Tag: Intel

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Supplier Report: 2/15/2019

Location. Location. Location.

Amazon is scrapping their New York City plans due to severe political push-back on the incentives NYC provided and the overall impact to the city.

Meanwhile, the long discussed Foxconn LCD factory that was to be built in Wisconsin, is covered in a cloud confusion. First they were, then they weren’t, and now they are looking to build a smaller facility…maybe?

Acquisitions

  • Report: Intel bids up to $6B to buy Mellanox

    If the deal reaches fruition, the $6 billion price tag would represent a 30% premium over the last closing price of Mellanox on Nasdaq last night, according to a story by Globes.

    The news of Intel’s interest in buying Mellanox came on the heels of Monday’s news that Intel was investing $11 billion to expand its chip plant in Israel. Intel also announced on Monday that it had received a $1 billion government grant for its expansion.

    https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/report-intel-bids-up-to-6b-to-buy-mellanox

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google and Microsoft warn investors that bad AI could harm their brand

    These disclosures are not, on the whole, hugely surprising. The idea of the “risk factors” segment is to keep investors informed, but also mitigate future lawsuits that might accuse management of hiding potential problems. Because of this they tend to be extremely broad in their remit, covering even the most obvious ways a business could go wrong. This might include problems like “someone made a better product than us and now we don’t have any customers,” and “we spent all our money so now don’t have any.”

    But, as Wired’s Tom Simonite points out, it is a little odd that these companies are only noting AI as a potential factor now. After all, both have been developing AI products for years, from Google’s self-driving car initiative, which began in 2009, to Microsoft’s long dalliance with conversational platforms like Cortana. This technology provides ample opportunities for brand damage, and, in some cases, already has. Remember when Microsoft’s Tay chatbot went live on Twitter and started spouting racist nonsense in less than a day? Years later, it’s a still regularly cited as an example of AI gone wrong.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18220050/google-microsoft-ai-brand-damage-investors-10-k-filing

Cloud

  • Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

    This week, the two companies made some more noise, letting the cloud market know that they are not ceding the market to anyone. For IBM, which is holding its big IBM Think conference this week in San Francisco, it involved opening up Watson to competitor clouds. For a company like IBM, this was a huge move, akin to when Microsoft started building apps for iOS. It was an acknowledgement that working across platforms matters, and that if you want to gain market share, you had better start thinking outside the box.

    While becoming cross-platform compatible isn’t exactly a radical notion in general, it most certainly is for a company like IBM, which if it had its druthers and a bit more market share, would probably have been content to maintain the status quo. But if the majority of your customers are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy, it might be a good idea for you to jump on the bandwagon — and that’s precisely what IBM has done by opening up access to Watson across clouds in this fashion.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/google-and-ibm-still-trying-desperately-to-move-cloud-market-share-needle/

Security

  • Huawei Corporate Entities Conspired to Steal Trade Secret Technology and Offered Bonus to Workers who Stole Confidential Information from Companies Around the World

    According to the indictment, in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information on a T-Mobile phone-testing robot dubbed “Tappy.” In an effort to build their own robot to test phones before they were shipped to T-Mobile and other wireless carriers, Huawei engineers violated confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of “Tappy,” taking measurements of parts of the robot, and in one instance, stealing a piece of the robot so that the Huawei engineers in China could try to replicate it. After T-Mobile discovered and interrupted these criminal activities, and then threatened to sue, Huawei produced a report falsely claiming that the theft was the work of rogue actors within the company and not a concerted effort by Huawei corporate entities in the United States and China. As emails obtained in the course of the investigation reveal, the conspiracy to steal secrets from T-Mobile was a company-wide effort involving many engineers and employees within the two charged companies.

    As part of its investigation, FBI obtained emails revealing that in July 2013, Huawei offered bonuses to employees based on the value of information they stole from other companies around the world, and provided to Huawei via an encrypted email address.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-device-manufacturer-and-its-us-affiliate-indicted-theft-trade

Software/SaaS

  • SAP job cuts prove harsh realities of enterprise transformation

    SAP announced that it was restructuring in order to save between €750 million and €800 million (between approximately $856 million and $914 million).

    While the company tried to put as positive a spin on the announcement as possible, it could involve up to 4,000 job cuts as SAP shifts into more modern technologies. “We are going to move our people and our focus to the areas where the new economy needs SAP the most: artificial intelligence, deep machine learning, IoT, blockchain and quantum computing,” CEO Bill McDermott told a post-earnings press conference.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/sap-job-cuts-prove-harsh-realities-of-enterprise-transformation/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google Fiber is leaving Louisville in humiliating setback

    In Louisville, Google Fiber installation crews had been using a process called “shallow trenching” that involved laying fiber cable two inches beneath the sides of roads in the city and covering them up with sealant. The company seemed optimistic about this plan until some of the cable started becoming exposed over time, requiring a second cover-up with hot asphalt. It seems Access realized it had to go a bit deeper with the cabling; in San Antonio, a similar method is used — but the fiber is laid at least six inches deep into the ground. Google Fiber has at times faced legal challenges from rivals (like AT&T) that don’t want to share utility poles, so shallow trenching is also a way around that hurdle.

