Tag: Apple

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Supplier Report: 6/5/2020

As COVID-19 continues to disrupt the global economy, some companies are taking advantage and making acquisitions as other organizations are announcing expense cuts.  IBM is backing out of their relationship with WeWork in NYC and Google is rescinding offers to 2,000 consultants.

Meanwhile, Google’s legal issues in the United States are expanding as Arizona is suing the company due a lack of privacy controls.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Cisco acquires ThousandEyes for around $1 billion to make deeper push into software

    ThousandEyes will be part of Cisco’s new Networking Services business unit, which is run by Todd Nightingale, the company said in the release. The purchase follow’s Cisco’s 2017 acquisition of AppDynamics for $3.7 billion, which brought in software that helps companies spot bugs in their apps and quickly fix them.

    In addition to AppDynamics, Cisco’s prior software deals include the $2.35 billion purchase of Duo Security in 2018, to bulk up in the authentication space, and the $1.9 billion acquisition of Broadsoft in 2017, to add technology for contact centers.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/28/cisco-acquires-thousandeyes-to-make-deeper-push-into-software.html

  • Apple just bought another AI startup to help Siri catch up to rivals Amazon and Google

    Inductiv Inc.’s technology automates the process of correcting flaws in data through the use of artificial intelligence. It’s one of several acquisitions Apple has made recently, following its purchase of the popular weather app DarkSky and virtual reality entertainment platform NextVR.

    Although Apple doesn’t disclose the purpose behind its acquisitions, Bloomberg reports that Inductiv’s engineering team is working on Siri, data science, and machine learning. Apple launched Siri back in 2011 on the iPhone 4S, long before Amazon introduced Alexa and Google launched the Google Assistant.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-buys-ai-startup-inductiv-siri-catch-up-amazon-google-2020-5

  • What Hertz Had Under the Hood Wasn’t Pretty

    The proximate cause of Hertz’s demise was of course the sudden collapse in bookings caused by coronavirus travel restrictions. The company’s monthly revenue fell 73% year-on-year in April, a shortfall that even the most resilient companies would struggle to withstand for long.

    But Hertz’s complicated financial plumbing contributed to it becoming one of the most high-profile companies to seek protection from creditors during the corona crisis. In the decade preceding its collapse, Hertz took on too much debt, participated in overpriced M&A and was accused of playing accounting games to pad its earnings.

    So when disaster struck and a request for a government bailout was rejected (rightly in my view considering top shareholder Carl Icahn is worth some $18 billion), Hertz was already standing far too close to the precipice. Regrettably Covid-19 will probably expose more of this type of corporate frailty, both in America and around the world.

    Hertz’s debt binge began when it was acquired by private equity firms from Ford Motor Co. in 2005; the new owners quickly took out a $1 billion dividend. Piling on debt juiced the potential returns for the owners and helped pay the inflated $2.3 billion price tag for the Dollar and Thrifty brands in 2012, which Hertz struggled to integrate.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-26/why-even-carl-icahn-couldn-t-save-hertz-from-chapter-11

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • A Case for Cooperation Between Machines and Humans

    In contrast, Dr. Shneiderman has sketched out a two-dimensional alternative that allows for both high levels of machine automation and human control. With certain exceptions such as automobile airbags and nuclear power plant control rods, he asserts that the goal of computing designers should be systems in which computing is used to extend the abilities of human users.

    This approach has already been popularized by both roboticists and Pentagon officials. Gill Pratt, the head of the Toyota Research Institute, is a longtime advocate of keeping humans “in the loop.” His institute has been working to develop Guardian, a system that the researchers have described as “super advanced driver assistance.”

    “There is so much that automation can do to help people that is not about replacing them,” Dr. Pratt said. He has focused the laboratory not just on car safety but also on the challenge of developing robotic technology designed to support older drivers as well.

    Similarly, Robert O. Work, a deputy secretary of defense under Presidents Trump and Barack Obama, backed the idea of so-called centaur weapons systems, which would require human control, instead of A.I.-based robot killers, now called lethal autonomous weapons.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/technology/ben-shneiderman-automation-humans.html

  • Microsoft sacks journalists to replace them with robots

    The team working on the Microsoft site did not report original stories but still exercised editorial control, selecting stories produced by other news organisations – including the Guardian – and editing content and headlines where appropriate to fit the format. The articles were then hosted on Microsoft’s website, with the tech company sharing advertising revenue with the original publishers.

    Manual curation of news stories also ensured that headlines were clear and appropriate for the format, while encouraging a spread of political opinions and avoiding untrustworthy stories, while highlighting interesting articles from smaller outlets.

