Supplier Report: 7/12/2019


Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash

The 4th of July is over, people are back to work, and the tech industry is picking itself up after a rough couple of weeks.

Old school software companies Corel and Symantec are likely to be acquired. Broadcom is interesting in Symantec and KKR has agreed to purchase Corel. Fans of the “off-brand” (see WordPerfect and PaintShop Pro) software company will be happy to know KKR is looking to invest in Corel’s product line.

The U.K. doesn’t seem to have the issues with Huawei that the U.S. does. The Chinese company has been helping British telecom companies build out their 5G networks… interesting.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Broadcom Is in Advanced Talks to Acquire Symantec

    Broadcom could reach an agreement to buy the Mountain View, California-based company within weeks, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. No deal has been finalized and the talks could fall through, the people said.

    A representative for Symantec declined to comment. A representative for Broadcom didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-02/broadcom-is-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-symantec

  • KKR confirms it has acquired Canadian software company Corel, reportedly for over $1B

    The terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed, but when the first rumors of a deal started to emerge a couple of months ago, the price being reported was over $1 billion.

    Corel has brought itself into the modern era, with acquisitions like Parallels — a virtualization giant that lets businesses run far-flung and very fragmented networks as if they weren’t — underscoring that strategy. And that is where KKR appears to be putting its focus. In the memo that a source passed us yesterday, Corel’s CEO Patrick Nichols assured staff that there would be no layoffs and that this acquisition would mean a significant new infusion of capital both to expand its existing business as well as to make more acquisitions to grow.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/03/kkr-corel-vector-parallels/

  • Oracle buys Brazilian firm Oxygen Systems

    Created in 2017 as a spin-off of Chilean IT integrator Sonda, Oxygen Systems is focused on the localization of the systems offering under Oracle’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) Netsuite.

    Oracle’s low-key announcement simply states that the acquisition, which has been completed, “strengthens Oracle NetSuite support for international and global customers, delivering a seamless ERP localization experience in Brazil.”

    Small and medium enterprises represent 20 percent of Oracle’s business in Brazil and over the last couple of years, it has been focusing on chasing more clients in that space.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/oracle-buys-brazilian-firm-oxygen-systems/

Cloud

  • It was a really bad month for the internet

    What can we learn? For one, internet providers need to do better with routing filters, and, secondly, perhaps it’s not a good idea to run new code directly on a production system.

    These past few weeks have not looked good for the cloud, shaking confidence in the many reliant on hosting giants — like Amazon, Google and more. Although some quickly — and irresponsibly and eventually wrongly — concluded the outages were because of hackers or threat actors launching distributed denial-of-service attacks, it’s always far safer to assume that an internal mistake is to blame.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/05/bad-month-for-the-internet/

Security/Privacy

  • China has been secretly installing spyware on some tourists’ Android phones

    Chinese border agents have been installing spyware on phones from tourists who enter the country through certain crossings in the Xinjiang region, an area where China is known to be conducting intensive surveillance of the largely Muslim ethnic minority groups who live there. The spyware was reported today by a group of publications, including The Guardian, Motherboard, The New York Times, and more.

    Border agents in the region have been requiring tourists to hand over their phones and passcodes before entering, according to the reports. The agents will then disappear with the phones in order to snoop through them. For iPhones, that reportedly includes plugging them into a machine that scans through the phone’s contents. For Android phones, it goes further, with border agents installing a spyware app that scans the phone and collects data.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/20679053/china-spyware-tourists-android-phones-xinjiang

  • 7-Eleven Japanese customers lose $500,000 due to mobile app flaw

    Approximately 900 customers of 7-Eleven Japan have lost a collective of ¥55 million ($510,000) after hackers hijacked their 7pay app accounts and made illegal charges in their names.

    The 7pay mobile app was designed to show a barcode on the phone’s screen when customers reach the 7-Eleven cashier counters. The cashier scans the barcode, and the bought goods are charged to the user’s 7pay app and the customer’s credit or debit cards that have been saved in the account.

    However, in a mind-boggling turn of events, the app contained a password reset function that was incredibly poorly designed. It allowed anyone to request a password reset for other people’s accounts, but have the password reset link sent to their email address, instead of the legitimate account owner.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/7-eleven-japanese-customers-lose-500000-due-to-mobile-app-flaw/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Huawei is helping all the UK’s top carriers build their 5G networks

    British carriers apparently aren’t put off by US pressure to ditch Huawei for their 5G network deployments. The Guardian’s sources understand that all four of the UK’s largest wireless providers (EE, O2, Three and Vodafone) are all using Huawei to build their 5G networks. The Chinese firm is reportedly involved with six out of Vodafone’s seven initial 5G cities, while it’s also helping with “hundreds” of EE sites. O2 and Three have also awarded contracts to Huawei, according to the tipsters.

    There might be reasons to take a chance on Huawei, apart from the lack of publicly available evidence of surveillance. Assembly’s Matthew Howett noted that reliance on a single supplier for a cellular network is dangerous. A major failure in Ericsson equipment left O2 users without 3G and LTE service for a full day — if everyone had been using similar hardware, the UK as a whole might have suffered the same problem. It might also delay launches by as much as two years, Howett said. Like it or not, Huawei could be useful in helping some countries offer 5G in a timely and reliable fashion.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/06/huawei-gear-in-uk-5g-networks/

 

Supplier Report: 7/13/2018

Amazon Networking: Joey Lombardi: The Source

Amazon is sending computer networking technology stocks into a dive with rumors they are getting into the router business.  Can the “eater of worlds” break into a market with low margins, demanding customers, and ever-present threat of hacks and security issues – and maintain customer satisfaction?

Amazon does control half of all online sales in the US… HALF. So they do know a thing or two about network traffic optimization.

IBM is finding that big data breaches cost corporations on average about $3.5M per event. Better make sure those routers are updated.

Acquisitions

  • Broadcom acquires CA Technologies for $18.9B in cash

    Broadcom, the massive semiconductor supplier you may remember from its failed attempt to acquire Qualcomm, today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with CA Technologies, a major IT management software and solutions provider. The price of the acquisition is $18.9 billion in cash. CA’s shareholders will receive $44.50 per share, a 20 percent premium over the closing price of the company’s stock today.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/11/broadcom-acquires-ca-technologies-for-18-9b-in-cash/

  • The Department of Justice isn’t done fighting the AT&T-Time Warner merger

    “The Court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based, and well-reasoned,” said AT&T General Counsel David McAtee in a statement. “While the losing party in litigation always has the right to appeal if it wishes, we are surprised that the DOJ has chosen to do so under these circumstances. We are ready to defend the Court’s decision at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/12/doj-appeals-att-time-warner/

  • AT&T acquires threat intelligence company AlienVault

    AT&T has announced plans to acquire cybersecurity company AlienVault. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    Founded in 2007, AlienVault offers a number of tools for detecting and responding to security threats through its Unified Security Management (USM) platform, while its Open Threat Exchange (OTX) platform serves as an online community where security professionals and researchers can share their latest findings and threat data.

    https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/10/att-acquires-threat-intelligence-company-alienvault/

  • Intel To Acquire eASIC: Lower Cost ASICs in FPGA Design Time

    Intel is also announcing that it will acquire a company called eASIC which develops FPGA-like design tools to roll out ‘structured ASICs’. These structured ASICs an intermediary between a full FPGA and a full ASIC that allow for a quick roll out time and cheaper production cost. Technically Intel has been using eASIC technology since at least 2015 in its custom Xeons, however today’s announcement means that the eASIC team will become part of Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group (PSG). The deal is expected to close within the next month.

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/13075/intel-acquires-easic-lower-cost-asics-in-fpga-design-time

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google Is Reportedly Looking to Take Over Call Centers With Its Duplex AI Assistant

    A report from The Information suggests Google may be making a play to find other applications for its human-sounding assistant and has already started experimenting with ways to use Duplex to do with away roles currently filled by humans—a move that could have ramifications for millions of people.

