Tag: Slack

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Supplier Report: 6/12/2020


Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

This has been a sad couple of weeks. Actually, this has been a sad year

Between COVID-19 and the recent protests on police brutality – companies, leaders, and governments have to rethink (everything). It would be weird not to mention what has been happening on this post. The news is rightfully focused on other topics.

And yet… even with all of this… business continues. If one thing is a constant, it is Elon Musk talking trash. The Telsa CEO took umbrage with Amazon over the availability of a book and called for the company to be split apart. I suppose we can at least appreciate the distractions he provides the public.

Donate: Black Lives Matter
Donate: Color of Change

Acquisitions/Investments

  • VMware acquires network security firm Lastline, said to lay off 40% of staff

    Since its launch in 2012, Lastline raised about $52.2 million, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Thomvest Ventures, which led the company’s $28.5 million Series C round in 2017; Redpoint and e.ventures, which led the company’s 2013 funding round; and Barracuda Networks, NTT Finance and Dell Technologies Capital.

    A source tells us that VMware will let go some 40% of Lastline’s employees — about 50 staffers — as part of the acquisition. We asked a Lastline spokesperson for comment prior to publication but did not hear back. A spokesperson for VMware also did not respond to a request for comment

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/04/vmware-lastline-staff-cuts/

  • Accenture Completes Acquisition of Gekko

    Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has completed its acquisition of Gekko, a leading French Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services company. Terms of the transaction, which was announced on April 20 [link to original news release], were not disclosed.

    Gekko has more than 100 trained cloud professionals, 100 AWS certifications and a deep relationship with AWS.

    The acquisition strengthens Accenture’s leadership position in cloud and artificial intelligence; extends its ongoing relationships with key technology providers, including ecosystem partners such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft; and complements the cloud migration expertise and strategic objectives of the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG) in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

    https://www.oleantimesherald.com/business/accenture-completes-acquisition-of-gekko/article_d1f22e62-6e3e-5d57-8955-7be0220ada24.html

Cloud

  • Who Will Acquire Zoom: Amazon, Oracle, or IBM?

    Larry Ellison and crew have been quiet on the M&A front for quite some time and that’s not normal for Oracle. With Oracle’s massive suite of SaaS apps, it could create some unique tie-ins with Zoom’s rapidly growing set of capabilities, and give Zoom immediate distribution and presence in every corner of the world.

    Plus, Ellison’s able to envision the full potential of the Zoom phenomenon better than just about anyone, and he always likes to be on offense. And at a time when Ellison is looking to sharply differentiate his company from AWS, the addition of Zoom would certainly help the cause.

    https://cloudwars.co/amazon/who-will-acquire-zoom-amazon-oracle-ibm-cloud-wars/

Software/SaaS

  • DocuSign posts strong Q1, enters remote work, digital transformation winner’s circle

    DocuSign’s e-signature and Agreement Cloud are among the first quarter winners as companies aim to go more digital and perform more work remotely.

    The company reported a first quarter net loss of 26 cents a share on revenue of $297 million, up 39% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the quarter were 12 cents a share.

    Wall Street was expecting DocuSign to report first quarter non-GAAP earnings of 10 cents a share on revenue of $281.1 million. CEO Dan Springer said the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enterprises to accelerate digital transformation efforts and driving demand.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/docusign-posts-strong-q1-enters-remote-work-digital-transformation-winners-circle/

  • Slack is teaming up with Amazon

    Slack added a record 12,000 new paying customers in the three months ending April 30, and more than 90,000 new organizations on paid or free subscription plans, it said in an earnings report Thursday. It also reported $201.7 million in revenue for the quarter, a 50% increase from the same period a year earlier.

    But neither those numbers, nor the Amazon deal, were enough to cheer investors — the company’s stock plunged around 16% in after-hours trading following the results.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/tech/slack-amazon-deal-earnings/index.html

Other

  • Elon Musk Calls for Amazon Breakup in Latest Spat With Jeff Bezos

    The criticism from Mr. Musk, chief executive of Tesla Inc., came in response to a tweet by Alex Berenson. The author said that Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s outlet for self-published e-books, had rejected his submission for a book called “Unreported Truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns.” It questions whether the virus is as deadly as public health experts say.

