Tag: Amazon

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/25/2019


Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

The ongoing saga of the T-Mobile/Sprint continues with positive news for T-Mobile… the FCC approved the merger. There are still more hurdles for the companies to clear, but for now they are moving forward.

Speaking of Sprint ownership… current Sprint owner SoftBank is mulling over the idea of taking over WeWork. SoftBank has invested almost $10B in WeWork, which is currently estimated to be worth $15B (down from $45B). SoftBank has made some dubious investments in the last few years, should they double down on WeWork?

Meanwhile, there are rumors that Jeff Bezos is mulling over splitting Amazon and AWS to get in front of government momentum that might force the company to split apart in the future. Would a split even matter?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • The FCC has voted to approve the T-Mobile-Sprint merger

    Now, the T-Mobile-Sprint merger faces one more battle before they plan to close the deal. The FCC and DOJ are the only two federal agencies required to approve telecom deals before they can close, and the DOJ already gave the companies the thumbs-up in July. However, a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general are still trying to block the deal through a multistate lawsuit, and representatives from the two companies said that they won’t close the merger until that is resolved.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/16/20917162/fcc-tmobile-sprint-merger-justice-department-ajit-pai-geoffrey-starks-jessica-rosenworel

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google and Ambient Computing

    Frankly, it’s a compelling vision on multiple dimensions:

    • First, it is a vision for the future that actually seems larger than the smartphone reality we live in. Alternatives like augmented reality or wearables feel smaller.
    • Second, it is a vision that does not compete with the smartphone, but rather leverages it. The smartphone is so useful for so many things that any directly competitive technology would have to cover an impossible number of use cases to displace it; ambient computing, though, simply conceives of the smart phone as one of several means to deliver on its promise.
    • Third, it is a vision that Google is uniquely suited to pursue. The company is a services company incentivized to serve the maximum number of customers no matter the means (i.e. device), and it already has a head start in providing services that contain and accumulate essential information about people’s lives.

    https://stratechery.com/2019/google-and-ambient-computing/

Cloud

  • Workday Casts a Large Cloud

    Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri answered a question about the state of the market by saying “we’re definitely seeing some delays.” He also said companies were still moving ahead with “transformation projects”—meaning an overall shift to cloud-based software—and that Workday isn’t seeing anything “drastically different” in the marketplace.

    The company maintained its previous projections for the fiscal year ending in January, but investors in the richly valued cloud computing software business tend to react badly to signs of sales deceleration. Workday’s stock price slid 11% Wednesday—its worst decline in nearly three years.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/workday-casts-a-large-cloud-11571252400

  • Amazon Could Be Open To Splitting

    CNBC ran an interview with writer Franklin Foer, who said breaking off the service “would be the obvious thing for [Bezos] to do in the face of this.”

    “I think that eventually Bezos, who is seeing around corners, is going to break up his own company,” Foer said. “AWS exists as its own fantastically profitable business. There’s no reason that it needs to be connected to Amazon the e-retailer. And as he looks at what’s happening in politics, where there’s this increasing bipartisan consensus that Big Tech is a problem, I’m pretty sure he’s going to say, ‘okay, fine.’”

    In a June interview, Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, said the company would listen to regulators if it was ordered to split off, but that he saw no upside to doing it just yet. As for revenue, AWS made up 13 percent of Amazon’s total in Q2, but more than half of its $3.1 billion in operating income for the same time period.

    https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2019/could-jeff-bezos-spin-off-amazon-web-services/

Security/Privacy

  • Samsung will fix bug that lets any fingerprint unlock a Galaxy S10

    “Samsung Electronics is aware of the case of the S10’s malfunctioning fingerprint recognition and will soon issue a software patch,” the company told Reuters in a statement. The problem has been deemed serious enough that an online bank in South Korea, KaKaobank, has advised owners to switch off fingerprint recognition until it’s resolved.

    It’s not clear what’s causing the problem, but the Galaxy S10 uses an ultrasonic sensor to detect fingerprint ridges. Plastic or silicone screen protectors can stymie it, so Samsung has been recommending that buyers used approved protective devices. That doesn’t explain why the system is allowing access to non-registered fingerprints, however. Engadget has reached out to Samsung for more information.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/17/samsung-patch-fingerprint-reader/?guccounter=1

Software/SaaS

  • Andrew Yang at Democratic debate: No one uses Bing. ‘Sorry, Microsoft, it’s true.’

    Yang, who has worked as a tech entrepreneur, referenced Bing while answering a question during the CNN and New York Times debate about the proper level of oversight for tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter.

    “We also have to be realistic that competition doesn’t solve all of the problems,” said Yang, 44. “It’s not like any of us wants to use the fourth best navigation app, that would be like cruel and unusual punishment. There’s a reason why no one is using Bing today.”

    A slow “ooh” began to rise up from the audience.

    “Sorry, Microsoft, it’s true,” he said.

    https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2019/10/andrew-yang-at-debate-no-one-uses-bing-sorry-microsoft-its-true.html

  • Amazon’s consumer business says bye bye to Oracle databases, moves to AWS

    But let’s get real. AWS will get more marketing returns out of this Amazon consumer migration than ever. More than 100 teams in Amazon’s consumer business contributed and the AWS move gives it a purpose built approach to databases. Again, Oracle would argue that leads to database sprawl. It is also worth noting that Amazon still has some Oracle databases. AWS explained: “Some third-party applications are tightly bound to Oracle and were not migrated.”

    But generally speaking, Amazon’s consumer unit moved most systems to AWS databases such as Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), and Amazon Redshift. The migration covered 100% of Amazon’s proprietary systems.

    As for returns, Amazon is claiming that it reduced database costs by more than 60% with latency reductions of 40% and database admin overhead by 70%.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-consumer-business-says-bye-bye-to-oracle-databases-moves-to-aws/

Other

  • Former Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd has passed away

    Mark Hurd, who until last month was one of two CEOs leading the database software giant Oracle, has passed away at age 62, one month after telling employees in a letter that he was taking a leave of absence owing to health reasons.

    Hurd joined Oracle nine years ago, after spending five years with Hewlett-Packard, where he was CEO, president and, ultimately, board chairman, all roles from which he was pressured to resign in 2010 after submitting inaccurate expense reports that concealed his personal relationship with an outside consultant to the company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/18/former-oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd-has-passed-away/

  • IBM Earnings Fall in Prolonged Sales Slump

    IBM on Wednesday reported sales of $18.03 billion, below analysts expectations and trailing the $18.76 billion it posted in the year-prior period. Shares slumped 6% in after-hours trading.

    The revenue decline was IBM’s 27th overall under Ms. Rometty, who has struggled to adapt the more than century-old company to a changing global IT landscape since taking the reins in 2012.

    The company’s closely watched adjusted earnings per share fell to $2.68, but came in slightly higher than analysts’ forecasts of $2.66.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-earnings-fall-in-prolonged-sales-slump-11571258768

  • Son, SoftBank Risk Too Much With WeWork Takeover

    Son’s desire to be a savior may be strong. His 2012 takeover of U.S. telecommunications company Sprint Corp. is one of the most notable examples. But Vision Fund investors may also take it as a warning: Sprint remains unprofitable. It has also taken up a lot of management time as SoftBank executives worked to find a buyer — Sprint now plans to merge with T-Mobile USA — and then regulators to allow the deal to go through.

    As big as WeWork is, that investment is just 10% of the Vision Fund. Yet VC investing returns aren’t measured in percentage points, but multiples. The Vision Fund should be able to write off WeWork in its entirety and still post solid profits. It also means that expending an inordinate amount of time, and reputation, on one investee is not in the best interests of the Vision Fund’s other 82 portfolio companies, nor its investors.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/son-softbankrisktoo-much-with-wework-takeover/2019/10/14/f3b46fd8-ee4e-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/4/2019


Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

September was the month of the failed CEO. Adam Neumann of WeWork has stepped down. Mark Hurd is out on sick leave. Devin Wenig of eBay quit. And Herbert Diess if Volkswagen is under investigation for fraud.

What is the takeaway? Nobody is perfect. And – the time of the unicorns is coming to a close (thankfully). A business has to have a profitable model and if they don’t… heads are going to roll.

With SoftBank coming under more scrutiny for these runaway business valuations, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the darlings of Silicon Valley.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Facebook has acquired Servicefriend, which builds ‘hybrid’ chatbots, for Calibra customer service

    As Facebook prepares to launch its new cryptocurrency Libra in 2020, it’s putting the pieces in place to help it run. In one of the latest developments, it has acquired Servicefriend, a startup that built bots — chat clients for messaging apps based on artificial intelligence — to help customer service teams, TechCrunch has confirmed.

    Although Facebook isn’t specifying what they will be working on, the most obvious area will be in building a bot — or more likely, a network of bots — for the customer service layer for the Calibra digital wallet that Facebook is developing.

