Tag: T-Mobile

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Supplier Report: 11/29/2019


Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

Black Friday is upon us and consumers are not the only ones out shopping. Several acquisitions were announced this month such as Google buying yet another cloud company and PayPal snapping up Honey.

But just like Thanksgiving, families come together to celebrate (SalesForce and AWS are forming a tighter partnership) and they also fight (Google vs. their own employees).

As we start to wrap up 2019 and start to look towards the future, will 2020 be a boom year or will we see cuts and decline (WeWork announced 2,400 job cuts)?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google buys a small cloud partner to make it easier for customers to use VMware on its cloud

    Google has bought yet another small business to build its cloud-computing unit: CloudSimple, whose software enables companies to run computing workloads that are based on VMware’s widely used server virtualization technology. Terms were not disclosed.

    The deal follows the buys of data integration company Alooma, storage company Elastifile and cloud migration company Velostrata. Kurian’s biggest deal to date has been the $2.6 billion acquisition of privately held data analytics company Looker, which, like CloudSimple, had been a partner prior to the deal. The Looker deal hasn’t closed yet, however, and the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division moved to seek information from the two companies as part of a review, Bloomberg reported last month.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/18/google-buys-cloudsimple-which-helps-run-vmware-workloads.html

  • PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

    PayPal announced today it has agreed to acquire Honey Science Corporation, the makers of a deal-finding browser add-on and mobile application, for $4 billion, mostly cash. The acquisition, which is PayPal’s largest to date, will give the payments giant a foothold earlier in the customer’s shopping journey. Instead of only competing on the checkout page against credit cards or Apple Pay, for example, PayPal will leap ahead to become a part of the deal discovery process, as well.

    Currently, Honey’s 17 million monthly active users take advantage of its suite of money-saving tools to track prices, get alerts, make lists, browse offers and participate in an Ebates-like rewards program called Honey Gold. Its users tend to be younger, millennial shoppers, both male and female.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/paypal-to-acquire-shopping-and-rewards-platform-honey-for-4-billion/

  • HP Rejects Xerox Offer but Remains Open to a Deal

    HP Inc. rejected a $33 billion takeover offer from Xerox Holdings Corp. as too low, but the PC and printer maker made clear it is interested in discussing a deal to combine with its smaller rival.

    Xerox’s unsolicited offer of $22 a share significantly undervalues the company, HP’s board said in a public letter to Xerox Chief Executive John Visentin on Sunday. It also voiced concern about the debt a transaction would put on the combined company and said it needs more information about Xerox’s business, known as due diligence.

    Still, HP said it recognizes the benefits of consolidation and is “open to exploring a potential combination with Xerox.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/hp-rejects-xerox-offer-but-remains-open-to-a-deal-11574027722

  • Celonis, a leader in big data process mining for enterprises, nabs $290M on a $2.5B valuation

    Celonis was founded in 2011 in Munich — an industrial and economic center in Germany that you could say is a veritable Petri dish when it comes to large business in need of digital transformation — and has been cash-flow positive from the start. In fact, Celonis waited until it was nearly six years old to take its first outside funding (prior to this Series C it had picked up less than $80 million, see here and here).

    The size and timing of this latest equity injection is due to seizing the moment, and tapping networks of people to do so. It has already been growing at a triple-digit rate, with customers like Siemens, Cisco, L’Oréal, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone among them.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/21/celonis-a-leader-in-big-data-process-mining-for-enterprises-nabs-290m-on-a-2-5b-valuation/

  • Report: Charles Schwab in talks to buy TD Ameritrade

    Brokerage firm Charles Schwab is in talks to buy rival TD Ameritrade, reports CNBC. The organization cites a source who said the deal could be announced today. The two brokerage firms are the largest publicly traded houses, with Charles Schwab having a market cap of $57.5 billion and TD Ameritrade at $22.4 billion.

    The retail brokerage industry has gone through upheaval in recent months as all of the major brokers have moved, or are moving, to commission-free trades in order to lure customers. CNBC says Charles Schwab was the first to do so, followed by TD Ameritrade.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90434433/report-charles-schwab-in-talks-to-buy-td-ameritrade

Cloud

Security/Privacy

  • Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights

    “The internet is vital for people to enjoy many of their rights, yet billions of people have no meaningful choice but to access this public space on terms dictated by Facebook and Google,” said Kumi Naidoo.

    “To make it worse this isn’t the internet people signed up for when these platforms started out. Google and Facebook chipped away at our privacy over time. We are now trapped. Either we must submit to this pervasive surveillance machinery – where our data is easily weaponized to manipulate and influence us – or forego the benefits of the digital world. This can never be a legitimate choice. We must reclaim this essential public square, so we can participate without having our rights abused.”

    This extraction and analysis of people’s personal data on such an unprecedented scale is incompatible with every element of the right to privacy, including the freedom from intrusion into our private lives, the right to control information about ourselves, and the right to a space in which we can freely express our identities.

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/google-facebook-surveillance-privacy/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • HPE Dumps Recent Acquisitions Into Its Container Platform

    The turnkey platform taps into HPE’s acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data software vendor BlueData last year and MapR in August.

    BlueData makes a software platform that uses Docker containers to make it easier for companies to deploy large-scale machine learning and big data analytics environments. MapR, which HPE “rescued” from the brink of collapse, provides enterprise-grade file system and cloud-native storage services.

