International Business Machines Corp (IBM) formed a partnership with Inspur Group Ltd (浪潮集團) after the Chinese company tried to lure away customers with its “IBM to Inspur” marketing campaign.
IBM’s database and WebSphere software are to be used on Inspur’s servers, which are set to be the first high-end hardware to be wholly developed and produced by a Chinese company. Inspur is also to use IBM’s Power8 chips to help design its own systems, the companies said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.
The deal sets aside the companies’ rivalry, spurred by tensions between the US and Chinese governments over claims of cyberspying and hacking made by US companies.
Inspur set out on a campaign to win over IBM’s customers after Bloomberg News reported in May that the Chinese government was studying whether domestic banks’ reliance on the US company’s technology threatened national security.
IBM said at the time that it was not aware of any Chinese government policy that recommended against the use of IBM servers within the country’s banking industry. On Friday, the China Daily reported that IBM said it never stopped providing new servers to Chinese banks, citing an interview with the chairman and chief executive officer of IBM China Group D.C. Chien.
IBM has been trying to turn around falling revenue in China, which has weighed heavily on chief executive officer Ginni Rometty’s profit goals. Sales in the country declined 11 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter, after tumbling 20 percent in the first three months of the year, adjusted for currency conversions.
Almost half of IBM’s China revenue comes from hardware sales, the company said in May.
For Inspur, the deal could help convince potential customers to buy its hardware with the option to use IBM’s software. Inspur plans to design its own systems based on technology from the OpenPower Foundation, which has 53 members and supports open-source technology, according to the statement.
That makes it easy to integrate IBM’s software on the new Inspur servers. IBM’s sales of application infrastructure and middleware — the type of offerings its new Chinese partner plans to deploy — accounted for the biggest share of the worldwide market last year at 30 percent, according to researcher Gartner Inc.
In a separate statement yesterday, IBM said it is also working with China Telecom Corp (中國電信) in a three-year agreement to help small and medium-sized businesses run cloud-based applications.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS