Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
Microsoft pulled off the upset victory! They beat AWS for the lucrative $10B+ Government cloud project known as JEDI. Several large IT firms like IBM and Oracle protested the procurement process saying Amazon was favored. Did the Pentagon pivot to quiet down the criticism or did Microsoft really deliver the best solution?
Google continues to have a rough time. They are being investigated for anti-trust behavior (as is Facebook) and now their years-long effort to consolidate texting/chat protocols is moving forward without them. Mobile service providers have joined forces and agreed to adopt RCS but are pushing Google out. Many tech journalists are proclaiming this to be disaster for Google.
Finally, Foxconn continues to fail in Wisconsin. Those buildings are still empty and all those promised jobs still haven’t arrived.
Acquisitions/Investments
- Amazon acquires Health Navigator for Amazon Care, its pilot employee healthcare program
This is the second health startup acquired by Amazon. The first was online pharmacy PillPack, purchased by the company in 2018 for slightly less than $1 billion. PillPack’s services have also been integrated into Amazon Care, which offers deliveries of prescriptions with remotely communicated treatment plans.
Health Navigator’s platform was created to be integrated into online health services, including telemedicine and medical call centers, to standardize the process of working with patients. Its platform includes natural language processing-based tools for documenting health complaints and care recommendations, and is integrated into apps with APIs.
- Microsoft Acquires Cloud File-Migration Company Mover
Microsoft commented that as customer demand continues to grow for moving content to the cloud, Mover should make it easier for customers to migrate files to Microsoft 365.
The company is headquartered in Edmonton, Canada, has fewer than 11 employees and has raised less than $1 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Owler estimates its annual revenue at $5.2 million.
The Mover acquisition marks Microsoft’s ninth acquisition this year, according to data from S&P Capital IQ, as outlined below. Microsoft is making acquisitions in a several diverse areas, including data migration, business intelligence, coding, games and security.
https://coresight.com/research/microsoft-acquires-cloud-file-migration-company-mover/
- SoftBank says it has now invested $18.5 billion in WeWork, ‘more than the GDP’ of Bolivia, which has 11.5 million people
One possible hitch that Claure understandably didn’t raise yesterday — one in addition to the countless obvious challenges WeWork faces in trying to generate forward momentum, including convincing corporate customers not to look elsewhere for office space — is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS.
As Bloomberg reported last night, SoftBank will seek national security approval from CFIUS for its takeover, and the committee has stymied the Japanese conglomerate before.
- Smart home platform Wink is dying as Will.i.am’s tech company is low on money
Will.i.am’s technology company i.am+ is running out of money, according to current employees, company emails, and documents obtained by The Verge. As a result, two current employees of smart home platform Wink — which i.am+ acquired in 2017 — tell The Verge that workers haven’t been paid in seven weeks, and that their office in Schenectady, New York has been temporarily closed. Wink users have also reported on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook that all sorts of third-party devices have stopped working with the platform, and that the company’s customer support line is dead.
Artificial Intelligence
- Why IBM Thinks Google Hasn’t Achieved ‘Quantum Supremacy’
In a blog post published on Monday, IBM researchers Edwin Pednault, John Gunnels and Jay Gambetta disputed Google’s claim that it would take a state-of-the-art classical computer around 10,000 years to complete the sampling task Google used to demonstrate quantum supremacy on its Sycamore quantum computer. “Supremacy” here is the point at which a quantum computer can quickly complete tasks that would take a non-quantum computer more than a human lifetime to do.
The researchers instead claim that IBM’s Summit supercomputer could perform effectively the same job in just 2.5 days, by using hard drive storage and “performance-enhancing techniques,” which Google allegedly did not consider in its estimation.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb5jxd/why-ibm-thinks-google-hasnt-achieved-quantum-supremacy
Cloud
- Microsoft reports a strong fiscal first quarter, but Azure’s growth rate continues to decline
Microsoft posted quarterly results today that were well ahead of analysts’ expectations, but Azure’s growth rate continues to decline as it competes with AWS.
The company’s revenue for the first quarter of the fiscal year rose 14% year-over-year, to $33.1 billion. Net income increased 21% to $10.7 billion, or $1.38 per share.
