Archive for June, 2011

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Oracle Falls After Reporting Unexpected Hardware Sales Drop

June 24th, 2011
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Oracle Corp. declined in late trading after an unexpected drop in hardware sales suggested the largest maker of database software may not be benefiting as much as predicted from its acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc.

Sales of hardware declined 6 percent to $1.16 billion, Redwood City, California-based Oracle said in a statement today. The company had forecast in March an increase of 6 percent to 12 percent. Shares fell as much as 7.5 percent in extended trading.

Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison has been trying to benefit from last year’s purchase of Sun as companies expand technology budgets and outfit data centers with servers and the databases needed to store digital information. Disappointment with the hardware results overshadowed a better-than-predicted performance in profit and sales of new software licenses.

“The hardware decline is likely the reason for the sell- off,” said Josh Olson, a Des Peres, Missouri-based analyst at Edward Jones & Co. “This is really the first full year-over- year compare for the hardware business, and it has started on the wrong foot.”

The stock fell as much as $2.45 to $30.01 in extended trading. It had climbed 26 cents to $32.46 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, and gained 3.7 percent this year.

Profit excluding certain costs was 75 cents a share in the quarter that ended May 31, exceeding the 71-cent average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Sales climbed 13 percent to $10.8 billion, meeting analysts’ predictions.

Sales Forecasts

Hardware sales may rebound in the current quarter, which ends in August, Oracle Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz said on a conference call. Sales of hardware products may range from a 5 percent increase to a 5 percent decline, Catz said.

New software license sales, a predictor of future sales, will rise 10 percent to 20 percent, she said. Profit excluding certain items will be 45 cents to 48 cents, compared with 46 cents projected by analysts, the company said.

Calculated on a basis that doesn’t comply with generally accepted accounting principles, revenue will increase 9 percent to 12 percent this quarter, Catz said. That implies sales of $8.27 billion to $8.5 billion, compared with $8.3 billion, the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

New license sales, a predictor of revenue, gained 19 percent last quarter to $3.74 billion, at the high end of Oracle’s forecast. That compares with the 13.5 percent growth predicted by Jason Maynard, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, in a June 20 research note.

‘Right’ Growth

Ellison is using his purchase of Sun to add computers to the arsenal of programs he has amassed through more than $42 billion in acquisitions since 2005. Oracle has tailored its databases to run faster on new machines using Sun hardware.

The company also has aimed to improve the unit’s profit by discontinuing sales of less expensive products and emphasizing its high-performance Exadata and Exalogic computer servers. That may have contributed to the revenue decline, said Peter Goldmacher, an analyst at Cowen & Co. in San Francisco.

Oracle may also be grappling with growing pains related to the buying spree, Goldmacher said.

“The more they acquire and the further afield they get from their core competence, the harder it is to manage the business,” Goldmacher said.

Oracle co-president Mark Hurd told analysts Oracle is selling fewer servers at higher prices, and increasing the amount of support contracts and software sold with each system.

“There’s no question we want to grow the top line, but we want to grow the top line right,” he said.

Overpriced Targets

Ellison said during the conference call that Oracle is taking a pause from large acquisitions because many potential targets are overpriced.

“They’re by and large not attractively priced now and don’t make sense, so we’re not doing them,” he said. “Instead we can focus our energies on organic growth.” The company is expanding its sales staff and developing new products, he said.

At Oracle’s OpenWorld conference that begins Oct. 2 in San Francisco, the company plans to announce a computer system for analyzing data in a computer’s memory instead of on disc. Oracle also plans what it calls a “big-data accelerator,” a product that will use open-source Hadoop software to help companies handle large amounts of data from various sources, Ellison said.

Oracle’s sales growth is expected to taper off as year- earlier figures reflect the acquisition. Sales are projected to increase 8.8 percent to $39 billion in 2012 after surging 34 percent in 2011, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

Source:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/06/24/bloomberg1376-LN96K40UQVI901-71UOQ87IBMGTPLPN3U21THVOGI.DTL

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HP’s Plan to Make TouchPad a Hit

June 24th, 2011
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During an interview at Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) Palo Alto headquarters, Todd Bradley, the head of the $41 billion PC group, is, as always, full of praise toward his microprocessor suppliers. Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are “important partners,” he says. Then he holds up a TouchPad, his company’s first tablet computer, which is powered by a Qualcomm (QCOM) chip and HP’s in-house operating system, webOS. It goes on sale July 1, starting at $500. “The AMD-Intel thing,” he says, “I think that’s kind of over.”