    Some of the journalists now facing redundancy had longstanding experience in the industry, while for others it offered a foot in the door and a job in an industry which has seen wave after wave of cuts. They now face a tough challenge to get jobs elsewhere when the whole industry is looking to cut costs. Other teams around the world are expected to be affected by Microsoft’s decision to automate the curation of its news sites.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/30/microsoft-sacks-journalists-to-replace-them-with-robots

Security/Privacy

  • Arizona sues Google claiming it illegally tracked Android users

    The state argued that Google made it too complicated to completely disable tracking, forcing users to dig into granular Android system settings. “When consumers try to opt out of Google’s collection of location data, the company is continuing to find misleading ways to obtain information and use it for profit,” Brnovich told The Post. The state is asking the court to force Google to pay back Arizona profits earned through ads that monetized the data, as well as potential fines of up to $10,000 per violation.

    “The Attorney General and the contingency fee lawyers filing this lawsuit appear to have mischaracterized our services,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. “We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We look forward to setting the record straight.”

    https://www.engadget.com/arizona-google-lawsuit-android-smartphone-tracking-080511589.html

  • Chrome: 70% of all security bugs are memory safety issues

    Half of the 70% are use-after-free vulnerabilities, a type of security issue that arises from incorrect management of memory pointers (addresses), leaving doors open for attackers to attack Chrome’s inner components.

    The percentage was compiled after Google engineers analyzed 912 security bugs fixed in the Chrome stable branch since 2015, bugs that had a “high” or “critical” severity rating.

    The number is identical to stats shared by Microsoft. Speaking at a security conference in February 2019, Microsoft engineers said that for the past 12 years, around 70% of all security updates for Microsoft products addressed memory safety vulnerabilities.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-70-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/

Other

  • IBM Leaving 70K SF WeWork Outpost in Union Square

    IBM will ditch its office at 88 University Place — which it has occupied for three years for its marketing division — after Labor Day and already gave notice to WeWork it was leaving, Business Insider reported.

    “The company continually looks at our real estate to ensure it services the needs of IBMers and how we serve our clients,” Doug Shelton, a spokesman for IBM, said in a statement. “WeWork was a terrific partner and we’re very grateful for the WeWork staff at 88 University, who served us during our tenure at that site.”

    A spokesman for WeWork did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    https://commercialobserver.com/2020/05/ibm-leaving-70k-sf-wework-outpost-in-union-square/

  • Google reportedly rescinds 2,000 contract worker jobs

    The 2,000 contract positions would have been located across the globe, according to the Times, and they represent a small fraction of Google’s workforce. The company reportedly has more than 130,000 contractors on top of 123,000 employees.

    Still, it speaks to the significant hiring slowdown that Porat telegraphed last month. The pandemic has caused a slowdown in the advertising market, which is where Google makes the vast majority of its money. Revenue from advertising was still up year over year for Google’s first quarter, but growth was slowing.

    These rescinded offers pose bigger problems for the people who are now out of work. The Times reports that some people left full-time positions to accept the contract jobs with Google. Because they left their positions voluntarily, they may not be eligible for unemployment benefits.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/29/21274500/google-contract-job-workers-coronavirus-ad-revenue-slowdown

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Supplier Report: 3/20/2020


Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Tired of reading about the Corona virus? Me too.

Unfortunately, the virus is causing major changes…everywhere. In the United States, workers are being sent home, the stock market is a complete roller-coaster, and infection rates are starting to climb.

The one bright spot of all this Corona virus talk is that Xerox seems to be backing off HP (too soon to be making jokes?)

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Unity acquires Dublin-based deep learning startup Artomatix

    The Dublin startup builds developer tools that allow game studios to more easily create deep learning-enhanced textures that scale more convincingly.

    Developers can use the startup’s ArtEngine platform to bring real-world materials to their game worlds, adapting the visual patterns to their 3D worlds more quickly than existing toolsets while eliminating seams and irregularities. ArtEngine uses AI to identify visual flaws in replications and saves developers from having to endlessly tweak environments.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/unity-acquires-dublin-based-deep-learning-startup-artomatix/

  • How the coronavirus outbreak will stress-test startups

    According to a Dun & Bradstreet whitepaper released this week, 94% of Fortune 1000 companies have key elements of their supply chain housed directly within the epicenter of the outbreak in China. Supply-side shocks are much more difficult for central banks to contain by moves such as interest-rate cuts or financial stimulus. These typically serve to catalyze demand (through increased cash or borrowing power), but do not directly alleviate the kind of production paralysis capable of hamstringing global commerce.

    Startups are especially vulnerable to such supply-side disruptions, each of which is worth considering independently. Operating through lean organizational structures in which personnel often occupy cross-functional roles, decreases in staff productivity can create significant issues for interdependent activities at startups. The diversion of attention — due alternatively to the need to attend to personal needs (such as family caregiving, healthcare issues, or household concerns) or societal requirements (such as monitoring the development of the virus and state or federal reactions to it) — can make a cumulative impact over the days, weeks, and months of the outbreak.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/10/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-will-stress-test-startups/

  • Xerox Pauses Campaign to Take Over HP as Coronavirus Pandemic Escalates

    The company said Friday it is postponing additional presentations, interviews with the press and meetings with HP shareholders.

