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News You Can Use: 4/13/2016

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  • Who’s the Boss of Workplace Culture?

    When asked what they do to preserve and strengthen workplace culture, HR professionals and managers were on the same page, listing “training and development” (72 percent and 61 percent, respectively) and “getting feedback from employees and acting on it” (45 percent and 46 percent) as the two top strategies.

    http://www.kronos.com/pr/who-is-the-boss-of-workplace-culture-hr-managers-and-employees-disagree-says-new-workforce-institute-study.aspx

  • Why Create RFP Hell?

    This is not a good thing to do. A company with a reputation for putting its potential suppliers though RFP hell is not one that many suppliers will want to deal with. The more a supplier’s peers complain about RFP hell with Company X, the fewer are the suppliers who will even acknowledge the existence of an RFP from Company X. As the word of RFP Hell from Company X spreads, the only suppliers that will respond to an RFP from Company X are those that are desperate. Those in bad financial shape, those without a stable customer base, and those with a bad reputation. These are not suppliers you want to deal with.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2016/04/03/why-create-rfp-hell/

  • How to build cybersecurity into outsourcing contracts

    Customers must perform a gap analysis between the vendor’s offering and the customer’s requirements to identify gaps and determine whether they can be covered by either party. In addition, narrow limitations of liability—frequent in cloud contracts—can warp the incentives for protection against cyber risk. While there has been a significant growth among sophisticated cloud vendors who are able to address their customers’ data protection and compliance requirements, there is still substantial variation among cloud vendors’ ability to adequately address such requirements.

    Also:

    The key contractual provisions to mitigate cyber risk are: (1) the security standards required of the vendor; (2) restrictions on subcontracting; (3) employee related protections, such as background checks and training; (4) security testing; (5) security audits; (6) security incident reporting and investigation; (7) data retention and use restrictions; (8) customer data access rights; and (9) vendor liability for cyber incidents.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3052269/cyber-attacks-espionage/how-to-build-cybersecurity-into-outsourcing-contracts.html#tk.rss_all

  • Failure to Monitor a Supply Chain for Risk Can Tarnish Your Brand

    A recent study by CIRANO found that while there is an 80% chance of a company losing at least 20% of its value at least once during a five year period as a result of a negative, but well publicized, incident, a major incident that negatively impacts the brand in a significant way can be much worse. Just ask Airbus that had its stock plummet by over 26% in a single day, equivalent to a market capitalization loss of approximately €5.4 Billion, after it announced on the close of trading on June 13, 2006 that issues with the supply and installation of electrical harnesses would lead to a further six-month delay in the delivery of the A380 (and that the impact of the disruption on earnings before interest and tax would be €500M per year for four years).

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2016/04/06/failure-to-monitor-a-supply-chain-for-risk-can-tarnish-your-brand/

  • SAP Ariba bids to transform financial supply chain in partnership with Prime Revenue

    “To compete and win in today’s global economy requires digital supply chains that are connected, agile and intelligent,” said Alex Atzberger, President, SAP Ariba. “In joining forces, SAP Ariba and PrimeRevenue can create a closed-loop system that links all of the data companies need to manage transactions and supply chain financing events with greater insight, speed and simplicity than ever.”

    https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/63865/sap-ariba-bids-to-transform-financial-supply-chain-in-partnership-with-prime-revenue

Photo: Calib Frith

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Supplier Report: 4/9/2016

There is alot of talk this week.

HPE’s Meg Whitman is talking about IBM’s Watson, EMC, and what you need to know about HPE’s success. Meanwhile, IBM is pushing out information about Watson this week.  Specifically, what cognitive uses might be in store for big blue’s poster child.  The storage industry is showing what happens to companies like NetApp with ever tightening margins.