    “This is insane @JeffBezos,” Mr. Musk initially tweeted, criticizing Amazon’s decision. He has repeatedly questioned the severity of the pandemic and criticized parts of the government response as overzealous. “Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!” Mr. Musk added in an intensifying battle between two business titans who both seek to dominate key markets on Earth and in outer space.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-calls-for-amazon-breakup-in-latest-spat-with-jeff-bezos-11591305297?mod=rss_Technology

  • Google Search a Target of U.S. Antitrust Probes, Rival Says

    U.S. federal and state authorities are asking detailed questions about how to limit Google’s power in the online search market as part of their antitrust investigations into the tech giant, according to rival DuckDuckGo Inc.

    Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive officer of the privacy-focused search engine, said the company has spoken with state regulators, and talked with the U.S. Justice Department as recently as a few weeks ago.

    Justice Department officials and state attorneys general asked the company about requiring Google to give consumers alternatives to its search engine on Android devices and in Google’s Chrome web browser, Weinberg said in an interview.

    “We’ve been talking to all of them about search and all of them have asked us detailed search questions,” he added.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/google-search-is-a-target-of-u-s-antitrust-probes-rival-says

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Supplier Report: 4/3/2020


Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

Having done this blog for the last 7 years, I tend to notice patterns with the technology press.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, articles mentioning artificial intelligence technology and automation have completely dropped off. Unfortunately, this makes sense as the global workforce is scared, and any talk of job-eliminating technology will add to our collective anxiety.

Only 25% of all Americans have the ability to work remotely. As shops close down and reduce their output, many are questioning how long some businesses can survive. It is getting to the point where certain IT firms (like Saleforce) are pledging not to make “substantial job eliminations” for the next 90 days – which is so classy considering Saleforce is a company that could operate almost entirely online and still produce products and sales with limited impact.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is quietly upping their game with more Azure capacity, pushing their Team’s software, and still making acquisitions.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Microsoft acquires 5G specialist Affirmed Networks

    With its focus on 5G and edge computing, Affirmed looks like the ideal acquisition target for a large cloud provider looking to get deeper into the telco business. According to Crunchbase, Affirmed raised a total of $155 million before this acquisition, and the company’s more than 100 enterprise customers include the likes of AT&T, Orange, Vodafone, Telus, Turkcell and STC.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/26/microsoft-acquires-5g-specialist-affirmed-networks/

  • Deloitte acquires Microsoft, IBM partner Bistech

    Bistech will join Deloitte’s data analytics team in Brisbane, with Bistech co-owners Shane Morgan, Justin Hoareau and Brad Culbert in leadership roles. All 17 consultants will also join Deloitte.

    “We’re incredibly excited and pleased to be joining Deloitte’s Analytics & Cognitive team, which shares the same people values and customer focus we’ve built over the last 19 years in business,” Bistech founder Shane Morgan said in a statement.

    Founded in 2000, Bistech provides data analytics, data science, data management and financial performance management services in the form of consulting, technical implementation, support and training.

    https://www.crn.com.au/news/deloitte-acquires-microsoft-ibm-partner-bistech-539759

Cloud

  • Microsoft reveals 775 percent Azure surge, quotas on some resources and ‘significant new capacity’ coming ASAP

    “We are expediting the addition of significant new capacity that will be available in the weeks ahead,” the post continues. “Concurrently, we monitor support requests and, if needed, encourage customers to consider alternative regions or alternative resource types, depending on their timeline and requirements. If the implementation of these efforts to alleviate demand is not sufficient, customers may experience intermittent deployment related issues. When this does happen, impacted customers will be informed via Azure Service Health.”

    The post seems very much designed to reassure customers that Microsoft is not going to run out of cloud anytime soon, but also reveals “a few temporary restrictions designed to balance the best possible experience for all of our customers.”

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/29/microsoft_reveals_775_percent_azure_usage_surge_in_coronavirus_lockdown_zones/
    Microsoft needs to invest heavily in its own infrastructure now if it wants to keep up with the popularity of its remote work tools, analyst warns

    A survey of chief information officers, human resources professionals and others this week suggested Microsoft could weather the crisis because of its cloud and collaboration software products including Skype for Business and the Microsoft Teams chat app.

    The survey, conducted by RBC Capital Markets, suggested companies are likely to accelerate moves from on-premises computing resources into the public and private cloud – benefiting cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services – and increase budgets for Microsoft collaboration products.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-coronavirus-crisis-new-customers-2020-3

Security/Privacy

  • Google’s security measures failed to find Android malware in Play Store

    The malware, named “Tekya”, imitated the user’s actions in order to click ads and banners from agencies suh as AdMob, AppLovin’, Facebook and Unity. The affected apps included utility apps such as cooking apps and calculators, and apps aimed at kids, such as puzzles and racing games.

    Tekya was able to go undetected for so long because it hid in Android’s native code — code that’s designed to run only on Android processors. As such, the malware avoided detection by Google Play Protect, the system designed to keep Android safe. The malware was removed by Google in early March, after Check Point disclosed its findings to the company.

    Considering the Play Store is home to more than two million apps, 56 being affected in this way represents a very small sample. However, it does demonstrate that Google’s security efforts aren’t fool-proof.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-24-google-security-android-malware-play-store.html

  • What Is the Most Secure Video Conferencing Software?

    While Zoom offers end-to-end encrypted chat—meaning only the participants in the exchange have access to the contents of the messages—its video calls are not encrypted in the same way by default. Hosts, however, can enable end-to-end encryption in video calls too, according to the company.

    The app has a troubled record when it comes to security and privacy. Thanks to a creepy feature, hosts can track whether you are paying attention to the meeting, and the company’s privacy policy allows it to collect all sorts of personal data.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7qwgx/what-is-the-most-secure-video-conferencing-software
    So they are not even going to mention Cisco’s Webex?

Software/SaaS

  • Slack working on Microsoft Teams “calling features” integrations via Public APIs, what does that mean?

    There is no simple open signalling standard/API for another system to directly call a Microsoft Teams user.

    Microsoft enables 1:1 calling between Skype for Business (Server and Online) and Microsoft Teams, so in theory, Slack could route calls via the own run Skype for Business Server infrastructure or emulate a Skype for Business Federation. This would allow 1:1 voice, video and chat if all the right codecs and signalling were supported. In Microsoft language, this is called “federation”.

    Microsoft is also rolling out Teams to Skype consumer connectivity, again 1:1, user to user, so Slack could emulate this to do peer to peer calling, video and chat.

    Note these are direct private chat, not team chat in a multi-person team workspace in either product.

    https://tomtalks.blog/2020/03/slack-working-on-microsoft-teams-calling-features-integrations-via-public-apis-what-does-that-mean/

Other

  • Apple’s Siri voice assistant now provides coronavirus advice

    When you first ask Siri about the virus, the voice assistant will ask whether you are experiencing related symptoms, which include a fever, dry cough, or shortness of breath. People with extreme or life-threatening illnesses are advised to call 911, while anyone who’s not sure is informed of the diseases symptoms and told to self-isolate if they appear. Links to telehealth apps on the App Store are provided for anyone who can’t currently reach a healthcare provider.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/23/21190600/apple-siri-coronavirus-covid-19-symptoms-healthcare-advice-information

  • Salesforce’s Benioff pledges no ‘significant’ layoffs for 90 days

    It sounds like Benioff’s second tweet, which also asked employees to consider paying their own hourly workers like housekeepers and dog walkers throughout the layoff period, whether they were working or not, was designed to give the CEO some wiggle room for at least some layoffs.

    Salesforce has almost 50,000 employees worldwide. Even if the company were to lay off just 1% of employees it would equal 500 people without jobs, though it’s not clear if that would count as “significant.” Perhaps more likely, the company might make some cuts to staff for performance or HR-related reasons, but not broad cuts, and thus make both of its CEO’s claims essentially true.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/26/salesforces-benioff-pledges-no-significant-layoffs-for-90s-days/

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

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Supplier Report: 11/15/2019


Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash

Xerox is looking to combine with HP Inc, which brings me back to the early days of this blog. There were rumors that HP Inc and Xerox were going to merge way back in 2015 but then Xerox got involved with Fuji Film and then they were no longer involved with Fuji Film. I am not sure how this deal would work considering Xerox wants to acquire HP which has the bigger market cap.

Google’s growing pains continue as critics ponder why the company is pushing so hard to get into hardware while the Government investigates them.

After years of fending off Microsoft, Slack is looking vulnerable due to poor paid growth projections. Everybody seems to be loving Microsoft at the moment, but they know how to be aggressive when they want to be, and they seem to want Slack out of the way.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • HP confirms it has received a proposal from Xerox about being acquired

    The Wall Street Journal got things rolling earlier today when it published a report that Xerox was interested in the printer company, reporting the offer could be for more than $27 billion. That’s a lot of money and the company has to at least consider it (assuming it’s accurate).

    HP acknowledged there are ongoing discussions between the two companies and that it received an offer letter from Xerox yesterday. What’s odd about this particular deal is that HP is the company with a much larger market cap of $29 billion, while Xerox is just a tad over $8 billion. The canary is eating the cat here.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/06/hp-confirms-it-is-having-discussions-with-xerox-about-being-acquired/
    Xerox to Sell Stake in Joint Venture to Fujifilm for About $2.3 Billion

    Xerox has agreed to sell its 25% stake in the venture, Fuji Xerox, to Fujifilm as part of a deal that will bring Xerox total proceeds of $2.3 billion, the companies said.

    Xerox has also agreed to sell a majority stake in a smaller joint venture to an affiliate of Fuji Xerox and extended the timeline of an agreement allowing Fujifilm to be a major supplier to Xerox, the companies said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/xerox-to-sell-stake-in-joint-venture-to-fujifilm-for-2-2-billion-11572931801

  • Workday to acquire online procurement platform Scout RFP for $540M

    The acquisition builds on top of Workday’s existing procurement solutions, Workday Procurement and Workday Inventory, but Workday chief product product officer Petros Dermetzis wrote in a blog post announcing the deal that Scout gives the company a more complete solution for customers.

    “With increased importance around the supplier as a strategic asset, the acquisition of Scout RFP will help accelerate Workday’s ability to deliver a comprehensive source-to-pay solution with a best-in-class strategic sourcing offering, elevating the office of procurement in strategic importance and transforming the procurement function,” he wrote.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/workday-to-acquire-online-procurement-platform-scout-rfp-for-540m/

  • T-Mobile’s latest merger gambit isn’t subtle

    The three programs T-Mobile announced are contingent on the merger. The company will only provide these services if it is able to complete its merger with Sprint. These programs are each cleverly designed to give T-Mobile instant rebuttals to potential criticisms of the merger. They’re so well-crafted that I can’t help but applaud how genius they are as pieces of propaganda. Even calling them “propaganda” makes me the asshole!

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/8/20954479/t-mobiles-5g-publicity-stunt-firefighters-merger-sprint

Artificial Intelligence

  • OpenAI has published the text-generating AI it said was too dangerous to share

    GPT-2 is part of a new breed of text-generation systems that have impressed experts with their ability to generate coherent text from minimal prompts. The system was trained on eight million text documents scraped from the web and responds to text snippets supplied by users. Feed it a fake headline, for example, and it will write a news story; give it the first line of a poem and it’ll supply a whole verse.

    It’s tricky to convey exactly how good GPT-2’s output is but the model frequently produces eerily cogent writing that can often give the appearance of intelligence (though that’s not to say what GPT-2 is doing involves anything we’d recognize as cognition.) But play around with the system long enough and its limitations become clear. It particularly suffers with the challenge of long-term coherence; for example, consistently using the names and attributes of characters in a story, or sticking to a single subject in a news article.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20953040/openai-text-generation-ai-gpt-2-full-model-release-1-5b-parameters

  • Google’s AI education tool makes it easy to train models for your projects

    Google’s Teachable Machine is no longer just a handy lesson in AI — you can now put it to work. The tech giant has launched Teachable Machine 2.0 with the ability to use your machine learning model in apps, websites and other projects. You can upload your model if you need it to work online, or save it if you’d rather have it on-device. You could create your own Not Hotdog app without having to craft an AI system by hand.

    Teachable Machine can also accept more than just images. You can train AI models based on sound and poses in addition to the usual image data (including photos, not just webcam images). Want to determine whether or not your music is metal enough? Now you can. The system also lets you upload your own data sets if you have some on hand, and can train more than three classes per model if necessary.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/07/google-teachable-machine-2/

Cloud

  • Indeed says Deloitte, IBM, Accenture top hirers for blockchain staff

    The report observed that software roles make up the highest percentage of crypto and blockchain jobs. Deloitte, IBM, Accenture, Cisco and Collins Aerospace are the top five companies hiring for crypto and blockchain roles. Another consultancy, EY, comes in at number six. But the proliferation of blockchain technology is not limited to one industry and startups are popping up everywhere.

    The data covered both blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and the top six appear to be firmly in the enterprise blockchain camp. One startup – ConsenSys – falls into both sectors. Earlier in the year it was in the top ten but has now fallen to number 13 on the list of top hirers.

    https://www.ledgerinsights.com/indeed-says-deloitte-ibm-accenture-top-hirers-for-blockchain-staff/

Security/Privacy

  • With a Laser, Researchers Say They Can Hack Alexa, Google Home or Siri

    Researchers in Japan and at the University of Michigan said Monday that they had found a way to take over Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri devices from hundreds of feet away by shining laser pointers, and even flashlights, at the devices’ microphones.

    In one case, they said, they opened a garage door by shining a laser beam at a voice assistant that was connected to it. They also climbed 140 feet to the top of a bell tower at the University of Michigan and successfully controlled a Google Home device on the fourth floor of an office building 230 feet away. And by focusing their lasers using a telephoto lens, they said, they were able to hijack a voice assistant more than 350 feet away.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/technology/digital-assistant-laser-hack.html

  • Google’s cybersecurity project ‘Chronicle’ is in trouble

    The employees Motherboard talked to said people have been leaving the company due to “a distant CEO” and “a lack of clarity about Chronicle’s future.” A former employee called Gillett a figurehead who didn’t care what everyone did outside of money matters. Sales and engineering people have apparently been finding other roles in Google or leaving the company entirely, because they have no product roadmap.

    Gillett himself already left for another role inside Google, while co-founder and chief security Mike Wiacek exited the tech giant. “Chronicle had one of the most healthy and vibrant corporate cultures I could imagine. Things were never perfect, but that’s important,” Wiacek wrote in his farewell note. Motherboard says Will Robinson, the Chief Technology Officer, also announced internally that he’s leaving the company.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/09/google-chronicle-trouble/

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft reveals the future of OneNote and it’s all about Fluid and desktop

    So what does this mean for the separate OneNote for Windows 10 app? Hodes didn’t reveal exactly what Microsoft is planning, but Mike Tholfsen, a Microsoft product manager, says “there will still be a Desktop and separate Windows 10 app.” It’s hard to imagine that two OneNote apps will exist to confuse Windows 10 users, but Microsoft does still have two Skype apps. It’s far more likely that at some point Microsoft will put development of this dedicated version on hold, as the company will start installing OneNote 2016 by default with Office 365 installs in March.

    Microsoft experimented with universal Office apps for Windows 10, but the company put these apps on hold last year. “We are currently prioritizing development for the iOS and Android versions of our apps; and on Windows, we are prioritizing Win32 and web versions of our apps,” explained a Microsoft spokesperson at the time.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20953691/microsoft-onenote-to-do-integration-fluid-framework-future-features-ignite-2019

  • Slack continues to sink as analysts worry Microsoft will kill it

    The Microsoft threat is a big reason why Slack’s stock, which debuted in late June through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange, has plunged in the past few months. It’s a classic David vs. Goliath story — except that most investors don’t believe Slack has a big enough rock to slay the giant from Redmond, Washington.

    Slack shares fell 2% Friday and dipped below $20, hitting an all-time low that is 25% below the stock’s reference price of $24 on the day of its Wall Street debut. The stock has plummeted more than 50% from its peak of $42, which it reached on its first day of trading.

    The company reported a big loss and slowing sales growth in September, news that spooked investors.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/investing/slack-stock-microsoft-teams/index.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Why Google, a software giant, is spending billions to get into gadgets

    Despite the billions Google has spent to get into hardware, the tech giant is still a small player in gadgets. Its Android smartphone operating software is in more than three times the number of global devices as Apple’s, but Google continues pushing its Pixel-brand phones, a laggard in market share. Advances in hardware like GPS and radar mean gadget makers are increasingly the gatekeepers for companies that make software for mobile phones. In terms of data collection, having customers using both the device and the operating system is akin to owning the mall rather than just the department store in it.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/04/googles-hardware-dreams-havent-yet-yielded-home-run/

 

Posted on

Supplier Report: 9/13/2019


Photo by Luke Michael on Unsplash

The walls are once again closing in on Google.  For weeks I have been tracking rumors that the DoJ is going to hit the internet giant with an anti-trust investigation and rumors are that the Department of Justice is pulling in dozens of state-level attorneys general to kick off the investigation that could start within weeks.

The bad press keeps rolling as over 40 current and former Google employees are protesting former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote at a Stanford University artificial intelligence ethics conference citing Schmidt’s lack of “ethical conduct” in the field (specifically the company’s aborted plans for China).

Meanwhile Thomas Kurian is trying to get more attention, better sales people, and of course customers for Google’s cloud services – but all this bad press can’t be helping the company attract new business.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Microsoft acquires cloud migration startup Movere to help companies transition to Azure

    Microsoft didn’t have to go far for its latest acquisition. The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant today announced that it acquired Movere, an 11-year-old Seattle-area cloud migration startup. Microsoft will use the deal to help customers move their existing applications and infrastructure to Azure. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

    “Movere’s innovative discovery and assessment capabilities will complement Azure Migrate and our integrated partner solutions, making migration an easier process for our customers. We believe that successful cloud migrations enable business transformation, and this acquisition underscores our investments to make that happen,” Jeremy Winter, partner director for Azure Management, said in a statement.

    https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-acquires-seattle-cloud-migration-startup-movere-help-companies-transition-azure/

Cloud

  • Google Cloud has a new program to assign its best salespeople to go after the biggest customers — but Google employees say it makes it harder for current salespeople to advance

    This change is similar to how Oracle, where Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian most recently worked, handles its largest customers. However, this isn’t sitting well with current Google employees, sources said: It’s far easier for outsiders to get hired into these account-director roles than for an existing Google salesperson to step up, even if they have the right experience.

    Sources also said that there’s a perception among Google Cloud salespeople that the hiring process is “biased” toward Oracle veterans.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/thomas-kurian-google-cloud-sales-account-director-2019-9

Security/Privacy

  • Monster.com says a third party exposed user data but didn’t tell anyone

    The server contained résumés and CVs for job applicants spanning 2014 and 2017, many of which included private information like phone numbers and home addresses, but also email addresses and a person’s prior work experience.

    Of the documents we reviewed, most users were located in the United States.

    It’s not known exactly how many files were exposed, but thousands of résumés were found in a single folder dated May 2017. Other files found on the exposed server included immigration documentation for work, which Monster does not collect.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/05/monster-exposed-user-data-years/

Software/SaaS

  • Slack Intensifies a War of Words

    World-wide spending on collaboration software is expected to rise to $16.5 billion this year and eventually reach more than $26.6 billion in 2023, according to research firm International Data Corp.

    Mr. Bracelin said Slack has an advantage over Microsoft in helping businesses get more productivity out of workers by automating and streamlining routine tasks. Slack offers users more than 1,800 third-party applications that work on top of its software, compared with just a few hundred for Teams.

    Slack’s user-engagement numbers are another sign of strength, D.A. Davidson & Co. analyst Rishi Jaluria said. People spend an average of 90 minutes daily using its software, Slack said, far more than the average time spent with some popular consumer applications such as Facebook and the mobile game “Candy Crush Saga.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/slack-intensifies-a-war-of-words-11567726192

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Antonio Neri and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s cultural revolution

    Neri and HPE may actually have two North Stars. At the center of the company’s current strategy are two sets of platforms. The first is HPE’s Greenlake—an infrastructure management service for both cloud and on-premises that turns even local infrastructure into a “consumption-based” resource that can be scaled up and down (within limits) on demand.

    The second central tenet is HPE’s pair of analytics and machine-learning based automation tools: InfoSight and OneView. Combined, these two sets of technologies will tie into HPE’s new Primera storage platform, Aruba networking hardware, and even supercomputing resources such as Silicon Graphics (and, if the transaction completes, Cray) systems to create an “as-a-service” fabric. With these two tentpoles, Neri’s long-term goal for the company is what he calls “cloudless” computing—a unified “as a service” management of all compute, storage, and network resources transparently across all public and private clouds and “edge” devices.