    “In light of the escalating Covid-19 pandemic, Xerox needs to prioritize health and safety of its employees, customers, partners and affiliates over and above all considerations, including its proposal to acquire HP,” Xerox Vice Chairman and Chief Executive John Visentin said.

    The company said it doesn’t consider the market decline since it put out its bid or the temporary suspensions of HP shares in recent days as a result of marketwide circuit breakers as a failure of any condition to acquire HP. Xerox said it would take the same view in future trading halts.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/xerox-pauses-campaign-to-take-over-hp-as-coronavirus-pandemic-escalates-11584105335

  • Oracle Tees Up Another $15 Billion In Buybacks

    The company reported revenue for its quarter that ended Feb. 29 of $9.79 billion, up from $9.61 billion in the comparable period a year earlier. That surpassed forecasts from analysts polled by FactSet.

    Oracle also reported a profit of $2.57 billion, or 79 cents a share, compared with earnings of $2.75 billion, or 76 cents a share, for the same quarter a year ago. Excluding stock-based compensation and certain other expenses, Oracle reported earnings of 97 cents a share, a penny more than forecasts from analysts.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-tees-up-another-15-billion-in-buybacks-11584047813
    JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and other major banks suspend stock buybacks due to pandemic

    Bank stocks have been pummeled so far this year as the virus has spread around the world. Shares of JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are both down more than 25% since the start of 2020, while shares of Citi have fallen more than 36%.

    As the pandemic has sharply slowed down economic activity in certain industries, such as travel, major companies like Boeing have announced that they will draw down their major credit lines from banks.

    “The decision on buybacks is consistent with our collective objective to use our significant capital and liquidity to provide maximum support to individuals, small businesses, and the broader economy through lending and other important services,” the Forum said.

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/15/jpmorgan-bank-of-america-citigroup-suspend-stock-buybacks-due-to-pandemic.html

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle-SAP Showdown: Will Larry Ellison Rip Huge ERP Customer from SAP as Promised?

    Oracle announces its fiscal-Q3 earnings tomorrow afternoon. That would be the ideal time for it to disclose this cutover customer whose defection from SAP will trigger, according to Ellison, a mass move of other big SAP ERP customers to Oracle.

    Adding to the drama is SAP’s complete dismissal of these claims, which I wrote about several weeks ago in Oracle-SAP Showdown: SAP Calls BS on Larry Ellison Claim of Snatching Huge SAP Customer.

    While the public wrangling between these two head-on competitors still run by founders with very healthy egos and little love for the other has been going on for years, it’s never taken a twist quite like this one about an imminent Pied-Piper wave of defections.

    Ellison’s predictions about trouble brewing for SAP came in Oracle’s mid-December earnings call, during which Ellison claimed that “SAP’s customer base is up for grabs.” And before a quick recap of Ellison’s promise about a showcase customer defection, bear in mind that SAP co-CEO Christian Klein totally dismissed such a possibility, saying “And actually we double-checked and honestly, I couldn’t find any customer who moved away from SAP ERP.”

    https://cloudwars.co/will-oracle-steal-huge-erp-customer-from-sap-larry-ellison/

  • Microsoft Teams goes down — just as everyone starts working from home

    The technology giant left a cryptic message — which at least is more than its users can do right now — on Twitter, stating that it’s “received reports that impact associated with TM206544 is ongoing.”

    “We’re investigating the issue,” said Microsoft.

    It’s Microsoft Team’s second outage in as many months after the software giant forgot to renew a TLS (HTTPS) certificate, forcing the service offline and users unable to communicate with colleagues for hours.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/microsoft-teams-down/

Other

  • France Fines Apple $1.2 Billion for Antitrust Issues

    France’s competition regulator, which had been examining wholesalers who sell Apple’s products in the country, said the company had unfairly divided products and customers between two wholesalers, Tech Data Corporation and Ingram Micro. The regulator accused Apple of making its wholesalers charge the same prices for products offered in Apple’s own retail stores and abusing its broad economic power over the firms.

    Isabelle de Silva, the president of the French Competition Authority, said in a statement that dividing duties among the wholesalers also had the effect of “sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products.” Tech Data and Ingram Micro were each fined millions of euros.

    An Apple spokesman, Josh Rosenstock, said in a statement that the company plans to appeal the decision.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/technology/france-apple-antitrust-fine.html

  • Bill Gates to Leave Boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway

    Most recently, Mr. Gates spent a lot of his time at Microsoft on devising tools that could make businesses more productive, said S. Somasegar, a former Microsoft corporate vice president who left in 2015 and is now a managing director at Seattle venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group. Microsoft has been one of several tech companies to promote so-called low-code tools to make it easier for regular employees to write software applications.

    Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, who has a long-running friendship with Mr. Gates, said former American Express Co. CEO Kenneth Chenault would replace Mr. Gates on the conglomerate’s board. Mr. Chenault, who joined Facebook Inc.’s board in 2018, won’t seek re-election, the social-media company said Friday.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-gates-to-leave-boards-of-microsoft-and-berkshire-hathaway-11584135172

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/6/2020


Photo by Jérémy Stenuit on Unsplash

The COVID-19 virus – which is rapidly earning pandemic status – has already caused massive disruption to the IT industry. As the virus spreads globally, companies are cutting back travel and pulling out of conferences.