    Unfortunately, things have somehow gone so awry in Louisville that Google Fiber claims it would need to rebuild the entire network to get everything to a satisfactory point, and it seems Alphabet just isn’t interested in blowing the cash that would be necessary to do that. So instead, Google Fiber will today alert Lousville customers that their service will end on April 15th.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215743/google-fiber-leaving-louisville-service-ending

  • Intel names Robert Swan as permanent CEO

    Intel’s stock slid Thursday after the chipmaker named interim CEO Robert Swan to the position permanently, ending a months-long search following the ouster of Brian Krzanich for what it called a “consensual relationship” with an employee.

    Swan, 58, has been interim CEO for seven months and chief financial officer since 2016. He was also elected to the board, the company said. Several media outlets including Bloomberg previously reported Swan didn’t want the job.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/intel-names-robert-swan-ceo.html

  • Apple will reportedly reveal its news subscription service next month

    Apple might face some stiff opposition in its bid to launch a subscription news service this spring. Wall Street Journal tipsters claim publishers like the New York Times and Washington Post are objecting to terms that would have Apple take “about half” of the revenue from the service, dividing the rest among publishers based on the amount of time people spend reading articles. That’s a considerably higher cut than the 30 percent Apple takes during the first year of a subscription, let alone the 15 percent it takes later on.

    It also wants “at least some” outlets to commit to supplying news for at least a year. Publishers are split on this, according to the sources — some want a longer commitment, while others want a chance to back out sooner.

    The price isn’t set in stone, but it’s tentatively set to cost the same $10 per month that you pay for Apple Music.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/12/apple-news-service-publisher-objections/

  • Microsoft begs users to stop using Internet Explorer

    IE is often used by enterprises and organisations that wish to run legacy web apps, as the outdated browser still supports them, but choosing the easy way out now could come back to haunt businesses later.

    Basically, by continuing to use IE as opposed to a more modern web browser, organisations are creating additional costs for themselves later by choosing the easiest, most convenient solution now as opposed to the best long term approach.

    https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/microsoft-begs-users-to-stop-using-internet-explorer

Other

  • No one seems to know what Foxconn is doing in Wisconsin

    On January 30th, Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn chief executive Terry Gou, told Reuters that the company was rethinking the whole screen-making idea. “In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory,” Woo said. He explained that Foxconn can’t compete producing televisions in the US. Instead, it would be more profitable to manufacture LCD panels in China and Japan, ship them to Mexico, and import them in the US. On Thursday, the Nikkei Asian Review reported that work on the Wisconsin project had been suspended.

    Later that day, Woo appeared to backtrack vaguely, sending a peculiar email to the Milwaukee TV station WTMJ suggesting that it was hard to know what to call the project. “No matter how we look at it, the campus cannot be simply described as a factory,” Woo wrote. “It is a lot more than that.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206261/foxconn-wisconsin-factory-government-subsidies-investments
    After a ‘personal conversation’ with Trump, Foxconn says it will build a factory in Wisconsin after all

    “After productive discussions between the White House and the company, and after a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou, Foxconn is moving forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility,” a statement read. A Gen 6 facility is smaller than the factory Foxconn initially promised in 2017, but larger than the assembly facility Foxconn said it would build yesterday.

    Foxconn has changed its plans multiple times since 2017, when then-Governor Scott Walker wooed the company with a record-breaking $4.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies. At the time, Foxconn promised a state-of-the-art, “Gen 10.5” screen-producing facility, and Walker and Trump touted the deal for bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. In June of last year, however, the company said it would make a far smaller “Gen 6” facility. This week, the company said it wouldn’t make screens in Wisconsin at all, and would instead do a mix of assembly and “knowledge work.” The sudden change in plans seemed to catch Wisconsin officials off guard, and left locals worried about the future of their communities.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207102/trump-foxconn-wisconsin-factory-build
    Foxconn is killing a second $9B factory

    Foxconn will postpone most of the production planned in a 61 billion yuan ($9 billion) display panel project in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou for at least six months, according to internal documents obtained by the Nikkei Asian Review. In the U.S., a $10 billion investment in display production in the state of Wisconsin has been suspended and scaled back as a result of negotiations with new Gov. Tony Evers, a Foxconn document obtained by Nikkei shows.

