Category: Supplier Report

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Supplier Report: 11/22/2019


Photo by Andrew Pons on Unsplash

The fight for the Pentagon’s JEDI contract might not be over as Amazon announced they would contest due to the final decision being biased against them. I know it is $10B, but everybody needs to move on.

Meanwhile JEDI winner Microsoft continues to push new technology in AI and Blockchain. Microsoft is testing medical AI technology to diagnose cervical cancer in India. Sometimes I feel that this medical review tech is more hype than reality, and my suspicions are higher when companies don’t test technology in the US first… but there is value if it truly works.

Finally, the State of New Jersey is hitting Uber with a $650M employee tax bill… good.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise

    With this deal, Mirantis is acquiring Docker Enterprise Technology Platform and all associated IP: Docker Enterprise Engine, Docker Trusted Registry, Docker Unified Control Plane and Docker CLI. It will also inherit all Docker Enterprise customers and contracts, as well as its strategic technology alliances and partner programs. Docker and Mirantis say they will both continue to work on the Docker platform’s open-source pieces.

    The companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but it’s surely nowhere near Docker’s valuation during any of its last funding rounds. Indeed, it’s no secret that Docker’s fortunes changed quite a bit over the years, from leading the container revolution to becoming somewhat of an afterthought after Google open-sourced Kubernetes and the rest of the industry coalesced around it.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-enterprise/

  • Yahoo-Line Merger Plan Raises Hopes for Japanese ‘Super App’

    SoftBank wants to gain greater control of Line in years to come, the person said.

    Another challenge is the two companies’ focus on the Japanese market, where the population is shrinking and growth prospects are limited. The market for the services they offer—such as texting, internet shopping and online financial services—is already dominated in most other countries by larger rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc.

    Still, analysts said the new entity, if designed well, could become Japan’s first “super app,” a gateway on smartphones for a broad range of everyday needs. That model has driven growth for China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Tencent’s WeChat app for chatting with friends spawned a payment service, WeChat Pay, that along with Alibaba’s Alipay is now almost universally used for retail purchases in China.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-line-merger-plan-raises-hopes-for-japanese-super-app-11573726726?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • OpenText buys data security firm Carbonite for $1.42B

    The deal marks a 78% premium on Carbonite’s share price on September 5, when it was first rumored the company was preparing to buy the backup and data recovery company. Carbonite said the board “strongly believes” the deal will return “substantial” cash value to shareholders, said Steve Munford, chairman of Carbonite’s board.

    In February, Carbonite bought endpoint security company Webroot for $618.5 million in an all-cash deal, as the company pushed to protect against emerging threats like ransomware. Only a year earlier, Carbonite bought Mozy for $145 million, a cloud backup service.

    Carbonite said at the time of its acquisition by OpenText the backup company had losses of $14 million on revenues of $125.6 million, an increase by 62% year-over-year.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/11/opentext-buys-carbonite/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Microsoft AI helps diagnose cervical cancer faster

    In some cases, AI-assisted cancer detection might be more than a convenience — it could be the key to getting a diagnosis in the first place. Microsoft and SRL Diagnostics have developed an AI tool that helps detect cervical cancer, freeing doctors in India and other countries where the sheer volume of patients could prove overwhelming. The team trained an AI to spot signs of the cancer by feeding it “thousands” of annotated cervical smear images to help it spot abnormalities (including pre-cancerous examples) that warrant a closer look. Doctors would only have to look at those slides that justify real concern.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/10/microsoft-ai-diagnoses-cervical-cancer-faster/

  • Microsoft’s A.I. and research chief Harry Shum is leaving

    Microsoft said on Wednesday that Harry Shum, the executive vice president in charge of its artificial intelligence and research group, is leaving the company in early 2020. Kevin Scott, the company’s chief technology officer and formerly a LinkedIn executive, is taking on Shum’s responsibilities in addition to his own. It’s not clear what Shum will do next.

