Tag: IBM

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Supplier Report: 5/15/2020


Photo by Frida Bredesen on Unsplash

Another sign that a recovery is starting… companies are starting to buy other companies again. Microsoft and Zoom are on the move. Intel announced an acquisition last week. But Covid-19 is also being used to rethink and get out of existing deals (see SoftBank).

Meanwhile, Amazon can’t get over their loss to Microsoft for the Pentagon’s JEDI contract… and they are going after each other on their own personal blogs (this is high school level drama).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Buyers’ Remorse Is Catching in the Coronavirus Era

    Several multibillion-dollar deals have already been scuttled. SoftBank Group Corp. has pulled out of a $3 billion promise to buy stock from employees of WeWork, while Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. canceled the $5.8 billion purchase of 15 U.S. luxury hotels from Anbang Insurance Group Co. WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann and Dajia Insurance Group (which took over Anbang’s assets after it was seized by the Chinese government) both contend that the buyers have used legally faulty pretexts to justify their actions, and they are suing.

    Using the fine print to renege on a deal isn’t pretty, but it’s understandable in an environment where virus-related lockdowns have ravaged economies across the world. Forecasts and valuation estimates predating the pandemic have been rendered all but meaningless.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-05/m-a-deals-founder-as-coronavirus-fuels-buyer-s-remorse

  • Microsoft to Buy Israeli Cybersecurity Startup CyberX

    The U.S. software giant Microsoft is expected to announce in the next few days that it has signed a deal to acquire the Israeli industrial cybersecurity startup CyberX for what sources say will be $165 million.

    TheMarker revealed before the coronavirus crisis that the two sides were in negotiations. They are now in the midst of getting signatures on the deal from all of CyberX’s shareholders.

    CyberX has developed an internet of things cybersecurity platform for factories and industrial control systems, using machine learning to analyze real-time activities and identifying anomalies. The IoT segment is different in many respects from cybersecurity for computers and servers, where Microsoft is active.

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-microsoft-to-buy-israeli-cybersecurity-startup-cyberx-1.8823367

  • Zoom buys Keybase — its first acquisition — as part of 90-day plan to fix security flaws

    The acquisition of the 25-person start-up is the latest move in a 90-day plan that Zoom announced on April 1 to fix its security flaws. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told CNBC the company needed a solution for users who are demanding the highest level of privacy and certainty that uninvited participants have no access to their conversations.

    When Keybase is implemented, the Zoom user who schedules a meeting will be able to choose end-to-end encryption. That setting will prevent anyone from calling in by phone, which is one way people can access meetings, and will disable cloud-based recording of the chat. Yuan said it’s critical that users know that the encryption key is not on Zoom’s servers, so the company has no access to the contents of the call.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/zoom-buys-keybase-in-first-deal-as-part-of-plan-to-fix-security.html

Cloud

  • IBM CEO Lays Out New Initiatives in Cloud, AI

    Mr. Krishna said the company believes the marketplace adoption of hybrid cloud technology is only about 20% complete, and that the adoption of AI is about 4% complete.

    The pandemic will “dramatically accelerate” the adoption of hybrid-cloud and AI, Mr. Krishna said, as companies turn to cloud services to help their employees work and serve customers remotely, as well as to AI to automate certain types of work.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-ceo-lays-out-new-initiatives-in-cloud-ai-11588651261

  • Bid high, lose, try again. Amazon continues to push for a JEDI re-do

    We received notice on Tuesday that Amazon has filed yet another protest – this time, out of view of the public and directly with the DoD – about their losing bid for the JEDI cloud contract. Amazon’s complaint is confidential, so we don’t know what it says. However, if their latest complaint mirrors the arguments Amazon made in court , it’s likely yet another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time.

    The only thing that’s certain about Amazon’s new complaint is that it will force American warfighters to wait even longer for the 21st-century technology they need – perpetuating Amazon’s record of putting its own interests ahead of theirs.