    Citing a person familiar with Google’s plans, The Information reported the company is already in conversation with at least one potential customer that would like to integrate Duplex into its operations. That firm, an unnamed large insurance company, is reportedly interested in using the voice assistant to handle simple, straightforward customer service calls.

    https://gizmodo.com/google-is-reportedly-looking-to-take-over-call-centers-1827379911

Cloud

  • Oracle Set to Merge Its Cloud Business

    Oracle (ORCL) is gradually converting its cloud service types—SaaS1, PaaS2, and IaaS3—into a single standard data center. These data warehouses are supported by a bare-metal infrastructure managed by a single unified operations team.

    The consolidation of these cloud services may help offer Oracle huge economies of scale by sharing data warehouse costs across the three categories, expanding margins. By bringing all three categories under one roof, the company can also improve efficiency.

    https://marketrealist.com/2018/07/oracle-set-to-merge-its-cloud-business
    Amazon is all about networking equipment

Security

  • ‘Mega’ Data Breaches Cost Companies a Staggering Fortune, IBM Study Finds

    According to the IBM study, while the average cost of a data breach globally hovers just under $4 million—a 6.4 percent increase over the past year—costs associated with so-called mega breaches (an Equifax or Target, for example) can reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The average cost of a breach involving 1 million records is estimated at around $40 million, while those involving 50 million records or more can skyrocket up to $350 million in damages.

    Of the 11 mega breaches examined by IBM, 10 were a result of criminal attacks.

    The average amount of time that passes before a major company notices a data breach is pretty atrocious. According to IBM, mega breaches typically go unnoticed for roughly a year.

    https://gizmodo.com/mega-data-breaches-cost-companies-a-staggering-fortune-1827510737

  • Microsoft urges lawmakers to regulate facial recognition technology

    The company, one of the key makers of software capable of recognizing individual faces, said it would take steps to make those systems less prone to bias; develop new public principles to govern the technology; and move more deliberately to sell its software and expertise in the area. While Microsoft said the technology industry bears responsibility for its products, it argued that government action is also needed.

    “The only effective way to manage the use of technology by a government is for the government proactively to manage this use itself,” Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, said Friday in a blog post. “And if there are concerns about how a technology will be deployed more broadly across society, the only way to regulate this broad use is for the government to do so. This in fact is what we believe is needed today — a government initiative to regulate the proper use of facial recognition technology, informed first by a bipartisan and expert commission.”

    http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facial-recognition-20180713-story.html

Software/SaaS

  • OpenText CEO opens up on organic growth ambitions

    But while M&A continues to be the leading growth driver for OpenText, opportunities for organic growth seem to be getting more attention at Canada’s largest software company, judging from announcements and discussions at the company’s Enterprise World 2018 event, being held this week in Toronto. And what does the company expect to be the three main sources of that growth? Cloud, AI and security.

    For a start, there was CEO Mark Barrenechea’s announcement in his Tuesday keynote of two new strands to the company’s cloud strategy: first, the release of the company’s new hybrid cloud platform OT2; and second, the news that its flagship EIM platform, OpenText Release 16, will now run on cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft Azure, in addition to the existing options of on-premise or on the OpenText cloud as a managed service.

    https://diginomica.com/2018/07/12/opentext-ceo-opens-up-on-organic-growth-ambitions/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Amazon Web Services Targets Cisco in Networking

    Networking company stocks fell off Friday following a report by The Information that Amazon Web Services is considering selling its own network switching devices.

    Cisco dropped 4 percent by the end of trading, representing a loss in stock value of roughly $8.5 billion. Juniper gave up more than 2 percent. Arista Networks dropped more than 4 percent, and F5 Networks dropped roughly a percent. Broadcom, which makes chips used in switching devices, was down more than 3 percent on the day following the report, extending a rough week for the stock.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/aws-network-devices-report-cisco-juniper-fall.html

Other

  • Amazon’s share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%, or 5% of all retail spend

    Amazon is set to clear $258.22 billion in US retail sales in 2018, according to eMarketer’s figures, which will work out to 49.1 percent of all online retail spend in the country, and 5 percent of all retail sales.