    Shum has been a figurehead in the more integrated approach to research that has taken hold at Microsoft during the tenure of CEO Satya Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer in 2014. His group has been one of the most prominent technology research institutions outside academia, alongside the likes of Google parent-company Alphabet and Facebook.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/microsoft-ai-and-research-chief-harry-shum-leaves.html

Cloud

  • AWS confirms reports it will challenge JEDI contract award to Microsoft

    In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson suggested that there was possible bias and issues in the selection process. “AWS is uniquely experienced and qualified to provide the critical technology the U.S. military needs, and remains committed to supporting the DoD’s modernization efforts. We also believe it’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence.

    “Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/14/aws-confirms-reports-it-will-challenge-jedi-contract-award-to-microsoft/

  • Privacy uproar shows Google cloud business has a trust problem

    This sounds like the leak of Facebook data to Cambridge Analytica. But it also describes this week’s portrayal by the media of US healthcare provider Ascension’s decision to hand the records of 50 million of its patients to Google.

    In reality, this is far from the scandal it was painted. But the huge attention it has received points to both the risks and opportunities as large troves of valuable data are moved, wholesale, to the cloud. How this information is handled, and who reaps the value from it, are questions that will stir much wider concern.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/privacy-uproar-shows-google-cloud-business-has-a-trust-problem-1.4084291
    Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Triggers Federal Inquiry

    The data on patients of St. Louis-based Ascension were until recently scattered across 40 data centers in more than a dozen states. Google and the Catholic nonprofit are moving that data into Google’s cloud-computing system—with potentially big changes on tap for doctors and patients.

    At issue for regulators and lawmakers who expressed concern is whether Google and Ascension are adequately protecting patient data in the initiative, which is code-named “Project Nightingale” and is aimed at crunching data to produce better health care, among other goals. Ascension, without notifying patients or doctors, has begun sharing with Google personally identifiable information on millions of patients, such as names and dates of birth; lab tests; doctor diagnoses; medication and hospitalization history; and some billing claims and other clinical records.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-googles-project-nightingale-a-health-data-gold-mine-of-50-million-patients-11573571867

  • IBM and Oracle are so far behind in the cloud, they might stop trying to compete with

    Amazon altogether and go a different route, analyst says
    Rather than compete directly with those giants, lagging players like Oracle will focus on its applications and databases, while IBM will focus on hybrid cloud and its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, the report says.

    Dave Bartoletti, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, tells Business Insider that they won’t get out of the game entirely: “It’s really a shifting of positioning,” he said. “I don’t think IBM and Oracle will get that much bigger. They will just refocus on what they do best.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-oracle-amazon-forrester-report-2019-11

Security/Privacy

  • But Actually, How Scary Is Critical Infrastructure Hacking?

    Critical infrastructure hacking was brought to the public’s attention by former Secretary of State and CIA director Leon Panetta in a much-maligned 2012 speech where he warned of a coming “Cyber Pearl Harbor.”

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xwpav/but-actually-how-scary-is-critical-infrastructure-hacking

  • Amazon-Owned Ring Shared Data About Tracking Kids On Halloween

    In a company blog and series of Instagram stories, posted Monday and Tuesday, the company showed that it collects, stores, and analyzes sensitive data about how, when, and where people use its doorbell cameras. Ring said that nationwide, its doorbell cameras were activated 15.8 million times on Halloween. The company makes several other types of surveillance cameras in addition to its doorbell camera.

    As it has on other occasions, like Super Bowl Sunday, Ring turned Halloween into a marketing opportunity. As reported by Mashable, Ring circulated videos of children on Halloween on Twitter. Ring also promoted Halloween-themed skins to decorate doorbell cameras on its company blogs and Instagram. However, in promoting itself as a family-friendly company, Ring showed that it collects user data on a granular level.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/ring-boasted-about-surveilling-trick-or-treaters-on

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple’s Phil Schiller says kids with Chromebooks in classrooms are ‘not going to succeed’

    “Kids who are really into learning and want to learn will have better success. It’s not hard to understand why kids aren’t engaged in a classroom without applying technology in a way that inspires them. You need to have these cutting-edge learning tools to help kids really achieve their best results.

