Tag: Apple

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Supplier Report: 5/3/2019

There is good news for Amazon this week with reports that the company is securing BILLIONS of dollars of cloud contracts. Names like Apple, Slack, and Lyft have all recently reported long-term/big-money contracts with the company.

As Amazon’s cloud business continues to dominate and they put more energy into their advertising business – there should be concern with how the company is going to leverage their position for pricing and for privacy.

Additionally, with accusations that Apple is not playing fair with apps that compete with their own services, we have to ask ourselves if companies creating these enormous ecosystems are reliable business partners over the long term.

Acquisitions

  • A $603 Million Deal Sheds Light on Cybersecurity Space

    In a deal that puts a spotlight on the shadowy world of cyberwarfare, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. agreed to acquire KeyW Holding Corp. for about $603 million, increasing its number of employees with top-secret government access by 50 percent.

    While neither company is a household name, both have deep ties to Washington’s web of cyberintelligence specialists. Jacobs, a Dallas-based engineering firm with more than 80,000 employees, already gets about 23 percent of its $15 billion in annual revenue from the U.S. government. In the past three years, Jacobs has acquired two other cybersecurity firms in the greater Washington area — Reston, Virginia-based Blue Canopy and Columbia, Maryland-based Van Dyke Technology Group Inc.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-22/a-603-million-deal-sheds-light-on-secretive-cybersecurity-space

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM’s head of HR says ‘100% of jobs are going to change’ with AI. Here’s how the tech giant is adapting.

    To make it through these market changes, IBM had to assess what skills its workforce had, and what skills it now needed. That’s not an easy feat when you’re a giant, multinational business. Gherson said that the company turned to the technology that was partially responsible for this disruption: AI.

    Instead of having managers work with each of their employees to map out their current skills and then work with other managers to see what skills were still needed, IBM automated the process. Internal software could analyze employees’ work experience and writings to infer what they excelled at. It prompted a cultural shift within the company.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ibm-is-using-artificial-intelligence-to-retrain-workers-2019-4

  • The growing backlash against facial recognition tech

    This month has made clear that public pressure is working when it comes to facial recognition. Behemoth companies know they can no longer ignore the criticisms — or, as they recently did, simply say they’d welcome regulation of this technology. Critics are making clear that’s not good enough — they want to see such companies “get out of the surveillance business altogether,” as the American Civil Liberties Union told Vox.

    Meanwhile, several bills are being considered to limit the use of facial recognition. San Francisco could soon become the first US city to institute an all-out ban on local government use of the tech, if its Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance passes. Neighboring cities like Oakland and Berkeley have already passed similar but slightly weaker ordinances. (Legislation along these lines was also introduced in the California state Senate, but was quashed after police opposed it.)

    https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/27/18518598/ai-facial-recognition-ban-apple-amazon-microsoft

Cloud

  • Amazon’s Profit More Than Doubles on 17% Rise in Sales

    Expenses, however, are expected to jump in the second quarter in part because Amazon said it would invest $800 million to make one-day free shipping the standard for Prime members, instead of two days.

    The e-commerce company’s bottom line got a big boost in the first quarter from its cloud-computing unit and burgeoning advertising business, helping to offset sluggish growth from the core online retail business. The profit more than doubled to well above what analysts were expecting.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-profit-more-than-doubles-on-17-rise-in-sales-11556224159

  • Slack to spend at least $250 million on Amazon Web Services over five years — less than Pinterest or Lyft

    Slack said on Friday that it has a hefty commitment to spend money with Amazon Web Services through 2023, though it’s not as big of a customer as other companies to recently go public, such as Lyft and Pinterest.

    In 2018, Slack signed an agreement with AWS to spend at least $50 million a year over five years, for a total of at least $250 million, according to the company’s filing with the SEC for a public stock listing. As of Jan. 31, the contract has a remaining minimum payment of $212.5 million. Slack said it uses AWS, the leading public cloud vendor, “as our processing and delivery infrastructure.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/26/slack-to-spend-at-least-250-million-on-aws-over-five-years.html

  • Apple Is Heavily Reliant on Amazon Web Services

    Apple has previously mentioned that it uses Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) for its iCloud storage. It could also be using Amazon’s cloud service for some of its other services.

    According to CNBC, this expenditure is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. According to the report, Apple has signed an agreement committing to spending a minimum of $1.5 billion on AWS over the next five years.

    Many other companies are also heavily reliant on Amazon’s cloud service. According to CNBC, Lyft has an agreement worth over $300 million with AWS to power its service until the end of 2021.

    https://articles.marketrealist.com/2019/04/apple-is-heavily-reliant-on-amazon-web-services/

Security

  • Managing Risk in Light of the Wipro Data Breach

    Wipro, the Bengaluru, India-based ITO and BPO services provider, confirmed on Tuesday, April 16th, that it fell victim to a data breach—specifically, an advanced and persistent “zero-day” malware attack. The attack may have begun in March as a phishing incident (an unauthorized attempt to access a target’s information systems, usually via fraudulent emails or other communication) involving one Wipro employee, and it has apparently led to a broader infiltration of Wipro’s email systems.

    Initial reports have indicated that the attack may have impacted more than a dozen of Wipro’s customers, but the ongoing investigation has yet to uncover whether, and to what extent, those customers’ data are at risk.

    https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/managing-risk-in-light-of-the-wipro-data-breach.html

Software/SaaS

  • Apple accused of clamping down on apps competing with Screen Time

    The introduction of Screen Time in iOS 12 was ostensibly a boon for parents and anyone else wanting to keep a lid on device use, but there are concerns that it’s cracking down on apps that compete with that feature. The New York Times and Sensor Tower have learned that Apple has either pulled or requested feature limitations for “at least” 11 of the 17 most popular parental control and screen time apps, and leaders at those developers claim it’s trying to discourage apps that rival Screen Time’s functionality. The creators of two apps, Kidslox and Qustodio, filed an EU competition complaint on April 25th.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/27/apple-clamp-down-on-screen-time-apps/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Samsung reportedly pushes back Galaxy Fold release

    Samsung is pushing things back a bit, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal that cites “people familiar with the matter.”

    There’s no firm time frame for the launch, though the phone is still expected “in the coming weeks,” at some point in May. We’ve reached out to Samsung for comment and will update accordingly. When a number a reviewers reported malfunctioning displays among an extremely small sample size, that no doubt gave the company pause.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/samsung-reportedly-pushes-back-galaxy-fold-launch/

  • Turnover Hits Apple’s Famed Industrial Design Team

    Rico Zorkendorfer and Daniele De Iuliis, who together have more than 35 years of experience at Apple, decided to leave the company recently, people familiar with the departures said. Another member of the team with a decade of experience, Julian Hönig, plans to leave in the coming months, people familiar with his plans said.

    The departures of members of the core design team that revived Apple in the 2000s and did the work behind the iPhone, iPad and watch come amid a pause in new products, as the company emphasizes new subscription services this year instead of new gadgets amid slowing iPhone sales. It also follows chief designer Jony Ive’s resumption a little over a year ago of day-to-day oversight for the industrial design group.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/turnover-hits-apples-famed-industrial-design-team-11556225563

  • Comcast Is Surviving Big Media’s Horror Flick

    While the company is losing cable subscribers as consumers cut the cord, it also is winning over more internet customers in need of high-speed connections to fuel their entertainment binge.

    In other words, the grim reaper comes bearing unexpected gifts.

    This dynamic was visible in Comcast’s first-quarter results. On Thursday it reported earnings of 77 cents a share, up from 66 cents a share in the same period last year, beating estimates of 68 cents a share. Revenue rose 18% to $26.86 billion, thanks partly to the company’s recent acquisition of Sky, the European pay-TV giant. It also was boosted by a 10% rise in Comcast’s high-speed internet revenue. The company said it added 375,000 customers in the period.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/comcast-is-surviving-big-medias-horror-flick-11556215034

Other

  • Google Walkout Organizers Say They’re Facing Retaliation

    Claire Stapleton, another walkout organizer and a 12-year veteran of the company, said in the email that two months after the protest she was told she would be demoted from her role as marketing manager at YouTube and lose half her reports. After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced further retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer; the company conducted an investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion. “While my work has been restored, the environment remains hostile and I consider quitting nearly every day,” she wrote.

    https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-theyre-facing-retaliation/

  • Microsoft has become the third US company to achieve a trillion-dollar valuation

    Microsoft revealed double-digit growth in its third-quarter financial results on Wednesday (April 24). Revenues grew by 14 percent to $30.6 billion, with profits climbing 19 percent to $8.8 billion. What really excited the stock market, however, was the 73 percent increase in revenues from Azure cloud services. This helped drive a five percent rise in Microsoft’s share price to $131.37, finally elevating it into the 13-digit club.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-has-become-the-third-us-company-to-achieve-a-trillion-dollar-valuation-albeit-briefly/

  • Elon Musk, SEC agree to guidelines on Twitter use

    Musk can tweet as he wishes except when it’s about certain events or financial milestones. In those cases, Musk must seek pre-approval from a securities lawyer, according to the agreement filed with Manhattan federal court.

    U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, the presiding judge on this matter, must still approve the deal. Nathan had given the SEC and Musk two weeks to work out their differences and come to a resolution.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/26/elon-musk-sec-agree-to-guidelines-on-twitter-use/

Photo by Sašo Tušar on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 4/12/2019

Google had a very rough week.

First it was discovered that they lost AI researcher Ian Goodfellow to Apple, who has made a habit of stealing Google’s AI talent of late.

Then the company announced the dissolution of their AI ethics board…after only one week. Some of their board selections received critical feedback both internally and externally.

Finally, Google’s temp labor teams published a letter requesting better treatment. Google responded to these demands by announcing their temporary labor services suppliers will provide better pay and benefits, but the temps say that isn’t enough, as they are looking to be treated with dignity.

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Watson knows when you’re planning to quit your job

    At CNBC’s Work Talent + HR Summit, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty revealed that the company AI has got so adept at detecting employee satisfaction that it’s now in the “95 per cent accuracy range.”

    Rometty wouldn’t be drawn on what data points Watson consults, but Googling the spelling of “curriculum vitae”, alongside extended periods on LinkedIn would be our first clue. Nobody has ever visited LinkedIn recreationally, after all.

    Watson’s “predictive attrition program” is used to retain talent, because as Rometty says, “the best time to get to an employee is before they go.” The company estimates that the early interventions will have saved it nearly $300m in retention costs.

    https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3073744/ibm-watson-knows-when-youre-planning-to-quit-your-job

  • What AI Will Do to Corporate Hierarchies

    The obvious answer may be that the management structure is likely to get more centralized and rigid. After all, AI will help managers track more detailed data about everything their subordinates are doing, which should make it easier—and more inviting—to exercise stricter controls.

    This will no doubt be true in some cases. But look more closely, and I believe the opposite is much more likely to happen in many cases. That’s because when AI does the routine tasks, much of the remaining nonroutine work is likely to be done in loose “adhocracies,” ever-shifting groups of people with the combinations of skills needed for whatever problems arise.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-ai-will-do-to-corporate-hierarchies-11554158120

  • Apple has poached another of Google’s top AI researchers

    Ian Goodfellow is one of the most prominent names in artificial intelligence, and previously worked at both Google and the Elon Musk-founded lab OpenAI. But, as first reported by CNBC, Goodfellow recently updated his LinkedIn profile to note that he is now working at Apple as a director for machine learning at the company’s Special Projects group.

    It’s not the first time Apple has used Google as an AI talent incubator, with the iPhonemaker luring away Goodfellow’s former boss, Google’s head of AI, John Giannandrea, last April.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18296473/apple-google-ai-research-poached-ian-goodfellow

  • Google dissolves AI ethics board just one week after forming it

    Google today disclosed that it has dissolved a short-lived, external advisory board designed to monitor its use of artificial intelligence, following a week of controversy regarding the company’s selection of members. The decision, reported first today by Vox, is largely due to outcry over the board’s inclusion of Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James, a noted conservative figure who has openly espoused anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and, through the Heritage Foundation, fought efforts to extend rights to transgender individuals and to combat climate change.

    The advisory board, called the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC), included a number of prominent academics in fields ranging from AI and philosophy to psychology and robotics. But it also included those with policy backgrounds, like James and members of former US presidential administrations.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/4/18296113/google-ai-ethics-board-ends-controversy-kay-coles-james-heritage-foundation

Cloud

Security

  • Facebook will stop asking new users for their email passwords

    Facebook told Axios that “a very small group of people have the option of entering their email password to verify their account when they sign up for Facebook,” but noted that people could choose instead to confirm their account with a code or link sent to their phone or email.

    “That said, we understand the password verification option isn’t the best way to go about this, so we are going to stop offering it,” the company said in a statement.

    https://www.axios.com/facebook-will-stop-asking-new-users-for-their-email-passwords–355c2e94-793f-47b7-a582-9ee0a4f01ae3.html

Software/SaaS

  • PwC Tests Blockchain for Validating Job Candidates’ Credentials

    If the technology becomes widely used, staffers won’t have to verify a candidate’s credentials by calling universities and previous employers, which can sometimes take weeks, Mr. Cushley said. The challenge, though, will be getting enough schools and companies on board to make blockchain truly valuable for validating credentials, he said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/pwc-tests-blockchain-for-validating-job-candidates-credentials-11554324777

  • American Express, SAP Ariba join forces for End-to-End B2B payments

    Sources close to the move claim that American Express, as a network extension partner, will use Ariba Network APIs to allow its virtual Card potentials within the SAP Ariba platform & process to facilitate secure payments, seamless commerce, and easy settlement between businesses on a single platform.

    Moreover, businesses, through the new integration, will have the opportunity to use their current American Express® Corporate Cards to make virtual Card payments, further making it easy for customers to get started without the need to create and maintain a standalone account.

    http://solutionrocket.com/american-express-sap-ariba-join-forces-end-end-b2b-payments/

  • Why Oracle is happy to lose to AWS and MongoDB

    Put another way, how is it that Oracle can be such a miss with developers and yet still print billions of dollars in revenue? I’m guessing Hurd doesn’t care much about developer adoption. He likely doesn’t care that, measured in popularity, Oracle has been in terminal decline for many years, as DB-Engines’ data suggests. In fact, if you look at the database technologies for which developers ask the most questions (indicating production use) on Stack Overflow, only MongoDB and PostgreSQL are booming (of the top-five database technologies).

    No, what Hurd cares about, as he acknowledges in his remarks to CNBC, is the fact that Oracle still controls roughly half of the global database market, worth tens of billions of dollars. Never mind that, as Gartner analyst Merv Adrian has highlighted, Oracle has lost market share every year since 2013, and collectively the old guard relational database players have shed nearly five percentage points.

    https://www.infoworld.com/article/3387123/why-oracle-is-happy-to-lose-to-aws-and-mongodb.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Samsung Expects 60% Decline in First-Quarter Operating Profit

    The world’s largest smartphone and memory chips maker by shipments has felt the economic slowdown acutely. Companies and consumers, hesitant to spend amid the U.S.-China trade fight, according to tech industry executives, have delayed smartphone purchases and moderated investments into areas like data servers.

