Tag: Dell

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Supplier Report: 6/7/2019

Rumors are dominating the news this week…

Amazon reportedly wants to snap up the potential Sprint/T-Mobile merger castoff Boost to create their own phone service. Some are saying Amazon’s interest is “economically insane“.

Meanwhile the WSJ noted that the Department of Justice is looking into investigating Google for anti-trust practices. Google, who has been fined several times by the European Union, has not been given much scrutiny in the US to this point.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • LinkedIn Snaps Up Drawbridge, Its Second Known Acquisition In 8 Months

    Drawbridge helps companies better understand their customers using machine learning. It addresses user-focused issues like customer experience, digital security, and risk detection according to its website. The company, led by Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan has also been recognized for its focus on consumer identity, was awarded an early patent for identity resolution.

    LinkedIn plans to use Drawbridge’s strength in the area of observations around customers to better target professional audiences, it says.

    https://news.crunchbase.com/news/linkedin-snaps-up-drawbridge-its-second-known-acquisition-in-8-months/

  • Amazon is reportedly interested in buying Boost Mobile

    If helping to create a competitor is a necessary condition to get the Sprint/T-Mobile deal done, then perhaps Amazon can help. A report from Reuters suggests the retailer is interested in buying Boost Mobile from the combo, particularly because it would come with the ability to use T-Mobile’s network for six years. The unnamed sources also claimed the company could be interested in spectrum the newly-merged pair would have to divest.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/30/amazon-prime-boost-mobile/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Sells Face Recognition Surveillance to a Dictatorship: Report

    The American technology titan IBM alongside Chinese tech giants Huawei and Hikvision are selling biometric surveillance systems to the UAE’s police and spy agencies, according to an extensive report in BuzzFeed.

    The UAE is a dictatorship famous for the oppression of dissent, human rights violations, abuse of laborers and migrants, an ongoing ban on international human rights workers and a fight against freedom of expression. It’s also a wildly rich Persian Gulf authoritarian regime that makes a hell of a customer for companies willing to do business with dictators.

    https://gizmodo.com/ibm-sells-face-recognition-surveillance-to-a-dictatorsh-1835101881

Cloud

  • Amazon Web Services Is Worth Half a Trillion Dollars, Analyst Estimates

    The survey found that 19% of IT workloads are now running in the public cloud. About 55% of the survey group is using cloud-based email systems, 53% rely on the public cloud for web hosting, 52% for sales and marketing applications, and 52% for e-commerce.

    Blackledge also nudged up his estimates for AWS—and for Amazon—this morning. He sees AWS revenues of $36.1 billion this year, growing about 31% a year to $140 billion in 2024. He raised his target price for Amazon stock to $2,500 from $2,400, and more remarkably, estimates the value of AWS alone as $506 billion. That is more than the current valuations of IBM, Oracle , and SAP—combined—and about even with the public market valuations for Facebook or Berkshire Hathaway.

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/amazon-stock-web-services-worth-half-a-trillion-dollars-51559060451

Security/Privacy

  • Microsoft Begs Windows Users To Update Now Citing ‘WannaCry 2’ Security Threat

    The warning, which reads almost as if Microsoft wrote it on bended knee, was posted on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog. Referring to the critical Remote Code Execution vulnerability, CVE-2019-0708, that has become better known as BlueKeep, Simon Pope, director of incident response at Microsoft, states that “Microsoft is confident that an exploit exists for this vulnerability.” What’s more, Pope says that such an exploit could “propagate from vulnerable computer to vulnerable computer in a similar way as the WannaCry malware spread across the globe in 2017.” An internet-scale port scanner has already determined that there are at least 923,671 internet-facing machines which are vulnerable to BlueKeep on port 3389 which is used by the Microsoft Remote Desktop feature.

    It is worth reading between the lines here, especially concerning that apparent confidence that a BlueKeep exploit exists. While it is not clear if Microsoft has intelligence that suggests active malware has been weaponized in this way, what we do know is that there is proof of concept (PoC) code available already. One BlueKeep demo on GitHub will crash a system that is vulnerable but does not execute the wormable threat that Microsoft is obviously so worried about.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/06/01/microsoft-begs-windows-users-to-update-now-citing-wannacry-2-security-threat/#1a5e8f4f60ca

  • Apple, Google and WhatsApp condemn UK proposal to eavesdrop on encrypted messages

    In practice, the proposal suggests a technique which would require encrypted messaging services — such as WhatsApp — to direct a message to a third recipient, at the same time as sending it to its intended user.

