Tag: AWS

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Supplier Report: 11/22/2019


Photo by Andrew Pons on Unsplash

The fight for the Pentagon’s JEDI contract might not be over as Amazon announced they would contest due to the final decision being biased against them. I know it is $10B, but everybody needs to move on.

Meanwhile JEDI winner Microsoft continues to push new technology in AI and Blockchain. Microsoft is testing medical AI technology to diagnose cervical cancer in India. Sometimes I feel that this medical review tech is more hype than reality, and my suspicions are higher when companies don’t test technology in the US first… but there is value if it truly works.

Finally, the State of New Jersey is hitting Uber with a $650M employee tax bill… good.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise

    With this deal, Mirantis is acquiring Docker Enterprise Technology Platform and all associated IP: Docker Enterprise Engine, Docker Trusted Registry, Docker Unified Control Plane and Docker CLI. It will also inherit all Docker Enterprise customers and contracts, as well as its strategic technology alliances and partner programs. Docker and Mirantis say they will both continue to work on the Docker platform’s open-source pieces.

    The companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but it’s surely nowhere near Docker’s valuation during any of its last funding rounds. Indeed, it’s no secret that Docker’s fortunes changed quite a bit over the years, from leading the container revolution to becoming somewhat of an afterthought after Google open-sourced Kubernetes and the rest of the industry coalesced around it.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-enterprise/

  • Yahoo-Line Merger Plan Raises Hopes for Japanese ‘Super App’

    SoftBank wants to gain greater control of Line in years to come, the person said.

    Another challenge is the two companies’ focus on the Japanese market, where the population is shrinking and growth prospects are limited. The market for the services they offer—such as texting, internet shopping and online financial services—is already dominated in most other countries by larger rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc.

    Still, analysts said the new entity, if designed well, could become Japan’s first “super app,” a gateway on smartphones for a broad range of everyday needs. That model has driven growth for China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Tencent’s WeChat app for chatting with friends spawned a payment service, WeChat Pay, that along with Alibaba’s Alipay is now almost universally used for retail purchases in China.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-line-merger-plan-raises-hopes-for-japanese-super-app-11573726726?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • OpenText buys data security firm Carbonite for $1.42B

    The deal marks a 78% premium on Carbonite’s share price on September 5, when it was first rumored the company was preparing to buy the backup and data recovery company. Carbonite said the board “strongly believes” the deal will return “substantial” cash value to shareholders, said Steve Munford, chairman of Carbonite’s board.

    In February, Carbonite bought endpoint security company Webroot for $618.5 million in an all-cash deal, as the company pushed to protect against emerging threats like ransomware. Only a year earlier, Carbonite bought Mozy for $145 million, a cloud backup service.

    Carbonite said at the time of its acquisition by OpenText the backup company had losses of $14 million on revenues of $125.6 million, an increase by 62% year-over-year.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/11/opentext-buys-carbonite/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Microsoft AI helps diagnose cervical cancer faster

    In some cases, AI-assisted cancer detection might be more than a convenience — it could be the key to getting a diagnosis in the first place. Microsoft and SRL Diagnostics have developed an AI tool that helps detect cervical cancer, freeing doctors in India and other countries where the sheer volume of patients could prove overwhelming. The team trained an AI to spot signs of the cancer by feeding it “thousands” of annotated cervical smear images to help it spot abnormalities (including pre-cancerous examples) that warrant a closer look. Doctors would only have to look at those slides that justify real concern.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/10/microsoft-ai-diagnoses-cervical-cancer-faster/

  • Microsoft’s A.I. and research chief Harry Shum is leaving

    Microsoft said on Wednesday that Harry Shum, the executive vice president in charge of its artificial intelligence and research group, is leaving the company in early 2020. Kevin Scott, the company’s chief technology officer and formerly a LinkedIn executive, is taking on Shum’s responsibilities in addition to his own. It’s not clear what Shum will do next.

    Shum has been a figurehead in the more integrated approach to research that has taken hold at Microsoft during the tenure of CEO Satya Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer in 2014. His group has been one of the most prominent technology research institutions outside academia, alongside the likes of Google parent-company Alphabet and Facebook.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/microsoft-ai-and-research-chief-harry-shum-leaves.html

Cloud

  • AWS confirms reports it will challenge JEDI contract award to Microsoft

    In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson suggested that there was possible bias and issues in the selection process. “AWS is uniquely experienced and qualified to provide the critical technology the U.S. military needs, and remains committed to supporting the DoD’s modernization efforts. We also believe it’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence.

    “Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/14/aws-confirms-reports-it-will-challenge-jedi-contract-award-to-microsoft/

  • Privacy uproar shows Google cloud business has a trust problem

    This sounds like the leak of Facebook data to Cambridge Analytica. But it also describes this week’s portrayal by the media of US healthcare provider Ascension’s decision to hand the records of 50 million of its patients to Google.

    In reality, this is far from the scandal it was painted. But the huge attention it has received points to both the risks and opportunities as large troves of valuable data are moved, wholesale, to the cloud. How this information is handled, and who reaps the value from it, are questions that will stir much wider concern.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/privacy-uproar-shows-google-cloud-business-has-a-trust-problem-1.4084291
    Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Triggers Federal Inquiry

    The data on patients of St. Louis-based Ascension were until recently scattered across 40 data centers in more than a dozen states. Google and the Catholic nonprofit are moving that data into Google’s cloud-computing system—with potentially big changes on tap for doctors and patients.

    At issue for regulators and lawmakers who expressed concern is whether Google and Ascension are adequately protecting patient data in the initiative, which is code-named “Project Nightingale” and is aimed at crunching data to produce better health care, among other goals. Ascension, without notifying patients or doctors, has begun sharing with Google personally identifiable information on millions of patients, such as names and dates of birth; lab tests; doctor diagnoses; medication and hospitalization history; and some billing claims and other clinical records.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-googles-project-nightingale-a-health-data-gold-mine-of-50-million-patients-11573571867

  • IBM and Oracle are so far behind in the cloud, they might stop trying to compete with

    Amazon altogether and go a different route, analyst says
    Rather than compete directly with those giants, lagging players like Oracle will focus on its applications and databases, while IBM will focus on hybrid cloud and its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, the report says.

    Dave Bartoletti, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, tells Business Insider that they won’t get out of the game entirely: “It’s really a shifting of positioning,” he said. “I don’t think IBM and Oracle will get that much bigger. They will just refocus on what they do best.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-oracle-amazon-forrester-report-2019-11

Security/Privacy

  • But Actually, How Scary Is Critical Infrastructure Hacking?

    Critical infrastructure hacking was brought to the public’s attention by former Secretary of State and CIA director Leon Panetta in a much-maligned 2012 speech where he warned of a coming “Cyber Pearl Harbor.”

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xwpav/but-actually-how-scary-is-critical-infrastructure-hacking

  • Amazon-Owned Ring Shared Data About Tracking Kids On Halloween

    In a company blog and series of Instagram stories, posted Monday and Tuesday, the company showed that it collects, stores, and analyzes sensitive data about how, when, and where people use its doorbell cameras. Ring said that nationwide, its doorbell cameras were activated 15.8 million times on Halloween. The company makes several other types of surveillance cameras in addition to its doorbell camera.

    As it has on other occasions, like Super Bowl Sunday, Ring turned Halloween into a marketing opportunity. As reported by Mashable, Ring circulated videos of children on Halloween on Twitter. Ring also promoted Halloween-themed skins to decorate doorbell cameras on its company blogs and Instagram. However, in promoting itself as a family-friendly company, Ring showed that it collects user data on a granular level.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/ring-boasted-about-surveilling-trick-or-treaters-on

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple’s Phil Schiller says kids with Chromebooks in classrooms are ‘not going to succeed’

    “Kids who are really into learning and want to learn will have better success. It’s not hard to understand why kids aren’t engaged in a classroom without applying technology in a way that inspires them. You need to have these cutting-edge learning tools to help kids really achieve their best results.

