Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo is in major trouble with the announcement that Yahoo was hacked yet again (impacting 1 billion accounts). Will Microsoft capitalize on Verizon’s misfortunes?
Perhaps Yahoo should speak with IBM as they are focusing their Watson AI technology on Cyber-security.
Cisco’s ambitions towards the cloud have been crushed by the AWS juggernaut. The company announced the discontinuation of their Intercloud platform this week… and there are rumors they might move customers over to Amazon.
Acquisitions
- Yahoo shares tumble as investors fear Verizon acquisition trouble
After the first big Yahoo hack was unveiled a few months ago, there were reports that Verizon would demand a $1 billion discount. In an October earnings call, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said they were “still evaluating what it means for the transaction.” But we have not been given any reason to believe that the deal was no longer happening.
Should the latest hack change things? Well, it’s certainly not a good look for Yahoo.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/15/yahoo-shares-tumble-as-investors-fear-verizon-acquisition-trouble/?ncid=rss
If Verizon Walks Away, Then Microsoft Should Finally Buy YahooAll of that sounds rather complicated, but the bottom line is that Microsoft and Yahoo have been in bed with each other for years, and now Microsoft might have a renewed chance to make their relationship official. The golden goose of the deal would likely be the mobile search traffic that Microsoft currently has no stake in.
http://etfdailynews.com/2016/12/16/if-verizon-walks-away-then-microsoft-should-finally-buy-yahoo/
- How Autonomy Fooled Hewlett-Packard
One fact really stands out: in each of the 10 quarters preceding the acquisition, Autonomy’s revenues were within 4% of analyst expectations. That’s a level of precision that should arouse suspicion. In hindsight, achieving revenue targets like clockwork looks awfully strange.
Artificial Intelligence
- IBM Starts to Apply Watson to Cyber-security
Kelley notes that there are over 1.5 million open IT security positions that IT organizations have little to no hope of ever filling. Advances in cognitive computing will equip IT organizations better to counter cybersecurity attacks that make use of bots and other automation tools to launch attacks at unprecedented levels of scale.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/it-unmasked/ibm-starts-to-apply-watson-to-cybersecurity.html
- Google Artificial Intelligence Whiz Describes Our Sci-Fi Future
Reinforcement learning is the idea of being able to assign credit or blame to all the actions you took along the way while you were getting that reward signal. It’s really effective in some domains today.
I think where reinforcement learning has some challenges is when the action-state you may take is incredibly broad and large. A human operating in the real world might take an incredibly broad set of actions at any given moment. Whereas in a board game there’s a limited set of moves you can take, and the rules of the game constrain things a bit and the reward signal is also much clearer. You either won or lost.
http://fortune.com/2016/11/26/google-artificial-intelligence-jeff-dean/?iid=sr-link1
Cloud
- Cisco Officially Throws In The Towel On Intercloud
“Cisco has internally communicated that we are discontinuing one of our internal cloud platforms and will be transitioning affected workloads onto other platforms,” said the statement. “The cloud market has shifted considerably in the last two years, and many of our customers are asking Cisco to help them develop cloud strategies that will help drive their digital transformations … We do not expect any material customer issues as a result of this transition.”
http://www.crn.com/news/networking/300083157/cisco-officially-throws-in-the-towel-on-intercloud.htm
Also:While Cisco isn’t saying the name of that cloud provider, there’s a good chance that it’s Amazon because enterprises are tripping over themselves to use Amazon these days. Amazon has got more features and more partners than any other cloud provider out there.
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-claims-another-victim-cisco-kills-its-1-billion-cloud-2016-12
- Red Hat’s Container Platform Lands on Google Cloud
Red Hat and Google are container compatriots, in the sense that both have gone all-in with Kubernetes as a container scheduler. Google started the Kubernetes project, so its commitment there isn’t exactly shocking. Red Hat had developed its own scheduling mechanism for OpenShift but switched to Kubernetes due to the community support the project was getting, says Brian Gracely, Red Hat’s director of product strategy.
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/red-hats-container-platform-lands-on-google-cloud/2016/12/
- Amazon Launches A Data Center Built On A Semi Truck
Snowmobile is a secure data truck that stores up to 100 PB of data and can help you to move exabytes to AWS in a matter of weeks (you can even get more than one if necessary!). Physically, Snowmobile is a 45 feet long, 9.6 feet high, and 8 feet wide tamper-resistant shipping container. It is water-resistant, climate-controlled and can be parked in a covered or uncovered area adjacent to your existing data center. Each Snowmobile consumes about 350 kW of AC power, and if you don’t have sufficient capacity on site, they can arrange a generator to ensure power stability.
http://www.psfk.com/2016/12/topline-amazon-launches-a-data-center-built-on-a-semi-truck.html
- Buyers Guide to cloud computing (who is HIPAA compliant)
Despite this rush to the cloud, healthcare decision makers must keep in mind they can’t just tap into anybody’s offering. A cloud-based solution that is purpose-built for the regulatory and privacy demands of healthcare and life sciences requires more than compute, storage and networking services.
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/buyers-guide-cloud-computing
Datacenter
- Old storage guard face incoming tech squeeze
The prime tech transition in the SAN area is from disk and hybrid flash/disk to all-flash arrays. Such systems take up less physical space and need less power and cooling to operate. Despite a solid wave of startup acquisition and tech adoption, Pure Storage has emerged as a post-IPO independent and Kaminario survives and is growing.
The three hybrid array startups – Nimble, Tegile and Tintri – have morphed into all-flash array vendors, with Nimble running an IPO. These three are also surviving and growing, meaning three more suppliers sharing the SAN market.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/13/old_storage_guard_flash/
Image: The Register
Software/SaaS
- IBM Helps Organizations Respond to and Manage Ransomware
According to a new IBM (IBM) study, seven out of 10 U.S. businesses surveyed infected with ransomware have paid to resolve a ransomware attack, with more than half paying more than $10,000. To help organizations respond rapidly and strategically to this type of threat and many other types of threats, Resilient’s new Dynamic Playbooks are an industry first in the incident response management market. Resilient’s Dynamic Playbooks provide an unmatched orchestration of incident response by adapting in real-time to the details of a cyberattack or other business threat, and enabling effective, rapid response to more sophisticated threat types.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/resilient-ibm-company-helps-organizations-110000984.html
Other
- IBM vows to hire and train US workers
“We expect to end 2016 with our US workforce about the same size as it was at the beginning of the year. By 2020, we expect it to be larger than it is today,” Pratt said.
Let’s review:
- Trump calls out IBM for outsourcing jobs
- Rometty is the only technology CEO to be added to Trump’s business council
- IBM promises more US based jobs in the future
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2016/12/15/2003661222
- Microsoft’s surprise hardware hit: The Surface Hub
The average Surface Hub customer is buying about 50 devices for each deployment, and the company has achieved more than 2,000 customers. One (unnamed) car manufacturer bought 1,500 of the things. Though Microsoft didn’t reveal the exact mix between sizes, Surface Hub looks like it’s another billion-dollar-a-year business for the software giant—to boot, it’s a piece of hardware that it got right even in version one. In a Forrester report commissioned by Microsoft, it’s claimed that meetings start more promptly—less faffing about to get remote attendees dialed in or computers hooked up to the projector—saving 15 to 23 minutes per meeting. Less measurable, Microsoft claims that Surface Hub is also driving greater meeting engagement, with people standing up and engaging with each other and the screen rather than hiding behind their laptop screens around a conference table or quietly playing games on their phones.
- Oracle CEO Safra Catz joins Trump transition team
Unlike some of the other attendees of Trump’s tech summit, Catz was not particularly outspoken about politics during the election season. Federal Election Commission data shows no contributions to presidential candidates in Catz’s name, although the CEO has donated to Republican and Democratic Congressional campaigns. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman, is a Republican mega-donor who contributed millions to a super PAC that backed Marco Rubio’s failed presidential bid.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/15/oracle-ceo-safra-catz-joins-trump-transition-team/?ncid=rss
Trump’s Tech Summit Was Missing These Key PlayersSalesforce.com co-founder and chairman Marc Benioff was absent. As was Hewlett-Packard Enterprise chief executive Meg Whitman. Fortune reached out to the Trump team as well as HPE for comment, and will update this story as needed.
Photo: Stefan Kunze