As Amazon continues to grow, the company is drawing the attention of President Trump. Trump’s issues with Amazon and Jeff Bezos are well documented, and there are reports that Trump is focused on finding ways to halt Amazon’s growth while the rest of the government is focused on regulating Facebook and Google.
Microsoft is undertaking a massive reorganization centered on cloud and AI. This push has resulted in long-time Windows lead Terry Myerson opting to leave the company.
IBM is currently undergoing another round of job eliminations. The full scope hasn’t been reported yet, but the focus seems to be around sales and services, leaving remaining employees to wonder how the company can support existing customers.
Oracle took a stock hit a few weeks ago, but they had a massive win against Google. The Java fair-use case that has been going on for years has finally shifted back in Oracle’s favor. The company could get a $9B settlement from Google.
Acquisitions
- Unit of Taiwan’s Foxconn to Buy Los Angeles-Based Belkin
A unit of Foxconn Technology Group has agreed to buy smartphone and electronics accessories maker Belkin International Inc. for $866 million.
The move disclosed Tuesday comes as Taiwan-based Foxconn, known as the contract assembler of Apple Inc.’s iPhones, seeks to bolster its consumer-branded operations.
Privately held Belkin also owns Linksys, a wireless router brand, and the Wemo brand of products that control home lights, monitor cameras and similar devices.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/unit-of-taiwans-foxconn-to-buy-los-angeles-based-belkin-1522151550
I wonder if Trump is going to let this sale happen? - DOJ and AT&T Clash Over Impact on Consumers of a Time Warner Deal
The Justice Department argued a post-merger AT&T would use Turner’s valuable channels to wring higher prices out of rival cable providers who need that programming for their packages. The government also argued AT&T would try to deter emerging online rivals who are offering pay-TV packages at cheaper prices.
Mr. Conrath highlighted Dish Network Corp.’s Sling TV, a new online-only TV package that competes against AT&T’s DirecTV Now streaming service, as proof of Time Warner’s importance. He said Turner chief John Martin warned a Sling TV executive the service would be “crap” if it didn’t carry Turner’s networks. (Mr. Conrath said Mr. Martin used a more profane word best kept out of the courtroom.) Sling TV today offers two basic $20-a-month TV packages, both of which carry Turner channels.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doj-says-pay-tv-will-cost-more-if-at-t-buys-time-warner-1521746321
Artificial Intelligence
- Apple and IBM Watson team for enterprise mobile machine learning
In leveraging the new technology, customers can build machine learning models using IBM Watson (the company’s cloud-based AI platform for business) and train it with their own industry-specific data. This includes the ability to create different machine learning models, compare the results, and run automated experiments – identifying patterns and gaining insights, to reach decisions more quickly.
Machine learning is implemented with IBM Watson’s visual modelling tools, such as PixieDust and Brunel, but there’s support for Jupyter notebooks with Python, R and Scala – plus the open-source RStudio. This is then converted to Apple’s Core ML to integrate it with Apple-compatible applications.
One such application of machine learning enables iPhone cameras to access Watson’s image recognition capabilities. Users can identify and classify content, before analyzing it to extract detailed information. This capability could shake up workflows in the industrial, logistics, and healthcare sectors.
https://internetofbusiness.com/apple-ibm-mobile-machine-learning/
- IBM Could Be a Dark Horse in the Virtual Assistant Market
Don’t expect IBM to launch a smart speaker, and don’t expect to be saying, “Hey, Watson.” The company is targeting enterprise customers with Watson Assistant instead of going after consumers directly. Watson Assistant can be used by companies and organizations to build industry-specific applications. It’s a white-label product, meaning that applications built on Watson Assistant will be branded and customized however the developing company chooses.
IBM provided an example of how this could work in a post announcing the product:
You’re on a business trip to Las Vegas. Upon landing at McCarran International Airport, Watson Assistant automatically checks into your hotel and your preferred rental car is not only ready, it has the hotel destination preprogrammed along with suggestions on where to get a latte while en-route. Nearing the hotel, the Watson Assistant in your car signals your arrival to the hotel and not only updates the room with your preferences for music, temperature and lighting, it synchs your smartphone, calendar and email with the in-room wall dashboard and checking you into the convention you’re attending.
- Microsoft is launching a huge reorganization to focus on AI and the cloud
The company is creating two new engineering divisions that it says will accelerate innovation and better serve its customers. One team will focus on the cloud and AI, the other on what it calls “experiences and devices.”
The AI cloud: It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Microsoft has decided to lump together its cloud services with its AI research—combining the two is a big business, with Google, Amazon, and Chinese firms all providing stiff competition. This new division will also include its teams working on augmented- and mixed-reality technologies.
Things people use: Microsoft’s new “experiences and devices” team will attempt to unify the way the firm is developing products for consumer and business users. It’ll include Microsoft’s mobile offerings, Windows, and its Microsoft 365 productivity suite.
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/610725/microsoft-is-doing-the-splits-to-focus-on-ai-and-the-cloud/
Microsoft’s longtime Windows boss is leaving the company amid a huge executive reorganizationAs part of the reorganization, Rajesh Jha, the executive VP of Microsoft Office products, will expand his responsibilities to encompass Myerson’s role. Jha will become the leader of a group called Experiences and Devices, bringing Windows and Office together under a single banner.
“The purpose of this team is to instill a unifying product ethos across our end-user experiences and devices,” Nadella said. “Computing experiences are evolving to include multiple senses and are no longer bound to one device at a time but increasingly spanning many as we move from home to work and on the go.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-terry-myerson-leaving-reorganization-2018-3
Cloud
- Trump Attacks Amazon, Saying It Does Not Pay Enough Taxes
Mr. Trump accused Amazon, one of the country’s most recognizable and successful brands, of putting thousands of local retailers out of business and said the company was using the United States Postal Service as its “Delivery Boy.”
The president has lashed out publicly against the giant company and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, on Twitter more than a dozen times since 2015. And privately, people close to him said, Mr. Trump repeatedly brings up his disdain for the company, often set off by his anger at negative stories in The Washington Post, which is owned by Mr. Bezos.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/us/politics/trump-amazon-taxes.html
One area where Trump could really hurt AmazonThe Washington Business Journal reported that the omnibus spending bill signed by Trump earlier this month contained a provision which requires the DoD to explain why awarding a contract that could run in excess of $10 billion to a single vendor is the best way to execute this plan.
In 2013, Amazon Web Services won a $600 million contract from the CIA.
And with signs pointing to Amazon having the upper hand in winning a potentially massive contract from the DoD, Clifton sees this as an area where Trump could hit back against Amazon.
“Of all the stories we read [on Wednesday], however, we saw very little attention paid to the one area where Trump could actually hurt Amazon – cloud computing contracts,” Clifton writes. “Tech companies have been fuming at the possibility of Amazon being the sole company awarded a multi-year cloud services contract at DoD. Congress was forced to intervene in the recent omnibus.”
https://sports.yahoo.com/one-area-trump-really-hurt-amazon-164512213.html
- Oracle Opens The Doors To Massive Austin Campus Entirely Focused On Driving Cloud Solutions
Oracle said the campus could ultimately support up to 10,000 workers, some of whom will live in a neighboring apartment building the company is constructing.
From the campus, Oracle will launch its Next Generation Contact Center, a customer support operation which looks to enhance the customer experience by leveraging Oracle Sales Cloud to drive the sales process.
A new Oracle Cloud Solution Hub will also be set up at the Austin campus.
The hubs—three more will operate at other Oracle sites across the country—showcase Oracle cloud projects in the works or already deployed in the field for customers. Engineers will be available to demonstrate Oracle’s next-gen solutions, from AI to virtual reality to bots.
- Microsoft will be worth $1T within year: Morgan Stanley
Other tech heavyweights still hold a lead over Microsoft. Apple is worth $861 billion, while Amazon’s market cap is $739 billion. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, fell to $709 billion during Monday’s trading session.
“Strong positioning for ramping public cloud adoption, large distribution channels and installed customer base, and improving margins support a path to $50 billion in [earnings before interest and taxes] and a $1 trillion market cap for [Microsoft],” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/microsoft-will-be-worth-1t-within-year-morgan-stanley
Security
- Apple’s Tim Cook calls for tougher regulation of personal data
In a discussion at the China Development Forum, Tim Cook said that tougher, “well-crafted” regulation of personal data is likely “necessary” in the wake of Facebook’s crisis. The ability to learn “every intimate detail of your life” through your internet history and contacts “shouldn’t exist,” Cook said.
He argued that Apple had been concerned about just this sort of privacy breach for a long time. It saw that were giving up info without understanding what they were doing, and that companies were creating profiles that would leave people “incredibly offended” when they learned the truth. This has happened “more than once,” Cook added.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/24/tim-cook-calls-for-tougher-regulation-of-personal-data/
- President signs overseas data access bill into law
The House of Representatives has approved a piece of legislation (PDF) that makes it easier for law enforcement to get access to info even if it’s stored in other countries. Officially known as Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, the set of regulations was part of the 2,000-page Omnibus Spending Bill the president has just signed. CLOUD was created to replace the current rules for cross-border access to data, which require requests for info to be ratified by the Senate and vetted by the DOJ. The new rules give the DOJ the power to obtain data US-based tech companies stored overseas, such as the Outlook emails Microsoft stores in Ireland. It also allows the agency to forge agreements with foreign governments seeking data from US tech corporations even without approval from Congress or the courts.
- Facebook has been collecting call history and SMS data from Android devices
While the recent prompts make it clear, Ars Technica points out the troubling aspect that Facebook has been doing this for years, during a time when Android permissions were a lot less strict. Google changed Android permissions to make them more clear and granular, but developers could bypass this and continue accessing call and SMS data until Google deprecated the old Android API in October.
