More Validation for Our Battle of Tech Titans Prediction

Earlier this year, we predicted that a continuing story line in 2011 would be: The continuing battle among tech giants: Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Cisco vs. EMC vs. HP vs. Oracle vs. SAP. (See our blog post: Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2011, The Top 12 Business & Technology Stories, Part IV.)


The latest evidence came from Google's purchase of patents from IBM, which has been cast as "So, Is It Google & IBM vs. Oracle?"

We think the clash of the tech titans will continue to be an ongoing story line for some time in the future.

Also, we will point out that back in Jan. we missed a big story of the moment: the phone hacking scandal that continues to ripple through the News Corp. empire. Well, can't get them all.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek Validates Another of Our Predictions

In its article, "Hewlett-Packard Hopes to End the Soap Opera" (which appeared in the printed edition as "HP Cancels the Board and the Beautiful"), Bloomberg BusinessWeek validated our prediction that the business media would continue to focus on the battle of the tech giants.

Here's the explanation for the continuing battle among a decreasing number of players (that are increasing in size):

In the 1990s, enterprise computing companies including HP, Oracle, EMC (EMC), and Cisco Systems (CSCO) were content to make billions in their distinct niches. Those lines are now blurring. HP is stepping on Cisco's networking turf through its acquisition of 3Com. Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems threatens HP's line of servers and storage systems. Cisco has started selling servers that compete with gear made by HP and Oracle.

These companies sense the approach of an inflection point as business customers make the transition from older technologies to the new era of cloud computing, where software applications run in data centers and connect to PCs over the Internet. To take advantage of the cloud, businesses must upgrade to newer, faster equipment and applications. HP and its competitors are vying to be full-service suppliers that can fulfill all of a customer's cloud computing needs.

That's an excellent explanation for what's happening among tech giants, and why.

Two years ago, we made the prediction that the battle of the tech giants would generate a fair share of business media coverage, and we've reiterated that among this year's predictions. This is a story that's not going away.

But, for what it's worth, I liked the headline of the print edition of the story better.