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.
- 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 goOther 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.
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.