    Yet Chromebooks don’t do that. Chromebooks have gotten to the classroom because, frankly, they’re cheap testing tools for required testing. If all you want to do is test kids, well, maybe a cheap notebook will do that. But they’re not going to succeed.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963166/apple-phil-schiller-google-chromebook-classroom-not-going-to-succeed

Other

  • T-Mobile CEO John Legere isn’t taking the WeWork CEO job, sources say

    Legere, who became CEO of T-Mobile in 2012, has no plans to leave the company, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential. CNBC and The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Legere was a candidate to be WeWork’s next CEO.

    By taking himself out of the running, Legere is avoiding a potential conflict of interest. SoftBank is the controlling shareholder of Sprint, which is in the process of merging with T-Mobile, and is the majority owner of WeWork. Legere was never the front-runner to take the job, according to people familiar with the matter.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/john-legere-isnt-leaving-t-mobile-to-take-wework-ceo-job.html

  • Uber Hit With $650 Million Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

    Uber Technologies Inc. owes New Jersey about $650 million in unemployment and disability insurance taxes because the rideshare company has been misclassifying drivers as independent contractors, the state’s labor department said.

    Uber and subsidiary Rasier LLC were assessed $523 million in past-due taxes over the last four years, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said in a pair of letters to the companies. The rideshare businesses also are on the hook for as much as $119 million in interest and penalties on the unpaid amounts, according to other internal department documents.

    The New Jersey labor department has been after Uber for unpaid employment taxes for at least four years, according to the documents, which Bloomberg Law obtained through an open public records request.

    https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/uber-hit-with-650-million-employment-tax-bill-in-new-jersey

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Supplier Report: 11/15/2019


Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash

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

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

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

Acquisitions/Investments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cloud

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

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

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

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

Security/Privacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Infrastructure/Hardware

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

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

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

 

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/25/2019


Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

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

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

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

Acquisitions/Investments

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google and Ambient Computing

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

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

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

Cloud

  • Workday Casts a Large Cloud

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

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

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

  • Amazon Could Be Open To Splitting

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

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

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

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

Security/Privacy

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other

  • Former Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd has passed away

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

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

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

  • IBM Earnings Fall in Prolonged Sales Slump

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

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

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

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

  • Son, SoftBank Risk Too Much With WeWork Takeover

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

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

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

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/18/2019


Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Facebook’s eCurrency platform Libra continues to lose support with payment vendors as scrutiny increases from the Government.

Huawei remains a security concern both in the US and EU as nations and communities try to figure out a way to replace billions of dollars of Huawei infrastructure.

Large corporation’s leadership is still in a season of change.  SAP’s Bill McDermott is stepping down and more details are being shared in Red Hat’s CFO Eric Shander’s dismissal.

Acquisitions/Investments

None this week

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM unveils Sterling Supply Chain Suite

    The “IBM Sterling Supply Chain Suite,” built on the foundation of Sterling B2B Network and Sterling Order Management, enables manufacturers and retailers to integrate critical data, business networks, and supply chain processes, Armonk, New York-based IBM said. The system’s open-architecture capabilities are a result of IBM’s recent acquisition of enterprise open-source solution provider Red Hat.

    These intelligent, self-correcting supply chains can continually learn from experience, creating greater reliability, transparency, and security while providing new competitive advantages, according to the company.

    “Supply chains are the central nervous system of global trade,” Bob Lord, IBM’s senior vice president for Cognitive Applications and Developer Ecosystems, said in a release. “Many organizations have risen to the top of their industries by building efficient and agile supply chains. But the technical infrastructure underlying many of these systems is still largely based on siloed, monolithic applications, which leads to inefficiencies throughout the supply chain.”

    https://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20191008-ibm-unveils-sterling-supply-chain-suite/

Cloud

  • Texas attorney general, Google’s new competition cop, says everything is ‘on the table’

    Since then, Paxton said, Washington has failed to pursue key signs that Google and Silicon Valley are in violation of federal law. “Antitrust seems like it hasn’t been focused on for decades, through several administrations, not just Democrats but also Republicans,” he said, later adding: “I think this should have been looked at sooner than it is.”