    Samsung’s results are closely watched because of its dual role as one of the world’s biggest hardware makers and a major supplier of electronics companies—including to rivals such as Apple Inc., which buys displays and chips from the Suwon, South Korea, company.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/samsung-expects-60-decline-in-first-quarter-operating-profit-11554426661?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Verizon’s 5G network is blazing fast, but it barely exists

    Yesterday, the leading US carrier triumphantly announced the debut of 5G service in “select areas of Chicago and Minneapolis,” and said that “for the first time ever, customers can access a commercial 5G network with the world’s first commercially available 5G-enabled smartphone.” Verizon welcoming customers onto its 5G network came a week earlier than initially planned. Verizon hasn’t said why it abruptly moved things up, but carriers in South Korea also went live with 5G yesterday, so it’s possible the company didn’t want to get beat by its global peers.

    I know you want speed tests, so to get started, yes, Verizon’s 5G data speeds are quite fast compared to what your smartphone can handle right now. I’m hitting between 400 and 600 Mbps on downloads. I can also tell you that, at least in Chicago, this feels like a premature launch, and 5G can be awfully hard to come by. When you do find it, you’ve basically got to stay where you are to see what it’s capable of.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/4/18295600/verizon-5g-network-first-tests-data-speed

Other

  • Jeff Bezos, Amazon C.E.O., and MacKenzie Bezos Finalize Divorce Details

    Mr. Bezos will keep 75 percent of the couple’s Amazon stock and all of their ownership of The Washington Post and the Blue Origin space company, Ms. Bezos wrote. Mr. Bezos will also have “sole voting authority” over Ms. Bezos’ Amazon shares, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    After the divorce, Ms. Bezos will own roughly 4 percent of Amazon, a stake that was worth almost $36 billion on Thursday. By keeping 75 percent of the couple’s Amazon shares, or about 12 percent of the company, Mr. Bezos will most likely remain the richest person in the world. His remaining stake in the company was worth almost $108 billion on Thursday. (Bill Gates, the second wealthiest, is worth $102 billion, according to Bloomberg.)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/technology/bezos-divorce-mackenzie.html

  • UN says US fears over Huawei’s 5G are politically motivated

    The secretary general of the UN’s internet and telecoms agency has suggested US concerns about 5G networks built using Huawei equipment have more to do with politics and trade, rather than legitimate worries over security. “There is no proof so far,” Houlin Zhao, head of the International Telecommunication Union, said regarding claims about Huawei’s security. He noted it’s in telecoms’ best interests to make sure their infrastructure is secure as they might otherwise feel the wrath of authorities.

    “I would encourage Huawei to be given equal opportunities to bid for business, and during the operational process, if you find anything wrong, then you can charge them and accuse them,” Zhao said, according to Reuters. “But if we don’t have anything then to put them on the blacklist — I think this is not fair.”

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/05/un-huawei-5g-network-security-allegations/

  • Google staff condemn treatment of temp workers in ‘historic’ show of solidarity

    TVCs make up 54% of Google’s global workforce, and more than half of the people on the personality team, according to the letter. The TVCs on the personality team sit alongside Google FTEs in offices around the world, but they are employed by a staffing agency on contracts ranging from two to six months at a time.

    On 8 March, about 80% of the TVCs on the team – 34 people – were informed that their contracts were ending ahead of schedule, either on 5 April or, in a few cases, on 31 July, according to the letter.

    The layoffs took place around the globe, starting in Seoul, and hitting London just as TVCs in New York were heading to work.

    “During the process, our managers and the full-time workers on our team were silent,” the letter states. “Google told them that offering support or even thanking us for years of work would make the company legally liable. Our teammates were told to distance themselves from us at the moment when we were most in need – just so that Google could avoid legal responsibility.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/02/google-workers-sign-letter-temp-contractors-protest

  • The EU Is Pissed at Steam for Region-Locking Games

    “Valve believes that the EC’s extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law,” he wrote. Lombardi claimed that without the ability to geo-block games in the EU, publishers will have to raise prices in “less affluent regions” to avoid people in more affluent regions buying games there rather than at home. Traditionally, prices on Steam vary from region to region.

    The recipients of the Commission’s objections will now have the opportunity to examine the Commission’s investigation files, respond in writing, and request a hearing. If the Commission concludes that there was an infringement, it could prohibit the alleged conduct and impose a fine of “up to 10% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/panj7v/the-eu-is-pissed-at-steam-for-region-locking-games

Photo by DJ Johnson on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 4/3/2019

  • How Better Communication Skills Can Make You a Better Leader

    You might stray away from being assertive, in fear that it’ll come off as confrontational — trust us when we say they’re not one and the same. Part of being assertive is the ability to confidently stand behind your words and offer up a much-needed sense of direction or action plan.

    Fact is, everyone possesses knowledge — but what makes individuals stand out as leaders is their ability to communicate that unique information. And beyond just relaying that information, figuring out a way to inspire and motivate others.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/331323

  • Apple still has a lot to prove with its new subscription services

    The best answer I can come up with is this: Apple has a huge effect on technology and culture, and Apple is trying to tell a new story about what it is and what it makes. You should care because the story Apple tells us and tells itself has real effects on the products it makes and its effect on culture.

    So yes, Apple makes subscription services now. But if the whole story is just “Apple can make more money now that iPhone sales have plateaued,” then none of this really matters or changes anything.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/26/18282776/apple-tv-news-plus-subscription-services-announcement-keynote-cost-bundle

  • Shh! Keep Your Big Goals to Yourself.

    Some experts argue that praise before accomplishment can actually prevent us from reaching our goals. In 2009, researcher Peter Gollwitzer asked the question, “Are scientists more likely to write papers if they tell colleagues about their intentions or if they keep their intentions to themselves?”

    After completing a series of studies, Gollwitzer and his team found that when people set a goal that’s closely tied to their identity and share their intentions with others, they’re less likely to achieve that goal. In converse example, telling friends that you’re going to start taking vitamins likely won’t affect your follow-through. That’s because vitamins probably aren’t deeply tied to your personal identity.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/329168

  • Move over, WeWork. This Belize beachside coworking space is the dream

    While all coworking spaces claim their business is “more than a workspace” and their unique design and the various perks they offer “set them apart,” the Belize Tourism Board (BTB) may actually be right. The bungalow is situated over the brilliantly blue water on Tobacco Caye. The coworking space has an open-concept layout to help coworkers feel right at home and make collaboration easy. There are standing desks, a wellness center, executive parking, a VIP boardroom, and, of course, Wi-Fi and a killer view.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90327084/move-over-wework-this-belize-beachside-co-working-space-is-the-dream

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 1/18/2019

IBM had a week of making excuses: First CEO Ginni Rometty had to defend Watson medical after reports from oncologists that the system is incorrectly diagnosing medical issues. Then the company had to defend the lack of growth in blockchain by essentially saying companies need to invest first and hope to see results. Finally, the company is failing to meet their hiring targets in Baton Rouge and are having a job fair – but someone needs to question why the company has a consulting hub in Baton Rouge in the first place.

Acquisitions

  • Amazon Web Services Acquires CloudEndure – Confirmed

    “As an AWS Advanced Technology Partner since 2016, CloudEndure has long joined forces with AWS to help customers future-proof their businesses. This acquisition expands our ability to deliver innovative and flexible migration, backup, and disaster recovery solutions.”

    Israeli media outlets estimate the deal to be worth about $200 to $250 million Dollars.

    https://esellercafe.com/amazon-web-services-acquires-cloudendure-confirmed/

  • Alibaba acquires German big data startup Data Artisans for $103M

    Alibaba has paid €90 million ($103 million) to acquire Data Artisans, a Berlin-based startup that provides distributed systems and large-scale data streaming services for enterprises.

    Data Artisans was founded in 2014 by the team leading the development of Apache Flink, an open source large-scale data processing technology. The startup offers its own dA Platform, with open source Apache Flink and Application Manager, to enterprise customers that include Netflix, ING, Uber and Alibaba itself.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/08/alibaba-data-artisans/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM CEO: Watson has not failed

    “Watson for Oncology is doing very well — very well,” Ms. Rometty told STAT during a photo opportunity at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where she delivered a keynote address. STAT has requested interviews with Ms. Rometty and other company executives for months with no success.

    In 2018, STAT reported several controversies involving IBM’s health division, including one of its physician customers calling Watson for Oncology a “piece of sh–,” and numerous employee layoffs. A key complaint about Watson for Oncology, which offers cancer treatment recommendations, is that it’s biased toward American treatment methods. However, IBM said it plans to add regional treatment guidelines to Watson for Oncology, as well as real-world data on patient outcomes, to boost user satisfaction.

    https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/artificial-intelligence/ibm-ceo-watson-has-not-failed.html

  • Microsoft Could Help Kroger Counter Amazon’s Growth

    Kroger recently partnered with Microsoft to test out two data-driven connected stores. The two renovated stores will use a smart retail system powered by Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and digital shelves, which display prices, promotions, and nutritional information on screens in front of products. Kroger introduced the shelves, which are already being used in nearly 100 stores, last year. The test stores will help guide shoppers through the aisles to the products they want to buy.

    All those devices will be tethered to Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, which is already Kroger’s preferred cloud platform. Microsoft and Kroger will also jointly market a commercial retail as a service (RaaS) product to the grocer’s industry peers.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/01/11/microsoft-could-help-kroger-counter-amazons-growth.aspx
    After Amazon-Whole Foods, Microsoft-Kroger: The Grocery Revolution Is Happening

    “The two outfitted Kroger locations, in Monroe, Ohio and Redmond, Wash., will feature digital shelving displays with real-time price updates and product information, as well as digital advertisements personalized to each shopper,” CNBC published on Monday.