    HPE’s Container Platform uses BlueData software as the control plane for container management and the MapR distributed file system and object store for persistent data with containers. It then uses Kubernetes for container orchestration. This package supports the containerization of cloud-native, microservices-architected applications and on-premises applications with persistent data.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/hpe-dumps-recent-acquisitions-into-its-container-platform/2019/11/

Other

  • Google Workers Protest Company’s ‘Brute Force Intimidation’

    Roughly 200 workers gathered about 11 a.m. local time Friday outside a Google office overlooking San Francisco bay.

    “Over the past two years, many of my coworkers have asked the company to take meaningful action to curtail sexual harassment and systemic racism, improve the working conditions of temps, vendors and contractors, and divest from harmful tech,” said Zora Tung, a Google software engineer. “Instead of listening to us, the company has chosen to silence us.”

    The Google workers who protested also said the company had unjustly put Laurence Berland and Rebecca Rivers on indefinite administrative leave without warning. They demanded that Google bring the employees back to work immediately.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-22/google-workers-protest-company-s-brute-force-intimidation

  • WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

    In a statement, a WeWork spokesperson said the cuts were being made as part of the company’s efforts to “create a more efficient organization” and refocus on the core office-sharing business. The job reductions represent 19% of WeWork’s total workforce, which amounted to 12,500 employees as of June 30, according to an SEC filing.

    “The process began weeks ago in regions around the world and continued this week in the U.S.,” the spokesperson said. “This workforce reduction affects approximately 2,400 employees globally, who will receive severance, continued benefits, and other forms of assistance to aid in their career transition. These are incredibly talented professionals and we are grateful for the important roles they have played in building WeWork over the last decade.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/21/wework-lays-off-2400-employees.html

  • When John Legere Leaves, Say Goodbye to the Old T-Mobile

    Make no mistake, the CEO transition will usher in a new T-Mobile. That’s not because the visions of the two men are so different — they aren’t, and Legere has been grooming Sievert, 50, for quite some time. But T-Mobile is no longer the industry upstart, and Legere’s departure suggests that he feels his work there is almost done. The last step is to complete the acquisition of Sprint Corp., which is being held up by a group of state attorneys general rightly concerned about the potential harm the transaction may cause consumers.

    Legere, 61, made clear that he isn’t retiring — nor is he turning his “Slow Cooker Sunday” Facebook Live series into a full-time gig. While he said the rumors of him joining WeWork aren’t true, he has fielded a “tremendous amount” of interest from companies seeking the expertise he’s demonstrated at turning around a troubled business and generating broad enthusiasm for a brand. “I’ve got 30 or 40 years and five or six good acts left in me,” Legere, the class clown of corporate events, said on Monday’s call.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/when-john-legere-leaves-say-goodbye-to-the-old-t-mobile/2019/11/18/a1a595ea-0a33-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html

  • Amazon Is America’s CEO Factory

    There’s one element some ex-Amazonians are leaving behind: the harsher parts of Amazon’s culture, such as hiring practices that favor skills over collegiality.

    Amazon is known for disregarding social cohesion in interviewing candidates, former employees said, elevating other traits over an ability to work well with colleagues. Mr. Gordon of Latchel originally embraced that tenet.

    “We approached hiring this way and it was a big, big mistake,” he said. He had to fire one employee he had hired who was capable but couldn’t get along with the team. “We need social cohesion and to like each other because we have to put in lots of additional hours and time because it’s a startup,” Mr. Gordon said.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-is-americas-ceo-factory/ar-BBX3hhE?li=BBnb7Kz

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Supplier Report: 10/25/2019


Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

The ongoing saga of the T-Mobile/Sprint continues with positive news for T-Mobile… the FCC approved the merger. There are still more hurdles for the companies to clear, but for now they are moving forward.

Speaking of Sprint ownership… current Sprint owner SoftBank is mulling over the idea of taking over WeWork. SoftBank has invested almost $10B in WeWork, which is currently estimated to be worth $15B (down from $45B). SoftBank has made some dubious investments in the last few years, should they double down on WeWork?

Meanwhile, there are rumors that Jeff Bezos is mulling over splitting Amazon and AWS to get in front of government momentum that might force the company to split apart in the future. Would a split even matter?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • The FCC has voted to approve the T-Mobile-Sprint merger

    Now, the T-Mobile-Sprint merger faces one more battle before they plan to close the deal. The FCC and DOJ are the only two federal agencies required to approve telecom deals before they can close, and the DOJ already gave the companies the thumbs-up in July. However, a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general are still trying to block the deal through a multistate lawsuit, and representatives from the two companies said that they won’t close the merger until that is resolved.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/16/20917162/fcc-tmobile-sprint-merger-justice-department-ajit-pai-geoffrey-starks-jessica-rosenworel

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google and Ambient Computing

    Frankly, it’s a compelling vision on multiple dimensions:

    • First, it is a vision for the future that actually seems larger than the smartphone reality we live in. Alternatives like augmented reality or wearables feel smaller.
    • Second, it is a vision that does not compete with the smartphone, but rather leverages it. The smartphone is so useful for so many things that any directly competitive technology would have to cover an impossible number of use cases to displace it; ambient computing, though, simply conceives of the smart phone as one of several means to deliver on its promise.
    • Third, it is a vision that Google is uniquely suited to pursue. The company is a services company incentivized to serve the maximum number of customers no matter the means (i.e. device), and it already has a head start in providing services that contain and accumulate essential information about people’s lives.

    https://stratechery.com/2019/google-and-ambient-computing/

Cloud

  • Workday Casts a Large Cloud

    Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri answered a question about the state of the market by saying “we’re definitely seeing some delays.” He also said companies were still moving ahead with “transformation projects”—meaning an overall shift to cloud-based software—and that Workday isn’t seeing anything “drastically different” in the marketplace.

