SourceCast: Episode 10: Social Media Menace
News You Can Use: 1/6/2016
- Are you over scheduling? (Let me answer that… Yes you are)
http://www.fastcompany.com/3054966/are-you-overscheduling - It’s a New Year and a New Start. How About a New Job?
If you’ve been working for the same company for several years, are you really certain that you enjoy the work? Or have you been consumed by a hefty paycheck? Changing jobs gives you the ability to not only discover your real passion but also allows you to start making money by doing something that you actually enjoy doing for a living.
- 10 habits to be better at your job this year
4. BE THE PERSON EVERYONE ADMIRES
From the sought-after industry leader to the person who’s unanimously approved for the promotion, people with great reputations seem to have an easier time at success. But their status doesn’t happen overnight or by chance. The first step in being that person everyone admires is to do what you say you’re going to do. “You can have a reputation of being friendly or nice, but if you don’t get it over the finish line, your reputation will suffer,” says Grace Killelea, CEO and founder of the women’s leadership program Half the Sky - Why adversity is good for your career
STAY HUNGRY
A benefit of starting out a lower rung is that it instills you with a drive to succeed. This, certainly, is the case of Enio Ohmaye. Previously a senior scientist at Apple, he’s now an executive at EF Learning. But he’s never forgotten the summer he spent as a busboy in Monticello, New York. He lived in a ramshackle house and was berated by the wealthy people he served. Now at the top, he is still attentive to the experience of people at the bottom: “When I interview people,” he says, “I afterwards often ask the receptionist how those people treated them.” - How to Stay Calm When You Know You’ll Be Stressed
You’re not at your best when you’re stressed. In fact, your brain has evolved over millennia to release cortisol in stressful situations, inhibiting rational, logical thinking but potentially helping you survive, say, being attacked by a lion. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin thinks there’s a way to avoid making critical mistakes in stressful situations, when your thinking becomes clouded — the pre-mortem. “We all are going to fail now and then,” he says. “The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be
Supplier Report: 1/2/2016
Another week of scraps. The suppliers didn’t make any noise during the last week, which was expected. As a result, news outlets took to speculation for 2016.
The major news coming out of the week is that EMC is expected to reduce headcount early in 2016 and some sites are predicting that Meg Whitman might step away from HP some time in 2016.
IBM
- As Vodafone looks for new vendors, this time IBM may have to share the $1 billion contract
The contract discussions will enter the final round of negotiations over the coming weeks and at the moment IBM is battling hard against domestic and multinational rivals to save a lion’s share of one of its largest telecom outsourcing contracts in Asia, the people mentioned above said. All of them requested anonymity as these discussions are confidential.
- IBM CFO Schroeter on the company’s innovation strategy
“With that we get [data on] about a hundred million lives … and we get a few billion images that describe all sorts of medical conditions. When you put that into Watson, you now have a system that can help doctors understand what they’re dealing with, so you get to outcome faster,” he said. “You can help payers understand what courses of treatment have worked the best and find insights in that data. And you get a system and an ability to change an industry from a pay-for-service to a pay-for-value.”
- Air pollution in China could be big biz for IBM, Microsoft
Leader of IBM’s Green Horizon initiative: Dr. Jin Dong, Distinguished Engineer & Member of IBM Industry Academy, Associate Director, IBM Research – China. Business clients – in particular renewable power generation companies – are another target, along with consumers. IBM’s tech is also already being used by solar farms in China for its ability to predict sunlight availability.
http://hexanews.com/2015/12/31/air-pollution-in-china-could-be-big-biz-for-ibm-microsoft.html
Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc
- Prediction: Meg Whitman Will Leave HP
Count on this one. Whitman, the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Chairman of HP Inc. HP will initiate a search for a replacement (if she hasn’t already), find one, and take a victory lap before departing.
http://fortune.com/2015/12/30/5-predictions-for-2016/?xid=gn_editorspicks
EMC | Dell
- EMC To Cut Jobs Ahead Of Dell Deal
The workforce reduction is expected to be substantially completed by the end of the first quarter of 2016 and fully completed by the end of 2016. The total charge resulting from the plan is expected to be approximately $250 million, with total cash payments associated with the plan expected to be $220 million.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/emc-to-cut-jobs-ahead-of-dell-deal-20160101-00005
Other
- Why Salesforce.com Wants SteelBrick
In the last part of this series, we looked at Salesforce.com’s (CRM) acquisition target—SteelBricks. SteelBrick’s Quote-to-Cash software, which is aimed primarily at SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses), is attracting a lot of attention. SteelBrick managed to raise $48 million funds in its Series C round in October 2015, largely due to this software. Apttus, a company that’s built on the Salesforce App Cloud, managed to raise $108 million in September 2015.
http://marketrealist.com/2015/12/salesforce-com-wants-steelbrick/
- Tableau in 2015: Year in Review
The year 2015 was expected to be a tough one for leading business intelligence company Tableau, but the company powered through the fears of increased competition eating into its growth. The year saw major updates in the business intelligence tools offered by software giantsSalesforce.com and Microsoft. At the same time, Tableau’s biggest riva lQlik released Qlik Sense Enterprise, a visualization tool for businesses that competes directly with Tableau. Despite the tightening race in the business intelligence and visualization market, Tableau consistently achieved solid performance throughout the year. We believe that a strong product portfolio and dominant position in the industry will help it continue to perform well in 2016.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/12/30/tableau-in-2015-year-in-review/
Photo: Natasha Vasiljeva
News You Can Use: 12/30/2015
- Why you should prioritize a sustainable sourcing strategy in 2016
Making complex supply chains more understandable. This included providing better traceability, simplifying what is asked of suppliers by using agreed standards and generating better relations with producers.
Mitigating risk. Rigorous auditing, transparency of origin, and outsourcing assurance of responsible practices to local experts helped companies mitigate risks of sourcing from complex supply chains.
Ensuring sustainable supply for the whole industry. Several companies noted that by their investment in certification, they were strengthening the reputation and ensuring a sustainable future for the whole sector.
Meeting consumer expectations. By communicating compliance with sustainability standards, companies said they were increasing consumer awareness of sustainable sourcing and creating market differentiation for their products.
Reflecting a company’s values and heritage. As well as aligning companies’ goals with their values and maintaining trust, certification also provided a way to engage more deeply with employees.
- Study finds companies are failing to modernize IT
If your IT team is already overloaded with work and doesn’t have enough employees to get the job done, you can’t expect them to squeeze successful modernization into their schedules. BPI Networks found that businesses report lacking in application development, software engineering and data analysis; all crucial elements of IT modernization. Not to mention that 82 percent of respondents said that they spend half their time managing emergencies and conducting maintenance, which leaves little time for innovation. Business leaders need to ensure that the right people are recruited and that the money exists for these new hires.
- AHOY! Whaling is the new Phishing
“Emails appearing to be sent from the CEO or CFO are used to trick finance staff into making illegitimate wire transfers to the attackers,” the company said in an advisory. “Whaling emails can be more difficult to detect because they don’t contain a hyperlink or malicious attachment, and rely solely on social-engineering to trick their targets.”
- Decide Who You Are, or Have it Decided for You (Podcast)
Minshew understands how growth can change a company — and not always for the better. In this podcast, she explains how a communicating a carefully-crafted list of core values drives everything from hiring to promotions at the company. She says being realistic — and accountable — to your values can shape what ‘great’ means and keep initiative and experimentation alive. “You have to live your values,” says Minshew. “It’s about execution.”
Photo: Brandon Redfern
Supplier Report: 12/26/2015
We are half-way through the holidays, and our favorite suppliers (thankfully) didn’t make too much noise going into the break.
The tone of the articles are shifting away from “what we did” and are focused on “what we are going to do”.
IBM is going leverage BlockChain, HPE is going make some awesome computer called “The Machine”, Dell is going to figure out a way to pay for EMC (maybe)… and Amazon is going to take over your house?
IBM
- IBM’s Opportunity In The Telecom Industry And Rivalry With Intel
IBM is targeting the CSPs (communication service providers), such as telecom operators, cable service providers, satellite broadcasting operators, content and applications service providers and cloud service providers, to help them generate revenue from the big data value chain. Internal telecom data combined with third-party data has tremendous potential that CSPs can exploit to drive their revenues with the help of advanced analytics. Third-party data include data from various social media like Facebook and Twitter.
As I said above, the challenges telcos are facing today are resulting in softer revenue growth and decreasing profit margin. The only way to boost revenue growth and profit margin is adopting business-focused big data initiatives. Well, what is a business-focused big data initiative? The answer is building customer focus and improving operational efficiencies for expanding revenue and profitability via prudent use of big data analytics and other solutions.
- Why Box Needs Friends Like IBM And Salesforce
Things must be going pretty well: Last Friday, the two announced a “long-term commitment” that could last at least a decade. Box hasn’t actually generated much in the way of new revenue from its IBM relationship yet, but it has at least 100 deals in the pipeline and could close some of them during its current quarter (which ends January 2016).
- Blockchain – Goldman and IBM care, should you?
Why is this even a topic for a DCD conference that focuses solely on infrastructure? Because “it points to two important factors: first, it demonstrates how quickly technology innovation can go from largely unheard of to attracting business start-ups and investors,” says Bruce Taylor, DCD executive vice president. “That has an impact on full-stack infrastructure planning – even if small right now. Secondly, it suggests a new cloud model that wasn’t even in the lexicon two years ago, but may be a massive boost in decentralized computing productivity.”
http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/events/blockchain-goldman-and-ibm-care-should-you/95402.article
- TCS, Cognizant at top of outsourcing industry; snatch market share from IBM, Accenture
More significantly, the performances Cognizant, which is US based but has most of its 219,000 employees in India, and TCS also comfortably eclipsed that of global technology behemoths such as IBM and Accenture during the same period, according to data compiled from company reports and regulatory filings. “India’s Top 5 providers have been gaining market share over the last several years. Within the set, there are growth variations with some growing faster. That said, the battle is now shifting to who can adapt faster to ‘as a service economy’. This is such a potent shift that can tilt the scales and create a new set of winners in services industry,” said Dinesh Goel, partner and India head at outsourcing advisory and research firm ISG.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc
- Can HPE’s “The Machine” Deliver?
When HP announced The Machine in Las Vegas in 2014, it presented the project as a near-complete overhaul of traditional computer architecture. Gone were the CPU-centric architecture, the slow copper communications, and the messy hierarchy of traditional memory. In their place, specialized computing cores, speedy light-carrying photonic connections, and a massive store of dense, energy-efficient memristor memory. The resulting computer, its designers say, will be efficient enough to manipulate petabyte-scale data sets in an unprecedented fashion, expanding what companies and scientists can accomplish in areas such as graph theory, predictive analytics, and deep learning in a way that could improve our daily lives.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/can-hpes-the-machine-deliver
EMC | Dell
- Dell filing shows why it really needs the EMC merger — it lost money last year and revenue is shrinking
Annual revenues went from $56.9 billion in its fiscal year ended February 1, 2013, to $58.1 billion in its fiscal year ended January 30, 2015. But they haven’t bounced back to the 2012 peak of $62.1 billion in the fiscal year ended February 3, 2012.
For the six months ended July 31, 2015, revenues were down about 6% compared to the year-ago quarter, from $29.5 billion to $27.5 billion.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/dell-reveals-losses-revenue-shrinking-2015-12
- Dell to Spin Off Security Division (more on SecureWorks)
“While SecureWorks has shown both expansion in its top line, and gross margin, it also posted increasing losses,” TechCrunch noted. “Investors have shown smaller appetite for company’s going public that fail to show falling losses and increasing revenues.”
People familiar with the matter have said the business could be valued at $2 billion because of the healthy growth rate, the WSJ said.
http://ww2.cfo.com/credit-capital/2015/12/dell-spin-off-security-division/
Oracle
- Oracle to build new cloud campus in Austin, Texas
Oracle plans to build a 295-unit apartment complex next to the new campus to give employees affordable living options. The company has also acquired an Austin-based startup called StackEngine Inc. for developing its Oracle Public Cloud domain.
Jobs at the new campus will be primarily sales-oriented, including direct selling, lead qualification, prospecting and technical support. The company plans to hire a lot of recent university graduates and people early in their career.
http://presstelegraph.com/2015/12/24/oracle-to-build-new-cloud-campus-in-austin-texas.html
- Oracle Settles ‘Deceptive Java Updates’ issue with FTC
FTC said that Oracle failed to disclose the security issue to consumers. Even if the issue was disclosed to customers, it was inadequate, the FTC added. Oracle acquired Java in 2010. The older versions of Java have been targeted by hackers as it has many security loopholes. Oracle has provided updates and plugged the security loopholes in Java. However, the older version of Java, before SE version 6, update 10, were still causing security issues. Oracle will be required to inform customers about the security risks involved with running older versions of Java SE.
Other
- Here’s how Amazon plans to run your home — before IBM, Microsoft get there
Amazon’s platform will compete directly with Microsoft’s, adding a dimension to the two companies’ cloud rivalry. Microsoft has had more time to work on its Internet of Things platform, but Amazon Web Services has far more cloud customers.
- NetApp buys SolidFire for $870 million in cash
Hardware company NetApp will buy SolidFire, a startup known for selling fast all-flash storage hardware, for $870 million in cash. The deal is considered to be an important one in the storage market especially when EMC has taken up flash by acquiring XtremIO and DSSD.
Not only EMC, Cisco has also purchased all-flash storage maker Whiptail in 2013. Though NetApp announced about its first all-flash storage hardware product two years back only, the company is not especially known for flash storage.
http://northerncalifornian.com/content/55462-netapp-buys-solidfire-870-million-cash
- Red Hat CEO: ‘State of the Red Hat Union is secure’
As we think about 2016 and beyond, it’s critical to recognize that we are building tomorrow’s IT legacy today. The next generation of technologists will inherit the decisions we make now just like we are dealing now with the legacy decisions made by the generation before us. Taking short-cuts and making decisions that get you up and running today – especially if it promises to save you some money – may be tempting. But, it needs to be a balance. You don’t want to be locked into technology you can’t escape – many enterprises are now confronting this pain from decisions made many years ago.
http://wraltechwire.com/red-hat-ceo-state-of-the-red-hat-union-is-secure-/15191748/