Verizon is taking a $4.6B write down of their AOL and Yahoo acquisitions, discovering what most people said at the time of their Yahoo purchase – they made a bad decision.
The company also announce over 10,000 Verizon employees will be volunteering to leave their positions.
Oracle continues to struggle with their cloud position in the wake of Thomas Kurian leaving for Google. The company continues to protest and take legal action against the DoD over the way they conducted the JEDI RFP… because that’s how you endear yourself to someone you want to do business with later.
Acquisitions
- Intel and TPG in talks to sell McAfee to Thoma Bravo for significantly more than $4.2 billion
Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is in early discussions to acquire security software company McAfee from TPG and Intel for a significant premium over the company’s 2016 $4.2 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Talks may still fall apart and a deal announcement isn’t expected soon, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/14/intel-tpg-in-talks-to-sell-mcafee-to-thoma-bravo.html
- SoftBank invests in parking startup ParkJockey pushing valuation to $1 billion
Along with the SoftBank investment news, ParkJockey also announced that it was acquiring two of the largest parking operators in North America. The startup, with help from Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Capital and debt financing from Owl Rock, said it had reached an agreement to acquire Imperial Parking Corporation, a North American-based parking management company often referred to as Impark. The agreement follows ParkJockey’s acquisition of parking management operator Citizens Parking Inc.
The investment puts the ParkJockey valuation to more than $1 billion, reported Miami Herald.
- GE Announces New Industrial IoT Software Business
In establishing GE Digital as a separate, wholly owned subsidiary, GE CEO Larry Culp is giving GE Digital perhaps its best chance of survival. He’s also creating an opportunity for GE shareholders to leverage any success down the road. But can GE Digital be successful as a standalone company?
The opportunity before a new GE Digital is to capitalize on the reputation of Predix as a solid platform for industrial IoT. Unencumbered by having to supply IT services to the various GE industrial divisions, the new GE Digital should be more nimble and responsive to market opportunities.
- Trello acquires Butler to add power of automation
What Butler brings to Trello is the power of automation, stringing together a bunch of commands to make something complex happen automatically. As Trello’s Michael Pryor pointed out in a blog post announcing the acquisition, we are used to tools like IFTTT, Zapier and Apple Shortcuts, and this will bring a similar type of functionality directly into Trello.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/trello-acquires-butler-to-add-power-of-automation/
Artificial Intelligence
- The Deadly Recklessness of the Self-Driving Car Industry
The newest and most glaring example of just how reckless corporations in the autonomous vehicle space can be involves the now-infamous fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, where one of Uber’s cars struck and killed a 49-year-old pedestrian. The Information obtained an email reportedly sent by Robbie Miller, a former manager in the testing-operations group, to seven Uber executives, including the head of the company’s autonomous vehicle unit, warning that the software powering the taxis was faulty and that the backup drivers weren’t adequately trained.
“The cars are routinely in accidents resulting in damage,” Miller wrote. “This is usually the result of poor behavior of the operator or the AV technology. A car was damaged nearly every other day in February. We shouldn’t be hitting things every 15,000 miles. Repeated infractions for poor driving rarely results in termination. Several of the drivers appear to not have been properly vetted or trained.”
https://gizmodo.com/the-deadly-recklessness-of-the-self-driving-car-industr-1831027948
Cloud
- Oracle earnings: Chronic cloud concerns create crisis of confidence
In a quarterly survey of 36 Oracle partners, J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Murphy found most results to be “underwhelming.”
“In the aftermath of former President Thomas Kurian’s departure to Google, metrics are listless and dull for Pace of Business, Revenue Expectation, and Oracle’s Momentum / Technology Vision,” Murphy wrote. “‘Failure to innovate’ is being mentioned.”
“Amazon, Microsoft MSFT SAP SAP and Google are most frequently mentioned as becoming more competitive with Oracle,” the J.P. Morgan analyst said. “Partners view Oracle as being ‘way back in the cloud arms race’ and ‘not sure they can catch up at this point.’”
https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/1FF18130-FD69-11E8-95C1-5E5DFA743B98
- Amazon Intervenes in Oracle’s JEDI Lawsuit
In addition to the alleged conflicts of interest, Oracle’s lawsuit takes issue with the Pentagon’s decision to award the contract to a single company, similar to arguments it made in a bid protest the Government Accountability Office denied in November.
In its motion to intervene, AWS called Oracle’s allegations “meritless” and contended it has “direct and substantial economic interests at stake” in the lawsuit; the granted motion gives AWS the legal right to defend its proprietary, financial and reputational interests that could arise in the case.
https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/12/amazon-intervenes-oracles-jedi-lawsuit/153559/
- Verizon Admits Defeat With $4.6 Billion AOL-Yahoo Writedown
The wireless carrier slashed the value of its AOL and Yahoo acquisitions by $4.6 billion, an acknowledgment that tough competition for digital advertising is leading to shortfalls in revenue and profit.
