IBM acquires open source software maker Red Hat for $35 billion

Considered to be the largest acquisition of a software company, IBM has just bought open source and Linux pioneering company Red Hat for US $35 billion. This deal will result in a merger propels IBM as an enterprise cloud computing provider. Now facing off against Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure Cloud, IBM says that its services will allow more businesses to shift their operations online, and that the proprietary nature of existing cloud systems means that it’s harder to move and secure data from system to system.

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst sharedthe following, "we have barely scratched the surface of the opportunity that is ahead of us. Open source is the future of enterprise IT. We believe our total addressable market to be $73 billion by 2021. If software is eating the world - and with digital transformation occurring across industries, it truly is - open source is the key ingredient. Powered by IBM, we can dramatically scale and accelerate what we are doing today. Imagine Red Hat with greater resources to grow into the opportunity ahead of us."

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Western Digital outs its biggest magnetic HDD yet

Western Digital is one upping its competition with its latest product. The company just outed a new 15TB Ultrastar DC HC620 HDD, which beats out the last year's 14TB models. While Seagate has announced it plans to out a 16TB model this year, it hasn't materialized. These aren't consumer-grade devices though but are meant more for enterprise customers who need massive storage drive densities for server and data center applications. So, yes, these will be pricey.

Source: The Verge

Apple celebrates seven years with Tim Cook as CEO

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

It's been seven years since Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs passed on the reins to Tim Cook. It was a bittersweet passing of the torch as Jobs was in advanced stages of Cancer and then-COO Cook, who had already served as pinch hitter for Jobs in years past, was reluctant to replace his friend and mentor.

Since then, Cook has represented Apple and steered the company to its greatest heights culminating in the recent trillion dollar valuation, a first for a technology company. Cook has also been a positive force for good, opening up Apple to charity and causes which he believes in.

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Microsoft reportedly buying code hosting repository GitHub

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Microsoft is reportedly buying GitHub which is a leading resource for global software development. "GitHub hosts code for 27 million software developers working on 80 million repositories of code,” according to Bloomberg. The deal is apparently expected to be a billion dollar blockbuster deal which is expected to get a formal announcement tomorrow June 4.

GitHub is a critical service used to help develop everything from iPhone apps to websites. Microsoft owning this resource gives it a powerfull foothold in the future of software development. While GitHub is a huge code repository used by Apple, Amazon, Google and many others. Microsoft is also a major contributor to GitHub and a natural fit as a steward of the service.

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