    Facebook’s plan is to build a range of financial services for people to use Calibra to pay out and receive Libra — for example, to send money to contacts, pay bills, top up their phones, buy things and more.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/21/facebook-servicefriend/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Ex-Google worker fears ‘killer robots’ could cause mass atrocities

    Nolan, who has joined the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and has briefed UN diplomats in New York and Geneva over the dangers posed by autonomous weapons, said: “The likelihood of a disaster is in proportion to how many of these machines will be in a particular area at once. What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed.

    “There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways. Which is why any advanced weapons systems should be subject to meaningful human control, otherwise they have to be banned because they are far too unpredictable and dangerous.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/15/ex-google-worker-fears-killer-robots-cause-mass-atrocities

  • Microsoft launches its AI presentation coach for PowerPoint

    The new PowerPoint Presentation Coach aims to take the hassle out of practicing. In its current version, the tool looks at three things: pace, slide reading and word choice. Pace is pretty self-explanatory and looks at how fast or slow somebody is speaking. The “slide reading” feature detects when you are simply reading the words from your slides word for word. Nobody wants to sit through that kind of presentation. The “word choice” tool doesn’t just detect how often you say “um,” “ah,” “actually” or “basically,” it also gives you feedback when you are using culturally insensitive phrases like “you guys” or “best man for the job.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/microsoft-launches-its-ai-presentation-coach-for-powerpoint/

Cloud

  • Oracle reportedly funding anti-Amazon lobbying group

    Oracle Vice President Kenneth Glueck, who runs the company’s lobbying efforts out of an office in Washington, D.C., confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that Oracle has backed Free and Fair Markets. Oracle declined to comment on the report to CRN.

    Glueck has been the chief architect of Oracle’s strategy to lobby the U.S. government against AWS winning the entirety of the looming JEDI contract—the centerpiece of the military’s potentially $10 billion cloud transformation initiative from which Oracle has been knocked out of contention. Only AWS and Microsoft remain on a short-list, but delivery of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure award has been delayed because of political factors.

    https://www.crn.com.au/news/oracle-reportedly-funding-anti-amazon-lobbying-group-531322
    Reminder: Oracle did the same thing against Google in Europe

  • Oracle speaking with Google’s antitrust investigators

    The House Judiciary Committee has asked for information from dozens of companies potentially harmed by anti-competitive actions of the tech giants. The committee will issue subpoenas based on how many voluntarily answer the requests.

    Oracle and Google have a long-standing legal battle over whether Google infringed on Oracle’s Java copyright to make the Android OS. The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to take up a Google appeal to the suit.

    https://seekingalpha.com/news/3502058-oracle-speaking-googles-antitrust-investigators

Security/Privacy

  • DoorDash confirms data breach affected 4.9 million customers, workers and merchants

    The breach happened on May 4, the company said, but added that customers who joined after April 5, 2018 are not affected by the breach.

    It’s not clear why it took almost five months for DoorDash to detect the breach.

    DoorDash spokesperson Mattie Magdovitz blamed the breach on “a third-party service provider,” but the third-party was not named. “We immediately launched an investigation and outside security experts were engaged to assess what occurred,” she said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/26/doordash-data-breach/

  • Facebook’s Suspension of ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Apps Reveals Wider Privacy Issues

    The social network said in a blog post that an investigation it began in March 2018 — following revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy, had retrieved and used people’s Facebook information without their permission — had resulted in the suspension of “tens of thousands” of apps that were associated with about 400 developers. That was far bigger than the last number that Facebook had disclosed, of 400 app suspensions in August 2018.

    https://news.yahoo.com/facebooks-suspension-tens-thousands-apps-140153504.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_11

Other

  • CEO of WeWork, Which Has Lost an Unfathomable Amount of Money, Is Stepping Down

    Adam Neumann, the eccentric co-founder of WeWork, is stepping down as CEO after a torrent of news cycles that read like pulp fiction, the New York Times reported. The Times reports that pressure came from investors and board members, and Neumann will stay on as the nonexecutive chairman of WeWork’s parent, the We Company.

    In a press release, Neumann said “While our business has never been stronger, in recent weeks, the scrutiny directed toward me has become a significant distraction, and I have decided that it is in the best interest of the company to step down as chief executive.”

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne8dbw/ceo-of-wework-which-has-lost-an-unfathomable-amount-of-money-is-stepping-down

    The Week the C.E.O.s Got Smacked

    Adam Neumann stepped down as chief executive of WeWork after a botched attempt to take the company public. Devin Wenig left his role as chief of eBay after the company’s board grew impatient with poor performance. And Herbert Diess, the chief executive of Volkswagen, was charged with stock market manipulation and misleading investors. Mr. Diess remains in his job, but all week, smartphone push alerts seemed to ping with the news of executive heads rolling.