    Now, it is fast approaching a tipping point where more people will be spending money online with Amazon, than with all other retailers — combined. Amazon’s next-closest competitor, eBay, a very, very distant second at 6.6 percent, and Apple in third at 3.9 percent. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer when counting physical stores, has yet to really hit the right note in e-commerce and comes in behind Apple with 3.7 percent of online sales in the US.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-commerce-market-is-now-49-or-5-of-all-retail-spend/

  • Xiaomi’s Weak I.P.O. Raises Doubts About China’s Tech Boom

    But many investors view Xiaomi as still largely a hardware maker, not an internet company. It has promised fatter margins from selling internet services to its smartphone users, but those services accounted for less than 9 percent of last year’s revenue.

    “Xiaomi has been billing itself as a Chinese internet company, but they really are not quite yet a pure internet company,” said Dan Wang, a technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics.

    “Investors haven’t really bought into that story,” Mr. Wang added.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/xiaomi-hong-kong-ipo.html

  • IBM earnings: Security is growing fast, but is it enough money to matter?

    Through the first quarter, IBM’s security business had generated $3.4 billion in revenue in the previous 12 months, for growth of 66% year over year, the company told MarketWatch. In the first quarter, security brought in $800 million with growth of 65% from the year-ago period, compared with SI’s 15% growth overall.

    That is just a fraction of IBM’s $19.07 billion in reported revenue, however, and may not be enough to truly move the needle as other segments grow much slower. Analysts expect technology services and cloud-platform revenue to rise 2.6%, to $8.63 billion and cognitive-solutions revenue to rise 4.4% to $4.76 billion from the year-ago quarter. Technology services and cloud-platform includes IBM Cloud, formerly known as Bluemix, while cognitive solutions includes IBM’s Watson AI.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ibm-earnings-security-is-growing-fast-but-is-it-enough-money-to-matter-2018-07-13?ns=prod/accounts-mw

Photo by Andrew Sharples on Unsplash

Supplier Report: 3/23/3018

Oracle and MicroFocus had a very rough week at the stock market.  MicroFocus dropped over 50% in value due to complications integrating HP software assets. Oracle investors are reacting to a lack of progress in cloud sales.

SAP settled a $600M software dispute with Anheuser-Busch, terms were not disclosed, but I am sure all parties need a drink after those discussions.

As China gains more traction in artificial intelligence, the US is attempting to curb any domestic growth in consumer goods or tech acquisitions.  Is this a sound strategy or is this the start of a potential trade war?

Acquisitions

  • Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

    Multiple sources tell us that Google is acquiring Lytro, the imaging startup that began as a ground-breaking camera company for consumers before pivoting to use its depth-data, light-field technology in VR.

    One source described the deal as an “asset sale” with Lytro going for no more than $40 million. Another source said the price was even lower: $25 million. A third source tells us that not all employees are coming over with the company’s technology: some have already received severance and parted ways with the company, and others have simply left. Assets would presumably also include Lytro’s 59 patents related to light-field and other digital imaging technology.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/sources-google-is-buying-lytro-for-about-40m/

  • Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5 billion

    But of course Salesforce gets more than tech with this purchase, which it can integrate into its growing family of products. It also gets major customers like Coca-Cola, VMware, GE, Accenture, Airbus, AT&T and Cisco. While Salesforce may have a presence already in some of these companies already, Mulesoft gives them entree into areas they might not have had and gives them the ability to expand that presence.

    What’s more, the company has big revenue goals. Having reached $10 billion in revenue faster than any software company ever has, a point that Chairman and co-founder Marc Benioff has been happy to make, they have actually set their sites on $60 billion by 2034. That’s a long way away, of course, but having a company like MuleSoft in the fold, which made almost $300 million in revenue in fiscal 201, will certainly help.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/salesforce-is-buying-mulesoft-at-enterprise-value-of-6-5-billion/

  • Google’s Cloud Boss Is Eyeing a ‘Major Acquisition’ to Get Ahead

    For 2018, Greene and her deputies mentioned a focus on winning customers in health care, energy and financial services. Greene said Google will keep working to sign cloud deals with the government, too. The company recently got its FedRAMP certification, a key clearance needed to provide cloud services to the U.S. government.

    Over the past two years, Alphabet has scaled back several costly initiatives, including projects in fiber broadband and drones. But the company has plowed money into Greene’s division. (Greene, an Alphabet director, said she recuses herself from board votes on cloud acquisitions.) That investment is indicative of the support that Alphabet CEO and Google co-founder Larry Page has for the business, Greene noted.

    “The entire board, including Larry, is pretty thrilled with what’s going on in cloud,” she said. “How could they not be? It’s phenomenal what the team has achieved.”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/google-s-cloud-boss-eyeing-major-acquisition-to-get-ahead

  • Qualcomm’s Jacobs to Leave Board as He Explores Acquisition

    Qualcomm Inc. said director Paul Jacobs, son of the chipmaker’s founder and a former chief executive officer, will leave the board after he decided to explore an acquisition of the company.

    “The board reached that decision following his notification to the board that he has decided to explore the possibility of making a proposal to acquire Qualcomm,” the company said in a statement on Friday.

    Jacobs, 55, was stripped of his executive chairman title last week as the company sought to fend off a $117 billion hostile takeover bid from Broadcom Ltd. The board largely agreed with Jacobs that Broadcom’s bid was too low. However, early counts in a board vote tied to the Broadcom bid showed many Qualcomm shareholders had voted to replace Qualcomm directors, including Jacobs and Chief Executive Officer Steve Mollenkopf. U.S. President Donald Trump blocked the deal earlier this week.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/qualcomm-s-jacobs-to-leave-board-as-he-explores-possible-buyout

Artificial Intelligence

  • Look out, Alexa and Google Assistant — Watson Assistant is coming for you

    One of the key differentiating factors between Watson and all other smart assistants is its status as a white label product. That means that there’s no specific way in which to use Watson Assistant — there is no set wake word, nor a dedicated smart speaker in which the assistant will live. Rather, companies will be able to leverage Watson however they see best, making it easier to add actions and commands. And perhaps most importantly, every individual application of Watson Assistant will keep its data to itself, which means that large companies can’t, as The Verge notes, “pool information on users’ activities across multiple domains.”

    As IBM’s vice president of Watson Internet of Things, Bret Greenstein, explained to The Verge, “If you start running the entire world through Alexa, it’s an enormous amount of data and control to give to one company.” But Watson Assistant hopes to avoid that situation.

    https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/watson-ibm-assistant/

  • FedEx Follows Amazon Into the Robotic Future

    Yes, the robots replaced a few jobs right away. And in time, they will replace about 25 jobs in a facility that employs about 1,300 people. But the hub creates about 100 new jobs every year — and a robot work force still seems like the distant future.

    “Everyone will have a job,” said Galen Steele, the senior manager who oversees the depot. “It just might be in a different place.”

    As people have become more comfortable buying online, big and bulky goods like car tires, canoes and boxes as big as a coffin have accounted for an increasing percentage of the packages flowing through FedEx’s distribution centers, said Ted Dengel, who oversees operations technology for the FedEx Ground network, which includes 35 shipping hubs across the United States and Canada, including the facility in North Carolina.

    These ungainly items can’t fit on a conveyor belt. That’s where the robots, which cost several thousand dollars and are made by a Massachusetts company called Vecna, come in.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/technology/fedex-robots.html

  • China wants to shape the global future of artificial intelligence (Thanks JD)

    “[The Chinese government] sees standardization not only as a way to provide competitiveness for their companies, but also as a way to go from being a follower to setting the pace,” says Jeffrey Ding, a student at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute who studies China’s nascent AI industry, and who translated the report. The government’s plan cites the way US standards bodies have influenced the development of the internet, expressing a desire to avoid having the same thing happen with AI.

    China’s booming AI industry and massive government investment in the technology have raised fears in the US and elsewhere that the nation will overtake international rivals in a fundamentally important technology. In truth, it may be possible for both the US and the Chinese economies to benefit from AI. But there may be more rivalry when it comes to influencing the spread of the technology worldwide.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610546/china-wants-to-shape-the-global-future-of-artificial-intelligence/

Cloud

  • Oracle stock heads for worst day in nearly 5 years, analysts run for shelter after cloud bursts

    In Oracle’s earnings conference call, CEO Safra Catz told analysts that the firm expects to report adjusted earnings of $0.92 to $0.95 per share and revenue growth of 1% to 3% for the fourth quarter. Heading into the report data, our Zacks Consensus Estimates were calling for earnings of $0.90 per share and revenue growth of 2.6%.

    But the real concern for investors is Oracle’s slowing cloud growth. Management guided for total cloud revenues to improve between 19% and 23% in Q4, which is sluggish compared to the 32% growth it saw this quarter-and even worse considering the 51% and 44% rates it witnessed in Q1 and Q2.

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-oracle-orcl-worth-buying-on-the-post-earnings-dip-cm937297

Security

  • Best Buy to Stop Selling Huawei Phones

    U.S. intelligence leaders have recently recommended against Americans using phones from Huawei or Chinese rival ZTE Corp. The most recent to do so was Paul Nakasone, the nominee to head both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, who said at a Senate hearing last week that he wouldn’t want his friends or family using such devices.

    In addition to selling smartphones, Huawei is the world’s top maker of the equipment that goes into cellular towers and related infrastructure. The U.S. government’s broad concern is that the Chinese government could order Huawei to exploit knowledge of how its electronics are designed to spy or launch cyberattacks. Huawei says it is employee-owned and that no government has ever asked it to spy on or sabotage another country.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/best-buy-to-stop-selling-huawei-phones-1521725835

Software/SaaS

  • DocuSign has filed confidentially for IPO

    Like Dropbox, which is finally going public this week, San Francisco-based DocuSign has been an anticipated IPO for several years now. It’s raised over $500 million since it was founded in 2003 and has been valued at $3 billion. Kleiner Perkins, Bain Capital, Intel Capital, GV (Google Ventures) and Dell are among the many well-known names which have invested in DocuSign.

    But like many “unicorns” these days, the company took its time, spending 15 years as a private company. The DocuSign team decided that 2018 is the year for its debut and is targeting an IPO in either the second or third quarter.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/docusign-has-filed-confidentially-for-ipo/

  • Coca-Cola and US government use blockchain to curb forced labor

    Coca-Cola, the US State Department and a trio of crypto organizations (Bitfury Group, Blockchain Trust Accelerator and Emercoin) have launched a pilot project that will use blockchain to enforce worker rights. The initiative would use blockchain’s distributed ledger technology to create a secure, decentralized registry for workers and their contracts. They’d not only have the sort of identification that isn’t always guaranteed, but a trail of evidence in case employers abuse their power or don’t honor their end of a bargain.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/18/coca-cola-and-us-government-use-blockchain-to-curb-forced-labor/

  • Microsoft’s Edge Browser Could Soon Be Harder to Ignore in Windows 10

    But if you keep scrolling, near the bottom of the patch notes for build 17623, there’s a bullet point that says Insiders on the Skip Ahead ring “will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” Please say it ain’t so. This means that regardless of what your default browser is set to in Windows 10, any hyperlink you click in the Mail app would open in Edge, whether you like it or not.

    Microsoft justifies this by saying Edge “provides the best, most secure and consistent experience on Windows 10 and across your devices” and that “With built-in features for reading, note-taking, Cortana integration, and easy access to services such as SharePoint and OneDrive, Microsoft Edge enables you to be more productive, organized and creative without sacrificing your battery life or security.”

    https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-s-edge-browser-could-soon-be-harder-to-ignore-1823843562

  • LinkedIn’s $27 Billion Challenge: Get People to Use It More

    Just 18% of LinkedIn members used the service daily in April 2016, according to Pew Research’s most recent look at the service’s usage in November 2016, a month before Microsoft MSFT 0.45% closed the deal. That’s down from 21% a year earlier.

    What’s more, more than half of members, 51%, used LinkedIn every few weeks or less often, Pew found. By comparison, 76% of Facebook Inc. members used the service at least daily, Pew found.