    The company maintained its previous projections for the fiscal year ending in January, but investors in the richly valued cloud computing software business tend to react badly to signs of sales deceleration. Workday’s stock price slid 11% Wednesday—its worst decline in nearly three years.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/workday-casts-a-large-cloud-11571252400

  • Amazon Could Be Open To Splitting

    CNBC ran an interview with writer Franklin Foer, who said breaking off the service “would be the obvious thing for [Bezos] to do in the face of this.”

    “I think that eventually Bezos, who is seeing around corners, is going to break up his own company,” Foer said. “AWS exists as its own fantastically profitable business. There’s no reason that it needs to be connected to Amazon the e-retailer. And as he looks at what’s happening in politics, where there’s this increasing bipartisan consensus that Big Tech is a problem, I’m pretty sure he’s going to say, ‘okay, fine.’”

    In a June interview, Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, said the company would listen to regulators if it was ordered to split off, but that he saw no upside to doing it just yet. As for revenue, AWS made up 13 percent of Amazon’s total in Q2, but more than half of its $3.1 billion in operating income for the same time period.

    https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2019/could-jeff-bezos-spin-off-amazon-web-services/

Security/Privacy

  • Samsung will fix bug that lets any fingerprint unlock a Galaxy S10

    “Samsung Electronics is aware of the case of the S10’s malfunctioning fingerprint recognition and will soon issue a software patch,” the company told Reuters in a statement. The problem has been deemed serious enough that an online bank in South Korea, KaKaobank, has advised owners to switch off fingerprint recognition until it’s resolved.

    It’s not clear what’s causing the problem, but the Galaxy S10 uses an ultrasonic sensor to detect fingerprint ridges. Plastic or silicone screen protectors can stymie it, so Samsung has been recommending that buyers used approved protective devices. That doesn’t explain why the system is allowing access to non-registered fingerprints, however. Engadget has reached out to Samsung for more information.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/17/samsung-patch-fingerprint-reader/?guccounter=1

Software/SaaS

  • Andrew Yang at Democratic debate: No one uses Bing. ‘Sorry, Microsoft, it’s true.’

    Yang, who has worked as a tech entrepreneur, referenced Bing while answering a question during the CNN and New York Times debate about the proper level of oversight for tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter.

    “We also have to be realistic that competition doesn’t solve all of the problems,” said Yang, 44. “It’s not like any of us wants to use the fourth best navigation app, that would be like cruel and unusual punishment. There’s a reason why no one is using Bing today.”

    A slow “ooh” began to rise up from the audience.

    “Sorry, Microsoft, it’s true,” he said.

    https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2019/10/andrew-yang-at-debate-no-one-uses-bing-sorry-microsoft-its-true.html

  • Amazon’s consumer business says bye bye to Oracle databases, moves to AWS

    But let’s get real. AWS will get more marketing returns out of this Amazon consumer migration than ever. More than 100 teams in Amazon’s consumer business contributed and the AWS move gives it a purpose built approach to databases. Again, Oracle would argue that leads to database sprawl. It is also worth noting that Amazon still has some Oracle databases. AWS explained: “Some third-party applications are tightly bound to Oracle and were not migrated.”

    But generally speaking, Amazon’s consumer unit moved most systems to AWS databases such as Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), and Amazon Redshift. The migration covered 100% of Amazon’s proprietary systems.

    As for returns, Amazon is claiming that it reduced database costs by more than 60% with latency reductions of 40% and database admin overhead by 70%.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-consumer-business-says-bye-bye-to-oracle-databases-moves-to-aws/

Other

  • Former Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd has passed away

    Mark Hurd, who until last month was one of two CEOs leading the database software giant Oracle, has passed away at age 62, one month after telling employees in a letter that he was taking a leave of absence owing to health reasons.

    Hurd joined Oracle nine years ago, after spending five years with Hewlett-Packard, where he was CEO, president and, ultimately, board chairman, all roles from which he was pressured to resign in 2010 after submitting inaccurate expense reports that concealed his personal relationship with an outside consultant to the company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/18/former-oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd-has-passed-away/

  • IBM Earnings Fall in Prolonged Sales Slump

    IBM on Wednesday reported sales of $18.03 billion, below analysts expectations and trailing the $18.76 billion it posted in the year-prior period. Shares slumped 6% in after-hours trading.

    The revenue decline was IBM’s 27th overall under Ms. Rometty, who has struggled to adapt the more than century-old company to a changing global IT landscape since taking the reins in 2012.

    The company’s closely watched adjusted earnings per share fell to $2.68, but came in slightly higher than analysts’ forecasts of $2.66.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-earnings-fall-in-prolonged-sales-slump-11571258768

  • Son, SoftBank Risk Too Much With WeWork Takeover

    Son’s desire to be a savior may be strong. His 2012 takeover of U.S. telecommunications company Sprint Corp. is one of the most notable examples. But Vision Fund investors may also take it as a warning: Sprint remains unprofitable. It has also taken up a lot of management time as SoftBank executives worked to find a buyer — Sprint now plans to merge with T-Mobile USA — and then regulators to allow the deal to go through.

