Unified communications voice deployments are on the rise, and many organizations are integrating Microsoft Lync enterprise voice with existing communications solutions, such as PBXs, IP PBXs and network and end-point devices.
In this Industry Buzz podcast, Blair Pleasant moderates a discussion among the UCStrate
The quarterly earnings from Dell show that the company did better than was expected by Wall Street, but are still down due to the declining PC market. There was a 72 percent drop in net income during Q2, from $732 million in the previous quarter to $204 million. Compared to last year, revenue was flat, coming in at $14.51 billion and exceeding forecasts of $14.18 billion.
A new addition has been made available via the Cloud Client Computing portfolio, Dell Wyse ThinOS 8 firmware and the Dell Wyse D10D thin client, according to Round Rock, Texas-based Dell.
Dell provides secure, manageable, and high-performing end-to-end desktop virtualization solutions for organizations that make use of Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and Dell software. The new addition is based on Dell Wyse's heritage as a leading provider of thin clients and popular purpose-built thin client operating system.
Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V will now be made available by Dell, who intend to use this as a hypervisor choice for the OpenStack cloud platform. Customers will be able to have extra flexibility and choice in operating OpenStack workloads in Windows Server environments, and this is the first time a technology vendor has made Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisor available on OpenStack for private clouds.
Dell has acquired a potentially critical cloud-agnostic services platform, Enstratius, in the midst of an ever-growing hybrid public-private cloud market in corporate America.
The amount of the purchase remains undisclosed, and Enstratius, which is a small privately held Minneapolis cloud management services provider with less than 50 employees, helps over 20 public/ private cloud platforms; this includes Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure, OpenStack, VMware and Rackspace.
Silver Lake Partners and Dell have reached an agreement with regard to the question of going private through a leveraged buyout. In addition to Dell and the private equity firm Silver Lake, other financing companies have also been involved in the deal. The leverage buyout stands at $13.65 per share or $24.4 billion, according to Dell.
It has recently been announced that Dell is potentially heading towards a private equity deal; this news could reap benefits for both Dell and the channel.
Most public companies are pressured into going private by the investment community, making them focus on the quarterly transition. However, a private Dell would be able to pay more attention to long-term value.
Currently, Dell is being forced to take risks and make long-term bets; this is because the company is in the midst of changes and in channel-building mode.
As the prediction season winds down, there's another prognosticator who deserves attention: Elliot Gold of Telespan. This is the 18th consecutive year that Mr. Gold has cast conferencing predictions, and according to his own analysis, his accuracy rate is 75 percent (127 correct out of 170).
Last week, he offered his 10 predictions for 2013 and then reviewed his forecasts from last year. The webinar and more information is available at his site telespan.com.
In the fourth quarter of last year, IDC reports that there was a fall of 6.4 percent in worldwide PC shipments. These results are even worse than what was expected in the research firm's previously forecasted decrease of 4.4 percent.
Slow PC sales remained in the last quarter of 2012 even with the release of Microsoft Windows 8. The decline in sales of PC units is the first in five years showing stark comparison to the last year, said the IDC report.