IBM

  • IBM Watson CTO on What’s Ahead for Cognitive Computing

    “This notion of creating ideas and inspiring new thoughts and new ways of asking questions is critical to so many things people do in the professional world with this. We got exposed to a lot of demand in healthcare in particular, especially around treatments for things like cancer.” For a complex disease like cancer, particularly one where the literature base is of staggering volume, there is no way for healthcare providers to keep pace with the latest research. It is here that Watson shines, High says. For doctors to keep pace with what is being published, it would take them 160 hours each week, just to keep pace with what’s new. Ultimately, he says, for this field, Watson is looking for new patterns, solutions, and treatments, and serving as an engine for doctors

    http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/07/ibm-watson-cto-whats-ahead-cognitive-computing/

  • IBM partners with Pfizer to measure patents Parkinson’s symptoms in the home

    A series of sensors have been developed by the team to give them 24/7 data on the day-to-day impact of living with the disease, improving on the partial diagnosis doctors can achieve through only partial observation whilst also eliminating the subjective nature of the people’s own experiences.

    http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/04/07/ibm-partners-pfizer-measure-patents-parkinson-s-symptoms-home

  • IBM Combines Blockchain Technology With Artificial Intelligence To Virtually Turn Back Time

    One of the potential applications of the technology would be to create a register of IoT devices based on the blockchain, with artificial intelligence programs then used to perform automated self-diagnoses and more advanced functions, which could eventually lead to the ability of engineers and regulators to virtually rewind the clock to go back in time and see at what point a smart device failed and see exactly what went wrong.

    http://www.ibtimes.com/ibm-combines-blockchain-technology-artificial-intelligence-virtually-turn-back-time-2349130

  • IBM partners with DocuSign to drive trust in the cloud

    DocuSign is working with IBM Cloud – with a 47-data centre footprint – to provide customers with access to public, private, and hybrid cloud services. DocuSign’s APIs will also be available through Bluemix, which will be key to embedding eSignature and DTM functionalities within IBM’s Cloud platform.

    http://www.itproportal.com/2016/04/07/ibm-partners-with-docusign-to-drive-trust-in-the-cloud/

  • IBM Hires AOL Vet Bob Lord as Chief Digital Officer

    His experience on both the agency and technology side of advertising was likely a big selling point for IBM. Over the past few months, Big Blue’s been on a bit of a shopping spree, snapping up shops Aperto, ecx.io and Resource/Ammirati. The tech giant also owns The Weather Channel’s data and analytics assets.

    http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/ibm-hires-aol-vet-bob-lord-chief-digital-officer-170591

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Meg Whitman tells IT leaders everything they need to know about HP Enterprise

    Yes. So if you think about new companies that are starting, they’re running their IT infrastructure completely differently, and so we have to figure out how we can remain relevant to these young companies. And I’ll give you a couple of good examples there in a minute. But the vast majority of the total available market is in legacy infrastructure. I mean by definition, if you’ve been around more than five years, you have a legacy infrastructure. I think there is a tremendous opportunity for us to help companies with legacy infrastructures migrate to a better place for them, to be able to compete with these new younger companies that maybe have an entirely different infrastructure.

    http://www.computerworld.in/interview/meg-whitman-tells-it-leaders-everything-they-need-know-about-hp-enterprise

  • Meg Whitman says IBM’s Watson is ‘not as far along’ as you might think

    Listen, they’re [IBM] doing some very interesting things. They’re buying healthcare companies and stuff, but listen, our Vertica platform is remarkable as is our Haven OnDemand platform. I put us up against Watson every day of the week here. We’re in a lot of customers where actually from a Watson perspectiveit’s not as far along in terms of real-world applications as you might imagine from the advertising.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/whitman-disses-ibms-watson-2016-4

  • EMC shrugs off HPE’s catty anti-merger ad campaign

    The copy on the advert continued: “In today’s business environment driven by rapid change, you can’t afford to miss a beat. Soon EMC and Dell will be forced to turn their attention to integrating two separate organisations with different product lines and services. Will this distraction take their focus off your business?”

    http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2453606/emc-shrugs-off-hpes-catty-anti-merger-ad-campaign