Facebook has responded to the findings, but the company appears to suggest it’s normal for apps to access your phone call history when you upload contacts to social apps. “The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with,” says a Facebook spokesperson, in response to a query from Ars Technica. “So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts.”
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/25/17160944/facebook-call-history-sms-data-collection-android
Software/SaaS
- Oracle Wins Court Ruling Against Google in Multibillion-Dollar Copyright Case
The court ruled Tuesday that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java programming technology wasn’t “fair,” a reversal of fortune in a case that dates back to 2010, when Oracle alleged Google’s Android smartphone operating system infringed copyrights related to Oracle’s Java platform. Oracle has sought as much as $9 billion in damages previously. Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley said in an interview that “the value has gone up,” though the company hasn’t come up with an updated number.
The appeals court ruling, if it stands, could have a broad impact on the software industry by limiting the “fair-use” defense in copyright cases. That could make it more costly and technically complex for developers to use Java and other copyrighted software to create new products, legal and industry experts said.
- Google Is Working on Blockchain Technology, Too
The search company is developing its own distributed ledger blockchain software to verify transactions within its cloud services. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Google will use the technology internally as well as provide a white-label version that other companies can run on their own servers. These sources said that Google has looked at the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger blockchain software. But it’s unknown whether the company will ultimately choose that open source software or something else.
It’s also unknown precisely how Google might be planning to use blockchain. But Cointelegraph reported that the company filed a patent application for a tamper-proof auditing system based on the technology.
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-working-blockchain-technology/2018/03/
Datacenter/Hardware
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise to move HQ to San Jose
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is moving from Palo Alto to San Jose. The company will relocate 1,000 employees to a 220,000-square-foot space in late 2018. HPE was spun-off from Hewlett-Packard in 2015 and is focused on servers and storage.
This news comes months after HPE announced a different plan in which the company was moving to Santa Clara, where Aruba Networks, a company it previously acquired, is headquartered.
HPE is going to occupy six floors in San Jose’s America Center, which is located near a forthcoming Berryessa BART station.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/hewlett-packard-enterprise-to-move-hq-to-san-jose/
Other
- Mark Zuckerberg won’t lose his job any time soon
As chairman of the board, Zuckerberg controls 87 percent of Facebook voting shares. Even if the remaining eight board members wanted to kick him out, they don’t have the power to do so, unless Zuckerberg decides to play along and vote himself out.
This consolidation of power didn’t happen by accident. In December 2015, Zuckerberg pledged to give away 99 percent of his Facebook shares — valued at $45 billion at the time — to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a charitable organization he founded with his wife. In order to do this without reducing Zuckerberg’s majority on the board, Facebook took a page of out the Google founders’ handbook. It introduced a new type of non-voting stock, Class C, that split every share for every stockholder into three distinct shares. A share worth $100 was transformed into three $33 shares, two of which were Class C, meaning they didn’t carry any voting rights.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/29/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-job-security/
- SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia plan to spend $200 billion building the world’s biggest solar power plant
According to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the Saudi Arabian project is about 100 times larger than the next biggest proposed development, the 2 gigawatt Solar Choice Bulli Creek PV in Australia, which is expected to be completed by 2023.
During an event with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in New York City on Tuesday, Son said the project will create 100,000 jobs, triple Saudi Arabia’s electricity generation capacity and save $40 billion in power costs. Saudi Arabia is the largest crude exporter in the world, but the kingdom is currently trying to diversify its economy beyond oil. Last month, the government awarded ACWA Power a $302 million deal to build Saudi Arabia’s first utility-scale renewable energy plant.
- Stop us if you’ve heard this one: Job cuts at IBM
So far there is no word on the number of people who have been let go, and no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices from IBM have been filed in New York or California. However, multiple posts from both groups suggest a significant portion of the sales staff has been axed.
“Sales is getting hit hard especially over 50. My achievement was good, but now they are eliminating the territory,” says another person whose job was cut.
“They are guessing it could be 20-30 per cent of sales force.”
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/29/ibm_layoffs/
IBMers in TSS: How WILL we support customers after these latest job cuts?The document revealed staff are worried about the headcount that will be left to provide support to customers. In it, one ECC rep said he had “raised a concern that the proposed redundancies, in addition to attrition in the hardware domain, posed a significant business risk”. This was “noted” by IBM, it added.
IBMers have told us of individual teams being obliterated with, in some cases, more than half of the personnel set to leave. One told us: “I am being dumped on the scrap heap” by the latest cost cutting in the support unit.
“The out-of-hours support is being compromised to save money. IBM customers are paying for a service that will be depleted,” our source added.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/27/ibm_tss/
I keep saying this, but I do not understand why the company keeps going after services and consulting bids when they are cutting into those exact groups.
Photo by Elijah O’Donell on Unsplash