VMware completes acquisition of Pivotal, connects infrastructure and application owners to boost software delivery, business outcomes

VMware announced Monday that it has completed the acquisition of Pivotal Software. With the completion of the acquisition, Pivotal’s Class A common stock was removed from listing on the New York Stock Exchange with trading suspended prior to the open of the market today, and Pivotal will now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of VMware. The transaction represented an enterprise value for Pivotal of approximately $2.7 billion.

Under the terms of the transaction, Pivotal’s Class A common stockholders are entitled to receive $15.00 per share cash for each share held (without interest and less applicable tax withholdings), and Pivotal’s Class B common stockholder, Dell Technologies, received approximately 7.2 million shares of VMware Class B common stock, at an exchange ratio of 0.0550 shares of VMware Class B common stock for each share of Pivotal Class B common stock.

Pivotal’s offerings will be core to the VMware Tanzu portfolio of products and services designed to help customers transform the way they build, run and manage their most important applications, with Kubernetes as the common infrastructure substrate. 

The combination of Pivotal’s developer-centric offerings with VMware’s upstream Kubernetes run-time infrastructure and management tools will deliver a comprehensive enterprise solution that enables dramatic improvements in developer productivity in the creation of modern applications. VMware is able to offer product building blocks and integrated solutions that are tested and proven with technical expertise that customers need to accelerate software delivery across data center, cloud and edge environments.

“It's my pleasure to announce Ray O'Farrell as the leader of VMware’s new Modern Applications Platform business unit—uniting the Pivotal and VMware Cloud Native Applications teams,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware. “And as Pivotal is now part of VMware, I want to thank the Pivotal leadership team for building a great company. Together, we’re poised to be the leading enabler of Kubernetes with a deep understanding of both operators and developers.”

“Digital transformation and the applications that drive it should not be restricted only to cloud and software giants,” said Ray O’Farrell, executive vice president and general manager, Modern Applications Platform Business Unit, VMware. “We believe that modern application development solutions and practices need to be easily accessible to everyday enterprises across the globe. With Pivotal’s developer capabilities as the foundation, we’ll focus on delivering consumable, enterprise-ready cloud native offerings to customers to help them achieve better business outcomes.”  

“Pivotal has fundamentally changed how the world’s biggest brands build and manage software with a focus on developer productivity through platform abstractions and development techniques as well as connecting the business with the developer,” said Edward Hieatt, senior vice president, customer success, Pivotal. “The combination of Pivotal and VMware offers the most comprehensive application platform in the industry and is a win for our customers, a win for Pivotal, and a win for VMware. We’re excited to team up with VMware to help more enterprises become like modern software companies by adopting DevOps and Lean techniques developed by internet giants and the startup community.”

Numerous mutual customers including Raytheon have reacted positively to the news of the acquisition. “By working with both Pivotal and VMware, we’ve been able to completely transform how we write software for our military and government customers,” said Todd Probert, vice president for C2, Space and Intelligence at Raytheon. “Combining these companies under a single umbrella is going to make it possible for my team to get code to our customers even faster and easier.”

Western Digital begins sampling of its 20TB SMR and 18TB CMR hard disk drives, to help scale data centers for zettabyte age

Western Digital announces that it has started shipping its high-capacity HDD samples to enterprise OEMs and hyperscale customers worldwide, so that users can efficiently scale their data centers for the zettabyte era.

The 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDDs and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs, first previewed in June 2019, and announced in September 2019, feature its initial commercial implementation of energy-assisted magnetic recording technology on a nine-disk platform, enabling customers to more efficiently provision and scale their data center environments with improved total cost of ownership.

Optimized to deliver improved capacity and low TCO, the Ultrastar DC HC600 series provides unprecedented capacity capability by harnessing two core complementary technologies: HelioSeal technology and host-managed SMR (HM-SMR). These field-proven technologies provide the foundation for delivering efficiency, quality and reliable performance required by cloud and hyperscale data centers. 

Unlike CMR drives, HM-SMR drives are not drop-in replacements for traditional drives and require system software modifications that take advantage of the new command sets to ensure data is written sequentially to the drive. This software investment helps yield cost-efficient storage solutions.

With zettabyte-scale data growth, the need for higher-capacity data storage across a broad spectrum of applications and workloads can be reliably met only with high capacity enterprise HDDs. 

The capacities of Western Digital’s Ultrastar 20TB SMR and 18TB CMR HelioSeal HDDs enable customers to deploy up to 22 percent fewer racks and reduce their TCO by up to 11 percent, along with the corresponding reductions in power consumption, cooling costs, and data center infrastructure needs when compared with 14TB CMR HDDs.

Western Digital achieves high areal density performance in these drives through the innovative use of energy-assisted magnetic recording. Together with the company’s HelioSeal and SMR technologies, triple-stage micro actuation and 9-disk platform, the energy-assisted recording technology provides an integrated solution, resulting in the dramatic gain in drive capacities.

“The market outlook for capacity-optimized enterprise HDDs remains very positive as IDC expects petabytes shipped to hyperscale cloud data centers and for OEM storage systems and servers to grow at a combined compound annual growth rate of 28 percent through 2023,” said Ed Burns, Research Director, HDD and Storage Technologies at IDC. “Western Digital’s new 20TB and 18TB HDDs should make a compelling case for customers to transition to higher capacity points as they seek greater storage and energy efficiencies in the near-term while building more cost-effective and scalable infrastructures for the future.”

“Delivering samples of our Ultrastar 20TB SMR and 18TB CMR HDDs marks a significant milestone for Western Digital—demonstrating our enduring commitment to the open SMR-based ecosystem, as well as our strong track record of innovation to provide great value for our customers,” said Phil Bullinger, senior vice president and general manager of Western Digital’s Data Center Business Unit. “These new HDDs deliver unsurpassed capacity and are our first to leverage energy-assisted magnetic recording technology, enabling new levels of data center efficiency and driving value creation from data at scale.”

Western Digital is now sampling the 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDD and the 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDD, with qualification and volume shipments expected in the first half of next year.

Gartner finds that 22 percent of CFOs are personally effective; most are overinvested in finance tasks

Gartner research shows that a mere 22 percent of CFOs achieve a high degree of personal effectiveness, while using a limited set of activities and successful relationships outside the finance department are the biggest contributors to a CFO’s personal effectiveness.

The research was based on more than 100 CFO interviews and it assessed CFO personal performance and effectiveness across 231 attributes to reveal what the most effective CFOs do differently with their time, relationships and teams.

“CFOs tell us they have more demands than ever, but the surprise in this research is just how few activities differentiate the most successful operators from the rest of the pack,” said Peter Nagy, research vice president in the Gartner Finance practice. “The most important relationships that drive high performance in the CFO role are found in the boardroom and where the customers are, not in the finance department.”

Gartner determined CFO personal effectiveness based on how closely a CFO’s organization aligned to efficient growth behaviors, such as positive risk taking to drive long-term growth, as well as the CFO’s ability to meet CEO expectations around revenue growth, margin expansion, return on invested capital and balance sheet health.

As part of the analysis, Gartner studied the average weekly activities of CFOs and found that the average CFO lost one full day of work per week to ineffective activities. The largest misallocation was in how much time CFOs spent working within their own departments.

“CFOs want to reinvent their departments, keep their talent pipelines full and provide services more efficiently to internal business partners, so it’s not surprising that most respondents noted that managing these activities were a huge demand on their time,” said Nagy. “However, none of these activities, even if mastered, ultimately impacted how effective a CFO was in their overall job performance.”

Gartner found that there was no correlation between an organization’s size or industry in how effectively their CFO performed. Within the finance department, a CFO taking personal ownership of finance talent acquisition, mergers and acquisitions strategy, cost management or digital transformation also had no material impact in how effective the CFO was rated in overall job performance.

While time allocated to, and relationships created within, the finance department did not drive CFO personal effectiveness, Gartner identified three key groups of relationships which the most personally effective CFOs focused on nurturing.

The most effective CFOs succeed in constructively challenging their CEOs to achieve better decision-making outcomes. CFOs reported that they were underinvested in time allocated to both overall corporate and finance strategy, potentially negatively impacting their ability to play this role effectively.

Personally effective CFOs are customer-centric and spend more time with external customers than their peers. CFOs surveyed by Gartner reported time spent with customers was the single activity they felt most underinvested in. CFOs who exhibit strong customer relationships are also deeply connected with their sales leaders and play an active role in owning pricing strategy.

The most effective CFOs are plugged into business unit performance. Levers that can be used to achieve this are having business unit CFOs as direct reports, maintaining strong relationships with business unit general managers and a deep involvement with business unit performance metrics.

“While it may be discouraging that just one in five CFOs currently meet the Gartner standard for a high level of personal effectiveness, the good news is that just focusing on a few key relationships outside of finance can drive significant gains in this area,” said Nagy. “The key for CFOs is to be mindful about where they invest their time and with whom, and then develop strategies for protecting those time investments from their many other day-to-day demands.”

Agero supports nearly half of passenger vehicles on the road with Oracle SD-WAN

Agero is using Oracle enterprise communications technologies to safeguard drivers in more than 115 million vehicles in the U.S. When a driver is stranded roadside, time is of the essence. With Oracle, the company has achieved continuous contact center uptime, so customers can get the assistance they need and are back on the road as quickly as possible.

For 45 years, Agero has provided smart solutions for its clients and their drivers. Currently, Agero’s  roadside assistance, accident management and consumer affairs services are leveraged in the U.S. by drivers in two-thirds of new passenger vehicles, policyholders from nine of the top 15 auto insurance carriers and customers of a variety of other diversified clients. 

Oracle SD-WAN was created to solve the ongoing IT challenges network managers face every day—from expensive, sluggish, inflexible WANs to difficulties deploying new office WAN links and accessing cloud services. 

With Oracle SD-WAN, enterprises can benefit from internet economics, leverage high-bandwidth and inexpensive Internet connections, and safely migrate applications to the public cloud and SaaS at their own pace – without sacrificing the high availability and predictable application performance they expect from their MPLS-only WANs..

To maximize the quality of its customers’ experiences and to eliminate communication failures or downtime, Agero needed predictable enterprise communications performance and real-time application support. Agero selected Oracle for the failsafe reliability, security and interoperability.

“When drivers are stranded on the road in the winter, creating not only an uncomfortable situation but also a health and safety issue, it is crucial for our customers to get directly in contact with an agent,” said Robert Sullivan, vice president, technology and shared services, Agero. “Oracle has the best of breed technology in the Oracle SD-WAN and Enterprise Session Border Controllers, which have helped us to deliver high availability, reliability and quality of experience for our customers.”

Since working with Oracle and Presidio to implement the Oracle SD-WAN solution, Agero has reduced downtime and created special routing situations for sites without substantial circuit diversity. This advanced, “always-on performance” is invaluable to Agero as the company processes more than 12 million roadside and emergency support requests per year.

“Agero is reinventing how driver assistance is delivered, while elevating the consumer experience in often dire scenarios,” said Andrew Morawski, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications - Networks. “As enterprises demand flexible WAN solutions supporting shifting business requirements, Oracle is increasing and leveraging bandwidth for affordable and trusted WAN connectivity, anywhere and whenever it’s needed.”

In addition to the Oracle SD-WAN, Agero deployed Oracle 1100 Enterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC) Oracle 3900 E-SBC and the Oracle Communications Converged Application Server (OCCAS) to protect its network and contact center from external threats.

BridgeClimb adopts RingCentral’s cloud communications and contact centre offerings to enable multichannel communications

BridgeClimb, the operator of Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge experience, adopted RingCentral Australia to enable multichannel communications and customer service. Looking to replace its legacy on-premise infrastructure, BridgeClimb has deployed RingCentral Office and RingCentral Contact Centre solutions across its entire staff. The implementation and cutover took place in October this year.

The RingCentral Office solution provides voice, video, online meetings and team messaging to support the communications needs for all BridgeClimb’s staff members. With this solution, BridgeClimb has replaced at least five different internal systems that they had been running previously to provide these various capabilities. 

RingCentral Contact Centre provides BridgeClimb’s customer service team multichannel capabilities with email, phone and chat in a universal queue. It is integrated with RingCentral Office and provides extensive performance reporting and analytics across the entire platform.

