Photo by Priya Berks on Unsplash
August was a hot month for M&A. There is even more purchasing activity by Microsoft, Splunk, and WordPress (reinforcing how inept Yahoo leadership was during their last few years of independence).
Oracle is facing a revolt from their shareholders over the 2016 acquisition of NetSuite (which Oracle founder Larry Ellison had a significant personal stake in). Oracle isn’t making the strides they need to in the cloud space and NetSuite has not yet become the sales driver it was promised to be.
President Trump (and the rest of the US) and China seem destined for a trade war. Cisco and Apple have cited China as a cause for sales projections to drop.
Acquisitions/Investments
- Splunk acquires cloud monitoring service SignalFx for $1.05B
SignalFx, which emerged from stealth in 2015, provides real-time cloud monitoring solutions, predictive analytics and more. Upon close, Splunk argues, this acquisition will allow it to become a leader “in observability and APM for organizations at every stage of their cloud journey, from cloud-native apps to homegrown on-premises applications.”
Indeed, the acquisition will likely make Splunk a far stronger player in the cloud space as it expands its support for cloud-native applications and the modern infrastructures and architectures those rely on.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/21/splunk-acquires-cloud-monitoring-service-signalfx-for-1-05b/
- Microsoft acquires jClarity, a Java performance tuning tool
Microsoft announced this morning that it was acquiring jClarity, a service designed to tune the performance of Java applications. It will be doing that on Azure from now on. In addition, the company has been offering a flavor of Java called AdoptOpenJDK, which they bill as a free alternative to Oracle Java. The companies did not discuss the terms of the deal.
As Microsoft pointed out in a blog post announcing the acquisition, they are seeing increasing use of large-scale Java installations on Azure, both internally with platforms like Minecraft and externally with large customers, including Daimler and Adobe.
- Verizon to Sell Tumblr to WordPress.com Owner
Verizon Communications Inc. has agreed to sell its blogging website Tumblr to the owner of popular online-publishing tool WordPress.com, unloading for a nominal amount a site that once fetched a purchase price of more than $1 billion.
Automattic Inc. will buy Tumblr for an undisclosed sum and take on about 200 staffers, the companies said. Tumblr is a free service that hosts millions of blogs where users can upload photos, music and art, but it has been dwarfed by Facebook , Reddit and other services.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-sell-tumblr-to-wordpress-owner-11565640000
Does anybody want to guess how much Automattic is actually paying? I would say less than $100M. Yahoo was insane to pay $1B for this platform, and Verizon was insane to ban the thing that made people use it.Update: Tumbler was reportedly purchased for $3M
- Oracle is suing Larry Ellison and Safra Catz over the $9 billion
The subject of the lawsuit is Oracle’s $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite in 2016, a deal in which a company that Ellison controls — Oracle — paid a premium price to buy a company that Ellison owned. Ellison was NetSuite’s founder and largest shareholder, with a roughly 40% stake.
The lead lawyer for Firemen’s Retirement System, Joel Friedlander, also said in a hearing in June “We’re seeking multiple billions of dollars in damages.”
While tossing a multi-billion figure around a hearing is sometimes just lawyerly bravado, in this case, there’s some meat to that number. The NetSuite deal put about $3.5 billion in cash from Oracle’s coffers into Ellison’s pocket.
- VMware says it’s looking to acquire Pivotal
VMware today confirmed that it is in talks to acquire software development platform Pivotal Software, the service best known for commercializing the open-source Cloud Foundry platform. The proposed transaction would see VMware acquire all outstanding Pivotal Class A stock for $15 per share, a significant markup over Pivotal’s current share price (which unsurprisingly shot up right after the announcement).
Pivotal’s shares have struggled since the company’s IPO in April 2018. The company was originally spun out of EMC Corporation (now DellEMC) and VMware in 2012 to focus on Cloud Foundry, an open-source software development platform that is currently in use by the majority of Fortune 500 companies.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/14/vmware-says-its-looking-to-acquire-pivotal/
Artificial Intelligence
- Amazon’s AI Can Now Identify Fear
For those who haven’t heard of the Big Brother-esque Rekognition software, it’s basically a system of neural nets trained on big data (i.e. a ton of photographs and videos) to identify and label objects such as text, activities, “inappropriate behavior,” people, and faces. And if you think Big Brother-esque is a bit of a stretch to describe Rekognition, keep in mind that it’s already being deployed by law enforcement to identify people’s faces. Which isn’t necessarily a bad application in itself, but let your imagination run wild and things could quickly evolve into a Philip K. Dick novel.
While fear was specifically noted by Amazon as a new emotion that Rekognition can identify, it’s actually only one addition to a number of improvements the AI is making. Along with identifying emotions, Amazon says that Rekognition is now also better at spotting gender and age range. Combined with the aforementioned list of other objects that Rekognition can identify, it’s clear that Amazon wants this software to be able detect and label absolutely any type of image you throw at it.
https://nerdist.com/article/amazon-rekognition-ai-identify-fear/
- IBM joins Linux Foundation AI to promote open source trusted AI workflows
As a Linux Foundation project, the LF AI Foundation provides a vendor-neutral space for the promotion of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) open source projects. It’s backed by major organizations like AT&T, Baidu, Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei.
IBM has a long history of supporting open source, and Moore explained why it’s the right way to quickly raise the bar when it comes to building trustworthy AI. “To get all of us working together, iterating quickly, can cover a lot more ground than any single company can,” he said.
On top of that, supporting open source projects has the added benefit of expanding the market opportunity for AI vendors like IBM. The goal, Moore said, is to build tools that improve the credibility of AI — and “to do it together, in a way that everybody can inspect and contribute to.”
Cloud
- IBM updates cloud-native software with Red Hat OpenShift
Overall, IBM has unveiled more than 100 new and/or updated software products and services across its Red Hat OpenShift-optimized software portfolio. These new solutions will be delivered on IBM’s hybrid multicloud platform, which is built using open source technologies just like Red Hat OpenShift.
Some of the new services that are optimized for this open source environment include Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z and LinuxONE. Additionally, IBM has unveiled new consulting and technology services delivered by Red Hat certified consultants and application services practitioners. These services are designed to help users better move, build, and manage their workloads in various cloud environments, while also providing a consistent and simplified experience across clouds.
Security/Privacy
- Huawei employees reportedly aided African governments in spying
The report cites unnamed senior surveillance officers. The paper adds that an investigation didn’t confirm a direct tie between the Chinese government or Huawei executives. It did, however, appear to confirm that employees for the tech giant played a part in intercepting communications.
The list includes encrypted messages, the use of apps like WhatsApp and Skype and tracking opponents using cellular data.
A representative for Zambia’s ruling party confirmed with the paper that Huawei technicians have helped in the fight against news sites with opposing stances in the country, stating, “Whenever we want to track down perpetrators of fake news, we ask Zicta, which is the lead agency. They work with Huawei to ensure that people don’t use our telecommunications space to spread fake news.”
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/14/huawei-employees-reportedly-aided-african-governments-in-spying/
Infrastructure/Hardware
- Cisco drops on poor guidance, says China business dropped 25%
“What we’ve seen is in the state on enterprises … we’re just being — we’re being uninvited to bid,” Robbins said. “We’re not being allowed to even participate anymore.” Sales to carriers declined more forcefully as well, he said.
The majority of Cisco’s revenue comes from sales of data center networking products, including switches and routers. That business is represented by Cisco’s Infrastructure Platforms segment, which came up with quarterly revenue of $7.88 billion, above the $7.84 billion consensus among analyst polled by FactSet.
The Applications segment had $1.49 billion in revenue, in line with the $1.49 billion FactSet analyst consensus. Cisco’s Security business contributed $714 million in revenue, less than $739.9 million FactSet consensus estimate.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/14/cisco-falls-on-soft-guidance.html
Other
- How Facebook Is Changing to Deal With Scrutiny of Its Power
Late last year, Facebook halted acquisition talks with Houseparty, a video-focused social network in Silicon Valley, for fear of inciting antitrust concerns, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Acquiring another social network after Facebook was already such a dominant player in that market was too risky, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be identified because the discussions were confidential.
Facebook has also begun internal changes that make itself harder to break up. The company has been knitting together the messaging systems of Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and has reorganized the departments so that Facebook is more clearly in charge, said two people briefed on the matter. Executives have also worked on rebranding Instagram and WhatsApp to more prominently associate them with Facebook.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/technology/facebook-antitrust.html
- Trump retaliates in trade war by escalating tariffs on Chinese imports and demanding companies cut ties with China
Trump initially directed his ire at Powell in Friday tweets, painting the Fed’s lack of monetary easing as a greater threat to American workers and businesses. “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” he tweeted.
Moments later, he demanded American companies cut ties with China.
“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA,” Trump tweeted.
- HP CEO steps down, citing ‘family health matter’
HP Inc. announced this afternoon that Dion Weisler is stepping down as president and CEO. The executive cited a “family health matter” in his decision, noting that he will be returning home to Australia.
The company already has a successor lined up, as its president of Imaging, Printing and Solutions, Enrique Lores, got unanimous approval from its board of directors. Lores will be assuming the top spot on November 1.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/hp-ceo-steps-down-citing-family-health-matter/
