Photo by Runde Imaging on Unsplash
Remember when Foxconn was supposed to bring 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin? The number is down to 1,500 according to the current Governor. Meanwhile Amazon thinks they are going to have a talent shortage in the future and is committed to re-training 1,000 workers in more advanced technical skills.
Oracle has lost their legal challenge to the Pentagon over their treatment in the never-ending JEDI cloud contract. With this ruling, Oracle is officially done and everyone can move on with our lives.
Finally – Facebook got fined $5B for all the security flaws and election issues it caused over the last few years (Facebook made $55B last year).
Acquisitions/Investments
- Cisco to Buy Acacia Communications for About $2.6 Billion
Acacia, a Maynard, Mass.-based maker of optical interconnect technologies like modules and semiconductors, derived roughly 14% of its $339.9 million in revenue last year from Cisco. Acacia was formed in 2009 and went public in May 2016.
Cisco said Acacia’s technology will enable users of its hardware to drive more data over high-speed internet networks. Cisco executives said the company is looking to take advantage of a growing trend of customers migrating to pluggable technology from chassis-based systems. Pluggable modules give network operators a more efficient way to increase the data that runs over networks.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-to-buy-acacia-communications-for-about-2-6-billion-11562675698
- Google acquires enterprise cloud storage provider Elastifile
Google today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Elastifile, a Santa Clara, California-based provider of enterprise cloud file storage solutions, for an undisclosed price. (CTech cited an anonymous source as saying Google is paying around $200 million.) Assuming the acquisition passes regulatory muster, the search giant expects it to be completed later this year, at which point the Elastifile team will join Google Cloud.
Perhaps uncoincidentally, this news comes on the heels of the launch of Elastifile File Service on Google Cloud Platform, a fully managed version of Elastifile optimized for Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian wrote in a blog post that Elastifle will be integrated with Google Cloud Filestore in the coming months.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/09/google-acquires-enterprise-cloud-storage-provider-elastifile/
- IBM closes Red Hat acquisition for $34 billion
IBM originally announced its intent to acquire the Linux developer in October of last year. The U.S. Department of Justice gave its stamp of approval in May, and the last big potential roadblock was removed when the EU gave its unconditional approval at the end of June.
IBM says that Red Hat will stay under the watch of CEO Jim Whitehurst, with Whitehurst joining IBM’s senior management and reporting directly to IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/09/ibm-closes-red-hat-acquisition-for-34-billion/
Artificial Intelligence
- AI smokes 5 poker champs at a time in no-limit Hold’em with ‘relentless consistency’
With six players, the possibilities for hands, bets and possible outcomes are so numerous that it is effectively impossible to account for all of them, especially in a minute or less. It’d be like trying to exhaustively document every grain of sand on a beach between waves.
Yet over 10,000 hands played with champions, Pluribus managed to win money at a steady rate, exposing no weaknesses or habits that its opponents could take advantage of. What’s the secret? Consistent randomness.
Cloud
- Oracle loses court challenge to $10 billion cloud contract
Federal Claims Court Senior Judge Eric Bruggink dismissed the company’s argument that the contract violates federal procurement laws and is unfairly tainted by conflicts of interests.
Bruggink said that because Oracle didn’t meet the criteria for the bid, it “cannot demonstrate prejudice as a result of other possible errors in the procurement process.”
The decision is a major blow to Oracle, which risks losing a share of its federal defense business if the Pentagon awards the contract to another cloud company. The ruling also eliminates a headache for the Pentagon, which has been fending off challenges to its winner-take-all strategy in the cloud contract for more than a year.
Security/Privacy
- Facebook’s $5 billion FTC fine is an embarrassing joke
That’s actually the real problem here: fines and punishments are only effective when they provide negative consequences for bad behavior. But Facebook has done nothing but behave badly from inception, and it has only ever been slapped on the wrist by authority figures and rewarded by the market. After all, Facebook was already under a previous FTC consent decree for privacy violations imposed in 2011, and that didn’t seem to stop any of the company’s recent scandals from happening. As Kara Swisher has written, you have to add another zero to this fine to make it mean anything.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20692524/facebook-five-billion-ftc-fine-embarrassing-joke
Other
- Amazon to Retrain a Third of Its U.S. Workforce
Amazon’s promise to upgrade the skills of its workforce—reported by The Wall Street Journal Thursday—represents one of the biggest corporate retraining initiatives on record, and breaks down to about $7,000 per worker, or about $1,200 a year through 2025. By comparison, large employers with 10,000 workers or more that were surveyed by the Association for Talent Development reported spending an average of $500 per worker on training in 2017.
Amazon said it would retrain 100,000 workers in total by expanding existing training programs and rolling out new ones meant to help its employees move into more-advanced jobs inside the company or find new careers outside of it. The training is voluntary and mostly free for employees and won’t obligate participants to remain at Amazon, the Seattle-based company said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-retrain-a-third-of-its-u-s-workforce-11562841120
- Foxconn will only create 1,500 jobs, says Wisconsin governor
The Foxconn factory in Wisconsin will only create 1,500 jobs when it starts production next May, Gov. Tony Evers told CNBC yesterday. That’s the same number Foxconn has been saying since it shifted plans for the factory a few months ago, and far short of the 13,000 jobs that were promised when President Trump broke ground a year ago. Evers has been negotiating with Foxconn since he replaced former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and he says he now has “clarity” on Foxconn’s plans.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20689021/foxconn-wisconsin-governor-jobs-tony-evers-manufacturing
- The Fortune 500 has a new woman CEO: Accenture’s Julie Sweet
The consulting company said Thursday that Sweet, 51, will take the top job in September. She’s currently the head of Accenture’s North America business, which accounts for almost 50% of the company’s global revenues.
“Julie is the right person to lead Accenture into the future, given her strong command of our business and proven ability to drive results in our largest market,” David Rowland, the company’s interim CEO and incoming executive chairman, said in a statement.
Sweet joined Accenture (ACN) in 2010. She served as the company’s general counsel after 10 years as a partner at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/12/business/accenture-julie-sweet/index.html