    This latest roadblock is disappointing but not surprising. As my colleague Jon Palmer made clear in a recent blog, Amazon wants a do-over on JEDI . As Jon wrote, “Amazon would have you believe that it lost the award because of bias at the highest levels of government. But Amazon, alone, is responsible for the pricing it offered. As the government explained in its brief: ‘AWS and Microsoft each had a fair chance to build pricing for the entire procurement, based on their overall business pricing.’ Amazon did build its pricing for the entire procurement, and it wasn’t good enough to win.”

    https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/05/07/amazon-jedi-re-do-dod/
    Amazon and Microsoft are trash talking each other over a DoD contract

    Drew Herdener, Amazon’s Vice President of Worldwide Communications responded in a blog post of his own today. It starts out level-headed: “Since we filed our protest, we’ve been clear in our intent: we don’t think the JEDI award was adjudicated fairly, we think political interference blatantly impacted the award decision, and we’re committed to ensuring the evaluation receives a fair, objective, and impartial review.”

    But then, things take a hard left turn. Herdener called Microsoft’s blog posts “self-righteous and pontificating,” and went on to state, “Nobody knowledgeable and objective believes they have the better offering. And, this has been further underscored by their spotty operational performance during the COVID-19 crisis (and in 2020 YTD).” Herdener even attacked the DoD: “This could have been easily avoided if [the DoD] had chosen to be responsive in any of the multiple requests we’ve made in the last two weeks.”

    https://www.engadget.com/amazon-microsoft-jedi-fight-154208730.html

Other

  • WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann accuses SoftBank of abusing its power in new lawsuit

    The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Court of Chancery, included a motion to consolidate his case with a lawsuit filed last month by a Special Committee of WeWork’s board. Both lawsuits focus on SoftBank Group and its Vision Fund’s decision to back out of a deal to buy shares of the co-working company.

    SoftBank Group pulled its $3 billion tender offer for WeWork shares April 1, citing COVID-19’s impact on the business but also closing conditions not being met. Specifically, it pointed to outstanding regulatory investigations, a growing body of litigation against the company and the failure to restructure a joint venture in China as reasons to torpedo the agreement.

    “SoftBank will vigorously defend itself against these meritless claims,” Rob Townsend, senior vice president and chief officer at SoftBank, said in a statement. “Under the terms of our agreement, which Adam Neumann signed, SoftBank had no obligation to complete the tender offer in which Mr. Neumann – the biggest beneficiary – sought to sell nearly $1 billion in stock.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/04/wework-co-founder-adam-neumann-accuses-softbank-of-abusing-its-power-in-new-lawsuit/

  • Uber lays off 14 percent of its workforce in COVID-19-related cost-cutting

    Uber will lay off 3,700 full-time employees, or around 14 percent of its global workforce, the company said in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forgo his salary for the rest of the year as the company continues to struggle in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The layoffs are expected to hit the company’s customer support and recruiting divisions. Uber says it will incur approximately $20 million in severance and other termination-related expenses. Last week, The Information reported that Uber’s top executives were considering laying off as many as 20 percent of the company’s workforce.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249131/uber-layoffs-coronavirus-pandemic-cost-cutting-ceo-salary

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Supplier Report: 5/1/2020


Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

The trend for this post is leaders leaving.  AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is stepping down, John Legere resigns from the T-Mobile board (completely cutting ties), and SAP dropped the co-CEO model a few months after starting it.

Companies are pivoting for the times ahead and certain leaders have other options or just don’t want to deal with the headaches of day-to-day operations (see Disney’s Bob Iger).

Meanwhile, IT news is shifting back to normal… more talk about cloud and AI and less about Zoom and security concerns.

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • Pope Joins Forces with IBM, Microsoft to Develop Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    Pope Francis threw his support behind the development of AI during a speech that was read on his behalf at a conference that was attended by Microsoft president Brad Smith and IBM Executive Vice President John Kelly. At that time, the pope was sick and was unable to deliver the speech himself.

    The joint document specifically referenced the potential abuse that can occur with facial recognition technology.

    “New forms of regulation must be encouraged to promote transparency and compliance with ethical principles, especially for advanced technologies that have a higher risk of impacting human rights, such as facial recognition,” the document stated.

    https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/149005/pope-joins-forces-with-ibm-microsoft-to-develop-artificial-intelligence-ai/

Cloud

  • Google’s Thomas Kurian on COVID-19, customers in crisis and the big cloud fight

    This is a little dark, but it seems like it’s going to be a good shopping opportunity. There’s going to be a lot of companies that don’t come through this, or don’t come through this at the same level that they were at six months ago.

