in-memory option, and occasional-end engineered systems will accelerate growth in 2014. Oracle reported better-than-expected financial results for the newest quarter, and in a conference call with financial analysts Wednesday, CEO Larry Ellison predicted that its flagship 12c Database, a growing portfolio of engineered systems, and cloud software subscriptions will drive growth within the year ahead. Results for the fiscal second quarter of 2014, which ended Nov. 30, were highlighted by a 2% revenue increase from a year earlier to $9.3 billion and earnings of 69 cents per share. Wall Street were expecting $9.2 billion of revenue and income of 67 cents per share. The gains came against a sturdy prior-year quarter, and sales were flat overall. New software licenses and cloud software subscriptions revenue was unchanged at $2.4 billion. Hardware systems revenue, including gross sales and support, was unchanged at $1.3 billion. Looking ahead, Ellison and Oracle president Mark Hurd said sales of the 12c database,... Read More »