    Levy and Robinson argued the proposal would be “no more intrusive than the virtual crocodile clips” which are currently used in wiretaps of non-encrypted communications. This refers to the use of chat and call apps that can silently copy call data during digital exchanges.

    Opposing this plan, signatories of the open letter argued that “to achieve this result, their proposal requires two changes to systems that would seriously undermine user security and trust.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/30/apple-google-and-whatsapp-condemn-gchq-ghost-proposal.html

Software/SaaS

  • AWS announces general availability of its document reading service Textract

    Amazon says Textract is more of an “OCR++ service” because it can recognize tables with a document and understand that the data is placed in rows and columns.

    “The power of Amazon Textract is that it accurately extracts text and structured data from virtually any document with no machine learning experience required,” Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS’s vice president of machine learning, said in a statement. “Subsequently, developers can analyze and query the extracted text and data using our database and analytics services like Amazon Elasticsearch Service, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Athena and integrate with other machine learning services like Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Comprehend Medical, Amazon Translate, and Amazon SageMaker to help customers derive deeper meaning from the extracted text and data.”

    Textract supports multiple image formats, including regular JPEG and PNG photo files, scans and PDF documents.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/05/29/aws-announces-general-availability-document-reading-service-textract/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Dell Technologies fiscal Q1 mixed as storage, server and networking sales fall

    The company reported first quarter earnings of $329 billion, or 38 cents a share, on revenue of $21.9 billion, up 3 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the quarter were $1.45 a share.

    Wall Street was looking for Dell fiscal first quarter non-GAAP earnings of $1.21 a share on revenue of $22.24 billion. Earnings estimates had a wide range given that Dell is recently public.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-technologies-fiscal-q1-mixed-as-storage-server-and-networking-sales-fall/

  • VMware Q1 tops expectations, revenue up 13% to $2.27 billion

    VMware delivered strong first quarter financial results Thursday that beat market expectations. The virtualization giant reported a net income of $505 million, or $1.21 per share. The income includes an unexpected gain of $132 million from VMware’s investment in Pivotal Software, the company said.

    Non-GAAP earnings were $1.32 per share on revenue of $2.27 billion, up 13% year over year. Wall Street was looking for earnings of $1.28 a share and revenue of $2.24 billion.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/vmware-q1-tops-expectations-revenue-up-13-to-2-27-billion/

Other

  • Experts are furious over the FCC’s rosy picture of broadband access

    To generate the report, the FCC relies on data from service providers. Using a form, the companies report on the census-derived “blocks” where they serve customers. Questions about the 2019 report started before it was even released: after an FCC press release put out in February trumpeted major gains in access, the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press noticed a major flaw in the figures. A small carrier, called BarrierFree, erroneously reported it served census blocks with nearly 62 million people, which would make it the fourth largest internet service provider in the country.

    The FCC rectified the error before the release of the final report, reducing the number of people it believed to have access by about 2 million, but the fact that the flaw was uncovered by Free Press raised questions about how closely the agency was monitoring the data it received. Starks’ statement questioned the figures. “It’s incredible to me that an error this large — approximately 62 million in overstated broadband connections — didn’t materially change the report,” he said.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/30/18644726/fcc-broadband-report-high-speed-rural-statistics-reactions

  • Lenovo channels the spirit of IBM: Lays off 500 staff, savages Data Centre Group

    Lenovo is eliminating 500 staff worldwide, including some in its US headquarters at Research Triangle Park in Morrisville, North Carolina.

    The tech giant’s data centre group is reportedly among the hardest hit, with 200 people set to lose their jobs.
    **
    The measures certainly don’t align with the manufacturer’s financial performance: Lenovo reported record revenues for its fiscal 2019, growing to $51bn for the first time, up 12.5 per cent year on year. It turned a profit of $597m, as opposed to a loss of $189m it suffered in FY 2018.

