Articles by Charles King

When SAP's five founders launched the company in June 1972, it's unlikely theyforesaw where the IT industry would travel in the decades to come. SAP's core business applications, including enterprise resource planning(ERP) solutions, continue to support tens of thousands of companies globally -- but howthose organizations and their employees work, communicate and collaborate, both at theoffice and on the go, is changing...

The messaging in VMware's announcement of its planned acquisition of Niciraoffers insight into both the company's view of the deal and the current state of cloudcomputing. In essence, without virtualization, cloud computing is an amorphouspipe dream. However, virtualization alone -- or of one type or in just one portion of the ITinfrastructure -- isn't enough to support truly agile, elastic, efficient and reliable computeclouds.

Overall, the deal between Intel and ASML is pretty straightforward: Intel agreed to commit about US$1.0B to ASML R&D programs to accelerate deployment of new technologies for 450mm microprocessor wafers and extreme ultraviolet lithography(EUVL) by as much as two years. The company also agreed to buy 10 percent of ASML shares for approximately $2.1

Dell's announcement of its planned Quest Software acquisition seemed more inevitable than surprising. Quest had been in play since March, when it said investment firm Insight Venture Partners offered US$23 per share (or about $2 billion) for the company. The price jumped when an unidentified player -- many assumed it was Dell -- entered the biddin...

From a PR standpoint, Microsoft's launch of its new Surface tablets was executed just about perfectly. The company's pre-event publicity dropped enough minor hints with major outlets (All Things D, in particular), ignored faulty diversions (Barnes & Noble, anyone?) and insisted on such severe levels of secrecy that it wouldn't have been surprising if the media buzz around the Los Angeles venue set off sympathetic vibrations deep within the San Andreas fault...

Dell's recent launch of its "Copper" initiatives and ecosystem, which aim to develop commercialARM-based servers, proves one point: IT industry watchers love a fight, especiallywhen it pits a youthful, upstart technology against an established heavyweight vendor There are numerous others to choose from, but the Microsoft vs. Linux slugfest ofthe la...

The x86 data center revolution has been a tale of industry standard upward mobility pressuring and displacing traditional systems. In essence, continually evolving x86-based systems and complementary technologies -- particularly virtualization, memory and I/O -- have provided hardware vendors the means to develop systems capable of challenging and beating traditional enterprise server platforms.

For those familiar with traditional thin-client computing, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions feel virtually like old home week with a couple of notable exceptions. First, rather than depending on dedicated data center-to-desktop hardware resources (a conventional model that is mostly on the wane), VDI leverages server, storage and net...

The tech industry loves the concept of new innovation to the point where product launches all too often call to mind infatuated elders showing off photos of their latest grandkids. But practicality tends to drive the manufacturing side of the IT business, with consistency trumping innovation. As a result, products arrive at market on time, retaile...

In the years since thin client computing arrived on the IT scene, it has been pronounced dead, only to arise again more often than Jason in the "Friday the 13th" film franchise. That's not due to any quality of its underlying architecture. In fact, thin client engineering is often elegant in the extreme and makes clever use of au courant mainstream technologies. But the two main benefits of thin clients tend to be counterbalanced by essential challenges: Cost -- The long-term costs associated with thin clients, especially operational and facilities expenditures (OPEX), are extremely attractive. But that is typically offset both by thin client infrastructure acquisition costs (CAPEX) and by the radical erosion of traditional desktop prices over time. When Windows NT-based thin clients made their commercial appearance in 1995, individual PCs cost about US$2,000 each. Today, the price of a standard PC is below $500 and still falling, placing steady pressure on thin client CAPEX and margins.

Major corporate realignments happen for any number of reasons. First and foremost, they aim to pursue and capture improved leverage of financial and human capital. Second, they can alter inefficient habitual behaviors and deconstruct unwanted corporate fiefdoms. Finally, they provide tangible proof to the markets of executive leaders' strategic vision. All these points are apparent in the plans HP announced last week.

Intel's launch of its new Xeon processor E5-2600 product family (aka "Sandy Bridge") marked numerous firsts for the company and x86 data centers. The new processors deliver leadership performance, best data center performance per watt, and breakthrough I/O innovation features, according to Intel, including the following: up to eight cores per proce...

In the run-up to the launch of any of Intel's newest generation Xeon CPUs, most every server vendor and its extended family starts jockeying for position over who has the bragging rights for the fastest, biggest, baddest x86 systems on the planet. The resulting Power Points tend to be mind-numbing, parsing out highly granular design points and technical details that can inspire even the geekiest server analyst to reach for a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol...

Last week saw a pair of announcements by major vendors that reflect the degree to which solid state disk or flash caching technologies are moving into the mainstream: IBM announced several key enhancements to its latest XIV Gen3 solutions, including a solid state drive caching option that can increase system performance by up to three times. The n...

A bit over a year ago, the conventional wisdom related to enterprise IT vendors was fairly straightforward: Sheer size and depth of expertise gave end-to-end systems vendors unlimited access to the high ground. As markets recovered from the 2008 recession, enterprise customers would naturally stick with or gravitate toward large established players that could fulfill their every need. Being one-stop shops allowed systems vendors to engineer killer deals for cost-conscious enterprises and still walk away with healthy profits. Plus, the smartest of the bunch were leading the way in exotic new areas including cloud computing and dedicated big data appliances.

Like every other Consumer Electronics Show (CES) I've attended, CES 2012 was one of the weirder, more ephemeral, and most compelling technology events of the season. Weird because since CES acts as an essentially level playing field for both the ridiculous and sublime, you can literally demo a pricey next-gen OLED TV while a couple of dozen feet away vendors are hawking bulk wiring harnesses, electrical connectors and gizmos of every kind. Ephemeral since so many of the products and "trends" being pimped by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), which runs the show, and attending vendors end up going nowhere but down the memory toilet.

Say this about 2011 -- along with any number of natural and unnatural disasters, the year featured more than its fair share of technology industry melodrama from the highly public wrangling between Oracle and HP to the passing of singular characters, including Apple's Steve Jobs. Both of these events also highlighted the importance of a topic mainly of interest to financial analysts and institutional investors: executive succession...

This story was originally published on Oct. 11, 2011, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Given the sheer volume of commentaries following the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs, I hesitated to add my own voice to the chorus. Like most folks, I didn't know Jobs personally. Like many, the closest I ever got to him was...

If it's late November or early December, I'm usually traveling to or from Westchester County, New York, home of IBM and its Software Group (SWG) and Systems and Technology Group's (STG) annual IT analyst confabs. In practical ways, these events tend to mirror one another; past strategies and solutions are trotted out for a quick going-over, current efforts are polished and examined, and future plans are discussed at some length. In that sense, this year was very much like every one before. But 2011 also marked the third analyst conference since IBM formally integrated STG with SWG, placing the entire shebang in the hands of SVP and Group Executive Steve Mills.

New enhancements to EMC's Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform are designed to ease the way enterprises and service providers implement and access public and private cloud storage. VMware vApp packaging should simplify installation, and improved visibility and reporting tools provide the means to expand cloud metering services and improve administrative reporting and controls.