The Department of Defense’s huge cloud contract is still up for grabs and Amazon’s competitors are raising a stink about Amazon’s glaring advantage. The government RFP requires their hosting service to be able to handle data designated as top secret. At the moment, AWS is the only cloud hosting service to be certified to host information at that level.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg survived over 600 questions from Congress during a 2-day session. Almost every news outlet summarized the effort as boring, but agreed that Zuckerberg likely resolved the company’s issues with the government. He also made $3B while taking those questions.
IBM released a new “skinny mainframe” this week and Oracle helped to send a rival company’s CEO to jail (he did kind of deserve it).
Acquisitions
- HPE acquires leading Microsoft Azure partner to bolster cloud play
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has unveiled plans to acquire RedPixie, a cloud consultancy and application developer specialising in Microsoft Azure.
Terms of the deal – of which financial details were not disclosed – will see the tech giant merge the partner into its Pointnext division, in a bid to expand capabilities across hybrid cloud.
Headquartered in the UK, RedPixie specialises in cloud advisory services, as well as application development and migration offerings specific to moving workloads to the public cloud.
- KPMG Acquires Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integrator Adoxio
KPMG in Canada is acquiring Adoxio Business Solutions, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 integrator and gold-level partner. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close this month.
Adoxio has 80 employees across Canada and in the United States, including offices in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Regina and Redmond, Washington. The company serves roughly 300 customers worldwide, including Dynamics 365 clientele within multiple vertical markets — particularly public sector, regulatory, manufacturing, retail and energy.
https://www.channele2e.com/investors/exits/kpmg-acquires-microsoft-dynamics-365-integrator-adoxio/
Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence Becoming Top Corporate Spending Priority
“We expect market share will continue to shift among leading vendors given the infancy of the AI/machine learning market,” Huberty said.
Chief information officers surveyed by Morgan Stanley on average expect their information technology spending to rise 5.8% this year.
“This is the most bullish CIOs have ever been in overall IT budget growth in the past 10 years,” Huberty said.
Cloud computing and security are the top priorities, followed by digital transformation initiatives, she said. AI and machine learning initiatives ranked sixth in the latest survey, up from No. 20 a year ago.
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/artificial-intelligence-ai-spending/
Cloud
- Don’t count on Amazon winning the $10 billion Defense Department deal — it’s still wide open
U.S. Navy Commander Patrick Evans, a Department of Defense spokesperson, reiterated that the Pentagon’s process is “transparent” and will remain “a full and open competition.”
“No companies were pre-selected. We have no favorites, and we want the best solution for the department,” Evans told CNBC.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White also addressed speculation Thursday that Amazon was in the lead to take the lucrative defense contract.
“The secretary has been very clear that we need to be good stewards of the American people’s money,” White said. “So, nothing is taken for granted and nothing is presumed. We will get a full, open and transparent competition, and this is the first of many competitions with respect to the cloud.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/aws-not-close-to-winning-jedi-government-cloud-deal.html
- Amazon’s Rivals Fear They Will Lose Out on Pentagon’s Cloud-Computing Contract
One of the greatest advantages Amazon has is the Pentagon’s insistence that bidders provide a cloud that can handle unclassified, secret and top-secret data. Only Amazon so far has received government approvals to house its most highly classified data in the cloud, though representatives from other companies said they are making progress toward earning the same certification.
Mr. Van Name said the Pentagon believes a number of companies, including Amazon, are qualified to produce what the Defense Department is demanding in the contract. The department also says companies could form a joint venture to meet the qualifications to win the award.
Pentagon officials plan to offer the contract as a two-year base award, followed by options of five and three years, respectively, Mr. Van Name said. The department hopes to award the contract by the end of September.
Security
- Zuckerberg’s boring testimony is a big win for Facebook
By the conclusion of the five hours of questioning, the senators themselves were admitting they hadn’t watched the day’s full testimony. Viewers at home had likely returned to their lives. Even the press corps’ eyes were glazing over. But Zuckerberg was prepared for the marathon. He maintained pace through the finish line. And he made it clear why marathons aren’t TV spectator sports.
The question is no longer what revelations would come from Mr. Zuckerberg going to Washington. Tomorrow’s testimony is likely to go similarly. It’s whether Facebook can coherently execute on the data privacy promises it made leading up to today. This will be a “never-ending battle” as Zuckerberg said, dragging out over many years. And again, that’s in Facebook’s interest. Because in the meantime, everyone’s going back to scrolling their feeds.
Datacenter/Hardware
- IBM announces launch of ‘skinny’ mainframe
The IBM z14 Model ZR1, launched today, is a cloud-ready system with a 19-inch server rack that can easily fit into any standard cloud centre or private cloud environment, a shift from the traditional, bulky pieces of hardware that can barely fit anywhere and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
IBM says the new z14 offers 10 per cent more capacity and approximately 8 terabytes of memory, twice the amount compared to its predecessor, the z13 mainframe.
https://www.computerdealernews.com/news/ibm-announces-skinny-mainframe/59330
Other
- The CEO of one of Oracle’s rivals has been sentenced to 2 years of prison — and Oracle is ‘pleased’
“Oracle is pleased that the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio accepted the guilty pleas of James Olding and Bernd Appleby, the principals of Terix, for their roles in misappropriating Oracle’s intellectual property and sentenced them both to prison for their criminal acts,” says Oracle spokesperson Deborah Hellinger.
“Oracle takes violations of its intellectual property rights very seriously and, as demonstrated by Oracle’s lawsuits against Terix, Rimini Street and other IP violators, Oracle will not hesitate to go after those who do so. Oracle appreciates the fine work of the law enforcement officials whose efforts led to the criminal penalties assessed against Terix’s principals,” she said.
Photo by Jennifer Regnier on Unsplash