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News You Can Use: 5/4/2016

sn_rooftop_Tom Sodoge
  • How a giant like GE found home in the cloud

    Embracing a cloud-first mentality across the organization required adjustments internally, too. Drumgoole arrived at GE two years ago to find the traditional angst between software developers and infrastructure operators. Devs can’t get the infrastructure they need; ops folks don’t know what the software teams need. Cloud seemed like the natural answer to this problem.

    GE invested in building tools, creating systems and processes for managing it and ensuring regulatory compliance. When GE’s IT team introduced the cloud services, some of those software developers and ops teams didn’t want to use it. “Some of the legacy, single-technology developers struggled with deploying and moving apps when we took away the support envelope of a traditional infrastructure team,” he says, adding that the challenge has largely been overcome, though it required a shift in mindset.

    http://www.networkworld.com/article/3056755/cloud-computing/how-a-giant-like-ge-found-home-in-the-cloud.html

  • No lawyer? This online tool uses AI to review your contracts
    This seems like a major privacy concern, but intriguing none the less…

    Next, LawGeex uses its array of technologies to compare the contract against a database of thousands of similar ones. It flags anything that needs extra attention and also provides statistics and benchmarks.

    Explained in simple terms, its final analysis — delivered within 24 hours, or on the next business day — aims to ensure that users know exactly what they’re agreeing to. Included in that report are a summary, a contract score, and information such as clause explanations, negotiating tips, and sample language for missing clauses.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3058698/no-lawyer-this-online-tool-uses-ai-to-review-your-contracts.html

  • How To Take Back Control Of A Negotiation

    1. Establish that you’re there because they need you. If you’re a finalist, they must already have a very positive perception of what you can do for them.

    2. Look for small ways to gain leverage. Moving the meeting to be last in the day is one example. Being last helps because the client learns from earlier presenters—and often shares that with you directly, like revealing that others had accepted an offer of $25,000.

    3. Radiate confidence when you’re in the room. You must believe deeply in yourself; otherwise it’ll show. Remember, they can only get what you do from you.

    4. Use your vulnerability. I knew that I’d feel anxious as soon as I first accepted the challenge of going after this project. The way to deal with those fears is by talking with your team and deciding what to do about them collectively. When I discovered who we were up against, that fear helped me realize how their size might actually be a weakness—which turned my own sense of vulnerability on its head. If nothing else, it encouraged the competition to underestimate us.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3058768/how-to-take-back-control-of-a-negotiation

  • These Are The Ages When We Do Our Best Work
    sn_achievement_fastcompany

    Some, like professional athletes and CEOS, tend to cluster especially tightly around certain age ranges (because of constraints like physical prowess and work experience, respectively). However, in each of these fields, people tend to do great work at all sorts of ages. Though Adele pulled the Grammy Album of the Year down from an average of around 40 by winning at age 23, Ray Charles yanked it up by winning his Grammy at 74.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3058870/your-most-productive-self/these-are-the-ages-when-we-do-our-best-work

  • Intel axes 12,000 jobs as it looks to break away from PCs

    Intel is cutting 12,000 jobs worldwide as the company restructures operations to diversify from PCs into growth areas of IoT and servers.

    The layoffs account for about 11 percent of employees worldwide. Intel is also consolidating work locations worldwide in a move the company hopes will save it US $750 million this year.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3058610/intel-axes-12000-jobs-as-it-looks-to-break-away-from-pcs.html

  • Verizon is offshoring jobs, records say

    For instance, in Lake Mary, Florida, employees wrote on their TAA application: “Verizon has been in the process of moving all production for all products off shore for the last few years. We were notified in April [2015] that all the remaining VOIP Order Management was being moved to Manila. Two VOIP order managers had been sent to Manila to train the new group. … My group also had to train the offshore group to take over our job function. HR told me this was a massive layoff!”

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3058708/it-outsourcing/verizon-is-offshoring-jobs-records-say.html

Photo: Tom Sodoge

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Supplier Report: 4/30/2016

sn_lemons_Erol Ahmed

In supplier news, the press likes to make groupings of four (like Gartner’s magic quadrants). This week, the press calls EMC, IBM, Oracle, and HPE the 4 horsemen of the legacy IT apocalypse (clever title, but the article fails to make any new observations).  We also learn who the 4 major players are in the cloud space (there should be absolutely no surprises to readers of this blog)

When we look past these blocks of 4, we learn about blockchains, using DNA as a storage vehicle, and why healthcare is a major target for cybercrime.

