Tag: Adobe

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Supplier Report: 4/5/2019

March went out with a fizzle when it came to major tech news, but there are a few trends to be aware of…

The EU continues to regulate complex technology with far reaching effects on European users and the entire global population. If critics are correct, the EU’s Copyright Directive Article 13 could split the internet in 3 (Europe, China, and the rest of the world).

Microsoft is showing more aggression against SalesForce via partnerships with Adobe and SAP to leverage LinkedIn to improve marketing integrations and to ensure customers have an easier time moving their cloud data around.

…And Google is getting back into robotics.

Acquisitions

  • Alibaba has acquired Teambition, a China-based Trello and Asana rival, in its enterprise push

    There were rumors of an acquisition circulating yesterday in Chinese media. Alibaba has now confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch but declined to provide any other details.

    Teambition had raised about $17 million in funding since 2013, with investors including Tencent, Microsoft, IDG Capital and Gobi Ventures. Gobi also manages investments on behalf of Alibaba, and that might have been one route to how the two became acquainted. Alibaba’s last acquisition in enterprise was German big data startup Data Artisans for $103 million.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/alibaba-has-acquired-teambition-a-china-based-trello-and-asana-rival-in-its-enterprise-push/

  • Daimler Trucks buys a majority stake in self-driving tech company Torc Robotics

    Daimler Trucks is the world’s largest truck manufacturer and a division of the larger Daimler Group.

    Torc, meanwhile, was founded in 2005. For most of its history, it specialized in self-driving software and sensors for commercial, industrial and military use, before recently shifting its attention to consumer vehicles. Earlier this year, it announced a partnership with public transportation company Transdev to create autonomous shuttles that connect people to transit.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/daimler-acquires-torc-robotics/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google is taking a cautious step back into the world of robotics

    The new operation is simply named Robotics at Google and will be led by AI scientist Vincent Vanhoucke. According to the Times, Google is focusing on using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp objects and navigate environments, but it’s far from clear where the company’s ambitions in this area lie.

    Although Google is a pioneer in AI research, its efforts in robotics have produced no commercial successes to date. The company’s last significant foray into the field started in 2013 with a program named “Replicant” led by Android co-founder Andy Rubin. An initial flurry of activity led to the purchase of six up-and-coming robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics and DARPA challenge winner Schaft.

    But these efforts stuttered, likely because the ambitious machines Google purchased were far away from commercialization

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283645/google-robotics-program-ai-manipulation-vincent-vanhoucke

Cloud

  • Sundar Pichai met with President Trump about Google’s ‘commitment to working with the US government’

    “I just met with Sundar Pichai, President of Google, who is obviously doing quite well,” President Trump tweeted after the meeting. “He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military. [We] also discussed political fairness and various things that Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!”

    Reached by The Verge, Google confirmed the meeting and its subject matter. “We were pleased to have productive conversations with the President about investing in the future of the American workforce, the growth of emerging technologies and our ongoing commitment to working with the U.S. government,” a Google representative said in a statement.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18284415/sundar-pichai-donald-trump-meeting-white-house

  • Microsoft, Adobe and SAP prepare to expand their Open Data Initiative

    The core principle of the alliance is that the customers own their data and they should be able to get as much value out of it as they can. Ideally, having this common data schema means that the customer doesn’t have to figure out ways to transform the data from these vendors and can simply flow all of it into a single data lake that then in turn feeds the various analytics services, machine learning systems and other tools that these companies offer.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/27/microsoft-adobe-and-sap-prepare-to-expand-their-open-data-initiative/

Security

  • Android users’ security and privacy at risk from shadowy ecosystem of pre-installed software, study warns

    The researchers behind the paper, which has been published in preliminary form ahead of a future presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, unearthed a complex ecosystem of players with a primary focus on advertising and “data-driven services” — which they argue the average Android user is unlikely to be unaware of (while also likely lacking the ability to uninstall/evade the baked in software’s privileged access to data and resources themselves).

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/25/android-users-security-and-privacy-at-risk-from-shadowy-ecosystem-of-pre-installed-software-study-warns/

  • How IBM is Rethinking its Data Protection Line-Up

    In this particular case, data protection, you now have two products:

    IBM Spectrum Data Protect: the good, old, TSM. While this product is one of those that have written Backup’s history and supports a myriad of Operating Systems and applications as well as backup, it is complex to operate and designed for large environments. Furthermore, it was designed well before the advent of hypervisors and modern applications, making it really tough to protect this environment efficiently.