    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/antonio-neri-and-hewlett-packard-enterprises-cultural-revolution/

  • In the Race to Dominate 5G, China Sprints Ahead

    President Trump has said 5G is a race that the U.S. must win. But while American wireless carriers are leading in early deployment of the technology, some telecom-industry leaders say Beijing is poised to vault ahead in coming months.

    While U.S. wireless carriers shuffle from city to city to introduce 5G, China plans to blanket urban areas with it by the end of next year and the rest of the country soon after. A local manager at one carrier estimated that even Tongguan, which lacks modern plumbing, could get the superfast networks by 2021.

    “We look forward to 5G,” said Wu Shengmin, Tongguan’s baby-faced village chief. His locale boasts superb service on current 4G systems that would be the envy in much of the U.S., courtesy of a nearby cellular tower nestled in a tree-covered peak.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-the-race-to-dominate-5g-china-has-an-edge-11567828888

Other

  • Google could face far-reaching antitrust investigation as soon as next week

    The investigation is said to involve more than half of the nation’s state attorneys general. The Post says the Department of Justice has met with many of those state attorneys general, but it’s unclear whether it will be involved in the final lawsuit.

    The news follows comments late last month from the DOJ’s antitrust chief Makan Delrahim that suggested the agency would be working closely with state lawmakers and regulatory authorities on future antitrust probes. Regardless, the investigation would mark a further escalation in the US government’s attempts to rein in Big Tech, and it signals that authorities at both the federal and state effort are working concurrently on a number of investigations into Silicon Valley companies.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847798/google-antitrust-investigation-us-states-attorneys-generals-doj-ftc-regulation

    Google receives demand for documents from Justice Dept., acknowledging federal antitrust scrutiny

    Google said Friday that the Justice Department has requested records related to its prior antitrust investigations, marking the tech giant’s first major acknowledgment that it’s a subject of a federal competition probe.

    The civil-investigative demand — acknowledged in a securities filing and a blog post — comes weeks after Justice Department officials said they would open a broad review of big tech, including search. It also comes days before more than 30 state attorneys general are expected to announce a major antitrust investigation of Google, as The Washington Post first reported.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/06/google-receives-demand-documents-doj-acknowledging-federal-antitrust-scrutiny/

  • We Company (WeWork) reportedly mulls slashing its valuation ahead of its initial public offering

    SoftBank has already balked at putting more cash into The We Company ahead of the public offering, and it’s not clear whether the company will step in as a white knight now.

    What is clear is that We needs money and its long-term viability as a business is contingent on the infusion of massive amounts of cash.

    Indeed, the company has a $6 billion line of credit at stake, which would be pulled if the public offering underperforms.

    If the company fails to hit the $3 billion mark in its public offering, then the credit line promised from the big banks that are underwriting the public offering goes away. That would be a pretty devastating turn of events for a company that’s currently racking up losses in the billions of dollars.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/05/we-company-reportedly-mulls-slashing-its-valuation-ahead-of-its-initial-public-offering/
    We Company adds a director, ditches its $5.9 million naming deal with its CEO, remains a governance nightmare

    As part of the amended filing, The We Company also committed to add a director to the board that will increase the company’s gender and ethnic diversity.

    In the same amendment, the company said that it was unwinding the $5.9 million transaction between itself and a holding company — WE Holdings LLC, which held the trademark for the “We” brand and was owned by We Company’s chief executive, Adam Neumann.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/04/we-company-adds-a-director-ditches-its-5-9-million-naming-deal-with-its-ceo-remains-a-governance-nightmare/

  • AT&T Names Media Boss John Stankey as CEO Heir Apparent

    Mr. Stankey, 56 years old, will serve as president and chief operating officer starting next month. He will continue to serve as the head of WarnerMedia, the unit that houses HBO, the Warner Bros. studio and cable channels like CNN.

    He will report to Mr. Stephenson and is the front-runner to take over the top job, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Stankey joined one of AT&T’s predecessors in 1985 and spent most of his career in the telecommunications business.

    Mr. Stephenson, 59 years old, hasn’t indicated when he plans to retire, though he has been CEO for 12 years and there are discussions for and against his retirement at the board level, the people said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-names-new-president-and-chief-operating-officer-11567525692