    As big as WeWork is, that investment is just 10% of the Vision Fund. Yet VC investing returns aren’t measured in percentage points, but multiples. The Vision Fund should be able to write off WeWork in its entirety and still post solid profits. It also means that expending an inordinate amount of time, and reputation, on one investee is not in the best interests of the Vision Fund’s other 82 portfolio companies, nor its investors.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/son-softbankrisktoo-much-with-wework-takeover/2019/10/14/f3b46fd8-ee4e-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html

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Supplier Report: 4/26/2019

Google continues to make moves in the cloud with new hires and policy changes that should make their services more attractive under the leadership of Thomas Kurian but news continues to leak about failing AI ethics boards and past behavior with open source competitors that makes me wonder if Google is actually evil (sometimes). But there is good news… Google’s streaming beef with Amazon seems to be squashed…for now.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile is facing an uphill battle with the DOJ on their Sprint merger plans and Wisconsin might actually push back against Foxconn.


Acquisitions

  • T-Mobile-Sprint Deal Runs Into Resistance From DOJ Antitrust Staff

    The nation’s third- and fourth-biggest carriers by subscribers are facing challenges on several fronts, but their most immediate hurdle comes from the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which is considering whether the deal would present an unacceptable threat to competition.

    In a meeting earlier this month, Justice Department staff members laid out their concerns with the all-stock deal and questioned the companies’ arguments that the combination would produce important efficiencies for the merged firm, the people said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/t-mobile-sprint-deal-runs-into-resistance-from-doj-antitrust-staff-11555446461

  • Salesforce is buying MapAnything, a startup that raised over $84 million

    The companies did not reveal the selling price, and Salesforce didn’t have anything to add beyond a brief press release announcing the deal.

    “The addition of MapAnything to Salesforce will help the world’s leading brands accurately plan: how many people they need, where to put them, how to make them as productive as possible, how to track what’s being done in real time and what they can learn to improve going forward,” Salesforce wrote in the statement announcing the deal.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/salesforce-is-buying-mapanything-a-startup-that-raised-over-84-million/

  • Why it just might make sense that Salesforce.com is buying Salesforce.org

    Salesforce has always made a lot of hay about being a responsible capitalist. It’s something it highlights at events and really extends with the 1-1-1 model it created, which gives one percent of profit, time and resources (product) to education and nonprofits. Its employees are given time off and are encouraged to work in the community. Salesforce.org has been the driver behind this, but something drove the company to bring Salesforce.org into the fold.

    While it’s easy to be cynical about the possible motivations, it could be a simple business reason, says Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research. As he pointed out, it didn’t make a lot of sense from a business perspective to be running two separate entities with separate executive teams, bookkeeping systems and sales teams. What’s more, he said there was some confusion over lack of alignment and messaging between the Salesforce.com education sales team and what was happening at Salesforce.org. Finally, he says because Salesforce.org couldn’t issue Salesforce.com stock options, it might not have been attracting the best talent.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/16/why-it-just-might-make-sense-that-salesforce-com-is-buying-salesforce-org/

  • Microsoft acquires Express Logic for its real-time internet of things operating system

    Microsoft today announced that it’s acquired Express Logic, a 23-year-old San Diego, California-based developer of real-time operating systems (RTOS) for internet of things (IoT) and edge devices powered by microcontroller units (MCUs), for an undisclosed amount.

    “With this acquisition, we will unlock access to billions of new connected endpoints, grow the number of devices that can seamlessly connect to Azure and enable new intelligent capabilities,” wrote Microsoft’s director of IoT Sam George in a blog post. “Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS joins Microsoft’s growing support for IoT devices and is complementary with Azure Sphere, our premier security offering in the microcontroller space.”

    https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/18/microsoft-acquires-express-logic-for-its-real-time-internet-of-things-operating-system/

  • CloudBees acquires Electric Cloud to build out its software delivery management platform

    CloudBees, the enterprise continuous integration and delivery service (and the biggest contributor to the Jenkins open-source automation server), today announced that it has acquired Electric Cloud, a continuous delivery and automation platform that first launched all the way back in 2002.

    The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but CloudBees has raised a total of $113.2 million while Electric Cloud raised $64.6 million from the likes of Rembrandt Venture Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, RRE Ventures and Next47.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/cloudbees-acquires-electric-cloud-to-build-out-its-software-delivery-management-platform/

Artificial Intelligence

  • The most overlooked path to commercialize AI is for companies to do it themselves

    Scaling these teams is expensive and operationally intensive. Going full stack opens up opportunities for companies to integrate labeling workflows into other jobs. Employees traditionally tasked with performing a consumer or enterprise service can take on the extra task at reduced expense. And if their role is assisted by a machine, they will gradually become more productive over time as their assistive models get more accurate with more labeled data.

    A second and inherently related benefit of going full stack is that these startups are able to generate — and own — powerful virtuous data feedback loops. Owning data flows creates more impressive moats than merely locking down static data sets. Deep Sentinel has a natural moat in the consumer security space, for example, as it not only has accurate classifiers, but accurate classifiers that continue to improve with real-world data generated in an environment it can control.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/15/the-most-overlooked-path-to-commercialize-ai-is-for-companies-to-do-it-themselves/

  • What HIPAA Compliance Means for Amazon

    Amazon is currently working with six business partners — Livongo, Express Scripts, Cigna Health Today, Swedish Health Connect, Atrium Health and ERAS, a program of Boston Children’s Hospital — to help customers make appointments, access medical instruction, track a prescription and other services. It’s a big step for one of the world’s most powerful companies, giving it a stronghold in the $3.5 trillion health care industry.

    Amazon had been working for some time to develop software that would meet federal HIPAA regulations, and it even created a health team within its Alexa division a year ago to work on the project, according to Business Insider. Meeting HIPAA standards is important, but the professors questioned whether it is enough.

