Profile of Bob Evans
News & Commentary Posts: 1070
Bob Evans is senior VP, communications, for Oracle Corp. He is a former InformationWeek editor.
Articles by Bob Evans
posted in September 2010
9/30/2010
HP is highlighting Leo Apotheker's experience but his ouster from SAP 8 months ago was marked by widespread customer unrest, product snafus, and awful morale among employees.
9/29/2010
Tibco's revenue is surging toward $1 billion because "20th-century" competitors like IBM, Oracle, and SAP "just don't have the goods," says CEO Vivek Ranadive.
9/29/2010
While HP's steeply calculated risk to hold its annual analysts' day without a CEO shows guts, it also lets IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Cisco to continue setting the IT agenda.
9/28/2010
While analysts have lots of probing questions for today's call with HP, here are the make-or-break topics: analytics, cloud, mobile, data centers, and who's the new CEO.
9/27/2010
IBM adds Blade Network's innovative technologies and in-Cisco's-face competitiveness to IBM's expanding ambitions in networking and the data center.
9/27/2010
Proclaiming its six data centers are now "Cisco-free," Hewlett-Packard said its six totally revamped data centers are running the $130-billion company's operations with networking technologies supplied exclusively by HP Networking.
9/27/2010
Noting that IBM has snapped up four Massachusetts companies in the past three months, the Boston Globe speculates on the identities of the next four takeover candidates. After all, an IBM exec says in the article that his company is always on the hunt.
9/26/2010
Ellison defies conventional wisdom by promising that extreme dependence on a single IT vendor (that would be Oracle) doesn't kill you and in fact will make you stronger.
9/24/2010
The Times does a hatchet job with strident but unproven claims about widespread fear and intimidation among Oracle customers.
9/23/2010
Trading potshots over differing cloud philosophies, Ellison and Benioff reveal some valuable questions to consider in devising a great cloud-computing strategy.
9/22/2010
Promising greater performance plus less busywork and lower costs, Oracle and IBM lead an industrywide movement toward highly engineered and purpose-built systems.
9/22/2010
Theatrics aside, Ellison's conversion from cloud-ranter to cloud-computing arms merchant reveals a great deal about today's rapidly shifting IT landscape.
9/22/2010
Stung by Larry Ellison's pointed public criticism of its unacceptably slow incorporation of bug fixes and enhancements, Red Hat has lashed back at the Oracle CEO by saying Red Hat's "commitment is deep and lasting, not fireworks and hyperbole followed by a huge invoice and vendor lock-in." Oh, can't we all just get along?!?
9/21/2010
Here's an advance look at some of the features and product strategy behind the Fusion Apps that Larry Ellison will introduce today at Oracle Open World.
9/21/2010
Introducing Oracle's new Exalogic Elastic Cloud machine, Larry Ellison opened his remarks by saying that cloud computing has many definitions, and he cited Amazon.com and Salesforce.com as examples of profoundly different cloud approaches. And then he unloaded on Salesforce.com for "commingling" customers' data and offering "a very weak security model."
9/20/2010
Dropping his standard jabs and insults, Ellison's been downright sweet to HP and IBM lately. What the heck's going on here?
9/20/2010
Since his sudden ouster as Hewlett-Packard CEO and then his re-emergence one month later as president of Oracle, Mark Hurd has generally kept a low profile and not much has been said about his specific responsibilities. But in a low-key comment during last week's earnings call, Hurd revealed what he'll be focusing upon at Oracle.
9/20/2010
Oracle has introduced its own alternative kernel to Red Hat Linux because, Larry Ellison says, Red Hat has continually dragged its feet on fixing bugs and making enhancements to its product-sometimes for as long as four years. But Ellison also reiterated Oracle's commitment to supporting Red Hat Linux "forever."
9/20/2010
Larry Ellison once said Netezza helped inspire Oracle's red-hot Exadata system, and I think he wants what Netezzza has.
9/20/2010
Larry Ellison debuts the Exalogic Elastic Cloud middleware machine and says it runs everything from legacy apps to modern Java releases.
9/19/2010
Oracle EVP Thomas Kurian's keynote was initially focused on forthcoming Fusion apps but is now called "Oracle and Cloud Computing."