    Over the last year, if you look at what we’ve said repeatedly, yes, we need a very clear, crisp product strategy. I think the feedback we’ve received from customers, from partners has shown that we have now clarified our product strategy. So if we were to do acquisitions, they know how it complements our footprint.

    We’ve also scaled our go-to-market organization significantly, with credit to Rob Enslin and his team. They’ve done a great job and to be honest with you, a lot of examples of customers I gave you [above] were illustrative of the reach that we now have through our customer service and sales organization to help customers through this.

    We continue to work with partners to bring them business. One of the things that we’ve always felt is that the best partnerships are tested during a difficult period, and we remain committed to bringing as much business as we can to the partner community.

    As I said, we’re not ruling in or out any acquisition discussion. We don’t need acquisitions to grow; you’ve seen our growth rates. Nor are we saying we won’t do anything, because it would not make sense to make such a public statement.

    https://www.protocol.com/interview-with-google-cloud-ceo-thomas-kurian

  • IBM First-Quarter Sales Decline as New CEO Aims to Revive Growth

    International Business Machines Corp. IBM 0.24% posted lower first-quarter sales, withdrew annual earnings guidance because of uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic and took a large restructuring charge, highlighting the challenges new Chief Executive Arvind Krishna faces in trying to revive Big Blue’s fortunes.

    IBM on Monday said it was withdrawing full-year earnings guidance that included generating at least $13.35 in adjusted earnings per share, citing the Covid-19 crisis. The company said it would reassess the situation at the end of the current quarter.

    “It was a tough decision to withdraw guidance,” Mr. Krishna told analysts. “But these are unprecedented times, and this quarter is not the time to declare we have clarity—that does not benefit us, and it does not benefit you as investors and analysts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-first-quarter-sales-decline-as-new-ceo-aims-to-revive-growth-11587415010

  • Amazon Is Running Out of Ways to Stop Microsoft’s JEDI Deal

    Between the fourth quarters of 2018 and 2019, AWS’s share of the global cloud platform market dipped from 33.4% to 32.4%, according to Canalys, while Azure’s market share jumped from 14.9% to 17.6%.

    Azure is growing faster for three main reasons: It’s tightly tethered to Microsoft’s other services, it’s increasingly popular with retailers that have been burned by Amazon, and it’s cheaper for Windows Server and SQL Server users, who are granted prices for “bundled” licenses instead of stand-alone services.

    AWS generates most of Amazon’s operating profits and supports the growth of its lower-margin marketplaces. If Azure keeps pulling customers away from AWS, Amazon’s profit growth could decelerate — which would leave it less room to expand its e-commerce ecosystem with loss-leading strategies.

    AWS generated $35 billion in revenue, or 12% of Amazon’s top line, in 2019. Assuming the JEDI contract pays out $1 billion annually over the next 10 years, it would only lift its AWS revenue by less than 3%.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/04/22/amazon-running-out-ways-stop-microsoft-jedi-deal.aspx

Software/SaaS

  • Fishtown Analytics raises $12.9M Series A for its open-source analytics engineering tool

    “I wrote this blog post in early 2016, essentially saying that analysts needed to work in a fundamentally different way,” Fishtown founder and CEO Tristan Handy told me, when I asked him about how the product came to be. “They needed to work in a way that much more closely mirrored the way the software engineers work and software engineers have been figuring this shit out for years and data analysts are still like sending each other Microsoft Excel docs over email.”

    The dbt open-source project forms the basis of this. It allows anyone who can write SQL queries to transform data and then load it into their preferred analytics tools. As such, it sits in-between data warehouses and the tools that load data into them on one end, and specialized analytics tools on the other.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/22/fishtown-analytics-raises-12-9m-series-a-for-its-open-source-analytics-engineering-tool/

  • Another pandemic woe: Zoom fatigue

    We’re using it for everything now. It would be one thing if we only used Zoom for team meetings and one-on-ones at work. But Zoom is now the go-to tool for informal social gatherings and virtual happy hours, family events and religious services, not to mention kids’ online classes, doctors’ appointments and perhaps a therapy session to process it all.

