Tag: Comcast

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News You Can Use: 3/13/2019

  • If We’re Going to Break Up Big Tech, We Shouldn’t Forget Big Telecom

    In recent years, telecom giants like Verizon have been repeatedly caught covertly spying on customers and selling your private location data to a long chain of dubious middlemen, often with little oversight. Giant ISPs often help scammers rip off their own customers, earning them the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any business sector in America.

    Telecom presents a unique problem in tech. ISPs like Comcast and AT&T not only enjoy vast media and broadcast empires, but a clear monopoly over access to the internet itself thanks to limited broadband competition.

    This domination of both the conduit and the content creates unique anti-competitive opportunities ISPs are starting to exploit in a variety of sneaky ways. For example, telecom giants convinced the FCC in 2017 to neuter itself at lobbyists’ behest, demolishing numerous widely popular consumer protections like net neutrality along the way.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwjvy/if-were-going-to-break-up-big-tech-we-shouldnt-forget-big-telecom

  • Philadelphia Bans ‘Cashless’ Stores Amid Growing Backlash

    The new law, signed by Mayor Jim Kenney last week, takes effect on July 1 and could lead to fines of up to $2,000 on businesses that do not take cash.

    But many transactions will be exempt, including those at parking lots and garages; businesses that sell goods through a membership model; rentals that require security deposits; online, telephone or mail-in transactions; and goods sold exclusively to employees.

    The bill amends the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, which is administered by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. Mike Dunn, a spokesman for the city, said on Thursday that the commission would have to set the penalties before the bill takes effect.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/business/cashless-stores-philadelphia.html
    This is the same city that makes it ever more difficult to use cash for public transportation. Philly – if you are making laws like this, you have to eat your own dog food.

  • Taxing the rich
  • Hip offices are part of our mental health crisis, here’s why

    Even with all the mental health days and in-office lounges, many employees still feel an inability to disconnect from the office mindset, which makes them feel overworked and exhausted for prolonged periods. Job-induced anxiety is on the rise as technology blurs the lines between work and home life. The idea of work-life balance has all but disappeared.

    According to a 2015 study put out by NAMI Massachusetts, one can attribute 64 percent of absenteeism from work because of poor mental health. And 81 percent of productivity loss occurs as a result of presenteeism, where people work when they’re sick (and should be resting).

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90313990/why-cool-offices-do-nothing-to-mental-health

Photo by Master Wen on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 2/21/2018

  • Whatever Happened to Generation X?

    That’s partially why, collectively, no one’s ever thought much of us. The boomers have for the most part ignored us, treating us like hapless little kids. And when the millennials came along — a group just as large and self-obsessed and overly dramatic as their parents — we became the forgotten middle children. We weren’t the “me” or the “me, me, me” generation. We were more like the “meh” generation, stuck between two cohorts who never stop talking. Lately, our sense of invisibility has felt particularly acute in Philly, a town still run by people in their 50s and 60s — but being remade to suit the tastes of people in their 20s.

    http://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/01/27/generation-x-philadelphia/

  • Comcast may force us to rethink the definition of “cord-cutting”

    For the fourth quarter, Comcast said it lost 33,000 traditional pay-TV subscribers while gaining an impressive 350,000 high-speed internet customers. All told, the company ended the quarter with a net increase of 243,000 new customers. For the full year, that number was up by 777,000 customers.

    Comcast further boasted that it has signed up more than 1 million high-speed internet customers for 12 consecutive years. In other words, a lot of cord-cutters still need that cable cord–even if they’d rather watch Netflix than channel surf through an old-fashion cable TV lineup.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40521015/comcast-may-force-us-to-rethink-the-definition-of-cord-cutting

  • The hidden role informal caregivers play in health care
  • HR has lost the trust of employees. Here is who has it now

    A superior has made a pass at a subordinate, and an executive of the company asks that the subordinate be fired to “clean up” the situation. An employee repeatedly makes homophobic, racist, or sexist remarks to their colleagues, but the company has deemed the individual critical to the functioning of the sales team, and so is merely given a warning. Company morale is suffering and complaints are showing up on online sites like Glassdoor, so HR is charged with “fixing” the company’s rating. A well-performing employee is repeatedly given poor performance reviews to make their firing tidy.

    All of these examples are hypothetical, but they are archetypes for the near daily news of HR abuses that are now been regularly published around the world.

    Independent Apps are becoming a solution:

    Clearly, people want to talk about the problems at their workplace. But venting to anonymous colleagues is about the least effective approach to ameliorating the underlying conditions making workers unhappy in the workforce. That’s why other apps are exploring how to handle difficult conversations at the workplace in a better light, often with the blessing of HR departments themselves.

