Category: Supplier Report

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Supplier Report: 3/6/2020


Photo by Jérémy Stenuit on Unsplash

The COVID-19 virus – which is rapidly earning pandemic status – has already caused massive disruption to the IT industry. As the virus spreads globally, companies are cutting back travel and pulling out of conferences.

The physical supply chain continues to be impacted with no timeline or solutions emerging other than “wait until after April”.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • DocuSign acquires Seal Software for $188M to enhance its AI chops

    DocuSign says it will continue to sell Seal’s analytics tools. What’s surely more important to DocuSign, though, is that it will also leverage the company’s AI tools to bolster its DocuSign CLM offering. CLM is DocuSign’s service for automating the full contract life cycle, with a graphical interface for creating workflows and collaboration tools for reviewing and tracking changes, among other things. And integration with Seal’s tools, DocuSign argues, will allow it to provide its customers with a “faster, more efficient agreement process,” while Seal’s customers will benefit from deeper integrations with the DocuSign Agreement Cloud.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/27/docusign-acquires-seal-software-for-188m-to-enhance-its-ai-chops/

  • Xerox Edges Closer to Fixing Its HP Printer Jam

    Were HP to become the acquirer, the new firm would emerge with significantly less debt. The Xerox offer as it stands would likely load the new entity with debt representing at least five times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. In the unlikely event that HP were to pay cash for Xerox (there would almost certainly be a stock component), then it would have debt of less than four times Ebitda.

    That includes the impact of a $15 billion buyback that HP announced today. The biggest risk for Xerox was that HP would essentially become the counterbidder for itself. By using his own balance sheet to boost shareholder value, Lores is doing just that. A $15 billion repurchase might buy back 50% of the shares, based on HP’s valuation before Xerox’s first bid. That could lift the share price well above the $24 a share of Xerox’s most recent offer.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/xerox-edges-closer-to-fixing-its-hp-printer-jam/2020/02/25/b1c61f82-57e8-11ea-8efd-0f904bdd8057_story.html

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • IBM and Microsoft support the Vatican’s guidelines for ethical AI

    The pledge, presented to Pope Francis today, calls for AI that safeguards the rights of all humans, especially the underprivileged, and for new regulations in areas like facial recognition. It asks tech leaders to “humanise technology and not ‘technologise’ humanity,” Novena News reports.

    “The Vatican is not an expert on the technology but on values,” Francesca Rossi, IBM’s global AI ethics leader, said in a statement. “The collaboration is to make the Vatican and the whole society understand how to use this technology with these values.”

    The pledge is part of a larger workshop on ethical AI led by the Pontifical Academy for Life in the Vatican this week. The Academy hopes governments, NGOs, industry leaders and other associations will join the “Rome Call for AI Ethics,” along with tech companies like IBM and Microsoft.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/28/ibm-microsoft-vatican-ai-ethics-pledge/

Cloud

  • Oracle has been outed as a donor for the Internet Accountability Project

    Database software giant Oracle Corp. has been outed as one of the donors of the Internet Accountability Project, which is a conservative organization that’s been throwing its weight behind a growing call for tougher privacy rules and stronger regulation of big tech companies.

    The IAP had always refused to say who was funding it, but it revealed in a disclosure on its website that Oracle donated between $25,000 and $99,000 last year, according to a Bloomberg report Tuesday.

    Oracle has been funding the IAP as part of its long-running campaigns against tech rivals such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google LLC. Oracle has been gunning for Amazon and its cloud business for years, while it’s also involved in a lengthy legal battle with Google regarding the use of patents relating to the Java programming language it owns.

    https://siliconangle.com/2020/02/26/oracle-outed-donor-internet-accountability-project/

Security/Privacy

  • ICE has run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland drivers

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been permitted to run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland driver’s license photos without first seeking state or court approval, state officials said — access that goes far beyond what other states allow and that alarms immigration activists in a state that grants special driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

    More than 275,000 such licenses have been issued statewide since 2013, when the state became the first on the East Coast to defy federal guidelines and allow undocumented immigrants to obtain a license without having to provide proof of legal status. The technology now under scrutiny could let an ICE official run a photograph of an unknown person through the system and see if any potentially undocumented immigrants are returned as a match.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/26/ice-has-run-facial-recognition-searches-millions-maryland-drivers/

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle to pay $12 million to settle ERISA suit

    Oracle Corp. agreed to pay $12 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed against the firm for allegedly breaching its fiduciary duties in managing its $16.5 billion 401(k) plan.

