Tag: Amazon

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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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News You Can Use: 3/27/2019

  • Workplace tracking is growing fast. Most workers don’t seem very concerned

    The single area that worries watchdogs the most is, perhaps, wellness. A majority of large companies and a significant percentage of smaller ones have programs today that, in the name of encouraging their workers to be in good physical and mental shape, seek out personal health information. This can include questions about whether workers are anxious or depressed, drink alcohol or use drugs, or take medication.

    The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act are supposed to ensure that an employee’s sensitive details are held close. Yet there are gaps in these laws, experts say, and companies may not always adhere strictly to the regulations that are on the books.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90318167/workplace-tracking-is-growing-fast-most-workers-dont-seem-very-concerned

  • Amazon is aggressively blocking ads for unprofitable products as part of a plan to bolster its bottom line

    In recent months, Amazon has been telling more vendors, or brand owners who sell their goods wholesale, that if Amazon can’t sell those products to consumers at a profit, it won’t let them pay to promote the items. For example, if a $5 water bottle costs Amazon that amount to store, pack and ship, the maker of the water bottle won’t be allowed to advertise it.

    The added stringency, which CNBC learned of from conversations with vendors and emails they received from Amazon as well as from outside experts, reflects a broader push to squeeze earnings out of a historically low-margin business. In its most recent quarter, Amazon posted $3 billion in net income, the highest in company history, while profit for the full year more than more than tripled to $10 billion.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/amazon-aggressively-suspending-ads-of-unprofitable-products-as-focus-on-the-bottom-line-grows.html

  • The colossal problem with universal basic income
  • No sleep, no sex, no life: tech workers in China’s Silicon Valley face burnout before they reach 30

    “One thing Chinese founders or unicorns haven’t figured out is how to become a sustainable business. If you continue those [long hours] for 10 years, people will have no personal life any more, they will have no kids, they will go crazy,” Wingender said.

    Yang is pondering what comes next. With more than 10 years of experience, he now holds a mid-level position at a top-tier internet company but has reached a career ceiling. He compares himself to a construction worker, who can earn good money due to high work intensity but can easily be replaced by younger, cheaper labour.

    https://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-social/article/3002533/no-sleep-no-sex-no-life-tech-workers-chinas-silicon-valley-face

  • The New Social Network That Isn’t New at All

    Newsletters could be a more reliable means of increasing readership for major publishers whose relationships with social networks have soured. Remember when Facebook moved away from promoting videos on the platform? Or when it decided to show more posts from friends and family, and de-emphasize content from publishers and brands? With every shift, big media companies had to adjust.

    Also

    “You don’t have to fight an algorithm to reach your audience,” Casey Newton, a journalist who writes The Interface, a daily newsletter for the technology news site The Verge, told me. “With newsletters, we can rebuild all of the direct connections to people we lost when the social web came along.”

    It can be more than just a creative endeavor: Newsletters can make a fine one-person business. Writers can charge readers to a monthly fee for their newsletters. Substack takes a cut of that fee; Revue charges writers using a tiered-pricing system based on the size of newsletter’s subscriber base.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/technology/new-social-network-email-newsletter.html

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 3/15/2019

Elizabeth Warren is going after large IT companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon and stating her desire to break them up if elected President.

As IT establishes itself as one of the primary drivers of the US economy (and THE major competitive advantage over foreign countries), can a 70-year-old politician really understand what these proposed “monopoly busters” would do to the US innovation engine?

Meanwhile, Facebook is handing politicians like Warren a narrative to break up the company with their inability to get privacy under control (while continuing to make a profit) and as Amazon grows (unchecked) in almost every major market.

Acquisitions

Cloud

  • Microsoft Azure Is Catching Up to Amazon AWS

    Brad Zelnick referred to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera, which is based on a survey of 786 technical professionals in a note to investors.

    The report said that overall Azure adoption grew from 45% to 52% to narrow the gap with AWS. As a result, the report said, Azure adoption has now reached 85% of AWS adoption, up from 70% last year.