    “I’m not sure that Amazon’s checking off the regulatory box on HIPAA compliance begins to answer the privacy concerns that we ought to have,” Rosoff said.

    https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/alexa-hipaa-compliant/

Cloud

  • Google Cloud brings on 27-year SAP veteran as it doubles down on enterprise adoption

    Unsurprisingly, Kurian is also looking to put his stamp on the executive team, too, and today announced that former SAP executive Robert Enslin is joining Google Cloud as its new president of Global Customer Operations.

    Enslin’s hire is another clear signal that Kurian is focused on enterprise customers. Enslin, after all, is a veteran of the enterprise business, with 27 years at SAP, where he served on the company’s executive board until he announced his resignation from the company earlier this month. After leading various parts of SAP, including as president of its cloud product portfolio, president of SAP North America and CEO of SAP Japan, Enslin announced that he had “a few more aspirations to fulfill.” Those aspirations, we now know, include helping Google Cloud expand its lineup of enterprise customers.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/google-cloud-brings-on-27-year-sap-veteran-as-it-doubles-down-on-enterprise-adoption/

Security

  • Facebook admits harvesting 1.5 million people’s email contacts without consent

    Facebook has admitted to accessing and storing the email contacts of as many as 1.5 million of its users without their consent. Business Insider reports that between May 2016 and last month, the social media platform asked some of its new users to verify their email address by providing the password to their email account. After doing so, the users’ contacts would be automatically imported, without any option for the user to opt out.

    Responding to the report, a Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that email contacts were “unintentionally uploaded” as part of the process. They said that these contacts had never been shared with anyone, and that the company is now deleting the contacts that were uploaded. Facebook also claims to have fixed the “underlying issue” that led to the problem.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18485089/facebook-email-password-contacts-upload-1-5-million-security-cybersecurity

Software/SaaS

  • Former Mozilla exec: Google has sabotaged Firefox for years

    “Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We’ll fix it soon. We want the same things. We’re on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe?”

    “I’m all for ‘don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence’ but I don’t believe Google is that incompetent. I think they were running out the clock. We lost users during every oops. And we spent effort and frustration every clock tick on that instead of improving our product. We got outfoxed for a while and by the time we started calling it what it was, a lot of damage had been done,” Nightingale said.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/

  • IBM’s Shares Slide as Growth Challenges Remain

    Goldman Sachs analysts said they were encouraged by IBM’s results, but added that investors remain skeptical of the company’s ability to sustain improvements. Cloud revenue accounted for one-quarter of IBM’s total revenue over the past 12 months, up from 22% a year earlier, an IBM representative said.

    Shares in IBM fell 4.2% to $139.11 on Wednesday. The stock is down 14% over the past year.

    IBM’s year-over-year revenue had fallen in virtually every quarter since Ms. Rometty took over until the last quarter of 2017. The company also posted revenue growth in the first half of last year, but that turnaround proved short-lived: Revenue declined again in the last two quarters of 2018.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibms-shares-tumble-as-challenges-remain-in-hunt-for-growth-11555526709

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple and Qualcomm settle dispute, paving way for 5G iPhone

    The two U.S. companies have been negotiating details of the settlement for weeks, sources told the Nikkei Asian Review. They have agreed to drop all litigation worldwide and struck a six-year licensing agreement, that will ensure the launch of the first 5G iPhone in 2020. The settlement included an undisclosed payment to Qualcomm by Apple, which several weeks ago asked its suppliers to begin testing the chipmaker’s 5G modems, sources said.

    Intel followed up news of the settlement by announcing its exit from 5G chips and raising questions over the future potential of the next generation technology, which the smartphone industry is hoping will help to revive a market suffering its third consecutive year of decline.

    https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/5G-networks/Apple-and-Qualcomm-settle-dispute-paving-way-for-5G-iPhone

  • Intel to Exit 5G Smartphone Modem Business, Focus 5G Efforts on

    Network Infrastructure and Other Data-Centric Opportunities
    The company will continue to meet current customer commitments for its existing 4G smartphone modem product line, but does not expect to launch 5G modem products in the smartphone space, including those originally planned for launches in 2020.

    “We are very excited about the opportunity in 5G and the ‘cloudification’ of the network, but in the smartphone modem business it has become apparent that there is no clear path to profitability and positive returns,” said Intel CEO Bob Swan. “5G continues to be a strategic priority across Intel, and our team has developed a valuable portfolio of wireless products and intellectual property. We are assessing our options to realize the value we have created, including the opportunities in a wide variety of data-centric platforms and devices in a 5G world.”

    https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-modem-statement/#gs.6hoz8p

  • Microsoft’s green plan: Our data centers will run on 60% renewable energy by 2020

    With the 60 percent milestone in sight, the company is now targeting over 70 percent renewable energy for its data centers by 2023.

    Microsoft is aiming to cut its carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030 and as part of that effort has raised its internal carbon ‘tax’ to $15 per metric ton on all carbon emissions, which is nearly double the current rate for carbon emissions, according to Microsoft president Brad Smith.

    Microsoft has had a carbon tax in place since 2012 that puts the burden on business divisions financially to cut their own carbon emissions.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-green-plan-our-data-centers-will-run-on-60-renewable-energy-by-2020/

Other

  • Gov. Tony Evers wants to renegotiate Foxconn deal, says company won’t employ 13,000

    “Clearly the deal that was struck is no longer in play and so we will be working with individuals at Foxconn and of course with (the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.) to figure out how a new set of parameters should be negotiated,” Evers told reporters in his Capitol office.