    Foxconn’s decision to delay work on the two factories throws into doubt the promise of fresh investment and employment at a sensitive time for both economies. China’s economic growth has slowed to a 28-year low, while in the U.S., President Donald Trump continues to seek wins on his vow to bring manufacturing jobs back to America.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/foxconn-is-killing-a-second-9b-factory/

  • Amazon Is Reconsidering Plan to Put Campus in New York

    The recent change in conversation at Amazon accelerated after Monday’s nomination of New York state Sen. Mike Gianaris, a vocal opponent of the deal, to a state board that would allow him to veto the development plan, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Gianaris needs to be approved for the post by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    The governor and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, fellow Democrats who have often clashed, agreed on wooing Amazon to New York with up to $3 billion in state and city tax incentives. On Friday, Mr. Cuomo reiterated his support for the deal for Amazon as he warned that local opponents could derail the project.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-reconsidering-plan-to-put-campus-in-new-york-11549668969?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
    Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters

    Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from some lawmakers and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives.

    Amazon released a statement mentioning they will not open their search to another city at this time:

    We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queens.html

Photo by Zoltan Kovacs on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 9/28/2018

Facebook was hacked (again), exposing 50 million users to potential data breaches. Instagram and WhatsApp accounts could also be affected.

As Intel experiences chip shortages, their plan is to focus on getting the high end chips at the door.

Ohh… Elon Musk is getting sued.

Acquisitions

  • Slack buys Astro and shuts down its email app

    It may seem curious for Slack, the giant chat app with the goal of killing email, to buy an email app — but the pairing makes a good deal of sense. Astro’s focus was on business users, and it built out some smart integrations inside of Slack. With the two teams combined, Slack can use Astro’s experience to build a native solution for dealing with emails right inside the chat app.

    There is some bad news, though: Slack is shutting down Astro’s email app. The app will stop functioning on October 10th. That’s unfortunate, given that good third-party email clients have become increasingly hard to come by, and Astro had some features that really made it stand out.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/24/17897658/slack-astro-acquisition-email-app-shut-down-integration

  • With Sirius behind it, can Pandora now stage a comeback?

    Sirius XM is all about selling subscriptions to listen to Howard Stern and stations based on genres like 70s, 80s and 90s, and for those who want on-demand music, “now Sirius can cross sell a Spotify clone,” he says. “It’s a winning combination.”

    Pandora’s biggest issue has been its double-edged sword. It is under contract to the record labels in paying higher copyright fees than on-demand outlets, and thus, the more listeners it gets, the more money it has to pay out. Pachter says Pandora has lost over $100 million in 2017 and 2016 due to sky high royalty rates.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/09/25/sirius-xm-pandora-comeback/1416707002/

  • DXC Boosts Cloud-First Approach With System Partners Buyout

    System Partners, a provider of customer-centric services like advisory, strategy designing, tailored managed services and the like, boasts more than 100 Salesforce certified consultants in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

    Management at DXC Technology believes that the buyout is a strategic move to support and cater to existing customers more efficiently, and strengthen its position in the cloud market

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/dxc-boosts-cloud-first-approach-with-system-partners-buyout-cm1029023

Artificial Intelligence

Cloud

  • Rising Cloud Bills May Get a Breather

    It is a big food chain that’s gotten much bigger quickly. Total capital spending by the four aforementioned companies has jumped by an average of 45% on a year-over-year basis for the past six quarters. The four spent a total of $34.7 billion in the first six months of this year—up 59% from the same period last year. But analysts for Morgan Stanley expect that pace to decelerate to growth of 45% for the second half and warned in a note this week that it could slow further to “low double digits” next year.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/rising-cloud-bills-may-get-a-breather-1538128800

  • Microsoft, IBM sign up to cheaper cloud alliance

    GeekWire is reporting that Cloudflare has brought in Microsoft, IBM, Digital Ocean, Automattic and Backblaze under a single banner called the Bandwidth Alliance.

    Scheduled to be announced today, during Cloudflare’s eighth birthday party, the group’s goal is to make sure Cloudflare’s customers using their services pay either significantly cheaper prices, or pay nothing at all, for the traffic that passes through locations where their networks are connected to Cloudflare’s services.

    https://www.itproportal.com/news/microsoft-google-sign-up-to-cheaper-cloud-alliance/

Security

  • France records big jump in privacy complaints since GDPR

    France’s CNIL agency said today that it’s received 3,767 complaints since May 25, when GDPR came into force, up from 2,294 complaints over the same period last year — which it notes was already a record year.