    Those three executives joined the recently departed chiefs of Juul, Nissan, comScore and HSBC as reminders that at the end of the trading day, corporate chieftains are there to make shareholders money.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/28/business/wework-juul-ebay-ceo.html

  • Poll: Two-thirds of Americans want to break up companies like Amazon and Google

    Across political party identification, Americans are pretty consistent about breaking up Big Tech. The poll shows that on the more extreme ends of both the left and the right, there is more enthusiasm on the matter.

    Forty-two percent of Americans who consider themselves very liberal and 40 percent of those who say they’re very conservative strongly support breaking up tech companies to foster competition, while about 30 percent of those who identify as liberal or conservative say the same. (Moderates and people unsure of their political affiliation showed the lowest support). On breaking up for content, 56 percent of people who say they’re very liberal and 47 percent of people who say they’re very conservative back breaking up Big Tech.

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/18/20870938/break-up-big-tech-google-facebook-amazon-poll

Posted on

Supplier Report: 9/27/2019


Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

The darlings of the tech world are facing the harsh embrace of reality. Both Uber and WeWork have been under fire for their valuations and other operational issues. Now leaders from other companies are commenting on their future viability.

Meanwhile many firms are clinging to the hope of artificial intelligence to improve their margins, increase their sales, and usher in a new market for customers to get excited about.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • McDonald’s Is Acquiring AI Startup Apprente

    McDonald’s is acquiring Apprente, a startup which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand speech in multiple languages. The technology will be used in the company’s drive-thrus and could also be used in its self-order kiosks and a mobile app. This is McDonald’s third tech deal this year.

    There is a new self-checkout shopping cart that makes grocery shopping easier. When you are shopping with a Caper cart, all you have to do is scan the item barcode and simply add it to your cart. Once you are done shopping you pay directly on the cart. Caper recently closed a $10 million Series A led by Lux Capital.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/339394

  • T-Mobile’s Sprint merger is opposed by 18 state attorneys general

    In July, the Department of Justice approved T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion bid to merge with Sprint — on the condition that it sell some of its business to Dish Network. And Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai endorsed the deal. But opposition from so many attorneys general could pose a legitimate threat.

    The state attorneys general fear the merger would hurt competition, raise prices for cell service, result in a loss of retail jobs and lower wages for the employees who remain. “The merger between T-Mobile and Sprint would severely undermine competition in the telecommunications sector, which would hurt Pennsylvanian consumers by driving up prices, limiting coverage, and diminishing quality,” Shapiro said in a statement.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/18/t-mobile-sprint-pennsylvania/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google’s quantum bet on the future of AI—and what it means for humanity

    The full reach of Google’s AI influence stretches far beyond the company’s offerings. Outside developers—at startups and big corporations alike—now use Google’s AI tools to do everything from training smart satellites to monitoring changes to the earth’s surface to rooting out abusive language on Twitter (well, it’s trying). There are now millions of devices using Google AI, and this is just the beginning. Google is on the verge of achieving what’s known as quantum supremacy. This new breed of computer will be able to crack complex equations a million or more times faster than regular ones. We are about to enter the rocket age of computing.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90396213/google-quantum-supremacy-future-ai-humanity

  • Artificial Intelligence Confronts a ‘Reproducibility’ Crisis

    Pineau is trying to change the standards. She’s the reproducibility chair for NeurIPS, a premier artificial intelligence conference. Under her watch, the conference now asks researchers to submit a “reproducibility checklist” including items often omitted from papers, like the number of models trained before the “best” one was selected, the computing power used, and links to code and datasets. That’s a change for a field where prestige rests on leaderboards—rankings that determine whose system is the “state of the art” for a particular task—and offers great incentive to gloss over the tribulations that led to those spectacular results.

    The idea, Pineau says, is to encourage researchers to offer a road map for others to replicate their work. It’s one thing to marvel at the eloquence of a new text generator or the “superhuman” agility of a videogame-playing bot. But even the most sophisticated researchers have little sense of how they work.

    https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-confronts-reproducibility-crisis/

Cloud

  • IBM sees Amazon and Microsoft as cloud allies, not rivals

    CEO Ginni Rometty is betting on the hybrid cloud, which lets IBM offer services on corporate customers’ cloud-based servers as well as on third-party clouds operated by the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. IBM has traditionally viewed these cloud giants as direct competitors, but it now aims to partner with them by supporting clients as they shift sensitive databases on to the cloud, regardless of which provider they use.

    After struggling to keep up in the cloud market for more than a decade, IBM has switched to a hybrid cloud strategy, cementing its future with last year’s US$34-billion acquisition of Red Hat, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based open-source software provider.

    https://techcentral.co.za/ibm-sees-amazon-and-microsoft-as-cloud-allies-not-rivals/92641/

  • Larry Ellison says Oracle will ‘write into your contract that your bill will be half’ of what you’d pay Amazon, as the database giant announces new cloud products

    Larry Ellison announced a new so-called autonomous operating system in a new initiative to challenge to Amazon Web Services, the leader in cloud computing — and took a jab at Amazon over its small role in the massive Capital One hack.

    A highlight of Ellison’s speech was the unveiling of what it touted as the world’s first autonomous operating system, that will automatically be maintained and updated and will not require manual management. This operating system is based on Linux, the free and open source operating system that’s ubiqitious in server rooms and data centers around the world.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-oracle-autonomous-os-free-cloud-access-2019-9

Security/Privacy

  • The FBI Tried to Plant a Backdoor in an Encrypted Phone Network

    The FBI tried to force the owner of an encrypted phone company to put a backdoor in his devices, Motherboard has learned. The company involved is Phantom Secure, a firm that sold privacy-focused BlackBerry phones and which ended up catering heavily to the criminal market, including members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, formerly run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa73dz/fbi-tried-to-plant-backdoor-in-encrypted-phone-phantom-secure

  • Thinkful confirms data breach days after Chegg’s $80M acquisition

    Thinkful, based in Brooklyn, New York, provides education and training for developers and programmers. The company claims the vast majority of its graduates get jobs in their field of study within a half-year of finishing their program. Earlier this month, education tech giant Chegg bought Thinkful for $80 million in cash.

    But the company would not say when the breach happened — or if Chegg knew of the data breach prior to the acquisition announcement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/thinkful-data-breach-chegg-acquisition/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

    This new investment is in addition to the $7 billion the company has invested since 2007 in the EU, but today’s announcement was focused on Google’s commitment to building data centers running on clean energy, as much as the data centers themselves.

    Of the 3 billion Euros, the company plans to spend, it will invest 600 million to expand its presence in Hamina, Finland, which he wrote “serves as a model of sustainability and energy efficiency for all of our data centers.” Further, the company already announced 18 new renewable energy deals earlier this week, which encompass a total of 1,600-megawatts in the US, South America and Europe.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/20/google-is-investing-3-3b-to-build-clean-data-centers-in-europe/

  • IBM will soon launch a 53-qubit quantum computer

    IBM notes that the new 53-qubit system introduces a number of new techniques that enable the company to launch larger, more reliable systems for cloud deployments. It features more compact custom electronics for improving scaling and lower error rates, as well as a new processor design.

    The fact that IBM is now opening this Quantum Computation itself, of course, is a pretty good indication about how serious the company is about its quantum efforts. The company’s quantum program also now supports 80 partnerships with commercial clients, academic institutions and research laboratories. Some of these have started to use the available machines to work on real-world problems, though the current state of the art in quantum computing is still not quite ready for solving anything but toy problems and testing basic algorithms.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/ibm-will-soon-launch-a-53-qubit-quantum-computer/

Other

  • Uber Vows to Fight California Legislation on Gig Economy

    The legislation, which intends to force companies to reclassify certain contract workers as employees, is considered a serious threat to Uber and Lyft, already losing billions of dollars a year combined, as their business models have relied on flexible labor and minimal worker costs.

    The bill’s passage in the state Assembly on Wednesday, after the state Senate’s passage the night before, reflects the degree to which the large Democratic majority in Sacramento has increased scrutiny of tech companies in recent years, as well as the strength of labor unions in the state.

    Given California’s size and history of creating influential business regulations, it also is the first significant step in a new paradigm for a changing workforce, fueled by people who have forgone benefits for the sake of flexibility and occasional incentives.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-governor-still-in-talks-with-uber-lyft-over-gig-workers-law-11568212014
    Oracle Founder Larry Ellison Calls Uber and WeWork ‘Almost Worthless’

    Ellison argued that while Uber raises capital to spend on gaining market share from rival Lyft (LYFT), the business they secure doesn’t necessarily stay with the company. He pointed out that Uber doesn’t own its cars and doesn’t control their drivers. And he declared that “they have an app my cat could have written.”

    Ellison said losing money to gain market share is “idiotic” if customers won’t stay with the firm. “They have nothing,” he said. “No technology. And no loyalty.”

    He mocked WeWork’s assertion that it is a technology company. “WeWork rents a building from me, and breaks it up, and then rents it,” Ellison said. “They say, ‘We’re a technology company, and we want a tech multiple.’ It’s bizarre.”

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/oracles-larry-ellison-calls-uber-and-wework-almost-worthless-51568924122

  • Avaya Goes Global With IBM Cloud

    As part of the IBM deal, Avaya gains access to Watson, to help its contact center customers improve routing and automation for dealing with customer calls, McGugan says. Additionally, IBM provides important automation tools and professional services for the cloud migration.

    In addition to IBM, Avaya has partnerships with other cloud providers, with compute resources in Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. “My customers sometimes dictate where they want their solutions housed,” McGugan said. Some workloads span multiple clouds.

    https://www.lightreading.com/services/unified-communication/avaya-goes-global-with-ibm-cloud/d/d-id/754203

  • Amazon Will Double Chicago Headcount, Add 70K SF at Tech Hub

    Amazon plans to expand its Chicago Tech Hub and create 400 new tech jobs in fields including cloud computing, advertising, and business development. To accommodate this job creation, Amazon will expand its space at Tishman Speyer’s Franklin office tower by more than 70,000 square feet.

    In all, Amazon employs more than 11,000 across Illinois, including workers at its fulfillment centers and retail stores.

    https://www.connect.media/amazon-will-double-chicago-headcount-add-70k-sf-at-tech-hub/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/25/2019


Photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash

  • Hey, Jeff Bezos: I work for Amazon – and I’m protesting against your firm’s climate inaction

    Since late last year, a group of workers within Amazon have been organizing to push the company to radically reduce its carbon emissions. Yesterday, they announced a major new action: on 20 September, Amazon workers around the world will walk out of their offices to join the Global Climate Strike. So far, more than 1,000 workers have pledged to participate. The organizers have three demands. They want the company to commit to zero emissions by 2030, to have zero custom cloud computing contracts with fossil fuel companies and to spend zero dollars on funding climate-denying lobbyists and politicians.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/10/jeff-bezos-amazon-climate-strike-aecj

  • Dozens of Google employees say they were retaliated against for reporting harassment

    After the retaliation document began circulating internally in late April, Google employees continued to use internal listservs to share similar retaliation cases related to sexual harassment and discrimination. In one anonymous mailing list dedicated to discussing mental health, at least seven stories about retaliation were shared in just the past few months, according to a source.

    Since many employees are reluctant to report HR violations through official channels, they have turned to anonymous platforms like these mailing lists for communicating with their colleagues. But some unofficial platforms for candid discussions, such as a previously employee-run newsletter for sharing complaints, are now being overseen by HR, which sources say is making matters worse.

    “In general, there’s a culture at Google where people were afraid to talk to HR — and in many cases for good reason,” Liz Fong-Jones, a former Google engineer and activist on internal company issues who said she faced retaliation for her activism, told Recode.

    https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/9/20853647/google-employee-retaliation-harassment-me-too-exclusive

  • What Tech Leaders Really Want
  • Government Orders Google: Let Employees Speak Out

    The NLRB’s settlement comes in response to a pair of complaints about Google’s reaction to workplace dissent. The settlement orders Google to inform current employees that they are free to speak to the media—without having to ask Google higher-ups for permission—on topics such as workplace diversity and compensation, regardless of whether Google views such topics as inappropriate for the workplace.

    The settlement was approved by an agency director this week, according to a document. It is slated to go into effect after an appeals period.

    The NLRB action is the second formal reminder to Google in a week to stay within the law. Last week, Google’s YouTube unit settled an investigation into alleged violations of child-privacy law with a $170 million fine and an admonishment from regulators not to track the internet activity of children under age 13.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-orders-google-let-employees-speak-out-11568284582

Posted on

Supplier Report: 9/20/2019


Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

News about massive acquisitions, mergers, and government fines can make it easy to lose track of the true value of a dollar.

WeWork and Uber continue to struggle justifying their value and become cash-flow positive. Google, through all of their own self-inflicted wounds are being treated like a piggy bank for foreign and the US governments.

Meanwhile critics of IT companies keep touting the value of data over the value of hard cash. Interesting times indeed.

Acquisitions/Investments

None this week

Artificial Intelligence

  • How to Build Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust

    For certain A.I. tasks, the dominant data-correlation approach works fine. You can easily train a deep-learning machine to, say, identify pictures of Siamese cats and pictures of Derek Jeter, and to discriminate between the two. This is why such programs are good for automatic photo tagging. But they don’t have the conceptual depth to realize, for instance, that there are lots of different Siamese cats but only one Derek Jeter and that therefore a picture that shows two Siamese cats is unremarkable, whereas a picture that shows two Derek Jeters has been doctored.

