Tag: Amazon

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Supplier Report: 2/22/2019

Amazon has disappointed or energized certain groups of people (depending on who you talk to) by retreating from their NYC expansion plans. Both sides are still pondering if this is a good thing for New York.

Regardless, the company continues to grow through acquisitions and leveraging their market position to gain access to behavioral data.

Meanwhile, IBM finds itself defending Watson (again) by claiming they did not overhype their AI’s capabilities (they did). The company is looking to build off their Red Hat acquisition to help companies address real integration issues and not “just porting applications to the cloud”.

Acquisitions

  • Democrats want to take another look at the T-Mobile-Sprint merger

    In the ten months since T-Mobile first announced its intention to buy up its competitor, the company has cozied up to the Trump administration. The company’s executives spent more than 50 nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. T-Mobile CEO John Legere spent two night in the hotel and paid a rate of $2,246 per night, according to the Washington Post. That activity is likely to be viewed as an attempt to buy favor with the president and will come up during this week’s hearings.

    The hearings this week won’t have a direct influence on the government’s decision on whether to allow the purchase to go forward or not. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission get to approve or deny the merger based on their own investigations that will look into antitrust concerns and other potential harms. However, the hearings may turn up new information that would give regulators pause. Legere told investors last week that he believes the merger will be completed by June.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/democrats-house-hearings-t-mobile-sprint-merger/

  • Amazon buys Eero: What does it mean for your privacy?

    Deluged in a swarm of angry tweets and social media posts, many have taken to reading tea leaves to try to understand what the acquisition means for ordinary privacy-minded folks like you and me. Not many had much love for Amazon on the privacy front. A lot of people like Eero because it wasn’t attached to one of the big tech giants. Now it’s to be part of Amazon, some are anticipating the worst for their privacy.

    Of the many concerns we’ve seen, the acquisition boils down to a key concern: “Amazon shouldn’t have access to all internet traffic.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/amazon-eero-privacy/

  • Apple buys voice app startup Pullstring

    Pullstring was founded in 2011 by a group of former Pixar executives, and originally was used to power interactive voice apps for toys (including Hello Barbie in 2015). It later broadened its approach with the introduction of such IoT products as Amazon Echo and Google Assistant.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-voice-app-pullstring-080b45b6-bbb4-466f-b60a-b87c932e2f57.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: ‘We Never Overpromised’ on Watson A.I.

    Pretty much the entire world believes IBM overhyped its Watson artificial intelligence technology. Rometty isn’t one of those people. “We never overpromised,” she says, allowing, though, that “the world was mesmerized by this idea” and that the whole tech industry has learned that “you cannot just put AI on top of existing workflows.” Rometty somewhat shockingly re-framed how people should think about Watson, the subject of years of IBM’s marketing efforts. “People ask, ‘What’s the size of the Watson business?’” she says. “People want to call it a business. I call it a capability.”

    http://fortune.com/2019/02/14/ibm-ceo-rometty-ai-watson/

Cloud

  • After limping through chapter one of cloud computing, IBM aims to own chapter two

    Chapter one of the cloud represented about 20 percent of the workload opportunity. It was largely about moving a lot of new and customer-facing applications to the cloud. Chapter two is about the hard stuff. It’s about scaling artificial intelligence and creating hybrid clouds. It’s about bringing the cloud operating model to all those mission-critical apps and enabling customers to manage data, workloads and apps and move them between multiple clouds. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity and IBM intends to be No. 1.

    To claim a leadership position in this next chapter, IBM is spending $34 billion to acquire open-source software leader Red Hat Inc. This is a huge move on the chessboard, underscoring that the IBM Cloud and a decade of trying to commercialize the AI-powered Watson system aren’t enough to win the day. Rather, it sees open source, Kubernetes, containers, microservices and developers as a lynchpin to success in the next chapter of cloud.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/02/14/limping-chapter-one-cloud-computing-ibm-aims-chapter-two/

  • Oracle Shares End Higher After Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Dumps Stake

    Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of around 90 U.S.-listed stocks lost around $38 billion in value over the three months ending in December, the SEC filings noted, as the S&P 500 slumped nearly 15% in a global market sell-off triggered by slowing growth and a then-hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve. Berkshire Hathaway told the SEC in its November filing that it had owned 41.4 million shares in Oracle at the end of the end of the third quarter after it had exited a holding in IBM (IBM – Get Report) earlier in the year.

    Oracle surprised investors with a bullish 2019 outlook late last year when it posted stronger-than-expected second quarter earnings and said growth in its cloud computing business would support sales and improve profit margins.

    The company also said it sees current quarter earnings of between 86 cents and 88 cents a share, topping the 84 cent Street forecasts, and said it expects full year revenue growth of around 3% on a constant currency basis.

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/oracle-shares-slide-after-warren-buffet-s-berkshire-hathaway-dumps-stake-14867890

Software/SaaS

  • Barclaycard Integrates B2B Payments Tech To SAP Ariba

    The integration will roll out later this year with the addition of Precisionpay Bank Transfer within the SAP Ariba platform. Corporate buyers can pay their vendors via virtual card, with suppliers receiving payment the same way they receive a bank transfer. Barclaycard noted that its collaboration with SAP Ariba could also link business buyers to supply chain financing, giving companies up to 56 days to pay their invoices while suppliers receive payment more quickly.

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/barclaycard-sap-ariba/

  • Oracle CEO Mark Hurd throws shade at SAP’s $8 billion Qualtrics acquisition: We don’t buy companies ‘to just buy them’

    “We’re not buying somebody to just buy them. We’re buying companies that fit into our portfolio,” Hurd said onstage at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Wednesday, in response to a question from the on-stage interviewer about how Oracle and SAP approach acquisitions.

    In November, SAP announced it would acquire online market research software startup Qualtrics for $8 billion. The news came close to the last possible second, as Qualtrics was about to go public. Hurd’s comments were almost certainly in reference to this very recent mega-deal.

    Also:

    Hurd also said that he disagreed with SAP asking customers to completely transition to its cloud-based S/4HANA platform by 2025. After that, SAP will stop providing support for its very popular Business Suite enterprise software.

    “I think that is just a terrible damn idea,” Hurd said. “Let’s say you go to your board and say, ‘We’re going to move from this thing to this other thing, and it’s going to cost $350 million.’ My guess is, the board will say, ‘What do we get for $350 million?’ Well, we moved from this thing to the HANA thing.”

    https://factsand.news/2019/02/14/tech/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-throws-shade-at-saps-8-billion-qualtrics-acquisition-we-dont-buy-companies-to-just-buy-them-orcl-sap/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google will have offices and data centers in 24 states by the end of 2019

    The company is launching a $13 billion expansion in 2019 that will give it a total US footprint of 24 states, including “major expansions” in 14 states. The growth includes its first data center in Nevada, a new office in Georgia, and multi-facility expansions in places like Texas and Virginia. This is on top of known projects like its future New York City campus.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/google-expands-us-footprint/

Other

  • Amazon is becoming too pervasive, anti-competitive

    To put this in old-fashioned terms, Amazon owns the mall, rents space to retailers, controls access to customers, collects data on every sale while also operating the largest store in the mall. And if one of the smaller retailers show some success, Amazon will compete with them.

    Yet that is not enough for CEO Jeff Bezos, because 90 percent of retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar buildings. Amazon has bought grocery giant Whole Foods, launched Amazon Go convenience stores and opened Amazon kiosks in shopping malls. The company is reportedly looking at old Sears stores to add more retail and warehouse space.

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Amazon-is-becoming-too-pervasive-anti-competitive-13588822.php

  • Amazon’s HQ2 New York plans didn’t need to end this way

    While it’s fair on some level that Amazon felt stymied by this political climate, the company still seems petty at the end of all this. As a tech and retail titan that is nearly impossible to avoid in daily life, the company has come to expect a certain level of fealty from the people and organizations it deals with. It’s used to walking into a room and getting what it wants. In this case, dealing with activists, vocal critics and pressure from key lawmakers meant Amazon wasn’t going to have another typically easy time — the line of thinking appears to be that, as helpful as another campus would be, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Lots of brilliant people work at Amazon, though; is it possible that no one saw the red tape coming?

    I have a hard time believing that Amazon couldn’t have handled this better. Could it have managed the conversation better? Could it have been more transparent in its dealings? Could it have tried to work more closely, more functionally with the lawmakers involved? Does this whole thing now feel like a huge waste of time? Yes, to all of the above.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/16/amazon-hq2-new-york-waste-of-time/

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 2/20/2019

  • We Reject the Side Hustle

    Maybe this was all true, but what was also true is that working outside of work quietly became a major drain on my energy levels, negatively impacting my mental, emotional, and even physical health. I also started spending money more stupidly (some might say compulsively) as a response to rising stress, which had the perverse effect of making me feel that I needed that extra cash flow even more. Rather than acting as a financial security blanket, my outside income became a specter that I kept in my life mostly out of fear. When I finally bit the bullet and focused on having just one job at a time, unsurprisingly, all that extra stress and anxiety dissipated almost immediately. I slept more, I took fewer overpriced cabs, I was better at my actual day job.

    https://lifehacker.com/we-reject-the-side-hustle-1832566443

  • We need to stop striving for work-life balance. Here’s why

    Balance is a limiting concept, and if we set the bar too low, we won’t demand enough of ourselves, our leaders, and our companies. Right now, too many companies are still operating in an either/or mentality (though thankfully, it’s starting to change). That’s why there are still workplaces that penalizes parents who choose to take parental leave or assume that employees who don’t put in as much “face time” aren’t committed to their jobs.

    I always like the mantra that “you can have it all, just not all at once.” There are seasons of life where you’ll have less time for yourself and will devote more to school or family or work. This is part of the normal ebb and flow of life. When you think big and expect that you can have a positive experience with all that work and life have to offer, you’ll be more likely to make that happen.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90308095/why-you-should-stop-trying-to-achieve-work-life-balance

  • Alexa, are you exploiting me?
  • Taxed out: Here’s why your refund may be smaller or nonexistent in 2019

    So far, the average refund paid to taxpayers is down 8.7% to $1,949, from an average of $2,135 this time in filing season last year, according to the IRS.

    Some taxpayers actually do owe more under the new tax law, which capped deductions for state and local taxes, especially affecting homeowners in high-property tax coastal states, and eliminated some deductions, such as those for unreimbursed expenses incurred as an employee.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90308731/tax-refunds-2019-heres-why-yours-may-be-smaller-or-why-you-may-owe

Photo by Alekzan Powell on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 2/15/2019

Location. Location. Location.

Amazon is scrapping their New York City plans due to severe political push-back on the incentives NYC provided and the overall impact to the city.

Meanwhile, the long discussed Foxconn LCD factory that was to be built in Wisconsin, is covered in a cloud confusion. First they were, then they weren’t, and now they are looking to build a smaller facility…maybe?

Acquisitions

  • Report: Intel bids up to $6B to buy Mellanox

    If the deal reaches fruition, the $6 billion price tag would represent a 30% premium over the last closing price of Mellanox on Nasdaq last night, according to a story by Globes.

    The news of Intel’s interest in buying Mellanox came on the heels of Monday’s news that Intel was investing $11 billion to expand its chip plant in Israel. Intel also announced on Monday that it had received a $1 billion government grant for its expansion.

    https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/report-intel-bids-up-to-6b-to-buy-mellanox

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google and Microsoft warn investors that bad AI could harm their brand

    These disclosures are not, on the whole, hugely surprising. The idea of the “risk factors” segment is to keep investors informed, but also mitigate future lawsuits that might accuse management of hiding potential problems. Because of this they tend to be extremely broad in their remit, covering even the most obvious ways a business could go wrong. This might include problems like “someone made a better product than us and now we don’t have any customers,” and “we spent all our money so now don’t have any.”

    But, as Wired’s Tom Simonite points out, it is a little odd that these companies are only noting AI as a potential factor now. After all, both have been developing AI products for years, from Google’s self-driving car initiative, which began in 2009, to Microsoft’s long dalliance with conversational platforms like Cortana. This technology provides ample opportunities for brand damage, and, in some cases, already has. Remember when Microsoft’s Tay chatbot went live on Twitter and started spouting racist nonsense in less than a day? Years later, it’s a still regularly cited as an example of AI gone wrong.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18220050/google-microsoft-ai-brand-damage-investors-10-k-filing

Cloud

  • Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

    This week, the two companies made some more noise, letting the cloud market know that they are not ceding the market to anyone. For IBM, which is holding its big IBM Think conference this week in San Francisco, it involved opening up Watson to competitor clouds. For a company like IBM, this was a huge move, akin to when Microsoft started building apps for iOS. It was an acknowledgement that working across platforms matters, and that if you want to gain market share, you had better start thinking outside the box.

    While becoming cross-platform compatible isn’t exactly a radical notion in general, it most certainly is for a company like IBM, which if it had its druthers and a bit more market share, would probably have been content to maintain the status quo. But if the majority of your customers are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy, it might be a good idea for you to jump on the bandwagon — and that’s precisely what IBM has done by opening up access to Watson across clouds in this fashion.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/google-and-ibm-still-trying-desperately-to-move-cloud-market-share-needle/

Security

  • Huawei Corporate Entities Conspired to Steal Trade Secret Technology and Offered Bonus to Workers who Stole Confidential Information from Companies Around the World

    According to the indictment, in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information on a T-Mobile phone-testing robot dubbed “Tappy.” In an effort to build their own robot to test phones before they were shipped to T-Mobile and other wireless carriers, Huawei engineers violated confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of “Tappy,” taking measurements of parts of the robot, and in one instance, stealing a piece of the robot so that the Huawei engineers in China could try to replicate it. After T-Mobile discovered and interrupted these criminal activities, and then threatened to sue, Huawei produced a report falsely claiming that the theft was the work of rogue actors within the company and not a concerted effort by Huawei corporate entities in the United States and China. As emails obtained in the course of the investigation reveal, the conspiracy to steal secrets from T-Mobile was a company-wide effort involving many engineers and employees within the two charged companies.

    As part of its investigation, FBI obtained emails revealing that in July 2013, Huawei offered bonuses to employees based on the value of information they stole from other companies around the world, and provided to Huawei via an encrypted email address.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-device-manufacturer-and-its-us-affiliate-indicted-theft-trade

Software/SaaS

  • SAP job cuts prove harsh realities of enterprise transformation

    SAP announced that it was restructuring in order to save between €750 million and €800 million (between approximately $856 million and $914 million).

    While the company tried to put as positive a spin on the announcement as possible, it could involve up to 4,000 job cuts as SAP shifts into more modern technologies. “We are going to move our people and our focus to the areas where the new economy needs SAP the most: artificial intelligence, deep machine learning, IoT, blockchain and quantum computing,” CEO Bill McDermott told a post-earnings press conference.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/sap-job-cuts-prove-harsh-realities-of-enterprise-transformation/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google Fiber is leaving Louisville in humiliating setback

    In Louisville, Google Fiber installation crews had been using a process called “shallow trenching” that involved laying fiber cable two inches beneath the sides of roads in the city and covering them up with sealant. The company seemed optimistic about this plan until some of the cable started becoming exposed over time, requiring a second cover-up with hot asphalt. It seems Access realized it had to go a bit deeper with the cabling; in San Antonio, a similar method is used — but the fiber is laid at least six inches deep into the ground. Google Fiber has at times faced legal challenges from rivals (like AT&T) that don’t want to share utility poles, so shallow trenching is also a way around that hurdle.

    Unfortunately, things have somehow gone so awry in Louisville that Google Fiber claims it would need to rebuild the entire network to get everything to a satisfactory point, and it seems Alphabet just isn’t interested in blowing the cash that would be necessary to do that. So instead, Google Fiber will today alert Lousville customers that their service will end on April 15th.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215743/google-fiber-leaving-louisville-service-ending

  • Intel names Robert Swan as permanent CEO

    Intel’s stock slid Thursday after the chipmaker named interim CEO Robert Swan to the position permanently, ending a months-long search following the ouster of Brian Krzanich for what it called a “consensual relationship” with an employee.

    Swan, 58, has been interim CEO for seven months and chief financial officer since 2016. He was also elected to the board, the company said. Several media outlets including Bloomberg previously reported Swan didn’t want the job.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/intel-names-robert-swan-ceo.html

  • Apple will reportedly reveal its news subscription service next month

    Apple might face some stiff opposition in its bid to launch a subscription news service this spring. Wall Street Journal tipsters claim publishers like the New York Times and Washington Post are objecting to terms that would have Apple take “about half” of the revenue from the service, dividing the rest among publishers based on the amount of time people spend reading articles. That’s a considerably higher cut than the 30 percent Apple takes during the first year of a subscription, let alone the 15 percent it takes later on.

    It also wants “at least some” outlets to commit to supplying news for at least a year. Publishers are split on this, according to the sources — some want a longer commitment, while others want a chance to back out sooner.

    The price isn’t set in stone, but it’s tentatively set to cost the same $10 per month that you pay for Apple Music.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/12/apple-news-service-publisher-objections/

  • Microsoft begs users to stop using Internet Explorer

    IE is often used by enterprises and organisations that wish to run legacy web apps, as the outdated browser still supports them, but choosing the easy way out now could come back to haunt businesses later.

    Basically, by continuing to use IE as opposed to a more modern web browser, organisations are creating additional costs for themselves later by choosing the easiest, most convenient solution now as opposed to the best long term approach.

    https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/microsoft-begs-users-to-stop-using-internet-explorer

Other

  • No one seems to know what Foxconn is doing in Wisconsin

    On January 30th, Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn chief executive Terry Gou, told Reuters that the company was rethinking the whole screen-making idea. “In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory,” Woo said. He explained that Foxconn can’t compete producing televisions in the US. Instead, it would be more profitable to manufacture LCD panels in China and Japan, ship them to Mexico, and import them in the US. On Thursday, the Nikkei Asian Review reported that work on the Wisconsin project had been suspended.

    Later that day, Woo appeared to backtrack vaguely, sending a peculiar email to the Milwaukee TV station WTMJ suggesting that it was hard to know what to call the project. “No matter how we look at it, the campus cannot be simply described as a factory,” Woo wrote. “It is a lot more than that.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206261/foxconn-wisconsin-factory-government-subsidies-investments
    After a ‘personal conversation’ with Trump, Foxconn says it will build a factory in Wisconsin after all

    “After productive discussions between the White House and the company, and after a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou, Foxconn is moving forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility,” a statement read. A Gen 6 facility is smaller than the factory Foxconn initially promised in 2017, but larger than the assembly facility Foxconn said it would build yesterday.

    Foxconn has changed its plans multiple times since 2017, when then-Governor Scott Walker wooed the company with a record-breaking $4.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies. At the time, Foxconn promised a state-of-the-art, “Gen 10.5” screen-producing facility, and Walker and Trump touted the deal for bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. In June of last year, however, the company said it would make a far smaller “Gen 6” facility. This week, the company said it wouldn’t make screens in Wisconsin at all, and would instead do a mix of assembly and “knowledge work.” The sudden change in plans seemed to catch Wisconsin officials off guard, and left locals worried about the future of their communities.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207102/trump-foxconn-wisconsin-factory-build
    Foxconn is killing a second $9B factory

    Foxconn will postpone most of the production planned in a 61 billion yuan ($9 billion) display panel project in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou for at least six months, according to internal documents obtained by the Nikkei Asian Review. In the U.S., a $10 billion investment in display production in the state of Wisconsin has been suspended and scaled back as a result of negotiations with new Gov. Tony Evers, a Foxconn document obtained by Nikkei shows.

    Foxconn’s decision to delay work on the two factories throws into doubt the promise of fresh investment and employment at a sensitive time for both economies. China’s economic growth has slowed to a 28-year low, while in the U.S., President Donald Trump continues to seek wins on his vow to bring manufacturing jobs back to America.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/foxconn-is-killing-a-second-9b-factory/

  • Amazon Is Reconsidering Plan to Put Campus in New York

    The recent change in conversation at Amazon accelerated after Monday’s nomination of New York state Sen. Mike Gianaris, a vocal opponent of the deal, to a state board that would allow him to veto the development plan, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Gianaris needs to be approved for the post by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    The governor and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, fellow Democrats who have often clashed, agreed on wooing Amazon to New York with up to $3 billion in state and city tax incentives. On Friday, Mr. Cuomo reiterated his support for the deal for Amazon as he warned that local opponents could derail the project.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-reconsidering-plan-to-put-campus-in-new-york-11549668969?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
    Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters

    Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from some lawmakers and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives.

    Amazon released a statement mentioning they will not open their search to another city at this time:

    We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queens.html

Photo by Zoltan Kovacs on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/1/2019

Microsoft purchased an open source database company continuing a trend they started with the acquisition of GitHub. As the company embraces open source, the open source community is grumbling about what happens when large software companies get involved with open source (see Amazon’s use and then discarding of MongoDB).

Speaking of Amazon, the company is getting serious about advertising, and they have access to massive amounts of personalized purchasing habit information. The company not only sells products, makes products, tracks behavior – it will have the ability to market to you as well. That certainly feels… intrusive.

Acquisitions

  • Microsoft buys an open source database startup to give it an edge against Amazon Web Services

    On Thursday, Microsoft announced it has acquired Citus Data, an open source database startup. Citus Data was first founded in 2010, and raised a relatively meager $13.2 million in venture capital funding in that time.

    What Citus Data does is take PostgreSQL, a database management system that’s popular with developers, and transform it into databases that can be dispersed over multiple computers. That gives developers the ability to bring their databases to ever-larger scales, for even the most demanding apps.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-acquires-open-source-postgresql-startup-citus-data-2019-1

Artificial Intelligence

  • One-quarter of jobs are at ‘high-risk’ of being automated

    Roles in transportation, food prep, production and office admin are among those at highest risk, with robotics and artificial intelligence threatening to automate in the neighborhood of 70 percent of tasks, according to the study. Activities involving processing, data collection and physical labor are, unsurprisingly, most at risk here.

    Automation is expected to have an outsized impact in certain regions in the country, and among less well educated workers. Likewise, it’s expect to impact different segments of the population in different ways.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/26/one-quarter-of-jobs-are-at-high-risk-of-being-automated/

  • Blue Prism to issue $130M in stock to raise new funds

    CEO Alastair Bathgate attempted to put the announcement in the best possible light. “The outcome of this placing, which builds on another year of significant progress for the company, highlights the meteoric growth opportunity with RPA and intelligent automation,” he said in a statement.

    While the company’s revenue more than doubled last fiscal year, from £24.5 million (approximately $32 million) in 2017 to £55.2 million (approximately $72 million) in 2018, losses also increased dramatically, from £10.1 million (approximately $13 million) in 2017 to £26.0 million (approximately $34 million), according to reports.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/24/blue-prism-to-issue-130m-in-stock-to-raise-new-funds/

Cloud

  • Amazon probed for potential conflict over $10B Pentagon contract

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) re-hired a former employee who left the company briefly to work at the Department of Defense, where he reportedly worked for the military’s cloud division Opens a New Window. and on the contract in question, as first reported by The Washington Post.

    A potential competitor for the bid, Oracle, has filed a lawsuit claiming the Pentagon needs to look into the role of the employee and whether the process is unfairly biased toward Amazon.

    While an official for the department previously said the employee’s work on the project did not impact the integrity of the procurement, the filing also noted that the agency is considering whether there is a conflict of interest now that AWS has submitted a bid for the contract.

    https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/amazons-bid-for-10b-pentagon-contract-under-review

  • IBM Smashes Analyst Estimates, But Can it Catch Cloud Rivals Amazon & Google?

    For the quarter, IBM pulled in $21.76 billion in revenue. While impressive, that figure is lower than what was reported for Q4 2017. Back then, IBM reported $22.54 billion in revenue.

    IBM’s cloud service offerings fall into its strategic imperatives group, which reaped almost $40 billion in revenue in 2018. Cloud revenue contributed about $19 billion of that, which was 12 percent higher than it was in 2017.

    https://www.ccn.com/ibm-smashes-analyst-estimates-but-can-it-catch-cloud-rivals-amazon-google/

Security

  • Google fined $57m by French regulator for breaching GDPR

    The regulator hit Google on two points: for making it difficult for users to see the detail on why and how they should give consent in order to be sent personalized ads, and for providing a pre-ticked option when requesting consent.

    CNIL has decided that essential information such as data processing purposes, the data storage periods or the categories of personal data used for sending personalized ads are “excessively disseminated” across several documents. This means users can only view the details after clicking through several pages.

    https://digiday.com/media/google-fined-57m-french-regulator-breaching-gdpr/

  • Amazon knows what you buy, and it’s built a $125-billion dollar ad business off it that’s a marketer’s dream

    But many ad agencies are particularly excited by another area of advertising that is less obvious to many consumers. The company has been steadily expanding its business of selling video or display ads — the square and rectangular ads on sites across the web — and gaining ground on the industry leaders, Google and Facebook.

    In addition to knowing what people buy, Amazon also knows where people live, because they provide delivery addresses, and which credit cards they use. It knows how old their children are from their baby registries, and who has a cold, right now, from cough syrup ordered for two-hour delivery. And the company has been expanding a self-service option for ad agencies and brands to take advantage of its data on shoppers.

    https://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/amazon-knows-what-you-buy-and-its-built-a-125-billion-dollar-ad-business-thats-a-marketers-dream

Software/SaaS

  • Zuckerberg Plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger

    The services will continue to operate as stand-alone apps, but their underlying technical infrastructure will be unified, said four people involved in the effort. That will bring together three of the world’s largest messaging networks, which between them have more than 2.6 billion users, allowing people to communicate across the platforms for the first time.

    The move has the potential to redefine how billions of people use the apps to connect with one another while strengthening Facebook’s grip on users, raising antitrust, privacy and security questions. It also underscores how Mr. Zuckerberg is imposing his authority over units he once vowed to leave alone.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/technology/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-messenger.html

  • PNC, IBM, And Aetna Set To Explore Blockchain Technology For Medical Health Plans

    According to IBM, more members will join this network in the months to come. These members will come from the healthcare industry, technology industry and other startups. After the announcement, the general manager for payers at IBM Watson Health, Barbara Hayes said:

    “While IBM is among the founding members, it is not the only one with a stake. Every founding member involved has an equal stake. It is vital because you don’t have side by side competitors struggling for waste in the healthcare sector 40 to 50 cents on the dollar. In the healthcare sector, these inefficiencies are found in administrative and clinical areas. Sometimes, it may be just friction in the system that ripple into bad customer experience.”

    https://smartereum.com/46967/blockchain-technology-pnc-ibm-and-aetna-set-to-explore-blockchain-technology-for-medical-health-plans-blockchain-news-today/

    IBM is finally starting to realize that companies are not going to pay for unproven technology. It is a shame they weren’t open to partnering to this degree a few years ago.

Other

  • Oracle underpaid thousands of women, minorities, government charges

    The Department of Labor (DoL) accused Oracle of widespread discriminatory wage practices that resulted in the loss of more than $400 million in wages for female, black and Asian employees, according to a federal complaint filed on Tuesday.

    According to the filing, the Silicon Valley giant underpaid women in jobs in its product development, information technology and support job functions, resulting in pay disparities as high as 20 percent, affecting more than 5,000 women. The DoL also alleged that it underpaid black employees, with disparities as high as 7.5 percent, and Asian employees, with gaps as high as 8 percent.

    https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/oracle-deliberately-underpaid-thousands-of-women-minorities-lawsuit-says

    Oracle Could Lose $100 Million Annually in Federal Contracts Over Pay Discrimination Suit

    The situation threatens an estimated $100 million a year that Oracle gets in federal contracts. The original DOL complaint seeks “an order canceling all of Oracle’s federal government contracts and subcontracts.”

    http://fortune.com/2019/01/23/oracle-discrimination-lawsuit/

  • U.S. Believes It Doesn’t Need to Show ‘Proof’ Huawei Is a Spy Threat

    U.S. intelligence officials have suggested at times that their views on Huawei are informed by definitive examples of malfeasance, though they have so far refused to share such evidence publicly. When the House Intelligence Committee in 2012 published an unclassified report naming Huawei as a security risk, it spoke generally about a lack of trust lawmakers placed in China but steered clear of providing concrete examples of the company being caught engaging in nefarious activity.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-believes-it-doesnt-need-to-show-proof-huawei-is-a-spy-threat-11548288297?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/25/2019

IBM continues to have a strong news cycle, but this week is more positive. The company is expected to purchase T-Systems mainframe business unit for approximately one billion dollars.

Big Blue also inked a $550m, 8-year deal/joint-venture with Vodaphone to build out AI and cloud services. They also announced a few blockchain projects that customers are willing to pay for (sounds like everything is coming up Milhouse)

On a down note, the company’s AI schemes continue to under-perform with the announcement that “Watson Workspace” is being shut down due to “lack of customer interest.”

Acquisitions

  • IBM to Reportedly Buy T-Systems’ Mainframe Business Unit

    IBM is acquiring T-Systems’ mainframe services business from Deutsche Telekom for roughly $986 million, according to the Handelsblatt and IT-Zoom.

    Roughly 400 T-Systems employees across six countries will transition to IBM in May 2019 as part of the deal, according to the reports. The mainframe unit is only one small piece of the larger T-Systems — a German global IT services and consulting company headquartered in Frankfurt. Founded in 2000, T-Systems is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/ibm-to-reportedly-buy-t-systems-mainframe-business-unit-cm1081559

  • Fiserv to Acquire First Data in $22 Billion All-Stock Deal

    Fiserv Inc. has struck a deal to buy First Data Corp. for $22 billion, combining two companies that, though largely unknown to consumers, provide much of the financial technology that connects Wall Street to Main Street.

    The all-stock deal underscores the growing threat of upstart financial-technology firms to a lucrative but obscure business long controlled by more mature companies. Fiserv and First Data provide a range of technology services to banks, merchants and other companies involved in the business of moving money.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiserv-to-acquire-first-data-in-22-billion-all-stock-deal-11547643455

  • Google is buying Fossil’s smartwatch tech for $40 million

    The smartwatch category continues to be dominated by Apple’s offerings, and top competitors Fitbit and Samsung have opted to go different routes, supporting the Pebble-based Fitbit OS and Tizen, respectively. All of this has left Google struggling to differentiate itself and its partners’ offerings. Fossil’s team certainly has the know how to build solid watch hardware, so this could prove a solid match.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/google-is-buying-fossils-smartwatch-tech-for-40-million/

  • AWS makes another acquisition, grabbing TSO Logic

    Amazon confirmed the purchase by email and referred to the statement on the TSO Logic website from CEO Aaron Rallo. “We are very pleased to share the news that TSO Logic will be joining the AWS family,” Rallo wrote in the statement.

    The company takes data about workloads and applications and helps customers find the most efficient place to run them by measuring requirements like resource needs against cost to find the right balance at any given time.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/aws-makes-another-acquisition-grabbing-tso-logic/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM to put Watson Workspace out to pasture over lack of adoption

    IBM is killing off its AI-powered collaboration tool Watson Workspace after it failed to “resonate” with clients, according to a leaked memo.

    Watson Workspace is IBM’s answer to Slack or Microsoft Teams, but with AI capabilities. It provided a platform for shared workspaces, collaborations and even hosted third-party apps. But, despite having only been released in 2016 in beta, the app is being shut down by the 28 February, according to a memo seen by The Register.

    https://www.itpro.co.uk/business-operations/32768/ibm-to-put-watson-workspace-out-to-pasture-over-lack-of-adoption
    Another IBM AI tool that fails to connect with the purchasing public…

  • Robot Hotel Loses Love for Robots

    Guests became frustrated when the hotel’s robots failed to keep pace with Siri or Alexa. One laggard was the robot assistant in each room named “Churi” because of its tulip-shaped head. The doll-like device can manage simple hello-how-are-you type conversations and adjust room heating and lighting in response to voice commands. But some guests quizzed her in vain about things like the opening time of the nearby theme park.

    Atsushi Nishiguchi, a guest at the hotel in 2017, said that after an irate exchange with Churi he decided to phone the hotel reception, only to find there was no phone in the room because the assistant was intended to handle guests’ requests. He used his cellphone to call the main hotel number to reach a human worker.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/robot-hotel-loses-love-for-robots-11547484628

Cloud

  • IBM and Vodafone form cloud, 5G and AI business venture and ink $550M service deal

    IBM is announcing a new venture with mobile carrier Vodafone, in a deal that will comes in two parts. First, IBM will supply Vodafone’s B2B unit Vodafone Business with managed services in the areas of cloud and hosting. And second, the two will together work on building and delivering solutions in areas like AI, cloud, 5G, IoT and software defined networking to enterprise customers.

    The latter part of the deal appears to be a classic JV that will see both sides bringing something to the table — employees from both companies will be moving into a separate office together very soon that will essentially be “neutral” territory. The former part, meanwhile, will see Vodafone paying IBM some $550 million in an eight-year agreement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/ibm-and-vodafone-form-550m-venture-to-develop-cloud-5g-and-ai-business-solutions/

Security

  • Amazon shareholders want the company to stop selling facial recognition to law enforcement

    This resolution, organized by nonprofit organization Open MIC, represents a group of shareholders that represent a total of $1.32 billion in assets under management.

    “It’s a familiar pattern: a leading tech company marketing what is hailed as breakthrough technology without understanding or assessing the many real and potential harms of that product,” Open MIC Executive Director Michael Connor wrote in a blog post. “Sales of Rekognition to government represent considerable risk for the company and investors. That’s why it’s imperative those sales be halted immediately.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/amazon-shareholders-want-the-company-to-stop-selling-facial-recognition-to-law-enforcement/

  • Another huge database exposed millions of call logs and SMS text messages

    Voipo, a Lake Forest, Calif. communications provider, exposed tens of gigabytes worth of customer data.

    Voipo is a voice-over-internet provider, providing residential and business phone line services that they can control themselves in the cloud. The company’s backend routes calls and processes text messages for its users. But because one of the backend ElasticSearch databases wasn’t protected with a password, anyone could look in and see streams of real-time call logs and text messages sent back and forth.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/another-huge-database-exposed-millions-of-call-logs-and-sms-text-messages/

Software/SaaS

  • IBM Announces 2 Blockchain Pilots For The Mining Industry

    The pilot program’s first use case will utilize the MineHub blockchain platform and test the technology’s ability to “manage concentrate from Goldcorp’s Penasquito Mine in Mexico throughout its path to market.” Once the ore is mined, the data will be uploaded to the blockchain platform. It will include data about sustainability and ethical practices. The data is then verified by “independent regulators,” and the ore can then be loaded for shipping. The MineHub platform records each transaction and lets participants “view and reconcile” this data as the product moves through the supply chain. EDCCs (better known as smart contracts) will be used by companies such as ING Bank and Wheaton Precious Metals for “trade finance, streaming and royalty contracts.”

    https://www.ethnews.com/ibm-announces-2-blockchain-pilots-for-the-mining-industry
    Looks like IBM has found someone to “pay for the roads to be built”

Other

  • WeWork’s CEO Makes Millions as Landlord to WeWork

    Mr. Neumann has made millions of dollars by leasing multiple properties in which he has an ownership stake back to WeWork, one of the country’s most valuable startups. Multiple investors of the privately held company said the arrangement concerned them as a potential conflict of interest in which the CEO could benefit on rents or other terms with the company.

    A WeWork spokesman said all related-party deals are reviewed and approved by the board or an independent committee and disclosed to investors. Mr. Neumann declined to comment through a spokesman.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/weworks-ceo-makes-millions-as-landlord-to-wework-11547640000

  • Foxconn might slow hiring at its Wisconsin plant

    On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company “fell short of the minimum number of jobs it was required to create in 2018 to claim state-job creation tax credits.” The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp says that the company needed to create 260 full-time jobs, but only created 178. As a result, the company won’t receive tax credits for 2018. The WSJ cites the state’s low employment rate as a factor for the slow hiring, and notes that the company could earn $19.1 million in tax credits if it passes its hiring goal of 2,080 jobs this year. The company denied reports last November that it had been looking to bring in workers from China to bolster its workforce.

    On top of that, Foxconn appears to be adjusting its expectations for hiring in the near future. It tells Bloomberg that it “remains committed” to creating those promised 13,000 jobs, but that it might slow its hiring moving forward: “we need to have the agility to adapt to a range of factors, including global economic conditions.” The company and former Governor Scott Walker have been heavily criticized, both for the steep subsidies promised to the company, as well as the possibility that the company might not deliver on its promise to bring 13,000 jobs to the state.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/19/18189480/foxconn-wisconsin-plant-possible-hiring-slowdown-jobs