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Supplier Report: 8/2/2019


Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

Microsoft continues to make strides in the cloud space inching closer to Amazon’s crown (but not that close…yet). The company is also betting on massive AI investments to continue their success in the future.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile and Sprint are finally allowed to merge and Dish will officially become a telecom company.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • T-Mobile and Sprint get DOJ approval for $26 billion merger deal

    The U.S. Department of Justice this morning gave the green light to T-Mobile US and Sprint for their proposed $26 billion merger. The deal, which would combine the nation’s third and fourth largest carriers (by subscriber number) has been green lit on the condition that Sprint sell its prepaid assets (including Boost Mobile) to Dish Network.

    As part of the deal, some nine million prepaid subscribers will move over to Dish, which will also have access to T-Mobile/Sprint’s network for a period of seven years.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/26/t-mobile-and-sprint-get-doj-approval-for-26-billion-merger-deal/

    Experts Say the DOJ Justification for T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Approval Is a Joke

    “Today’s settlement will provide Dish with the assets and transitional services required to become a facilities-based mobile network operator that can provide a full range of mobile wireless services nationwide,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said of the deal.

    But experts consulted by Motherboard say the proposal isn’t likely to work, and the end result of the merger will still very likely be higher prices and worse service for all.

    For one thing, Dish has been promising to build a wireless network for the better part of the last decade with little to show for it. The company has routinely been accused of “spectrum squatting,” or buying spectrum it doesn’t use in a bid to turn around and sell it later when it’s more valuable. Even T-Mobile made this complaint when Dish initially criticized the merger.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjvw55/t-mobile-sprint-merger-is-a-joke

Artificial Intelligence

  • Microsoft to Invest $1 Billion in Artificial-Intelligence Startup

    “This is a big investment for Microsoft, even at their size,” said Stifel analyst Brad Reback. “They’ll do scores of acquisitions annually but most of them tend to be smaller technology tuck-ins.”

    OpenAI was launched in 2015 as a nonprofit with a goal of leading efforts to develop artificial general intelligence. It competes with Alphabet Inc. ’s DeepMind Technologies and others. OpenAI is led by CEO Sam Altman, a former president of startup accelerator Y Combinator.

    The Microsoft investment signals a vote of confidence in OpenAI’s recent transformation into a private company from a nonprofit. In March, OpenAI revamped its legal structure to raise more money and gain scale, which enabled it to accept the investment from Microsoft.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-invest-1-billion-in-artificial-intelligence-startup-11563813648

Cloud

  • Google Cloud’s run rate is now over $8B

    Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who recently installed former Oracle exec Thomas Kurian as the new head of Google Cloud, announced that this business unit now has an $8 billion annual revenue run rate. That’s up from the $4 billion the company reported in early 2018.

    While Google often felt like an also-ran in the cloud wars, it’s clearly starting to make up some ground. “Other cloud providers would have you believe that no one is using Google, which is not true,” Kurian told me when I talked to him earlier this year. Now he can put some numbers behind this claim.

    To put that into perspective, AWS’s run rate topped $30 billion last quarter while Microsoft Azure is somewhere around $11 billion, though concrete numbers are hard to come by.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/25/google-clouds-run-rate-is-now-over-8b/

  • The cloud computing market is closing in on a $100 billion milestone, but half of it is going to either Amazon or Microsoft, according to an analyst report

    The cloud market, which covers web-based services for infrastructure, platform and hosted private clouds, totaled about $23 billion in the second quarter, according to Synergy Research Group. That’s up 39% from the year-ago period and $1.6 billion from the previous quarter.

    Amazon owned 33% of that market, bigger than the combined share of its four closest rivals: Microsoft, which had 16%, Google, 8%, Alibaba and Tencent. The report also mentioned other key players in the cloud market — IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and Rackspace — which posted lower growth rates and “are more niche-oriented.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-microsoft-cloud-gap-narrowing-2019-7

  • Microsoft, AT&T sign cloud deal worth more than $2 billion

    Under the deal, Microsoft and AT&T will also work together on so-called edge computing, which will see Microsoft technology deployed alongside AT&T’s coming 5G network for applications that need extremely small delays in passing data back and forth, such as air traffic control systems for drones. The multi-year deal is worth more than $2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    The agreement is a major win for Microsoft, which will become AT&T’s “preferred” cloud vendor and is fighting to gain market share from Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services, the biggest provider of public cloud services. Cloud service customers run their software applications in data centers managed by the cloud provider.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-at-t-cloud/microsoft-att-sign-cloud-deal-worth-more-than-2-billion-idUSKCN1UC1KK?il=0
    IBM Lands AT&T as Client in Cloud Deal

    The partnership builds on IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of open-source software firm Red Hat, which closed last week. Buying Red Hat strengthened IBM’s standing in the hybrid cloud market. Companies use the hybrid cloud to manage software and other systems across different cloud services and their own data centers.