    He said it was premature to say what specific changes he would be seeking. Under existing deals, the state and local governments could provide the company up to $4 billion to establish a massive facility in Racine County and create up to 13,000 Wisconsin jobs.

    https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/17/tony-evers-says-foxconn-wont-employ-13-000-wants-new-deal/3498897002/

  • Google and Amazon end their ridiculous streaming video spat

    This should mark the end of a long, contentious relationship between Amazon and Google. For a while, Amazon declined to sell Google’s Chromecast devices, products that compete directly with Amazon’s own Fire TV products. Amazon also didn’t include support for Google Cast in the Prime Video app, which made it essentially impossible to get Prime Video on bigger screens if you used Google products. Google responded by pulling support for the YouTube apps on Fire TV as well as the Echo Show

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/18/google-amazon-youtube-firetv-prime-video-chromecast/

  • The EU has officially passed its controversial copyright law

    A total of 19 European Council members, including France and Germany, voted in favor of the new Copyright Directive. Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland and Sweden voted against adopting the directive, whereas Belgium, Estonia and Slovenia abstained — but their opposition ultimately didn’t matter. EU countries now have 24 months to apply the directive to their national legislations.

    Under the new rules, the likes of YouTube, Facebook and Instagram will be required to obtain licenses for copyrighted works from rights holders in order to host their content. They’ll also be forced to police copyrighted material through the use of tools such as filters. Critics, including Google, fear a surge in takedown requests could turn the web into a ghost town. Internet campaigners, meanwhile, have warned that the resulting censorship could quell unique forms of online expression, from GIFs to memes.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/15/eu-officially-passed-copyright-law/

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Supplier Report: 2/22/2019

Amazon has disappointed or energized certain groups of people (depending on who you talk to) by retreating from their NYC expansion plans. Both sides are still pondering if this is a good thing for New York.

Regardless, the company continues to grow through acquisitions and leveraging their market position to gain access to behavioral data.

Meanwhile, IBM finds itself defending Watson (again) by claiming they did not overhype their AI’s capabilities (they did). The company is looking to build off their Red Hat acquisition to help companies address real integration issues and not “just porting applications to the cloud”.

Acquisitions

  • Democrats want to take another look at the T-Mobile-Sprint merger

    In the ten months since T-Mobile first announced its intention to buy up its competitor, the company has cozied up to the Trump administration. The company’s executives spent more than 50 nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. T-Mobile CEO John Legere spent two night in the hotel and paid a rate of $2,246 per night, according to the Washington Post. That activity is likely to be viewed as an attempt to buy favor with the president and will come up during this week’s hearings.

    The hearings this week won’t have a direct influence on the government’s decision on whether to allow the purchase to go forward or not. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission get to approve or deny the merger based on their own investigations that will look into antitrust concerns and other potential harms. However, the hearings may turn up new information that would give regulators pause. Legere told investors last week that he believes the merger will be completed by June.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/democrats-house-hearings-t-mobile-sprint-merger/

  • Amazon buys Eero: What does it mean for your privacy?

    Deluged in a swarm of angry tweets and social media posts, many have taken to reading tea leaves to try to understand what the acquisition means for ordinary privacy-minded folks like you and me. Not many had much love for Amazon on the privacy front. A lot of people like Eero because it wasn’t attached to one of the big tech giants. Now it’s to be part of Amazon, some are anticipating the worst for their privacy.

    Of the many concerns we’ve seen, the acquisition boils down to a key concern: “Amazon shouldn’t have access to all internet traffic.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/amazon-eero-privacy/

  • Apple buys voice app startup Pullstring

    Pullstring was founded in 2011 by a group of former Pixar executives, and originally was used to power interactive voice apps for toys (including Hello Barbie in 2015). It later broadened its approach with the introduction of such IoT products as Amazon Echo and Google Assistant.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-voice-app-pullstring-080b45b6-bbb4-466f-b60a-b87c932e2f57.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: ‘We Never Overpromised’ on Watson A.I.

    Pretty much the entire world believes IBM overhyped its Watson artificial intelligence technology. Rometty isn’t one of those people. “We never overpromised,” she says, allowing, though, that “the world was mesmerized by this idea” and that the whole tech industry has learned that “you cannot just put AI on top of existing workflows.” Rometty somewhat shockingly re-framed how people should think about Watson, the subject of years of IBM’s marketing efforts. “People ask, ‘What’s the size of the Watson business?’” she says. “People want to call it a business. I call it a capability.”

    http://fortune.com/2019/02/14/ibm-ceo-rometty-ai-watson/

Cloud

  • After limping through chapter one of cloud computing, IBM aims to own chapter two

    Chapter one of the cloud represented about 20 percent of the workload opportunity. It was largely about moving a lot of new and customer-facing applications to the cloud. Chapter two is about the hard stuff. It’s about scaling artificial intelligence and creating hybrid clouds. It’s about bringing the cloud operating model to all those mission-critical apps and enabling customers to manage data, workloads and apps and move them between multiple clouds. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity and IBM intends to be No. 1.

    To claim a leadership position in this next chapter, IBM is spending $34 billion to acquire open-source software leader Red Hat Inc. This is a huge move on the chessboard, underscoring that the IBM Cloud and a decade of trying to commercialize the AI-powered Watson system aren’t enough to win the day. Rather, it sees open source, Kubernetes, containers, microservices and developers as a lynchpin to success in the next chapter of cloud.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/02/14/limping-chapter-one-cloud-computing-ibm-aims-chapter-two/

  • Oracle Shares End Higher After Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Dumps Stake

    Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of around 90 U.S.-listed stocks lost around $38 billion in value over the three months ending in December, the SEC filings noted, as the S&P 500 slumped nearly 15% in a global market sell-off triggered by slowing growth and a then-hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve. Berkshire Hathaway told the SEC in its November filing that it had owned 41.4 million shares in Oracle at the end of the end of the third quarter after it had exited a holding in IBM (IBM – Get Report) earlier in the year.