9/17/2010
Hey, who wouldn't like a 52% pay hike in this economy? That increase for Commonwealth Bank of Australia CIO Michael Harte is even more sweet because it builds on his old pay package of $2.8 million and brings his current comp plan to $4.2 million. CBA's CEO said Harte's technology leadership was "a very significant catalyst" in the bank posting record annual profit of $5.66 billion.
9/17/2010
Underscoring the old adage that it's better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you're a fool rather than opening it and removing all doubt, Oracle posted a blowout quarter yesterday with stronger than expected gains across the board, including several Sun hardware categories that critics said would languish under the Oracle brand.
9/16/2010
A list of Top 100 global brands includes six tech firms in the top 10, but I think some glue-sniffers must have been behind the ranking given to Apple.
9/16/2010
SAP is experiencing soaring demand for its products and services among large businesses and government agencies in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Argentina, according to an article quoting an SAP executive. One of his comments: "We are going from a focus on cutting costs to a focus on growth."
9/15/2010
New Exadata machines, Mark Hurd's new role, the status of MySQL and Java, and more will be on Larry Ellison's mind at Oracle Open World this coming week.
9/14/2010
Oracle's just starting to wring full value out of Sun and is firmly among top players in overhauling data centers, says analyst Jason Maynard.
9/14/2010
The iPad is emerging as not just a cooler and slicker computing device but rather a superb customer-engagement tool that unlocks new business possibilities.
9/13/2010
Looking to transcend ERP and become the world leader in real-time analytics, SAP tomorrow will roll out 15 real-time analytics applications in concert with six major customers. The launch of new apps, hosted by CEO Bill McDermott, will highlight the industry-specific functionality SAP has built in and will underscore "the importance and evolving role of analytics in business today," the company said.
9/12/2010
IBM offers HP and Oracle customers aggressive trade-in financing, and SAP hits back at Oracle with new industry-specific real-time applications.
9/11/2010
Just when you thought you'd picked which side to back in the smartphone wars-iPhone or BlackBerry?-along comes that darn Google Android to mess up those best-laid plans: Gartner says Android's market share this year will eclipse that of both BlackBerry and Apple.
9/10/2010
In July of 2002, I received a letter from an executive at an investment firm whose offices had been on the 93rd floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower. On September 11th, 35 of the company's employees were killed, including its CTO, and the executive said he wanted his company's CTO to be remembered. So I had the privilege to write a column about Mike Howell, including thoughts from his wife and a couple of colleagues. And today, eight years later and on the eve of September 11, those mem
9/10/2010
HP's pairing with Microsoft and SAP on huge rollout of machines aimed at BI, OLTP, Exchange, and more. Can it catch IBM and billion-dollar Exadata?
9/8/2010
The 71% of CEOs who are more concerned with their company's financial health than with "the environment" should be fired, says a Forrester senior VP.
9/8/2010
SAP intends to dramatically expand its iPad rollout from the 1,500 employees who have the devices today to 17,000 by this time next year, equalling about 35% of SAP's global workforce, says computing.co.uk. And, not coincidentally, 17,000 iPads would match the number of Blackberries currently in use across the company.
9/7/2010
Larry Ellison's farewell rationale for Phillips' awkward departure just doesn't add up. And I think Mark Hurd better watch his back.
9/7/2010
One month after resigning in disgrace from HP, Hurd joins Ellison's pursuit of IBM. Here are Hurd's top 10 challenges.
9/6/2010
A fly on the wall overhears the final stages of Ellison's conversation with Hurd to have the former HP CEO join Oracle as President of Systems.
9/4/2010
Extending the iPad phenomenon from its high-profile executives to mainstream employees, SAP is equipping 1,000 of its workers with iPads running a range of enterprise applications, including SAP's own BusinessObjects BI tools, reports winshuttle.com.
9/3/2010
Instead of campaigning to marshal support against Ellison's Java plans, Java creator Gosling has trivialized the issue with his insipid T-shirt "protest."
9/2/2010
IBM's ranking of software vendors by vulnerabilities is riddled with errors, so Google intervenes and goes from worst to first.
9/2/2010
Citigroup says the z196's record-setting chips help deliver massive performance increase and flexibility that will result in greater innovation and value for customers.
9/1/2010
Oracle's begun promoting the idea that the IT stack can become much more manageable, much less expensive, and much less complex if CIOs will simply go with all-Oracle stacks. While Oracle says this novel approach is starting to gain traction among customers, IBM senior VP Steve Mills says it's all a bunch of typical Oracle testosterone-driven blather.