    IBM said that Red Hat’s open-source software will give AT&T Business the flexibility to move data and applications among various clouds and data centers. AT&T Business until now has worked with multiple cloud vendors.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-lands-at-t-as-client-in-cloud-deal-11563317480

Security/Privacy

  • An Equifax hack settlement promises a $125 payout. The truth is more complicated.

    First, if your information (most importantly, your social security number) was part of the hack, then you should assume it’s out there forever. Even if someone hasn’t stolen your identity yet, it could still happen.

    Second, even if you file for reimbursement, there’s a good chance you won’t actually get the full $125 that Equifax and the FTC are talking about. Things are worded carefully in the agreement, but the bottom line is there’s a limited amount of money in the payout pool, and it won’t cover $125 checks for 147 million people.

    Given all that, the biggest loophole you should be aware of is that if you do nothing, you will automatically waive your right to take legal action against Equifax in the future.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/27/equifax-settlement-guide-how-get-money-what-you-need-know/?utm_term=.ae82df97b9e0

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple’s and Intel’s No-Brainer Deal

    The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the two are in “advanced talks.” A deal would purportedly involve both the intellectual property and staff related to Intel’s effort to design and build the crucial smartphone component that ultimately landed only Apple as a customer. The reported purchase price under discussion is about $1 billion.

    That is less than a week’s worth of free cash flow for Apple. It also is about what Intel has been losing annually on modems. Despite landing the sizable iPhone business, Intel’s modem-chip operation never achieved the necessary scale to compete profitably with market leader Qualcomm . QCOM -0.17% Meanwhile, Apple was effectively locked into the Intel modem during its bruising legal tussle with Qualcomm. The latter’s advancements in 5G technology ultimately spurred a settlement of that dispute, but it is an uneasy peace. Intel now has a modem operation with no customer following this year’s iPhone model, and Apple is back to depending on a supplier with whom it now has a rather tortured history.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-and-intels-no-brainer-deal-11563900798

  • Sony’s wearable AC will arrive too late to save you from this year’s heatwave

    Sony has announced the Reon Pocket, a small cooling device that you can wear like a portable air conditioner. It’s currently live on Sony’s crowdfunding website, where prices start at ¥12,760 (about $117). SlashGear notes that as well as cooling you during hot days, the device, which slots into the back pocket of a specially designed T-shirt, can also warm you up during the winter.

    https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/7/27/8931701/sony-reon-pocket-portable-wearable-air-conditioner-heater-heatwave-t-shirt

    I need this thing now. Right Now.

Other

  • Tesla’s longtime CTO is stepping down

    Longtime Tesla executive JB Straubel is leaving his post as chief technology officer after some 15 years, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday evening. Straubel will transition to a “senior advisor” role, according to Musk, and is not fully leaving the company. The news comes as Tesla announced a $408 million loss for the second quarter of 2019.

    “I’m not disappearing, and I just wanted to make sure that people understand that this was not some, you know, lack of confidence in the company, or the team, or anything like that,” Straubel said on the call.

    Straubel is the second C-suite executive to announce a change in his role on one of Tesla’s earnings calls in the last six months. Longtime chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja announced he was retiring on a call in January. Tesla also has a well-documented revolving door when it comes to lower-level executives.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/24/20726728/tesla-jb-straubel-cto-is-stepping-down

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News You Can Use: 7/31/2019


Photo by Thao Le Hoang on Unsplash

  • Our 6 Must Reads for Cutting Through Conflict and Tough Conversations

    When conflict arises in the workplace, people have two tendencies: Either they’ll hide from discomfort and hope the issue dissipate, or they’ll address the conflict head-on, often without filtering the words they use. Neither response is correct, nor constructive. Avoiding problems only allows them to fester and impact more people, while hasty, non-strategic communication can turn a small fire into a blaze.

    To help clients communicate through confrontations mindfully, Mehl recommends the A-E-I-O-U Model of Managing Conflict. It’s distinguished from other strategies by assuming that both sides of any argument mean well — basically, that there are positive reasons behind each person’s actions.

    Standing for Acknowledge, Express, Identify, Outcome, and Understanding, the A-E-I-O-U method can be used to resolve a variety of standoffs: employee-to-boss, peer-to-peer, co-founder to co-founder. It’s particularly useful for early startups, Mehl says, because everyone knows each other and is learning together. No matter how old your company is or how it’s structured, employees should always feel comfortable approaching managers and communicating on a level playing field.

    https://firstround.com/review/our-6-must-reads-for-cutting-through-conflict-and-tough-conversations/

  • Work at one of these 10 companies if you want a job you actually like

    Among the top 10 are:
    Adobe
    Facebook
    Southwest Airlines
    Live Nation
    Intuit
    Costco Wholesale
    Delta
    eBay
    Microsoft
    Johnson & Johnson

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90376970/work-at-one-of-these-10-companies-if-you-want-a-job-you-like
    Adobe…? That can’t be right.

  • Have you accidentally offended someone? Here’s advice for you and them
  • Everybody Hates the Key Card. Will Your Phone Replace It?

    The number of hotels in the United States that have digital keys available rose from 6 percent in 2016 to 17 percent last year, according to a survey by the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Marriott International, Hilton, MGM Resorts and Disney hotels are among the brands offering loyalty members the option of using digital keys at some properties.

    Some, including Hilton and Marriott, only allow a single phone to receive a key during a stay, and other guests in the room receive card keys. Like the card keys, the digital keys can be used to access elevators, fitness centers, parking garages and other common areas. Some mobile keys require the user to touch a button on their phone screen to unlock the door, while others require that the phone be held up to the lock.

    Digital keys are hugely popular with travelers in some areas, like Silicon Valley, but overall, only about 10 percent of all hotel guests use them, Mr. Aznar estimated.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/travel/hotel-security-mobile-keys.html

  • In major switch, DoorDash announces that customers’ tips will now go to workers

    Just as things were calming down, a July 21 first-person New York Times article about working for various delivery services, including DoorDash, went viral. While the Times article didn’t break any news about the payment system, it thrust the issue back into the spotlight, prompting a new round of outrage.

    Xu had long defended the practice of using customer tips to pay drivers, with DoorDash chipping in only as a way of “making Dashers whole when a customer left no tip,” as he described it on Twitter. “But it’s clear from recent feedback that we didn’t strike the right balance,” he wrote.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90380942/in-major-switch-doordash-announces-that-customers-tips-will-now-go-to-workers

Posted on

News You Can Use: 7/24/2019


Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

  • Amazon Offers Sellers a Leg Up, With a Catch

    Amazon.com Inc. is offering independent merchants on its platform marketing support, product reviews and prominent display. The catch? Amazon gains the right to purchase a merchant’s brand at any time for a fixed price, often $10,000.

    The program—which allows brand rights to be bought for a fixed price on 60 days’ notice, according to a contract seen by The Wall Street Journal—is part of a push by Amazon to obtain a stable of exclusive brands for the platform. It is the first selling program that allows Amazon to obtain direct control over independent brands that sell on its website, according to merchants familiar with Amazon programs.

    Also:

    The contract sets the price at $10,000, but says designs, patents and trade secrets will remain with the seller after the sale. Sellers in the program may sell the same product elsewhere under a different brand name and keep rights to brands they haven’t entered in the Accelerator program.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-offers-sellers-a-leg-up-with-a-catch-11563452450

  • Most of the Google Walkout Organizers Have Left the Company

    The employee resignations highlight growing hostility between Google and its most outspoken employees, who have grown increasingly organized and strident in their demands for significant changes to Google’s approach to issues including sexual harassment claims, military contracts, censored search in China, and equitable treatment of contract workers, who now outnumber full-time employees. That tension presents a challenge to Google’s open company culture, which encouraged employees to debate and dissent on internal forums, but established strong social norms around secrecy. Google evangelized this culture, elements of which have been adopted by other Silicon Valley firms, and the company’s response to employee activism is being closely watched.

    https://www.wired.com/story/most-google-walkout-organizers-left-company/

  • The biggest threat to America? Americans.
  • ‘The climate has changed’: Agencies are finding more young employees report burnout

    Burnout among millennials has been a major talking point this year. At the same time, agency sources say there has been a cultural shift in the way the industry approaches mental health and burnout. Agencies have employed new policies, like no answering emails after 7 p.m. or no Slack on weekends, to combat the burnout. It makes sense to do so, as 32% of agency employees are worried about their mental health, per Digiday+ research.

    “Fifteen years ago, [agencies] dismissed the idea of burnout,” said Jean Freeman, president and CEO of independent shop Zambezi. “The climate has changed, which is for the better, and now we’re paying attention to physical and mental health. If you pay attention to your staff, you can see it.”

    https://digiday.com/marketing/burnout-is-contagious-why-agencies-need-to-listen-when-younger-employees-self-diagnose/

  • The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t

    According to experts on the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation, radio waves become safer at higher frequencies, not more dangerous. (Extremely high-frequency energies, such as X-rays, behave differently and do pose a health risk.)

    In his research, Dr. Curry looked at studies on how radio waves affect tissues isolated in the lab, and misinterpreted the results as applying to cells deep inside the human body. His analysis failed to recognize the protective effect of human skin. At higher radio frequencies, the skin acts as a barrier, shielding the internal organs, including the brain, from exposure. Human skin blocks the even higher frequencies of sunlight.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/science/5g-cellphones-wireless-cancer.html

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News You Can Use: 7/17/2019


Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

  • How U.S. Tech Giants Are Helping to Build China’s Surveillance State

    The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to “drive innovation” — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.

    Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people.

    https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm-semptian/

  • These Tech Companies Are Giving Millions To Politicians Who Vote Against LGBTQ People

    The group, Zero for Zeros, analyzed the contribution data between 2010 and 2019 of the top-scoring companies on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. It found 49 corporate PACs that gave a combined $5,837,331 to members of Congress who had received ratings of zero on the HRC’s legislative scorecard. These elected officials include Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who introduced legislation in 2018 that would make it legal for businesses and nonprofits to discriminate against same-sex couples, unmarried couples, and single parents.

    Companies like Google, through their corporate PACs, gave a combined $178,500 to politicians who scored zeros on the HRC legislative scorecard. Google, which has faced scrutiny for refusing to crack down on anti-LGBTQ speech, donated $10,000 to Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. In 2014, Lee said that the progressive agenda “rejects the enviable right to life according to one’s religious convictions, and is utterly blind to the moral and economic consequences of our nation’s growing marriage crisis.”

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/these-tech-companies-are-giving-millions-to-politicians-who

  • Why aren’t Millennials buying homes?
  • The 3 Essential Negotiation Tactics According to Researchers

    The guilt and petty politics of socials debt can be a nightmare. But when it comes to negotiations, reciprocity can be used to give yourself some serious leverage, especially if you’re smart about it. Marketing and persuasion expert Robert Cialidini found that waiters offering their patrons an after dinner mint increased tips by 3%. For wait staff who added, “for you nice people, here’s an extra mint,” tips jumped by a whopping 23%.

    This isn’t just for beguiling the other side, but for guilting them as well. Katherine Shonk, editor of Harvard Business School’s Negotiation blog, asserts that you should be specific about the things you’re giving up. Why? Well, in spite of people’s instinct to be even, you can’t always count the opposing side recognizing when you’re making a compromise or how important of a point you’re folding on. Getting a fair deal means making people understand exactly what you’re exchanging. As strong as reciprocity is, to really make it work for you, you need to make the exchange felt for it to have any effect.

    https://www.primermagazine.com/2019/earn/negotiation-tactics

  • Workers waste half their time as they struggle with data

    Organizations are suffering from inefficiencies and ineffectiveness as they turn to data as the lifeblood of their digital transformation — and the workforce is struggling.

    About 54M data workers around the world face challenges associated with the complexity, diversity and scale of their company’s data. These data workers represent a quarter of knowledge workers around the world.

    Four out of five (80%) of organizations take advantage of data across multiple organizational processes, but despite increases in innovation, workers waste 44% of their time each week due to unsuccessful activities because of lack of collaboration, existence of knowledge gaps and resistance to change.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/workers-waste-half-their-time-as-they-struggle-with-data/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/12/2019


Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash

The 4th of July is over, people are back to work, and the tech industry is picking itself up after a rough couple of weeks.

Old school software companies Corel and Symantec are likely to be acquired. Broadcom is interesting in Symantec and KKR has agreed to purchase Corel. Fans of the “off-brand” (see WordPerfect and PaintShop Pro) software company will be happy to know KKR is looking to invest in Corel’s product line.

The U.K. doesn’t seem to have the issues with Huawei that the U.S. does. The Chinese company has been helping British telecom companies build out their 5G networks… interesting.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Broadcom Is in Advanced Talks to Acquire Symantec

    Broadcom could reach an agreement to buy the Mountain View, California-based company within weeks, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. No deal has been finalized and the talks could fall through, the people said.