RingCentral Australia, provider of global enterprise cloud communications, collaboration, and contact centre solutions and a wholly owned subsidiary of RingCentral Inc. The RingCentral platform empowers employees to work better together, from any location, on any device, and via any mode to serve customers, improving business efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

It also features unified voice, video meetings, team messaging, digital customer engagement, and integrated contact centre solutions for enterprises globally. RingCentral’s open platform integrates with business apps and enables customers to customise business workflows. RingCentral is headquartered in Belmont, California, and has offices around the world.

RingCentral’s Professional Services team completed the design, configuration and implementation of the unified communications and contact centre solutions. It took just seven weeks from the initial meeting between RingCentral and BridgeClimb to complete the cutover of the new solution.

BridgeClimb no longer has any single points of communications failure and no reliance on any physical infrastructure. RingCentral has a high availability, fully-redundant cloud and telecommunications infrastructure, end-to-end performance monitoring and SLAs, and real-time disaster recovery.

As a people-first organisation, the employee experience is critical for BridgeClimb. RingCentral’s user interface is very intuitive with similar functionality to the consumer communications apps that are already very familiar to most users. This made the transition to RingCentral a very smooth experience for BridgeClimb’s staff, and also ensures easy onboarding and training for new employees.

With RingCentral’s subscription model and no communications hardware requirements or user onboarding constraints, BridgeClimb can continue to grow its business without any technology limitations.

With BridgeClimb currently undergoing an extensive digital transformation, RingCentral’s ability to integrate ‘out of the box’ with many other systems and applications was another critical decision factor. RingCentral is already integrated with BridgeClimb’s Microsoft Office 365 environment, and the company will be looking to other integrations in the future, including a new CRM solution.

“We’re delighted to be associated with the iconic Sydney tourism experience BridgeClimb, and really looking forward to seeing how the BridgeClimb team leverages RingCentral’s open platform for further innovation and business transformation as they roll out new digital applications and services,” said Peter Hughes, regional sales vice president for Asia Pacific, RingCentral.

Kaspersky’s IT Security Calculator reveals budgets lower than average in 45% of SMBs and 50% of enterprises

Data released by the Kaspersky IT Security Calculator shows that budgets at 45 percent of SMBs and 50 percent of enterprises are below the average spend at US$205,000 for small to medium, and $8 million for enterprise businesses. This is despite a Gartner report announcing cybersecurity spending is growing year-on-year with almost 9 percent growth this year.

The Kaspersky IT Security Calculator is a free web tool that allows IT security managers to view the average budget for cybersecurity in their region and industry, as well as to compare budgets within their organization. The tool is becoming increasingly important as it allows companies to understand their position in the market and also gives them the ability to compare their budget with competitors and improve planning.

Globally, IT security budgets are demonstrating positive dynamics with a number of analyst reports showing that budgets continue to grow year over year. 

Kaspersky’s own survey of almost five thousand organizations across the world confirms this trend with 70 percent of respondents showing they expect their IT security budget to increase in the next three years. However, statistics from usage of the Kaspersky IT Security Calculator in October 2018- 2019 revealed that some businesses are not keeping up with this trend, as their IT security spending is lower than average.

Overall, budgets for SMBs were reviewed more actively (46 percent) than for enterprises (38 percent) and very small companies (16 percent). For small and medium businesses, the budget issue proves to be complicated as it’s not only about finances but also the alignment of the budget planning process. Another challenge to consider is the demands on human resources to hire experts in relevant cybersecurity risks and the protection methods needed for different business services.

“Budget planning is a very important process for companies to carefully consider as the proper investments ensure a company is ready to meet current cybersecurity challenges and threats,” said Sergey Martsynkyan, head of B2B product marketing at Kaspersky. “Though it may be a complex task which demands a deep understanding of business needs towards cybersecurity, it is important to understand how to address them and how much it can cost. At Kaspersky, we do our best to give organizations insights to help them with this process. Along with the report on IT security economics we prepare annually, the IT Security Calculator gives a glance on average cybersecurity spending as well as specific threats and advice on protection measures.”

The Kaspersky IT Security Calculator website with threat statistics and recommended protection is available, and free to use.