    Yet Chromebooks don’t do that. Chromebooks have gotten to the classroom because, frankly, they’re cheap testing tools for required testing. If all you want to do is test kids, well, maybe a cheap notebook will do that. But they’re not going to succeed.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963166/apple-phil-schiller-google-chromebook-classroom-not-going-to-succeed

Other

  • T-Mobile CEO John Legere isn’t taking the WeWork CEO job, sources say

    Legere, who became CEO of T-Mobile in 2012, has no plans to leave the company, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential. CNBC and The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Legere was a candidate to be WeWork’s next CEO.

    By taking himself out of the running, Legere is avoiding a potential conflict of interest. SoftBank is the controlling shareholder of Sprint, which is in the process of merging with T-Mobile, and is the majority owner of WeWork. Legere was never the front-runner to take the job, according to people familiar with the matter.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/john-legere-isnt-leaving-t-mobile-to-take-wework-ceo-job.html

  • Uber Hit With $650 Million Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

    Uber Technologies Inc. owes New Jersey about $650 million in unemployment and disability insurance taxes because the rideshare company has been misclassifying drivers as independent contractors, the state’s labor department said.

    Uber and subsidiary Rasier LLC were assessed $523 million in past-due taxes over the last four years, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said in a pair of letters to the companies. The rideshare businesses also are on the hook for as much as $119 million in interest and penalties on the unpaid amounts, according to other internal department documents.

    The New Jersey labor department has been after Uber for unpaid employment taxes for at least four years, according to the documents, which Bloomberg Law obtained through an open public records request.

    https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/uber-hit-with-650-million-employment-tax-bill-in-new-jersey

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Supplier Report: 4/19/2019

IBM and Oracle have been eliminated from the Pentagon’s “Project JEDI” RFP, after almost a year of complaints and public accusations that the bidding event was rigged in Amazon’s favor.

Meanwhile Google, who bowed out of Project JEDI bidding early, made several cloud-based announcements this week to differentiate themselves from AWS and Microsoft. Thomas Kurian is wasting no time.

Foxconn is getting blasted in the press this week due to their (lack of) plans at their Wisconsin manufacturing plant. There are reports that rented office buildings are almost completely empty and the overall strategy for the new plant make absolutely no sense.

Acquisitions

  • Accenture announces intent to buy French cloud consulting firm

    Accenture says that Cirruseo’s strength and deep experience in Google’s cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions should help as Accenture expands its own AI practice. Google TensorFlow and other intelligence solutions are a popular approach to AI and machine learning, and the purchase should help give Accenture a leg up in this area, especially in the French market.

    “The addition of Cirruseo would be a significant step forward in our growth strategy in France, bringing a strong team of Google Cloud specialists to Accenture,” Olivier Girard, Accenture’s geographic unit managing director for France and Benelux said in a statement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/accenture-announces-intent-to-buy-french-cloud-consulting-firm/

Artificial Intelligence

  • A Google Brain Program Is Learning How to Program

    In a new paper, Google Brain researchers propose using neural networks to model human source code editing. Effectively this means treating code editing as a sequence and having a machine learn how to “write code” like in a natural language model — by analysing a short paragraph of editing, the model can extract intent and leverage that to generate subsequent edits.

    To understand the intent behind developers’ source code editing actions, the main challenge was how to learn from earlier editing sequences in order to predict upcoming edits. Researchers explain the AI models needed to understand “the relationship of the change to the state” rather than “the content of the edits” or “the result of the edit.”

    https://medium.com/syncedreview/a-google-brain-program-is-learning-how-to-program-27533d5056e3
    (Thanks JD!)

Cloud

  • Google’s hybrid cloud platform is coming to AWS and Azure

    So with Anthos, Google will offer a single managed service that will let you manage and deploy workloads across clouds, all without having to worry about the different environments and APIs. That’s a big deal and one that clearly delineates Google’s approach from its competitors’. This is Google, after all, managing your applications for you on AWS and Azure.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/googles-anthos-hybrid-cloud-platform-is-coming-to-aws-and-azure/

  • What’s Been Lacking at Google’s Cloud? Enough Humans

    Google Cloud had prioritized developing technology over sales and support, said Gene Reznik, strategy chief at the consulting firm Accenture PLC, which helps clients deploy tech from major cloud services including Google’s.