    The news of the Microsoft-Kroger partnership dovetails with a report from RBC Capital Markets indicating that Amazon’s cashierless grocery stores take in 50% more revenue than conventional counterparts. Amazon has said it may open up as many as 3,000 Amazon Go stores by 2021, suggesting the possibility of a $4.5 billion business.

    https://streetfightmag.com/2019/01/09/after-amazon-whole-foods-microsoft-kroger-the-grocery-revolution-is-happening/

Cloud

  • Microsoft wins $1.76 billion defense contract: Pentagon

    Microsoft Corp has been awarded a five-year contract worth $1.76 billion for delivering enterprise services for the Defense Department, Coast Guard and intelligence services, the Pentagon said on Friday.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-defense/microsoft-wins-1-76-billion-defense-contract-pentagon-idUSKCN1P52HB

  • AWS gives open source the middle finger

    AWS argues that while MongoDB is great at what it does, its customers have found it hard to build fast and highly available applications on the open-source platform that can scale to multiple terabytes and hundreds of thousands of reads and writes per second. So what the company did was build its own document database, but made it compatible with the Apache 2.0 open source MongoDB 3.6 API.

    If you’ve been following the politics of open source over the last few months, you’ll understand that the optics of this aren’t great. It’s also no secret that AWS has long been accused of taking the best open-source projects and re-using and re-branding them without always giving back to those communities.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/09/aws-gives-open-source-the-middle-finger/

  • AWS, Coupa Expand IT Spend Visibility For Corporates

    Coupa users can link their accounts to Amazon Web Services to automatically have AWS invoices sent to the Coupa platform. The integration means companies using both Coupa and AWS can more quickly process those invoices, while gaining enhanced visibility into their spend with AWS services.

    The integration deploys Coupa’s InvoiceSmash solution, which accelerates invoice processing and payments for users, aimed at enabling companies to capture early payment discounts from their suppliers.

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/aws-coupa-it-spend-visibility-management/

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle inks stadium naming rights deal with San Francisco Giants

    The deal appears to be one of the richest of its kind in North American professional sports, which seemingly would trickle through to the Giants’ product on the field. The team already boasted the second-highest payroll in the majors last season at around $203 million.

    Kevin Bartram, principal of Bartram Partnerships, a brand sponsorship consultancy, told Bloomberg the $200 million to $350 million price tag “seems very fair.” He was one of the consultants who brokered the Pacific Telesis-Giants partnership, according to the news outlet.

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/09/oracle-inks-stadium-naming-rights-deal-with-san-francisco-giants/

    Is this the best use of Oracle’s money at the moment?

  • Why more people aren’t using blockchain, according to IBM

    “We believe that blockchain is a team sport. For a blockchain-based solution to work successfully, it requires multiple entities to come together in a symbiotic relationship and agree on common principles, operating model and governance,” Parzygnat says. “The very nature of blockchain-based solutions require the vision and leadership of a governing body to convene the ecosystem in a common blockchain-based network. Then it requires each enterprise member to acknowledge their core competencies and compete in the market by defending or enhancing them.”

    https://www.finder.com.au/why-more-people-arent-using-blockchain-according-to-ibm

    Translation: “Pay for the roads first, and maybe we will built them”

Other

  • Chinese Huawei Executive Is Charged With Espionage in Poland

    The Chinese national’s detention follows the December arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer in Canada, at the U.S.’s request, on allegations the company violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Unlike that case, the Polish charges relate directly to suspicions by Washington and other Western governments that China could use Huawei equipment, or its employees, to help it spy on foreign governments and companies.

    Polish officials said Huawei itself wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing. They didn’t detail the charges or say whether any sensitive information was compromised. Officials also arrested a Polish national on the same charge.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-huawei-executive-is-charged-with-espionage-in-poland-11547201100?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Google Nears Win in Europe Over ‘Right to Be Forgotten’

    At issue in the case is the right, established by the court in 2014, for EU residents to demand that search engines remove links containing personal information—such as a home address—from searches for their names. Under the 2014 ruling, search engines must balance those requests against the public’s right to access a link associated with the searched-for name, taking into account, for instance, whether the person is a public figure.

    Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general for the court, argued in Thursday’s nonbinding opinion that if the EU orders removal of content from websites accessed outside the region, there is a danger that other jurisdictions would use their laws to block information from being accessible within the EU.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-court-adviser-recommends-limited-scope-for-right-to-be-forgotten-11547112114

  • Apple’s trillion-dollar market cap was always a false idol

    It’s worth noting that Apple has hardly been in alone taking a huge hit on its stock price, especially tech stocks, which have been taking a beating since November on Wall Street. Want to talk a trillion dollars, how about the biggest names in tech losing a trillion (that’s with a T, folks) in value in one stretch in November. When Apple halted trading last week to announce lower than expected revenue, the stock dove even further, as it confirmed the worst fears of investors.

    Worse, Chinese consumers have driven iPhone sales just as the Chinese economy has hit a massive speed bump this year. In June, Reuters reported shockingly weak growth. In November, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese economy was slowing down long before the president started a trade war.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/apples-trillion-dollar-market-cap-was-always-a-false-idol/

  • IBM now heading to Lafayette to recruit workers for Baton Rouge hub

    The company will conduct a career fair Jan. 19 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at South Louisiana Community College in the Devalcourt Building at 320 Devalcourt St., a news release from Louisiana Economic Development said. IBM is looking to fill 75 available positions in Baton Rouge, the release said.

    IBM fell short on its promise to create 800 jobs in Baton Rouge by 2017 in exchange for state incentives. The company reached an agreement with the state to meet that goal next year and will have to pay a penalty of $10,000 for each job below the threshold of 800.

    https://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2019/01/11/ibm-now-heading-to-lafayette-to-recruit-workers-for-baton-rouge-hub/
    No offense to Louisiana – but it is an odd place to start a work hub. Yes, there are colleges (36 4-year schools), but it isn’t overflowing with students compared to other states, and it doesn’t seem like people want to stay there.
    IBM laying off more than 300 workers in RTP

    The jobs, which were part of an IBM subsidiary called Seterus, will be permanently terminated “no earlier than March 11,” according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification on Jan. 9.

    The 310 job cuts come a week after IBM agreed to sell Seterus to the mortgage services company the Mr. Cooper Group.

    https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article224283465.html

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/11/2019

Apple is having a rough week because they (finally) realized that people don’t want to pay $1,400 for a new phone every year (can we make rotten apple jokes now?). The company needs to shift to a services model ASAP – will they build or will they buy?

IBM is selling IP because they need to get cash quickly to cover their acquisition of Red Hat. Their most recent sell off is a mortgage platform called Seterus to a company called Mr. Cooper Group. I am left wondering why IBM had a mortgage group in the first place.

Continuing 2018’s trend of “you data is never going to be safe” – password management app Blur accidentally exposed user data on their AWS platform.

Acquisitions

  • Mr. Cooper buys IBM mortgage platform that brought in $200 million last year

    Coppell-based Mr. Cooper Group Inc. is continuing to expand its mortgage servicing business with Thursday’s purchase of IBM’s Seterus platform.

    Mr. Cooper said the deal bolsters its portfolio by adding servicing rights to $24 billion in mortgages and a subservicing contract for an additional $24 billion in mortgages. Terms of the transaction weren’t immediately disclosed.

    https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2019/01/03/mr-cooper-buys-ibm-mortgage-platform-brought-200-million-last-year

  • Google picks up company behind Q&A app

    Google has quietly acquired Superpod, a startup that had built a question-and-answer mobile app, Axios has learned. Google paid less than $60 million to “acqui-hire” the founders and purchase some of Superpod’s assets, according to a source.

    The bigger picture: The search giant hasn’t been shy about its ambitions for Google Assistant, the voice-activated virtual assistant that it debuted in 2016. Superpod, which lets users ask questions and receive answers from experts, could help Google bolster its virtual assistant’s ability to answer users’ questions.

    https://www.axios.com/google-acquires-superpod-qa-app-38d68263-7122-447b-9d81-58fadc404cb9.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • Forbes is building more AI tools for its reporters

    Over the summer, the business publisher, which just had its most profitable year in more than a decade, rolled out a new CMS, called Bertie, which recommends article topics for contributors based on their previous output, headlines based on the sentiment of their pieces and images too. It’s also testing a tool that writes rough versions of articles that contributors can simply polish up, rather than having to write a full story from scratch. The CMS is currently available to Forbes’ editorial staff and senior contributors in North America, and will be rolled out to all of its contributors in North America and Europe in the first quarter of 2019. The AI story-writing tool, which Forbes’s product team is experimenting with, does not have an immediate roll-out date.

    https://digiday.com/media/forbes-built-a-robot-to-pre-write-articles-for-its-contributors/

  • PepsiCo is using robots to deliver snacks to college students

    The autonomous snackbots, built by Y-Combinator startup Robby Technologies, can travel 20 miles on a charge, and are equipped with a camera, headlights and all-wheel drive to handle rough or wet terrain. Once it arrives, you simply release the lid, grab your snacks and close it to complete the sale. The app presumably takes care of the security and dispensing end of things.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/04/pepsico-robot-snack-delivery/

Cloud

  • What’s Behind Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud: Q&A with Oracle VP Kyle York

    Why is Oracle calling the new technology “Gen 2”—what is different from other cloud technology?
    As with most new things, the first rev is not always built for the long-term success. First generation public cloud offerings were not architected to accommodate traditional application architectures. They were architected for net-new cloud native applications. Think websites, mobile apps, or ecommerce storefronts—certainly not financial systems, government workloads, or data-intensive applications. Many enterprise workloads simply cannot run in hypervisor-based environments, as they don’t provide the performance predictability and high availability often required by traditional enterprise applications. They also don’t play nice with the tooling and security infrastructure historically deployed on-premise, in a complex ecosystem cultivated over decades.

    Oracle offers the most flexibility in the public cloud, allowing companies to run traditional and cloud-native workloads on the same platform. This enables our customers to reduce operational overhead and costs and enable connectivity and shared data between these workloads.

    http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/Whats-Behind-Oracles-Gen-2-Cloud-QandA-with-Oracle-VP-Kyle-York-129198.aspx

Security

  • Marriott Says Hackers Swiped Millions of Passport Numbers

    The incident marked one of the largest data breaches in history, rivaled only by a hack of Yahoo Inc. in 2013 and 2014.

    The company said early Friday in a release that the number of guests involved in the data breach is lower than the original 500 million, but it didn’t specify a number.

    Marriott said a total of about 383 million records was “the upper limit” for the number potentially compromised in the incident. That figure includes passport numbers, email addresses and payment-card data of some guests, the company said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-says-hackers-swiped-millions-of-passport-numbers-11546605000?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Hackers Dump Data on Merkel, Politicians in Giant German Leak

    It’s unclear at this point whether the data release is linked to the 2015 Bundestag hack, and how significant it is. It includes two email addresses and a fax number the perpetrators link to Merkel, and a letter by SPD lawmakers sent to the chancellor in 2016 that criticizes her handling of the refugee crisis. The data connected to Merkel was not considered sensitive, Fietz said.

    The data, which Germany is trying to remove, also includes what appears to be chat transcripts from Economy Minister Peter Altmaier. More mundane material includes rental-car contracts and letters, some of them several years old. The attack appears to have affected all major German political parties with the exception of the populist Alternative for Germany.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/hackers-release-personal-data-of-hundreds-of-german-politicians

  • Blur password manager exposes 2.4M users on misconfigured AWS cloud instance

    While finding no evidence that the document had been accessed, Abine is nonetheless warning users that their accounts may have been compromised. Users are being asked to reset their master passwords for Blur and to set up two-factor authentication as an additional security measure.

    Blur is not the first password manager to have had security issues. LastPass was infamously hacked in 2015 before having to issue an urgent patch in 2017 after it was discovered that plugins related to the product could expose customer passwords.

    LastPass, though, was a different case because it was specifically targeted by hackers. The fact that a company offering password protection software would “accidentally” expose user data on an AWS S3 instance is a different level of incompetence.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/01/03/blur-password-manager-exposes-2-4m-user-details-misconfigured-aws-instance/

Software/SaaS

  • Apple’s Precarious and Pivotal 2019

    Today, the stock is down nearly 10%. Tens of billions of dollars have been shaved off of Apple’s market cap, literally overnight. The company is now the 4th most valuable corporation in the world. That sounds like a great thing until you remember that until recently, it was the most valuable company in the world — and for much of the past several years, this was the case by far.

    Also:

    And then there’s the real standout part of the paragraph: “consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies”. Once again, this translates into English as: we pushed the price of the iPhone too far. And whereas before, such prices were obfuscated by things like carrier contracts, that world is shifting. And Apple hasn’t shifted fast enough or strongly enough to account for this.

    https://500ish.com/apples-precarious-and-pivotal-2019-f4f8cea3993a

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Why the iPhone Is Finally Fading

    You’ve probably heard before that A.I. and voice are the future. That’s still on track to be true, even though it hasn’t happened overnight. (The future rarely does.) It’s coming first in the form of speakers such as Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, with Apple’s HomePod and others playing catch-up. While the big tech companies don’t yet report sales figures for these devices, studies show the market expanding rapidly, with nearly a quarter of U.S. households owning one as of last fall, according to Nielsen. Some analysts predict that figure will top 50 percent by 2022.

    Meanwhile, the sector is growing at rates reminiscent of smartphones’ early days. A report by Strategy Analytics estimated that Amazon’s Echo business grew 64 percent from 2017 to 2018, while Google’s Home sales boomed 420 percent. That’s before we even start counting all the other devices that are being sold with Alexa, Google Assistant, or other voice AI services built in, or the many more that are voice-compatible.

    https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/apple-iphone-decline-china-replacement-alexa-siri.html

Other

  • Salesforce’s Marc Benioff unplugged for two weeks, and had a revelation that could change the tech industry

    All that relaxation led Benioff to one big revelation: He’s too busy.

    Weeks at work are filled with dinners, parties, events and business council meetings exclusively for CEOs, meaning that if anyone from Salesforce is to attend, it has to be him. Meanwhile, he’s trying to run a 30,000-person company, build Salesforce towers across the globe, bolster his philanthropy, invest in start-ups, mentor other business leaders and become a louder voice on a number of social and political issues.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/30/salesforce-marc-benioff-talks-tech-ethics-time-magazine-and-vacation.html

  • The case for why Big Tech is violating antitrust laws

    The nearly 20-year-old case of US v. Microsoft illustrates how today’s tech giants are breaking the law. The court held that Microsoft used its monopoly power in “Intel-compatible desktop PC operating systems” to squash the Netscape browser by requiring computer makers to instead install Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser. Rather than competing on the merits, Microsoft used its monopoly power to try to take over the internet browser market. Ironically, if the Department of Justice had not sued Microsoft to stop its anticompetitive behavior, Google might not exist! After taking over the internet browser market, Microsoft could have required computer makers to use its own search engine, too.

    Google, Amazon and Facebook are following the same playbook. The tech giants have “platform privilege” — the incentive and ability to prioritize their own goods and services over those of competitors that depend on their platforms. By doing so, they contend they are improving their products and benefiting customers. An entrepreneur can create a superior product or service and still get crushed because Big Tech is controlling the game and playing it, too.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/02/perspectives/big-tech-facebook-google-amazon-microsoft-antitrust/index.html