    At the time of the deal, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said one goal was to weave together the tools people use to get their jobs done and professional networks that connect workers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedins-27-billion-challenge-get-people-to-use-it-more-1521201600

  • Oracle claims database 10 times cheaper than AWS, analyst says cloud on ‘continual slide’

    Speaking on an earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Hurd talked up Oracle’s new autonomous database.

    “The amazing thing about the autonomous database is that it is the only database on the planet that requires no human labor to administer,” he said.

    “Oracle has a faster database than Amazon, it’s no big surprise there, but the interesting thing [is that] Amazon charges by the minute and we charge by the minute; our prices are essentially the same or close enough.

    “If we run 10 times faster, we are one-tenth the cost of Amazon’s database. We’ve been through all the public benchmarks – you can go and look at them – we’re one-tenth the cost.”

    https://www.channelnomics.com/channelnomics-us/news/3028817/oracle-claims-database-is-ten-times-cheaper-than-aws

  • Hewlett Packard Spin-Off Falters, as Shares Drop 55% in London

    It hasn’t worked out as planned. Micro Focus shares plunged 46% Monday after it said technical problems related to combining the computer systems of Micro Focus and HPE would lead to lower-than-expected sales.

    Micro Focus also said its chief executive, Chris Hsu, resigned after a 6½-month tenure. Previously HPE’s chief operating officer, Mr. Hsu was appointed CEO in January 2017 and officially took the position when the merger was completed this past September.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/hewlett-packard-spin-off-falters-as-shares-drop-55-in-london-1521471054

Other

  • Facebook Suspends Data Firm That Helped Trump Campaign

    Facebook said late Friday that it been given information that Cambridge Analytica, along with two individuals who don’t work there, improperly kept Facebook user data for years despite telling the social network that it had destroyed those records. Facebook didn’t say how Cambridge Analytica used that data or if it gave the data to the Trump campaign.

    Facebook, which didn’t elaborate on the source of its information, said it is suspending Cambridge Analytica, its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories and the two individuals from buying ads or administering clients’ pages while it investigates the reports.

    The move once again spotlights Facebook’s role during the 2016 presidential election and its shortcomings in policing manipulation and misuse of its platform.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-suspends-cambridge-analytica-for-failing-to-delete-user-data-1521260051

  • SAP settles licensing dispute with AB InBev

    Questioned about the settlement, an SAP spokesman added just one adjective: “There is nothing more to say than ‘There was a dispute and it was resolved amicably,’” he said via email.

    That the companies were able to conclude the dispute so amicably and quietly comes down to the framework SAP used to enforce its licensing agreement: the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association.

    Commercial arbitration proceedings are usually conducted in private, and unlike in U.S. courts, filings and rulings are not matters of public record.

    When a licensing dispute goes to court, it’s generally a lot harder to keep quiet, as another alcoholic beverage maker, Diageo, found when SAP sued it for accessing data stored in its SAP system without the appropriate licenses. In February 2017 a U.K. court ruled that Diageo needed named-user licenses for customers and employees to access the SAP system, even when they did so indirectly through a Salesforce.com app. The court didn’t immediately rule on how much Diageo had to pay, but SAP was asking for £54,503,578 (around $76 million).

    https://www.cio.com/article/3263717/enterprise-resource-planning/sap-settles-licensing-dispute-with-ab-inbev.html

  • Cutting “old heads” at IBM

    The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would “correct seniority mix.” It slashed IBM’s U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.

    In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.

    https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/

  • Trump strikes back at Chinese tech practices with new tariffs

    Trump directed his administration to take action that will likely result in tariffs on a proposed list of 1,300 products as punishment for Beijing’s intellectual property practices, senior White House officials said ahead of the announcement.

    The officials said the list of targeted products will largely focus on technology China is accused of forcefully taking from U.S. companies. The value of that list represents the harm that U.S. companies have suffered from China’s practices, they said.

    “What you’ll see is that many of these areas are those where China has sought to acquire advantage through the unfair acquisition or forced technology transfer from U.S. companies with an aim toward establishing its own competitive advantage,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, during a call with reporters.

    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/trump-chinese-tech-practices-tariffs-428551

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