    “There is a lot of hand-holding required” with big corporate customers, Mr. Reznik said. But Google often had product engineers rather than account managers handle customer calls. “It really wasn’t their day job,” he said, adding that Mr. Kurian brings a corporate credibility to Google’s “consumer-centric culture.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-been-lacking-at-googles-cloud-enough-humans-11554724802

  • Amazon and Microsoft Are 2 Finalists for $10 Billion Pentagon Contract

    The Pentagon said Wednesday that Amazon and Microsoft were the final candidates for a hotly contested $10 billion contract to bring modern cloud computing to the Defense Department.

    IBM and Oracle had also bid for the project, known as the joint enterprise defense infrastructure, or JEDI. But the Defense Department concluded that they did not meet the minimum requirements for the program.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/technology/amazon-microsoft-jedi-pentagon.html

  • Why IBM Is Leaving The Marketing Cloud Business

    Rather than scrabbling over marketshare in the marketing cloud space, where Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle have been dropping billions, IBM is focusing on core technologies and infrastructure, AI, blockchain, global services, consulting and creating a cloud environment to compete with Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

    “That’s the big game IBM is hunting,” Stanhope said.

    But even back when IBM seemed like it was ramping up its focus on marketing technology, there wasn’t necessarily buy in from the big wigs at the top. IBM also lost one of its marketing product cheerleaders when David Kenny, who led efforts at IBM Watson, left to take on the CEO role at Nielsen in November 2018.

    https://adexchanger.com/platforms/why-ibm-is-leaving-the-marketing-cloud-business/

Security

  • Amazon’s Alexa isn’t just AI — thousands of humans are listening

    What the company doesn’t tell you explicitly, as highlighted by an in-depth investigation from Bloomberg published this evening, is that one of the only, and often the best, ways Alexa improves over time is by having human beings listen to recordings of your voice requests. Of course, this is all buried in product and service terms few consumers will ever read, and Amazon has often downplayed the privacy implications of having cameras and microphones in millions of homes around the globe. But concerns about how AI is trained as it becomes an ever more pervasive force in our daily lives will only continue to raise alarms, especially as most of how this technology works remains beyond closed doors and improves using methods Amazon is loathe to ever disclose.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18305378/amazon-alexa-ai-voice-assistant-annotation-listen-private-recordings

  • Nearly 70 percent of hotel websites leak personal data, Symantec study finds

    The main issue involved booking confirmation emails, according to Symantec principal threat researcher Candid Wueest. Many of the messages include an active link that directs to a separate website where guests can access their reservation having to log in again. The booking code and the guest email are often in the URL itself, which in and of itself isn’t a big deal.

    But, like many businesses, hotels share your personal data with third parties, meaning that your booking code and email are visible to them as well. The attacker would only need access to your booking code and email in order to find your address, full name, cell phone number, passport number and other highly sensitive information. Symantec also found that a smaller number of hotels didn’t encrypt the links sent in confirmation emails, giving attackers another window of opportunity.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/10/nearly-70-percent-of-hotel-websites-leak-personal-data-symantec/

  • Hackers publish personal data on thousands of US police officers and federal agents

    TechCrunch spoke to one of the hackers, who didn’t identify his or her name, through an encrypted chat late Friday.

    “We hacked more than 1,000 sites,” said the hacker. “Now we are structuring all the data, and soon they will be sold. I think something else will publish from the list of hacked government sites.” We asked if the hacker was worried that the files they put up for download would put federal agents and law enforcement at risk. “Probably, yes,” the hacker said.

    The hacker claimed to have “over a million data” [sic] on employees across several U.S. federal agencies and public service organizations.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/12/police-data-hack/

Software/SaaS

  • Google’s new AI tools scan documents, take phone calls, and search for products

    Google today launched Document Understanding AI in beta, a serverless platform that automatically classifies, extracts, and structures data within contained within scanned physical and digital documents. It integrates with existing products from Iron Mountain, ​Box​, DocuSign, ​Egnyte​, ​Taulia​, UiPath, ​Accenture, and others, and Google says that customers who’ve tapped it for custom document classification have seen up to 96% accuracy.