    Bravely is one such app. The company, based in New York, was founded by Toby Hervey, Sarah Sheehan, and Rasesh Patel as a platform to facilitate the kinds of hard conversations that need to happen for a workplace to thrive. Their concept is to connect workers who might be struggling bringing up a matter at work with expert “Pros” who are trained executive and life coaches who can help a worker think through their options and how best to raise their voice at a company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/10/hr-has-lost-the-trust-of-employees-here-is-who-has-it-now/?ncid=rss

  • Conversation Topics That Should and Shouldn’t Be Discussed in the Office

    Despite the strict views that some people and industries have about what’s appropriate office conversation, talk is talk and people are going to do it either way. So what’s the hottest topic of conversation? Politics. Seventy-four percent of people agree that politics is the most common subject, and that’s likely due to the rocky 2016 election and the current state of American politics right now.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308815

    Source: InsuranceQuotes (click the link to see the whole infographic)

Photo: Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez

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Supplier Report: 12/22/2017

Twas the Supplier Report before Xmas and I have to admit…
I didn’t predict Google’s announcement of the step-down of Eric Schmidt.

On to other things that you should know…
Apple confirmed they made your phone slow.

Here, at the end of the fourth term…
Oracle and Accenture bought out two firms.

And finally, our friends at Comcast and AT&T…
Are rewarding their employees financially.

This bonus is a result of the FCC…
Making changes to how we access content digitally.

Acquisitions

  • Oracle to Buy Australian Software Maker Aconex

    Oracle Corp. has struck a $1.2 billion deal to buy an Australian project-management software provider, the latest leg in its push to take on Amazon.com Inc. and others in selling cloud-computing services.

    The California-based software company on Monday said it had entered a binding takeover agreement after offering 7.80 Australian dollars ($5.96) cash a share for Aconex Ltd., valuing the Australian company at A$1.6 billion.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-to-buy-australian-software-maker-aconex-1513551593

  • Accenture acquires Irish creative agency Rothco

    Accenture has entered into an agreement to acquire Rothco, a full-service creative agency. Located in Dublin, Rothco will boost Accenture Ireland’s creative capabilities and those of Accenture Interactive as an experience agency in Europe. Thanks to acquisitions including Brand, Karmarama and Australia’s The Monkeys, among a great many other creative agencies, Accenture Interactive is now thought by many to rank as one of the world’s biggest digital agencies, leading to the creative wing delivering high-profile end-to-end solutions for global brands including Pearson publishing, although their actual size and influence is still a matter hotly contested by advertising industry heavyweights such as WPP.

    https://www.consultancy.uk/news/15070/accenture-acquires-irish-creative-agency-rothco

Artificial Intelligence

  • Accenture CEO: Company’s ‘Evolving’ its Digital Business to Take Advantage of AI

    To that end, he said, “going forward, Accenture Digital will be focused on three big areas: Accenture Interactive, Accenture Industry X.0 and Accenture Applied Intelligence.” As part of the strategy, Accenture Interactive will work with CMOs to help brands “transform the customer experience,” he said, adding the company is “strengthening our end-to-end marketing capabilities for CMOs by investing to scale intelligent marketing operations.” That capability “combines platforms, analytics and artificial intelligence to run marketing campaigns as a seamless managed service,” he said.

    http://www.mesalliance.org/2017/12/21/accenture-ceo-companys-evolving-digital-business-take-advantage-ai/

    “Accenture Industry X.0″…reminds me when everything was “xtreme” in the late 90’s…kewl marketing terms bra

  • Youngest IBM Watson Programmer Says Do Not Be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence

    The youngest IBM Watson Programmer, Tanmay Bakshi says that the leaders today should not be afraid of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Tanmay and his sister Tanvi, talk to host Kimberli Lewis, of Leadership Beyond Borders on VoiceAmerica’s Business channel, about why AI is important now and for our future.

    Tanmay, one of the youngest cloud computing developers in the world, has been programming since he was 5 and now, at the age of 14, he is building applications engineered to augment human capabilities.

    The Bakshi family immigrated from India to Canada, when both Tanmay and Tanvi were young children. These two Generation Z-ers, talk about what it was like to immigrate, how education and learning is important and why AI is an opportunity not a threat.

    http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/3603688
    Programming AI at 14… I need to re-evaluate how I spend my time.

Cloud

  • Why an (unofficial) anti-Amazon alliance is a very good thing

    Amazon is going to take a lot of effort to stop. Even the three other gargantuan tech companies are in danger of being overwhelmed, as Amazon spends more on R&D than any other company on the planet.

    The risk isn’t that we see more squabbles between competing streaming platforms or hardware availability limits, it’s that the efforts to stop Amazon are so late that retail is dominated by one player with so many network effect positives it’s almost impossible to compete.

    The Big Four look like they’ll be overshadowed by one big player: Amazon. Scott Galloway’s new book The Four is invaluable extended reading on this subject.