    “Azure continues to catch up with AWS overall especially among enterprises, where Azure adoption increases slightly from 58% to 60%, while AWS adoption in this group is relatively flat at 67%. This puts Azure with 89% of the AWS adoption based on the overall number of respondents using each cloud,” the Cloud Report said, noting that Google maintains its third-place position, increasing slightly from 18% to 19% adoption.

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/azure-closing-the-gap-with-aws-14885053

  • Democrats to push to reinstate repealed ‘net neutrality’ rules

    Democrats in the U.S. Congress plan to unveil legislation on Wednesday to reinstate “net neutrality” rules that were repealed by the Trump administration in December 2017, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

    Pelosi told lawmakers in a letter that House Democrats, who won control of the chamber in the November 2018 elections, would work with their colleagues in the U.S. Senate to pass the “Save The Internet Act.”

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet-idUSKCN1QL1W0

  • SAP’s restructuring – Hunger Games, Game of Thrones or both?

    It seems that SAP has determined that it cannot realistically compete with AWS, Google and Microsoft for cloud platform offerings and is, therefore, scaling those back. That’s one easy way to unload staff and should be of no surprise to anyone in particular. Even though SAP touts a cloud platform, it never figures in any of the surveys of runners and riders. And despite the obvious allure as evidenced by AWS numbers (and Microsoft’s recent rocketing performance) SAP isn’t going to fight battles it can’t win. However, that still leaves the problem of engineering for each of those choices. That’s BIG engineering work that requires a considerable resource for very little obvious payback other than protecting existing application investments.

    Also

    From what I can gather, SAP started its program in Germany, including at its Walldorf HQ, offering early retirement to some of the ABAP ‘greybeards.’ In addition, employees are being offered the opportunity to apply for one of the 3,000 openings elsewhere. This is where I get my Hunger Games metaphor. 4.5 down with 3 up is a competitive environment.

    https://diginomica.com/saps-restructuring-hunger-games-game-of-thrones-or-both/

    Looks like SAP is letting go of several Hana and development subject matter experts…not good.

Security

  • Do You Trust Your VPN? Are You Sure?

    The CEO of one top VPN company, Silicon Valley–based AnchorFree, told me in a phone interview that he suspects one of his top rivals is secretly based in China—which would raise a red flag for many privacy advocates because of the Chinese government’s aggressive surveillance regime. An executive for that rival, ExpressVPN, insisted that isn’t true, though he wouldn’t disclose where the owners are actually based or even who they are. (The company is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.) He argued the secrecy is actually a virtue because governments can’t apply pressure to ExpressVPN’s principals to give up user data if they don’t know who, or even where, those principals are. Indeed, many VPN users consider offshore providers preferable to U.S.-based firms.

    Also…

    How about the VPN that gets the best reviews? Ah, but there are dozens of review sites, their findings often conflict, and their criteria aren’t always transparent. Two of the more reputable tech sites that review VPNs, PCMag and CNET, both give Panama-based NordVPN the top spot, citing its speed, ease of use, and privacy features. But two others, Wirecutter and Tom’s Guide, found NordVPN slow and buggy. And, like ExpressVPN, NordVPN goes to great lengths to obscure its ownership. As Tom’s Guide notes, it’s a subsidiary of a Panama-based holding company called Tefincom S.A., which appears to be a shell company. (As with ExpressVPN, there are potential justifications for that anonymity.)

    https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/best-vpn-companies-trust-privacy.html

  • Facebook only cares about privacy because it has to

    Zuckerberg also talks about how ephemeral content (posts that don’t last forever) are key to Facebook’s evolution. That should come as no surprise given the rise of Instagram Stories, which now has over 500 million daily active users. That’s more than double of Snapchat — you know, the app Facebook essentially ripped off to create Stories. Zuckerberg says this doesn’t mean the News Feed is going away anytime soon, but it does raise the question: How does Facebook plan to turn its privacy-focused strategy into cash? Again, that’s a question that Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to have an answer for at the moment. Presumably, Facebook will still need to make money. And you have to wonder, if you’re not giving up your privacy, what will you have to give up for the company to turn a profit?

