the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

Information Week just released a paper delving into the results of their of "State of the Server" survey. The magazine surveyed 579 IT professionals at North American companies and editor Alexander Wolfe put together a nice review of the responses and the server environment. Here are some of the more interesting items that might be of significance for those reading from a financial and investment perspective who follow tech stocks: Reduction in number of servers -- Most companies are trying hard to maintain or reduce the number of servers in their datacenters. 42% are reducing server count by consolidating old servers to fewer, new more capable systems. 26% are attempting to hold server count fairly constant; replacing servers on only a normal replacement cycle. 5% are in a "freeze" mode, avoiding new purchases and extending the life of existing servers. There is a continued push toward virtualization. This trend should help the two major players in virtual...

This past weekend we generated a nice list of Alert HQ BUY signals. Despite a drooping market on Monday there were some stocks that still registered gains. One of them is Multi-Fineline Electronix (MFLX). Take a look at the following chart. You can see this stock is really perking up. MACD and DMI are all swinging bullish and the stock has made it above it's 50-day moving average on a day when most other tech stocks sagged. The down-trend starting in September has been broken to the upside. All good signs. Background -- Here is the descripition from Yahoo! Finance: “Multi-Fineline Electronix, Inc. engages in the engineering, design, and manufacture of flexible printed circuit boards and related component assemblies for the electronics industry. The company’s products are used in feature phones, smart phones, consumer electronic devices, portable bar code scanners, computer/storage devices, and medical devices… It operates primarily in the United States, China, Singapore, ...

It almost looks like a bidding war for Data Domain (DDUP). First a bid from NetApp (NTAP), then a bid from EMC and now a revised bid from NetApp. First, what does Data Domain do? Here is summary of the profile from Yahoo Finance: "Data Domain, Inc. provides deduplication storage appliances for disk-based backup, archiving, and network-based disaster recovery. The company's appliances reduce the storage of redundant copies of data within enterprises. It also offers Replicator software, which allows enterprises to utilize wide area network vaulting for offsite disaster protection and recovery; and a capacity-optimized Virtual Tape Library software option that emulates multiple tape libraries over a fiber channel interface, as well as integrates with an enterprise's existing backup infrastructure." Translation: Data Domain's hardware and software, by reducing duplication and redundancy in a company's data and documents, lessens storage requirements and thereby cu...