IBM

  • Big Blue’s big blockchain bet

    So Friday’s announcement is that IBM has chosen “the good builds,” run a battery of tests, certified that the framework is secure, and is now widely distributing its version of the code to developers.

    The company also announced Friday that it was graduating its own cloud-based blockchain services from experimental to beta. In other words, IBM is offering to securely run a company’s blockchain network within its own ecosystem so developers can focus on creating applications for the tech.

    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/29/ibm-announces-blockchain-services.html

  • Don’t Worry About IBM’s Mainframe Sales Collapse

    While sales of mainframe systems represent a relatively small portion of IBM’s total sales, once related hardware, software, and services are included, the mainframe accounts for a major part of IBM’s profits. Back in 2012, an analyst from Bernstein Research estimated that the mainframe ultimately accounted for a quarter of IBM’s revenue and nearly half of its profits. IBM’s business has changed since then, with the company undergoing a transformation, but the mainframe remains a key part of IBM.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/27/dont-worry-about-ibms-mainframe-sales-collapse.aspx

Microsoft

  • Why Microsoft is buying 10 million strands of DNA

    “Today, the vast majority of digital data is stored on media that has a finite shelf life and periodically needs to be re-encoded. DNA is a promising storage media, as it has a known shelf life of several thousand years, offers a permanent storage format and can be read for continuously decreasing costs,” Emily M. Leproust, CEO of Twist Bioscience, said in a press release. “Our silicon-based DNA synthesis platform offers unmatched scale and product quality that vastly accelerates the ability to write DNA at a cost enabling data storage. We are thrilled to work with Microsoft, and University of Washington researchers, to address the growing challenge of digital data storage.”

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-microsoft-is-buying-10-million-strands-of-dna/

  • Microsoft and Google Set to End All Legal Proceedings Against Each Other

    This formal announcement came just two days after the European Union levied a formal antitrust complaint against Android, but according to the statement given to Recode both companies said that their deal about this collaboration was still in progress. But this isn’t the first time Microsoft and Google have entered a collaboration agreement to end these legal complaints against each other. The two companies ended a legal battle over Android patents last year.

    http://wccftech.com/microsoft-google-legal-proceedings/

Oracle

  • Oracle Buys Textura

    Textura’s cloud services process $3.4 billion in payments for over 6,000 projects each month, helping keep projects on time and under budget while reducing risk for developers, contractors and subcontractors. Textura offers its cloud services in a consumption model preferred by the engineering and construction industry whereby the companies involved pay based on project activity. Further, usage of Textura’s cloud services creates a network effect that benefits all participants as more than 85,000 general and subcontractors are connected to the platform.

    http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/158589/
    More:

    In 2014, Textura and Allin became the target of famous short seller Andrew Left of Citron Research. (Citron and Left will forever be known as for taking down Valeant, though he’s had plenty of other targets, like Mobileye.)

    In Left’s classic style, Citron issued a scathing report on Textura filled with words like “fraud” and “fraudulent.” Left took issue with things like how the company was reporting revenue and how it was predicting its profit trajectory.

    Citron also called out Allin for not disclosing a previous CEO role he had at a company called Patron Systems a decade ago. Patron’s business at the time was based around a proposed deal to buy security company Trustwave, but the purchase never happened, Allin resigned, and Patron went bankrupt a few years later, reports Crain’s Chicago Business editor John Pletz.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-buys-textura-founder-gains-58-million-2016-4

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Wanna walk the plank voluntarily? You got it

    Around a quarter of the 780 ITO staff earmarked for redundancy were supposed to leave at the end of this month but company insiders told us not all of those plans were followed through.

    One told us, “A fair few people about have been ‘spared’ from the current redundancies. Lots of messing them about though, [some were] told they were going [in April] and then told last week that actually they weren’t.”

    The earliest termination date is 31 July (last day at work would be 29 July) but staff that volunteer to leave need to have everything signed and sealed by mid-May.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/27/hpe_voluntary_redundancy_track_opened

Storage [EMC |Dell |Infinidat]

  • EMC Faces Growing Competition from Flash Storage Providers

    EMC’s Information Infrastructure segment’s revenues fell by 6% YoY to $3.8 billion whereas revenues from RSA and Information Storage fell by 8.1% and 5.9% YoY, respectively. Revenues from EMC’s Enterprise Content division also fell by 2.9% YoY.

    Revenues for EMC were impacted due to sluggish demand for traditional data storage products. As shown in the above chart, VMware’s (VMW) revenues rose by 4.8% YoY to $1,583 billion in 1Q16. EMC’s Pivotal segment reported revenues of $83 million, a massive increase of 56% YoY.

    http://marketrealist.com/2016/04/emc-faces-growing-competition-flash-storage-providers/

  • Exclusive: VMware Cloud Chief Exits

    Fathers’s exit is not a huge surprise given that the company’s cloud efforts have been in flux for more than a year. That picture got even fuzzier in October when Dell and VMware parent company EMC disclosed their planned $67 billion merger. There was significant overlap in the three companies’ cloud strategies that muddied the waters further.

    http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/exclusive-vmware-cloud-chief-exits/

  • Leading Cloud Provider Triple C Selects INFINIDAT to Expand Operations and Speed Customer Transitions to the Cloud

    “INFINIDAT’s storage solutions enable us to achieve significant financial savings, along with increased capacity to address dramatically expanding storage volumes and customers’ availability requirements,” said Erez Rozenbaum, director of cloud engineering at Triple C. “The major challenge for cloud-based storage is how to handle data at scale. With InfiniBox, we can meet the highest SLA business objectives set by the company for both private and public cloud services.”

    http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/27190/leading-cloud-provider-triple-c-selects-infinidat/

Other

  • Former Aprimo to be Sold

    The buyer is an affiliate of Marlin Equity Partners. Teradata has been negotiating the sale of the unit since late last year as it shifts emphasis. You can view the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by clicking here.

    Aprimo was founded in Indianapolis by Bill Godfrey.

    Teradata acquired Aprimo in 2011 for $525 million. At the time, Teradata touted the move for the cloud-based company as a “milestone” event and it led to the launch of its new applications business unit that has been managed in Indy.

    In 2013, it transitioned from the name Aprimo to Teradata Applications.

    Teradata says either party can terminate the purchase agreement if the acquisition is not complete by October 22.

    http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/story/31823283/former-aprimo-to-be-sold-for-90-million

  • AWS, Google, Microsoft and IBM pull away from pack in race for cloud market share

    “This is a market that is so big and is growing so rapidly that companies can be growing by 10-30% per year and might feel good about themselves and yet they’d still be losing market share,” said John Dinsdale, Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group. “The big question for them is whether or not they are building a sustainable and profitable business. This can be done by focusing on specific regions or specific services, but the bulk of the market demands huge scale, a broad footprint, very deep pockets and a long-term corporate focus.”

    http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2016/04/29/aws-google-microsoft-and-ibm-pull-away-from-pack-in-race-for-cloud-market-share/
    sn_cloudgrowth

  • Why cybercriminals attack healthcare more than any other industry

    [Health records] typically contain credit card data, email addresses, social security numbers, employment information and medical history records – much of which will remain valid for years, if not decades. Cyberthieves are using that data to launch spear-phishing attacks, commit fraud and steal medical identities.

    https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/04/26/why-cybercriminals-attack-healthcare-more-than-any-other-industry/

  • EMC, IBM, HP Enterprise, and Oracle: Four Horses Of The Legacy Tech Apocalypse

    The cloud computing “wars” are “entering a new phase,” and it will hurt traditional IT vendors such as SAP, Oracle and IBM, according to a report published in April by JP Morgan analysts Mark Murphy, Doug Anmuth, Sterling Auty, Rod Hall, and Philip Cusick.

    Their survey of more than 207 chief information officers at companies with an annual budget of at least $600 million found that Microsoft will remain the dominant IT vendor ahead of Amazon, IBM and others. JP Morgan believes that Microsoft will be the only vendor not to lose market share as the so-called public cloud grows at a 20% annual rate through 2021.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2016/04/25/emc-ibm-hp-enterprise-and-oracle-four-horses-of-the-legacy-tech-apocalypse/#7556fe4a542d

Photo: Erol Ahmed

Posted on

News You Can Use: 4/27/2016

sn_mushroom_Aaron Burden
  • Stop Treating Your Employees Like Mushrooms
    What is a “mushroom”?