    Oracle surprised investors with a bullish 2019 outlook late last year when it posted stronger-than-expected second quarter earnings and said growth in its cloud computing business would support sales and improve profit margins.

    The company also said it sees current quarter earnings of between 86 cents and 88 cents a share, topping the 84 cent Street forecasts, and said it expects full year revenue growth of around 3% on a constant currency basis.

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/oracle-shares-slide-after-warren-buffet-s-berkshire-hathaway-dumps-stake-14867890

Software/SaaS

  • Barclaycard Integrates B2B Payments Tech To SAP Ariba

    The integration will roll out later this year with the addition of Precisionpay Bank Transfer within the SAP Ariba platform. Corporate buyers can pay their vendors via virtual card, with suppliers receiving payment the same way they receive a bank transfer. Barclaycard noted that its collaboration with SAP Ariba could also link business buyers to supply chain financing, giving companies up to 56 days to pay their invoices while suppliers receive payment more quickly.

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/barclaycard-sap-ariba/

  • Oracle CEO Mark Hurd throws shade at SAP’s $8 billion Qualtrics acquisition: We don’t buy companies ‘to just buy them’

    “We’re not buying somebody to just buy them. We’re buying companies that fit into our portfolio,” Hurd said onstage at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Wednesday, in response to a question from the on-stage interviewer about how Oracle and SAP approach acquisitions.

    In November, SAP announced it would acquire online market research software startup Qualtrics for $8 billion. The news came close to the last possible second, as Qualtrics was about to go public. Hurd’s comments were almost certainly in reference to this very recent mega-deal.

    Also:

    Hurd also said that he disagreed with SAP asking customers to completely transition to its cloud-based S/4HANA platform by 2025. After that, SAP will stop providing support for its very popular Business Suite enterprise software.

    “I think that is just a terrible damn idea,” Hurd said. “Let’s say you go to your board and say, ‘We’re going to move from this thing to this other thing, and it’s going to cost $350 million.’ My guess is, the board will say, ‘What do we get for $350 million?’ Well, we moved from this thing to the HANA thing.”

    https://factsand.news/2019/02/14/tech/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-throws-shade-at-saps-8-billion-qualtrics-acquisition-we-dont-buy-companies-to-just-buy-them-orcl-sap/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google will have offices and data centers in 24 states by the end of 2019

    The company is launching a $13 billion expansion in 2019 that will give it a total US footprint of 24 states, including “major expansions” in 14 states. The growth includes its first data center in Nevada, a new office in Georgia, and multi-facility expansions in places like Texas and Virginia. This is on top of known projects like its future New York City campus.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/google-expands-us-footprint/

Other

  • Amazon is becoming too pervasive, anti-competitive

    To put this in old-fashioned terms, Amazon owns the mall, rents space to retailers, controls access to customers, collects data on every sale while also operating the largest store in the mall. And if one of the smaller retailers show some success, Amazon will compete with them.

    Yet that is not enough for CEO Jeff Bezos, because 90 percent of retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar buildings. Amazon has bought grocery giant Whole Foods, launched Amazon Go convenience stores and opened Amazon kiosks in shopping malls. The company is reportedly looking at old Sears stores to add more retail and warehouse space.

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Amazon-is-becoming-too-pervasive-anti-competitive-13588822.php

  • Amazon’s HQ2 New York plans didn’t need to end this way

    While it’s fair on some level that Amazon felt stymied by this political climate, the company still seems petty at the end of all this. As a tech and retail titan that is nearly impossible to avoid in daily life, the company has come to expect a certain level of fealty from the people and organizations it deals with. It’s used to walking into a room and getting what it wants. In this case, dealing with activists, vocal critics and pressure from key lawmakers meant Amazon wasn’t going to have another typically easy time — the line of thinking appears to be that, as helpful as another campus would be, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Lots of brilliant people work at Amazon, though; is it possible that no one saw the red tape coming?

    I have a hard time believing that Amazon couldn’t have handled this better. Could it have managed the conversation better? Could it have been more transparent in its dealings? Could it have tried to work more closely, more functionally with the lawmakers involved? Does this whole thing now feel like a huge waste of time? Yes, to all of the above.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/16/amazon-hq2-new-york-waste-of-time/

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Supplier Report: 12/28/2018

Phone companies are taking over my report this week for a variety of reasons: T-mobile’s acquisition of Sprint is happening, AT&T is lying about 5G access (which is nothing new apparently), and Samsung is making chips for IBM.

And while these companies try to grow from their core businesses, Oracle is struggling with their big shift to cloud… but they have options.

Acquisitions

  • T-Mobile Takeover of Sprint Clears U.S. National Security Panel

    Neither Deutsche Telekom nor SoftBank is required to significantly change its own business or operations as a result of Cfius’s demands, according to the terms of the merger. Any potential changes are limited to T-Mobile, Sprint and their respective subsidiaries, deal documents show.

