Supplier Report: 3/27/2020
Photo by Christopher Windus on Unsplash
As more travel and movement restrictions are announced, there is less technology news being released… which is disappointing as I am looking for any news other than Corona.
Thankfully there is SOME news out there. I am glad to see that AT&T is canceling plans to buy back stock and keeping cash reserves for the impending financial doom that is likely to come.
SAP Ariba did hold a virtual version of their Ariba Live conference last week and I have been picking over the videos.
Acquisitions/Investments
- The Airlines Want A $58 Billion Bailout After Spending $45 Billion On Stock Buybacks
Help in the U.S. is needed because “this crisis hit a previously robust, healthy industry at lightning speed,” Airlines for America said in a statement. The trade group outlined a proposal for $50 billion for passenger airlines and $8 billion for cargo carriers.
But the request for taxpayer assistance via loans, grants and tax relief comes after a decade of massive consolidation — and billions in profits — that put the industry in a far more robust condition than before.
What’s more, from 2010 to 2019, U.S. airlines spent 96% of their free cash flow, some $45 billion, to purchase shares of their own stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The world’s largest carrier, American Airlines Group Inc., was the biggest buyer, spending $12.5 billion.
- SoftBank reportedly balks at commitment to buy $3B in shares from WeWork shareholders
Citing a notice sent to WeWork shareholders, the Journal reported that if SoftBank reneged on the buyback, it would not go back on its commitment to give the office sharing company a $5 billion lifeline.
According to the Journal’s reporting, the deal to buy back shares isn’t canceled, and could just be an effort to renegotiate terms in light of the global economic slowdown caused by the world’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
- AT&T Warns Coronavirus Financial Impact ‘Could Be Material,’ Nixes $4 Billion Stock-Buyback Plan
AT&T called off plans to repurchase $4 billion in stock during the second quarter — and has halted all other buybacks — saying it has decided to keep the cash to invest in its networks and in taking care of employees during the coronavirus pandemic.
The telco, which made the disclosure Friday in an SEC filing, said that while its business “continues to operate effectively” during the COVID-19 outbreak the ongoing crisis could have a material impact on financial results.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has [affected] and will continue affecting economies and businesses around the world. The impacts of the pandemic could be material, but due to the evolving nature of this situation, we are not able at this time to estimate the impact on our financial or operational results,” AT&T said in the filing.
https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/att-coronavirus-material-cancels-stock-buyback-plan-1203540168/
Software/SaaS
- Google halts upcoming releases of Chrome and Chrome OS to keep things stable for everyone working from home
It makes sense that Google doesn’t want to risk unforeseen bugs popping up and making life more difficult for Chromebook owners and everyone doing their work in Chrome during these stressful days. This is also an admission that it’s difficult to balance Chrome stability and new features with the team so decentralized. So Google is wisely prioritizing the former.
- SAP’s Ariba Live online: ‘The Network Effect for Buyers and Suppliers’
Volume growth appears to be coming from three key areas — free supplier enablement options (for lower volume suppliers), general network/transaction growth for existing and new customers, and direct materials/EDI growth.
However, from a network-value effect perspective, it is true that many of the benefits that we normally see in supplier portals and supplier networks are more oriented to the communication and exchange of documents between buyers and suppliers (rather than deeper and more complex collaboration) — with benefits generally being of greater value for the buyers than for suppliers.
In Sean’s videoconference he mentioned that they have been working closely with its Supplier Advisory Board to understand what the most important supplier needs and wants are from an ecosystem perspective, and not surprisingly what suppliers want is more sales to drive more revenue and an easier way to use the Ariba Supplier Network (changing the way buyers & suppliers interact, better ways to manage the information, and more network-centric applications). It’s interesting that they didn’t mention a free network, at least for certain services and transactions; but that’s another story we’ve repeatedly addressed in Spend Matters’ coverage.
- OK, Fine, Let’s All Get Back on Facebook
It’s been almost exactly two years since Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. It’s also around two years since I wrote about why Facebook didn’t need to listen in on our mics. After all that, I didn’t #deletefacebook, but I vowed to take a step back from its products.
The reality is, the company collects more personal data than it needs to perform the services it offers users, and has been evasive and even dishonest when asked about all of that data collection.
Yet just one week into self-isolation, I’m pointing a Facebook-connected camera at my son.
It’s the ultimate test of what we’re willing to live with after all we’ve learned over the last two years: To make our lives better—or at least easier—will we give the tech giant a pass on its fast and loose take on privacy?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ok-fine-lets-all-get-back-on-facebook-11584763207
Hell No… join Slack or get a Discord server.
Infrastructure/Hardware
- YouTube joins Netflix in reducing video quality in Europe
YouTube is reducing the quality of its videos in Europe, as an increase in home usage strains the continent’s internet during the novel coronavirus outbreak, Reuters reports. “We are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default,” the company said in a statement.
The decision comes after EU industry chief Thierry Breton called on streaming platforms to help reduce their load on the continent’s infrastructure. Internet traffic is increasing as more people spend time at home in line with social-distancing guidelines during the pandemic. There are fears about the strain this could place on the internet’s infrastructure, and cause further disruption to remote workers and e-learning activities now that businesses and schools have been shuttered.
Other
- ‘They don’t care about safety’: Amazon workers struggle with pandemic demand
Workers say the hectic pace of work amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak is devastating for their physical and mental health as they try to keep up with massive new demand. They also have to deal with their own worries and problems coping with the pandemic.
“My kids are off from school. A lot of businesses are letting workers work from home. But Amazon workers are going in extra time, we’re doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing and due to the nature of our work, it’s hands-on. We have to do that,” said an Amazon warehouse worker in Troutdale, Oregon, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
“I usually work 40 hours a week, four 10-hour shifts. We’ve all been called in for a mandatory extra day, a 10-hour shift, which is usually reserved for holiday peak season,” the worker added.
- Anthony Levandowski pleads guilty to one count of trade secrets theft under plea deal
Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has pleaded guilty to one count of stealing trade secrets while working at Google under a plea agreement reached with the U.S. District Attorney.
While Levandowski still faces a possible prison sentence of between 24 to 30 months, the outcome is much rosier than it could have been. In August, federal grand jury indicted Levandowski on 33 counts of theft and attempted theft. He was looking at a protracted legal fight and a trial that wasn’t expected to begin until 2021.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.”
- 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
Supplier Report: 2/22/2019
Amazon has disappointed or energized certain groups of people (depending on who you talk to) by retreating from their NYC expansion plans. Both sides are still pondering if this is a good thing for New York.
Regardless, the company continues to grow through acquisitions and leveraging their market position to gain access to behavioral data.
Meanwhile, IBM finds itself defending Watson (again) by claiming they did not overhype their AI’s capabilities (they did). The company is looking to build off their Red Hat acquisition to help companies address real integration issues and not “just porting applications to the cloud”.
Acquisitions
- Democrats want to take another look at the T-Mobile-Sprint merger
In the ten months since T-Mobile first announced its intention to buy up its competitor, the company has cozied up to the Trump administration. The company’s executives spent more than 50 nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. T-Mobile CEO John Legere spent two night in the hotel and paid a rate of $2,246 per night, according to the Washington Post. That activity is likely to be viewed as an attempt to buy favor with the president and will come up during this week’s hearings.
The hearings this week won’t have a direct influence on the government’s decision on whether to allow the purchase to go forward or not. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission get to approve or deny the merger based on their own investigations that will look into antitrust concerns and other potential harms. However, the hearings may turn up new information that would give regulators pause. Legere told investors last week that he believes the merger will be completed by June.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/democrats-house-hearings-t-mobile-sprint-merger/
- Amazon buys Eero: What does it mean for your privacy?
Deluged in a swarm of angry tweets and social media posts, many have taken to reading tea leaves to try to understand what the acquisition means for ordinary privacy-minded folks like you and me. Not many had much love for Amazon on the privacy front. A lot of people like Eero because it wasn’t attached to one of the big tech giants. Now it’s to be part of Amazon, some are anticipating the worst for their privacy.
Of the many concerns we’ve seen, the acquisition boils down to a key concern: “Amazon shouldn’t have access to all internet traffic.”
- Apple buys voice app startup Pullstring
Pullstring was founded in 2011 by a group of former Pixar executives, and originally was used to power interactive voice apps for toys (including Hello Barbie in 2015). It later broadened its approach with the introduction of such IoT products as Amazon Echo and Google Assistant.
https://www.axios.com/apple-voice-app-pullstring-080b45b6-bbb4-466f-b60a-b87c932e2f57.html
Artificial Intelligence
- IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: ‘We Never Overpromised’ on Watson A.I.
Pretty much the entire world believes IBM overhyped its Watson artificial intelligence technology. Rometty isn’t one of those people. “We never overpromised,” she says, allowing, though, that “the world was mesmerized by this idea” and that the whole tech industry has learned that “you cannot just put AI on top of existing workflows.” Rometty somewhat shockingly re-framed how people should think about Watson, the subject of years of IBM’s marketing efforts. “People ask, ‘What’s the size of the Watson business?’” she says. “People want to call it a business. I call it a capability.”
Cloud
- After limping through chapter one of cloud computing, IBM aims to own chapter two
Chapter one of the cloud represented about 20 percent of the workload opportunity. It was largely about moving a lot of new and customer-facing applications to the cloud. Chapter two is about the hard stuff. It’s about scaling artificial intelligence and creating hybrid clouds. It’s about bringing the cloud operating model to all those mission-critical apps and enabling customers to manage data, workloads and apps and move them between multiple clouds. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity and IBM intends to be No. 1.
To claim a leadership position in this next chapter, IBM is spending $34 billion to acquire open-source software leader Red Hat Inc. This is a huge move on the chessboard, underscoring that the IBM Cloud and a decade of trying to commercialize the AI-powered Watson system aren’t enough to win the day. Rather, it sees open source, Kubernetes, containers, microservices and developers as a lynchpin to success in the next chapter of cloud.
https://siliconangle.com/2019/02/14/limping-chapter-one-cloud-computing-ibm-aims-chapter-two/
- Oracle Shares End Higher After Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Dumps Stake
Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of around 90 U.S.-listed stocks lost around $38 billion in value over the three months ending in December, the SEC filings noted, as the S&P 500 slumped nearly 15% in a global market sell-off triggered by slowing growth and a then-hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve. Berkshire Hathaway told the SEC in its November filing that it had owned 41.4 million shares in Oracle at the end of the end of the third quarter after it had exited a holding in IBM (IBM – Get Report) earlier in the year.
Oracle surprised investors with a bullish 2019 outlook late last year when it posted stronger-than-expected second quarter earnings and said growth in its cloud computing business would support sales and improve profit margins.
The company also said it sees current quarter earnings of between 86 cents and 88 cents a share, topping the 84 cent Street forecasts, and said it expects full year revenue growth of around 3% on a constant currency basis.
Software/SaaS
- Barclaycard Integrates B2B Payments Tech To SAP Ariba
The integration will roll out later this year with the addition of Precisionpay Bank Transfer within the SAP Ariba platform. Corporate buyers can pay their vendors via virtual card, with suppliers receiving payment the same way they receive a bank transfer. Barclaycard noted that its collaboration with SAP Ariba could also link business buyers to supply chain financing, giving companies up to 56 days to pay their invoices while suppliers receive payment more quickly.
https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/barclaycard-sap-ariba/
- Oracle CEO Mark Hurd throws shade at SAP’s $8 billion Qualtrics acquisition: We don’t buy companies ‘to just buy them’
“We’re not buying somebody to just buy them. We’re buying companies that fit into our portfolio,” Hurd said onstage at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Wednesday, in response to a question from the on-stage interviewer about how Oracle and SAP approach acquisitions.
In November, SAP announced it would acquire online market research software startup Qualtrics for $8 billion. The news came close to the last possible second, as Qualtrics was about to go public. Hurd’s comments were almost certainly in reference to this very recent mega-deal.
Also:
Hurd also said that he disagreed with SAP asking customers to completely transition to its cloud-based S/4HANA platform by 2025. After that, SAP will stop providing support for its very popular Business Suite enterprise software.
“I think that is just a terrible damn idea,” Hurd said. “Let’s say you go to your board and say, ‘We’re going to move from this thing to this other thing, and it’s going to cost $350 million.’ My guess is, the board will say, ‘What do we get for $350 million?’ Well, we moved from this thing to the HANA thing.”
Datacenter/Hardware
- Google will have offices and data centers in 24 states by the end of 2019
The company is launching a $13 billion expansion in 2019 that will give it a total US footprint of 24 states, including “major expansions” in 14 states. The growth includes its first data center in Nevada, a new office in Georgia, and multi-facility expansions in places like Texas and Virginia. This is on top of known projects like its future New York City campus.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/google-expands-us-footprint/
Other
- Amazon is becoming too pervasive, anti-competitive
To put this in old-fashioned terms, Amazon owns the mall, rents space to retailers, controls access to customers, collects data on every sale while also operating the largest store in the mall. And if one of the smaller retailers show some success, Amazon will compete with them.
Yet that is not enough for CEO Jeff Bezos, because 90 percent of retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar buildings. Amazon has bought grocery giant Whole Foods, launched Amazon Go convenience stores and opened Amazon kiosks in shopping malls. The company is reportedly looking at old Sears stores to add more retail and warehouse space.
- Amazon’s HQ2 New York plans didn’t need to end this way
While it’s fair on some level that Amazon felt stymied by this political climate, the company still seems petty at the end of all this. As a tech and retail titan that is nearly impossible to avoid in daily life, the company has come to expect a certain level of fealty from the people and organizations it deals with. It’s used to walking into a room and getting what it wants. In this case, dealing with activists, vocal critics and pressure from key lawmakers meant Amazon wasn’t going to have another typically easy time — the line of thinking appears to be that, as helpful as another campus would be, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Lots of brilliant people work at Amazon, though; is it possible that no one saw the red tape coming?
I have a hard time believing that Amazon couldn’t have handled this better. Could it have managed the conversation better? Could it have been more transparent in its dealings? Could it have tried to work more closely, more functionally with the lawmakers involved? Does this whole thing now feel like a huge waste of time? Yes, to all of the above.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/16/amazon-hq2-new-york-waste-of-time/
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
Supplier Report: 9/14/2018
Microsoft acquired Lobe, a company to help advance their AI strategy and make it accessible to the masses. Making AI easier is critical as there are reports that companies need to start investing in AI now to just keep up with competition in the next 5-10 years.
Companies also need to invest in software developers as CNBC reports that developers are more valuable to corporations than money…
Acquisitions
- Microsoft acquires Lobe, a drag-and-drop AI tool
Microsoft today announced that is has acquired Lobe, a startup that lets you build machine learning models with the help of a simple drag-and-drop interface. Microsoft plans to use Lobe, which only launched into beta earlier this year, to build upon its own efforts to make building AI models easier, though, for the time being, Lobe will operate as before.
“As part of Microsoft, Lobe will be able to leverage world-class AI research, global infrastructure, and decades of experience building developer tools,” the team writes. “We plan to continue developing Lobe as a standalone service, supporting open source standards and multiple platforms.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/13/microsoft-acquires-lobe-a-drag-and-drop-ai-tool/
- Intel acquires NetSpeed Systems to boost its system-on-a-chip business
The company has acquired NetSpeed Systems, a startup that makes system-on-chip (SoC) design tools and interconnect fabric intellectual property (IP). The company will be joining Intel’s Silicon Engineering Group, and its co-founder and CEO, Sundari Mitra, herself an Intel vet, will be coming on as a VP at Intel where she will continue to lead her team.
Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but for some context, during NetSpeed’s last fundraise in 2016 (a $10 million Series C) it had a post-money valuation of $60 million, according to data from PitchBook.
Artificial Intelligence
- The devilishly quiet age of AI
The era’s winners will be those who are not fooled by the absence of visible change from AI over the next 5-7 years. By the time the fruits of AI investment become clear — after 2025 — it will be extremely difficult to compete with the leading players, says Jacques Bughin and Jeongmin Seong, two co-authors of the report.
AI adoption will add $13 trillion a year to global production, the report said, and an average of 1.2% to global GDP growth per year.
- Google Cloud’s new AI chief is on a task force for AI military uses and believes we could monitor ‘pretty much the whole world’ with drones
Google’s decision to hire Moore was greeted with displeasure by at least one former Googler who objected to Project Maven.
“It’s worrisome to note after the widespread internal dissent against Maven that Google would hire Andrew Moore,” said one former Google employee. “Googlers want less alignment with the military-industrial complex, not more. This hire is like a punch in the face to the over 4,000 Googlers who signed the Cancel Maven letter.”
A Google spokesman declined to comment.
Cloud
- Oracle’s Kurian Is Said to Be at Odds With Ellison on Cloud
The growing strife between Kurian, president of product development, and Executive Chairman Ellison culminated in Kurian’s announcement on Sept. 5 that he’s taking a break, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter. Kurian wants Oracle to make more of its software available to run on public clouds from chief rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as a way to diversify from its own struggling infrastructure, a view opposed by Ellison, one of the people said.
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/oracle/oracles-kurian-said-be-odds-ellison-cloud
Security
- A year later, Equifax lost your data but faced little fallout
“There was a failure of the company, but also of lawmakers,” said Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, in a call with TechCrunch. Warner, who serves Virginia, was one of the first lawmakers to file new legislation after the breach. Alongside his Democratic colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the two senators said their bill, if passed, would hold credit agencies accountable for data breaches.
“The message sent to the market is ‘if you can endure some media blowback, you can get through this without serious long-term ramifications’, and that’s totally unacceptable,” he said.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/08/equifax-one-year-later-unscathed/
Software/SaaS
- Software developers are now more valuable to companies than money: Survey
And yet, despite being many corporations’ most precious resource, developer talents are all too often squandered. Collectively, companies today lose upward of $300 billion a year paying down “technical debt,” as developers pour time into maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software.
This is especially worrisome, given the outsized impact developers have on companies’ chances of success. Software developers don’t have a monopoly on good ideas, but their skill set makes them a uniquely deep source of innovation, productivity and new economic connections. When deployed correctly, developers can be economic multipliers — coefficients that dramatically ratchet up the output of the teams and companies of which they’re a part.
- What you need to know ahead of the EU copyright vote
European lawmakers want to extend digital copyright to also cover the ledes of news stories which aggregators such as Google News typically ingest and display — because, again, the likes of Alphabet is profiting off of bits of others’ professional work without paying them to do so. And, on the flip side, media firms have seen their profits hammered by the Internet serving up free content.
The reforms would seek to compensate publishers for their investment in journalism by letting them charge for use of these text snippets — instead of only being ‘paid’ in traffic (i.e. by becoming yet more eyeball fodder in Alphabet’s aggregators).
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/08/what-you-need-to-know-ahead-of-the-eu-copyright-vote/
- Burger King selects SAP solutions to support growth
The chain will use Cloud-based procurement applications and a business network from SAP Ariba and SAP S/4HANA from SAP to expand its presence and increase revenue.These solutions will assist the restaurant chain to create a digital process to fuel savings, efficiencies and business growth.
Leveraging both solutions, the company will gain insights from the data stored in its supply chains and use them to grow further.
https://www.verdictfoodservice.com/news/burger-king-sap-solutions-growth/
Datacenter/Hardware
- Apple raised the price of its best phone by $330, and no one cares
Two years ago, a brand-new flagship Apple smartphone started at $650. Now, the a compromised version of Apple’s vision will set you back $750. Even though the Xr will likely be more than enough iPhone for most customers, the iPhone X proved that there are loads of people out there willing to pay $999 and up for a truly premium device.
And this year, those with lots of money have even more opportunity to spend: the iPhone Xs Max starts at $1,099 and goes up to an insane $1,449 with 512GB of storage. In 2016, the top-of-the-line iPhone 7 Plus with 256GB of storage cost $929. Not only has Apple raised the cost of a flagship device, it expanded the pricing window for its highest-end phones by more than $500.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/13/apple-iphone-xs-xr-price-increases/
Other
- Trump renews call for Apple to make its products in the US
But while moving its manufacturing operations to the US would allow it to skip the tariffs, Apple’s products likely wouldn’t be any cheaper. China is an attractive to tech manufacturing because its workforce is cheaper and the plants that produce individual components are in close proximity to one another. Moving that manufacturing infrastructure would be costly. On Twitter, Trade lawyer Scott Lincicome pointed out that an iPhone would be more expensive to manufacture here in the US, citing a Marketplace report from 2014 that suggested that the component cost of an iPhone in China was around $190 per phone. In the US, that price jumps up to around $600, pushing the device — at the time — to a predicted price of $2000, far more than what would be seen under the tariffs.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/8/17835158/trump-twitter-apple-manufacturing-tariffs
- Tough Days for China’s Tech Giants
For Tencent, which makes over 90% of its revenue in China, more government scrutiny has become a reality. Beijing has been holding up approvals for new games and sales of in-game items like virtual weapons—Tencent makes around half its annual revenue from the latter. The freeze caused the company’s first year-over-year profit decline since the last quarter in 2005.
This doesn’t seem like a hiccup. Beijing last week said it will continue limiting videogame releases and set restrictions on young people’s playing time, while state media has been repeatedly lambasting game companies for creating social problems. Nasdaq-listed Baidu, too, has been reprimanded for hosting content that threatens China’s “social order.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tough-days-for-chinas-tech-giants-1536312601?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
- Tim Armstrong to depart as CEO of Verizon’s Oath
Verizon’s head of media and advertising Tim Armstrong will leave at the end of the year, the company announced Wednesday. CNBC reported Armstrong was in talks to leave as of Sept. 7.
Armstrong came to Verizon in 2015 as part of the acquisition of AOL, where he was CEO. The company later bought Yahoo and combined the two divisions into a digital advertising unit called Oath but those efforts have yet to produce significant growth. Verizon has decided to integrate Oath more fully with the rest of the company’s operations, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, despite recent discussions about spinning off Oath into a separate business.
Oath president and COO K. Guru Gowrappan will “assume all management responsibilities” as chief executive effective Oct. 1, the company said in a release.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/12/tim-armstrong-out-at-verizons-oath.html
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash