Category: Supplier Report

Posted on

Supplier Report: 5/15/2020


Photo by Frida Bredesen on Unsplash

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

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

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Buyers’ Remorse Is Catching in the Coronavirus Era

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

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

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

  • Microsoft to Buy Israeli Cybersecurity Startup CyberX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cloud

  • IBM CEO Lays Out New Initiatives in Cloud, AI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

Supplier Report: 5/8/2020


Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash

The shadow of COVID19 continues to loom.

Amazon is warning stockholders that they plan to spend $4B in operational expenses protecting employees and combating the strain. Pandemic darling Zoom announced a new cloud contract with Oracle (which makes sense since Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have their own competing video conference platforms).

SoftBank’s financial woes continue and they cannot rely on a strong economy for a rebound. Their investments in WeWork continue to sour due to isolation orders globally and I don’t see things getting better for WeWork or SoftBank anytime soon… but relaxed Japanese banking systems could help.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for $1B to boost its autonomous car division

    Sources tell TechCrunch that the startup — which had previously been backed by Intel Capital in a strategic investment — will become part of Intel’s Israeli automotive hub, which is anchored by Mobileye, the autonomous driving company that Intel acquired for $15.3 billion in 2017.

    It’s not clear yet what Moovit would be doing in that hub, but as a rule, ingesting and actioning reliable, real-time traffic data and intelligent routing — the crux of what Moovit does — are some of the most challenging aspects of getting autonomous vehicle services up and running.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/03/intel-to-buy-smart-urban-transit-startup-moovit-for-1b-to-boost-its-autonomous-car-division/

  • SoftBank to write down WeWork by $6.6 billion, compounding portfolio misery

    The tech conglomerate has poured more than $13.5 billion into WeWork, one of a string of troubled bets by CEO Masayoshi Son that have laid waste to SoftBank’s full-year earnings.

    The group maintained its forecast of a record annual operating loss of 1.35 trillion yen announced earlier this month.

    The darkening future for WeWork with customers in lockdown comes as deep-seated problems from SoftBank’s cash-fuelled push for rapid expansion are being compounded by the coronavirus outbeak.

    SoftBank shares pared gains to close up 0.5% compared to a 2.1% rise in the benchmark index .N255. The group has launched a record 2.5 trillion yen buyback to support its share price. CEO Son uses his SoftBank shares as collateral for loans.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-softbank-group-results/softbank-sees-84-billion-net-loss-on-wework-writedown-idUSKBN22C011

Cloud

  • Oracle wins cloud computing deal with Zoom as video calls surge

    The deal is a big win for Oracle, which wants to catch up with rivals such as Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) that have greater market share, and is selling a new generation of cloud technology after its first generation efforts failed to gain traction.

    Zoom and Oracle did not disclose the size of the deal, but said traffic for “millions” of meeting participants is being handled by Oracle’s cloud service and about 7 million gigabytes of Zoom data per day is flowing through Oracle servers.

    “It’s exciting to be able to come on to a platform and scale very rapidly,” Zoom’s Chief Technology Officer Brendan Ittelson told Reuters in an interview.

    Zoom’s service ran on a mixture of its own data center gear and cloud computing services from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure, but it began working with Oracle about six weeks ago.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-zoom-video-commn/oracle-wins-cloud-computing-deal-with-zoom-as-video-calls-surge-idUSKCN22A1R9
    And now we understand why Larry was saying nice things about Zoom. He was working the deal. It is sad that everybody was expecting news like this because it is so out of character for Ellison to compliment other technology companies not in his pocket.

  • Microsoft signs Coca-Cola to 5-year cloud technology and business software deal

    The companies describe the agreement as a strategic partnership. Microsoft says Coca-Cola’s call center managers will use artificial intelligence in Dynamics 365, for example, to determine which issues are most important for customers such as retailers and vendors in Coke’s supply chain.

    In addition to using Microsoft Teams for smaller meetings and collaboration as many of its employees work from home, the company is using Microsoft 365 Live Events for large-scale video presentations, such as employee town halls.