The move will erase almost half the value of the division it had been calling Oath, which houses AOL, Yahoo and other businesses like the Huffington Post.
Security
- Chinese Hackers Breach U.S. Navy Contractors
The data allegedly stolen from Navy contractors and subcontractors often is highly sensitive, classified information about advanced military technology, according to U.S. officials and security researchers. The victims have included large contractors as well as small ones, some of which are seen as lacking the resources to invest in securing their networks.
One major breach of a Navy contractor, reported in June, involved the theft of secret plans to build a supersonic anti-ship missile planned for use by American submarines, according to officials. The hackers targeted an unidentified company under contract with the Navy’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I.
- Equifax breach was ‘entirely preventable’ had it used basic security measures, says House report
The report confirmed most of what was already known, but added new color and insights that were previously unreported. The credit agency failed to patch a disclosed vulnerability in Apache Struts, a common open source web server, which Homeland Security had issued a warning about some months before. The unpatched Apache Struts server was powering its five-decades-old(!) web-facing system that allowed consumers to check their credit rating from the company’s website. The attackers used the vulnerability to pop a web shell on the server weeks later, and managed to retain access for more than two months, the House panel found, and were able to pivot through the company’s various systems by obtaining an unencrypted file of passwords on one server, letting the hackers access more than 48 databases containing unencrypted consumer credit data.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/equifax-breach-preventable-house-oversight-report/
The people at Equifax want you to forget about this, we have to keep reminding ourselves that this was not acceptable and ensure other companies with this data are held to higher standards.
Software/SaaS
- IBM Hopes To Strengthen ‘Do Not Call’ Registries With Blockchain
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is hoping that by using blockchain to keep tabs on the system, it will make it easier to figure out who is abusing the system and how. The proposed platform would record who made a “Do Not Call” request, the telephone numbers accused of violating the request, and mobile telephone portability data. By having this information on a shared ledger, it will theoretically be easier to identify fraud quickly.
https://www.ethnews.com/ibm-hopes-to-strengthen-do-not-call-registries-with-blockchain
Other
- Verizon announces 10,400 employees will voluntarily leave the company
Verizon today announced 10,400 employees are taking buyouts to leave the company. That’s about 7 percent of the company’s worldwide workforce. This is part of an effort to trim the telecom giant’s workforce ahead of its push toward 5G.
- Why Apple Chose Austin, Seattle and Culver City for Its New Jobs Push
Each location where it announced expansion plans Thursday reflects a different facet of Apple’s evolving model. Culver City gives Apple a Hollywood homebase as it pushes into video programming. Seattle is a machine-learning hub where it can develop algorithms that personalize streaming-music playlists and improve Siri. San Diego and Austin offer semiconductor engineers who can advance the customized-chip efforts that help Apple wring more money out of its iPhones, iPads and Macs.
- Why the Amazon Invasion in New York and Virginia Will Be Slow
Before workers can move in, Amazon needs to remodel temporary offices it is leasing in Long Island City and Crystal City, which will take several months. Amazon already has plenty of office space in both metro areas, so it won’t need to rush construction, these people said. It could take roughly two years before Amazon is able to break ground on its new New York campus, and potentially a little sooner for Northern Virginia, due to various needed site approvals and other preconstruction
- Huawei CFO freed on bail ahead of extradition
A British Columbia Supreme Court justice has granted Meng bail after her attorney and family made a case for her conditional release. She’s paying $10 million CAD ($7 million of it in cash) and must stay in the province, report to a supervisor, agree to around-the-clock surveillance, pay for security, live in a Vancouver area house owned by her husband (Liu Xiaozong) and remain home between 11PM and 6AM.
Liu also promised both $1 million in cash as well as the $14 million value of two Vancouver homes.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/11/huawei-cfo-freed-on-bail/
Inside Huawei’s Secret HQ, China Is Shaping the FutureIn the past two years, the largest internet companies formed semiconductor units to improve their cloud offerings and AI applications, such as image recognition and voice assistance. Huawei’s chip design unit, HiSilicon, has been around since 2004. It started working on customized chips to handle complex algorithms on hardware before the cloud companies did. Research firm Alliance Bernstein estimates that HiSilicon is on pace for $7.6 billion in sales this year, more than doubling its size since 2015.
“Huawei was way ahead of the curve,” said Richard, the analyst.
Yet in terms of sales and operations, Huawei’s cloud business is meager next to its larger rivals. The company spent about $13 billion on research and development in 2017, up more than 17 percent from the previous year. Its rivals in the cloud market have cut similarly sized checks. “Huawei has concluded that if it does not offer future solutions via the cloud, where its customers are migrating, someone else will,” said Siow Meng Soh, a research manager for GlobalData Plc.
Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash