The New Nation - Internet Edition

Yahoo stays silent as Microsoft deadline nears

IT REPORT

Yahoo maintained a defiant silence on Microsoft's $40-billion takeover bid, as the deadline to wrap up the deal came down to the wire.

Instead of publicly responding to the software giant's ultimatum, Yahoo ignored the issue entirely and instead unveiled plans to rewire its Internet services to make them more flexible for users and more compatible with other websites.

The announcement of Yahoo's intended conversion to a social hub was made at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco by Yahoo chief technology officer Ari Balogh, who dubbed the initiative "Yahoo Open Strategy". The announcement reinforced expectations that the internet pioneer would remain steadfast in its rejection of Microsoft's bid, which Yahoo argues fails to take into account the company's imminent growth prospects.

Under the new system, Yahoo's 500 million users will be able to seamlessly integrate content from across Yahoo's entire web empire into their personal network.

Yahoo will also open its application platform to outside developers to allow third parties to create apps that work across the network and help create a social networking site that through sheer numbers of users and applications could quickly overtake current market leaders like MySpace and Facebook. The system is not expected to debut before 2009.

"We are not building another social network," Balogh told more than 1,000 attendees at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco. "We are building social into everything we do."

Since Microsoft unveiled its original $44-billion cash and stock offer in February, Yahoo has determinedly sought other suitors to help it remain independent. However its attempts to forge an alliance with News Corp floundered when Rupert Murdoch's company allied with Microsoft.

Yahoo's plans for more limited alliances with Google and AOL have failed to convince many stockholders that they will yield more advantages than Microsoft's bid which offers a 60 percent premium on Yahoo's pre-bid share price.

With Yahoo appearing resolute in resisting Microsoft's current bid, analysts are split on whether Microsoft will walk away, sweeten the offer, or launch a hostile bid that would try to circumvent Yahoo's board of directors.

But with Yahoo unable to offer any compelling alternative to investors in the short term, Microsoft is unlikely to increase its offer, most analysts believe.

If Microsoft remains determined to do a deal it may be able to pick up Yahoo for less by waiting a few months. With Yahoo's latest earnings reports showing disappointing results the company's stock is liable to drop precipitously if Microsoft withdraws.

HP integrity system now allows migration

IT REPORT

HP has announced that, more than 50 Asia Pacific and Japan customers from have successfully migrated from legacy mainframe systems to HP Integrity systems in the past 18 months to support mission critical IT environments.

Companies moving to next-generation data centers from diverse industry sectors have replaced legacy systems, including IBM mainframes, with HP Integrity to minimize high hardware maintenance and software licensing costs.

Fueled by increased demand for HP Integrity and Integrity Non Stop servers in Q4 2007, HP's Intel Itanium (EPIC) processor-based server revenues grew 53.0 percent in Asia Pacific (excl. Japan) region(1).

According to IDC, HP tied for the top position in the Asia/Pacific (inc. Japan) Unix server market in revenue terms, securing 33.0 percent market share measured in CYQ4, 2007. HP's RISC & EPIC Unix server revenues grew 29.3 percent on a quarter-on-quarter basis in Q4 2007, underpinned by 23.8 percent growth in EPIC Unix. RISC Unix server revenues grew by 46.4 percent on a quarter-on-quarter basis, outperforming the market growth of 8 percent during the same period. HP Integrity servers represented the majority of HP's Business Critical Systems revenue in Asia Pacific (Inc. Japan), with 77.0 percent share in Q4 2007 (2).

HP also introduced a modernization program to leverage its new HP Legacy Application Transformation© and Visual Intelligence Tools©. By helping businesses understand the structure and composition of legacy applications based on scientific analysis, these tools significantly improve the transformation process by minimizing risks, reducing time, budget and resource requirements.

"Customers are realizing that mainframe systems are expensive to maintain and vulnerable to security threats," said Herbert Zwenger, vice president and general manager, Business Critical Systems, HP Asia Pacific and Japan. "HP helps customers to easily move towards next-generation data centers by modernizing legacy applications and ensuring better investment protection through open and modular HP Integrity server solutions."

Shinhan Bank migrated from existing mainframe systems to HP Integrity to maintain a large core banking system following its merger with Chohung Bank. "There were many cases of transforming mainframes into open systems, yet none was comparable with us in terms of scale," said Tae-Jun Lee, general manager, IT Planning Division, IT Group Shinhan Bank. "Our successful transformation paved the way for a new trend of mainframe downsizing in the Korea banking industry." Key customers in Asia Pacific who migrated from mainframe systems to HP Integrity to lower power consumption and ease management of multiple applications include:

HP helped to consolidate the marketing data of Astellas Pharma from an old mainframe server to a single HP Integrity Superdome on virtual servers that was divided and split into multiple hardware systems and partitions. HP Integrity servers and virtualization tools helped Astellas Pharma reduce system operating costs by 50 percent.

The mainframes of steelmaker POSCO had limitations in managing the rapidly evolving new applications environment. By transitioning to HP Integrity Superdome from the mainframes, the company reduced delivery time by more than 60 percent and increased e-commerce volume to 98 percent.

Intel is seeing rapid adoption of Itanium-based platforms, particularly in Asia Pacific's financial and telecom sectors, where customers with legacy mainframe environments are choosing to move to more flexible and reliable Itanium-based solutions that reduce IT costs and are highly optimized for business-critical operations.

"The Itanium processor, along with our robust processor roadmap, is well positioned as a mainframe replacement solution for mission-critical applications such as ERP, CRM and BI," says William Wu, Asia Pacific Product Marketing Manager for Intel's Server Platforms Group. "The fast adoption of HP Integrity servers and migration from legacy mainframe environments is good validation of Itanium's ability to meet the rising requirements of performance-demanding industries in Asia Pacific. Together with partners like HP, Intel will continue to develop the Itanium platform with new innovations and process technology well into the future."

With a significant number of customer adoptions in Asia Pacific and Japan, HP Integrity runs more than 1,400 leading Independent Software Vendor (ISV) applications that support unique customer needs in ERP and SCM environments. In addition, HP Integrity servers support more than 14,000 applications globally.

Oracle signs pact with India provincial government

IT REPORT

Software firm Oracle has signed an agreement with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to roll out the Oracle Academy program in 342 engineering colleges benefit ting 50,000 students over two years.

Institute for Electronic Governance (IEG), an initiative of the state government with this agreement would introduce Oracle's business and technology curriculum to the students.

Under the agreement, the Oracle Academy program would be offered to over 50,000 students over a two-year period, the company said in a statement.

The IEG, which leads the States Jawahar Knowledge Centre initiative, will work with Oracle to roll out the program to 342 engineering colleges that are part of initiative.

"Our collaboration with the Oracle Academy would extend to our 342 engineering colleges and will address the skills gap in over 50,000 students seeking to join the IT industry," IEG CEO Amarnath Reddy said.

Jawahar Knowledge Centers is an initiative by the Andhra Pradesh government to achieve inclusive growth by providing students all around the state with employable and industry grade skills.