  • HP’s Whitman on investing in startups, particularly one Microsoft wanted to buy

    Some have warned Whitman that integrating with startups like Mesosphere could help them grow to $1 billion quickly and give HPE only a small percentage of the startup’s equity. While true, she believes that increasing HPE’s relevancy to CIOs will result in increased sales of more traditional Hewlett Packard Enterprise offerings.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/blog/techflash/2016/04/hps-whitman-on-investing-in-startups-particularly.html

  • HPE Sells Controlling Stake In Mphasis To Blackstone For $825M

    Under the terms of the deal, Blackstone has agreed to purchase at least 84 percent of HPE’s stake in Mphasis for $6.51 per share, HPE said in its statement. Blackstone will then purchase the remaining 16 percent stake that’s permitted under Indian law and subject to the outcome of a mandatory tender offer between the signing and closing of the deal, HPE said.

    http://www.crn.com/news/managed-services/300080240/hpe-sells-controlling-stake-in-mphasis-to-blackstone-for-825m.htm

Microsoft

  • Microsoft Snags Oracle’s Main Man on Linux

    Here’s a really interesting tidbit for software geeks: Wim Coekaerts, a long-time Oracle veteran who helped transform that company into a Linux power, is now a corporate vice president at Microsoft. Coekaerts started at Microsoft in March as corporate vice president of enterprise open source, according to his Linkedin profile. The news of his job change was first reported by ZDNet. Fortune reached out to Coekaerts, Oracle, and Microsoft for comment and will update this story as needed.

    http://fortune.com/2016/04/01/microsoft-snags-oracles-linux-guru/

Oracle

  • Don’t Believe Everything You Read About Cloud Adoption
    Didn’t I say this last week?

    If companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are truly making huge inroads in enticing companies away from on-premise offerings, it will impact VMware’s earnings. VMware is the undisputed number one provider of the virtualization layer and is not offered as part of either the Microsoft or Oracle Cloud offerings. Going forward, if we see the cloud numbers from Oracle and Microsoft growing rapidly, but don’t see some kind of flattening or decline with VMware (and we haven’t so far), I’d suggest that means something is not quite adding up.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3963577-believe-everything-read-cloud-adoption

Storage ( EMC | Dell | Infinidat )

  • Infinidat adds predictive analytics to Infinibox OS. But what’s it mean?

    Infinidat’s array is a hybrid, employing disk for bulk data storage and flash (SATA SSDs) for caching data. There are, Broido believes, at this point in time, no good cost and performance reasons for adopting an all-flash array architecture or a flash storage tier, not when it wins bake-offs by customers against all-flash array vendors’ products. The 10:1 to 25:1 cost/GB differential between nearline disk drives and SATA SSDs is to prevent Infinidat replacing disk with flash.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/infinidat_infinibox_os_adding_predictive_analytics/

  • Here’s What Dell and EMC Corp. Are Selling off as Acquisition Nears

    EMC acquired California-based Documentum for $1.7 billion in 2003. Documentum’s software gives corporations a secure way to file and track documents. Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that the company generated $600 million in revenue and has profit margins of 30 percent or more.

    Additionally…

    SonicWALL, meanwhile, is a San Jose-based network security company that Dell acquired for about $1.2 billion in 2012. And Quest makes IT management software. It was acquired by Dell in 2012 for $2.36 billion.

    http://austininno.streetwise.co/2016/04/07/dell-emc-merger-selling-documentum-2-other-units-for-billions/

  • NetApp ain’t all that: Flashy figures show HPE left ’em for dust

    The disparity in revenues between HDS and EMC, Pure, IBM, HPE and NetApp is so great that HDS’ best hope may lie in acquiring an existing vendor. Ones that come to mind in the pure (no pun intended) all-flash area are Kaminario and Violin. Buying Nimble, Tegile or Tintri would bring in hybrid arrays which would muddy the waters of HDS’ existing integrated storage offerings from a marketing/product positioning perspective.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/01/extended_allflasharray_revenue_numbers/
    sn_storge_2016_04_07