    Videoconferencing imposes cognitive and psychological frictions and aggravates social anxieties. As experts in human-computer interaction point out, using Zoom means putting on a show for others without being able to rely on the cues we primates depend on in physical encounters.

    https://www.axios.com/zoom-fatigue-coronavirus-teleconferencing-f5c0ce17-483f-4c71-9a7d-f023d7e7a45b.html

Other

  • SAP Drops Co-CEO Structure to Simplify Leadership During Pandemic

    SAP said Co-CEO Jennifer Morgan, 48 years old, would leave the company on April 30.

    “More than ever, the current environment requires companies to take swift, determined action which is best supported by a very clear leadership structure,” SAP said in a written statement. “Therefore, the decision to transfer from Co-CEO to sole CEO model was taken earlier than planned to ensure strong, unambiguous steering in times of an unprecedented crisis.”

    Christian Klein, 39, would stay on as sole CEO, SAP said late Monday in New York.

    Ms. Morgan, who is American, joined SAP in 2004 and ran the company’s cloud-computing business before being elevated last year to co-CEO. Mr. Klein, who is German and joined SAP in 1999 as a student, served as chief operating officer before his co-CEO appointment.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/sap-drops-co-ceo-structure-to-simplify-leadership-during-pandemic-11587425462

  • John Legere abruptly resigns from T-Mobile board of directors ‘to pursue other options’

    “Mr. Legere noted that he was not resigning because of any disagreement with management or the board on any matter,” T-Mobile said in its note, which also contained a quote from Legere addressed to the company and its employees:

    In his notice to the company, Mr. Legere stated “It has been a privilege and honor to have led T-Mobile as CEO for the past seven and a half years and served on the Board of Directors. And although I will be leaving the Board just a few weeks earlier than planned, be assured that I remain T-Mobile’s #1 fan!”

    Whatever Legere has planned next, apparently it couldn’t wait another month and change.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/24/21235226/john-legere-resigns-tmobile-board-directors

  • AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson to step down, COO Stankey to take over

    AT&T announced Friday that CEO Randall Stephenson will retire and will be succeeded by President and COO John Stankey on July 1, months earlier than expected.

    Stephenson, 60, said in February he would remain CEO for the rest of the year, though he refused to project beyond that date. He will remain executive chairman of the board until January. AT&T shares were largely unchanged following the announcement.

    Stankey, who was being groomed as Stephenson’s successor over the last couple years, recently dropped his position as CEO of AT&T’s WarnerMedia, which will soon be led by Hulu co-founder Jason Kilar.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/att-ceo-randall-stephenson-to-step-down.html

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Supplier Report: 4/24/2020


Photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash

This truly must be the end of days because Larry Ellison complimented a company that wasn’t Oracle. Ellison gave conferencing tool Zoom (which has had major security issues since their rise to fame) a shout out in a recent news article stating the technology was transformational…

Speaking of security issues, several governments around the world are using technology to track the covid virus and the people infected. Some watch groups are concerned about eroding rights in a time of crisis.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Airbnb Gets $1 Billion Loan, Bringing Coronavirus Funding to $2 Billion

    The San Francisco-based company didn’t disclose Tuesday the terms of the loan or the names of the investors. According to a person familiar with the matter, the loan is five years, and the interest rate will be 7.5%, plus a benchmark rate known as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

    Airbnb had planned to start trading publicly this year. Instead, it faced escalating losses as travel ground to a halt, forcing it to raise money privately at a lower valuation than the $31 billion price tag of its last fundraising round in 2017, people close to the company have said.

    Last week, Airbnb said it was raising $1 billion from private-equity firms Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners. That investment came with a steep price tag: an interest rate of 10%, plus Libor, according to people familiar with the deal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-gets-1-billion-loan-bringing-coronavirus-funding-to-2-billion-11586929819

Security/Privacy

  • How Coronavirus Is Eroding Privacy

    Authorities in Asia, where the virus first emerged, have led the way. Many governments didn’t seek permission from individuals before tracking their cellphones to identify suspected coronavirus patients. South Korea, China and Taiwan, after initial outbreaks, chalked up early successes in flattening infection curves to their use of tracking programs.

    In Europe and the U.S., where privacy laws and expectations are more stringent, governments and companies are taking different approaches. European nations monitor citizen movement by tapping telecommunications data that they say conceals individuals’ identities.

