IBM

Sarbox-inspired storage tape breakthrough?

Jim Kim — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:33:32 -0400

We've noted that Sarbanes-Oxley has really fueled the database and storage market. Data centers will certainly continue to draw IT resources, even in a tough budgetary environment. Reflecting the times, IBM and Sun have just come out with nuclear solutions. This month, within a day of each other, both announced enterprise tape drives capable of carrying 1 terabyte worth of data. The IT giants are aiming their nukes at financial services, life sciences and other companies with intense retention needs, reports eWeek. In this era of virtualized environments, do you really need this kind of capacity? My guess is that the products will slowly find markets in large companies and perhaps third-party data center service providers. They'll cost just under $40,000 each.

For more:
- here's an eWeek article

Related Article:
Data centers are hot again

The meaning of IBM's Cognos deal

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:59:59 -0500

What prompted IBM to pay about 5 times Cognos' annual revenue and nearly 40 times its most recent net earnings? Well, you can chalk some of it up to Sarbanes Oxley. IBM has been aggressively pursuing the compliance opportunity--along with Oracle and SAP--and seems to be close to achieving "leader" status in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for financial compliance software companies. Of course, Cognos was a leader in Business Intelligence. The challenge for IBM is to offer the software in an integrated way. One could argue that compliance is the conversion point for a lot of apps, content management, business intelligence, core GRC, and ERM. IBM is clearly on to something.

For more about the purchase:
- read this New York Times article

Oracle continues to add compliance features

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 06:59:59 -0400

Oracle is a great example of how big IT vendors have ridden the compliance wave. Clearly, Oracle along with IBM and others sense a certain demand out there, which frankly would be hard to miss. Oracle at least seems to be counting on most clients to opt for add-ons to existing products rather than deploying standalone GRC apps, which seem to be multiplying nevertheless. Oracle's latest GRC suite move: It has announced a deal to buy LogicalApps, which markets an Active Governance suite that enables prevention, monitoring and reporting of financial and operational risk, according to ITworld.com.

For more:
- here's the article

Related articles:
- IT Watch: Oracle continues to focus on compliance
- GRC software seems to be rising