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/07/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-privacy-focused-strategy/
    Why Facebook’s pivot to privacy could backfire

    My view is that if you accept that Facebook’s News Feed and other feed-based products will eventually fade away, as they have already begun to do in North America, Facebook will need to transform its business completely. Rallying around privacy, encryption, and ephemeral messages — while buying time to build out new businesses around commerce and payments — seems to be as good an idea as any.

    Zuckerberg nods weakly to a belief in the continuing importance of the News Feed in his post. But over the past year, he also moved top News Feed talent to parts of the company that he needs to grow faster: Adam Mosseri to Instagram; designer Geoff Teehan to the blockchain division, and so on. These moves, coupled with the decline of original sharing in the News Feed in North America, lead me to believe that Zuckerberg — ever paranoid about the company’s long-term survival — feels pressure to start building lifeboats.

    https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/3/8/18255480/facebook-pivot-privacy-mark-zuckerberg-pr-stunt

Software/SaaS

  • Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon and Facebook

    The proposal — which comes on the same day Ms. Warren will hold a rally in Long Island City, the Queens neighborhood that was to be home to a major new Amazon campus — calls for the appointment of regulators who would “unwind tech mergers that illegally undermine competition,” as well as legislation that would prohibit platforms from both offering a marketplace for commerce and participating in that marketplace.

    Ms. Warren’s plan would also force the rollback of some acquisitions by technological giants, the campaign said, including Facebook’s deals for WhatsApp and Instagram, Amazon’s addition of Whole Foods, and Google’s purchase of Waze. Companies would be barred from transferring or sharing users’ data with third parties. Dual entities, such as Amazon Marketplace and AmazonBasics, would be split apart.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-amazon.html
    Elizabeth Warren Wants To Break Up Amazon, Google And Facebook; But Does Her Plan Make Any Sense?

    But I fear that nearly all of these plans to “break up” big tech actually make that harder. It doesn’t open up new opportunities for a protocol-based approach, and simply assumes that the world will always be managed by giant platform companies — just slightly smaller, and highly regulated, ones. And that might actually lead us to a much worse future, one that is still controlled by more centralized systems, rather than more decentralized, distributed protocols where the users have power.

    The internet is a constant challenge with lots of new upstarts hoping to disrupt the big guys. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. We should be wary of companies with too much power abusing that position to block competition. And I’m certainly open to looking at specific situations where it’s alleged that these companies are blocking competitors, but a general position that says breaking up the internet giants seems more opportunistic and headline-grabbing than realistic.

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190308/10591041767/elizabeth-warren-wants-to-break-up-amazon-google-facebook-does-her-plan-make-any-sense.shtml

Other

  • Amazon’s joint healthcare organization is called ‘Haven’

    Haven, the website says, is a nonprofit that aims to make primary care easier to access, make prescription drugs more affordable and insurance benefits easier to understand. When the partners first announced the endeavor, they said they want to accomplish those goals with the help of technology. That hasn’t changed: they explained that they’re looking at new ways to use data and technology to better the healthcare system.

    The organization will start with addressing the healthcare needs of 1.2 million Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase workers in the US. Ultimately, the partners intend to use whatever they learn from that initial period and the solutions they come up with to improve the system for everyone.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/07/amazon-joint-healthcare-organization-haven/

  • Amazon to close all of its 87 pop-up stores in the US beginning in April

    “Across our Amazon network, we regularly evaluate our businesses to ensure we’re making thoughtful decisions around how we can best serve our customers,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. “After much review, we came to the decision to discontinue our pop-up kiosk program, and are instead expanding Amazon Books and Amazon 4-star, where we provide a more comprehensive customer experience and broader selection.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/amazon-to-close-all-of-its-pop-up-stores-in-the-us.html

  • Amazon’s HQ2 deal isn’t looking great for Arlington County

    The contract doesn’t require Amazon to provide construction workers with a living wage, what would typically be called a project labor agreement, and it doesn’t ask Amazon to contribute to Arlington’s affordable housing trust fund. Housing fund requests are typically made after a company comes back to Arlington with more specific development plans.