    The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday afternoon, providing the first official glimpse of its financial performance since the global COVID-19 pandemic began. Analysts expect Microsoft to post revenue of $33.9 billion for the quarter, up from $30.6 billion a year ago, and earnings of 1.28 per share, up from 1.14 per share a year ago.

    https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-signs-coca-cola-co-5-year-deal-cloud-tech-business-software-deal/

Software/SaaS

  • Celonis pushes beyond process mining into automated workflow tooling

    “We put all of this together — the intelligence, the action, the automation and we solve business goals for certain departments,” Rinke said.

    For starters, that involves supply chain and finance, but there are plans for building even more applications this year and beyond. The way it works for starters, is it connects to the company’s transactions systems, whether that’s SAP or Oracle or something similar. This is where the Banyas acquisition really comes into play,

    “You can basically put these applications on top of your transaction systems and tell them which business goals you have — like I want to preserve cash or I want to pay on time — and then we analyze the enterprise’s entire processes towards these business goals, and then drive everything, automate things towards these business goals intelligently,” he said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/celonis-moves-beyond-process-discovery-into-automated-workflow-tooling/

  • Can API vendors solve healthcare’s data woes?

    While hospitals, urgent care facilities and health systems have stored patient records electronically for years thanks to laws passed under the Clinton administration, those records were difficult for patients themselves to access. The way the system has been historically structured has made it nearly impossible for an individual to access their entire medical history.

    It’s a huge impediment to ensuring that patients receive the best care they possibly can, and until now it’s been a boulder that companies have long tried to roll uphill, only to have it roll over them.

    Now, new regulations are requiring that the developers of electronic health records can’t obstruct interoperability and access by applications. Those new rules may unlock a wave of new digital services.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/can-api-vendors-solve-healthcares-data-woes/

Other

  • Zoom admits it doesn’t have 300 million users, corrects misleading claims

    The misleading blog was edited on April 24th, a day after the numbers made headlines worldwide. After The Verge reached out for comment from Zoom, the company added a note to the blog post admitting the error yesterday, and provided the following statement:

    “We are humbled and proud to help over 300 million daily meeting participants stay connected during this pandemic. In a blog post on April 22, we unintentionally referred to these participants as “users” and “people.” When we realized this error, we adjusted the wording to “participants.” This was a genuine oversight on our part.”

    Zoom’s growth has been impressive, but the company has not actually provided a daily active user count. Zoom usage has soared from 10 million daily meeting participants back in December to 300 million this month. Rivals like Microsoft Teams and Google Meet appear to be closing the gap, though. Microsoft said yesterday it now has 75 million daily active users of Teams, a jump from 70 percent in a month. Microsoft also recorded 200 million meeting participants in a single day this month.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21242421/zoom-300-million-users-incorrect-meeting-participants-statement

  • Amazon says it’ll spend $4 billion or more dealing with COVID-19

    One of the more interesting bits from Bezos’ statement was that Amazon has a team of current employees that are working to build “incremental testing capacity.” So far, the team has built a lab to pilot tests for its frontline employees, and it pledges to share any progress the team makes to the greater effort against COVID-19.

    Amazon’s Q1 2020 performance fell in line with its guidance from late last year, with $4 billion in operating income. Its net sales were at $75.5 billion, which outpaced the growth that it expected last quarter. AWS, its cloud computing services, saw a huge increase year over year, bringing in $10.2 billion this quarter, which is up from $7.7 billion in the same quarter in 2019.

    Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers reveal that Amazon — at least so far — is rolling with the punches and keeping up with the unprecedented demand seen for orders around the globe.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21243112/amazon-q1-2020-earnings-covid-19-coronavirus-jeff-bezos

Posted on

Supplier Report: 5/1/2020


Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

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

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

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

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

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

Cloud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

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

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

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

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

  • Another pandemic woe: Zoom fatigue

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/24/2020


Photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash

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

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

Acquisitions/Investments

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

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

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

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

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

Security/Privacy

  • How Coronavirus Is Eroding Privacy

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

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

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

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

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

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

Other

  • Amazon fires two employees who condemned treatment of warehouse workers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/17/2020


Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

The relationship between SoftBank and WeWorks is crumbling and it is extremely interesting to watch this situation implode.

As more information comes to light about how WeWork operated and their overall strategy of real estate manipulation, you can’t feel bad for either company’s failure (at least I don’t). Manipulate. Overvalue. Cash Out. I hope investors and reputable banks learn from this mess (hello Uber).

Meanwhile, Foxconn might actually use those manufacturing plants in Wisconsin for something useful… making respirators.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Friendship Ended With SoftBank, Now Lawsuits Are WeWork’s Best Friend

    SoftBank’s reasoning for backing out includes concern about regulatory probes into WeWork and more technical details concerning an exchange of shares that SoftBank sabotaged in order to prevent this deal. WeWork is suing SoftBank, claiming that concern over regulatory troubles are not grounds for backing out because WeWork has been controlled by SoftBank for nearly half a year now. In WeWork’s own words:

    “The investigations were not a surprise, given Neumann’s conduct and the Company’s loss of billions in value. SoftBank had complete knowledge of the facts underlying the investigations when it executed the [Master Transaction Agreement]. … All of the investigations were known to SoftBank at the time that it signed the December 27, 2019 amendment to the MTA. But SoftBank did not raise the investigations as a basis not to consummate the Tender Offer until recently, as the approaching April 1, 2020 closing date caused it to become increasingly desperate.”

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3m7gy/friendship-ended-with-softbank-now-lawsuits-are-weworks-best-friend

  • German security firm Avira has been acquired by Investcorp at a $180M valuation

    The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed in the companies’ joint announcement, but the CEO of Avira, Travis Witteveen, and ITP’s MD, Gilbert Kamieniecky, both said it gives Avira a total valuation of $180 million. The deal will involve ITP taking a majority ownership in the company, with Avira founder Tjark Auerbach retaining a “significant” stake of the company in the deal, Kamieniecky added.

    Avira is not a tech startup in the typical sense. It was founded in 1986 and has been bootstrapped (in that it seems never to have taken any outside investment as it has grown). Witteveen said that it has “tens of millions” of users today of its own-branded products — its anti-virus software has been resold by the likes of Facebook (as part of its now-dormant antivirus marketplace) — and many more via the white-label deals it makes with big names. Strategic partners today include NTT, Deutsche Telekom, IBM, Canonical and more.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/08/german-security-firm-avira-has-been-acquired-by-investcorp-at-a-180m-valuation/

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but it is very strange how there has been almost no news about AI and automation for the last 6 weeks.

Once would assume with people being unable to work, there would be some talk of automation (even if it is an uncomfortable topic with people out of work), but… crickets.

Software/SaaS

  • Our Government Runs on a 60-Year-Old Coding Language, and Now It’s Falling Apart

    The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly warned about the use of legacy programming languages for critical systems. In 2019, the GAO issued a report summarizing 10 federal computing systems that were in desperate need of an overhaul. For instance, the Department of Education’s system for processing federal student aid applications was implemented in 1973. It takes 18 contractors to maintain the system, and since it’s written in COBOL, it requires specific hardware and is difficult to integrate with newer software languages.

    GAO considers COBOL a legacy language, which means agencies have trouble finding staff that knows how to write the code at all. And when they can, the specialist contractors charge a premium.

    It also means that when a system breaks, there might not be somebody there to fix it. And that’s where New Jersey finds itself now, with a sagging system and lack of qualified engineers.

    https://onezero.medium.com/our-government-runs-on-a-60-year-old-coding-language-and-now-its-falling-apart-61ec0bc8e121

  • SAP the first of the enterprise software vendors to pre-announce
    • FRS Cloud Revenue Up 29% €2.01 billion €2.01 billion
    • Non-IFRS Cloud Revenue Up 27% €2.01 billion
    • Software Licenses Revenue Down 31% to €0.45 billion
    • Total Revenue Up 7% to €6.52 billion
    • IFRS Operating Profit Up More Than 100% to €1.21 billion
    • Non-IFRS Operating Profit Up 1% to €1.48 billion

    The decline in software licenses is steep but not wholly unexpected. SAP has all but stopped selling licenses and is moving rapidly to a subscription model.

    The question of just how fragile the ERP market has become will be the subject of much commentary on the earnings call. For the moment, SAP believes decisions are being ‘postponed,’ anticipating that conditions will remain very difficult through Q2 with a gradual recovery in Q3-4.

    https://diginomica.com/sap-first-enterprise-software-vendors-pre-announce

  • Microsoft thinks coronavirus will forever change the way we work and learn

    While usage continues to rise, Microsoft is releasing a new remote work trend report to highlight how work habits are changing.

    Naturally, more people are using the video and meetings capabilities of Teams, and Microsoft has seen a new daily record of 2.7 billion meeting minutes in a single day. That’s up 200 percent from 900 million minutes in mid-March, around the time many businesses shifted toward remote working. Unsurprisingly, people are turning on video in Teams meetings two times more than before, with video calls usage in Teams growing by more than 1,000 percent in March. Microsoft found that people in Norway and the Netherlands are more likely to turn on video with around 60 percent of calls including video, compared to 38 percent in the US and 47 percent in the UK.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/9/21214314/microsoft-teams-usage-coronavirus-pandemic-work-habit-change

  • Google’s Hangouts Meet is now just Google Meet

    In an email to The Verge, Google confirmed that it has officially changed the service’s name. Google also confirmed that Meet is an independent part of G Suite, the portfolio of business services that also includes brands such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Drive. Hangouts Chat, the text-messaging arm of the Hangouts brand, is also part of the suite.

    The rebrand still appears to be a work in progress. As of this writing, the service is still called Hangouts Meet by Google in the iOS App Store, and its G Suite landing page also retains the old name. And while G Suite’s website lists “Meet” as an included service at the top of the page, “Hangouts Meet” is still referenced in a list lower down.

    The rebrand comes at a time when Google Meet has seen explosive growth as the COVID-19 pandemic forces workplaces to move their meetings online. Google Meet’s usage is currently 25 times what it was in January, Google revealed late last month, and the service is gaining more than 2 million new users a day.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/8/21214059/google-hangouts-meet-rebrand-video-chat-conferencing

    Ugh… Google’s message tool strategy frustrates me so much.

Other

  • Foxconn will produce ventilators at its controversial Wisconsin plant

    Medtronic’s CEO was unable to share the numbers of ventilators that Foxconn will produce during his interview with CBNC. However, in a statement provided to Reuters, Foxconn said that it’s hoping to speed up production time so that the ventilators can be produced as soon as possible, and that medical and technical personnel from the two companies were working closely together. The partnership came about after Medtronic open-sourced the design for its PB-560 ventilator, which has been downloaded 70,000 times, according to Ishrak.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/8/21213269/foxconn-ventilators-wisconsin-plant-medtronic-pb-560-open-source-design-covid-19

  • End of an Era: Microsoft Word Now Flagging Two Spaces After Period as an Error

    The change was received with mixed reactions by the user community, but many believe that using just one space after a period is something that makes total sense.

    “Consistency and efficiency won. Two spaces after a period is a relic of the typewriter world,” someone says. “There should always be two spaces unless you need to cut down to fit in the 280 limit. Readability improves with two spaces,” another Twitter user, who this time suggests we should all stick with two spaces after a period, explains.

    The new approach is without a doubt controversial, but while change is hard, it’s all just a matter of time until everyone adapts to the one-space rule.

    https://news.softpedia.com/news/end-of-an-era-microsoft-word-now-flagging-two-spaces-after-period-as-an-error-529706.shtml