    Still, the global campaign by the other U.S. national security officials outside of Cfius was bearing some fruit. Deutsche Telekom on Friday said it was reviewing its procurement strategy for vendor equipment given “the global discussion about the security of network elements from Chinese manufacturers.” SoftBank last week made similar comments about its network in Japan.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/t-mobile-takeover-of-sprint-clears-u-s-national-security-panel-11545076651

Artificial Intelligence

  • This Health Startup Won Big Government Deals—But Inside, Doctors Flagged Problems

    To prove their point, the doctors had spent about a day carrying out an audit on their own initiative, according to one current and one former staff member, who asked not to be named for fear of legal repercussions. They found that around 10% to 15% of the chatbot’s 100 most frequently suggested outcomes, such as a chest infection, either missed warning signs of a more serious condition like cancer or sepsis or were just flat-out wrong, according to one insider. The clinicians had gone directly to Parsa that Friday in the hope of stalling the new release. They made their case, and after some negotiation he agreed to delay the rollout.

    But the doctors were still troubled. Interviews with current and former Babylon staff and outside doctors reveal broad concerns that the company has rushed to deploy software that has not been carefully vetted, then exaggerated its effectiveness.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/12/17/this-health-startup-won-big-government-dealsbut-inside-doctors-flagged-problems/#724a98c2eabb

Cloud

  • Oracle Revenue Flat as Push to Bolster Cloud Business Continues

    Oracle officials sought to reassure investors about the cloud business during a Monday conference call with analysts, highlighting strong software-as-a-service bookings in the latest period and Oracle’s competitive edge from its autonomous database.

    “We need more than just a great database,” said Larry Ellison, the company’s co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer. “We also need first-class infrastructure to run the database on, and we know finally have that.”

    Overall, Oracle reported second-quarter profit rose 5% to $2.33 billion, or 61 cents a share. Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, profit rose to 80 cents a share from 69 cents a share.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-revenue-flat-as-push-to-bolster-cloud-business-continues-11545084073

Security

  • China appears to have breached HPE and IBM, hacked into clients’ computers

    The attacks were part of a Chinese campaign known as Cloudhopper, which the United States and Britain on Thursday said infected technology service providers in order to steal secrets from their clients.

    While cybersecurity firms and government agencies have issued multiple warnings about the Cloudhopper threat since 2017, they have not disclosed the identity of technology companies whose networks were compromised.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/china-hacked-hpe-and-ibm-and-then-went-after-their-clients-reports-2018-12
    IBM says no evidence that ‘sensitive’ data was hacked by China

    “IBM has been aware of the reported attacks and already has taken extensive counter-measures worldwide as part of our continuous efforts to protect the company and our clients against constantly evolving threats,” Ed Barbini, vice-president for external relations and spokesman for New York-headquartered IBM, said in a text message.

    “We take responsible stewardship of client data very seriously, and have no evidence that sensitive IBM or client data has been compromised by this threat,” stated Mr Barbini.

    https://www.thenational.ae/business/technology/ibm-says-no-evidence-that-sensitive-data-was-hacked-by-china-1.804980

Software/SaaS

  • There’s ‘no way’ customers would migrate from Oracle to Amazon database software, Ellison says

    Amazon made its database technology available on the cloud long before Oracle did, Ellison said, but now Oracle is making its database technology readily available to customers in the cloud. The move lessens the chance customers will opt to move off Oracle technology. Such migrations are “just incredibly expensive and complicated and you’ve got to be willing to give up tons of reliability, tons of security, tons of performance to go ahead and do it,” Ellison said.

    https://www.ciodive.com/news/theres-no-way-customers-would-migrate-from-oracle-to-amazon-database-sof/544639/

  • Red Hat Flat as IBM’s $34B Purchase Nears

    Red Hat’s total revenues increased 13.2 percent year over year to $847 million for the third quarter of its fiscal 2019. That was lower than the 21.5 percent surge the company posted for the same quarter last year, and just shy of forecasts.

    The company closed 100 deals during the quarter valued in excess of $1 million. Red Hat CFO Eric Shander added that, “Strong renewals of our largest deals also helped drive these results with all of our top 25 deals renewing at an upsell rate above 120 percent.”

    Red Hat CEO and President Jim Whitehurst said that the company added more than 100 new customers to both its OpenShift and Ansible platforms during the quarter. OpenShift is Red Hat’s Kubernetes-focused enterprise container product while Ansible is its DevOps automation platform.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/red-hat-flat-as-ibms-34b-purchase-nears/2018/12/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Samsung to Manufacture IBM’s 7nm Power CPUs

    IBM’s announcement noted that it has had a strong alliance in developing new process technologies with Samsung for the past 15 years. Back in 2015, IBM announced that its IBM Research Alliance, which includes Samsung, was able to produce the first 7nm EUV test chip. IBM will soon be able to take advantage of this node, too, although it doesn’t look like it will be among the first to use it.

    “This collaboration is an important milestone for Samsung’s foundry business as it signifies confidence in Samsung’s cutting-edge high performance EUV process technology,” Ryan Lee, Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-ibm-7nm-power-cpu-hpc,38278.html

Other

  • AT&T will put a fake 5G logo on its 4G LTE phones

    According to FierceWireless, AT&T will display an icon reading “5G E” on newer phones that are connected to LTE in markets where the carrier has deployed a handful of speed boosting — but still definitively 4G — technologies. The “E,” displayed smaller than the rest of the logo, refers to “5G Evolution,” the carrier’s term for networks that aren’t quite 5G but are still faster than traditional LTE.

    If this sounds sadly familiar, it’s because AT&T pulled this exact same stunt during the transition to LTE. The company rolled out a speed-boosting 3G tech called HSPA+, then got all of its phone partners — even Apple! — to show a “4G” logo when on that kind of connection.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/21/18151764/att-5g-evolution-logo-rollout-fake-network

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