    All Amazon needs to do in Arlington is hit office space requirements. It must occupy 64,000 square feet of office space by the end of July 2020, 252,800 square feet by 2021, and 5.576 million by 2034. As Amazon hits its office space goals, it will receive partial payment of the $23 million.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/5/18252093/amazons-hq2-deal-arlington-county-living-wage-affordable-housing

Photo by Toby Yang on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 3/8/2019

Amazon was all over the news this week. There is still fall out from the company’s decision to pull back from NYC, there are grumblings about Bezos’ divorce impacting operations (and ownership), and they announced they are opening grocery stores… separate from the Whole Foods brand.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is introducing some very cool Excel scanning technology and Google is optimizing wind energy in their data-centers.

Acquisitions

  • Web Content-Recommendation Firm Outbrain to Acquire Native-Ad Specialist

    New York-based Outbrain has agreed to purchase the Cologne, Germany-based firm, in an all-stock transaction. The deal’s financial terms weren’t disclosed.

    The acquisition, which Outbrain says is its largest ever, is meant to help the company capture more of the market for native advertising, or ads that mimic the look and feel of the content around them. Ligatus operates a so-called supply-side platform that helps publishers sell native ads.

    Companies like Outbrain, whose recommendations often appear at the bottom of news articles, have faced criticism for promoting low-quality content.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/web-content-recommendation-firm-outbrain-to-acquire-native-ad-specialist-11551177120

Artificial Intelligence

  • Machine learning can boost the value of wind energy

    Using a neural network trained on widely available weather forecasts and historical turbine data, we configured the DeepMind system to predict wind power output 36 hours ahead of actual generation. Based on these predictions, our model recommends how to make optimal hourly delivery commitments to the power grid a full day in advance. This is important, because energy sources that can be scheduled (i.e. can deliver a set amount of electricity at a set time) are often more valuable to the grid.

    Although we continue to refine our algorithm, our use of machine learning across our wind farms has produced positive results. To date, machine learning has boosted the value of our wind energy by roughly 20 percent, compared to the baseline scenario of no time-based commitments to the grid.

    https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/machine-learning-can-boost-value-wind-energy/

Cloud

  • Lyft has to pay Amazon’s cloud at least $8 million a month until the end of 2021

    Buried in there is the revelation that Lyft is contractually obligated to pay at least $300 million to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s market-leading cloud-computing business, between January 2019 and December 2021. Some quick napkin math shows that — depending on when exactly the contract began in January 2019 and ends in December 2021 — Lyft is committed to spending between $8.33 million and $8.57 million a month on AWS, which hosts its entire app and platform.

    Notably, Lyft said that if its usage of Amazon’s cloud doesn’t hit or exceed that $300 million threshold, it’ll have to pay the difference. Lyft committed to spending at least $80 million in each of the three years of the deal, with the stipulation that it will spend $300 million in aggregate overall.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/lyft-ipo-amazon-web-services-2019-3

  • AWS chief Andy Jassy says it’s ‘really easy to cut prices’

    “It’s actually really easy to lower prices,” Jassy told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money” on Thursday. “It’s much harder to be able to afford to lower prices.” In the past decade, AWS has cut prices 70 times, he said.

    Other key areas where Amazon tries to stay ahead of the competition include geographic reach and the variety of tools that are available.

    “We’re much more focused on the long term than most companies,” Jassy said. “We are trying to build a business and a set of customer relationships that outlasts all of us. And as such, we think if we help our customers get more done and are successful on their own, even if it means lower margin percentages, over time we’ll drive more absolute margin dollars, and they’ll be more successful, and we’ll ultimately be more relevant.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/aws-ceo-andy-jassy-its-really-easy-to-lower-prices.html

    Hey Andy – tell that to Lyft

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft Excel will now let you snap a picture of a spreadsheet and import it

    Microsoft is adding a very useful feature to its Excel mobile apps for iOS and Android. It allows Excel users to take a photo of a printed data table and convert it into a fully editable table in the app. This feature is rolling out initially in the Android Excel app, before making its way to iOS soon. Microsoft is using artificial intelligence to implement this feature, with image recognition so that Excel users don’t have to manually input hardcopy data. The feature will be available to Microsoft 365 users.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246429/microsoft-excel-covert-photos-data-tables-editable-table-ai-feature

  • Warren Buffett says he ditched his stake in Oracle because of his experience getting burned by IBM

    “[Cofounder and CTO] Larry Ellison’s done a fantastic job with Oracle. I mean I’ve followed it from the standpoint of reading about it. But I felt like I didn’t understand the business,”

    “Then, after I started buying it, I felt I still didn’t understand the business. I actually changed my mind in terms of understand and not in terms of evaluating it. I think, I mean, Oracle is a great business. But I don’t think, particularly after my experience with IBM, I don’t think I understand exactly where the cloud is going.

    “You know, I’ve been amazed at what Amazon has done there. And now Microsoft is doing it as well. So I don’t know where that game is going.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-oracle-ibm-2019-2

  • Accenture Works With Mastercard, Amazon to Boost Circular Supply Chain Using DLT

    Within the announced initiative, Accenture is collaborating with major global companies including cloud computing firm Amazon Web Services, blockchain supply chain firm Everledger, international development organization Mercy Corps and multinational financial services corporation Mastercard.

    According to the release, the new blockchain-enabled circular supply chain capability will allow customers to identify small-scale suppliers and growers on the supply chain and make rewards by using direct payments.

    Additionally, the new capability is designed to provide better management of inventory and waste elimination, transparency across the supply chain and authenticity of products.

    https://cointelegraph.com/news/accenture-works-with-mastercard-amazon-to-boost-circular-supply-chain-using-dlt

Datacenter/Hardware

  • HP Sales Rise, but Fall Short of Estimates

    HP Inc.’s sales missed Wall Street targets in the most recent quarter, weighed down by the weaker-than-expected sales of printing supplies to commercial customers. Revenue from the printing segment, which includes the supplies business, fell to $5.06 billion from $5.08 billion a year earlier.

    Meanwhile, sales in the personal-systems segment, which includes its PC business, rose 2.3% to $9.66 billion, also missing analysts’ expectations. Total units sold fell 3% from the year earlier, as notebook units sold declined 1% and sales of desktops fell 8%, HP said.

    Overall, HP reported a first-quarter profit of $803 million, or 51 cents a share, down 59% from the year earlier, when the Palo Alto, Calif., company got a boost from the U.S. tax overhaul. Excluding restructuring charges and other items, profit was in line with analysts’ estimates at 52 cents a share, up from 48 cents a share a year earlier.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/hp-sales-rise-but-fall-short-of-estimates-11551301659

Other

  • WeWork confirms it has laid off 300 employees

    Headquartered in New York, the layoffs were performance-related, part of the company’s routine process of shedding underperformers. Among the departments impacted by the cuts were WeWork’s engineering team, product and user experience design.

    “Over the past nine years, WeWork has grown into one of the largest global physical networks thanks to the hard work and dedication of our team,” the company said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “WeWork recently conducted a standard annual performance review process. Our global workforce is now more than 10,000 strong, and we remain committed to continuing to grow and scale in 2019, including hiring an additional 6,000 employees.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/01/wework-confirms-it-has-let-go-of-300-employees/

  • Amazon to Launch New Grocery-Store Business

    The new stores aren’t intended to compete directly with the more upscale Whole Foods stores and will offer a different variety of products, at a lower price point, these people said. Whole Foods doesn’t sell products with artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and sweeteners, among other quality standards.