The physical supply chain continues to be impacted with no timeline or solutions emerging other than “wait until after April”.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • DocuSign acquires Seal Software for $188M to enhance its AI chops

    DocuSign says it will continue to sell Seal’s analytics tools. What’s surely more important to DocuSign, though, is that it will also leverage the company’s AI tools to bolster its DocuSign CLM offering. CLM is DocuSign’s service for automating the full contract life cycle, with a graphical interface for creating workflows and collaboration tools for reviewing and tracking changes, among other things. And integration with Seal’s tools, DocuSign argues, will allow it to provide its customers with a “faster, more efficient agreement process,” while Seal’s customers will benefit from deeper integrations with the DocuSign Agreement Cloud.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/27/docusign-acquires-seal-software-for-188m-to-enhance-its-ai-chops/

  • Xerox Edges Closer to Fixing Its HP Printer Jam

    Were HP to become the acquirer, the new firm would emerge with significantly less debt. The Xerox offer as it stands would likely load the new entity with debt representing at least five times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. In the unlikely event that HP were to pay cash for Xerox (there would almost certainly be a stock component), then it would have debt of less than four times Ebitda.

    That includes the impact of a $15 billion buyback that HP announced today. The biggest risk for Xerox was that HP would essentially become the counterbidder for itself. By using his own balance sheet to boost shareholder value, Lores is doing just that. A $15 billion repurchase might buy back 50% of the shares, based on HP’s valuation before Xerox’s first bid. That could lift the share price well above the $24 a share of Xerox’s most recent offer.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/xerox-edges-closer-to-fixing-its-hp-printer-jam/2020/02/25/b1c61f82-57e8-11ea-8efd-0f904bdd8057_story.html

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • IBM and Microsoft support the Vatican’s guidelines for ethical AI

    The pledge, presented to Pope Francis today, calls for AI that safeguards the rights of all humans, especially the underprivileged, and for new regulations in areas like facial recognition. It asks tech leaders to “humanise technology and not ‘technologise’ humanity,” Novena News reports.

    “The Vatican is not an expert on the technology but on values,” Francesca Rossi, IBM’s global AI ethics leader, said in a statement. “The collaboration is to make the Vatican and the whole society understand how to use this technology with these values.”

    The pledge is part of a larger workshop on ethical AI led by the Pontifical Academy for Life in the Vatican this week. The Academy hopes governments, NGOs, industry leaders and other associations will join the “Rome Call for AI Ethics,” along with tech companies like IBM and Microsoft.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/28/ibm-microsoft-vatican-ai-ethics-pledge/

Cloud

  • Oracle has been outed as a donor for the Internet Accountability Project

    Database software giant Oracle Corp. has been outed as one of the donors of the Internet Accountability Project, which is a conservative organization that’s been throwing its weight behind a growing call for tougher privacy rules and stronger regulation of big tech companies.

    The IAP had always refused to say who was funding it, but it revealed in a disclosure on its website that Oracle donated between $25,000 and $99,000 last year, according to a Bloomberg report Tuesday.

    Oracle has been funding the IAP as part of its long-running campaigns against tech rivals such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google LLC. Oracle has been gunning for Amazon and its cloud business for years, while it’s also involved in a lengthy legal battle with Google regarding the use of patents relating to the Java programming language it owns.

    https://siliconangle.com/2020/02/26/oracle-outed-donor-internet-accountability-project/

Security/Privacy

  • ICE has run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland drivers

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been permitted to run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland driver’s license photos without first seeking state or court approval, state officials said — access that goes far beyond what other states allow and that alarms immigration activists in a state that grants special driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

    More than 275,000 such licenses have been issued statewide since 2013, when the state became the first on the East Coast to defy federal guidelines and allow undocumented immigrants to obtain a license without having to provide proof of legal status. The technology now under scrutiny could let an ICE official run a photograph of an unknown person through the system and see if any potentially undocumented immigrants are returned as a match.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/26/ice-has-run-facial-recognition-searches-millions-maryland-drivers/

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle to pay $12 million to settle ERISA suit

    Oracle Corp. agreed to pay $12 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed against the firm for allegedly breaching its fiduciary duties in managing its $16.5 billion 401(k) plan.

    The suit, filed in 2016, alleged that Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle caused participants of its 401(k) savings and investment plan “to pay unreasonable record-keeping and administrative fees” to its record keeper, Fidelity Management Trust Co.

    https://www.pionline.com/courts/oracle-pay-12-million-settle-erisa-suit

  • Expedia cuts 3,000 jobs, including 500 at new Seattle HQ

    Expedia said at the time that it was targeting $300 to $500 million of annual cost savings, but hadn’t previously announced explicit plans for job cuts.

    The layoffs come across the company and globe. About 500 people will be let go in Seattle, where Expedia recently moved to a new 40-acre waterfront campus and employs more than 4,000 people. Expedia said it will eliminate certain projects and activities, and reduce the use of vendors and contractors. It will provide impacted workers with severance packages that include extended healthcare.

    “Moving forward, we will exert more discipline in setting priorities and allocating resources, simplify our business processes and inter-dependencies, raise the bar on performance standards, and demonstrate and demand accountability for results,”

    https://www.geekwire.com/2020/expedia-cuts-3000-jobs-including-500-new-seattle-hq-read-internal-email-employees/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple Loses Pair of Key Operations, Supply Chain Executives

    Nick Forlenza, a vice president of manufacturing design, has retired from Apple, while Duco Pasmooij, another vice president who worked on operations, is discussing an exit in the near future, according to people familiar with the moves. Pasmooij left the operations team over a year ago, moving into a role reporting to the company’s head of augmented reality efforts, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing personnel.

    Apple has about a hundred vice presidents across the company who help Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and the senior executive team run one of the world’s most profitable companies. An Apple spokesman declined to comment. Forlenza and Pasmooij didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-27/apple-loses-pair-of-key-operations-supply-chain-executives

Other

  • Disney’s Iger Is Now in a Rare Role: Executive Chairman

    Such arrangements work when an executive chairman cedes enough control to give the new CEO autonomy, while remaining present as a sounding board, says Anthony Abbatiello, who heads the leadership and succession-planning practice at Russell Reynolds Associates, an executive-search firm. Transitions can crumble if the newly installed chairman insists on micromanaging operations, he said.

    When Jim McCann, the founder and longtime CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com Inc., became executive chairman in 2016 and handed the reins to his brother, Chris McCann, he says he tried to clearly separate the roles. He stopped attending some meetings and quarterly gatherings of managers, and refrained from participating in corporate earnings calls. Instead, he took on projects focused on innovation and better serving customers, leaving his brother to handle day-to-day operations.

    A mentor advised the two executives to never let others drive a wedge between them. “That’s rung in our ears,” Jim McCann said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/disneys-iger-is-now-in-a-rare-role-executive-chairman-11582840014

  • Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block steps down

    Block stepped into the co-CEO role in 2018, after a long career at the company that saw him become vice chairman, president and director before he took this position. Block spent the early years of his career at Oracle . He left there in 2012 after the release of a number of documents in which he criticized then-Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, who passed away last year.

    Industry pundits saw his elevation to the co-CEO role as a sign that Block was next in line as the company’s sole CEO in the future (assuming Benioff would ever step down). After this short tenure as co-CEO, it doesn’t look like that will be the case, but for the time being, Block will stay on as an advisor to Benioff.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/25/salesforce-co-ceo-keith-block-steps-down/

  • Amazon tells employees to pause nonessential travel in U.S. due to coronavirus

    Amazon sent the notification to employees on Friday. In a separate internal communication, Dave Clark, who runs Amazon’s retail operations, told employees to hold off on planning group or team meetings that require travel until at least the end of April, when he estimated that the company will have a better sense of the virus, its spread and its impact.

    In January, Amazon said it was restricting employee travel to China “until further notice” amid the coronavirus outbreak. The company also recommended that employees who are expected to travel back from one of the affected provinces of China work from home for two weeks. Amazon urged employees who experienced any symptoms to seek medical attention before returning to the office.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/amazon-pauses-non-essential-travel-in-us-due-to-coronavirus.html
    Coronavirus concerns prompt cancellation of Facebook F8 developer conference

    “This was a tough call to make — F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on,” Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s director of developer platforms and programs, said in a statement.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/coronavirus-concerns-prompt-cancellation-of-facebook-f8-developer-conference/
    GDC 2020 has been canceled

    In recent days, nearly all of the event’s top corporate sponsors announced that they would not be sending employees to the event due to concerns surrounding coronavirus. Microsoft, Unity, Epic, Amazon, Facebook and Sony had all bowed out of the event. GDC’s statement did not reference the virus.

    The company behind GDC detailed that they will be refunding conference and expo attendees in full, though a blog post details that the group hopes to host a GDC event later in the summer, noting, “We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/28/gdc-has-been-postponed/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/14/2020


Photo by Finan Akbar on Unsplash

Investment company SoftBank is having trouble finding investors for the second wave of their “Vision Fund”. The company has taken heavy criticism for their investment strategies that some financial experts attribute to the over-valuation of companies like Uber and WeWork.

With less capital investments available, will the over-valuation of unprofitable tech companies end or will something or someone else fuel the next bubble?

Meanwhile Jeff Weiner is stepping down as LinkedIn CEO (he is still staying with the company) and Seeking Alpha is questioning why IBM didn’t select Jim Whitehurst as their next CEO.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Koch Industries acquires Infor in deal pegged at nearly $13B

    Infor, which makes large-scale cloud ERP software, has been around since 2002 and counts Koch as both a customer and an investor, so the deal makes sense on that level. Koch was lead investor last year in a $1.5 billion investment, wherein the company indicated that it was a step before going public.