    The suit, filed in 2016, alleged that Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle caused participants of its 401(k) savings and investment plan “to pay unreasonable record-keeping and administrative fees” to its record keeper, Fidelity Management Trust Co.

    https://www.pionline.com/courts/oracle-pay-12-million-settle-erisa-suit

  • Expedia cuts 3,000 jobs, including 500 at new Seattle HQ

    Expedia said at the time that it was targeting $300 to $500 million of annual cost savings, but hadn’t previously announced explicit plans for job cuts.

    The layoffs come across the company and globe. About 500 people will be let go in Seattle, where Expedia recently moved to a new 40-acre waterfront campus and employs more than 4,000 people. Expedia said it will eliminate certain projects and activities, and reduce the use of vendors and contractors. It will provide impacted workers with severance packages that include extended healthcare.

    “Moving forward, we will exert more discipline in setting priorities and allocating resources, simplify our business processes and inter-dependencies, raise the bar on performance standards, and demonstrate and demand accountability for results,”

    https://www.geekwire.com/2020/expedia-cuts-3000-jobs-including-500-new-seattle-hq-read-internal-email-employees/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple Loses Pair of Key Operations, Supply Chain Executives

    Nick Forlenza, a vice president of manufacturing design, has retired from Apple, while Duco Pasmooij, another vice president who worked on operations, is discussing an exit in the near future, according to people familiar with the moves. Pasmooij left the operations team over a year ago, moving into a role reporting to the company’s head of augmented reality efforts, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing personnel.

    Apple has about a hundred vice presidents across the company who help Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and the senior executive team run one of the world’s most profitable companies. An Apple spokesman declined to comment. Forlenza and Pasmooij didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-27/apple-loses-pair-of-key-operations-supply-chain-executives

Other

  • Disney’s Iger Is Now in a Rare Role: Executive Chairman

    Such arrangements work when an executive chairman cedes enough control to give the new CEO autonomy, while remaining present as a sounding board, says Anthony Abbatiello, who heads the leadership and succession-planning practice at Russell Reynolds Associates, an executive-search firm. Transitions can crumble if the newly installed chairman insists on micromanaging operations, he said.

    When Jim McCann, the founder and longtime CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com Inc., became executive chairman in 2016 and handed the reins to his brother, Chris McCann, he says he tried to clearly separate the roles. He stopped attending some meetings and quarterly gatherings of managers, and refrained from participating in corporate earnings calls. Instead, he took on projects focused on innovation and better serving customers, leaving his brother to handle day-to-day operations.

    A mentor advised the two executives to never let others drive a wedge between them. “That’s rung in our ears,” Jim McCann said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/disneys-iger-is-now-in-a-rare-role-executive-chairman-11582840014

  • Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block steps down

    Block stepped into the co-CEO role in 2018, after a long career at the company that saw him become vice chairman, president and director before he took this position. Block spent the early years of his career at Oracle . He left there in 2012 after the release of a number of documents in which he criticized then-Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, who passed away last year.

    Industry pundits saw his elevation to the co-CEO role as a sign that Block was next in line as the company’s sole CEO in the future (assuming Benioff would ever step down). After this short tenure as co-CEO, it doesn’t look like that will be the case, but for the time being, Block will stay on as an advisor to Benioff.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/25/salesforce-co-ceo-keith-block-steps-down/

  • Amazon tells employees to pause nonessential travel in U.S. due to coronavirus

    Amazon sent the notification to employees on Friday. In a separate internal communication, Dave Clark, who runs Amazon’s retail operations, told employees to hold off on planning group or team meetings that require travel until at least the end of April, when he estimated that the company will have a better sense of the virus, its spread and its impact.

    In January, Amazon said it was restricting employee travel to China “until further notice” amid the coronavirus outbreak. The company also recommended that employees who are expected to travel back from one of the affected provinces of China work from home for two weeks. Amazon urged employees who experienced any symptoms to seek medical attention before returning to the office.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/amazon-pauses-non-essential-travel-in-us-due-to-coronavirus.html
    Coronavirus concerns prompt cancellation of Facebook F8 developer conference

    “This was a tough call to make — F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on,” Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s director of developer platforms and programs, said in a statement.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/coronavirus-concerns-prompt-cancellation-of-facebook-f8-developer-conference/
    GDC 2020 has been canceled

    In recent days, nearly all of the event’s top corporate sponsors announced that they would not be sending employees to the event due to concerns surrounding coronavirus. Microsoft, Unity, Epic, Amazon, Facebook and Sony had all bowed out of the event. GDC’s statement did not reference the virus.