    Suppliers with big brands have hoped to have inroads into Whole Foods since Amazon bought the chain nearly two years ago. While Whole Foods has gradually expanded the big brands it carries—such as Honey-Nut Cheerios and Michelob beer—a conventional grocer can carry a much larger assortment of items.

    Amazon has had mixed results with its food-delivery business, and it wants to better understand how it can cater to grocery shoppers, according to people briefed on the company’s strategy.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-launch-new-grocery-store-business-sources-say-11551461887?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

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Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/1/2019

Microsoft employees are pushing back on the company’s newest government contract. The $480m deal is to provide VR headsets to the military and despite the feedback the company does plan to move forward.

Speaking of government contracts, Amazon is still fighting to win the JEDI cloud deal with the DoD after new conflict of interest information coming to light.

Meanwhile, there is more information about how Facebook uses other phone applications to collect data on users, even if you don’t have a Facebook account.

Acquisitions

  • Palo Alto Networks to acquire Demisto for $560M

    The company sees a tool that can help enhance the Palo Alto security portfolio by adding a higher level of automation. “The addition of Demisto’s orchestration and automation technologies will accelerate Palo Alto Networks Application Framework strategy and serve as a critical step forward in the company’s aim to deliver immediate threat prevention and response for security teams,” the company explained in a statement.

    Palo Alto also hopes that Demisto’s automated solutions will help accelerate its AI and machine learning capabilities to bring intelligent automation across the platform. The company brings more than technology, of course. It also brings its 150 customers to Palo Alto, a quarter of which are in the Fortune 500.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/palo-alto-networks-to-acquire-demisto-for-560m/

  • Google acquires a small cloud start-up as it looks to catch up to Amazon and Microsoft

    Google is making another play in the cloud space with a new acquisition. The company announced Tuesday it plans to acquire cloud migration company Alooma, which helps other companies move their data from multiple sources into one data warehouse.

    Google did not disclose how much it will pay for Alooma, which is based in Israel and California, but it’s likely a relatively small acquisition. Alooma has raised about $15 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequioa Capital Israel, according to Crunchbase.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/19/google-plans-to-acquire-cloud-migration-company-alooma.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • OpenAI built a text generator so good, it’s considered too dangerous to release

    OpenAI said its new natural language model, GPT-2, was trained to predict the next word in a sample of 40 gigabytes of internet text. The end result was the system generating text that “adapts to the style and content of the conditioning text,” allowing the user to “generate realistic and coherent continuations about a topic of their choosing.” The model is a vast improvement on the first version by producing longer text with greater coherence.

    But with every good application of the system, such as bots capable of better dialog and better speech recognition, the non-profit found several more, like generating fake news, impersonating people, or automating abusive or spam comments on social media.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dangerous/

Cloud

  • Why Alphabet and Microsoft Are Better-Positioned Than You Think

    Each year, Stack Overflow polls over 100,000 professional developers to get a read on their favorite platforms — what they use most, what they love most, what they dread most, and what they want most. Linux was the winner, by far, which is really good news for both Alphabet and Microsoft.

    Why? Let’s start with Linux itself. The world’s most popular open-source operating system is available in a number of varieties commonly known as distributions. Red Hat has a very popular one that IBM is in the process of acquiring. In the cloud, Ubuntu is extremely popular. So are Fedora (a completely free version of Red Hat) and Arch Linux.

    Alphabet is far and away the biggest consumer of open-source software built for Linux and related technologies. Microsoft is the biggest overall contributor of open-source ideas to GitHub, the development community it acquired in August for about $7.5 billion in stock. Both companies are also making it easier to run Linux installations in their clouds (i.e., Azure and Google Cloud, respectively). As developers continue to up their intake of Linux — and last year usage doubled, according to Stack Overflow — they’re more likely to run into open-source offerings from Alphabet and Microsoft.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/22/why-alphabet-and-microsoft-are-better-positioned-t.aspx

  • Pentagon Cloud-Computing Contract Sought by Amazon Faces New Hurdle

    The contract was expected to be awarded this spring. Rival Oracle Corp. sued to halt the process until the government thoroughly investigates Oracle’s claims of alleged conflicts, which center on a former government employee who worked at Amazon before and after playing a role in the Pentagon’s procurement process.