    “Most companies have billions of documents — and moving that information into digital or cloud-native solutions where it can be easily accessed and analyzed can involve many hours of manual entry,” Besik said. “Document Understanding AI can help automate document processing workflows. This means you can … start making data-driven business decisions faster and more accurately.”

    https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/10/googles-new-ai-tools-scan-documents-take-phone-calls-and-search-for-products/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft says its data shows FCC reports massively overstate broadband adoption

    Part of the issue is that internet providers essentially just report their own coverage via a form, and the FCC reports it more or less as fact. That’s a problem not just when a mistake on a form adds tens of millions of subscribers that don’t actually exist, but when large ISPs overstate their coverage so they don’t have to pay to fill in the gaps.

    Microsoft’s suggestions, which it has made to Members of Congress and the FCC (though it won’t, as I originally wrote here, testify in the Senate on Wednesday) would make it far more difficult to fib on the Form 477, which as written seems to provide enormous leeway for a company to imply coverage that isn’t actually there.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/microsoft-says-its-data-shows-fcc-reports-massively-overstate-broadband-adoption/

Other

  • Thousands of Amazon employees ask the company to adopt a climate change plan

    Employees, citing Amazon’s work for oil and gas companies and what they describe as insufficient plans for action on climate change, are asking the company to commit to several goals. Among them, they ask the company to make “a complete transition away from fossil fuels,” and to advocate politically for climate-friendly policies. They also ask the company to adopt a shareholder resolution calling for a climate change plan.

    In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson highlighted company initiatives, like work to reduce the carbon footprint of shipments, and described Amazon’s commitment to environmental issues as “unwavering.”

    “Amazon’s sustainability team is using a science-based approach to develop data and strategies to ensure a rigorous approach to our sustainability work,” the spokesperson said. “We have launched several major and impactful programs and are working hard to integrate this approach fully across Amazon.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18304800/amazon-employees-open-letter-climate-change-plan

  • Foxconn is confusing the hell out of Wisconsin

    In February, a Foxconn executive cheerfully likened the company’s vague, morphing plans to designing and building an airplane midflight.

    Such statements have not been particularly reassuring to residents of Wisconsin, where state and local governments have already taken very concrete actions to prepare the way for what was supposed to be an enormous manufacturing facility. Taxpayers have already spent more than $300 million on roadwork, infrastructure, and land acquisition related to the project. In August, Moody’s downgraded Mount Pleasant’s credit rating over the extreme levels of debt it took on for the area’s $763 million incentive package, costs that have since grown closer to a billion, in part because it had to take out higher interest long-term loans after Foxconn’s plans changed. Dozens of residents have been relocated, some under threat of eminent domain.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18296793/foxconn-wisconsin-location-factory-innovation-centers-technology-hub-no-news

  • Google Sued Over Abuse of Search Power, Opening Path for More Claims

    In the suit filed in a Berlin court Friday, Idealo internet GmbH, a leading price-comparison service that is majority-owned by publisher Axel Springer SPR 2.61% SE, alleged that Google made it harder for users of its search engine to find links to Idealo after the U.S. company started promoting its own price-comparison offering, now called Google Shopping. Alphabet’s European entity, Google Ireland Ltd., is also targeted by the suit.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/suit-could-raise-googles-liabilities-in-price-comparison-case-11555056397

  • Net Neutrality Vote Passes House, Fulfilling Promise by Democrats

    But the legislation, the Save the Internet Act, faces long odds in the Republican-led Senate. The Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, said this week that the legislation would be “dead on arrival.” Earlier this week, the Office of Management and Budget advised the White House to veto the law if it reached the president’s desk. The office said in a letter that since the law had been overturned, the broadband industry had thrived, a good sign of how deregulation helped the economy.

    The legislation would prohibit blocking and throttling web traffic and would categorize broadband as a service open to heavy regulation. Supporters say the regulation would prevent companies from blocking or slowing the delivery of content like videos. Opponents say it would strap broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast with heavy-handed restrictions, and could lead to price controls.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/technology/net-neutrality-vote.html

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 1/25/2019

IBM continues to have a strong news cycle, but this week is more positive. The company is expected to purchase T-Systems mainframe business unit for approximately one billion dollars.