    IBM Data Protect Plus: a new product designed from the ground up for modern environments, including hypervisors, NoSQL DBs and more. It has a very modern snapshot-based design that pairs nicely with VMWARE CBT (change block tracking) for example. It’s easy to use and can be adopted by IT organizations of all sizes.

    https://gigaom.com/2019/03/29/how-ibm-is-rethinking-its-data-protection-line-up/

Software/SaaS

  • Adobe, Microsoft team to take on Salesforce

    Adobe (ADBE) today announced an extension of its partnership with Microsoft and a new integration with LinkedIn that will accelerate account-based experiences (ABX) through new marketing solution integrations. Adobe and Microsoft are aligning key data sources to populate account-based profiles in Adobe Experience Cloud, including Marketo Engage and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales. This will empower B2B marketers and sellers to easily identify, understand and engage B2B customer buying teams. This partnership will drive better orchestration, measurement and delivery of targeted content for a more personalized experience at both the individual and account level on key B2B platforms like LinkedIn.

    https://seekingalpha.com/news/3445688-adobe-microsoft-team-take-salesforce

  • Cisco CEO: ‘People Didn’t Think We Could Do’ Network Subscriptions

    Robbins says the company is “on track” to meet its pledge to have software and services account for 30 percent of its revenue over the next three years.

    Cisco’s focus on software and services is helping ePlus not only gain new customers, but go deeper with its existing client base, he said. It’s also making the renewal process a “nonevent.”

    “When you start selling software in a multi-year fashion, you don’t want to sell services only when it’s time to do the renewal,” he said. “The solutions we are selling today are taking a different course in terms of how we interact with customers to make them successful.”

    https://www.crn.com/news/networking/cisco-ceo-people-didn-t-think-we-could-do-network-subscriptions

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Tech companies not ‘comfortable’ storing data in Australia, Microsoft warns

    This week the Australian tech industry renewed calls for further amendments to controversial encryption-cracking legislation at an industry forum in Sydney.

    Also on Wednesday, Labor’s spokesman on the digital economy, Ed Husic, told the StartupAus forum in Sydney he wished he could “turn back time”, expressing regret for Labor’s role in passing the bill and explaining the opposition feared it would be blamed for a terrorist attack over Christmas if it refused.

    In Canberra, Smith told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia the law had not yet changed Microsoft’s operations in Australia, but the company was worried about the law’s “potential consequences”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/27/tech-companies-not-comfortable-storing-data-in-australia-microsoft-warns

Other

  • Europe is splitting the internet into three

    Despite setbacks, the most controversial clauses of the Copyright Directive — Article 11 or the ‘link tax’ and Article 13 — have remained pretty much intact.

    Article 11 lets publishers charge platforms like Google News when they display snippets of news stories, while Article 13 (renamed Article 17 in the most recent draft of the legislation) gives sites like YouTube new duties to stop users from uploading copyrighted content.

    In both cases, critics say these well-intentioned laws will lead to trouble. Article 13, they say, will lead to the widespread introduction of “upload filter,” that will scan all user content uploaded to sites to remove copyrighted material. The law does not explicitly call for such filters, but critics say it will be an inevitability as sites seek to avoid penalties.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283541/european-union-copyright-directive-internet-article-13

  • IBM purged “gray hairs” and “old heads” as it launched “Millennial Corps”: lawsuit

    “In 2015 and 2016, IBM doubled down on its efforts to replace its long-tenured, older employees with the younger Millennials it sought to recruit,” the suit alleged. “IBM made presentations to its senior executives calling for IBM to evaluate its long-term employees more harshly, to use those negative evaluations to justify selecting long-term employees for lay-off, and to replace these employees with ‘EPs’– IBM management short-hand for ‘early professionals.’”

    A 2016 presentation concerning one section of the company “specifically called for managers to exempt all ‘early professional hires’ from layoff, regardless of performance,” the suit claimed. “The long-serving, older employees were provided no such exemption.”

    https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/28/ibm-ageism-lawsuit-millennial-corps/

  • Amazon To Create 800 New Jobs At Austin Tech Hub

    In a press release, Amazon said the jobs will be in the areas of software and hardware engineering, research science and cloud computing. Amazon said that since it opened its Austin Tech Hub, it has created more than 22,000 full-time jobs in Texas and has invested more than $7 billion in the state, including on infrastructure and compensation to workers.

