IBM had a few noteworthy updates in the past few days. The first one comes not from IBM, but rather from Oracle.

Oracle reported its earnings for the second quarter yesterday, disappointing investors and raising concerns that its lower software sales may be an early indicator of a decline in short-term IT spending. That had an impact on the entire tech industry, including IBM. The company’s stock dipped as low as -4.1 percent today, shaving off 60 points from the Dow.

Oracle’s 13 percent decline didn’t stop CEO Larry Allison from bashing Big Blue. Here’s a part of what he said:

“I know IBM’s running a lot of ads saying they run faster; that their machines run faster than ours. But I’d love to see their customer references because we haven’t seen one. We’ve seen a lot of ads — no customer references. We have lots and lots of customer references. We’re replacing P series and running much faster than IBM. I’d like to see one from IBM.”

IBM had a bad day with Oracle, but business is still going strong. Big Blue entered into strategic partnerships with five Kenyan banks to upgrade their IT infrastructure, the latest are just a few of over 20 such deals IBM landed with African banks earlier this year.  The Kenyan institutions are are Credit Bank, Co-operative Bank, Family Bank, the National Bank of Kenya, and the National Industrial Credit Bank.

IBM revealed a couple of other new initiatives yesterday, specifically involving analytics. Cedars-Sinai’s cancer research unit has agreed to collaborate with Watson user WellPoint to harness the supercomputer’s analytics capabilities cancer treatment evaluation. And IBM has teamed-up with several universities throughout China, India, Ireland and Scotland to launch new data scientist programs.