VCE, the converged systems joint-venture formed by VMware, Cisco and EMC becomes part of the EMC stable as the storage vendor buys the Cisco stake in the company for an undisclosed sum.

Following the deal EMC owns 80% of VCE, while Cisco retains a 10% equity stake. VCE leadership remains the same, with Praveen Akkiraju as CEO and Frank Hauck as president, while EMC will absorb 2000 VCE employees.

Why did Cisco quit the VCE venture? Reports suggest EMC and Cisco's stepping on each other's toes in segments such as software-defined networking and all-flash array storage might have led to a fraying partnership. However a canned media quote be Cisco CEO John Chambers simply states "We have been thrilled with the execution, results and customer demand the VCE team has delivered. I look forward to the next chapter of VCE’s evolution and Cisco’s continued commitment in VCE as a crucial route to market for Cisco’s next-generation technologies for the data centre and cloud.”

According to Re/code the newly separate PC side of HP is working on an interesting "new computing experience"-- a flat screen display, touch input surface and overhead projector/3D scanner combo dubbed Sprout.

The news site's unnamed sources say the overhead projector beams images downwards, on the touch surface. Users can interact with the images using either fingers or stylus, and can also add objects to the images by simply putting them on them on the surface, which is where the 3D scanner comes into play.

Re/code adds the Sprout will initially run on Windows but ChromeOS versions might appear in the future. It is reportedly the work of a team led by Eric Monsef, an ex-Apple hardware exec.

IBM pays $1.5 billion to offload its commercial semiconductor technology business to contract-chipmaker Globalfoundries, a deal which includes related intellectual property, technologists and technologies.

Globalfoundries will also become the exclusive IBM 22, 14 and 10nm semiconductor provider for the next 10 years, as well as opportunities in RF and speciality technologies and ASIC design capabilities.

As for Big Blue, the offloading frees it to specialise further in semiconductor research and the development of future cloud, mobile, big data and secure transaction-optimised systems. It is also set to invest $3 billion over the next 5 years in semiconductor research.

In a bid to strengthen its position in the Internet of Things (IoT) and connected vehicles Qualcomm buys UK-based chip maker CSR, an acquisition worth $2.5 billion in cash.

Formerly known as Cambridge Silicon Radio, CSR is a connectivity specialist and Bluetooth pioneer. Its chips are found in products ranging from smartphones, portable audio speakers, Beats headphones, connected appliances and in-auto entertainment systems, and currently sees growth thanks to the IoT boom.

IDC expects the IoT market to grow from $19 trillion in 2013 to $7.1tr by 2020.

Intel reports Q3 2014 revenues of $14.6 billion with net profits reaching $3.3 billion, a 12% Y-o-Y increase as the company manages to beat analyst expectations thanks to stabilising PC market.

"We are pleased by the progress the company is making," CEO Brian Krzanich says. "We achieved our best-ever revenue and strong profits in the third quarter.  There is more to do, but our results give us confidence that we’re successfully executing to our strategy of extending our products across a broad range of exciting new markets."

The Chipzilla PC Client Group sees growth during the quarter, with revenues reaching $9.2bn with 9% Y-o-Y growth. The Data Center Group remains the strongest-growing unit with revenues reaching $3.7bn (a 16% Y-o-Y increase), while the still small Internet of Things unit grows by 14% Y-o-Y to revenues worth $530 million.

Splitting up is the "in" thing in the IT industry. HP just did it, eBay recently did the same with Paypal. Now it's the turn for Symantec and its split into separate security and storage businesses.

The split effectively undoes the company's 2005 acquisition of security vendor Veritas, which was worth $10.2 billion.

"It has become clear that winning in both security and information management requires distinct strategies, focused investments and go-to market innovation,” Symantec CEO Michael A. Brown says. “Separating Symantec into two, independent publicly traded companies will provide each business the flexibility and focus to drive growth and enhance shareholder value.”

The security business covers the Symantec endpoint security and management products, data encryption, mobile, SSL, authentication, mail Web and data security security, data loss prevention, hosted security and managed security services. Meanwhile the storage/nformation management business includes backup and recovery, archiving, eDiscovery, storage management, and information availability products.