Q3 2010 Results From HP

Hewlett-Packard Development Company has announced its latest financial results, for the third quarter of 2010 that ended July 31, 2010.

The company has posted net revenue of USD 30.7 billion, which is higher by 11.4% compared to the same quarter’s performance of 2009. Operating profit zoomed up to USD 2.3 billion, which is 5% higher than that reported for the same quarter last year. The GAAP diluted earning per share (EPS) has worked out to USD 0.75, which is higher than the USD 0.69 notched up for Q3 2009.

Amongst its various business lines, the services stream increased its revenue by 1% to USD 8.6 billion, while the sale of enterprise storage and server equipment fetched it revenue of USD 4.4 billion, which is a whopping 19% increase over the previous year’s third quarter. The company earned USD 863 million revenue in software sales. There are two groups focused on two different domains – the Personal Systems Group, which notched USD 9.9 billion and the Imaging and Printing Group, which notched USD 6.2 billion.

The company’s financial services arm too saw a growth of revenue by 14% and touched USD 764 million.

Read more about the financial performance of this IT biggie, here.

Intel Moving Into Security Space

Close on the heels of the news that Intel is moving into the cable modem and consumer electronics space in a big way, is another news that Intel is also branching out into the IT security space. Intel has announced the acquisition of Santa Clara, California-headquartered McAfee Inc. The deal will take away USD 7.69 billion from Intel’s cash account.

Founded in 1987, McAfee had clocked about USD 2 billion in revenue in the previous year of 2009.The company has over 6,000 employees spread in offices around the world. The company’s forte is software-centered security solutions such as “Total Protection”, McAfee Antivirus, McAfee Internet Security, Firewall and “IPS”.

Post acquisition, McAfee will function as a 100% subsidiary of Intel, and be managed by the company’s Software and Services Group which is headed presently by Ms. Renee James, senior vice president and general manager. Mr. David DeWalt, President and CEO of McAfee is joining Intel along with the entire management team.

The strategy behind this acquisition is to offer a holistic solution to the customer for security that combines both hardware and software elements, especially in the connected devices space – and not many in the competition are a master at security in this space.

Read more about the latest news in Intel’s acquisition spree, here.

Adobe Acquires Day Software

Day Software Holding AG, a Basel, Switzerland-headquartered company, has been acquired by Adobe Inc. The transaction is worth CHF 255 million (roughly USD 244.3 million).

Post the acquisition, Day Software will operate as a product line within Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit. The CEO of Day, Mr. Erik Hansen, too will join Adobe, and will report directly to Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Enterprise Solutions.

Day Software is known to be a pioneer in the enterprise content management (ECM) space. The company’s flagship product is Content Repository Extreme (CRX), which is a leading Java Content Repository (JCR) in the industry. Another of Day’s products worth mentioning here is “CQ5″, which is a single unified suite that offers web content management, digital asset management and social collaboration. The suite won the prestigious 2009 InfoWorld “Technology of the Year Award” in the web CMS category.

The company has been trading on both the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX) and also the American OTC exchange.

With this acquisition, Adobe hopes to further strengthen its hold on enterprise software solutions, using Day’s expertise in content management, digital asset management and social collaboration.

Read more about the latest acquisition by Adobe, after its last purchase of Omniture in 2009; here.

A More Powerful Mac Pro From Apple

A new series in the Mac Pro brand of computers has been unveiled by Apple Inc. The basic configuration begins at USD 2,499.

The Cupertino, California-based company has built the new computer on Intel’s Xeon processors, and incorporated quad-core and 6-core CPUs that together tot up a speed of 3.33 Ghz. Because of the way these chips are designed – on a single die -, the cores share up to 12MB L3 cache, with an integrated memory controller. This translates to faster memory bandwidth and lower latency of memory. An technology called hyper-threading built into the Intel architecture has been exploited to increase the number of cores from 12 to a virtual 24.

The Mac Pro now comes with ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics processor, which the customer can upgrade to HD 5870. These processors have their own 1GB of memory.

The device has a 1TB SATA hard drive preinstalled, with space to accommodate 4 SSDs. There are two Mini DisplayPorts and one dual-link DVI port in the system, allowing customers to hook up two LED Cinema Displays without an additional graphics card or adapter. The Magic Mouse is included as part of the configuration.

Read more about the latest series of computing beasts from Apple, here.

Intel To Increase Penetration In Cable Modem Industry

The Santa Clara, California-headquartered Intel Corporation has announced their intention to increase their hold over the cable industry market, besides ancillary consumer electronic segments by reaching an agreement with Texas Instruments to buy the latter’s modem product line. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

As per the information available, after hiving off, the cable modem group will become part of Intel’s Digital Home Group. Employees of the cable modem group of Texas Instruments have received offers from Intel to join the company at sites in their home countries. The cable modem group is primarily based in Israel.

The motivation behind this strategic move for Intel is to now offer a complete digital set top box solution for residences. Intel will manufacture and sell set top boxes, residential gateways and modem products to the cable OEM retail market. Part of this solution will comprise the Puma product lines belonging to Texas Instruments. Puma, along with the DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) technology is coming Intel’s way.

This is yet another attempt by Intel to move into the consumer electronics industry in a big way. Other CE products that Intel is focusing on include digital TVs, Blu-ray disc players, companion boxes, and the like. Read more about a strategic move by the processor manufacturer, here.

Next Page »