    The result is a significant legal and political challenge on the horizon for Google and its executives. Bipartisan in nature, and born out of a belief that the tech industry has escaped government accountability for too long, Paxton and his team said nothing is off limits — words that threaten a broad review of Google’s business in a way that could reshape not only the company but the rest of Silicon Valley.

    “If we end up learning things that lead us in other directions, we’ll certainly bring those back to the states and talk about whether we expand into other areas,” he said.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/texas-attorney-general-googles-new-competition-cop-says-everything-is-table/

  • Oracle Hiring Cloud Experts, Despite Cloud Chaos

    The announcement of these cloud-based hires comes four months after Oracle reportedly laid off hundreds of employees from the Seattle facility that served as the nucleus for much of its cloud operations. At the time, Business Insider suggested that the layoffs stemmed from vicious infighting among the cloud teams, along with a broader struggle to determine the company’s direction.

    Indeed, a new article in Bloomberg suggests that Oracle is retreating from its previous vision of competing directly against Amazon Web Services in the cloud-infrastructure arena. Instead, Oracle is focusing on cloud-based platforms and applications that serve its clients’ database and analytics needs. On top of that, the company is reportedly abandoning its previous strategy of going it alone in favor of partnerships with companies such as Microsoft, Box, and VMware.

    https://insights.dice.com/2019/10/10/oracle-hiring-cloud-experts/

Security/Privacy

  • No one could prevent another ‘WannaCry-style’ attack, says DHS official

    Jeanette Manfra, the assistant director for cybersecurity for Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF that the 2017 WannaCry cyberattack, which saw hundreds of thousands of computers around the world infected with ransomware, was uniquely challenging because it spread so quickly.

    “I don’t know that we could ever prevent something like that,” said Manfra, referring to another WannaCry-style attack. “We just have something that completely manifests itself as a worm. I think the original perpetrators didn’t expect probably that sort of impact,” she added.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/06/government-prevent-wannacry-style-dhs/

  • EU Warns of 5G Risks Amid Scrutiny of Huawei

    The new assessment has raised alarm among officials in European capitals over Huawei, in particular, according to officials familiar with the report. Huawei has been a big supplier of network gear in large European economies like the U.K. and Germany. European leaders will lay out specific guidelines for member states on how best to approach issues of security within 5G networks later this year.

    “These vulnerabilities are not ones which can be remedied by making small technical changes, but are strategic and lasting in nature,” said a person familiar with the debate inside the European Council, the bloc’s top political policy-making body.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-warns-of-5g-risks-amid-scrutiny-of-huawei-11570814799
    Huawei helped bring Internet to small-town America. Now its equipment has to go

    Other rural telecom companies face a similar predicament. About a dozen small rural carriers have purchased gear over the years from Huawei or ZTE, another Chinese company that has raised security concerns, according to their trade group, the Rural Wireless Association. The carriers often bought the equipment with U.S. government subsidies intended to help bring Internet service to sparsely populated areas that larger telecom companies deemed unprofitable.

    Replacing the gear would cost roughly $1 billion, the association says, and Pine and other small companies are calling for federal funding to help. “If not, rural America takes a hit,” Whisenhunt said, adding that it would take Pine years and tens of millions of dollars to strip its Huawei equipment off more than 140 cell towers.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/10/huawei-helped-bring-internet-small-town-america-now-its-equipment-has-go/

Other

  • SAP’s Bill McDermott on stepping down as CEO

    SAP’s CEO Bill McDermott today announced that he wouldn’t seek to renew his contract for the next year and step down immediately after nine years at the helm of the German enterprise giant.

    Shortly after the announcement, I talked to McDermott, as well as SAP’s new co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein. During the call, McDermott stressed that his decision to step down was very much a personal one, and that while he’s not ready to retire just yet, he simply believes that now is the right time for him to pass on the reins of the company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/10/saps-bill-mcdermott-on-stepping-down-as-ceo/

  • Mastercard, Visa, eBay Drop Out of Facebook’s Libra Payments Network

    The moves came after lawmakers, central bankers and regulators expressed deep concerns about the libra project.

    The loss of four of the largest payments companies in the world leaves Facebook without much of the muscle it assembled for libra, a digital currency it hoped would make it a player in e-commerce and global money transfers. The project now mostly hinges on smaller payments companies, telecommunications providers, venture-capital firms, e-commerce merchants and nonprofits.

    “I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update,” David Marcus, the Facebook executive overseeing the project, wrote Friday on Twitter. “Of course, it’s not great news in the short term, but in a way it’s liberating. Stay tuned for more very soon. Change of this magnitude is hard. You know you’re on to something when so much pressure builds up.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/mastercard-drops-out-of-facebook-s-libra-payments-network-11570824139

  • Red Hat CFO Loses Out on Retention Bonus Following Standards-Related Ouster

    Red Hat Inc.’s finance chief Eric Shander has been dismissed from the company, forfeiting a $4 million retention award that was agreed to ahead of Red Hat’s acquisition by International Business Machines Corp.

    The Raleigh, N.C.-based software company confirmed late Thursday that Mr. Shander was no longer working at Red Hat. “Eric was dismissed without pay in connection with Red Hat’s workplace standards,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-hat-cfo-loses-out-on-retention-bonus-following-standards-related-ouster-11570825819

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/4/2019


Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

September was the month of the failed CEO. Adam Neumann of WeWork has stepped down. Mark Hurd is out on sick leave. Devin Wenig of eBay quit. And Herbert Diess if Volkswagen is under investigation for fraud.

What is the takeaway? Nobody is perfect. And – the time of the unicorns is coming to a close (thankfully). A business has to have a profitable model and if they don’t… heads are going to roll.

With SoftBank coming under more scrutiny for these runaway business valuations, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the darlings of Silicon Valley.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Facebook has acquired Servicefriend, which builds ‘hybrid’ chatbots, for Calibra customer service

    As Facebook prepares to launch its new cryptocurrency Libra in 2020, it’s putting the pieces in place to help it run. In one of the latest developments, it has acquired Servicefriend, a startup that built bots — chat clients for messaging apps based on artificial intelligence — to help customer service teams, TechCrunch has confirmed.

    Although Facebook isn’t specifying what they will be working on, the most obvious area will be in building a bot — or more likely, a network of bots — for the customer service layer for the Calibra digital wallet that Facebook is developing.

    Facebook’s plan is to build a range of financial services for people to use Calibra to pay out and receive Libra — for example, to send money to contacts, pay bills, top up their phones, buy things and more.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/21/facebook-servicefriend/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Ex-Google worker fears ‘killer robots’ could cause mass atrocities

    Nolan, who has joined the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and has briefed UN diplomats in New York and Geneva over the dangers posed by autonomous weapons, said: “The likelihood of a disaster is in proportion to how many of these machines will be in a particular area at once. What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed.

    “There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways. Which is why any advanced weapons systems should be subject to meaningful human control, otherwise they have to be banned because they are far too unpredictable and dangerous.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/15/ex-google-worker-fears-killer-robots-cause-mass-atrocities

  • Microsoft launches its AI presentation coach for PowerPoint

    The new PowerPoint Presentation Coach aims to take the hassle out of practicing. In its current version, the tool looks at three things: pace, slide reading and word choice. Pace is pretty self-explanatory and looks at how fast or slow somebody is speaking. The “slide reading” feature detects when you are simply reading the words from your slides word for word. Nobody wants to sit through that kind of presentation. The “word choice” tool doesn’t just detect how often you say “um,” “ah,” “actually” or “basically,” it also gives you feedback when you are using culturally insensitive phrases like “you guys” or “best man for the job.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/microsoft-launches-its-ai-presentation-coach-for-powerpoint/

Cloud

  • Oracle reportedly funding anti-Amazon lobbying group

    Oracle Vice President Kenneth Glueck, who runs the company’s lobbying efforts out of an office in Washington, D.C., confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that Oracle has backed Free and Fair Markets. Oracle declined to comment on the report to CRN.