    The Defense Department largely dismissed conflict of interest claims earlier, making Tuesday’s motion to seek the stay a potential turning point.

    “DoD can confirm that new information not previously provided to DoD has emerged related to potential conflicts of interest,” Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said in a statement. “As a result of this new information, DoD is continuing to investigate these potential conflicts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-cloud-computing-contract-sought-by-amazon-faces-new-hurdle-11550601359

Security

  • You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.

    The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed.

    It is already known that many smartphone apps send information to Facebook about when users open them, and sometimes what they do inside. Previously unreported is how at least 11 popular apps, totaling tens of millions of downloads, have also been sharing sensitive data entered by users. The findings alarmed some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s testing.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-give-apps-sensitive-personal-information-then-they-tell-facebook-11550851636?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • The Hot, Lucrative Market in IT Security Talent

    “What you’ve been seeing for the last year or two is more demand than supply” in cybersecurity, says Ryan Sutton, district president at the Robert Half Technology staffing agency. “As demand stays high and supply more or less stays constant,” upward pressure on wages is likely to increase, he says.

    In addition to pushing up salaries, the competition for talent is forcing companies to snatch up candidates more quickly than they have in the past, Mr. Sutton says.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-lucrative-market-in-it-security-talent-11550763976

Software/SaaS

  • Snapchat is in the middle of an identity crisis

    There are many reasons why Snapchat hasn’t caught up to Facebook or Instagram, Keath said, but the lack of public profiles and embeddable content on the web are the main ones to blame for its growth troubles. Another big issue has been the app’s janky user interface, particularly on Android, which Snapchat has been vowing to fix for a couple of years now.

    Then there’s Snapchat’s dependence on ephemeral posts, though rumors suggest it may soon allow public Stories that don’t disappear. If Snapchat were to come up with a way to make Stories last longer or be permanent on someone’s account, it could help it better compete with Instagram and other social networks.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/22/snapchat-bhad-bhabie-nike-augmented-reality-identity-crisis/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • The Dirty Energy Powering Data Center Alley

    Despite significant new investment in renewable generation by utilities in other data center hot spots such as Iowa, the dramatic expansion of Virginia’s Data Center Alley continues to fuel and increase demand in coal and natural gas. At present, power generation in Virginia is dominated by fossil fuels, with less than 5 percent coming from renewable sources, lagging far behind other regions. Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electricity provider and the primary electric utility for Data Center Alley, has strongly resisted any meaningful transition to renewable sources of electricity, currently representing only 4 percent of its generation mix, with plans to increase to only slightly over 10 percent by 2030.

    Dominion’s lack of renewable energy supply and insistence on making significant new investments in fossil fuels will both delay Virginia’s transition to cleaner sources of energy, and make it much more costly to do so. Yet many of the largest data center companies with commitments to 100 percent renewable energy have continued to rapidly expand their presence in Virginia, thus fueling even more demand for dirty electricity, with Amazon Web Services the biggest culprit. Amazon Web Services (AWS) already ranked as one of Dominion Energy’s largest electricity customers when it made its commitment to 100 percent renewable energy in late 2014, and Greenpeace‘s analysis shows AWS has tripled its data center operations in Virginia since that time. Even though AWS did add a sizable amount of renewable energy locally from 2015 to 2016, its dramatic growth in Virginia during this period continued to far exceed the additional electricity supply from its renewable projects.

    https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/click-clean-virginia/

    Amazon aims to make half of its shipments carbon neutral by 2030

    The company is calling this program “Shipment Zero.” Details on this long-term project weren’t yet available, but Amazon says it plans to share its company-wide carbon footprint “along with related goals and programs,” at a later date. That seems to indicate Amazon will offer an update on the progress of its other sustainability goals, as well.

    It’s important for Amazon to be transparent on these plans, as the size of its business means its impact to the environment, energy consumption and, ultimately climate change, is significant.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/18/amazon-aims-to-make-half-of-its-shipments-carbon-neutral-by-2030/

  • Apple’s move to ARM-based Macs creates uncertainty

    The move could give developers a way to reach a bigger market with a single app, although the transition could be bumpy. For Intel, of course, it would mean the loss of a significant customer, albeit probably not a huge hit to its bottom line.

    The key question is not the timeline but just how smoothly Apple is able to make the shift. For developers, it will likely mean an awkward period of time supporting new and classic Macs as well as new and old-style Mac apps.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-macbook-arm-chips-ea93c38a-d40a-4873-8de9-7727999c588c.html

  • Microsoft workers demand it drop $480 million U.S. Army contract

    Microsoft won a contract in November to supply the Army with at least 2,500 prototypes of augmented reality headsets, which digitally display contextual information in front of a user’s eyes. The government has said the devices would be used on the battlefield and in training to improve soldiers “lethality, mobility and situational awareness.”

    In the petition to Microsoft executives, posted on Twitter, the workers said they “did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used.” They called on the company to develop “a public-facing acceptable use policy” for its technology and an external review board to publicly enforce it.

    Microsoft said in a statement that it always appreciates employee feedback. It also referred to an October blog post by its president, Brad Smith, in which he said the company remained committed to assisting the military and would advocate for laws to ensure responsible use of new technologies.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-army/microsoft-workers-demand-it-drop-450-million-u-s-army-contract-idUSKCN1QB2LV

Other

  • Nestlé, McDonald’s, Others Pull Ads From YouTube

    The advertisers’ withdrawals come after video blogger Matt Watson posted a video on YouTube on Sunday that showed inappropriate user comments about videos featuring underage girls, including some that identified precise segments where children appear in compromising positions.

    The video, which had received over 1.7 million views as of Wednesday afternoon, said YouTube’s recommendation algorithm leads users to similar content.

    McDonald’s Corp. , which was among the several brands whose ads ran alongside the objectionable content, also paused spending on YouTube, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/nestle-mcdonalds-others-pull-ads-from-youtube-11550705643

  • Apple is reportedly closing two stores in a Texas district to avoid patent trolls

    As MacRumors notes, the Eastern District of Texas is known for its patent cases (an SMU Dedman School of Law paper backs up that claim), and per US law, patent lawsuits can be filed in places where the defendant “has a regular and established place of business.” By closing its two stores in the district, Apple reportedly hopes to shield itself from those suits.

    The Apple Willow Bend store in Plano and the Apple Stonebriar store in Frisco are both expected to close up shop on April 12th. Apple is planning to open a new store at the Galleria Dallas shopping mall just outside of the Eastern District border to continue to have a retail presence in the area.

    https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/2/22/18236424/apple-closing-stores-eastern-district-texas-avoid-patent-trolls

  • Two Former Cognizant Executives Charged in Bribery Probe

    Gordon Coburn, the company’s former president, and Steven Schwartz, its former chief legal officer, authorized a $2 million bribe to at least one government official in India to secure permits necessary for the construction of an office campus there to support roughly 17,000 employees, prosecutors said.

    To conceal Cognizant’s role in the bribery scheme, Messrs. Coburn and Schwartz, and others, agreed to use a construction company to secure the permit, prosecutors said. The construction company would pay the bribe, and Cognizant would later reimburse the firm through disguised cost overruns on the project, located in Chennai, India, prosecutors said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cognizant-to-pay-25-million-to-settle-bribery-claims-11550252878

  • IBM is the top choice for Gen Z employees in tech: Glassdoor

    Glassdoor economics research analyst Amanda Stansell attributed Gen Zers’ top choice to a number of factors, including a good work-life balance at IBM and IBM employees’ ability to work from home.

    Another factor that may play a role in IBM being the top choice? Lack of controversy.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-glassdoor-gen-z-193615566.html

    But they are cutting back from work at home options, cutting staff, and are still in transition…

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