    “In the last four years, we have created more than 1,000 jobs in Austin,” said Terry Leeper, general manager of Amazon’s Austin Tech Hub, in the press release. “With a strong pool of technical talent in Austin and a dynamic quality of life, we are excited to continue to expand and create more opportunity in this vibrant city.”

    https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2019/austin-tech-hub-jobs-ecommerce/

Photo by Kido Dong on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 9/21/2018

The Source: China Trade Wars

The trade war with China might actually happen. Alibaba is backing off a promise to bring 1 million jobs to the United States due to President Trump’s impending tariffs. Some believe Jack Ma is using this latest news to back out of something he had no intention of delivering on.

Amazon might have a corporate espionage issue, Intel is having a hard time keeping up with demand, and some trendy tech firms are over San Francisco.

Acquisitions

  • Time Magazine Sold to Salesforce Founder Marc Benioff for $190 Million

    Nearly eight months after Meredith Corp.completed its purchase of Time Inc., the publisher has agreed to sell Time magazine for $190 million to Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce.com , CRM and his wife Lynne Benioff.

    The proposed sale is expected to close within 30 days. The Benioffs are buying Time as individuals; the agreement is unrelated to Salesforce.com, where Mr. Benioff also serves as chairman and co-chief executive.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-magazine-sold-to-salesforce-founder-marc-benioff-for-190-million-1537137165?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Adobe Buys Marketing-Automation Firm Marketo for $4.75 Billion

    The deal is expected to add scale to Adobe’s existing marketing-technology capabilities. It also will bolster the company’s clout with business-to-business brands, which make up the bulk of Marketo’s customer base. Reuters earlier reported that Adobe and Marketo were in talks.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/adobe-buys-marketing-automation-firm-marketo-for-4-75-billion-1537473995

  • MariaDB acquires Clustrix

    MariaDB, the company behind the eponymous MySQL drop-in replacement database, today announced that it has acquired Clustrix, which itself is a MySQL drop-in replacement database, but with a focus on scalability. MariaDB will integrate Clustrix’s technology into its own database, which will allow it to offer its users a more scalable database service in the long run.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/20/mariadb-acquires-clusterix/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Top Healthcare AI Trends To Watch

    AI faces both technical and feasibility challenges that are unique to the healthcare industry. For example, there’s no standard format or central repository of patient data in the United States.

    When patient files are faxed, emailed as unreadable PDFs, or sent as images of handwritten notes, extracting information poses a unique challenge for AI.

    But big tech companies like Apple have an edge here, especially in onboarding a large network of partners, including healthcare providers and EHR vendors.

    https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/ai-trends-healthcare/

Security

  • Your Network Has Been Hacked. You Have 72 Hours to Report It.

    The fast turnaround creates a challenge for companies. “The biggest challenge is knowing enough about the incident to actually report it,” says Jim Routh, chief security officer at Aetna Inc. AET -0.25% “We have to do some analysis to figure out what the scope or impact is, and it’s often days before we have that identified.”

    Aetna meets that challenge by informing regulators almost immediately upon learning of a possible breach and then updating them as the company learns more, Mr. Routh says.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-network-has-been-hacked-you-have-72-hours-to-report-it-1537322400

  • Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

    Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries, are offering internal data and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the data, as well as brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations.

    The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which might embolden them to take risks.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-investigates-employees-leaking-data-for-bribes-1537106401

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle missed Wall Street revenue targets and the stock is tumbling.

    Business software maker Oracle Corp on Monday missed revenue estimates for the first quarter, as sales in its cloud services and license support unit disappointed, sending its shares down 5 percent in extended trading.

    Revenue from the unit, its biggest division by sales, rose 3.2 percent to $6.61 billion, missing the average analyst estimate of $6.71 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/r-oracle-first-quarter-revenue-up-1-percent-2018-9

  • Oracle Buys Its Way to Stability

    About $10 billion was spent during the quarter on 212 million shares, the company said in its conference call. That makes for a record amount for the company in a given quarter and brings the total spent on buybacks over the past 12 months to about $21 billion. Oracle has averaged a little more than $7 billion in buybacks on an annual basis over its past nine fiscal years, according to S&P Capital IQ.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-buys-its-way-to-stability-1537296117
    IBM was doing this for years and only just recently stopped.

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Intel’s Shortages Chip Away at Micron

    Intel, in other words, has many demanding customers competing for a finite amount of manufacturing capacity. And while the company has already boosted its planned capital expenditure for the year by $1 billion, such facilities can’t be expanded quickly—especially while the company is struggling to shift some of its production to a new, more advanced 10-nanometer process. That makes it difficult to respond to rapid changes in the market, like the recent surprising jump in PC demand. Second quarter PC shipments grew globally for the first time in six years, according to Gartner.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/intels-shortages-chip-away-at-micron-1537512343?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Other

  • Trump Hits China With Tariffs on $200 Billion in Goods, Escalating Trade War

    The tariffs on $200 billion worth of products comes on top of the $50 billion worth already taxed earlier this year, meaning nearly half of all Chinese imports into the United States will soon face levies. The next wave of tariffs, which are scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 24, will start at 10 percent before climbing to 25 percent on Jan. 1. The timing of the staggered increase will partially reduce the toll of price increases for holiday shoppers buying Chinese imports in the coming months.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/us/politics/trump-china-tariffs-trade.html

    Alibaba will no longer bring 1 million jobs to the US, citing tariffs

    Ma told Chinese state-run news outlet Xinhua today that his promise was based on the assumption that the US and China would have “rational trade relations,” which is no longer the case. “This promise was based on friendly US-China partnership and rational trade relations,” Ma said. “The current situation has already ruined that. There is no way to complete the promise now, but we won’t stop working hard to promote the healthy development of China-US trade.” Last week, Ma announced his plans to retire this year and hand over the company to its current CEO. He denied rumors that he was being forced out.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17879844/alibaba-us-jobs-tariffs

  • Tech expansion: Up and out of SF

    The unemployment and office vacancy rates in San Francisco are near historic lows, while tech stocks, including Salesforce, have set new highs. Housing prices continue to soar, with few homes coming on the market. For San Francisco’s fastest-growing businesses, there are two places to put employees: up or out. The answer is often both, with software engineers more typically getting the pricey space in new towers at headquarters and support and sales going to cheaper, roomier cities.

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/For-San-Francisco-s-fast-growing-tech-13227433.php

  • Google Employees Are Quitting Over The Company’s Secretive China Search Project

    When Poulson resigned in August, he said he only planned to share his concerns about Dragonfly with those inside Google. But when Google didn’t respond to a group of human rights organizations that presented it with a letter arguing that Dragonfly is unethical and asking the company to kill the project, Poulson felt compelled to share his opinion with the public.

    “I’m offended that no weight has been given to the human rights community having a consensus,” he said. “If you have coalition letter from 14 human rights organizations, and that can’t even make it into the discussions on the ethics behind a decision, I’d rather stand with the human rights organizations in this dispute.”

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/google-project-dragonfly-employees-quitting

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Supplier Report: 6/22/2018

Source Report: Argumentative AI: Joey Lombardi: Jon Tyson

IBM was in the news this week for (mostly) all the right reasons… they bought a company and they developed an argumentative AI. Can this breakthrough actually bring in money for Big Blue?

Oracle reported decent earnings this quarter, but their stock still took a hit. In the following days, many articles highlighted that Oracle is combining certain sales metrics to hide the exact number of cloud sales happening (vs. legacy software).

Amazon shareholders are begging the company not to move forward with providing law enforcement facial recognition software that has been in development citing potential civil rights violations.

Acquisitions

  • IBM acquires Oniqua to bolster its Industrial IoT business

    Founded in 2000, Qniqua is a global innovator in Maintenance Repair and Operations (MRO) Inventory Optimization solutions and services focused on mining, oil & gas, transportation, utilities, manufacturing and other asset-intensive industries. Qniqua’s focus is on helping asset-intensive companies reduce costs and eliminate waste through advanced analytics and value services. It’s our pursuit and our passion, and one that every Oniqua employee is committed to delivering.

    https://techstartups.com/2018/06/15/ibm-acquires-oniqua-bolster-industrial-iot-business/

  • The court’s decision to let AT&T and Time Warner merge is ridiculously bad

    But neither Facebook nor Google owns the ultimate distribution layer of the consumer connection to the internet. They aren’t the world’s largest telecom company. Neither is Netflix or Amazon or any of the other companies AT&T and Time Warner are afraid of. (Yes, I know Google owns Google Fiber, but that has been more failure than success.)

    Tech companies might have vertically integrated the creation and production of content with consumer-facing apps and services, but they all depend on internet connections to reach their audiences. And those connections are increasingly wireless. AT&T and Time Warner aren’t trying to catch up to Netflix by merging; they’re trying to step ahead of them in line by marrying Time Warner’s content to AT&T’s network.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/15/17468612/att-time-warner-acquisition-court-decision

  • AT&T in Talks to Acquire AppNexus for About $1.6 Billion

    Acquiring AppNexus would advance AT&T’s ambitions to build a robust advertising business. AppNexus operates one of the largest online ad exchanges, automated marketplaces that allow advertisers to buy space across thousands of websites, targeting their desired audiences.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-in-talks-to-acquire-appnexus-for-about-1-6-billion-1529464400

  • Microsoft is buying AI startup, Bonsai

    The company specializes in reinforcement learning, a kind of trial and error approach to teach a system within the confines of a simulation. That learning can be used to train autonomous systems to complete specific tasks. Microsoft says the acquisition will serve to forward the kind of research the company has been pursuing in the field by leveraging its Azure cloud platform.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/20/microsoft-is-buying-a-ai-startup-bonsai/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Watson Health downsizes its work with hospitals

    IBM Watson Health leadership reportedly told employees June 13 it plans to refocus its business strategy, which includes cutting down on its work with hospital clients, according to STAT.

    Because of changes to the ACA, hospitals aren’t as willing to spend resources managing their pay-for-performance contracts, executives told employees, although they did not specify which changes to the law are affecting the shift in IBM’s strategy. STAT suggested the main driver could be some of the changes the Trump administration made to the law’s reimbursement models.

    https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/stat-ibm-watson-health-downsizes-its-work-with-hospitals.html

  • IBM Unveils System That ‘Debates’ With Humans

    IBM’s system was designed to debate about 100 topics, but these interactions are tightly constrained: a four-minute opening statement followed by a rebuttal to its opponent’s argument — and then a statement summing up its own viewpoint. It was not exactly Lincoln v. Douglas.

    Subsidized space exploration, the machine said during its opening statement, “inspires our children to pursue education and careers in science and technology and mathematics.”

    Noam Slonim, an IBM researcher who helped oversee the project, estimated that the technology could have a “meaningful” debate on those 100 topics 40 percent of the time. IBM chose the topic for the live debate before it began. In some cases, the machine’s lengthy speeches hinted at how it was stitching together its arguments — identifying relevant sentences and clauses and then combining them into a reasonably coherent, computerized thought.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/technology/ibm-debater-artificial-intelligence.html
    This is cute IBM… I want to read an article about IBM actually selling some of this awesome argumentative ai technology to a paying customer.  Time to get out of the lab! 

Cloud

  • Oracle’s Cloud Thickens

    The corporate software giant said late Tuesday that revenues from its cloud services businesses jumped 25% year over year to $1.7 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter that ended May 31. That was better than the 19% to 23% rise the company projected three months ago—a projection so disappointing that it took Oracle’s stock price down 8% in response. Cloud revenues are now significant, making up nearly 16% of the company’s total for the last fiscal year compared with just 8% two years ago. Overall revenue for the quarter rose a much more modest 3.3% to $11.3 billion, though it should also be noted that Oracle ended its fiscal year with its best annual growth rate in seven years.

    The problem is that the business that was the main engine of Oracle’s recent growth will be harder to analyze in the future. Oracle changed its reporting structure so that results from the closely watched cloud segment are now folded into the much larger unit that includes software license updates and support for Oracle’s older, legacy software business. That business grows at a much slower rate. The company says the change is necessitated by its new practice of selling software licenses that cover both traditional software and cloud offerings.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracles-cloud-thickens-1529506558

Security

  • French media plan to meet with government over Google-GDPR concerns

    The impact of Google’s GDPR approach were felt across Europe as soon as it took effect. In France, volume demand dropped by as much as 50 percent for some independent ad tech vendors, while some publishers’ programmatic ad revenues dropped 70 percent, according to Gié. Google moved quickly to rectify the issue, with the result that several of the major exchanges such as AppNexus were reintegrated into Google’s ad-buying ecosystem in the days after May 25. Today, business is almost back to normal as more and more exchanges have been reintegrated, according to sources. But some vendors still aren’t on Google’s vendor whitelist, which has meant certain publishers’ programmatic ad revenues are suffering as a direct result, said Gié.

    https://digiday.com/media/french-media-plan-meet-government-concern-google-gdpr/

  • Amazon shareholders call for halt of facial recognition sales to police

    The shareholders, which include the Social Equity Group and Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment, are joining groups such as the ACLU in efforts to stop the company from selling the service — pointing out the risks of mass surveillance.