    In no small part, this failure of comprehension is why general-purpose robots like the housekeeper Rosie in “The Jetsons” remain a fantasy. If Rosie can’t understand the basics of how the world works, we can’t trust her in our home.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/ai-explainability.html

Cloud

  • Attorneys General Launch Probe of Google

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, announced the probe in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building, joined by about a dozen other attorneys general. In all, 48 states are part of the investigation of the Alphabet Inc. unit, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, officials said.

    Mr. Paxton said the states for now would focus on Google’s practices in online advertising markets. “But the facts will lead where the facts lead,” he said, adding, “We don’t know all the answers.”

    The states sent Google a civil subpoena on Monday seeking information about its ad practices, officials said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/attorneys-general-launch-probe-of-google-11568055853

  • Google, Amazon and Microsoft in Battle to Store Health Data in the Cloud

    Google will announce Tuesday a 10-year deal with the Mayo Clinic to store the hospital system’s medical, genetic and financial data. Providence St. Joseph Health in July said it reached a data-storage agreement with Microsoft. Later that month, Cerner Corp. CERN -0.24% , one of the largest electronic-health-record companies, unveiled its cloud-storage agreement with Amazon’s cloud-computing unit, Amazon Web Services.

    Some hospital-system and company officials said they expect to jointly develop new software by combining data and expertise of health-care companies with tech giants’ computing power and engineering know-how. “Google can’t do this alone. We can’t do this alone,” said Cris Ross, Mayo’s chief information officer. The terms weren’t disclosed.

    Patient records will be kept private and access will be controlled by Mayo, Mr. Ross said. Data used to develop new software will be stripped of any information that could identify individual patients before it is shared with the tech giant.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amazon-and-microsoft-in-battle-to-store-health-data-in-the-cloud-11568122202

Security/Privacy

  • Big Tech’s Hands-Off Era Is Over

    Over the years, these growing companies have successfully skirted legal recourse for bad actors on their sites. They have had the law on their side: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields internet platforms from liability for what others post.

    Now, as global behemoths, it seems that with greater power comes greater legal responsibility. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit earlier this year held that a customer in Pennsylvania could sue Amazon over a product that was allegedly unsafe. Meanwhile, Facebook was recently fined $5 billion over privacy violations—the largest privacy-related fine in the history of the Federal Trade Commission. Google was also just hit with a $170 million FTC fine over its YouTube operation, for which the company made changes such as disabling comments on children’s videos.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-techs-hands-off-era-is-over-11567762389

  • 51 tech CEOs send open letter to Congress asking for a federal data privacy law

    Many privacy advocates (and even some tech CEOs) believe tech companies aren’t really looking after users’ interests, but their own. There’s a belief that companies are trying to aggregate any privacy lawmaking under one roof, where lobby groups can water-down any meaningful user protections that may impact bottom lines.

    Many companies make money by selling customers’ personal or device-usage data to online advertisers. A privacy framework with too many teeth could prevent companies from selling certain types of data.

    To help speed up the legislative process, the Business Roundtable group released their own consumer privacy framework [more here] that they’d like Congress to analyze and use as a base for any future law. This proposal includes many of the same provisions of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); however, in very broad terms.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/51-tech-ceos-send-open-letter-to-congress-asking-for-a-federal-data-privacy-law/

  • 1B Mobile Users Vulnerable to Ongoing ‘SimJacker’ Surveillance Attack

    Researchers on Thursday disclosed what they said is a widespread, ongoing exploit of a SIM card-based vulnerability, dubbed “SimJacker.” The glitch has been exploited for the past two years by “a specific private company that works with governments to monitor individuals,” and impacts several mobile operators – with the potential to impact over a billion mobile phone users globally, according to by researchers with AdaptiveMobile Security.

    “Simjacker has been further exploited to perform many other types of attacks against individuals and mobile operators such as fraud, scam calls, information leakage, denial of service and espionage,” said researchers with AdaptiveMobile Security in a post breaking down the attack, released Thursday.

    https://threatpost.com/1b-mobile-users-vulnerable-to-ongoing-simjacker-surveillance-attack/148277/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • The mainframe business is alive and well, as IBM announces new z15

    IBM announced last month that it was making OpenShift, Red Hat’s Kubernetes-based cloud-native tools, available on the mainframe running Linux. This should enable developers, who have been working on OpenShift on other systems, to move seamlessly to the mainframe without special training.