Other

  • Google might adopt a key Apple technology in a big way

    Amid an ongoing legal battle with Oracle over the Android operating system, Google is considering a big shift towards Apple’s very popular Swift programming language, reports The Next Web. The report says Google is considering making Swift a “first-class” language choice for programmers making apps for Android.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/google-might-bring-swift-to-android-2016-4

  • Huge Opportunity in This ‘Future Predicting’ Sector

    Multinational consulting firm McKinsey says Big Data services can allow consumers to capture $600 billion in economic surplus. That’s probably why tech heavyweights IBM, Accenture, Oracle, Microsoft, EMC and Cisco have spent tens of billions of dollars building up their Big Data platforms.

    http://www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/huge-opportunity-in-this-future-predicting-sector-22492

Photo: Ryan McGuire

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News You Can Use: 4/6/2016

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  • What to Do When Good Talent Has Suspicious Social Media

    Know where your company stands on disqualification standards and how to identify whether or not a resume is accurate. In an October 2015 study from Adecco, 54 percent of the more than 4,168 recruiters surveyed said they excluded candidates based on online information that contradicted their CVs. Address these contradictions directly in the interview, with specific questions. If the-job seeker provides vague, rambling answers, chances are he or she is lying or trying to avoid the confrontation.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272441

  • Where (and how) to find top supply SCM talent

    Spend Matters recently revealed that one way to bridge this gap is, instead of focusing on hiring workers who are skilled in a specific category, restructuring roles to attract talented leaders who can exercise a dynamic range of capabilities, such as “increased business and leadership skills, technological prowess, knowledge of foreign policy and regulations and the ability to handle cross-functional complexity.”

    http://www.strategicsourceror.com/2016/03/where-and-how-to-find-top-supply-scm.html
    Additionally:
    Solutions to Bridging the Supply-Chain Talent Gap

    Those with awareness of the profession might be turned off by pay disparities. Women tend to start out with compensation that’s equivalent to, if not higher than, that of men. But after 10 years in the workforce, the pay gap widens by around 34 percent, Eshkenazi said. What’s more, employers are paying insufficient attention to the work-life balance that’s required by many young employees, both male and female, today.

    http://www.supplychainbrain.com/content/blogs/think-tank/blog/article/solutions-to-bridging-the-supply-chain-talent-gap/

  • Economic Sustentation 06: Preparing for the Corporate Takeover

    3. Become a customer of choice.
    Supplier sales teams fight for their customers of choice. When push comes to shove and there is not enough supply to go around, you will get it. When the parent company wants to push prices up to cover the costs of the acquisition, the sales team will look elsewhere. When you need access to innovation, they will fight to give it. But, despite many contractual claims to the contrary, very few clients are actually customers of choice.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2016/03/24/economic-sustentation-06-preparing-for-the-corporate-takeover/

  • New report calls for Nestle to take lead on cleaning up Thai supply chain

    “These findings of severe labor and human rights abuses present an urgent challenge to any company sourcing seafood,” said Verite. “[We] recognize the complex and entrenched nature of these issues, the challenges of finding leverage points to effect change, and the practical difficulty of cascading accountability into a non-vertical supply chain with limited visibility.”

    https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2016/03/24/new-report-calls-for-nestle-to-take-lead-on-cleaning-up-thai-supply-chain/

  • How creative thinkers can thrive in a regulated industry

    At the end, we circle back to the beginning. To build a great company, you need great people. But there are many different kinds of great people out there, and, as a healthcare company, no matter how ground-breaking and innovative, you need to make sure you’re hiring the right kind of great people. The ones who are in it for the long term, who have the patience and maturity to understand that despite the technological edge they live on, they operate in an industry with different rules.

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/31/how-creative-thinkers-can-thrive-in-a-regulated-industry/