    They warn about potential civil and human rights violations, and how Amazon’s involvement could have a negative impact on the company’s stock. The shareholders point to the recent scrutiny of Facebook (FB) over privacy and data as a cautionary tale.

    http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/18/technology/amazon-facial-recognition/index.html

Software/SaaS

  • Here’s why the one-size-fits-all relational database model is dead

    Seldom can one database fit the needs of multiple distinct use cases. The days of the one-size-fits-all monolithic database are behind us, and developers are now building highly distributed applications using a multitude of purpose-built databases. Developers are doing what they do best: breaking complex applications into smaller pieces and then picking the best tool to solve each problem. The best tool for a job usually differs by use case.

    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/amazon-heres-why-the-one-size-fits-all-relational-database-model-is-dead/

  • Adobe could be the next $10 billion software company

    Revenue was up across all major business lines, but as has been the norm, the vast majority comes from the company’s bread and butter, Creative Cloud, which houses the likes of Photoshop, InDesign and Dreamweaver, among others. In fact digital media, which includes Creative Cloud and Document Cloud accounted for $1.55 billion of the $2.2 billion in total revenue. The vast majority of that, $1.30 billion was from the creative side of the house with Document Cloud pulling in $243 million.

    Adobe has been mostly known as a creative tools company until recent years when it also moved into marketing, analytics and advertising. Recently it purchased Magento for $1.6 billion, giving it a commerce component to go with those other pieces. Clearly Adobe has set its sights on Salesforce, which also has a strong marketing component and is not coincidentally perhaps, the most recently crowned $10 billion software company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/15/adobe-could-be-the-next-10-billion-software-company/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Chip Makers: We’ll End Up Paying Tariffs on Our Own Goods

    While the U.S. tariffs may impair Chinese companies that use semiconductors, among others, the fallout also will extend to U.S. businesses that participate in the complex supply chain of chip manufacturing, the Semiconductor Industry Association said.

    That is because most chips American companies import from China are designed in the U.S. The manufacturing of many components in those chips often starts in the U.S. as well, before they are shipped to China for assembly, testing and packaging.

    The tariffs will force American companies to pay duties on their own products, some of which were initially built in the U.S., the trade group said, adding that the imposition “fails to address the serious IP and industrial policy issues in China.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/chip-makers-well-end-up-paying-tariffs-on-our-own-goods-1529084158?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Other

  • Microsoft Employees Protest Work With ICE, as Tech Industry Mobilizes Over Immigration

    “We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits,” said the letter, which was addressed to the chief executive, Satya Nadella. The letter pointed to a $19.4 million contract that Microsoft has with ICE for processing data and artificial intelligence capabilities.

    Calling the separation of families “inhumane,” the employees added: “As the people who build the technologies that Microsoft profits from, we refuse to be complicit. We are part of a growing movement, comprised of many across the industry who recognize the grave responsibility that those creating powerful technology have to ensure what they build is used for good, and not for harm.”
    **
    The letter is part of a wave of tech workers mobilizing this week against the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy that refers for criminal prosecution all immigrants apprehended crossing the border without authorization. The policy has resulted in about 2,000 children being separated from their migrant parents, raising a bipartisan outcry.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/technology/tech-companies-immigration-border.html

  • A complete 5G standard is finally here

    “Two years ago, 5G was seen as a vision or even just a hype — with the closing of Rel-15, 3GPP has made 5G a reality within a very short time,” Georg Mayer, chairman of 3GPP CT, said in a statement. “The outcome is an amazing set of standards that will not only provide higher data rates and bandwidth to end customers but which is open and flexible enough to satisfy the communication needs of different industries — 5G will be the integration platform for heterogeneous businesses.”

    A number of companies are already gearing up for 5G including Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. “This milestone will allow for more advanced testing using standards-compliant equipment and paves the way for our commercial 5G launch in a dozen cities later this year,” AT&T said in a statement.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/15/complete-5g-standard-finally-here/

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash