Supplier Report: 3/30/2018
As Amazon continues to grow, the company is drawing the attention of President Trump. Trump’s issues with Amazon and Jeff Bezos are well documented, and there are reports that Trump is focused on finding ways to halt Amazon’s growth while the rest of the government is focused on regulating Facebook and Google.
Microsoft is undertaking a massive reorganization centered on cloud and AI. This push has resulted in long-time Windows lead Terry Myerson opting to leave the company.
IBM is currently undergoing another round of job eliminations. The full scope hasn’t been reported yet, but the focus seems to be around sales and services, leaving remaining employees to wonder how the company can support existing customers.
Oracle took a stock hit a few weeks ago, but they had a massive win against Google. The Java fair-use case that has been going on for years has finally shifted back in Oracle’s favor. The company could get a $9B settlement from Google.
Acquisitions
- Unit of Taiwan’s Foxconn to Buy Los Angeles-Based Belkin
A unit of Foxconn Technology Group has agreed to buy smartphone and electronics accessories maker Belkin International Inc. for $866 million.
The move disclosed Tuesday comes as Taiwan-based Foxconn, known as the contract assembler of Apple Inc.’s iPhones, seeks to bolster its consumer-branded operations.
Privately held Belkin also owns Linksys, a wireless router brand, and the Wemo brand of products that control home lights, monitor cameras and similar devices.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/unit-of-taiwans-foxconn-to-buy-los-angeles-based-belkin-1522151550
I wonder if Trump is going to let this sale happen? - DOJ and AT&T Clash Over Impact on Consumers of a Time Warner Deal
The Justice Department argued a post-merger AT&T would use Turner’s valuable channels to wring higher prices out of rival cable providers who need that programming for their packages. The government also argued AT&T would try to deter emerging online rivals who are offering pay-TV packages at cheaper prices.
Mr. Conrath highlighted Dish Network Corp.’s Sling TV, a new online-only TV package that competes against AT&T’s DirecTV Now streaming service, as proof of Time Warner’s importance. He said Turner chief John Martin warned a Sling TV executive the service would be “crap” if it didn’t carry Turner’s networks. (Mr. Conrath said Mr. Martin used a more profane word best kept out of the courtroom.) Sling TV today offers two basic $20-a-month TV packages, both of which carry Turner channels.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doj-says-pay-tv-will-cost-more-if-at-t-buys-time-warner-1521746321
Artificial Intelligence
- Apple and IBM Watson team for enterprise mobile machine learning
In leveraging the new technology, customers can build machine learning models using IBM Watson (the company’s cloud-based AI platform for business) and train it with their own industry-specific data. This includes the ability to create different machine learning models, compare the results, and run automated experiments – identifying patterns and gaining insights, to reach decisions more quickly.
Machine learning is implemented with IBM Watson’s visual modelling tools, such as PixieDust and Brunel, but there’s support for Jupyter notebooks with Python, R and Scala – plus the open-source RStudio. This is then converted to Apple’s Core ML to integrate it with Apple-compatible applications.
One such application of machine learning enables iPhone cameras to access Watson’s image recognition capabilities. Users can identify and classify content, before analyzing it to extract detailed information. This capability could shake up workflows in the industrial, logistics, and healthcare sectors.
https://internetofbusiness.com/apple-ibm-mobile-machine-learning/
- IBM Could Be a Dark Horse in the Virtual Assistant Market
Don’t expect IBM to launch a smart speaker, and don’t expect to be saying, “Hey, Watson.” The company is targeting enterprise customers with Watson Assistant instead of going after consumers directly. Watson Assistant can be used by companies and organizations to build industry-specific applications. It’s a white-label product, meaning that applications built on Watson Assistant will be branded and customized however the developing company chooses.
IBM provided an example of how this could work in a post announcing the product:
You’re on a business trip to Las Vegas. Upon landing at McCarran International Airport, Watson Assistant automatically checks into your hotel and your preferred rental car is not only ready, it has the hotel destination preprogrammed along with suggestions on where to get a latte while en-route. Nearing the hotel, the Watson Assistant in your car signals your arrival to the hotel and not only updates the room with your preferences for music, temperature and lighting, it synchs your smartphone, calendar and email with the in-room wall dashboard and checking you into the convention you’re attending.
- Microsoft is launching a huge reorganization to focus on AI and the cloud
The company is creating two new engineering divisions that it says will accelerate innovation and better serve its customers. One team will focus on the cloud and AI, the other on what it calls “experiences and devices.”
The AI cloud: It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Microsoft has decided to lump together its cloud services with its AI research—combining the two is a big business, with Google, Amazon, and Chinese firms all providing stiff competition. This new division will also include its teams working on augmented- and mixed-reality technologies.
Things people use: Microsoft’s new “experiences and devices” team will attempt to unify the way the firm is developing products for consumer and business users. It’ll include Microsoft’s mobile offerings, Windows, and its Microsoft 365 productivity suite.
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/610725/microsoft-is-doing-the-splits-to-focus-on-ai-and-the-cloud/
Microsoft’s longtime Windows boss is leaving the company amid a huge executive reorganizationAs part of the reorganization, Rajesh Jha, the executive VP of Microsoft Office products, will expand his responsibilities to encompass Myerson’s role. Jha will become the leader of a group called Experiences and Devices, bringing Windows and Office together under a single banner.
“The purpose of this team is to instill a unifying product ethos across our end-user experiences and devices,” Nadella said. “Computing experiences are evolving to include multiple senses and are no longer bound to one device at a time but increasingly spanning many as we move from home to work and on the go.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-terry-myerson-leaving-reorganization-2018-3
Cloud
- Trump Attacks Amazon, Saying It Does Not Pay Enough Taxes
Mr. Trump accused Amazon, one of the country’s most recognizable and successful brands, of putting thousands of local retailers out of business and said the company was using the United States Postal Service as its “Delivery Boy.”
The president has lashed out publicly against the giant company and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, on Twitter more than a dozen times since 2015. And privately, people close to him said, Mr. Trump repeatedly brings up his disdain for the company, often set off by his anger at negative stories in The Washington Post, which is owned by Mr. Bezos.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/us/politics/trump-amazon-taxes.html
One area where Trump could really hurt AmazonThe Washington Business Journal reported that the omnibus spending bill signed by Trump earlier this month contained a provision which requires the DoD to explain why awarding a contract that could run in excess of $10 billion to a single vendor is the best way to execute this plan.
In 2013, Amazon Web Services won a $600 million contract from the CIA.
And with signs pointing to Amazon having the upper hand in winning a potentially massive contract from the DoD, Clifton sees this as an area where Trump could hit back against Amazon.
“Of all the stories we read [on Wednesday], however, we saw very little attention paid to the one area where Trump could actually hurt Amazon – cloud computing contracts,” Clifton writes. “Tech companies have been fuming at the possibility of Amazon being the sole company awarded a multi-year cloud services contract at DoD. Congress was forced to intervene in the recent omnibus.”
https://sports.yahoo.com/one-area-trump-really-hurt-amazon-164512213.html
- Oracle Opens The Doors To Massive Austin Campus Entirely Focused On Driving Cloud Solutions
Oracle said the campus could ultimately support up to 10,000 workers, some of whom will live in a neighboring apartment building the company is constructing.
From the campus, Oracle will launch its Next Generation Contact Center, a customer support operation which looks to enhance the customer experience by leveraging Oracle Sales Cloud to drive the sales process.
A new Oracle Cloud Solution Hub will also be set up at the Austin campus.
The hubs—three more will operate at other Oracle sites across the country—showcase Oracle cloud projects in the works or already deployed in the field for customers. Engineers will be available to demonstrate Oracle’s next-gen solutions, from AI to virtual reality to bots.
- Microsoft will be worth $1T within year: Morgan Stanley
Other tech heavyweights still hold a lead over Microsoft. Apple is worth $861 billion, while Amazon’s market cap is $739 billion. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, fell to $709 billion during Monday’s trading session.
“Strong positioning for ramping public cloud adoption, large distribution channels and installed customer base, and improving margins support a path to $50 billion in [earnings before interest and taxes] and a $1 trillion market cap for [Microsoft],” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/microsoft-will-be-worth-1t-within-year-morgan-stanley
Security
- Apple’s Tim Cook calls for tougher regulation of personal data
In a discussion at the China Development Forum, Tim Cook said that tougher, “well-crafted” regulation of personal data is likely “necessary” in the wake of Facebook’s crisis. The ability to learn “every intimate detail of your life” through your internet history and contacts “shouldn’t exist,” Cook said.
He argued that Apple had been concerned about just this sort of privacy breach for a long time. It saw that were giving up info without understanding what they were doing, and that companies were creating profiles that would leave people “incredibly offended” when they learned the truth. This has happened “more than once,” Cook added.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/24/tim-cook-calls-for-tougher-regulation-of-personal-data/
- President signs overseas data access bill into law
The House of Representatives has approved a piece of legislation (PDF) that makes it easier for law enforcement to get access to info even if it’s stored in other countries. Officially known as Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, the set of regulations was part of the 2,000-page Omnibus Spending Bill the president has just signed. CLOUD was created to replace the current rules for cross-border access to data, which require requests for info to be ratified by the Senate and vetted by the DOJ. The new rules give the DOJ the power to obtain data US-based tech companies stored overseas, such as the Outlook emails Microsoft stores in Ireland. It also allows the agency to forge agreements with foreign governments seeking data from US tech corporations even without approval from Congress or the courts.
- Facebook has been collecting call history and SMS data from Android devices
While the recent prompts make it clear, Ars Technica points out the troubling aspect that Facebook has been doing this for years, during a time when Android permissions were a lot less strict. Google changed Android permissions to make them more clear and granular, but developers could bypass this and continue accessing call and SMS data until Google deprecated the old Android API in October.
Facebook has responded to the findings, but the company appears to suggest it’s normal for apps to access your phone call history when you upload contacts to social apps. “The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with,” says a Facebook spokesperson, in response to a query from Ars Technica. “So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts.”
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/25/17160944/facebook-call-history-sms-data-collection-android
Software/SaaS
- Oracle Wins Court Ruling Against Google in Multibillion-Dollar Copyright Case
The court ruled Tuesday that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java programming technology wasn’t “fair,” a reversal of fortune in a case that dates back to 2010, when Oracle alleged Google’s Android smartphone operating system infringed copyrights related to Oracle’s Java platform. Oracle has sought as much as $9 billion in damages previously. Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley said in an interview that “the value has gone up,” though the company hasn’t come up with an updated number.
The appeals court ruling, if it stands, could have a broad impact on the software industry by limiting the “fair-use” defense in copyright cases. That could make it more costly and technically complex for developers to use Java and other copyrighted software to create new products, legal and industry experts said.
- Google Is Working on Blockchain Technology, Too
The search company is developing its own distributed ledger blockchain software to verify transactions within its cloud services. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Google will use the technology internally as well as provide a white-label version that other companies can run on their own servers. These sources said that Google has looked at the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger blockchain software. But it’s unknown whether the company will ultimately choose that open source software or something else.
It’s also unknown precisely how Google might be planning to use blockchain. But Cointelegraph reported that the company filed a patent application for a tamper-proof auditing system based on the technology.
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-working-blockchain-technology/2018/03/
Datacenter/Hardware
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise to move HQ to San Jose
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is moving from Palo Alto to San Jose. The company will relocate 1,000 employees to a 220,000-square-foot space in late 2018. HPE was spun-off from Hewlett-Packard in 2015 and is focused on servers and storage.
This news comes months after HPE announced a different plan in which the company was moving to Santa Clara, where Aruba Networks, a company it previously acquired, is headquartered.
HPE is going to occupy six floors in San Jose’s America Center, which is located near a forthcoming Berryessa BART station.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/hewlett-packard-enterprise-to-move-hq-to-san-jose/
Other
- Mark Zuckerberg won’t lose his job any time soon
As chairman of the board, Zuckerberg controls 87 percent of Facebook voting shares. Even if the remaining eight board members wanted to kick him out, they don’t have the power to do so, unless Zuckerberg decides to play along and vote himself out.
This consolidation of power didn’t happen by accident. In December 2015, Zuckerberg pledged to give away 99 percent of his Facebook shares — valued at $45 billion at the time — to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a charitable organization he founded with his wife. In order to do this without reducing Zuckerberg’s majority on the board, Facebook took a page of out the Google founders’ handbook. It introduced a new type of non-voting stock, Class C, that split every share for every stockholder into three distinct shares. A share worth $100 was transformed into three $33 shares, two of which were Class C, meaning they didn’t carry any voting rights.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/29/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-job-security/
- SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia plan to spend $200 billion building the world’s biggest solar power plant
According to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the Saudi Arabian project is about 100 times larger than the next biggest proposed development, the 2 gigawatt Solar Choice Bulli Creek PV in Australia, which is expected to be completed by 2023.
During an event with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in New York City on Tuesday, Son said the project will create 100,000 jobs, triple Saudi Arabia’s electricity generation capacity and save $40 billion in power costs. Saudi Arabia is the largest crude exporter in the world, but the kingdom is currently trying to diversify its economy beyond oil. Last month, the government awarded ACWA Power a $302 million deal to build Saudi Arabia’s first utility-scale renewable energy plant.
- Stop us if you’ve heard this one: Job cuts at IBM
So far there is no word on the number of people who have been let go, and no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices from IBM have been filed in New York or California. However, multiple posts from both groups suggest a significant portion of the sales staff has been axed.
“Sales is getting hit hard especially over 50. My achievement was good, but now they are eliminating the territory,” says another person whose job was cut.
“They are guessing it could be 20-30 per cent of sales force.”
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/29/ibm_layoffs/
IBMers in TSS: How WILL we support customers after these latest job cuts?The document revealed staff are worried about the headcount that will be left to provide support to customers. In it, one ECC rep said he had “raised a concern that the proposed redundancies, in addition to attrition in the hardware domain, posed a significant business risk”. This was “noted” by IBM, it added.
IBMers have told us of individual teams being obliterated with, in some cases, more than half of the personnel set to leave. One told us: “I am being dumped on the scrap heap” by the latest cost cutting in the support unit.
“The out-of-hours support is being compromised to save money. IBM customers are paying for a service that will be depleted,” our source added.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/27/ibm_tss/
I keep saying this, but I do not understand why the company keeps going after services and consulting bids when they are cutting into those exact groups.
Photo by Elijah O’Donell on Unsplash
Supplier Report: 3/23/3018
Oracle and MicroFocus had a very rough week at the stock market. MicroFocus dropped over 50% in value due to complications integrating HP software assets. Oracle investors are reacting to a lack of progress in cloud sales.
SAP settled a $600M software dispute with Anheuser-Busch, terms were not disclosed, but I am sure all parties need a drink after those discussions.
As China gains more traction in artificial intelligence, the US is attempting to curb any domestic growth in consumer goods or tech acquisitions. Is this a sound strategy or is this the start of a potential trade war?
Acquisitions
- Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M
Multiple sources tell us that Google is acquiring Lytro, the imaging startup that began as a ground-breaking camera company for consumers before pivoting to use its depth-data, light-field technology in VR.
One source described the deal as an “asset sale” with Lytro going for no more than $40 million. Another source said the price was even lower: $25 million. A third source tells us that not all employees are coming over with the company’s technology: some have already received severance and parted ways with the company, and others have simply left. Assets would presumably also include Lytro’s 59 patents related to light-field and other digital imaging technology.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/sources-google-is-buying-lytro-for-about-40m/
- Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5 billion
But of course Salesforce gets more than tech with this purchase, which it can integrate into its growing family of products. It also gets major customers like Coca-Cola, VMware, GE, Accenture, Airbus, AT&T and Cisco. While Salesforce may have a presence already in some of these companies already, Mulesoft gives them entree into areas they might not have had and gives them the ability to expand that presence.
What’s more, the company has big revenue goals. Having reached $10 billion in revenue faster than any software company ever has, a point that Chairman and co-founder Marc Benioff has been happy to make, they have actually set their sites on $60 billion by 2034. That’s a long way away, of course, but having a company like MuleSoft in the fold, which made almost $300 million in revenue in fiscal 201, will certainly help.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/salesforce-is-buying-mulesoft-at-enterprise-value-of-6-5-billion/
- Google’s Cloud Boss Is Eyeing a ‘Major Acquisition’ to Get Ahead
For 2018, Greene and her deputies mentioned a focus on winning customers in health care, energy and financial services. Greene said Google will keep working to sign cloud deals with the government, too. The company recently got its FedRAMP certification, a key clearance needed to provide cloud services to the U.S. government.
Over the past two years, Alphabet has scaled back several costly initiatives, including projects in fiber broadband and drones. But the company has plowed money into Greene’s division. (Greene, an Alphabet director, said she recuses herself from board votes on cloud acquisitions.) That investment is indicative of the support that Alphabet CEO and Google co-founder Larry Page has for the business, Greene noted.
“The entire board, including Larry, is pretty thrilled with what’s going on in cloud,” she said. “How could they not be? It’s phenomenal what the team has achieved.”
- Qualcomm’s Jacobs to Leave Board as He Explores Acquisition
Qualcomm Inc. said director Paul Jacobs, son of the chipmaker’s founder and a former chief executive officer, will leave the board after he decided to explore an acquisition of the company.
“The board reached that decision following his notification to the board that he has decided to explore the possibility of making a proposal to acquire Qualcomm,” the company said in a statement on Friday.
Jacobs, 55, was stripped of his executive chairman title last week as the company sought to fend off a $117 billion hostile takeover bid from Broadcom Ltd. The board largely agreed with Jacobs that Broadcom’s bid was too low. However, early counts in a board vote tied to the Broadcom bid showed many Qualcomm shareholders had voted to replace Qualcomm directors, including Jacobs and Chief Executive Officer Steve Mollenkopf. U.S. President Donald Trump blocked the deal earlier this week.
Artificial Intelligence
- Look out, Alexa and Google Assistant — Watson Assistant is coming for you
One of the key differentiating factors between Watson and all other smart assistants is its status as a white label product. That means that there’s no specific way in which to use Watson Assistant — there is no set wake word, nor a dedicated smart speaker in which the assistant will live. Rather, companies will be able to leverage Watson however they see best, making it easier to add actions and commands. And perhaps most importantly, every individual application of Watson Assistant will keep its data to itself, which means that large companies can’t, as The Verge notes, “pool information on users’ activities across multiple domains.”
As IBM’s vice president of Watson Internet of Things, Bret Greenstein, explained to The Verge, “If you start running the entire world through Alexa, it’s an enormous amount of data and control to give to one company.” But Watson Assistant hopes to avoid that situation.
- FedEx Follows Amazon Into the Robotic Future
Yes, the robots replaced a few jobs right away. And in time, they will replace about 25 jobs in a facility that employs about 1,300 people. But the hub creates about 100 new jobs every year — and a robot work force still seems like the distant future.
“Everyone will have a job,” said Galen Steele, the senior manager who oversees the depot. “It just might be in a different place.”
As people have become more comfortable buying online, big and bulky goods like car tires, canoes and boxes as big as a coffin have accounted for an increasing percentage of the packages flowing through FedEx’s distribution centers, said Ted Dengel, who oversees operations technology for the FedEx Ground network, which includes 35 shipping hubs across the United States and Canada, including the facility in North Carolina.
These ungainly items can’t fit on a conveyor belt. That’s where the robots, which cost several thousand dollars and are made by a Massachusetts company called Vecna, come in.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/technology/fedex-robots.html
- China wants to shape the global future of artificial intelligence (Thanks JD)
“[The Chinese government] sees standardization not only as a way to provide competitiveness for their companies, but also as a way to go from being a follower to setting the pace,” says Jeffrey Ding, a student at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute who studies China’s nascent AI industry, and who translated the report. The government’s plan cites the way US standards bodies have influenced the development of the internet, expressing a desire to avoid having the same thing happen with AI.
China’s booming AI industry and massive government investment in the technology have raised fears in the US and elsewhere that the nation will overtake international rivals in a fundamentally important technology. In truth, it may be possible for both the US and the Chinese economies to benefit from AI. But there may be more rivalry when it comes to influencing the spread of the technology worldwide.
Cloud
- Oracle stock heads for worst day in nearly 5 years, analysts run for shelter after cloud bursts
In Oracle’s earnings conference call, CEO Safra Catz told analysts that the firm expects to report adjusted earnings of $0.92 to $0.95 per share and revenue growth of 1% to 3% for the fourth quarter. Heading into the report data, our Zacks Consensus Estimates were calling for earnings of $0.90 per share and revenue growth of 2.6%.
But the real concern for investors is Oracle’s slowing cloud growth. Management guided for total cloud revenues to improve between 19% and 23% in Q4, which is sluggish compared to the 32% growth it saw this quarter-and even worse considering the 51% and 44% rates it witnessed in Q1 and Q2.
https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-oracle-orcl-worth-buying-on-the-post-earnings-dip-cm937297
Security
- Best Buy to Stop Selling Huawei Phones
U.S. intelligence leaders have recently recommended against Americans using phones from Huawei or Chinese rival ZTE Corp. The most recent to do so was Paul Nakasone, the nominee to head both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, who said at a Senate hearing last week that he wouldn’t want his friends or family using such devices.
In addition to selling smartphones, Huawei is the world’s top maker of the equipment that goes into cellular towers and related infrastructure. The U.S. government’s broad concern is that the Chinese government could order Huawei to exploit knowledge of how its electronics are designed to spy or launch cyberattacks. Huawei says it is employee-owned and that no government has ever asked it to spy on or sabotage another country.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/best-buy-to-stop-selling-huawei-phones-1521725835
Software/SaaS
- DocuSign has filed confidentially for IPO
Like Dropbox, which is finally going public this week, San Francisco-based DocuSign has been an anticipated IPO for several years now. It’s raised over $500 million since it was founded in 2003 and has been valued at $3 billion. Kleiner Perkins, Bain Capital, Intel Capital, GV (Google Ventures) and Dell are among the many well-known names which have invested in DocuSign.
But like many “unicorns” these days, the company took its time, spending 15 years as a private company. The DocuSign team decided that 2018 is the year for its debut and is targeting an IPO in either the second or third quarter.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/docusign-has-filed-confidentially-for-ipo/
- Coca-Cola and US government use blockchain to curb forced labor
Coca-Cola, the US State Department and a trio of crypto organizations (Bitfury Group, Blockchain Trust Accelerator and Emercoin) have launched a pilot project that will use blockchain to enforce worker rights. The initiative would use blockchain’s distributed ledger technology to create a secure, decentralized registry for workers and their contracts. They’d not only have the sort of identification that isn’t always guaranteed, but a trail of evidence in case employers abuse their power or don’t honor their end of a bargain.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/18/coca-cola-and-us-government-use-blockchain-to-curb-forced-labor/
- Microsoft’s Edge Browser Could Soon Be Harder to Ignore in Windows 10
But if you keep scrolling, near the bottom of the patch notes for build 17623, there’s a bullet point that says Insiders on the Skip Ahead ring “will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” Please say it ain’t so. This means that regardless of what your default browser is set to in Windows 10, any hyperlink you click in the Mail app would open in Edge, whether you like it or not.
Microsoft justifies this by saying Edge “provides the best, most secure and consistent experience on Windows 10 and across your devices” and that “With built-in features for reading, note-taking, Cortana integration, and easy access to services such as SharePoint and OneDrive, Microsoft Edge enables you to be more productive, organized and creative without sacrificing your battery life or security.”
https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-s-edge-browser-could-soon-be-harder-to-ignore-1823843562
- LinkedIn’s $27 Billion Challenge: Get People to Use It More
Just 18% of LinkedIn members used the service daily in April 2016, according to Pew Research’s most recent look at the service’s usage in November 2016, a month before Microsoft MSFT 0.45% closed the deal. That’s down from 21% a year earlier.
What’s more, more than half of members, 51%, used LinkedIn every few weeks or less often, Pew found. By comparison, 76% of Facebook Inc. members used the service at least daily, Pew found.
At the time of the deal, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said one goal was to weave together the tools people use to get their jobs done and professional networks that connect workers.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedins-27-billion-challenge-get-people-to-use-it-more-1521201600
- Oracle claims database 10 times cheaper than AWS, analyst says cloud on ‘continual slide’
Speaking on an earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Hurd talked up Oracle’s new autonomous database.
“The amazing thing about the autonomous database is that it is the only database on the planet that requires no human labor to administer,” he said.
“Oracle has a faster database than Amazon, it’s no big surprise there, but the interesting thing [is that] Amazon charges by the minute and we charge by the minute; our prices are essentially the same or close enough.
“If we run 10 times faster, we are one-tenth the cost of Amazon’s database. We’ve been through all the public benchmarks – you can go and look at them – we’re one-tenth the cost.”
- Hewlett Packard Spin-Off Falters, as Shares Drop 55% in London
It hasn’t worked out as planned. Micro Focus shares plunged 46% Monday after it said technical problems related to combining the computer systems of Micro Focus and HPE would lead to lower-than-expected sales.
Micro Focus also said its chief executive, Chris Hsu, resigned after a 6½-month tenure. Previously HPE’s chief operating officer, Mr. Hsu was appointed CEO in January 2017 and officially took the position when the merger was completed this past September.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hewlett-packard-spin-off-falters-as-shares-drop-55-in-london-1521471054
Other
- Facebook Suspends Data Firm That Helped Trump Campaign
Facebook said late Friday that it been given information that Cambridge Analytica, along with two individuals who don’t work there, improperly kept Facebook user data for years despite telling the social network that it had destroyed those records. Facebook didn’t say how Cambridge Analytica used that data or if it gave the data to the Trump campaign.
Facebook, which didn’t elaborate on the source of its information, said it is suspending Cambridge Analytica, its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories and the two individuals from buying ads or administering clients’ pages while it investigates the reports.
The move once again spotlights Facebook’s role during the 2016 presidential election and its shortcomings in policing manipulation and misuse of its platform.
- SAP settles licensing dispute with AB InBev
Questioned about the settlement, an SAP spokesman added just one adjective: “There is nothing more to say than ‘There was a dispute and it was resolved amicably,’” he said via email.
That the companies were able to conclude the dispute so amicably and quietly comes down to the framework SAP used to enforce its licensing agreement: the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association.
Commercial arbitration proceedings are usually conducted in private, and unlike in U.S. courts, filings and rulings are not matters of public record.
When a licensing dispute goes to court, it’s generally a lot harder to keep quiet, as another alcoholic beverage maker, Diageo, found when SAP sued it for accessing data stored in its SAP system without the appropriate licenses. In February 2017 a U.K. court ruled that Diageo needed named-user licenses for customers and employees to access the SAP system, even when they did so indirectly through a Salesforce.com app. The court didn’t immediately rule on how much Diageo had to pay, but SAP was asking for £54,503,578 (around $76 million).
- Cutting “old heads” at IBM
The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would “correct seniority mix.” It slashed IBM’s U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.
In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/
- Trump strikes back at Chinese tech practices with new tariffs
Trump directed his administration to take action that will likely result in tariffs on a proposed list of 1,300 products as punishment for Beijing’s intellectual property practices, senior White House officials said ahead of the announcement.
The officials said the list of targeted products will largely focus on technology China is accused of forcefully taking from U.S. companies. The value of that list represents the harm that U.S. companies have suffered from China’s practices, they said.
“What you’ll see is that many of these areas are those where China has sought to acquire advantage through the unfair acquisition or forced technology transfer from U.S. companies with an aim toward establishing its own competitive advantage,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, during a call with reporters.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/trump-chinese-tech-practices-tariffs-428551
Photo by Guzmán Barquín on Unsplash
Supplier Report: 3/16/2018
Broadcom’s bid for Qualcomm has been shut down by the government citing fears over national security.
Amazon is hiring more developers for Alexa than Google is hiring for everything. As Team Bezos builds out more cloud services, there are rumors this week that Amazon is focusing on corporate training services.
IBM thinks Lotus Notes can make a comeback… is it wishful thinking or is there a real strategy?
Acquisitions
- Apple to Acquire Digital-Magazine-Subscription Service Texture
Apple Inc. said it will acquire Next Issue Media LLC and its digital-magazine-subscription service Texture, a product developed by top magazine companies that bundles together some 200 subscriptions into one monthly service.
The acquisition comes as Apple looks to beef up its services business, which includes music streaming and mobile payments.
Apple has set a goal of increasing total revenue from services to more than $40 billion by 2020. The company generated nearly $30 billion in services revenue in its fiscal year ended in September.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-acquire-magazine-subscription-service-texture-1520875158
- Why Intel Is So Wary of a Broadcom-Qualcomm Merger
Since late last year, Intel has been exploring a bid for Broadcom to forestall that company’s $117 billion offer for Qualcomm in what would be the biggest-ever tech deal, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal in an article published Friday. Intel’s interest in derailing that deal reflects its worry that a combined Broadcom-Qualcomm, which would create the third-largest chip company by revenue after Intel and Samsung Electronics Co., would endanger its competitive position, the people said.
A merged Broadcom and Qualcomm would combine market-leading smartphone chips with a strong presence in data centers, two areas Intel has targeted for growth. And Qualcomm’s own proposed purchase of Dutch automotive chip specialist NXP Semiconductors NV would turbocharge such a merger in the automotive market, where Intel has placed one of its biggest bets.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-intel-is-so-wary-of-a-broadcom-qualcomm-merger-1520800808
Broadcom’s Bid for Qualcomm May Be Headed for Rejection, U.S. Panel WarnsA government panel reviewing Broadcom’s $117 billion bid for Qualcomm has warned that it may refer the potential deal to President Trump for rejection, further dimming the prospects for what would be the biggest-ever technology takeover in history.
In a letter to the two companies on Sunday, the panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, said that it believed the offer by Broadcom posed national security concerns. Broadcom is currently headquartered in Singapore, but is in the process of relocating its legal base to the United States to allay those issues.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/business/dealbook/cfius-broadcom-qualcomm-merger.html
Rejection of Qualcomm-Broadcom Deal Followed Monthslong StrategyQualcomm’s Jan. 29 filing to CFIUS helped trigger a chain of events that culminated in President Donald Trump’s decision Monday to block the deal. Broadcom on Wednesday said it had withdrawn its offer for Qualcomm, though it is proceeding with plans to change its domicile to the U.S. from Singapore.
Qualcomm’s appeal tapped into gathering concern among some congressional Republicans and the Trump administration about U.S. national security and competitiveness with China, especially in advanced technologies—sentiment that already was fueling an effort to expand the power of CFIUS. The company also got help from sympathetic senators and representatives who pressed the administration.
Artificial Intelligence
- Amazon Is Hiring More Developers For Alexa Than Google Is Hiring For Everything
Amazon is hiring 1,147 people for its Alexa business unit alone, says Citi Research in a new report. That’s more than Google is hiring for product and technical roles across the entire Alphabet conglomerate, including YouTube, Waymo, Google Fiber, and — of course — the main money maker in the Alphabet empire: the original Google.
“Key takeaways from the job openings at Alphabet include that the company’s pace of hiring relative to its current headcount (3%) is among the lowest in our coverage,” said Citi analysts Mark May and Caleb Siegel.
That could bode well for Google’s margins, Citi says.
It also could mean that innovation is slowing.
Cloud
- Amazon’s cloud is looking at building a corporate training service
The move suggests Amazon Web Services sees ready-to-use services, rather than raw computing and storage resources for roll-your-own application development, as vehicles for maintaining the rapid growth of its cloud and keeping its lead ahead of the likes of Google and Microsoft. With learning-management software, individuals can go through collections of content such as videos to gain skills, and managers can track progress.
Amazon already has online training programs for partners to train their employees on how to use AWS offerings. This would be a broader general-purpose service that companies could use to manage all kinds of corporate training and learning programs.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/amazon-aws-exploring-learning-management-space.html
Security
- Microsoft expands software and microcode fixes for Meltdown and Spectre
Included as part of today’s Patch Tuesday rollout, Microsoft has expanded protections for the Meltdown vulnerability to x86 editions of Windows 7 and 8.1. That’s in addition to emergency fixes Microsoft first rolled out just after the exploits were disclosed. The company notes that it will continue to work on providing updates for additional supported versions of Windows.
In addition to expanding its software fixes, Microsoft says that it has also removed the antivirus compatibility check for security updates on Windows 10.
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-expands-software-and-microcode-fixes-meltdown-and-spectre
Software/SaaS
- IBM thinks Notes and Domino can rise again
Since announcing that HCL would take over development of IBM’s collaborationware, the two companies have conducted a long listening tour that saw them stage 22 meatspace meetings and four online forums. The results of that consultation, which reached 2,000 people, plus lab work already conducted by IBM and HCL, were recently presented to the faithful.
The top line message imparted to users was that IBM and HCL think Notes can rise again: the companies have given themselves the “big hairy audacious goal” of having Notes seen as “… the application platform that business users tap to solve their collaboration intensive business problems – anyone, anywhere.”
Execs from the companies said the first step towards that goal will be version 10 of the platform, which will land sometime in 2018. Attendees at a webcast were told version 11 has already been planned.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/13/ibm_hcl_notes_domino_10_roadmap/
- Amazon Chime to be charged per-use
A blog post penned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) chief evangelist Jeff Barr explains that following the initial 30-day free trial where users have access to all Amazon Chime features, users can still chat with each other and attend meetings at no cost. However, in order to use the scheduling and hosting features once the trial is over, users must be connected to an AWS account.
On days where users host meetings, they will be charged $3 per-day, capped at $15 per month, starting from April 1, 2018.
“Based on historical usage patterns, this will result in an overall price reduction for virtually all Amazon Chime customers,” the blog reads.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-chime-to-be-charged-on-a-per-use-basis/
Slack Needs to Worry About Microsoft TeamsIn a blog post on Monday, Microsoft provided an update on Teams to mark its one-year anniversary. Teams is now in use at 200,000 organizations in 181 markets, with big-name users including A.P. Moller-Maersk, Macy’s, and General Motors. That’s up from 125,000 organizations in September.
One reason Teams has taken off so quickly is that it’s included with various Office 365 plans. Office 365 Business Premium, which costs $12.50 per user per month, includes Teams along with the full Office suite and other services such as OneDrive, Exchange, and Skype for Business. Office 365 Business Essentials, which leaves out the Office suite, is priced at just $5 per user per month. Microsoft’s three Office 365 enterprise plans, which start at $8 per user per month, also include Teams.
Slack offers a free plan, with two other plans priced at $6.67 and $12.50 per month. For any business that already uses Microsoft Office 365, using Teams over Slack is a no-brainer, even with Slack being a more mature product. For businesses using alternative productivity software, like Google’s G Suite, Office 365 with Teams and Slack are both priced in the same ballpark.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/13/slack-needs-to-worry-about-microsoft-teams.aspx
Other
- Some hard truths about Twitter’s health crisis
Because Twitter’s content problems really boil down to Twitter failing to enforce the community standards it already has. Which in turn is a failure of leadership, as I have previously argued.
A good current example is that it has an ads policy that bans “misleading and deceptive” ads. Yet it continues to accept advertising money from unregulated entities pushing dubiously obscure crypto exchanges and flogging wildly risky token sales.
Twitter really doesn’t need to wait for a new metric to understand that the right thing to do here is to take crypto/ICO ads off its platform right now.
https://beta.techcrunch.com/2018/03/10/some-hard-truths-about-twitters-health-crisis/?ncid=rss
- Former Equifax executive charged with insider trading ahead of massive data breach
According to the SEC, Jun Ying, the CIO of an Equifax business unit and next in line to be the global CIO, received confidential information about the company’s breach before the news was public. Ying allegedly exercised his stock options and sold his shares, making close to $1 million and avoiding a $117,000 loss when the stock price tanked post-announcement.
The SEC said the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia is also filing criminal charges against Ying.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17119538/equifax-insider-trading-data-breach-charges
- Why media companies are shifting their attention from Facebook to YouTube
While Facebook Watch hasn’t taken off as a revenue source for publishers and the social network has deprioritized publisher content, YouTube offers something of a safe harbor for publishers that want to get into the video business. For example, publishers can direct-sell into their video on YouTube, said Kai Hsing, svp of marketing and operations at Bustle, which recently rekindled its interest in YouTube. YouTube was the most lucrative platform for publishers after Facebook, according to a Digital Content Next report.
Publishers also recognize that people are going to YouTube specifically to watch videos. That’s a reason parenting publication Fatherly recently resurrected its YouTube channel. In January, Fatherly hired Adam Banicki, a former video producer at Vice, as its first vp of video. In February, it began uploading videos to its YouTube channel for the first time since June 2017.
https://digiday.com/media/media-companies-shifting-attention-facebook-youtube/
Photo: Michael Baldovinos
Supplier Report: 3/9/2018
Amazon had an outage this week taking down popular sites like Slack and Atlassian. This outage happened as AWS is in talks with the Pentagon on another cloud contract (in which they are the front-runners). As AWS gets bigger, should companies look at other options so they don’t go down with the Titanic?
Apple found their supply chain had more human rights violations that originally reported via an internal audit conducted by an independent 3rd party. The company is in the process of rolling out a formal process to manage these types of ongoing violations.
IBM has over 400 active blockchain projects with customers at the moment. As IBM shifts to newer business models and services, some of their older customers like the Canadian government, are having major implementation issues on traditional services.
Acquisitions
- WeWork acquires SEO and marketing company Conductor
There’s a lot that make WeWork and Conductor a natural fit. Seth and his team built Conductor to provide the insights, education, and resources their customers need to succeed — in other words, Conductor helps their customers do what they love, and do it better. Conductor has made it easier for us to reach potential WeWork members who are looking for workspace. It’s also helped us get the word out about the services and amenities that we offer to companies of all sizes.
https://beta.techcrunch.com/2018/03/06/wework-acquires-conductor/
- WTF is CFIUS?
The U.S. is a technology leader, and it has a robust set of economic warfare tools to protect its competitive advantages. One of those tools is CFIUS, or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. You might have heard it in the news recently because of its potential impact on Broadcom’s mega offer to buy Qualcomm, or because Congress is considering strengthening its provisions to potentially regulate startup investments from foreign firms.
CFIUS is becoming a lot more important these days due to a single country: China. There are few economic stories more fundamental than the continued rise of China as a world superpower. From humble experiments with capitalism in the early 1980s to the behemoth it is today, China’s economic growth has been nothing short of extraordinary. Underpinning that growth has been a deep appetite for technology and scientific research, first learned through overseas universities, and now through indigenous development.
As China’s wealth has grown, so has its desire to own the most distinguished technology companies in the world, and that’s where CFIUS comes in. The United States’s latest National Security Strategy labels China a “strategic competitor.” As tensions flare, CFIUS will be at the heart of the battle for who will ultimately own the technology industry.
- Google is selling off Zagat
Seven years after picking up Zagat for $151 million, Google is selling off the perennial restaurant recommendation service. The New York Times is reporting this morning that the technology giant is selling off the company to The Infatuation, a review site founded nine years back by former music execs.
The company had been rumored to be courting a buyer since early this year. As Reuters noted at the time, Zagat has increasingly become less of a focus for Google, as the company began growing its database of restaurant recommendations organically. Zagat, meanwhile, has lost much of the shine it had when Google purchased it nearly a decade ago.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/05/google-is-selling-off-zagat/?ncid=rss
Cloud
- AWS outage: Datacentre power cut knocks ‘hundreds’ of internet services offline
The cloud services giant confirmed that its US-East-1 region suffered two separate power loss incidents over the course of two hours in one of the site’s network peering facilities, each one lasting about 10 minutes.
As a result, organisations that rely on that region to host their applications and workloads “may have experienced internet connectivity issues”, said AWS in a statement on its services status page.
“Our network is designed to be fully redundant with multiple independent peering facilities in every region,” the statement continued. “Some customers experienced elevated latency and packet loss while the network rerouted affected traffic to these unaffected network peering facilities.
“Some packet loss was also observed as we restored traffic to the affected network peering facility.”
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/252436193/AWS-outage-Datacentre-power-cut-knocks-out-hundreds-of-internet-services
And this is why corporate customers should at least think about alternatives to AWS, 67% of all cloud is on AWS. When a hacker or a outage occurs, there are much bigger impacts. - Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery: How To Avoid the ‘Gotchas’
Sync-and-share solutions are a great opportunity to examine one of the key problems of cloud computing: Namely, that expectations rarely match reality. IT practitioners have a pretty good idea of how sync-and-share solutions work. As a result, it rarely occurs to us to sit users down and have the talk with them about the cloud not being magic. Unfortunately, many users encounter cloud-based solutions with erroneous preconceptions, and this “knowledge” leads to errors.
One common belief is that sync-and-share solutions adequately protect users against ransomware. They don’t. Modern ransomware makes numerous changes to files over time, ultimately running out the number of versions of files kept by the sync-and-share solution. There’s even a little game of cat-and-mouse going on with some of them where the sync-and-share vendor tries to add some level of ransomware detection based on access patterns, and the ransomware evolves new access patterns.
https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2018/03/06/cloud-dr-gotchas-to-avoid.aspx
- Microsoft to offer governments local version of Azure cloud service
The pairing of Azure Stack, Microsoft’s localized cloud product, and Azure Government, the government-tailored version of Microsoft’s cloud, comes as competition against Amazon.com Inc for major clients in the public sector ramps up.
The new offering, which will be made available in mid-2018, is designed to appeal to governments and agencies with needs for on-premise servers, such as in a military operation or in an embassy abroad, said Tom Keane, Microsoft Azure’s head of global infrastructure.
“Quite literally we’ve designed Azure Stack with the scenario of a submarine in mind,” Keane told Reuters.
- Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft jockey for Pentagon’s cloud business
Catz’s meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, which was confirmed by a department spokesman, came as technology companies are raising concerns that the Pentagon is leaning toward choosing Amazon.com Inc’s cloud division as a single provider for a multi-year contract to modernise its technology infrastructure.
Having already won two other government cloud contacts, Amazon Web Services is widely perceived as the front-runner for the Defense Department’s cloud award, while companies including Oracle, Microsoft Corp, and International Business Machines Corp fight for a piece of that business.
Oracle has a vested interest in how the contract is awarded because it has long-term contracts with multiple government agencies that use its flagship database to store information on their own systems. As the agencies look to switch to cloud computing and eye market leader Amazon, these moves threaten Oracle’s traditional revenue sources. Oracle has tried to protect its database business by offering cloud services of its own, but has come late to that market.
Software/SaaS
- IBM told investors that it has over 400 blockchain clients — including Walmart, Visa, and Nestlé
At least 400 IBM customers are now running blockchain-based projects, according to the briefing. Among those customers are 63 that work together with certain themes: 25 companies in global trade, 14 companies in food tracking, and 14 companies in global payments. Some of IBM’s most recognizable blockchain clients include Nestlé, Visa, Walmart, and HSBC.
While blockchains continue to be widely associated with startups and crypto-millionaires, IBM’s client list shows that large enterprises are truly embracing the technology.
IBM and Walmart actually launched a joint food safety blockchain project globally last year, which enables the grocery chain to figure out where specific produce originated in a matter of seconds.
http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-blockchain-enterprise-customers-walmart-visa-nestl-2018-3
Datacenter/Hardware
- Amazon will stop selling Nest smart home devices, escalating its war with Google
The stakes are huge. Both Amazon and Google are building out a new voice-powered operating system that can control everything in your life — from your lights to your garage door to the music and video you stream. Amazon’s acquisition of Ring will give it a nice boost on the hardware side as it continues to build out Alexa’s AI. Ring was already one of Nest’s biggest competitors. Now it has the nearly-limitless funding needed from Amazon to go after its Google-backed rival.
The rivalry between Amazon and Google extends beyond the smart home, though.
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-wont-sell-nest-products-from-google-2018-3
- Google’s new Bristlecone processor brings it one step closer to quantum supremacy
Today, Google said that it believes that Bristlecone, its latest quantum processor, will put it on a path to reach quantum supremacy in the future. The purpose of Bristlecone, Google says, it to provide its researchers with a testbed “for research into system error rates and scalability of our qubit technology, as well as applications in quantum simulation, optimization, and machine learning.”
One of the major issues that all quantum computers have to contend with is error rates. Quantum computers typically run at extremely low temperatures (we’re talking millikelvins here) and are shielded from the environment because today’s quantum bits are still highly unstable and any noise can lead to errors.
Because of this, the qubits in modern quantum processors (the quantum computing versions of traditional bits) aren’t really single qubits but often a combination of numerous bits to help account for potential errors. Another limited factor right now is that most of these systems can only preserve their state for under 100 microseconds.
Other
- Apple finds more serious supplier problems as its audits expand
Apple said in the report that the proportion of “low performers,” or suppliers scoring less than 59 points on its 100-point scale, fell to 1 percent in 2017 from 3 percent in 2016 and 14 percent in 2014. “High performers” with scores of more than 90 rose to a record high of 59 percent from 47 percent the year before.
Apple found 44 “core violations” of its labor rules in 2017, double the previous year. Those included three instances of employees forced to pay excessive fees for a job, a practice Apple banned in 2015.
In one case, over 700 foreign contract workers recruited from the Philippines were charged a total of $1 million to work for a supplier. Apple said it forced the supplier to repay the money.
- Why Amazon Is Immune To Almost Any Boycott
Amazon, however, is in a different position–one that’s great for Jeff Bezos and annoying for activists. “For all its problems,” says King, “[Amazon] has a pretty robust reputation.” He goes on, “a boycott against Amazon doesn’t really change in people’s minds what kind of company Amazon is.” Which is to say, Bezos’s behemoth website has remained a relative constant for all these years, strategically staying out of the public eye while amassing hundreds of millions of loyal users. People know what the company is, what it has been doing, and the services its offers.
What’s more, the boycotts levied against the retail giant aren’t about some deep-seated collusion with the forces of evil, but rather passive business dealings. The activist organization Sleeping Giants, for instance, has been lobbying for Amazon to stop advertising on Breitbart. Though the group has had success with other campaigns–it got over a thousand advertisers to pull advertising from both Breitbart and the Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor–Amazon has yet to change its ways. Though it may ruffle some people’s feathers that the company advertises on a far-right website or allows a gun rights organization to distribute its TV content, that doesn’t reveal an internal clash of values. Amazon is just doing business–the same business it’s been doing for years. And since people are very unlikely to stop using Amazon, the company probably sees no reason to acquiesce.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40538592/how-amazon-is-immune-to-almost-any-boycott
- Canada’s IBM Payroll Plans Go Bust — Costing $1 Billion
“They should have known better,” Daviau told the publication, adding that IBM holds some of the blame because it also went forward with the payroll system’s launch.
“IBM got into a contract with the government that was very beneficial to IBM, which meant that the contract — despite non-delivery — could continue to be extended and IBM could continue to come back to the pot for money,” she said.
In a statement, IBM said it is “fulfilling its obligations on the Phoenix contract, and the software is functioning as intended.” It added that it “continues to work in partnership with the government’s efforts to resolve the project’s issues and remains committed to the project’s overall success.”
https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2018/ibm-canada-payroll/
- More ‘boomerang’ employees return to Microsoft as corporate culture shifts
Microsoft has always had “boomerang” employees, as have other tech companies in the highly competitive industry. During the few years before Nadella stepped into the role, about 12 percent of the company’s new hires in the U.S. each year had previous job stints at the company. But that number ticked up to 16 percent, or 621 boomerangs, between July 2014 and July 2015, starting a few months after Nadella took over as CEO.
For the recent Microsoft boomerangs, returning to Redmond feels like stepping into a company that has changed — albeit one where that still occurs slowly.
- Marriott Employee Roy Jones Hit ‘Like.’ Then China Got Mad
Craig Smith, head of Asia-Pacific for Marriott, said in a separate statement, “We made a few mistakes in China earlier this year that suggested some associates did not understand or take seriously enough the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China. Those incidents were mistakes and in no way representative of our views as a company.”
“Not only can’t you speak freely inside of China, but you can’t even speak freely outside of China—and that’s really bad,” said Xiao Qiang, a Chinese internet expert at the University of California at Berkeley.
Marriott was within its legal rights to fire Mr. Jones, legal experts say. But some say the severity of the penalty—termination, rather than a reprimand or suspension—highlights the increasingly unforgiving environment for those who offend Chinese sensibilities.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-employee-roy-jones-hit-like-then-china-got-mad-1520094910
Photo: Kirstyn Paynter