    Glueck has been the chief architect of Oracle’s strategy to lobby the U.S. government against AWS winning the entirety of the looming JEDI contract—the centerpiece of the military’s potentially $10 billion cloud transformation initiative from which Oracle has been knocked out of contention. Only AWS and Microsoft remain on a short-list, but delivery of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure award has been delayed because of political factors.

    https://www.crn.com.au/news/oracle-reportedly-funding-anti-amazon-lobbying-group-531322
    Reminder: Oracle did the same thing against Google in Europe

  • Oracle speaking with Google’s antitrust investigators

    The House Judiciary Committee has asked for information from dozens of companies potentially harmed by anti-competitive actions of the tech giants. The committee will issue subpoenas based on how many voluntarily answer the requests.

    Oracle and Google have a long-standing legal battle over whether Google infringed on Oracle’s Java copyright to make the Android OS. The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to take up a Google appeal to the suit.

    https://seekingalpha.com/news/3502058-oracle-speaking-googles-antitrust-investigators

Security/Privacy

  • DoorDash confirms data breach affected 4.9 million customers, workers and merchants

    The breach happened on May 4, the company said, but added that customers who joined after April 5, 2018 are not affected by the breach.

    It’s not clear why it took almost five months for DoorDash to detect the breach.

    DoorDash spokesperson Mattie Magdovitz blamed the breach on “a third-party service provider,” but the third-party was not named. “We immediately launched an investigation and outside security experts were engaged to assess what occurred,” she said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/26/doordash-data-breach/

  • Facebook’s Suspension of ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Apps Reveals Wider Privacy Issues

    The social network said in a blog post that an investigation it began in March 2018 — following revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy, had retrieved and used people’s Facebook information without their permission — had resulted in the suspension of “tens of thousands” of apps that were associated with about 400 developers. That was far bigger than the last number that Facebook had disclosed, of 400 app suspensions in August 2018.

    https://news.yahoo.com/facebooks-suspension-tens-thousands-apps-140153504.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_11

Other

  • CEO of WeWork, Which Has Lost an Unfathomable Amount of Money, Is Stepping Down

    Adam Neumann, the eccentric co-founder of WeWork, is stepping down as CEO after a torrent of news cycles that read like pulp fiction, the New York Times reported. The Times reports that pressure came from investors and board members, and Neumann will stay on as the nonexecutive chairman of WeWork’s parent, the We Company.

    In a press release, Neumann said “While our business has never been stronger, in recent weeks, the scrutiny directed toward me has become a significant distraction, and I have decided that it is in the best interest of the company to step down as chief executive.”

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne8dbw/ceo-of-wework-which-has-lost-an-unfathomable-amount-of-money-is-stepping-down

    The Week the C.E.O.s Got Smacked

    Adam Neumann stepped down as chief executive of WeWork after a botched attempt to take the company public. Devin Wenig left his role as chief of eBay after the company’s board grew impatient with poor performance. And Herbert Diess, the chief executive of Volkswagen, was charged with stock market manipulation and misleading investors. Mr. Diess remains in his job, but all week, smartphone push alerts seemed to ping with the news of executive heads rolling.

    Those three executives joined the recently departed chiefs of Juul, Nissan, comScore and HSBC as reminders that at the end of the trading day, corporate chieftains are there to make shareholders money.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/28/business/wework-juul-ebay-ceo.html

  • Poll: Two-thirds of Americans want to break up companies like Amazon and Google

    Across political party identification, Americans are pretty consistent about breaking up Big Tech. The poll shows that on the more extreme ends of both the left and the right, there is more enthusiasm on the matter.

    Forty-two percent of Americans who consider themselves very liberal and 40 percent of those who say they’re very conservative strongly support breaking up tech companies to foster competition, while about 30 percent of those who identify as liberal or conservative say the same. (Moderates and people unsure of their political affiliation showed the lowest support). On breaking up for content, 56 percent of people who say they’re very liberal and 47 percent of people who say they’re very conservative back breaking up Big Tech.

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/18/20870938/break-up-big-tech-google-facebook-amazon-poll