Revenue from Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes its Office products and LinkedIn, grew 13%, to $11.1 billion. LinkedIn’s revenue increased by 25%.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/microsoft-reports-a-strong-fiscal-first-quarter-but-azures-growth-rate-continues-to-decline/
But Wait…
In a victory over Amazon, Microsoft wins $10B Pentagon JEDI cloud contractMicrosoft beat out Amazon in the final round for this lucrative contract after the two cloud giants beat out other competitors like IBM and Oracle in an earlier round. Most pundits considered Amazon to be the frontrunner to win the deal.
“We’re surprised about this conclusion. AWS is the clear leader in cloud computing, and a detailed assessment purely on the comparative offerings clearly lead to a different conclusion,” an Amazon spokesperson told us in an emailed comment. “We remain deeply committed to continuing to innovate for the new digital battlefield where security, efficiency, resiliency, and scalability of resources can be the difference between success and failure.”
The process to get to this point has been anything but uncomplicated, though, with various lawsuits, last-minute recusals and other controversies, with even the president getting involved at one point.
- SAP teams up on cloud sales with Microsoft
“We bundled SAP’s cloud platform services to support customers around the extension, integration and orchestration of SAP systems,” Morgan told reporters, adding that Microsoft would act as a reseller for the product.
SAP said it expected annual revenues of around 75 million euros ($84 million) from the deal: “There’s no downside to those numbers – only upside,” she told analysts on a call.
In the third quarter, SAP reported a 10% increase in revenue and a 15% rise in operating profit, after adjusting one-off items and currencies, helping it to achieve an expansion of 1.7% in its operating margins. The company reiterated its forecast for the year and through to 2023.
- Forty-six attorneys general have joined a New York-led antitrust investigation of Facebook
Forty-six attorneys general have joined a New York-led antitrust investigation of Facebook, officials announced Tuesday, raising the stakes in a sweeping bipartisan probe of the tech giant that could result in massive changes to its business practices.
The expanded roster of states and territories taking part in the investigation reflects lingering, broad concerns among the country’s competition watchdogs that “Facebook may have put consumer data at risk, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, and increased the price of advertising,” New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said in a statement.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) added, “By working together, state attorneys general are leading the way in ensuring digital platforms respect consumer privacy and do not engage in anticompetitive behavior.”
Security/Privacy
- Comcast Is Lobbying Against Encryption That Could Prevent it From Learning Your Browsing History
The plan, which Google intends to implement soon, would enforce the encryption of DNS data made using Chrome, meaning the sites you visit. Privacy activists have praised Google’s move. But ISPs are pushing back as part of a wider lobbying effort against encrypted DNS, according to the presentation. Technologists and activists say this encryption would make it harder for ISPs to leverage data for things such as targeted advertising, as well as block some forms of censorship by authoritarian regimes.
Also
Of course, it’s worth noting that, in 2017, ISPs lobbied Congress to make it possible to sell your browsing data without your consent.
“Either, they are doing something with this data today that is not transparent to users, or they are working incredibly hard to protect a future business model,” Erwin said.
- NordVPN confirms it was hacked
“While this is unconfirmed and we await further forensic evidence, this is an indication of a full remote compromise of this provider’s systems,” the security researcher said. “That should be deeply concerning to anyone who uses or promotes these particular services.”
NordVPN said “no other server on our network has been affected.”
But the security researcher warned that NordVPN was ignoring the larger issue of the attacker’s possible access across the network. “Your car was just stolen and taken on a joy ride and you’re quibbling about which buttons were pushed on the radio?” the researcher said.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/nordvpn-confirms-it-was-hacked/
Software/SaaS
- Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield says that Microsoft has been ‘surprisingly unsportsmanlike’ as a competitor
In July, Microsoft said that it had had 13 million daily active users, indicating that it both had more users than Slack, and that it was growing faster. In October, Slack released a new figure of 12 million daily active users, while also saying that its users were highly-engaged with the chat app — which it said was as important, or more so, than user metrics.
On stage at the conference, Butterfield said that it was “kind of crazy” for Microsoft to release those numbers while Slack was in the quiet period after its direct listing. He also highlighted the fact that several of the top Google search trends for Microsoft Teams are related to how to uninstall the app.
https://www.businessinsider.com/slack-ceo-microsoft-sees-us-as-an-existential-threat-2019-10
Infrastructure/Hardware
- AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have finally agreed to replace SMS with a new RCS standard
Google is a fascinating and perhaps telling omission from the press release. Up until this point, the primary advocate for RCS has been Google, which bet on it as the only platform-level messaging service for Android. It was a bet that carriers haven’t backed until now. Verizon isn’t supporting RCS on the Pixel 4 after doing so on the Pixel 3, for example. Google recently stopped waiting for carriers in the UK and France and rolled out RCS support for Android phones using its own servers.
Google was unable to immediately provide comment on the CCMI. That in and of itself is telling — as is the fact that the word “Google” appears precisely zero times in the carriers’ press release. Garland says the company continues to be an ecosystem partner and that this release was focused on the carriers.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/24/20931202/us-carriers-rcs-cross-carrier-messaging-initiative-ccmi-att-tmobile-sprint-verizon
Somehow, Android’s messaging mess is about to get even worseAt any time in the past five years, Google could have leveraged Android’s 80-plus-percent market share and told carriers that it was launching a default messaging service that works like iMessage, falling back to SMS only when necessary. It’s not in Google’s nature to push partners around (though it does make exceptions). For reasons that probably seemed reasonable every time, when it came to messaging Google always blinked.
All that blinking and now the opportunity to simply fix Android’s messaging mess by fiat might have passed. By handing control of Android messaging over to the carriers, Google wasn’t just blinking — it was blinkered. Now the company has to scramble to make sure this entirely foreseeable outcome doesn’t end up wrecking the default texting experience on every Android phone sold in America.
Other
- Foxconn finally admits its empty Wisconsin ‘innovation centers’ aren’t being developed
Beyond the halted innovation centers, Foxconn’s general Wisconsin plans are similarly in flux. The company announced a partnership in September with an automated coffee kiosk company to help manufacture its product domestically, with plans to add the coffee kiosk to its manufacturing contracts for the planned Mount Pleasant factory.
But the factory doesn’t exist yet. The company is now aiming to open it in 2020 after repeatedly shifting its deadlines. It’s also reduced the planned number of jobs and the size of the factory from the original 13,000 jobs and 20 million square feet to a 1,500-employee, 1-million-square foot facility that will no longer produce the promised big-screen LCD TVs that were part of the initial contract. Earlier this month, the company announced, scrapped, and then re-announced plans to build a giant, nine-story glass orb that would serve as a data center.
- Report: SoftBank is taking control of WeWork at an ~$8B valuation
SoftBank, a long-time WeWork investor, plans to invest between $4 billion and $5 billion in exchange for new and existing shares, according to CNBC . The deal, expected to be announced as soon as tomorrow, represents a lifeline for WeWork, which is said to be mere weeks from running out of cash and has been shopping several of its assets as it attempts to lessen its cash burn.
WeWork declined to comment.
To be clear, it is reportedly the Vision Fund’s parent company, SoftBank Group Corp. that is taking control, with SoftBank International chief executive officer Marcelo Claure stepping in to support company management, per reports.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/report-softbank-is-taking-control-of-wework-at-an-8b-valuation/
- Bill McDermott aims to grow ServiceNow like he did SAP
It’s unclear how quickly the move came together but the plan for him is clear: to scale revenue like he did in his last job.
Commenting during the company’s earning’s call today, outgoing CEO John Donahoe said that McDermott met all of the board’s criteria for its next leader. This includes the ability to expand globally, expand the markets it serves and finally scale the go-to-market organization internally, all in the service of building toward a $10 billion revenue goal. He believes McDermott checks all those boxes.
McDermott has his work cut out for him. The company’s 2018 revenue was $2.6 billion. Still, he fully embraced the $10 billion challenge. “Well let me answer that very simply, I completely stand by [the $10 billion goal], and I’m looking forward to achieving it,” he said with bravado during today’s call.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/bill-mcdermott-aims-to-grow-servicenow-like-he-did-sap/
- President of SAP Customer Experience departs
Atzberger’s departure follows on the heels of Bill McDermott’s, who left his post as SAP CEO two weeks ago. McDermott was replaced by co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein. The change is not a surprise to some industry experts, but it raises questions about the future of SAP Customer Experience and its ability to compete with Salesforce in the CRM market.
Morgan announced Atzberger’s departure in an email to SAP Customer Experience employees Tuesday. The email also said that enterprise industry veteran and former SAP employee Bob Stutz was joining SAP Customer Experience as president of engineering and operations.
https://searchsap.techtarget.com/news/252472717/President-of-SAP-Customer-Experience-departs