    IBM sees the mainframe as a bridge for hybrid computing environments, offering a highly secure place for data that when combined with Red Hat’s tools, can enable companies to have a single control plane for applications and data wherever it lives.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/12/the-mainframe-business-is-alive-and-well-as-ibm-announces-new-z15/

Other

  • California Bill Makes App-Based Companies Treat Workers as Employees

    The bill passed in a 29-to-11 vote in the State Senate and will apply to app-based companies, despite their efforts to negotiate an exemption. On Wednesday morning, the Assembly gave its final approval, 56 to 15. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, endorsed the bill this month and is expected to sign it. Under the measure, which would go into effect Jan. 1, workers must be designated as employees instead of contractors if a company exerts control over how they perform their tasks or if their work is part of a company’s regular business.

    The bill may influence other states. A coalition of labor groups is pushing similar legislation in New York, and bills in Washington State and Oregon that were similar to California’s but failed to advance could see renewed momentum. New York City passed a minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers last year but did not try to classify them as employees.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/technology/california-gig-economy-bill.html

  • Mark Hurd, the co-CEO of Oracle, is taking a leave of absence, citing health reasons

    With Hurd’s departure for now, Catz will become the sole CEO of Oracle. Ellison, who remains the company’s CTO, is also expected to take on some of Hurd’s responsibilities, says CNBC.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/11/mark-hurd-the-co-ceo-of-oracle-is-taking-a-leave-of-absence-citing-health-reasons/

    Safra Catz has long been Oracle’s secret weapon, and analysts say that it’s her time to shine as sole CEO: ‘This will test her, but she will prevail’

    Ray Wang of Constellation Research described Catz as “an extraordinary operator” who has not drawn as much attention as Oracle’s other high-profile — and sometimes controversial — top execs.

    “Many folks underestimate her because she doesn’t want to take the limelight, but she has a silent power,” he told Business Insider. “I think she’s not sought the limelight but internal folks will always tell you she’s the one running the company in the background. Her biggest weakness is a strength in today’s climate. She’s not seeking the limelight. She’s focused on getting the job done.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/safra-catz-profile-oracle-sole-ceo-2019-9

  • Jack Ma officially retires as Alibaba’s chairman

    Ma will continue serving on Alibaba’s board until its annual general shareholders’ meeting next year. He also remains a lifetime partner of Alibaba Partnership, a group drawn from the senior management ranks of Alibaba Group companies and affiliates that has the right to nominate (and in some situations, appoint) up to simple majority of its board.

    Ma said in last year’s announcement that he plans for his departure from Alibaba Group to be very gradual: “The one thing I can promise everyone is this: Alibaba was never about Jack Ma, but Jack Ma will forever belong to Alibaba.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/09/jack-ma-officially-retires-as-alibabas-chairman/

  • Google to pay $549 million fine and $510 million in back taxes in France

    This is a settlement, which means that French authorities are dropping charges against Google in France. It covers activities from 2005 to 2018.

    According to previous reports, the company owed around $1.3 billion in taxes. In 2014, Google started putting aside some money for a potential fine.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/12/google-to-pay-549-million-fine-and-510-million-in-back-taxes-in-france/

  • WeWork and Uber are proof valuations are meaningless

    Up top, we dug into WeWork and the latest from the company’s continuing IPO saga. The question regarding the co-working company’s public offering has changed to whether the IPO will happen this year, not just at what price the firm can entice enough investment to actually get public.

    Alex has written about the company’s cash appetite a few times now, which raise the question of how long the company can survive without some sort of large, external investment. If SoftBank is willing to commit more capital is an open question

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/13/wework-and-uber-are-proof-valuations-are-meaningless/
    WeWork’s Latest Threat: Old-School Landlords Trying to Copy WeWork

    WeWork started off as a great customer of Hines Interests LP and other landlords, leasing unused space and renting it to businesses too tiny to be ordinary tenants, Hines executive Charlie Kuntz said in a presentation after dessert, according to several people present.

    But WeWork didn’t stop there. It began cutting deals with large corporations too, making it a threat to Hines’s core business. WeWork’s move reminded some at the dinner of how Airbnb Inc. stole business from hotels and how taxicab companies saw Uber Inc. eat their lunch.

    “It’s not too late for us,” Gerald Hines, the 94-year-old family patriarch and CEO’s father, told the group.

    This June, the big landlord punched back. It launched its own co-working business, called Hines Squared, as a direct competitor to WeWork.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/weworks-latest-threat-old-school-landlords-trying-to-copy-wework-11568127640