Stunning as it is to hear a PC executive essentially declare the end of the Wintel era, HP had no choice but to distance itself from the Microsoft-Intel ecosystem. For years, HP used its supply chain prowess to lead a commodity PC market, and eke out 8 percent operating margins. Now, in the age of mobile, HP’s margins are down to 5 percent or 6 percent. The TouchPad is part of a big gamble that began last year with HP’s $1.3 billion purchase of Palm and webOS: to build an ecosystem of its own, despite a landscape littered with the carcasses of others that tried.

For this bet to pay off, HP needs a tech trifecta. First, webOS devices must offer Apple (AAPL)-like simplicity, built on top of loads of applications and content. It won’t be easy, but HP could quickly outdistance most IPad rivals, including tablets running Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system. Like Apple, HP controls both the hardware and the software, which gives the company a huge design advantage, says Tim Bajarin, president of tech consultancy Creative Strategies. “They at least are trying to control their destiny, while all the others are putting it in the hands of Google or Microsoft (MSFT),” Bajarin says. For instance, a webOS feature called Synergy lets developers design applications that talk to each other. Facebook friends’ birthdays automatically show up in your contacts. Work and personal calendars, even those of a spouse, appear together. Users can make a call using their wireless carrier or Skype, without having to open separate applications. “The concept from the very beginning of this is, ‘Your life is moving to the cloud,’” says Jon Rubinstein, who helped create the IMac and IPod at Apple before becoming chief executive officer of Palm.

Second, HP must break Apple’s lock on developers. The TouchPad will launch with 300 tablet-specific applications. (IPad has 90,000.) A recommendation engine will make it easier to discover new apps. Users who like cooking might see Epicurious pop up on their suggested list. The company is wooing holdouts such as Netflix (NFLX) by offering slots in webOS Pivot, an app showcase on all webOS devices. It’s a cross between an app store and digital magazine. “We’ll come out of the gates behind, but I’m really confident we’ll catch up,” says Bradley.

Even if HP nails webOS and wins over developers, there’s the obvious third task: getting people to buy the devices. With its 20,000-plus global sales force, the company has a good shot at landing corporate customers, Bajarin says. To sell to consumers, he says HP will have to train Best Buy and 600,000 other dealers to show customers the glories of webOS. HP has paid retailers to set up its own section within stores and is dispatching several hundred employees to demonstrate the product at retail this July, says Stephen DeWitt, Personal Systems Group senior vice-president. HP is spending hundreds of millions on an ad blitz starring Jay-Z and other celebrities.

Bradley and Rubinstein say that if the TouchPad’s reception is lukewarm initially, they’ll be patient. “We have a really good opportunity to become No. 2 in tablets fairly quickly,” Rubinstein says. “Possibly No. 1.”

Source:http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_27/b4235040584134.htm

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Google: Chromebooks will succeed where Linux netbooks failed

June 24th, 2011
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Why would you wait for over a minute for your Windows 7 PC to boot up if all you want to do is check your email and catch up on world news?

That’s the key question that Google is hoping will persuade even tech-savvy punters to splash the cash and buy a ‘boots in 10 seconds and resumes instantly from sleep’ Chromebook this summer.

In doing so, Google hopes to break the Microsoft-Apple stranglehold on home computing that has seen only two major operating systems succeed in 30 years.

The stats don’t lie – most of us spend all our computing time within a web browser, and Google’s philosophy for it’s browser-based Chrome OS is that you shouldn’t need to tinker with your laptop, you shouldn’t need to maintain it or change settings, you should simply ‘use’ it.

TechRadar spoke to Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome at Google, at the launch of the Samsung Chromebook this week.

Pichai says that Chromebooks are ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the complications that come with more traditional operating systems.

“I’ve given Chromebooks to thousands of users, friends and family. The extent to which is that they feel their life is made better compared to a traditional Windows experience on a netbook,” he says.

“My dad used to ask me technical questions every few days, I gave him a Chromebook and he’s never had an issue with it. I think it’s such a simpler end to end experience it’s just a no brainer.

“Even the hardware for a lot of people is easier than most netbooks. Most netbooks are cramped, you can hardly see the web. We really spent a lot of time trying to give you a lot of pixels so you can maximise your web usage, a full size keyboard, the trackpad is really big, literally you can take it out all day without a charger and most importantly you do nothing other than use the device. You just use it. You’re not maintaining it, you’re not taking care of it, you just use the device. That’s how computing should be.”

Chromebooks for power users?

Pichai admits that for power users, Chrome OS is not going to replace their main machine, but says these people only make up around two per cent of the world’s computer users.

“If you’re a regular user of traditional Windows desktop applications like Photoshop, this is not the right computer for you. So I think as long as you spend most of your time on the web, which is true for most users, it’s a great choice and most people who’ve shown interest in buying a Chromebook or have one of our test machines, already have a computer at home, but they get this and this is what they spend most of their time on. And they can use that other machine for their legacy needs.”

While the reception to Chrome OS has been on-the-whole a lot more positive than it perhaps could have been, TechRadar readers have been less than receptive to the £350 asking price for the Wi-Fi-only Samsung Chromebook. But Pichai says the price is fair:

“The price point comes from the grade of hardware. I think if you compare the equivalent prices of hardware, I think we’ve done a great job to make the hardware better. If you think a windows 7 netbook is more attractive because it has more software then I think you’re just opting in to two very different computing models.

“If you get Windows 7 on your computer, with that you inherit all the design decisions and the choices and the security trade offs and everything that’s built in. You may be a sophisticated user – and I think maybe one to two per cent of the population really enjoy dealing with those issues – Chromebooks might not be the right device for you.

“But if you’re asking me why people should buy it, then everything I see, in my experience with friends and family, people like the change, they find it better. Once you have been using Chrome OS, you can pick up any Chromebook anywhere and you can log in and all your stuff is there waiting for you as though it’s your device.”

Chromebooks vs Linux netbooks

Of course, readers with a sharp memory will recall the netbook revolution of 2007 when Asus launched its first Eee PCs. They cost under £200 but ran Linux rather than Windows and return-rates for these products were amongst the highest in consumer electronics history. But Pichai thinks there is no comparison between Linux netbooks and the new Chromebooks.

“I have thought about this a lot and I bought a Linux netbook too to test it out, and the thing I found was that those netbooks did not offer a great user experience. Linux netbooks tried to have the same metaphor as windows, so you constantly felt like you were in a Windows experience but it wasn’t the same and it was confusing.

“But whoever you give a Chromebook to, they log in and they’re in a browser – it’s the most familiar environment to most users because they spend most of their time in a browser anyway. Even a technical user could struggle with a Linux netbook, but give them a Chromebook and there’s just no hesitation, they just log in and start using it, so I think that’s a huge difference. As long as you know how to use a browser, there’s literally nothing you need to learn, nothing.”

Google is attempting to smooth over the transition period for users by making Chromebooks available online only for the time being. The idea is that by walling off Chromebooks from traditional home computers in stores, it reduces the risk of people buying them without fully understanding what they are.

“We didn’t want them to be just lying around where people who don’t understand it walk away with it by mistake,” says Pichai. “Our intention isn’t to force this on anyone, by having it online you come and buy it because you know what it is and what it’s all about.

“We have 160 million users of the Chrome browser and for them, buying a Chromebook would be the most seamless transition ever. If you’re already using Chrome sync, and you log in to a Chromebook and first time, it’s all there.

“And there’s other things. The guest mode in Chrome OS is one ofthemost private modes ever built into a computer. We care about security a lot internally and I was speaking to Eric Sachs who is head of security at Google and I said, ’so somebody has sent me a really shady URL, can I click on it?’ He said, ‘as long as you’re in the guest mode of Chrome OS, I wouldn’t worry about clicking on anything’.

“That’s the promise we can make to a user. We had a zero day flash bug last week, we got a patch from adobe on Sunday morning, by Sunday afternoon we updated all Chrome users and all Chromebook users. And it all happens in the background. It updates all on it’s own without you even knowing about it.”

TechRadar is in possession of a Samsung Chromebook and we’ll bring you a full review in due course.

Source:http://www.techradar.com/news/laptops/mobile-computing/google-chromebooks-will-succeed-where-linux-netbooks-failed-970026

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Computer and Telecoms System Tanzania Pioneers Provision of Quality IT Training

June 24th, 2011
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Computer and Telecoms System Tanzania (CATS) focuses on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), a powerful tool for developing, creating and upgrading the business environment and knowledge based economy in the country. The IT firm runs a training institute-the Institute of Management and Information Technology (IMIT), the first IT training institute in Tanzania that aims at promoting IT in the country through provision of high quality training to everyday users as well as to students aspiring to become IT professionals. To cap it all, the institute boasts of extensive computing resources, qualified and well-trained instructors, conducive learning environment and constant updating and upgrading of instructor skills to ensure that quality training is imparted to every student at the campus.

Under CATA Tanzania Limited, IMIT envisages rendering training services in the areas of IT and business management. IMIT, a subsidiary of CATS Tanzania Ltd, was the first reputable vocational training institute in Tanzania to offer IT related courses.

The institute is one of the many pioneering efforts of the CATS Group to provide Total Information Technology, Systems Solutions and Services in Tanzania.

It deals with all aspects of training within the scope of Computing Information Systems Management. It runs both short-term and long-term academic and professional courses.

To make its objective effective, the Institute consists of well qualified lecturers training on academic courses ranging from certificate to Diplomas; Bachelors (Bsc-IT Hons) to Masters; and professional courses like A+, N+, MCITP, CCNA, CCNA Security, CCNP, Oracle and Linux.

IMIT has eight networked and well-equipped training centres with state-of-the-art PCs. It as well has a Testing Center (Prometric Authorized) allowing candidates to sit for any International Certification Exams and get instant score reports.

Like any company that realises the need for change to succeed in business, the institute understands that its values, divided into core and operating values have to change for progress although the core values, which are the main traditional spine, always remain unchanged.

The company General Manager, Mr Cyrus Dupetawalla says; “Our core values are our quality and commitment to provide what is relevant and beneficial to the public although we are continuously striving towards change for the better, our core values remain untouched”.

“Our Vision is to train the public on the most relevant and the most beneficial qualification regardless of gender, culture, religion, age, or sector to contribute to the betterment of our nation and the world at large,” The manager says, noting that the institute vision can only be realised through dedicated trainers, up to date technology and full commitment towards student welfare.

With a group of qualified professionals as trainers, the training institute gives its students the learning experience that could last forever. Although strict in its policies, IMIT provides a learning environment that is both academic and relaxing so that the students feel refreshed within the institute.

IMIT talk big of its colorful history of producing competent professionals who are currently serving in some of the most influential positions in various companies, aiming further to produce top-of-the-notch hands-on professionals.

The institute has often produced high achievers like Mr Awadh Said, who was the highest regional Achiever in Diploma and Advanced Diploma in Computer Studies in December 2008 examination session.

IMIT offers the entire Roadmap for NCC Education that provides UK-based internationally recognized curriculum.

On the software front, the manager says that CATS has been the first organization to install ACCPACC on the Linux platform amongst the ACCPAC partners in East and Central Africa region and were awarded the prestigious 2010 Softline ACCPAC Silver Star Solution Provider award in Tanzania. Currently, the company has lots of promotions on Sage Accpac Suite on-going.

Concerning achievements on the infrastructure design and implementation phase, the company successfully saw through an enterprise-wide project that included 3 physical servers having 23 virtual servers with a large scale terabyte solution having fiber channel connectivity.

Mr Dupetawalla affirms that footprint of the infrastructure; power requirement and the entire cost of procuring were reduced tremendously. This helped the client to do more with less!

“To install and commission the entire project took about a month and it was done by our local Tanzanian professionals who were sent abroad to get fully trained and certified by HP on the hardware and software. We take great pride in executing enterprise-wide projects using our local resources”, concluded the General Manager of CATS Tanzania Limited, Mr Dupetawalla.

Source:http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/computer-and-telecoms-system-tanzania–pioneers-provision-of-quality-it-training-2011062416103.html

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Autodesk AutoCAD 2011 for Mac

June 23rd, 2011
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AutoCAD, the industry-standard Computer Aided Design (CAD) application from Autodesk, is back on the Mac after an 18-year hiatus. This is good news for many Mac fans in the architecture, engineering, and design professions who have been unwilling to give up their MacBook Pros and iMacs for the sake of a single application, despite its status as a very important part of their workflow. With the new Mac version of AutoCAD for freeform 2D and 3D design and drafting, Mac users no longer need to use Boot Camp or Parallels ()—or suffer a PC on the same desk with their Mac.

Mac from the ground up

AutoCAD 2011 for the Mac is not a port from Windows. Rather, Autodesk has programmed this version for the Mac from the ground up with a conscious effort to take advantage of the Mac OS X interface.

Instead of offering the ribbon-based interface of the Windows version, Autodesk has has chosen to place more AutoCAD functions in the pulldown menus. Floating tool palettes also include most of the same tools as the menus, while the interface will look familiar to users of other Mac CAD applications. Autodesk has also taken advantage of multi-touch trackpad gestures (and offers similar moves on Apple’s Magic Mouse () For example, two-finger swipes scroll up or down, pinching can zoom in or out, and a shift plus two-finger swipe can rotate around a 3D model. Cover Flow navigation lets you easily flip through your designs. Nice.

While AutoCAD is a complex and powerful application, the system requirements are higher than much of the competition on the Mac (such as Vectorworks (), TurboCAD (), and Ashlar-Vellum), starting with a minimum of 3GB of RAM and higher screen resolution (1280 x 800 pixels). The program works with only with more recent Mac hardware such as Mac Pro (early 2009), MacBook Pro (mid-2009), and iMac (early 2008). To be fair, you’d want to use a high resolution monitor with a CAD program anyway, given the quantity and level of graphic detail you’re typically working with. But, you are less likely to be disappointed with AutoCAD’s performance if you bought your Mac in the last couple of years.

When you first launch AutoCAD 2011, you will be presented with the drawing canvas or Modelspace, the window where you will build your drawing or model. The menus are extensive, and the tool and information palettes are arranged to the left and right of the canvas.

One of the first things you will notice is that the default background in AutoCAD is black or slate-colored with the lines and objects you draw in white (or bright colors). This differs from most Mac CAD or graphic design applications, which typically have a white background with black and color drawing elements on top. You can change the background color in the preferences and, in fact, much of the interface can be altered to suit your own tastes, including which tools show up in the palettes and where the palettes are located on screen.

One interface element Autodesk brought over from the Windows version is the ViewCube, a very useful graphical navigation element for controlling 3D views. It allows you to rotate your drawing and model, or jump to standard 3D views and orientations with a single click. The ViewCube rotates as you click on it, giving you a visual representation of your drawing at various angles. Moving around a 3D model can be disorienting, and the ViewCube does a good job of letting you know whether you are looking from above, below, or at some oblique angle.

Another uniquely AutoCAD interface element is the Command Line window. This has been an AutoCAD mainstay for decades. At first it looks like some DOS operating system throwback, but it is actually a very useful window because it displays—in text format—everything that is going on while you’re drawing, line-by-line, command-by-command. Interestingly, it can operate both ways: you can enter text commands into the window and control your drawing from the command line while maximizing the use of the keyboard and minimizing use of the mouse and menus. While overall that method of operation is not very Mac-like, if you have been using the Windows version of AutoCAD for a long time, this feature will be welcome.

From the Mac perspective, though, my biggest complaint about the interface is that the process of drawing objects often includes more clicks than necessary, and can require the use of the keyboard.

For instance, drawing a simple line is not as easy as choosing the line tool and then clicking and dragging to create the line. In AutoCAD, to end the process of drawing the line, you have to hit another key such as Escape or Enter, or the Space Bar after the second click. Otherwise, you will keep adding more lines. Then, if you want to draw another line elsewhere, you have to select the line tool again. No doubt, this is something you can get used to, but I’d rather not have to click so much.

Ubiquitous file format

One of the reasons many architecture firms use AutoCAD is the popularity of its file format. The DWG format—native to AutoCAD—is commonly used for collaborative work across a broad range of professions such as consultants, architects, and engineers.

While many CAD programs can import and export DWG files, these translations sometimes require cleanup. Not having to worry about cleanup or whether your exported DWG files will open correctly is real advantage of AutoCAD for Mac over other Mac CAD programs. I opened a number of DWG files received from Windows consultants I work with and AutoCAD for Mac opened most of them seamlessly. However, I did run into a small number of drawings that required components not available for the Mac, such as some (but not all) ObjectARX components my civil engineer uses. Some of these components, made by third-party vendors, are widely used and customize and extend AutoCAD. I hope that the developers of such components update them for use on the Mac.

Third-party extensions

This brings up the subject of add-ons for AutoCAD. One thing that makes AutoCAD for Windows such a dominant product are all of the third-party extensions available. In the Windows version, there are add-ons and extensions available for just about any profession or specialty, and there are thousands of tools and scripts that you can add to AutoCAD that provide even more capabilities than are included in the basic application. Some of the add-ons are already available for the Mac, but today, most are not. For example, I ran into some missing extensions while trying to import AutoCAD files from a civil engineer I work with. Autodesk says it is working on having more extensions available for subsequent releases of the Mac program, and will be making the development of add-ons possible on the Mac.

One glaring feature missing from AutoCAD 2011 is support for importing and exporting PDF files. In the current version, there is no export or print-to-PDF feature from within AutoCAD. Using the print-to-PDF option in the standard Mac print dialog box gives poor results compared to other CAD programs with built-in PDF support (including AutoCAD for Windows). There is also no way to import a PDF file into your drawing, another feature supported in the Windows version of AutoCAD, but not on the Mac.

Like PDF, there are dozens of features in the Windows version that are not included in the Mac version. Some of them are important features such as Plot Style Configuration, Plot to File, or the Reference Manager.

With this first comeback version of AutoCAD, Autodesk seems to be applying the 80/20 rule for its Mac users, providing the 80 percent of features and tools that are used the most. I don’t have a conceptual problem with that approach. It seems sane for such a huge program to implement the most important parts first and then fill in. But AutoCAD 2011 for Mac is $3995—the same price as the more-capable Windows version, and that doesn’t seem quite fair.

On a positive note, Autodesk has a free iPhone/iPad app available in the iTunes store that allows you to share and view AutoCAD files in the field. You can even do some light editing of the files right on your iPhone or iPad, including drawing new objects, moving, rotating, and annotating.

Macworld’s buying advice

Autodesk’s AutoCAD 2011 for Mac is a very powerful application and an impressive 1.0 version that has been missing from the Mac universe for too long. Unfortunately, it comes up short in features and steep in price, both of which detract from my assessment. For a generic 2D and 3D drafting application that does not include any architectural or other vertical market-specific tools such as walls, floors, or roofs, the price is too high—about twice as much as comparable alternative packages available for the Mac. (Vectorworks Fundamentals with Renderworks, for example, costs $1945.)
If you are a longtime user of AutoCAD for Windows, you might want to wait for the next version (AutoCAD 2012 is due before the end of the year), which will no doubt fill in some of the missing features and provide a better value. If you are new to AutoCAD, unconcerned about the price, and crave the native DWG file format and peace of mind using AutoCAD provides, then this version will work fine—and you can look forward to an upgrade soon.

Source:http://www.macworld.com/article/159942/2011/06/autocad11.html

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Oracle Sales Poised to Top $10 Billion on Shift Into Hardware

June 23rd, 2011
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Oracle Corp. is likely to say today that quarterly sales topped $10 billion for the first time as Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison benefits from pairing software and hardware, a strategy mastered by Apple Inc.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predicted, on average, that Oracle will report revenue of $10.8 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in May. Earnings excluding certain costs likely rose to 71 cents a share, according to projections.

Ellison is using his purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. to add computers to the arsenal of programs he has amassed through more than $42 billion in acquisitions since 2005. Oracle has tailored its databases, used to store information, to run faster on new machines using Sun hardware. The approach helps Oracle woo corporate customers the way Apple lures computer users, said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities Inc.

“The way that Apple provides consumers with fully integrated products — the hardware as well as the software — Oracle is doing much the same thing,” said Barnicle, who is based in Portland, Oregon. “They’re a one-stop shop for whatever your business needs.”

Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, slipped 45 cents to $32.20 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. It has climbed 2.9 percent this year and surged on May 2 to $36.37, its highest closing since Oct. 19, 2000.

Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle, declined to comment.

License Sales Predictions

Oracle’s Exadata machines, which combine specially engineered Sun computers with Oracle database software, will likely keep fueling growth, said Mark Murphy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in San Francisco. That’s because customers who buy Exadata also purchase software licenses, generating revenue in the future.

New license revenue, a predictor of future sales, probably climbed 15 percent to $3.61 billion in the fourth quarter, said Murphy, who rates Oracle “overweight” and predicts that the shares will rise to $37. That includes $2.63 billion from databases and so-called middleware, which helps programs work together, and $983 million from applications, Murphy said.

Analysts at UBS AG project a 17 percent gain in new license sales, according to a June 3 research note. Oracle said on March 24, during the third-quarter earnings call, that new software license revenue would climb 9 percent to 19 percent in the fourth quarter.

Another benefit from Sun is the Java programming language Oracle gained in the deal. Ellison has called Java “the single most important software asset” the company has ever bought.

Grappling With Google

A lawsuit Oracle filed against search giant Google Inc. may added to chances to profit from this purchase, said Pat Walravens, an analyst at JMP Securities LLC in San Francisco.

Oracle accused Google, based in Mountain View, California, of using technology related to Java in the Android mobile operating system. Oracle’s damages expert has estimated that Google would owe $1.4 billion to $6.1 billion in damages if it were found liable for infringement.

“Our sense is that Oracle has had the better side of the argument,” Walravens wrote in a June 16 research note.

Even as Oracle benefits from Sun products, its sales growth is expected to taper off as year-earlier figures reflect the acquisition. Sales are projected to increase 8.8 percent to $39 billion in 2012 after surging 34 percent in 2011, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

Catch-Up In The Cloud

The company’s sales are getting a boost from demand for databases and the servers that populate data centers, which can provide computing power over the Internet, via the so-called cloud. Still, the company lags behind rivals in the software used to deliver cloud computing, where Salesforce.com Inc. is a leader, Murphy said.

“A database is not the cloud, but part of the infrastructure,” Murphy said. “They’ve got a way to participate, but they’re not offering multitenant cloud-based products.”

Oracle will get help in cloud computing with the introduction of Fusion, a new version of its suite of applications that help companies handle a range of business tasks, said Kirk Materne, an analyst at Evercore Partners Inc. in New York. Customers will be able to run Fusion in their data centers or access it via the Web.

“If you look at it from an applications standpoint, with Fusion applications, they now have a much more comprehensive software-as-a-service offering,” Materne said.

Source:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/06/23/bloomberg1376-LN6ZWI1A1I4H01-5H902N3HIAL7HG2USPBBE5SBTO.DTL

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Google Places Two Bets on a Post-PC World

June 23rd, 2011
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Two gadgets that began shipping last week represent assaults from Google on the dominant model of computing, in which we use a cursor and a keyboard to manipulate boxes and windows on a virtual desktop. Samsung makes the hardware for both: the Series 5 Chromebook notebook, the first computer with the browser-only ChromeOS, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, whose operating system is the latest version of Honeycomb, the tablet edition of Google’s Android mobile operating system.

These products have arrived at a pivotal moment for computing. Steve Jobs popularized the phrase “post-PC era” to describe what’s supposed to come next, with the iPad displacing the window-driven, desktop-focused experience that the word “computer” conjures up. Now Google too is offering alternatives to that experience, taking on traditional computing with a pincer movement of tablets and Chromebooks. That the two are advancing together may be either an accident or a deliberate attempt to establish distinct post-PC categories—all we know for sure that Google likes to experiment publicly.

The Galaxy Tab

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a close match for—some might say it mimics—that proven PC-skewering weapon the iPad 2. The tablet that I reviewed is a special edition, with Android logos on the back, that was handed out to developers and lent to journalists at the Google I/O conference last month. You can buy it without the decoration for $500 with 16 gigabytes of storage or $600 with 32 GB. It’s WiFi-only for now, but a version with a cellular data plan is due out soon.

The Galaxy Tab’s similarity to the iPad 2 highlights the fact that in the tablet world, hardware is scarcely relevant. A responsive, glossy, color-rich touch screen, eight-hour-plus battery life, and front and rear cameras are all table stakes by now. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is actually slightly slimmer than the iPad 2 (by 0.2 millimeters) and lighter (by 35 grams), thanks to the plastic back it has, instead of an aluminum one. It’s also more widescreen, with a 16:10 aspect ratio.

Google’s post-PC vision—like Apple’s—is all in the software, but this is where the similarity ends. Jobs’s claims about the first iPad’s “magic” were dismissed by those who saw the device as nothing more than a “giant iPhone,” and the iPad 2 can still be accurately described that way. When you turn it on, you are greeted with a grid of every app you ever installed. Customization doesn’t go beyond the ability to group the icons into folders and move six to privileged spots on a dock at the base of the screen.

The Galaxy Tab’s Honeycomb 3.1, however, seems to be gunning to replace the desktop experience with something that looks to be suspiciously like another one, albeit without a mouse. You can clutter your five desktops with app shortcuts to your heart’s content. You can add “widgets” (cut-down, interactive versions of regular apps) to that clutter to do things like provide a permanent view of your e-mail inbox or music player. This latest release of Honeycomb allows you to resize your widgets, an option that makes it possible to create a desktop-PC feel by putting, for example, a calendar and an e-mail inbox side by side.

Honeycomb even comes with a very Windows-like system tray—a place where running apps can be seen and notifications pop up—in the bottom right corner. But it all adds up to a less slick experience than an iPad—there’s much more to tinker with, and you invariably leave things untidy. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 requires a steeper learning curve than the iPad 2.

The second part of Google’s post-PC vision requires is even trickier to master.

I used the “stable” version of Chrome OS that comes with Samsung’s Series 5 Chromebook on Google’s prototype the Cr-48 notebook, released last year, which has much the same hardware. The Samsung Series 5 will set you back $430 with 16 GB of storage and Wi-Fi only, or $500 for the same with 3G added (yes, it has less storage than you can get with the Galaxy Tab).

Learning how a Chromebook works is pleasant enough at first, as you adjust to a computer that takes just eight seconds to switch on from cold, and one second to wake from sleep (a state it can maintain for over a weekwhen starting with a full charge). The machine may be physically lightweight and have stripped-down functionality, but unlike some netbooks, it provides snappy access to even complex Web pages and handles full-screen Flash video just fine. Its settings menu is delightfully spare and really highlights the fun of junking a lot of stuff you always assumed had to be there in an OS.

But you soon hit the post-PC limitation of this vision: not being able to store files on your computer or do anything while offline. Users are encouraged to “install” Web apps from the Chrome Web store, but that essentially means adding a bookmark. File storage is intended to be via online services like Google Docs or Google’s beta cloud Music locker. (Google has said some of its services will work offline by later this year.)

Two recent additions to Chrome OS help, enabling you to view files that are on a USB drive and play music or video from a connected device, but both feel very primitive. When you can’t get Wi-Fi, or use 3G if your Chromebook has it, this vision of post-PC computing feels post-apocalyptic: everything digital you (digitally) own is gone, and your only chance of getting it back is to reinvent the Internet from scratch.

When you look at them together, it’s clear that each of Google’s two takes on a world beyond the PC demands considerably more of users than the simple, singular vision promoted by Apple. You’re expected to take a more active role in managing the complexity (Honeycomb) or the limitations (Chrome OS) of your device.

A deficiency the pair have in common is a lack of decent apps: the Chrome OS and Android tablet app stores are pitifully bare. Google claims that both are about to be saved by waves of innovative apps from third-party developers, but it’s an argument that feels persuasive only for tablets. Android phones had a few delinquent early years while their app ecosystem got started. But the Galaxy Tab’s groundwork of a richly featured if somewhat complex OS has been laid, and it just needs more app developers to come and build. The foundations of Chrome OS, however, are not so complete. Here Google is relying on developers to create powerful Web apps that work offline even before its own apps do so, or the OS feels like a finished product.

The two claws of Google’s pincer movement against traditional PCs may each offer more features – and complexity – than the iPad, but only one, Android Honeycomb, feels capable of doing as much damage as Jobs’ magical giant iPhone.

Source:http://www.technologyreview.in/computing/37872/

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