    American officials are drawing cellphone location data from mobile advertising firms to track the presence of crowds—but not individuals. Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google recently announced plans to launch a voluntary app that health officials can use to reverse-engineer sickened patients’ recent whereabouts—provided they agree to provide such information.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-paves-way-for-new-age-of-digital-surveillance-11586963028

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle’s Larry Ellison calls Zoom an ‘essential service’ as coronavirus forces remote work

    Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison gave Zoom high praise this week, calling it an “essential service” for his business and others around the world.

    Ellison said in the video posted Monday he believes Zoom will continue to be an important to businesses once workers return to the office.

    “We’re looking forward to the economy being reopened, we’re looking forward to going back to work, but the way we work will never again be the same,” Ellison said. “We will now meet not just face-to-face, we’ll meet sometimes face-to-face and sometimes digitally via Zoom.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/oracles-larry-ellison-calls-zoom-an-essential-service.html
    Larry Ellison actually said something nice about another tech company… wow. He must be an investor.

Other

  • Amazon fires two employees who condemned treatment of warehouse workers

    The user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said on Tuesday they had been fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Costa had worked at the company for more than 15 years and Cunningham had been an employee for more than five.

    “I don’t regret standing up with my co-workers,” Costa said in a statement. “This is about human lives, and the future of humanity. In this crisis, we must stand up for what we believe in, have hope, and demand from our corporations and employers a basic decency that’s been lacking in this crisis.”

    An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the two employees were fired for “repeatedly violating internal policies”, which prohibit employees from commenting publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from executives.

    “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” the spokeswoman said.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/14/amazon-workers-fired-coronavirus-emily-cunningham-maren-costa

  • IBM age discrimination lawsuit suddenly ends, suggests Big Blue was willing to pay to avoid discovery process

    The judge overseeing Jonathan Langley’s age discrimination lawsuit against IBM has dismissed the case, which was scheduled to go to trial later this year.

    The court order [PDF] closing the case, signed on Wednesday by Judge David Ezra in the Texan Western District Court, cites a stipulation of dismissal by Langley and IBM. That suggests the two parties have agreed to settle confidentially out of court.

    The Register asked IBM to confirm that the case has been settled. We’ve not heard back. Langley’s attorneys could not be reached for comment.

    In 2018, Langley sued IBM, claiming age discrimination. He was laid off at the age of 60 after 24 years at the biz. The lawsuit was filed several months after a report from ProPublica and Mother Jones claimed that IBM had embarked on a company-wide campaign to dismiss older workers, a project said to be called Operation Baccarat.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/15/ibm_age_discrimination_lawsuit/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 3/4/2020


Photo by Ani Kolleshi on Unsplash

  • How IBM, Goldman Sachs, PwC and others are responding to the coronavirus threat to the global workplace

    As concerns grow over the spread of the new coronavirus, which causes a respiratory illness called covid-19, other companies stepped up their precautions.

    Goldman Sachs said it has restricted business travel to South Korea, as well as to the Lombardy and Veneto regions of Italy, and asked that nonessential business travel to other parts of Italy and Asia be postponed. In addition to mainland China, “all employees who have traveled to South Korea or the impacted regions in Italy, or who have been in close contact with individuals who have been to these areas, are required to remain out of the office for at least 14 days,” the company said.

    PwC is asking employees to defer or cancel trips to Japan and is encouraging them to use the company’s $1,000 annual backup child-care benefit in case of school or day care closures.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/28/workplace-coronavirus-work-from-home/

  • As coronavirus outbreak continues, ad companies restrict travel and encourage remote work

    With the fear of contracting coronavirus on the rise, agencies are taking precautions to restrict travel to the affected areas and encouraging employees to work remotely and use video conferencing as needed rather than risk traveling. The agency holding companies say that work for clients is still getting done but much of that is now happening remotely as needed rather than traveling for meetings.

    Earlier this week, Omnicom shuttered its London office for 48 hours after a potential scare with the virus. Since then, the holding company updated its travel guidance postponing travel to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Iran, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, or Northern Italy until further notice. Employees returning from those places have also been asked not to return to the Omnicom offices for 14 days.

    https://digiday.com/marketing/coronavirus-outbreak-continues-holding-companies-restrict-travel-encourage-remote-work/

  • Q&A on Coronavirus – COVID-19 with WHO’s Dr Maria Van Kerkhove
  • Why Curbing Travel Is No Cure-All for the Coronavirus

    Consider Italy, which abruptly canceled flights to and from China when it emerged as an early European Union virus hot spot. The government’s decision was second-guessed, since travelers from China could still fly to other EU countries and enter Italy from there — without a passport check — depriving authorities of the ability to track arrivals or do spot medical checks at airports. And travel curbs can create a false sense of security, distracting countries from other crucual steps to fight an epidemic. Catherine Worsnop, an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland who has studied the effects of restrictions on people’s movement in past outbreaks, says such steps can merely delay an epidemic for a few weeks, at considerable economic and societal cost. Plus, the fear of trade and travel limits can lead governments to “intentionally conceal outbreaks to avoid economic and political harm,” Worsnop wrote in a 2019 study.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-curbing-travel-is-no-cure-all-for-the-coronavirus/2020/02/28/bb38416c-5a7c-11ea-8efd-0f904bdd8057_story.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/21/2020


Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

It was a random week in tech: Larry Ellison is looking to make friends with President Trump (one of those the enemy of my enemy situations against Bezos perhaps?).

Xerox is still thirsty for HP Inc. and it looks like a hostile takeover is at least a possibility?

IBM is doubling down on communication platform Slack (thus shunning Microsoft) while Oracle and SAP are looking a little long in the tooth?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google closes $2.6B Looker acquisition

    While Kurian was happy to announce that Looker was officially part of the Google family, he made it clear in a blog post that the analytics arm would continue to support multiple cloud vendors beyond Google.

    “Google Cloud and Looker share a common philosophy around delivering open solutions and supporting customers wherever they are—be it on Google Cloud, in other public clouds, or on premises. As more organizations adopt a multi-cloud strategy, Looker customers and partners can expect continued support of all cloud data management systems like Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL, Snowflake, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and Teradata,” Kurian wrote.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/13/google-closes-2-6b-looker-acquisition/

  • Xerox Raises Its Bid to Acquire HP

    Xerox Holdings Corp. XRX -1.13% raised its offer to buy HP Inc. HPQ +0.34% to $24 a share and said it would launch a public takeover bid early next month.

    In November, Xerox made an initial stock-and-cash offer of $22 a share for the maker of computers and printers. It said Monday that the latest offer isn’t tied to financing or due-diligence conditions.

    HP had rejected the initial bid as too low and questioned Xerox’s ability to finance a deal. In January, Xerox said it had secured up to $24 billion debt financing but HP again said the bid undervalued the company.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/xerox-raises-offer-for-hp-plans-to-launch-takeover-bid-in-early-march-11581342655

  • Infosys is acquiring Simplus for $250M to grow its Salesforce consulting arm

    The acquisition follows the purchase of Fluido, another Salesforce consulting shop, in 2018. The moves suggest that Infosys wants to build deeper expertise around Salesforce and make that a key piece of its consulting operations moving forward.

    Brent Leary, a CRM industry veteran, who is owner at CRM Essentials, says that Simplus is well-positioned in the Salesforce ecosystem to capture lucrative cloud integration services, and it should help expand Infosys’s Salesforce consulting arm. “By acquiring Simplus, it allows Infosys to grab more market share, while extending Salesforce capabilities to offer existing clients,” Leary told TechCrunch.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/11/infosys-is-acquiring-simplus-for-250m-to-grow-its-salesforce-consulting-arm/

Cloud

  • Google to restructure Cloud business, with some roles eliminated

    The restructuring is primarily meant to realign focus on international markets and affects fewer than 50 employees, according to a person close to the company. The company would not comment on how many employees are affected or which areas within the Cloud business would be affected, only saying it is working with internal “mobility teams” to find the employees new roles within the company.

    Kurian this week outlined the company’s strategy, which included targeting five industries: retail, health care, financial services, media and entertainment, and manufacturing.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/google-to-restructure-cloud-business-with-some-roles-eliminated.html

  • YouTube shines but Google ads continue to slow

    YouTube’s ad sales in the last three months of 2019 rose 31% year-on-year to $4.7bn (£3.62bn), Alphabet said. Overall Alphabet revenue increased by 17% year-on-year to $46bn – the slowest rate in more than two years.

    While YouTube is rapidly growing, Alphabet’s cloud business lags rivals.

    For years the business did not publish revenue figures for its various divisions, to the concern of investors and regulators. When Sundar Pichai took over as Alphabet chief executive last year the policy changed, although it is still not releasing profit figures for individual units.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51364853

  • Japan to hire Amazon to build government cloud

    The government aims to put systems currently operated by different ministries and agencies on the cloud in four to eight years. It is expected to officially choose industry leader Amazon Web Services this spring to build 20 core government wide systems to kick-start the process, due to its pricing and quality of services.

    Cloud-based systems are expected to cost a third of the current set up to maintain. It would also free up manpower, helping to boost productivity.

    Noncore systems, such as those specific to the pension system or to a specific ministry, will be launched as they become ready and meet government standards. The government wants cloud service providers to have data centers in Japan due to security concerns, which means it cannot work with Chinese companies required to manage data at home.

    https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-hire-Amazon-to-build-government-cloud

Software/SaaS

  • IBM picks Slack over Microsoft Teams for its 350,000 employees

    While this new rollout makes IBM Slack’s biggest customer to date, it has been the company’s biggest customer for years according to Slack. “IBM has been Slack’s largest customer for several years and has expanded its usage of Slack over that time,” reveals an SEC filing from Slack, which appears to downplay the news.

    In a statement to The Verge, Slack says IBM has more than 300,000 users and “has scaled its Slack deployment so it can offer it to every employee at IBM.” This is a significant increase from the 165,000 IBM users that Slack last reported in 2019 after the launch of its Enterprise Grid service. It’s not clear whether IBM is using the paid version of Slack for all of its employees or a mix of the free and paid options, though.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/10/21132060/ibm-slack-chat-employee-rollout-microsoft-teams-competition

    I am not sure if it is about “trust”… I am sure it helps that IBM already has AI integrations with Slack and they have been using the product for a few years…

  • Oracle and SAP – going soft in their old age?

    Both, it seems, have woken up to the fact that firms like Salesforce, Workday, Coupa, Google and Amazon represent existential threats they are both hard put to push back against. In short, while neither are going away any time soon, both are long in the tooth and need to reinvent themselves if they are to stay relevant.

    Reinvention is never easy, especially when you’ve enjoyed a long period of success. After all, who wants to rock the proverbial boat when the cash register is singing along? But in these companies’ case, change is a-coming and not just in the product lines where both have been slow to understand the impact of technology shifts.

    https://diginomica.com/oracle-and-sap-going-soft-their-old-age

Other

  • Target’s Delivery App Workers Describe a Culture of Retaliation and Fear

    So it’s not enough to deliver the customer’s order from Target, now if you want to keep getting good ratings and more work you have to take out their trash and walk their dogs. Cool system! The article also details how Shipt workers worry about the company retaliating against them for posting negative comments or asking pointed questions on internal message boards and Facebook groups. One worker described being temporarily deactivated after criticizing the company’s new logo.

    And then there’s the issue of pay: Shipt workers told Motherboard that the company recently switched from a straightforward per-order pay structure to a confusing algorithm that considers… some factors… to determine how they’re paid. You will be shocked to hear that the new algorithm does not favor the workers; some report their pay has dropped by 50 percent since Shipt made the switch.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dygxzw/target-shipt-delivery-app-workers-retaliation

  • Larry Ellison Joins Peter Thiel In Trump’s Camp

    Increasingly, Ellison’s company is competing with the cloud computing wing of Amazon.com Inc., and he does it with zeal. Oracle funded an anti-Amazon group called the “Free and Fair Markets Initiative” to attack Amazon. Oracle also worked desperately to derail Amazon’s bid for JEDI, a lucrative Defense Department cloud contract, going for far as to sue the federal government for illegally favoring Amazon.

    Now, Ellison is making friends with his enemy’s enemy, who happens to be the President of the United States. On Wednesday, Ellison will host a fundraiser for President Donald Trump at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. Top contributors are expected to shell out $250,000 for a photo, a golf outing and a round-table discussion.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-14/larry-ellison-joins-peter-thiel-in-trump-s-camp