IBM plans to sell its x86 server business, The Wall Street Journal reports-- with Lenovo as one of the top acquisition candidates, at least according to unnamed sources.

CRN has a similar story, with an anonymous high-ranking industry executive as source. The news site says IBM product engineering (PE) lab employees are to become Lenovo employees from 1 June 2013. 

The PE lab supports all IBM server lines, including System x, System i, System p and System z, and is located at Research Triangle Park just 5 miles away from Lenovo's N. American HQ in Morrisville, North Carolina. 

Such a sale is potentially work "billions" of dollars ($5-6 billion according to CRN) and covers the IBM System x line (Intel- and AMD-based tower, rack and blade servers.  Read more...

Intel reports Q1 2013 revenues of $12.6 billion and net income of $2.0bn (down from Q1 2012 revenues of 12.9bn and income of $2.7bn) as it forecasts "low single-digit percentage" growth for 2013.

PC Client Group revenues fall by 6% Y-o-Y to $8.0bn, Data Centre Group revenues grow by 7.5% Y-o-Y to $2.6bbn while Other Architecture revenues drop by 9.0% Y-o-Y to $1.0bn.

"Amidst market softness, Intel performed well in Q1 and I'm excited about what lies ahead for the company," Paul Otellini says in his final earnings call as Intel CEO. "We shipped our next generation PC microprocessors, introduced a new family of products for micro-servers and will ship our new tablet and smartphone microprocessors this quarter."

Intel reveals the future of Thunderbolt technology at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show-- boosting data rates from 10Gbps to 20Gbps in both directions.

Seen in prototype form, Thunderbolt 2.0 (codenamed "Falcon Ridge") allows simultaneous 4K file transfer and display, and improves speeds via implementation of PCIe 3.0 technology outside the PC.

Falcon Ridge makes use of copper cables, is backwards-compatible with 1st generation Thunderbolt cables and connectors, and should be available from 2014.

At NAB Intel also previews Read more...

Oracle revenues drop by -1% Y-o-Y to $9.0 billion for fiscal Q3 2013 as software, cloud and hardware divisions miss internal forecasts and current quarterly outlooks disappoint Wall Street.

Software licenses and cloud software subscriptions are down by -2% Y-o-Y to $2.3bn, while hardware revenues crash by -23% Y-o-Y to $671m. Reductions are also significant on a Q-o-Q basis, with Q2 2013 software subscriptions being $2.389bn and hardware revenues $734m. 

According to Marketwatch Oracle expected software and cloud revenues to grow by 3-13% and hardware Read more...