    All of this is a U.S.-centric view though – Chinese online retailing behemoth Alibaba has a market cap of $450 billion and on the back on China’s continuing rise, could have the muscle to fight Amazon. Both are currently competing to tap India’s emerging ecommerce market.

    https://www.androidauthority.com/why-an-unofficial-anti-amazon-alliance-is-a-very-good-thing-822092/

  • Cloud Price Comparison: AWS vs. Azure vs. Google

    The charts below show how AWS, Azure and GCP stack up for Linux and Windows instances of various sizes and commitment contracts. And to make the charts a little easier to read, the lowest cost in each category is green, the second lowest is yellow, and the most expensive is pink.
    Linux:

    Windows:

    https://www.datamation.com/cloud-computing/cloud-price-comparison-aws-vs.-azure-vs.-google.html

Datacenter

  • IBM Enters Quantum Computing Business with First Paying Customers

    In addition to JPMorgan Chase, Daimler AG, and Samsung, the first customers include JSR Corporation, Barclays, Hitachi Metals, Honda, Nagase, Keio University, Oak Ridge National Lab, Oxford University, and University of Melbourne. All of them will be will be able to tap into IBM’s 20-qubit quantum computer, which the company installed in November. A 50-qubit system, which is currently just a prototype, will be offered to customers in a future version of the platform.

    Each of the initial clients will use the opportunity to research and develop quantum computing applications related to their area of expertise. In the case of JP Morgan Chase, the company will focus on how the technology can be applied to financial services applications, including trading, portfolio optimization, asset pricing, and risk analysis.

    https://www.top500.org/news/ibm-enters-quantum-computing-business-with-first-paying-customers/

Software/SaaS

  • Acquision of SAP to Ariba (not much of a headline tbh)

    Automation of the fundamental procedure of any supply chain is vital, however it’s insufficient. To gain power of your supply chain and your spending, you have to move your point of view from the procedure to the master plan. What’s more, you have to find an innovation accomplice that can help. An accomplice who can enable you to supplier how you can work together with your providers, who comprehends the complexities of dealing with a solid supply chain, and who can interface all aspects of your obtaining procedure over your whole business while giving your providers an approach to better oversee and grow theirs.

    SAP Ariba coordinates the whole purchasing process over your whole association. When you associate with Ariba Network, you interface with a huge number of providers crosswise over immediate and indirect cost categories.

    http://nbherard.com/business/acquision-of-sap-to-ariba/38270

Other

  • Eric Schmidt stepping down as Alphabet’s executive chairman to become a ‘technical advisor’

    “Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet’s evolution for this transition,” he said in the statement. “The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving. In recent years, I’ve been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work.”

    Schmidt joined up with Google in 2001, stepping into the role of CEO at the behest of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, after stints at Sun Microsystems and Novell. Around the time of the company’s 2004 IPO, the trio reportedly pledged to work together for another 20 years.

    Of course, Schmidt handed the baton to Page in 2011. Four years later, when Google restructured to form Alphabet, Page became its CEO, with Sundar Pichai stepping in to take over Google.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/21/eric-schmidt-stepping-down-as-alphabets-executive-chairman-to-become-a-technical-advisor/?ncid=rss

  • Cloud revenue helps Oracle beat earnings forecast this time, but outlook tanks shares

    Oracle said it earned a profit of nearly $3 billion before certain expenses such as stock compensation, or 70 cents a share, up 14 percent from a year ago. Revenue rose 6 percent, to $9.62 billion. Analysts had expected an adjusted profit of 68 cents a share on revenue of $9.57 billion. Traditional on-premises software brought in the vast majority of revenue, at $6.3 billion, up 3 percent. But the portion from new software licenses was flat at $1.35 billion, making growth in cloud revenue crucial.

    Software-as-a-service applications saw growth of 55 percent, to $1.1 billion, while infrastructure as a service, the base-level computing and storage services that compete with public cloud leaders such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure, grew only 21 percent. That’s well behind the growth rate of the leaders. But Catz added that the cloud revenue includes older hosting revenue that’s slowing, masking higher growth in newer-generation cloud computing.

    https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/12/14/cloud-revenue-helps-oracle-beat-earnings-forecast-just-not-enough-investors/

  • Apple: Yes, we’re slowing down older iPhones

    The tech giant issued a rare statement of explanation on Thursday, saying that it has used software updates to limit the performance of older iPhones and prevent them from shutting down unexpectedly.

    Tech analysts and angry customers have reported in recent days that operating system updates had caused older iPhones to slow considerably, with some suggesting that Apple could be using the tactic to encourage fans to buy new phones.

    Apple insists the updates were made with a different goal in mind: It said the performance of lithium-ion batteries degrades over time, which can sometimes cause phones to suddenly shut down in order to protect their components.

    http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/technology/apple-slows-down-old-iphones/

  • AT&T, Comcast giving $1,000 bonuses to hundreds of thousands of workers after tax bill

    Telecom giant AT&T was quick to respond to news of U.S. tax reform, announcing it would give some employees bonuses once the legislation is signed into law.

    AT&T said in a press release Wednesday that it would give more than 200,000 of its U.S. workers who are union members a special bonus of $1,000. The company also increased its capital expenditures budget by $1 billion in the U.S.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/tax-reform-reaction-att-is-giving-bonuses-to-200000-employees.html

  • Uber Is a Taxi Service, the E.C.J. Rules, in Major Setback for Firm

    In the decision, the court determined that Uber, which connects drivers with riders through a smartphone app for payments, “must be regarded as being inherently linked to a transport service.” The 28 member countries in the European bloc will have to regulate “the conditions under which such services are to be provided,” the court added.

    The European court ruling applies across the European Union, but not elsewhere. In a statement, the company said that it was already operating under the transportation law of most European countries in which it did business, and that the ruling would have little impact. It added that it would continue a dialogue with cities across Europe for its services.

    The case may provide a benchmark for countries seeking to regulate independent workers, who make up as much as 30 percent of the working-age population in the United States and Europe, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Some worry, though, that such a group could soon become an underclass.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/business/uber-europe-ecj.html

Photo: Kira auf der Heide

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News You Can Use: 6/28/2017

  • Has outsourcing lost its strategic relevance?

    Somewhere along this journey, global delivery of IT services grew less important and less strategic. Cost savings became the key criteria to measure success and service providers commoditized their offerings to meet market demand. But at what cost? Industry vets would likely point to a lack of innovation, poor delivery or the recent trend to repatriate services. Indeed, the desire for continued cost cutting has made functional CIOs and global IT service providers less and less relevant.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3201097/outsourcing/has-outsourcing-lost-its-strategic-relevance.html

  • The CPO is Dead

    By definition the title of Chief Procurement Officer is no longer accurate or reflective of the job’s responsibilities. The title doesn’t even sound strategic. So I say kill it and demand the correct and more strategic title: Chief Value Officer.

    The concept of CVO is nothing new. It has been suggested as a title for a senior level officer position for a number of years. I researched the title on Linked-In and found that there were actually quite a few people with that title across a number of industries and functions. Wikipedia’s definition “business value: is an informal term that includes all forms of value that determine the health and well-being of the firm in the long run.”

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cpo-dead-michael-shaw
    There is an article every few months saying that the CPO has to evolve into something new (C#O, CVO) and yet there are companies that still don’t have proper procurement discipline. The title is just a title, the function of any good CPO is to bring value and reduce risk. How that is done as business evolves is what separates the good CPOs from the pack.

  • Comcast CEO Brian Roberts talk cord-cutting, customer service, net neutrality

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-06-14/the-david-rubenstein-show-brian-roberts-video
  • Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

    One reason for Karp and Tumblr’s silence? Last week Verizon completed its acquisition of Tumblr parent company Yahoo, kicking off the subsequent merger of Yahoo and AOL to create a new company called Oath. As one of the world’s largest ISPs, Verizon is notorious for challenging the principles of net neutrality — it sued the FCC in an effort to overturn net neutrality rules in 2011, and its general counsel Kathy Grillo published a note this April complimenting new FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to weaken telecommunication regulations.

    Now, multiple sources tell The Verge that employees are concerned that Karp has been discouraged from speaking publicly on the issue, and one engineer conveyed that Karp told a group of engineers and engineering directors as much in a weekly meeting that took place shortly after SXSW. “Karp has talked about the net neutrality stuff internally, but won’t commit to supporting it externally anymore,” the engineer said. “[He] assures [us] that he is gonna keep trying to fight for the ability to fight for it publicly.” Karp did not respond to four emails asking for comment, and neither Yahoo nor Tumblr would speak about the matter on the record.

    https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/21/15816974/verizon-tumblr-net-neutrality-internet-politics-david-karp

  • Why WordPress’s Parent Doubled Down on Remote Work

    Simply put, Automattic’s remote-working policies are just that popular. At a time when companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard are calling employees back to the office, Automattic’s success with remote working is striking. The remote-working criticism–that it’s harder to get people to move in the same direction when they’re dispersed–just doesn’t seem to apply at Automattic.

    In fact, says Mullenweg, it’s actually been a big benefit to the company. “I used to be very conflicted,” he told Quartz. “All I hear from my friends in San Francisco is how hard it is to hire. Should I not tell them this secret? I decided it’s a great idea and everyone should do it. I’ll keep shouting from the rooftop because everyone should do it.”

    https://www.inc.com/kaitlyn-wang/automattic-wordpress-remote-work.html

Photo: Korney Violin