    The company behind GDC detailed that they will be refunding conference and expo attendees in full, though a blog post details that the group hopes to host a GDC event later in the summer, noting, “We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/28/gdc-has-been-postponed/

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Supplier Report: 2/28/2020

Google had a lot of things happening in the news this week…

First their parent company Alphabet announced it is pruning its “other bets” (aka Moonshot” projects). These projects tend to focus on “greater good” goals like energy, internet availability for poor countries, or security. Alphabet has been moving these projects back under the Google umbrella, reducing funding, or looking to sell off companies.

Rumors continue that Alphabet companies are toxic and poorly managed. Like Nest, Jigsaw (a company focused on internet protection and security) has employees fleeing due to bad leadership and a lack of action when issues and complaints are raised.

Finally, the company is not making friends with the DOJ as the anti-trust case ramps up. Meanwhile, their rival Oracle (and Larry Ellison), continue to get very friendly with President Trump.

Google was a company that said “don’t be evil” and invested in technologies that could help billions of people across the planet. Now it is de-funding those projects, trying to find ways into China, harbors creepy out-of-touch executives, and is being called out for a “culture of fear” while their list of enemies grow…

What the hell happened?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google parent Alphabet is pruning its ‘other bets’

    That list has been amended over the last four and a half years. Many Alphabet companies have simply rebranded — Life Sciences has become Verily, for instance, Google Ventures is now GV and Google X has dropped the word Google from its name. Of greater importance, however, are the “other bets” that Alphabet has created, killed and casually moved under Google management. Surprisingly, these decisions have accelerated over the last 12 months, highlighting Alphabet’s changing ambitions and just how difficult it is to turn a moonshot into a billion-dollar business.

    Take Makani. The team was developing kites with tiny turbines that could be tethered to a stable structure — a large boat or buoy, for instance — and leverage the wind to generate energy. Google invested an undisclosed amount in 2007 and then, through its X factory, acquired the company six years later. Makani worked in the secretive laboratory before partnering with Shell and ‘graduating’ to Alphabet company status in February 2019. Last August, the team completed its first off-shore demonstration in the North Sea, roughly 10 kilometers away from Norway. But that wasn’t enough for Alphabet management. Earlier this week, the company admitted that it was no longer confident in Makani’s moonshot.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/20/alphabet-makani-chronicle-jigsaw-other-bets/

  • SoftBank spends $2.5 billion to get second Vision Fund off the ground: sources

    Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) account for the bulk of the first Vision Fund at $60 billion. They have yet to commit to the second fund.

    Son spoke to Mubadala executives last week to convince them that the turnaround the Vision Fund was implementing in its investment portfolio was working, said one of the people, who declined to be identified as the information was not public.

    SoftBank and PIF declined to comment. A Mubadala spokesman said his company was a long-term partner of SoftBank, with which it was in regular discussion.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-softbank-visionfund/softbank-spends-2-5-billion-to-get-second-vision-fund-off-the-ground-sources-idUSKBN20C0N3

Cloud

  • Google Plots Course to Overtake Cloud Rivals

    Within Google, the cloud business has been growing in importance. The cloud generated 5.5% of Alphabet sales last year, or $8.9 billion, up from $4.1 billion, or 3.7% of total sales, two years earlier. Alphabet only began separately reporting cloud sales in the last quarter, further highlighting the growth push.

    Mr. Kurian’s changes have led to tensions within Google’s cloud ranks, where engineers had largely worked unencumbered by deadlines, according to current and former employees. Engineers were often more focused on projects they deemed interesting, former employers said, rather than what customers were wanting. That meant such features as databases and identity management—which didn’t excite employees but were prized by corporate buyers—were neglected, former employers said.

    Under Mr. Kurian, said a former Google Cloud engineer, “we have to build stuff we can sell. People weren’t used to having that.” Mr. Kurian also upset some sales people when he shifted their compensation plans by lowering their base pay but offering more in bonuses for the deals they secured, former employees said. Google declined to comment.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plots-course-to-overtake-cloud-rivals-11582383601

Security/Privacy

  • Google shifts authority over UK user data to the US in wake of Brexit

    Since 2019, shortly after Europe’s GDPR privacy rules were enacted, the official service provider and data controller for UK users had been Google’s Irish subsidiary. According to Reuters, the change in data controller could have implications for the extent of legal protection over Google’s UK user data. While Ireland is covered by the EU’s strict GDPR data protection regulations, the USA’s privacy protections are comparatively weaker. Reuters says the shift could make it easier for British authorities to obtain the data, in instances such as criminal investigations. The USA’s recent Cloud Act, it notes, could make this easier still.

    However, Reuters also says that the UK’s privacy rules will continue to apply when British authorities request user data, regardless of the fact that they’ll now be directed at Google’s US headquarters. For the foreseeable future, these rules are likely to be aligned with GDPR.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21145180/google-uk-user-data-processing-ireland-usa-authorities-data-protection-gdpr-cloud-act

  • Google’s Jigsaw Was Supposed to Save the Internet. Behind the Scenes, It Became a Toxic Mess

    Among Jigsaw’s products and research projects are Project Shield, a free service to stop distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks; Outline, a controversial VPN for people who live under censorious regimes that’s used by 50,000 people, according to a source with knowledge of the product; a tool to automatically moderate comments and a hate-speech-fighting AI that can spot “toxic” comments that’s used by The New York Times; and a program to steer people away from violent extremist content called the Redirect Method.

    These projects have gotten a lot of attention when they’ve launched, but none have been transformative for the internet. Experts say it’s unclear how much of a difference Jigsaw has made.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb98pb/google-jigsaw-became-toxic-mess

  • Hackers Were Inside Citrix for Five Months

    In March 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alerted Citrix they had reason to believe cybercriminals had gained access to the company’s internal network. The FBI told Citrix the hackers likely got in using a technique called “password spraying,” a relatively crude but remarkably effective attack that attempts to access a large number of employee accounts (usernames/email addresses) using just a handful of common passwords.

    In a statement released at the time, Citrix said it appeared hackers “may have accessed and downloaded business documents,” and that it was still working to identify what precisely was accessed or stolen.

    But in a letter sent to affected individuals dated Feb. 10, 2020, Citrix disclosed additional details about the incident. According to the letter, the attackers “had intermittent access” to Citrix’s internal network between Oct. 13, 2018 and Mar. 8, 2019, and that there was no evidence that the cybercrooks still remain in the company’s systems.

    https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/hackers-were-inside-citrix-for-five-months/

Other

  • Jeff Bezos announced a $10 billion fund to fight climate change

    In a post on Monday morning Bezos announced that the Bezos Earth Fund will finance “scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”

    Bezos is already an investor in Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund whose mission is to finance the development of technologies that can mitigate climate change and reduce the use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions in industries, including energy generation, food production and manufacturing.

    Questions about the new fund are being referred to Amazon, which doesn’t have much to share. The money is from Bezos’ personal wealth and is separate from the foundation that he’d established, according to a spokesperson for the company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/17/jeff-bezos-announced-a-10-billion-fund-to-fight-climate-change/

  • Texas AG accuses Google of delaying antitrust investigation and ‘pushing us towards a fight’

    In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton pointed to Google’s attempts to prevent the state from using certain outside consultants as one delay tactic. And Paxton said he’s willing to take a more aggressive stance as a result.

    “They’re pushing us towards a fight,” Paxton told CNBC. “We don’t necessarily want one. But we won’t back off if they’re not going to cooperate.”

    Google has said it objected to three consultants because they worked for competitors, including Microsoft and News Corp, and that it wants to ensure any documents they review remain confidential.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/05/texas-ag-paxton-says-google-delaying-antitrust-investigation.html

  • As Google heads to the Supreme Court, Oracle takes aim at its industry allies

    Google has argued that calling its work copyright infringement would hurt software interoperability, saying that it copied elements of Java to support Java developers building apps for Android. Earlier this year, it garnered around two dozen briefs supporting its position.

    But Oracle claims that in reality, “Google appears to be virtually alone — at least among the technology community.” Glueck says Google’s most prominent backers had ulterior motives or “parochial agendas”; either they were working closely with Google, or they had their own designs on Java. Microsoft, for example, settled a Java-related lawsuit with some parallels to Google’s case. (That was, granted, nearly 20 years ago.) Oracle alleges that IBM simply wants easier access to Java after acquiring software company Red Hat. And Google is a prominent member of the CCIA.

    Glueck also argues that these briefs don’t support Google as wholeheartedly as they seem. It cites Microsoft’s brief, for example, as only addressing one of Google’s two arguments for why its borrowing is legal. (That argument involves establishing Google’s actions as fair use, though, which would still be enough to get it off the hook.)

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21142366/google-supreme-court-oracle-java-copyright-microsoft-ibm

  • Dear Sophie: I need the latest details on the new H-1B registration process

    No, there is no limit to how many times a company can sponsor an individual. A lot of companies tend to do it three times because candidates can often work for you for three years with OPT and STEM OPT, but the law doesn’t set out an upper limit. Also, you can sponsor current F-1 students as well as people who have accepted your offers who are currently outside the United States.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/21/dear-sophie-i-need-the-latest-details-on-the-new-h-1b-registration-process/

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Supplier Report: 2/21/2020


Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

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

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

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

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google closes $2.6B Looker acquisition

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

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

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

  • Xerox Raises Its Bid to Acquire HP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cloud

  • Google to restructure Cloud business, with some roles eliminated

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

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

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

  • YouTube shines but Google ads continue to slow

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

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

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

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

  • Japan to hire Amazon to build government cloud

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

  • Larry Ellison Joins Peter Thiel In Trump’s Camp

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

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

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

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/14/2020


Photo by Finan Akbar on Unsplash

Investment company SoftBank is having trouble finding investors for the second wave of their “Vision Fund”. The company has taken heavy criticism for their investment strategies that some financial experts attribute to the over-valuation of companies like Uber and WeWork.

With less capital investments available, will the over-valuation of unprofitable tech companies end or will something or someone else fuel the next bubble?

Meanwhile Jeff Weiner is stepping down as LinkedIn CEO (he is still staying with the company) and Seeking Alpha is questioning why IBM didn’t select Jim Whitehurst as their next CEO.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Koch Industries acquires Infor in deal pegged at nearly $13B

    Infor, which makes large-scale cloud ERP software, has been around since 2002 and counts Koch as both a customer and an investor, so the deal makes sense on that level. Koch was lead investor last year in a $1.5 billion investment, wherein the company indicated that it was a step before going public.

    It’s not clear if that is still the goal, as sources suggested that staying private might provide the company with more capital flexibility in the future. Daniel Newman, founder and principal analyst at Futurum Research, says staying private longer could benefit Infor in the long run.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/04/koch-industries-acquires-infor-in-deal-pegged-at-nearly-13b/

  • New SoftBank Tech Fund Falls Far Short of $108 Billion Fundraising Goal

    Hailed by SoftBank last summer as a $108 billion sequel to its $100 billion Vision Fund, the new pool could end up being less than half that size, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself, the people said.

    A failure by SoftBank to raise a big new fund would reverberate across the tech startup world. Dozens of companies from ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies to food delivery company DoorDash Inc. got big boosts from the fund’s nearly $90 billion two-year spending spree.

    Less money to invest could mean cuts to SoftBank’s 500-person investing staff.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-softbank-tech-fund-falls-far-short-of-108-billion-fundraising-goal-11581100669

  • Elliott Management Builds More Than $2.5 Billion Stake in SoftBank

    Elliott Management Corp. has quietly built up a more than $2.5 billion stake in Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 7.13% and is pushing the sprawling technology giant to make changes that would boost its share price, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Founded by billionaire Paul Singer, New York-based Elliott is known as a formidable activist investor, often seeking to influence company management. SoftBank is one of Elliott’s largest bets, according to people familiar with the matter. At current prices, the investment would be equivalent to about 3% of SoftBank’s market value.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elliott-management-builds-more-than-2-5-billion-stake-in-softbank-11581015340

  • HPE acquires cloud native security startup Scytale

    HPE announced today that it has acquired Scytale, a cloud native security startup that is built on the open-source Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) protocol. The companies did not share the acquisition price.

    Specifically, Scytale looks at application-to-application identity and access management, something that is increasingly important as more transactions take place between applications without any human intervention. It’s imperative that the application knows it’s OK to share information with the other application.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/hpe-acquires-cloud-native-security-startup-scytale/

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • Laszlo Bock Thinks Machine Learning Can Make Work Better

    “There are seven billion people on this planet, and work sucks for most of them,” Mr. Bock adds. “How do you make it better without waiting 200 years for it to get better? What if you could actually drive business outcomes while also making work better?”

    His answer to that what-if is Humu Inc., a behavioral-change startup whose mission is to “make work better everywhere through machine learning, science and a little bit of love.” Mr. Bock, 48, serves as Humu’s CEO. He started the company in 2017 with two of his former Google colleagues, Wayne Crosby and Jessie Wisdom. Based in Mountain View, Calif., Humu seeks to expand the kind of data-driven approach to personnel management that Mr. Bock developed during his 10 years as Google’s head of human resources (or as Google calls it, “people operations”).

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/laszlo-bock-thinks-machine-learning-can-make-work-better-11580492585

Cloud

  • Oracle Adds Data Centers in Five New Countries to Its Cloud Platform

    This week Oracle announced the addition of five new regions to its Generation 2 cloud platform across the globe. This brings the number of Oracle cloud data center availability regions to 21, with a total of 36 to be available by the end of the year, which is when the company has said it will have more global data center hubs than Amazon Web Services.

    The new regions are in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Melbourne, Australia; Osaka, Japan; Montreal, and Amsterdam.

    https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/oracle/oracle-adds-data-centers-five-new-countries-its-cloud-platform

Security/Privacy

  • Researcher: Backdoor mechanism still active in many IoT products

    According to Yarmak, the backdoor can be exploited by sending a series of commands over TCP port 9530 to devices that use HiSilicon chips and Xiongmai firmware.

    The commands — the equivalent of a secret knock — will enable the Telnet service on a vulnerable device.

    Yarmak says that once the Telnet service is up and running, the attacker can log in with one of six Telnet credentials listed below, and gain access to a root account that grants them complete control over a vulnerable device.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/researcher-backdoor-mechanism-still-active-in-many-iot-products/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple fined $27 million in France for throttling old iPhones without telling users

    A couple of years ago, Apple released an iOS update (10.2.1 and 11.2) that introduced a new feature for older devices. If your battery is getting old, iOS would cap peak performances as your battery might not be able to handle quick peaks of power draw. The result of those peaks is that your iPhone might shut down abruptly.

    While that feature is technically fine, Apple failed to inform users that it was capping performances on some devices. The company apologized and introduced a new software feature called “Battery Health,” which lets you check the maximum capacity of your battery and if your iPhone can reach peak performance.

    And that’s the issue here. Many users may have noticed that their phone would get slower when they play a game, for instance. But they didn’t know that replacing the battery would fix that.

    Some users may have bought new phones even though their existing phone was working fine.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/07/apple-fined-27-million-for-throttling-old-iphones-without-telling-users/

  • The Coronavirus Impact on Hardware Startups

    It seems like most people are expecting factories to open on 2/10 as planned. However, the expectation is being set that production will take two weeks to ramp back up to normal. And, there is some concern that larger companies will likely exert pressure to be at the front of the line.

    Another problem at this point is movement into and out of China. The Chinese border with Hong Kong is only open at a few places and many are afraid to enter China right now for fear that they won’t be able to leave.

    Everyone anticipates a big logistics clog once things start shipping, which will introduce delay and cost, although the magnitude of this is unknown.

    Finally, the downstream (or upstream – I never get that right) impact of long lead time items will add another wrinkle once people understand the volume and timing constraints when things settle down.

    https://feld.com/archives/2020/02/the-coronavirus-impact-on-hardware-startups.html

    Yes – I posted this video twice. Watch it. Subscribe. I might make more.

Other

  • Status Quo For IBM Is Unsustainable. An Acquirer Would Treat Its Assets Better

    The fact that Jim Whitehurst was given the consolation prize of President is all you need to know about where the board is, in regard to a sense of urgency about the going forward. Whitehurst was the erstwhile CEO of Red Hat; he is not some “wet-behind-the-ears” naive tech company founder. Before Red Hat, Whitehurst was the COO of Delta in what was very trying times going into the teeth of the great recession. Whitehurst understands how to perform while playing hurt. Whitehurst also knows how to grow a tech business. Red Hat was an admired company before IBM scooped it up by paying top dollar. I am sure that during the courtship Rometti whispered in Whitehurst’s ear all kinds of promises including the fact that she will retire soon and IBM may very well be his realm. That is what a lot of people who grew up in technology, in earlier more genteel times, hoped. IBM would finally get its footing by reaching outside and putting its house in order. This “business-as-usual” coronation, promoted a 40-year IBMer, who has no corporate leadership experience, no experience in restructuring, no experience in building a tech company. His claim to fame is that he bought Whitehurst’s company for top dollar? Really?

    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4322576-status-quo-for-ibm-is-unsustainable-acquirer-treat-assets-better

  • IBM, Marriott and Mickey Mouse Take On Tech’s Favorite Law

    An unusual constellation of powerful companies and industries are fighting to weaken Big Tech by limiting the reach of one of its most sacred laws. The law, known as Section 230, makes it nearly impossible to sue platforms like Facebook or Google for the words, images and videos posted by their users.

    The companies’ motivations vary somewhat. Hollywood is concerned about copyright abuse, especially abroad, while Marriott would like to make it harder for Airbnb to fight local hotel laws. IBM wants consumer online services to be more responsible for the content on their sites.

    But they all see an opening as both Democrats and Republicans increasingly raise their own concerns about the power of the tech industry and the law.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/technology/section-230-lobby.html

  • Jeff Weiner will step down as CEO of LinkedIn June 1, product head Ryan Roslansky steps up

    There is a major change ahead for LinkedIn, the social network for the working world, now with 675 million members. Jeff Weiner, who has been leading the company as CEO for the past 11 years, is stepping down on June 1, 2020. His new role will be executive chairman. Ryan Roslansky, who is currently head of product, will be stepping up to the role of CEO, while Tomer Cohen, who had been under Roslansky, is stepping up to lead the product team.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/05/jeff-weiner-will-step-down-as-ceo-of-linkedin-june-1-product-head-ryan-roslansky-steps-up/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/7/2020

It is the end of an era with IBM’s announcement that CEO Virginia Rometty is retiring. Rometty assumed the role in 2012 and has been attempting to transform the company into a cloud and AI powerhouse. This transformation has been bumpy with IBM losing 22% value during her tenure.

But her acquisitions and steady hand may position IBM for a Microsoft-like resurgence (or she may have led the company to its final stand).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • LSI acquires S2P Solutions to solidify its SAP portfolio

    The public services transformation company LSI announced today that it will acquire S2P Solutions Ariba Cloud-based business commerce business unit on February 3rd, pending shareholder approval. With the addition of S2P, LSI will continue its leadership in delivering full ERP Cloud solutions to Regulated Industries. The focus of S2P’s business is in procurement, spend management and supplier discovery, and it is considered a leading service provider for Ariba services.

    “S2P is a champion in the procurement services market – and they have been instrumental in our strategy to deliver Ariba solutions to our SAP client base”, explained Steve Roach – CEO & President of LSI. “The ERP market is moving to the Cloud and SAP continues to lead the charge. By weaving Ariba (procurement), SuccessFactors (human resources) to the S/4H (digital core) together we are able to meet the needs of State, Local Government, Education, Utilities, Non-for-profits and Healthcare institutions. This acquisition is the next step in our journey to build out the Intelligent Public Enterprise”.

    https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/508559866/lsi-acquires-s2p-solutions-to-solidify-its-sap-portfolio

Cloud

  • Microsoft Profit, Sales Beat as Cloud Demand Persists

    Revenue in the period ended Dec. 31 rose 14% to $36.9 billion, marking the software maker’s 10th straight quarter of double-digit sales growth. Analysts on average had predicted $35.7 billion. Fiscal second-quarter profit was $11.6 billion, or $1.51 a share, Microsoft said Wednesday in a statement. That compared with the $1.32 per-share estimate of analysts polled by Bloomberg. Shares rose 4% in late trading.

    Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has been trying to narrow the gap in cloud infrastructure with market leader Amazon.com Inc., in both technical capabilities and the caliber of customer it can attract for its Azure products and services. Microsoft’s recent wins include a massive contract with the Pentagon, for which it beat out front-runner Amazon, and a cloud deal with accounting giant KPMG LLP. Microsoft is also pulling in more revenue from Office 365, with companies such as KPMG and Ikea upgrading to the internet-based productivity software. Azure revenue in the recent period rose 62% and Office 365 sales to businesses increased 27%.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/microsoft-profit-sales-beat-as-cloud-demand-persists

Security/Privacy

  • FCC: Wireless carriers violated federal law by selling location data

    Back in 2018, it came to light that carriers sell their customers’ real-time location data to aggregators, which then resold it to other companies or even gave it away. Last year, a Motherboard report also revealed that bail bond companies and bounty hunters have been buying people’s location data for years, allowing them to use that information to track their targets.

    All four major US carriers promised to stop selling customer location data to aggregators after the information first came out. The companies made good on their word, though it took them a year to do so: They informed FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that they had already halted sales to aggregators after she requested for an update in 2019.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/31/fcc-carriers-violated-federal-law-selling-location-data/

  • Hackers are selling card info stolen in last year’s Wawa breach

    If you purchased anything at the East Coast gas station and convenience store chain Wawa between March and December last year, there’s a chance your credit and debit card info is being sold on the dark web. Earlier this week, fraud intelligence company Gemini Advisory discovered stolen payment card data being uploaded to Joker’s Stash, an online cybercrime marketplace. It seems the data was obtained during the Wawa breach discovered in December.

    As you may remember, last month, Wawa revealed that malware had been swiping customers’ payment card info, possibly since March. It’s believed that 850 stores may have been hit, exposing 30 million sets of payment records, making it one of the largest payment breaches of all time. Cardholders in the US, several Asian countries, Europe and Latin America may have had their data stolen.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/30/wawa-breach-stolen-data-sold-online/

  • Antivirus company shuts down its data-harvesting arm after getting caught red-handed

    The reports, which were the result of a joint investigation between Motherboard and PCMag, detailed how Avast was collecting user browsing data via its antivirus software. This data included Google searches, location lookups, visited URLs along with precise time stamps, and in some cases even specific searches made on porn websites. Although Avast claimed that individual users could not be identified from this data, Motherboard spoke to experts who said that this could be possible in some cases.

    Jumpshot claimed to have data from as many as 100 million devices, and it listed some of the world’s largest companies among its clients, including Google, Yelp, Microsoft, and Pepsi. Jumpshot would package this data up into different products, one of which was its “All Click Feed,” which would allow its clients to see all user clicks on individual domains (such as Amazon.com). These clients reportedly paid millions of dollars for Jumpshot’s products, which often included precise browsing data.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/30/21115326/avast-jumpshot-subsidiary-suspended-data-collection-selling-ceo-blog-post

Other

  • IBM CEO Virginia Rometty is retiring

    IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, one of the most prominent female leaders in tech, is stepping down on April 6th, 2020. She will still serve as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of the year, but she’s retiring completely after that. Rometty will be replaced as CEO by Arvind Krishna, who currently runs the company’s cloud business and who was a key figure in IBM’s Red Hat acquisition. She called Krishna “the right CEO for the next era at IBM.”

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/30/ibm-ceo-virginia-rometty-is-retiring/

  • WeWork Names Veteran Real Estate Executive as New Chief

    The naming of an experienced real estate executive is a clear indication that WeWork is moving on from Mr. Neumann’s strategy of building a sprawling company with lofty aims that included transforming how people work and live together. He had promoted WeWork as if it were a groundbreaking technology company set on upending its industry. The firm had also branched out well beyond office space, establishing sleek dormitories for working professionals and even a private school in Manhattan.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/business/wework-chief-executive.html

  • Apple is closing all mainland China stores due to coronavirus outbreak

    The coronavirus outbreak is having a tangible impact on the tech world, and Apple is serving as a textbook example of its effect. The company is closing all its retail stores and corporate offices in mainland China through February 9th out of an “abundance of caution” and in consultation from experts. Apple had initially closed three stores, but this shuts down a full 42 locations across the country.

    Key suppliers like Foxconn have said they don’t expect problems meeting production goals for companies like Apple. Caution is still the order of the day, however. Apple chief Tim Cook said that expectations for the start of the calendar year were unusually vague due to virus-related uncertainty. Sales at stores had dropped across China in recent days, even outside of the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/01/apple-closes-china-stores-due-to-coronavirus/