One of the Silicon Valley’s biggest success stories, Salesforce.com (CRM), which provides enterprise cloud computing services for customer relationship management, has put itself up for sale. The company, which began as a small, niche software startup, has quickly evolved into a formidable software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. Today, Salesforce is the leader in the $20B customer relationship management market.
Read More
Ellison No Longer An Oracle
Last Thursday, former two-time college dropout Larry Ellison, now the world's fifth richest man, announced he was immediately resigning from his CEO position at Oracle (ORCL). The company, which he founded 37 years ago, has established itself as the premier business solutions provider since the late 1970s. However, in recent years, Oracle has struggled to adapt to the rapid expansion of cloud storage and evolving digital business infrastructure demands.
Read More
Arista Networks IPO
Last Friday, June 6, 2014, cloud-networking company, Arista Networks (ANET), made its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company’s shares were initially priced at $43. Although Cisco (CSCO), IBM, and Microsoft (MSFT) have dominated the networking market for the past two decades, Arista may finally present a credible challenge to these tech behemoths. Investors showed optimism in Arista’s future, as shares hit $59.72 in the first week of its IPO and now sit at roughly $65.
Read More
The Rotting Apple
What I am about to write will be wildly unpopular amongst Apple’s cult following, but remains relevant nonetheless. It will be controversial and, to some fan boys, unbearable. However, this is the opinion of an investor, not a consumer (although I do own two MacBooks, five iPods, two Apple TVs, two iPads, and an iPhone). Knowing this, please keep in mind that if I were to hypothetically favor a company, my bias would be in favor of Apple (AAPL).
Read More
The Snowden Effect
Let’s face it, technology isn’t going anywhere; hence, neither is Cisco (CSCO). In fact, the IT sector is expected to grow in key verticals such as cloud computing, thanks to the advent of big data, and by the potential of the Internet of Everything. As technology becomes more pervasive, and companies such as Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB) collect increasing amounts of user information, the demand to organize and prioritize this big data has resulted in an unprecedented demand for analytic equipment.
Read More