    It’s not clear if that is still the goal, as sources suggested that staying private might provide the company with more capital flexibility in the future. Daniel Newman, founder and principal analyst at Futurum Research, says staying private longer could benefit Infor in the long run.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/04/koch-industries-acquires-infor-in-deal-pegged-at-nearly-13b/

  • New SoftBank Tech Fund Falls Far Short of $108 Billion Fundraising Goal

    Hailed by SoftBank last summer as a $108 billion sequel to its $100 billion Vision Fund, the new pool could end up being less than half that size, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself, the people said.

    A failure by SoftBank to raise a big new fund would reverberate across the tech startup world. Dozens of companies from ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies to food delivery company DoorDash Inc. got big boosts from the fund’s nearly $90 billion two-year spending spree.

    Less money to invest could mean cuts to SoftBank’s 500-person investing staff.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-softbank-tech-fund-falls-far-short-of-108-billion-fundraising-goal-11581100669

  • Elliott Management Builds More Than $2.5 Billion Stake in SoftBank

    Elliott Management Corp. has quietly built up a more than $2.5 billion stake in Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 7.13% and is pushing the sprawling technology giant to make changes that would boost its share price, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Founded by billionaire Paul Singer, New York-based Elliott is known as a formidable activist investor, often seeking to influence company management. SoftBank is one of Elliott’s largest bets, according to people familiar with the matter. At current prices, the investment would be equivalent to about 3% of SoftBank’s market value.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elliott-management-builds-more-than-2-5-billion-stake-in-softbank-11581015340

  • HPE acquires cloud native security startup Scytale

    HPE announced today that it has acquired Scytale, a cloud native security startup that is built on the open-source Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) protocol. The companies did not share the acquisition price.

    Specifically, Scytale looks at application-to-application identity and access management, something that is increasingly important as more transactions take place between applications without any human intervention. It’s imperative that the application knows it’s OK to share information with the other application.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/hpe-acquires-cloud-native-security-startup-scytale/

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • Laszlo Bock Thinks Machine Learning Can Make Work Better

    “There are seven billion people on this planet, and work sucks for most of them,” Mr. Bock adds. “How do you make it better without waiting 200 years for it to get better? What if you could actually drive business outcomes while also making work better?”

    His answer to that what-if is Humu Inc., a behavioral-change startup whose mission is to “make work better everywhere through machine learning, science and a little bit of love.” Mr. Bock, 48, serves as Humu’s CEO. He started the company in 2017 with two of his former Google colleagues, Wayne Crosby and Jessie Wisdom. Based in Mountain View, Calif., Humu seeks to expand the kind of data-driven approach to personnel management that Mr. Bock developed during his 10 years as Google’s head of human resources (or as Google calls it, “people operations”).

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/laszlo-bock-thinks-machine-learning-can-make-work-better-11580492585

Cloud

  • Oracle Adds Data Centers in Five New Countries to Its Cloud Platform

    This week Oracle announced the addition of five new regions to its Generation 2 cloud platform across the globe. This brings the number of Oracle cloud data center availability regions to 21, with a total of 36 to be available by the end of the year, which is when the company has said it will have more global data center hubs than Amazon Web Services.

    The new regions are in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Melbourne, Australia; Osaka, Japan; Montreal, and Amsterdam.

    https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/oracle/oracle-adds-data-centers-five-new-countries-its-cloud-platform

Security/Privacy

  • Researcher: Backdoor mechanism still active in many IoT products

    According to Yarmak, the backdoor can be exploited by sending a series of commands over TCP port 9530 to devices that use HiSilicon chips and Xiongmai firmware.

    The commands — the equivalent of a secret knock — will enable the Telnet service on a vulnerable device.

    Yarmak says that once the Telnet service is up and running, the attacker can log in with one of six Telnet credentials listed below, and gain access to a root account that grants them complete control over a vulnerable device.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/researcher-backdoor-mechanism-still-active-in-many-iot-products/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple fined $27 million in France for throttling old iPhones without telling users

    A couple of years ago, Apple released an iOS update (10.2.1 and 11.2) that introduced a new feature for older devices. If your battery is getting old, iOS would cap peak performances as your battery might not be able to handle quick peaks of power draw. The result of those peaks is that your iPhone might shut down abruptly.

    While that feature is technically fine, Apple failed to inform users that it was capping performances on some devices. The company apologized and introduced a new software feature called “Battery Health,” which lets you check the maximum capacity of your battery and if your iPhone can reach peak performance.

    And that’s the issue here. Many users may have noticed that their phone would get slower when they play a game, for instance. But they didn’t know that replacing the battery would fix that.

    Some users may have bought new phones even though their existing phone was working fine.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/07/apple-fined-27-million-for-throttling-old-iphones-without-telling-users/

  • The Coronavirus Impact on Hardware Startups

    It seems like most people are expecting factories to open on 2/10 as planned. However, the expectation is being set that production will take two weeks to ramp back up to normal. And, there is some concern that larger companies will likely exert pressure to be at the front of the line.

    Another problem at this point is movement into and out of China. The Chinese border with Hong Kong is only open at a few places and many are afraid to enter China right now for fear that they won’t be able to leave.

    Everyone anticipates a big logistics clog once things start shipping, which will introduce delay and cost, although the magnitude of this is unknown.

    Finally, the downstream (or upstream – I never get that right) impact of long lead time items will add another wrinkle once people understand the volume and timing constraints when things settle down.

    https://feld.com/archives/2020/02/the-coronavirus-impact-on-hardware-startups.html

    Yes – I posted this video twice. Watch it. Subscribe. I might make more.

Other

  • Status Quo For IBM Is Unsustainable. An Acquirer Would Treat Its Assets Better

    The fact that Jim Whitehurst was given the consolation prize of President is all you need to know about where the board is, in regard to a sense of urgency about the going forward. Whitehurst was the erstwhile CEO of Red Hat; he is not some “wet-behind-the-ears” naive tech company founder. Before Red Hat, Whitehurst was the COO of Delta in what was very trying times going into the teeth of the great recession. Whitehurst understands how to perform while playing hurt. Whitehurst also knows how to grow a tech business. Red Hat was an admired company before IBM scooped it up by paying top dollar. I am sure that during the courtship Rometti whispered in Whitehurst’s ear all kinds of promises including the fact that she will retire soon and IBM may very well be his realm. That is what a lot of people who grew up in technology, in earlier more genteel times, hoped. IBM would finally get its footing by reaching outside and putting its house in order. This “business-as-usual” coronation, promoted a 40-year IBMer, who has no corporate leadership experience, no experience in restructuring, no experience in building a tech company. His claim to fame is that he bought Whitehurst’s company for top dollar? Really?

    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4322576-status-quo-for-ibm-is-unsustainable-acquirer-treat-assets-better

  • IBM, Marriott and Mickey Mouse Take On Tech’s Favorite Law

    An unusual constellation of powerful companies and industries are fighting to weaken Big Tech by limiting the reach of one of its most sacred laws. The law, known as Section 230, makes it nearly impossible to sue platforms like Facebook or Google for the words, images and videos posted by their users.

    The companies’ motivations vary somewhat. Hollywood is concerned about copyright abuse, especially abroad, while Marriott would like to make it harder for Airbnb to fight local hotel laws. IBM wants consumer online services to be more responsible for the content on their sites.

    But they all see an opening as both Democrats and Republicans increasingly raise their own concerns about the power of the tech industry and the law.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/technology/section-230-lobby.html

  • Jeff Weiner will step down as CEO of LinkedIn June 1, product head Ryan Roslansky steps up

    There is a major change ahead for LinkedIn, the social network for the working world, now with 675 million members. Jeff Weiner, who has been leading the company as CEO for the past 11 years, is stepping down on June 1, 2020. His new role will be executive chairman. Ryan Roslansky, who is currently head of product, will be stepping up to the role of CEO, while Tomer Cohen, who had been under Roslansky, is stepping up to lead the product team.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/05/jeff-weiner-will-step-down-as-ceo-of-linkedin-june-1-product-head-ryan-roslansky-steps-up/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/7/2020

It is the end of an era with IBM’s announcement that CEO Virginia Rometty is retiring. Rometty assumed the role in 2012 and has been attempting to transform the company into a cloud and AI powerhouse. This transformation has been bumpy with IBM losing 22% value during her tenure.

But her acquisitions and steady hand may position IBM for a Microsoft-like resurgence (or she may have led the company to its final stand).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • LSI acquires S2P Solutions to solidify its SAP portfolio

    The public services transformation company LSI announced today that it will acquire S2P Solutions Ariba Cloud-based business commerce business unit on February 3rd, pending shareholder approval. With the addition of S2P, LSI will continue its leadership in delivering full ERP Cloud solutions to Regulated Industries. The focus of S2P’s business is in procurement, spend management and supplier discovery, and it is considered a leading service provider for Ariba services.

    “S2P is a champion in the procurement services market – and they have been instrumental in our strategy to deliver Ariba solutions to our SAP client base”, explained Steve Roach – CEO & President of LSI. “The ERP market is moving to the Cloud and SAP continues to lead the charge. By weaving Ariba (procurement), SuccessFactors (human resources) to the S/4H (digital core) together we are able to meet the needs of State, Local Government, Education, Utilities, Non-for-profits and Healthcare institutions. This acquisition is the next step in our journey to build out the Intelligent Public Enterprise”.

    https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/508559866/lsi-acquires-s2p-solutions-to-solidify-its-sap-portfolio

Cloud

  • Microsoft Profit, Sales Beat as Cloud Demand Persists

    Revenue in the period ended Dec. 31 rose 14% to $36.9 billion, marking the software maker’s 10th straight quarter of double-digit sales growth. Analysts on average had predicted $35.7 billion. Fiscal second-quarter profit was $11.6 billion, or $1.51 a share, Microsoft said Wednesday in a statement. That compared with the $1.32 per-share estimate of analysts polled by Bloomberg. Shares rose 4% in late trading.

    Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has been trying to narrow the gap in cloud infrastructure with market leader Amazon.com Inc., in both technical capabilities and the caliber of customer it can attract for its Azure products and services. Microsoft’s recent wins include a massive contract with the Pentagon, for which it beat out front-runner Amazon, and a cloud deal with accounting giant KPMG LLP. Microsoft is also pulling in more revenue from Office 365, with companies such as KPMG and Ikea upgrading to the internet-based productivity software. Azure revenue in the recent period rose 62% and Office 365 sales to businesses increased 27%.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/microsoft-profit-sales-beat-as-cloud-demand-persists

Security/Privacy

  • FCC: Wireless carriers violated federal law by selling location data

    Back in 2018, it came to light that carriers sell their customers’ real-time location data to aggregators, which then resold it to other companies or even gave it away. Last year, a Motherboard report also revealed that bail bond companies and bounty hunters have been buying people’s location data for years, allowing them to use that information to track their targets.

    All four major US carriers promised to stop selling customer location data to aggregators after the information first came out. The companies made good on their word, though it took them a year to do so: They informed FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that they had already halted sales to aggregators after she requested for an update in 2019.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/31/fcc-carriers-violated-federal-law-selling-location-data/

  • Hackers are selling card info stolen in last year’s Wawa breach

    If you purchased anything at the East Coast gas station and convenience store chain Wawa between March and December last year, there’s a chance your credit and debit card info is being sold on the dark web. Earlier this week, fraud intelligence company Gemini Advisory discovered stolen payment card data being uploaded to Joker’s Stash, an online cybercrime marketplace. It seems the data was obtained during the Wawa breach discovered in December.

    As you may remember, last month, Wawa revealed that malware had been swiping customers’ payment card info, possibly since March. It’s believed that 850 stores may have been hit, exposing 30 million sets of payment records, making it one of the largest payment breaches of all time. Cardholders in the US, several Asian countries, Europe and Latin America may have had their data stolen.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/30/wawa-breach-stolen-data-sold-online/

  • Antivirus company shuts down its data-harvesting arm after getting caught red-handed

    The reports, which were the result of a joint investigation between Motherboard and PCMag, detailed how Avast was collecting user browsing data via its antivirus software. This data included Google searches, location lookups, visited URLs along with precise time stamps, and in some cases even specific searches made on porn websites. Although Avast claimed that individual users could not be identified from this data, Motherboard spoke to experts who said that this could be possible in some cases.

    Jumpshot claimed to have data from as many as 100 million devices, and it listed some of the world’s largest companies among its clients, including Google, Yelp, Microsoft, and Pepsi. Jumpshot would package this data up into different products, one of which was its “All Click Feed,” which would allow its clients to see all user clicks on individual domains (such as Amazon.com). These clients reportedly paid millions of dollars for Jumpshot’s products, which often included precise browsing data.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/30/21115326/avast-jumpshot-subsidiary-suspended-data-collection-selling-ceo-blog-post

Other

  • IBM CEO Virginia Rometty is retiring

    IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, one of the most prominent female leaders in tech, is stepping down on April 6th, 2020. She will still serve as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of the year, but she’s retiring completely after that. Rometty will be replaced as CEO by Arvind Krishna, who currently runs the company’s cloud business and who was a key figure in IBM’s Red Hat acquisition. She called Krishna “the right CEO for the next era at IBM.”

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/30/ibm-ceo-virginia-rometty-is-retiring/

  • WeWork Names Veteran Real Estate Executive as New Chief

    The naming of an experienced real estate executive is a clear indication that WeWork is moving on from Mr. Neumann’s strategy of building a sprawling company with lofty aims that included transforming how people work and live together. He had promoted WeWork as if it were a groundbreaking technology company set on upending its industry. The firm had also branched out well beyond office space, establishing sleek dormitories for working professionals and even a private school in Manhattan.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/business/wework-chief-executive.html

  • Apple is closing all mainland China stores due to coronavirus outbreak

    The coronavirus outbreak is having a tangible impact on the tech world, and Apple is serving as a textbook example of its effect. The company is closing all its retail stores and corporate offices in mainland China through February 9th out of an “abundance of caution” and in consultation from experts. Apple had initially closed three stores, but this shuts down a full 42 locations across the country.

    Key suppliers like Foxconn have said they don’t expect problems meeting production goals for companies like Apple. Caution is still the order of the day, however. Apple chief Tim Cook said that expectations for the start of the calendar year were unusually vague due to virus-related uncertainty. Sales at stores had dropped across China in recent days, even outside of the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/01/apple-closes-china-stores-due-to-coronavirus/