    CNIL says this represents a 64% increase in complaints, which it suggests shows that EU citizens have “seized the GDPR strongly” — attributing public engagement on the issue to media attention on the new regulation and on data protection stories such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/25/france-records-big-jump-in-privacy-complaints-since-gdpr/

  • Facebook Is Breached by Hackers, Putting 50 Million Users’ Data at Risk

    Three software flaws in Facebook’s systems allowed hackers to break into user accounts, including those of the top executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, according to two people familiar with the investigation but not allowed to discuss it publicly. Once in, the attackers could have gained access to apps like Spotify, Instagram and hundreds of others that give users a way to log into their systems through Facebook.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Intel acknowledges supply issues, will prioritize premium chips

    In the short term, Intel plans to prioritize the premium market, including Xeon and Core processors, so it “can serve the high-performance segments of the market.” Beyond that, the company plans to invest $15 billion in capital expenditures this year, including $1 billion going toward the manufacture of 14nm silicon in the U.S., Ireland and Israel.

    These issues have left the broader PC industry in a rough spot. On the face of it, a shortage due to increased demand seems like a good problem to have, but ultimately a lack of processors could create a major issue if the market continues to grow, perhaps ultimately reversing some of that success.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/intel-acknowledges-supply-issues-will-prioritize-premium-chips/

  • Verizon hits 1.45Gbps 4G LTE speeds in New York

    The milestone saw it aggregate six channels of spectrum (both licensed and shared — a first in the US). According to Verizon VP of Technology Planning and Development, Bill Stone, the company is laying a “foundation” for its “evolution into 5G.”

    The trial involved aggregating four carriers of licence-assisted access (LTE-LAA) spectrum with licensed PCS and AWS spectrum, according to ZDNet. It also relied on 256 quadrature amplitude moderation (256 QAM) and 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output (4×4 MIMO) technologies — the latter antenna tech is available in 1,100 locations nationwide. Meanwhile, it’s facing fierce 5G competition from rivals AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/28/verizon-peak-4g-lte-speed-new-york/

Other

  • SEC charges Tesla CEO Elon Musk with fraud

    The SEC complaint alleges that Musk issued “false and misleading” statements and failed to properly notify regulators of material company events. The SEC held a press conference Thursday evening regarding the complaint.

    Among other remedies, the SEC is seeking to bar Musk from serving as an officer or director of a publicly traded company if found guilty.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/tesla-falls-4percent-on-report-elon-musk-sued-by-sec.html

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 9/21/2018

The Source: China Trade Wars

The trade war with China might actually happen. Alibaba is backing off a promise to bring 1 million jobs to the United States due to President Trump’s impending tariffs. Some believe Jack Ma is using this latest news to back out of something he had no intention of delivering on.

Amazon might have a corporate espionage issue, Intel is having a hard time keeping up with demand, and some trendy tech firms are over San Francisco.

Acquisitions

  • Time Magazine Sold to Salesforce Founder Marc Benioff for $190 Million

    Nearly eight months after Meredith Corp.completed its purchase of Time Inc., the publisher has agreed to sell Time magazine for $190 million to Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce.com , CRM and his wife Lynne Benioff.

    The proposed sale is expected to close within 30 days. The Benioffs are buying Time as individuals; the agreement is unrelated to Salesforce.com, where Mr. Benioff also serves as chairman and co-chief executive.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-magazine-sold-to-salesforce-founder-marc-benioff-for-190-million-1537137165?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Adobe Buys Marketing-Automation Firm Marketo for $4.75 Billion

    The deal is expected to add scale to Adobe’s existing marketing-technology capabilities. It also will bolster the company’s clout with business-to-business brands, which make up the bulk of Marketo’s customer base. Reuters earlier reported that Adobe and Marketo were in talks.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/adobe-buys-marketing-automation-firm-marketo-for-4-75-billion-1537473995

  • MariaDB acquires Clustrix

    MariaDB, the company behind the eponymous MySQL drop-in replacement database, today announced that it has acquired Clustrix, which itself is a MySQL drop-in replacement database, but with a focus on scalability. MariaDB will integrate Clustrix’s technology into its own database, which will allow it to offer its users a more scalable database service in the long run.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/20/mariadb-acquires-clusterix/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Top Healthcare AI Trends To Watch

    AI faces both technical and feasibility challenges that are unique to the healthcare industry. For example, there’s no standard format or central repository of patient data in the United States.

    When patient files are faxed, emailed as unreadable PDFs, or sent as images of handwritten notes, extracting information poses a unique challenge for AI.

    But big tech companies like Apple have an edge here, especially in onboarding a large network of partners, including healthcare providers and EHR vendors.

    https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/ai-trends-healthcare/

Security

  • Your Network Has Been Hacked. You Have 72 Hours to Report It.

    The fast turnaround creates a challenge for companies. “The biggest challenge is knowing enough about the incident to actually report it,” says Jim Routh, chief security officer at Aetna Inc. AET -0.25% “We have to do some analysis to figure out what the scope or impact is, and it’s often days before we have that identified.”

    Aetna meets that challenge by informing regulators almost immediately upon learning of a possible breach and then updating them as the company learns more, Mr. Routh says.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-network-has-been-hacked-you-have-72-hours-to-report-it-1537322400

  • Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

    Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries, are offering internal data and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the data, as well as brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations.

    The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which might embolden them to take risks.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-investigates-employees-leaking-data-for-bribes-1537106401

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle missed Wall Street revenue targets and the stock is tumbling.

    Business software maker Oracle Corp on Monday missed revenue estimates for the first quarter, as sales in its cloud services and license support unit disappointed, sending its shares down 5 percent in extended trading.

    Revenue from the unit, its biggest division by sales, rose 3.2 percent to $6.61 billion, missing the average analyst estimate of $6.71 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/r-oracle-first-quarter-revenue-up-1-percent-2018-9

  • Oracle Buys Its Way to Stability

    About $10 billion was spent during the quarter on 212 million shares, the company said in its conference call. That makes for a record amount for the company in a given quarter and brings the total spent on buybacks over the past 12 months to about $21 billion. Oracle has averaged a little more than $7 billion in buybacks on an annual basis over its past nine fiscal years, according to S&P Capital IQ.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-buys-its-way-to-stability-1537296117
    IBM was doing this for years and only just recently stopped.

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Intel’s Shortages Chip Away at Micron

    Intel, in other words, has many demanding customers competing for a finite amount of manufacturing capacity. And while the company has already boosted its planned capital expenditure for the year by $1 billion, such facilities can’t be expanded quickly—especially while the company is struggling to shift some of its production to a new, more advanced 10-nanometer process. That makes it difficult to respond to rapid changes in the market, like the recent surprising jump in PC demand. Second quarter PC shipments grew globally for the first time in six years, according to Gartner.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/intels-shortages-chip-away-at-micron-1537512343?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Other

  • Trump Hits China With Tariffs on $200 Billion in Goods, Escalating Trade War

    The tariffs on $200 billion worth of products comes on top of the $50 billion worth already taxed earlier this year, meaning nearly half of all Chinese imports into the United States will soon face levies. The next wave of tariffs, which are scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 24, will start at 10 percent before climbing to 25 percent on Jan. 1. The timing of the staggered increase will partially reduce the toll of price increases for holiday shoppers buying Chinese imports in the coming months.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/us/politics/trump-china-tariffs-trade.html

    Alibaba will no longer bring 1 million jobs to the US, citing tariffs

    Ma told Chinese state-run news outlet Xinhua today that his promise was based on the assumption that the US and China would have “rational trade relations,” which is no longer the case. “This promise was based on friendly US-China partnership and rational trade relations,” Ma said. “The current situation has already ruined that. There is no way to complete the promise now, but we won’t stop working hard to promote the healthy development of China-US trade.” Last week, Ma announced his plans to retire this year and hand over the company to its current CEO. He denied rumors that he was being forced out.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17879844/alibaba-us-jobs-tariffs

  • Tech expansion: Up and out of SF

    The unemployment and office vacancy rates in San Francisco are near historic lows, while tech stocks, including Salesforce, have set new highs. Housing prices continue to soar, with few homes coming on the market. For San Francisco’s fastest-growing businesses, there are two places to put employees: up or out. The answer is often both, with software engineers more typically getting the pricey space in new towers at headquarters and support and sales going to cheaper, roomier cities.

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/For-San-Francisco-s-fast-growing-tech-13227433.php

  • Google Employees Are Quitting Over The Company’s Secretive China Search Project

    When Poulson resigned in August, he said he only planned to share his concerns about Dragonfly with those inside Google. But when Google didn’t respond to a group of human rights organizations that presented it with a letter arguing that Dragonfly is unethical and asking the company to kill the project, Poulson felt compelled to share his opinion with the public.

    “I’m offended that no weight has been given to the human rights community having a consensus,” he said. “If you have coalition letter from 14 human rights organizations, and that can’t even make it into the discussions on the ethics behind a decision, I’d rather stand with the human rights organizations in this dispute.”

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/google-project-dragonfly-employees-quitting

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Supplier Report: 9/14/2018

The Source: Lobe will set you free

Microsoft acquired Lobe, a company to help advance their AI strategy and make it accessible to the masses.  Making AI easier is critical as there are reports that companies need to start investing in AI now to just keep up with competition in the next 5-10 years.

Companies also need to invest in software developers as CNBC reports that developers are more valuable to corporations than money…

Acquisitions

  • Microsoft acquires Lobe, a drag-and-drop AI tool

    Microsoft today announced that is has acquired Lobe, a startup that lets you build machine learning models with the help of a simple drag-and-drop interface. Microsoft plans to use Lobe, which only launched into beta earlier this year, to build upon its own efforts to make building AI models easier, though, for the time being, Lobe will operate as before.

    “As part of Microsoft, Lobe will be able to leverage world-class AI research, global infrastructure, and decades of experience building developer tools,” the team writes. “We plan to continue developing Lobe as a standalone service, supporting open source standards and multiple platforms.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/13/microsoft-acquires-lobe-a-drag-and-drop-ai-tool/

  • Intel acquires NetSpeed Systems to boost its system-on-a-chip business

    The company has acquired NetSpeed Systems, a startup that makes system-on-chip (SoC) design tools and interconnect fabric intellectual property (IP). The company will be joining Intel’s Silicon Engineering Group, and its co-founder and CEO, Sundari Mitra, herself an Intel vet, will be coming on as a VP at Intel where she will continue to lead her team.

    Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but for some context, during NetSpeed’s last fundraise in 2016 (a $10 million Series C) it had a post-money valuation of $60 million, according to data from PitchBook.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/intel-acquires-netspeed-systems-to-beef-up-its-system-on-a-chip-business/

Artificial Intelligence

  • The devilishly quiet age of AI

    The era’s winners will be those who are not fooled by the absence of visible change from AI over the next 5-7 years. By the time the fruits of AI investment become clear — after 2025 — it will be extremely difficult to compete with the leading players, says Jacques Bughin and Jeongmin Seong, two co-authors of the report.

    AI adoption will add $13 trillion a year to global production, the report said, and an average of 1.2% to global GDP growth per year.

    https://www.axios.com/quiet-artificial-intelligence-revolution-3ade583f-ca2d-4b10-bdf9-d9c75fb8418f.html

  • Google Cloud’s new AI chief is on a task force for AI military uses and believes we could monitor ‘pretty much the whole world’ with drones

    Google’s decision to hire Moore was greeted with displeasure by at least one former Googler who objected to Project Maven.

    “It’s worrisome to note after the widespread internal dissent against Maven that Google would hire Andrew Moore,” said one former Google employee. “Googlers want less alignment with the military-industrial complex, not more. This hire is like a punch in the face to the over 4,000 Googlers who signed the Cancel Maven letter.”

    A Google spokesman declined to comment.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-new-ai-chief-history-military-security-task-force-2018-9

Cloud

  • Oracle’s Kurian Is Said to Be at Odds With Ellison on Cloud

    The growing strife between Kurian, president of product development, and Executive Chairman Ellison culminated in Kurian’s announcement on Sept. 5 that he’s taking a break, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter. Kurian wants Oracle to make more of its software available to run on public clouds from chief rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as a way to diversify from its own struggling infrastructure, a view opposed by Ellison, one of the people said.

    https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/oracle/oracles-kurian-said-be-odds-ellison-cloud

Security

  • A year later, Equifax lost your data but faced little fallout

    “There was a failure of the company, but also of lawmakers,” said Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, in a call with TechCrunch. Warner, who serves Virginia, was one of the first lawmakers to file new legislation after the breach. Alongside his Democratic colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the two senators said their bill, if passed, would hold credit agencies accountable for data breaches.

    “The message sent to the market is ‘if you can endure some media blowback, you can get through this without serious long-term ramifications’, and that’s totally unacceptable,” he said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/08/equifax-one-year-later-unscathed/

Software/SaaS

  • Software developers are now more valuable to companies than money: Survey

    And yet, despite being many corporations’ most precious resource, developer talents are all too often squandered. Collectively, companies today lose upward of $300 billion a year paying down “technical debt,” as developers pour time into maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software.

    This is especially worrisome, given the outsized impact developers have on companies’ chances of success. Software developers don’t have a monopoly on good ideas, but their skill set makes them a uniquely deep source of innovation, productivity and new economic connections. When deployed correctly, developers can be economic multipliers — coefficients that dramatically ratchet up the output of the teams and companies of which they’re a part.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/companies-worry-more-about-access-to-software-developers-than-capital.html

  • What you need to know ahead of the EU copyright vote

    European lawmakers want to extend digital copyright to also cover the ledes of news stories which aggregators such as Google News typically ingest and display — because, again, the likes of Alphabet is profiting off of bits of others’ professional work without paying them to do so. And, on the flip side, media firms have seen their profits hammered by the Internet serving up free content.

    The reforms would seek to compensate publishers for their investment in journalism by letting them charge for use of these text snippets — instead of only being ‘paid’ in traffic (i.e. by becoming yet more eyeball fodder in Alphabet’s aggregators).

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/08/what-you-need-to-know-ahead-of-the-eu-copyright-vote/

  • Burger King selects SAP solutions to support growth

    The chain will use Cloud-based procurement applications and a business network from SAP Ariba and SAP S/4HANA from SAP to expand its presence and increase revenue.These solutions will assist the restaurant chain to create a digital process to fuel savings, efficiencies and business growth.

    Leveraging both solutions, the company will gain insights from the data stored in its supply chains and use them to grow further.

    https://www.verdictfoodservice.com/news/burger-king-sap-solutions-growth/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Apple raised the price of its best phone by $330, and no one cares

    Two years ago, a brand-new flagship Apple smartphone started at $650. Now, the a compromised version of Apple’s vision will set you back $750. Even though the Xr will likely be more than enough iPhone for most customers, the iPhone X proved that there are loads of people out there willing to pay $999 and up for a truly premium device.

    And this year, those with lots of money have even more opportunity to spend: the iPhone Xs Max starts at $1,099 and goes up to an insane $1,449 with 512GB of storage. In 2016, the top-of-the-line iPhone 7 Plus with 256GB of storage cost $929. Not only has Apple raised the cost of a flagship device, it expanded the pricing window for its highest-end phones by more than $500.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/13/apple-iphone-xs-xr-price-increases/

Other

  • Trump renews call for Apple to make its products in the US

    But while moving its manufacturing operations to the US would allow it to skip the tariffs, Apple’s products likely wouldn’t be any cheaper. China is an attractive to tech manufacturing because its workforce is cheaper and the plants that produce individual components are in close proximity to one another. Moving that manufacturing infrastructure would be costly. On Twitter, Trade lawyer Scott Lincicome pointed out that an iPhone would be more expensive to manufacture here in the US, citing a Marketplace report from 2014 that suggested that the component cost of an iPhone in China was around $190 per phone. In the US, that price jumps up to around $600, pushing the device — at the time — to a predicted price of $2000, far more than what would be seen under the tariffs.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/8/17835158/trump-twitter-apple-manufacturing-tariffs

  • Tough Days for China’s Tech Giants

    For Tencent, which makes over 90% of its revenue in China, more government scrutiny has become a reality. Beijing has been holding up approvals for new games and sales of in-game items like virtual weapons—Tencent makes around half its annual revenue from the latter. The freeze caused the company’s first year-over-year profit decline since the last quarter in 2005.

    This doesn’t seem like a hiccup. Beijing last week said it will continue limiting videogame releases and set restrictions on young people’s playing time, while state media has been repeatedly lambasting game companies for creating social problems. Nasdaq-listed Baidu, too, has been reprimanded for hosting content that threatens China’s “social order.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tough-days-for-chinas-tech-giants-1536312601?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Tim Armstrong to depart as CEO of Verizon’s Oath

    Verizon’s head of media and advertising Tim Armstrong will leave at the end of the year, the company announced Wednesday. CNBC reported Armstrong was in talks to leave as of Sept. 7.

    Armstrong came to Verizon in 2015 as part of the acquisition of AOL, where he was CEO. The company later bought Yahoo and combined the two divisions into a digital advertising unit called Oath but those efforts have yet to produce significant growth. Verizon has decided to integrate Oath more fully with the rest of the company’s operations, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, despite recent discussions about spinning off Oath into a separate business.

    Oath president and COO K. Guru Gowrappan will “assume all management responsibilities” as chief executive effective Oct. 1, the company said in a release.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/12/tim-armstrong-out-at-verizons-oath.html

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 8/17/2018

The Source: All about the chip: joey lombardi

CPUs are the main story this week. As companies like AMD develop better processors and better manufacturing methods, former CPU champ Intel is finding ways to divest. The company purchased another AI company to add to their Movidius unit.  Can Intel fend off AMD and companies like Foxconn (who are supporting China’s agenda of creating their own processors)?

Cisco’s strategy to focus on software seems to be paying off as the company saw growth of 6% over last year.

Acquisitions

  • Intel buys deep-learning startup Vertex.AI to join its Movidius unit

    Vertex says that Intel will continue to develop PlaidML as an open source project (see its Github page here), where it will continue to support a variety of hardware under an Apache 2.0 license with an Intel nGraph backend. “We are excited to advance flexible deep learning for edge computing as part of Intel,” the company said.

    Intel, once a pace-setter and leader in the computing industry on the strength of its processors, has lost some momentum amid a new wave of companies building processors for mobile and other next-generation devices.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/16/intel-buys-deep-learning-startup-vertex-ai-to-join-its-movidius-unit/

  • Amazon in Running to Acquire Landmark Movie Chain

    Pushing into movie theaters would follow Amazon’s expansion into myriad other forms of media, including a film and TV studio and music service. With Landmark, it gets a chain focused on independent and foreign films that was founded in 1974. The company has more than 50 theaters, including high-profile locations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with about 250 screens in 27 markets.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM pushes back on negative Watson Health stories

    In response to the claims, Kelly noted a number of positives for the company, including a Mayo Clinic poster presentation showing improved enrollment in breast cancer trials following implementation of Watson for Clinical Trial Matching and training from Memorial Sloan Kettering on 13 different cancers, which he says represents 80% of the global cancer incidence and prevalence.

    Kelly also noted an extended contract with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, research showing that its Watson for Genomics found new actionable mutations in 32% of patients and high rates of concordance in breast cancer at Manipal Hospital’s multidisciplinary tumor board.

    https://www.massdevice.com/ibm-pushes-back-on-negative-watson-health-stories/

Cloud

  • Google defends controversial China project in meeting with employees

    “Our stated mission is to organize the world’s information,” Pichai added. “China is one-fifth of the world’s population. I think if we were to do our mission well, I think we have to think seriously about how we do more in China. I genuinely do believe we have a positive impact when we engage around the world and I don’t see any reason why that would be different in China.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/16/17707324/google-china-search-engine-censorship-response-meeting

Security

  • Teen Allegedly Hacked Into Apple’s Network, Got Caught With ‘Hacky Hack Hack’ Folder

    It’s unclear whether the data he accessed was particularly sensitive. Apple caught the teen and alerted the FBI, which in turn worked with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to track down the hacker. Authorities seized two laptops, a phone, and a hard drive. They found a folder on one of his computers titled “Hacky Hack Hack,” according to reports.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb44nn/autralian-teen-hacked-apple-network

  • FBI Is Reportedly Warning Banks That Hackers Are Planning to Make A Global Run on ATMs

    “The FBI has obtained unspecified reporting indicating cyber criminals are planning to conduct a global Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cash-out scheme in the coming days, likely associated with an unknown card issuer breach and commonly referred to as an ‘unlimited operation,’” the FBI letter to banks reads.

    Unlimited operations use malware to gain access to the card information of bank customers and access to the banks’ networks.

    “The cyber criminals typically create fraudulent copies of legitimate cards by sending stolen card data to co-conspirators who imprint the data on reusable magnetic strip cards, such as gift cards purchased at retail stores,” the FBI letter said. “At a pre-determined time, the co-conspirators withdraw accounts funds from ATMs using these cards.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywke7w/fbi-is-reportedly-warning-banks-that-hackers-are-planning-to-make-a-global-run-on-atms

Software/SaaS

  • Cisco Extends Growth Streak on Strong Software Sales

    Cisco’s streak—the company generated $12.84 billion in total revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter, up 6% from a year earlier—comes after two years of declines during which it faced increasing pressure from competitors while it relied heavily on slower-growth hardware sales.

    And the company expects the run to continue, providing guidance that calls for revenue growth of between 5% and 7% in the current quarter.

    Cisco has seen its financial fortunes improve, as it focused on software sales, particularly in the security arena. Revenue in its security segment revenue jumped 12% to $627 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-extends-growth-streak-on-strong-software-sales-1534377123

Datacenter/Hardware

  • AMD Set to Crack Intel’s Lock on Data Centers

    There is an opening for AMD because Intel has struggled to transition to a new chip-manufacturing process. One of the companies that makes AMD’s chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , or TSMC, has moved ahead of Intel and is producing the latest version of AMD’s Epyc server processor, which is expected to start shipping in volume next year. Intel doesn’t intend to launch a server chip based on its newest production process until sometime in 2020.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amd-set-to-crack-intels-lock-on-data-centers-1534439566

  • Foxconn Posts Unexpected Drop in Profit

    Taiwan-based Foxconn said Monday that its net profit for the quarter ended June 30 was 17.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($566.7 million). That compared with the NT$20.2 billion average estimate of analysts polled by S&P Capital IQ. Its net profit in the year-earlier quarter was NT$17.9 billion.

    Foxconn, known formally as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. 2317 0.12% , is the world’s largest contract electronics maker, and is best known for assembling Apple’s iPhones. Last year, Foxconn relied on Apple for about 54% of its revenue, according to Arthur Liao, an analyst at Fubon Research.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/foxconn-posts-unexpected-drop-in-profit-1534163275

  • Foxconn Pursues Chip Ambitions With Plans for China Plant

    Foxconn said it is developing plans within the partnership, which includes “other stakeholders” in the city. “We will be prepared to announce these plans when they have been finalized in the coming months,” the Taiwan-based company said.

    The initiative comes at a time when China is spending billions of dollars to nurture its own semiconductor industry and reduce its reliance on foreign technology, an effort that has grown more urgent as its attempts to acquire U.S. chip companies have met opposition from the U.S. over national-security concerns.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/foxconn-to-build-semiconductor-plant-in-chinas-pearl-river-delta-1534498173?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Brian Kostiuk on Unsplash