    You’ve probably heard the expression “feeling like a mushroom,” which is to say feeling kept in the dark, left uninformed and fed a bunch of sh–. Think shittake mushrooms.

    Why is it bad:

    1. 1 in 4 employees surveyed has quit, or knows someone who has quit, due to a lack of transparency and communication in the workplace
    2. Only 10 percent of employees surveyed were aware of their company’s progress in real time.
    3. More than 4 out of 5 employees surveyed wanted to hear more frequently from their bosses about how their company was doing.
    4. More than 90 percent of employees surveyed said they would rather hear bad news than no news.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/274279

  • Apple’s organizational cross roads

    Apple employs what is known as a “unitary organizational form” — U-form for short — which is also known as a “functional organization.” In broad strokes, a U-form organization is organized around expertise, not products: in the case of Apple, that means design is one group (under Ive), product marketing is another (under Schiller), and operations a third (under Williams, who is also Chief Operating Officer). Other areas of expertise represented by the members of Apple’s executive team include Software Engineering (Craig Federighi), Hardware Engineering (Dan Riccio), and Hardware Technologies (Johny Srouji).

    What is most striking about that list is what it does not include: the words iPhone, iPad, Mac, orWatch. Apple’s products instead cut across the organization in a way that enforces coordination amongst the various teams.

    https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroads/

  • Future trends of procurement every customer-centric industry should know

    2) Adopt a Nimble Approach to Strategic Decision Making

    The past complexities of supply chain management resulted in rigid contracts and raised the cost of switching vendors. This concept needs to be replaced with a flexible yet dependable sourcing model that focuses on reducing supplier proximity for enhanced visibility. This less extended approach will condense the product lifecycle and bring the vendors closer to the companies.

    http://www.sourcingfocus.com/site/opinionsitem/future_trends_of_procurement_every_customer-centric_industry_should_kn/

  • Your Office Has Its Own Microbiome, And It Comes From Your Coworkers’ Skin

    The people who inhabit an office have some influence, too. Across all nine offices, human skin bacterial communities “were the largest identifiable source” in the samples. About 25% to 30% of office microbes come from human skin. Even grosser? “The human nasal microbiome also appeared to be a small but consistent source of office surface microbial communities.” (Memo to staff: Stop picking your nose.)

    http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059111/your-office-has-its-own-microbiome-and-it-comes-from-your-coworkers-skin

  • 4 ways to apply SLAs to shadow IT

    By creating specific SLAs for shadow IT and including these non-IT delivered capabilities in operating level standards, IT can align overall goals and targets with shared objectives, such as 100 percent compliance with change and release management procedures. “For external functions (to the extent possible) align SLAs within underpinning contracts to defined outcomes compatible with SLAs,” advises Wright. “And where SLAs are non-negotiable establish responsibilities and supporting organization objectives or OLAs for shadow and core IT to provide an effective bridge from the non-negotiable SLA to the required outcome.”

    http://www.cio.com/article/3059270/it-industry/4-ways-to-apply-slas-to-shadow-it.html

  • 6 Prophetic Supply Chain Quotable Quotes

    “If you had to wait a week for Google to respond, would you use it?” Dominic Thomas, VP Business Consulting, Kinaxis and Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine 2016 Provider ‘Pro to Know’

    I was fortunate enough to hear Dominic present and when this line came out I committed it to memory. My immediate thought was the supply chain planning community is either extremely patient or has surrendered to Excel and legacy planning systems. This gets back to starting your supply chain conversation. Today asking a supply chain question like, ‘what’s the impact of a 20% demand increase?’ could mean another meeting while those who have to answer try and piece the response together. I didn’t include it as one of the quotes but I once heard a supply chain executive say, “It takes me three weeks to get the wrong answer.” Future supply chain planning processes should no longer include ‘waiting’ as one of the squares on the Visio flowchart.

    http://blog.kinaxis.com/2016/04/6-prophetic-supply-chain-quotable-quotes/

  • How Do Con Artists Fool People? They Listen.

    We tend to think con artists are smooth talkers and persuasive sellers, but listening is their most essential quality, says Maria Konnikova, who has written a new book on con artistry. Here she discusses the case of Victor Lustig, a Frenchman who sold the Eiffel Tower twice for scrap metal to two different buyers. Too embarrassed at being taken in, the buyers never reported Lustig.