    A representative for Symantec declined to comment. A representative for Broadcom didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-02/broadcom-is-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-symantec

  • KKR confirms it has acquired Canadian software company Corel, reportedly for over $1B

    The terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed, but when the first rumors of a deal started to emerge a couple of months ago, the price being reported was over $1 billion.

    Corel has brought itself into the modern era, with acquisitions like Parallels — a virtualization giant that lets businesses run far-flung and very fragmented networks as if they weren’t — underscoring that strategy. And that is where KKR appears to be putting its focus. In the memo that a source passed us yesterday, Corel’s CEO Patrick Nichols assured staff that there would be no layoffs and that this acquisition would mean a significant new infusion of capital both to expand its existing business as well as to make more acquisitions to grow.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/03/kkr-corel-vector-parallels/

  • Oracle buys Brazilian firm Oxygen Systems

    Created in 2017 as a spin-off of Chilean IT integrator Sonda, Oxygen Systems is focused on the localization of the systems offering under Oracle’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) Netsuite.

    Oracle’s low-key announcement simply states that the acquisition, which has been completed, “strengthens Oracle NetSuite support for international and global customers, delivering a seamless ERP localization experience in Brazil.”

    Small and medium enterprises represent 20 percent of Oracle’s business in Brazil and over the last couple of years, it has been focusing on chasing more clients in that space.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/oracle-buys-brazilian-firm-oxygen-systems/

Cloud

  • It was a really bad month for the internet

    What can we learn? For one, internet providers need to do better with routing filters, and, secondly, perhaps it’s not a good idea to run new code directly on a production system.

    These past few weeks have not looked good for the cloud, shaking confidence in the many reliant on hosting giants — like Amazon, Google and more. Although some quickly — and irresponsibly and eventually wrongly — concluded the outages were because of hackers or threat actors launching distributed denial-of-service attacks, it’s always far safer to assume that an internal mistake is to blame.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/05/bad-month-for-the-internet/

Security/Privacy

  • China has been secretly installing spyware on some tourists’ Android phones

    Chinese border agents have been installing spyware on phones from tourists who enter the country through certain crossings in the Xinjiang region, an area where China is known to be conducting intensive surveillance of the largely Muslim ethnic minority groups who live there. The spyware was reported today by a group of publications, including The Guardian, Motherboard, The New York Times, and more.

    Border agents in the region have been requiring tourists to hand over their phones and passcodes before entering, according to the reports. The agents will then disappear with the phones in order to snoop through them. For iPhones, that reportedly includes plugging them into a machine that scans through the phone’s contents. For Android phones, it goes further, with border agents installing a spyware app that scans the phone and collects data.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/20679053/china-spyware-tourists-android-phones-xinjiang

  • 7-Eleven Japanese customers lose $500,000 due to mobile app flaw

    Approximately 900 customers of 7-Eleven Japan have lost a collective of ¥55 million ($510,000) after hackers hijacked their 7pay app accounts and made illegal charges in their names.

    The 7pay mobile app was designed to show a barcode on the phone’s screen when customers reach the 7-Eleven cashier counters. The cashier scans the barcode, and the bought goods are charged to the user’s 7pay app and the customer’s credit or debit cards that have been saved in the account.

    However, in a mind-boggling turn of events, the app contained a password reset function that was incredibly poorly designed. It allowed anyone to request a password reset for other people’s accounts, but have the password reset link sent to their email address, instead of the legitimate account owner.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/7-eleven-japanese-customers-lose-500000-due-to-mobile-app-flaw/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Huawei is helping all the UK’s top carriers build their 5G networks

    British carriers apparently aren’t put off by US pressure to ditch Huawei for their 5G network deployments. The Guardian’s sources understand that all four of the UK’s largest wireless providers (EE, O2, Three and Vodafone) are all using Huawei to build their 5G networks. The Chinese firm is reportedly involved with six out of Vodafone’s seven initial 5G cities, while it’s also helping with “hundreds” of EE sites. O2 and Three have also awarded contracts to Huawei, according to the tipsters.

    There might be reasons to take a chance on Huawei, apart from the lack of publicly available evidence of surveillance. Assembly’s Matthew Howett noted that reliance on a single supplier for a cellular network is dangerous. A major failure in Ericsson equipment left O2 users without 3G and LTE service for a full day — if everyone had been using similar hardware, the UK as a whole might have suffered the same problem. It might also delay launches by as much as two years, Howett said. Like it or not, Huawei could be useful in helping some countries offer 5G in a timely and reliable fashion.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/06/huawei-gear-in-uk-5g-networks/