Big Blue also inked a $550m, 8-year deal/joint-venture with Vodaphone to build out AI and cloud services. They also announced a few blockchain projects that customers are willing to pay for (sounds like everything is coming up Milhouse)

On a down note, the company’s AI schemes continue to under-perform with the announcement that “Watson Workspace” is being shut down due to “lack of customer interest.”

Acquisitions

  • IBM to Reportedly Buy T-Systems’ Mainframe Business Unit

    IBM is acquiring T-Systems’ mainframe services business from Deutsche Telekom for roughly $986 million, according to the Handelsblatt and IT-Zoom.

    Roughly 400 T-Systems employees across six countries will transition to IBM in May 2019 as part of the deal, according to the reports. The mainframe unit is only one small piece of the larger T-Systems — a German global IT services and consulting company headquartered in Frankfurt. Founded in 2000, T-Systems is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/ibm-to-reportedly-buy-t-systems-mainframe-business-unit-cm1081559

  • Fiserv to Acquire First Data in $22 Billion All-Stock Deal

    Fiserv Inc. has struck a deal to buy First Data Corp. for $22 billion, combining two companies that, though largely unknown to consumers, provide much of the financial technology that connects Wall Street to Main Street.

    The all-stock deal underscores the growing threat of upstart financial-technology firms to a lucrative but obscure business long controlled by more mature companies. Fiserv and First Data provide a range of technology services to banks, merchants and other companies involved in the business of moving money.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiserv-to-acquire-first-data-in-22-billion-all-stock-deal-11547643455

  • Google is buying Fossil’s smartwatch tech for $40 million

    The smartwatch category continues to be dominated by Apple’s offerings, and top competitors Fitbit and Samsung have opted to go different routes, supporting the Pebble-based Fitbit OS and Tizen, respectively. All of this has left Google struggling to differentiate itself and its partners’ offerings. Fossil’s team certainly has the know how to build solid watch hardware, so this could prove a solid match.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/google-is-buying-fossils-smartwatch-tech-for-40-million/

  • AWS makes another acquisition, grabbing TSO Logic

    Amazon confirmed the purchase by email and referred to the statement on the TSO Logic website from CEO Aaron Rallo. “We are very pleased to share the news that TSO Logic will be joining the AWS family,” Rallo wrote in the statement.

    The company takes data about workloads and applications and helps customers find the most efficient place to run them by measuring requirements like resource needs against cost to find the right balance at any given time.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/aws-makes-another-acquisition-grabbing-tso-logic/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM to put Watson Workspace out to pasture over lack of adoption

    IBM is killing off its AI-powered collaboration tool Watson Workspace after it failed to “resonate” with clients, according to a leaked memo.

    Watson Workspace is IBM’s answer to Slack or Microsoft Teams, but with AI capabilities. It provided a platform for shared workspaces, collaborations and even hosted third-party apps. But, despite having only been released in 2016 in beta, the app is being shut down by the 28 February, according to a memo seen by The Register.

    https://www.itpro.co.uk/business-operations/32768/ibm-to-put-watson-workspace-out-to-pasture-over-lack-of-adoption
    Another IBM AI tool that fails to connect with the purchasing public…

  • Robot Hotel Loses Love for Robots

    Guests became frustrated when the hotel’s robots failed to keep pace with Siri or Alexa. One laggard was the robot assistant in each room named “Churi” because of its tulip-shaped head. The doll-like device can manage simple hello-how-are-you type conversations and adjust room heating and lighting in response to voice commands. But some guests quizzed her in vain about things like the opening time of the nearby theme park.

    Atsushi Nishiguchi, a guest at the hotel in 2017, said that after an irate exchange with Churi he decided to phone the hotel reception, only to find there was no phone in the room because the assistant was intended to handle guests’ requests. He used his cellphone to call the main hotel number to reach a human worker.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/robot-hotel-loses-love-for-robots-11547484628

Cloud

  • IBM and Vodafone form cloud, 5G and AI business venture and ink $550M service deal

    IBM is announcing a new venture with mobile carrier Vodafone, in a deal that will comes in two parts. First, IBM will supply Vodafone’s B2B unit Vodafone Business with managed services in the areas of cloud and hosting. And second, the two will together work on building and delivering solutions in areas like AI, cloud, 5G, IoT and software defined networking to enterprise customers.

    The latter part of the deal appears to be a classic JV that will see both sides bringing something to the table — employees from both companies will be moving into a separate office together very soon that will essentially be “neutral” territory. The former part, meanwhile, will see Vodafone paying IBM some $550 million in an eight-year agreement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/ibm-and-vodafone-form-550m-venture-to-develop-cloud-5g-and-ai-business-solutions/

Security

  • Amazon shareholders want the company to stop selling facial recognition to law enforcement

    This resolution, organized by nonprofit organization Open MIC, represents a group of shareholders that represent a total of $1.32 billion in assets under management.

    “It’s a familiar pattern: a leading tech company marketing what is hailed as breakthrough technology without understanding or assessing the many real and potential harms of that product,” Open MIC Executive Director Michael Connor wrote in a blog post. “Sales of Rekognition to government represent considerable risk for the company and investors. That’s why it’s imperative those sales be halted immediately.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/amazon-shareholders-want-the-company-to-stop-selling-facial-recognition-to-law-enforcement/

  • Another huge database exposed millions of call logs and SMS text messages

    Voipo, a Lake Forest, Calif. communications provider, exposed tens of gigabytes worth of customer data.

    Voipo is a voice-over-internet provider, providing residential and business phone line services that they can control themselves in the cloud. The company’s backend routes calls and processes text messages for its users. But because one of the backend ElasticSearch databases wasn’t protected with a password, anyone could look in and see streams of real-time call logs and text messages sent back and forth.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/another-huge-database-exposed-millions-of-call-logs-and-sms-text-messages/

Software/SaaS

  • IBM Announces 2 Blockchain Pilots For The Mining Industry

    The pilot program’s first use case will utilize the MineHub blockchain platform and test the technology’s ability to “manage concentrate from Goldcorp’s Penasquito Mine in Mexico throughout its path to market.” Once the ore is mined, the data will be uploaded to the blockchain platform. It will include data about sustainability and ethical practices. The data is then verified by “independent regulators,” and the ore can then be loaded for shipping. The MineHub platform records each transaction and lets participants “view and reconcile” this data as the product moves through the supply chain. EDCCs (better known as smart contracts) will be used by companies such as ING Bank and Wheaton Precious Metals for “trade finance, streaming and royalty contracts.”

    https://www.ethnews.com/ibm-announces-2-blockchain-pilots-for-the-mining-industry
    Looks like IBM has found someone to “pay for the roads to be built”

Other

  • WeWork’s CEO Makes Millions as Landlord to WeWork

    Mr. Neumann has made millions of dollars by leasing multiple properties in which he has an ownership stake back to WeWork, one of the country’s most valuable startups. Multiple investors of the privately held company said the arrangement concerned them as a potential conflict of interest in which the CEO could benefit on rents or other terms with the company.

    A WeWork spokesman said all related-party deals are reviewed and approved by the board or an independent committee and disclosed to investors. Mr. Neumann declined to comment through a spokesman.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/weworks-ceo-makes-millions-as-landlord-to-wework-11547640000

  • Foxconn might slow hiring at its Wisconsin plant

    On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company “fell short of the minimum number of jobs it was required to create in 2018 to claim state-job creation tax credits.” The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp says that the company needed to create 260 full-time jobs, but only created 178. As a result, the company won’t receive tax credits for 2018. The WSJ cites the state’s low employment rate as a factor for the slow hiring, and notes that the company could earn $19.1 million in tax credits if it passes its hiring goal of 2,080 jobs this year. The company denied reports last November that it had been looking to bring in workers from China to bolster its workforce.

    On top of that, Foxconn appears to be adjusting its expectations for hiring in the near future. It tells Bloomberg that it “remains committed” to creating those promised 13,000 jobs, but that it might slow its hiring moving forward: “we need to have the agility to adapt to a range of factors, including global economic conditions.” The company and former Governor Scott Walker have been heavily criticized, both for the steep subsidies promised to the company, as well as the possibility that the company might not deliver on its promise to bring 13,000 jobs to the state.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/19/18189480/foxconn-wisconsin-plant-possible-hiring-slowdown-jobs

Posted on

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

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