    The Data Center Group was the Chinese biz’s fastest-growing business, with revenue going up 37.1 per cent year-on-year to $6.025bn – but the unit still made a pre-tax loss of $231m.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/30/lenovo_lays_off_500/

  • Justice Department Prepares Antitrust Investigation of Google

    A Justice Department investigation would put Google—and potentially other tech giants—in an unwanted spotlight at a time when major internet companies already have seen their political fortunes turning, both in the U.S. and overseas.

    The shift has come with multibillion-dollar antitrust fines for Google from the European Union. Facebook Inc. has come under intense fire over Russian use of its platform to meddle in the 2016 election. Policy makers also are increasingly skeptical of internet companies’ privacy practices, as well as their potential to create other public harm.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-is-preparing-antitrust-investigation-of-google-11559348795

    Update: Amazon could face heightened antitrust scrutiny under a new agreement between U.S. regulators

    Amazon could face heightened antitrust scrutiny under a new agreement between U.S. regulators that puts it under closer watch by the Federal Trade Commission, three people familiar with the matter said.

    The move is the result of the FTC and the Department of Justice, the U.S. government’s leading antitrust enforcement agencies, quietly divvying up competition oversight of two of the country’s top tech companies, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the government’s work is confidential. The Justice Department is set to have more jurisdiction over Google, The Washington Post reported on Friday, paving the way for a potential investigation of the search-and-advertising giant.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/02/amazon-could-face-heightened-antitrust-scrutiny-under-new-agreement-between-us-regulators

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 10/19/2018

The Pentagon’s “Project Jedi” continues to make headlines this week as Microsoft employees published a letter asking the company to not bid on the work.

Jeff Bezos was interviewed the week and pondered why technology companies would decline an opportunity to work with the military as the “United States has a right to be defended”.

IBM was down 6% this week as cloud and analytics sales were flat. They did score a $240M AI contract with Lenovo, so it isn’t all bad?

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Snags $240 Million AI Deal

    Lenovo is now looking to make its commercial PC business more efficient, and it’s turning to IBM’s artificial intelligence technology for help. IBM announced a multiyear deal with Lenovo on Thursday that aims to use AI to reduce customer service and field service costs. The $240 million pact, covering North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, is a win for IBM’s technology support services business.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/18/ibm-snags-240-million-ai-deal.aspx

Cloud

  • Jeff Bezos Says Tech Companies Should Work With the Pentagon

    The Amazon founder seemed baffled by the wave of employee dissent that has torn through tech companies over the ethical implications of government contracts. Last week, for example, Google said it would not bid for a Pentagon cloud computing contract called Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative, or JEDI. Google earlier said it would not renew its contract on Project Maven.

    “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Bezos said of tech companies pulling back from government work. “One of the jobs of the senior leadership team is to make the right decision, even when it’s unpopular.”

    https://www.wired.com/story/amazons-jeff-bezos-says-tech-companies-should-work-with-the-pentagon/

  • Microsoft workers urge company to pass on JEDI

    “Many Microsoft employees don’t believe that what we build should be used for waging war,” the group said in an open letter published Oct. 12 on Medium. The post came as the company itself signaled in a blog post that it was likely to bid on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, a 10-year, single-source deal designed to provide cloud and advanced computing capabilities to the warfighter in the field.

    The Microsoft employee group is also seeking a set of “AI principles” modeled on the tenets of artificial intelligence put out by Google under pressure from its employees. Google has committed to not developing weaponized AI, as well as AI applications that conduct surveillance outside of “internationally accepted norms” and whose purpose “contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

    https://fcw.com/articles/2018/10/15/jedi-microsoft-dont-bid.aspx

Security

  • Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla come together to end TLS 1.0

    The impact of removing the old protocols shouldn’t be too substantial. All four companies cite usage figures for the old versions; Firefox sees the most TLS 1.0 and 1.1 usage (1.4 percent of all secure connections) while the other three vendors claim a figure below 1.0 percent. The current recommendation is that sites switch to TLS 1.2 (which happens to be the minimum required for HTTP 2.0) and offer only a limited, modern set of encryption algorithms and authentication schemes. TLS 1.3 was recently finalized, but it currently has little widespread adoption.

    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/browser-vendors-unite-to-end-support-for-20-year-old-tls-1-0/

  • Apple ‘Deeply Apologetic’ Over Account Hacks in China

    The Cupertino, Calif.-based company didn’t specify how many users were hit or how much money was stolen, nor did it offer details about how the hackers acquired the users’ Apple IDs and passwords. To help prevent unauthorized access to their accounts, Apple said, people should enable two-factor authentication.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-deeply-apologetic-over-account-hacks-in-china-1539690961?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Software/SaaS

  • Why IBM’s Brief Growth Streak Just Stalled

    There had been some faint lights at the end of the tunnel here over the past couple of quarters, when they’ve been able to grow their quarterly revenues. That flipped this quarter. Their strategic imperatives, which is really their cloud business, their data analytics business, saw some stumbling blocks. Their growth slowed there. They saw a drop in new signings in that business. That stung a little bit. It’s been a very tough go for IBM. Their best business this quarter, and really a lot this year, is their legacy mainframe business. That will tend to tail off next year.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/19/why-ibms-brief-growth-streak-just-stalled.aspx

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Inside the heart of an IBM Cloud Data Center

    Uh… Cool?
  • Dell says its gaming business is worth $3 billion

    According to Frank Azor (who helms the Alienware, Gaming, and XPS divisions at Dell), that number puts Dell’s gaming business at three times the size of its competitors, though Azor apparently didn’t specify which competitors he was referring to. Also unknown is how that number breaks down between the flagship Alienware line and Dell’s more recent, cheaper G Series gaming hardware. It’d be interesting to see how the company’s newer and more budget-friendly options contribute to the overall total.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/18/17994618/dell-gaming-worth-3-billion-alienware

Other

  • Google’s CEO Defends Potential Return to China

    In his most extensive public remarks on the topic, Sundar Pichai said entering China in some ways aligns with the company’s mission to provide information to the world’s population, since one-fifth of those people reside in China. Even complying with China’s censors, he said, Google would be able to deliver search results to more than 99% of queries and in some cases deliver more helpful results than users currently get from local search engines.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-ceo-defends-potential-return-to-china-1539661027

  • Google could finally face serious competition for Android

    Until now, Google has locked phone and tablet makers into its ecosystem. If they wanted to include Google’s apps and services at all, they effectively had to include those apps and services on every consumer Android device that they made (with the exception of inside China, where Google doesn’t operate). That’s meant, for instance, that Samsung likely couldn’t release a variant of the Galaxy S9 that only includes the Galaxy Apps store and the Samsung browser and doesn’t include Chrome, Google Play, or Google search.

    Google said it is incorrect to say the original terms banned Android partners from making any phones or tablets without its apps. The terms only prevented them from selling non-certified versions of Android, the company says; devices that were “compatible” with its apps could still be shipped, even if its apps weren’t included. But it’s unclear whether there are any certified consumer Android devices that do not include Google’s apps.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/18/17989052/google-android-fork-competition-europe-antitrust-commission-lawsuit

  • Netflix criticizes EU over ‘content quota’

    The EU, writes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in the report, is “currently rewriting its audio visual rules” that will demand streaming services like Netflix “devote a minimum of 30 percent of their catalog to European works.” Netflix’s report acknowledged that catering to a specific audience encouraged more regional original programming for international audiences, but suggested that enforcing quotas on a streaming service could have unwanted negative effects.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17986086/netflix-third-earnings-report-european-union-content-quote-international

Photo by Tobias Cornille on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 7/6/2018

The Source Report: 7/6: Dell is going public: Joey Lombardi

Dell is going public again after Founder Michael Dell took the company private 5 years ago. Keeping VMWare was a major driver in this decision as is managing the debt incurred from acquiring EMC two years ago.

IBM has lined up ANOTHER large IT contract, this time with the Australian government which is surprising considering several public failures on joint efforts over the last few years.

Acquisitions

  • Dell will again become a publicly traded company in $22 billion buyout

    Dell is returning to the public market in a $22 billion stock buyout that will still leave CEO / founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake firmly in charge, as reported by The Financial Times. The company went private in 2013 following a $25 billion buyout by Dell and Silver Lake. Since then, Dell has seen success both in the enterprise market and with its consumer-focused PCs.

    By moving back to the public sphere, Dell and Silver Lake will retain control over VMWare — which Dell acquired back in 2015 when it purchased enterprise data company EMC to better appeal to business customers — and be placed in a better position to reduce its debts.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/2/17525450/dell-public-company-stock-buyout-market

  • AT&T Jacks Up TV Prices Post Merger After Claiming That Wouldn’t Happen

    AT&T last week informed its DirecTV Now streaming video customers they’ll be paying $5 more to use the service starting in August.

    “To continue delivering the best possible streaming experience for both new and existing customers, we’re bringing the cost of this service in line with the market—which starts at a $40 price point,” AT&T said in a statement to Cord Cutter News, which first reported the hike.

    The problem: AT&T repeatedly claimed that the company’s merger with Time Warner would lower rates, not raise them.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gy3xv4/atandt-jacks-up-tv-prices-post-merger-after-claiming-that-wouldnt-happen

Artificial Intelligence

  • Oracle recently offered an artificial intelligent expert as much as $6 million in total pay as Silicon Valley’s talent war heats up

    Oracle offered at least one candidate a $6 million package made up of salary and equity incentives to convince them to join the company, a source told Business Insider.

    That candidate had other job offers but went with Oracle because of the higher pay, the source said.

    https://nordic.businessinsider.com/oracle-artificial-intelligence-expert-pay-2018-7/

Cloud

  • Google Cloud’s COO has left after less than a year

    Before joining Google in late November 2017, Bryant spent more than 25 years at Intel, most recently leading its data center group. She took what was supposed to be a temporary leave from that role in May due to “family matters,” but ended up joining Google instead, under Cloud CEO Diane Greene.

    Bryant’s hire was a win for the search giant’s cloud business, which is widely seen as No. 3 in the public cloud market, behind Amazon and Microsoft. As the relative newcomer in the space, Google Cloud’s challenge has been to prove its capabilities to large businesses, though Greene has said that there are no more “deal blockers” in the way of new contracts.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/03/google-cloud-coo-diane-bryant-has-left-after-less-than-a-year.html

Security

  • Australian National University ‘hit by Chinese hackers’

    Networks at the Australian National University in Canberra, which is home to several defence-focused research units, were breached “months ago” by attackers whom authorities traced to China, said Channel Nine television and Fairfax Media websites, citing “multiple” unnamed security and intelligence sources.

    Also

    China has consistently and strongly denied being involved in any hacking attacks and its embassy in Australia, as well as the foreign ministry in Beijing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The news comes as tension flares over new Australian laws that seek to curb foreign interference, measures the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has said were adopted to allay concerns over Chinese influence in politics and universities.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/07/australian-national-university-hit-by-chinese-hackers

Software/SaaS

  • Micro Focus sells Suse for $2.5B

    Suse, one of the longest-running commercial Linux distributors and, these days, a major player in the open-source infrastructure and management space, has been through a few ownership changes in recent years. Micro Focus acquired Suse from The Attachmate Group back in 2014, which itself had acquired Novell, the then-owner of Suse, in 2010. Today, Micro Focus announced that Suse is changing owners yet again, as private equity firm and venture capital fund EQT is acquiring Suse.

    While the exact terms of the deal where not disclosed, EQT says the deal valued Suse at $2.535 billion.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/02/micro-focus-sells-suse-for-2-5b/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IBM lands $740M contract to provide IT services to Australian government

    The main idea is to “prioritize the introduction of new technologies to citizen services,” Australia’s government said.

    One of the programs involves IBM setting up a research team in Melbourne that will be tasked with studying potential applications for AI, blockchain and quantum computing in government. Additional research units will be based in Canberra and on the Gold Coast, working on new cybersecurity tools for data protection. They’ll also be looking into how supercomputers can be used to enhance government services.

    This is important…

    IBM’s contract award comes despite a couple of recent calamities relating to past services it provided for Australia’s government. They include failing to provide basic protection against a distributed denial-of-service attack that led to an outage during Australia’s online census in 2016, and a botched payroll system IBM installed for Queensland’s Department of Health for which the client was later blamed.

    https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/07/05/ibm-lands-740m-contract-provide-services/

Other

  • How Google and Facebook Are Monopolizing Ideas

    But as the companies come under growing pressure to police their platforms and weed out “fake news,” a growing range of content gets banned, labeled or deleted for often opaque or arbitrary reasons. ProPublica and Reveal, both nonprofit news publications, have had content dealing with hate groups and immigrant children, respectively, deleted or rejected by Instagram or Facebook. Video artists complain of viewership and ads being restricted because their content violated YouTube’s community standards.

    Unhappy users, advertisers and content providers wouldn’t have as much to complain about if Google (which bought YouTube in 2006) and Facebook (which acquired Instagram in 2012) had strong competitors to which they could switch.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-and-facebook-are-monopolizing-ideas-1530713153?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Teddy Kelley on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 2/16/2018

Moves are being made this week!  Both Oracle and Google (along with Roche and OpenText) announced acquisitions.  If you pair that with comments made by Oracle CEO Mark Hurd about the economy, it seems that the M&A drought is subsiding.

Equifax, the company that allowed hackers to gain access to all of the information needed to open a line of credit in your name, announced that hackers probably got even MORE information that initially reported.  News also came out this week that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stopped investigations into the breach.

Amazon is going after UPS and Fedex and also reducing their workforce in certain areas (while increasing headcount in their Alexa and AI departments).

Acquisitions

  • Roche to Acquire Healthcare-Software Company Flatiron for $1.9 Billion

    Pharmaceuticals firm Roche Holding AG RHHBY 1.16% has agreed to buy the shares it doesn’t already own of Flatiron Health Inc., an oncology software company, for $1.9 billion, the companies said Thursday.

    Switzerland-based Roche said the deal is part of an effort to accelerate its development and delivery of medicines for cancer patients. Roche already owns 12.6% of New York City-based Flatiron Health, which was launched in 2012.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/roche-to-acquire-healthcare-software-company-flatiron-for-1-9-billion-1518732811

  • Google to acquire Xively IoT platform from LogMeIn for $50M

    Google announced today that it intends to buy Xively from LogMeIn for $50 million, giving Google Cloud an established IoT platform to add to their product portfolio.

    In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Google indicated it wants to use this purchase as a springboard into the growing IoT market, which it believes will reach 20 billion connected things by 2020. With Xively they are getting a tool that enables device designers to build connectivity directly into the design process while providing a cloud-mobile connection between the end user app and the connected thing, whatever that happens to be.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/google-to-acquire-xively-iot-platform-from-logmein/

  • Oracle acquires cloud security startup Zenedge

    Oracle announced today that it reached an agreement to acquire Zenedge, a company that provides firewalls and denial-of-service mitigation to enterprises.

    The deal is part of Oracle’s overall work to build out its cloud platform, providing customers with security features for their applications that help them stay secure and running in a hostile web environment. Zenedge fits in with the company’s previous acquisition of Dyn, a domain name system (DNS) provider that helps determine how traffic gets directed between different applications.

    https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/15/oracle-acquires-cloud-security-startup-zenedge/

  • Consolidation in the cloud as OpenText buys Hightail and Carbonite grabs Mozy from Dell

    Mark J. Barrenechea, who holds several titles at OpenText including vice chairman, CEO and CTO, says the addition of Hightail helps them meet yet another content management use case. “The acquisition of Hightail underscores our commitment to delivering differentiated content solutions in the cloud that enable marketers and creative professionals to share, produce, and securely collaborate on digital content,” Barrenechea said in a statement.

    This could allow them to compete with Adobe, at least on the file sharing side. Adobe has a big stake in the creative market and providing solutions for creating and sharing the large files they produce.

    Today’s acquisition comes on the heels of the sale of another early cloud company when Dell sold Mozy to Carbonite yesterday for $145 million. Mozy, a cloud backup service, which launched in 2005, was sold to EMC in 2007 for $76 million. You may recall that Dell purchased EMC in Oct 2015 for $67 billion. That deal closed in September 2016.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/14/consolidation-in-the-cloud-as-opentext-buys-hightail-and-carbonite-grabs-mozy-from-dell/?ncid=rss

  • Equinix acquires Infomart Dallas hub for $800m

    Equinix, which was recently listed as the top data centre operator in the world by Cloudscene’s latest leaderboard rankings, will benefit greatly from the acquisition of the 1.6 million gross sq ft landmark facility. The highly interconnected hub will further strengthen Equinix’s global platform.

    The Dallas metro represents one of the largest enterprise and colocation markets in the Americas and the eight Equinix IBX data centres house more than 100 network service providers—more than any other data centre provider in the Dallas metro area.

    http://www.capacitymedia.com/Article/3787932/Equinix-acquires-Infomart-Dallas-hub-for-800m

Cloud

  • LinkedIn still hasn’t moved to Azure, continues to run its own data centers

    However, despite Microsoft owning LinkedIn, the company has no obligation to adopt Azure, a pattern seen before. Last year, Amazon acquired Whole Foods in a $13.7 billion deal, and the company made no public announcement of adopting AWS. At the time of acquisition, Whole Foods ran on Azure.

    Still, Microsoft is the “preferred” cloud vendor for some heavyweight companies including Adobe and Columbia Sportswear. However, if companies don’t adopt Azure, Microsoft often boasts enterprise customers through its SaaS solutions.

    https://www.ciodive.com/news/linkedin-still-hasnt-moved-to-azure-continues-to-run-its-own-data-centers/516748/

  • Oracle to Launch 12 Cloud Data Centers Around the World

    Oracle announced Monday a plan to add 12 locations to the list of availability regions hosting its new enterprise cloud platform. Today, the platform is hosted in two locations in the US and one in Europe.

    Most of the expansion will be in Asia, where the new platform, launched in 2016, currently has no physical presence. Oracle’s plan includes new cloud data centers in China, India, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. (It’s expanding in China in partnership with Tencent, according to The Wall Street Journal.)

    Oracle is also adding data centers in Europe (Amsterdam and Switzerland), where the platform is currently hosted in Frankfurt, with an upcoming London region.

    http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/oracle/oracle-launch-12-cloud-data-centers-around-world

Security

  • Apple intern reportedly leaked iPhone source code

    According to Motherboard, the intern who stole the code took it and distributed it to a small group of five friends in the iOS jailbreaking community in order to help them with their ongoing efforts to circumvent Apple’s locked down mobile operating system. The former employee apparently took “all sorts of Apple internal tools and whatnot,” according to one of the individuals who had originally received the code, including additional source code that was apparently not included in the initial leak.

    The plan was originally to make sure that the code never left the initial circle of five friends, but apparently the code spread beyond the original group sometime last year. Eventually, the code was then posted in a Discord chat group, and was shared to Reddit roughly four months ago (although that post was apparently removed by a moderation bot automatically).

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/9/16997266/apple-source-code-leak-intern-internal-tools-jailbreaking-github-ios-9

  • Equifax breach may have exposed more data than first thought

    The 2017 Equifax data breach was already extremely serious by itself, but there are hints it was somehow worse. CNN has learned that Equifax told the US Senate Banking Committee that more data may have been exposed than initially determined. The hack may have compromised more driver’s license info, such as the issuing data and host state, as well as tax IDs. In theory, it would be that much easier for intruders to commit fraud.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/10/equifax-breach-may-have-exposed-more-data/
    32 senators want to know if US regulators halted Equifax probe

    Earlier this week, a Reuters report suggested that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) had halted its investigation into last year’s massive Equifax data breach. Reuters sources said that even basic steps expected in such a probe hadn’t been taken and efforts had stalled since Mick Mulvaney took over as head of the CFPB late last year. Now, 31 Democratic senators and one Independent have written a letter to Mulvaney asking if that is indeed the case and if so, why.

    Reuters sources said that Mulvaney has neither ordered subpoenas against Equifax nor collected any sworn testimony from company executives. Additionally, reviews of how Equifax protects its data and on-site cybersecurity exams of other credit bureaus — which the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency all offered to assist with — have been put on hold. The bank regulators who had offered to help were reportedly told that there were no exams planned and their assistance wouldn’t be needed.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/08/senators-ask-if-us-regulators-halted-equifax-probe/

  • Consumers prefer security over convenience for the first time ever, IBM Security report finds

    “We always talk about the ease of use, and not impacting user experience, etc, but it turns out that when it comes to their financial accounts…people actually would go the extra mile and will use extra security,” Kessem said. Whether it’s using two factor authentication, an SMS message on top of their password, or any other additional step for extra protection, people still want to use it. Some 74% of respondents said that they would use extra security when it comes to those accounts, she said.

    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ibm-security-report-security-now-outweighs-convenience/

  • ‘BuckHacker’ Search Engine Lets You Easily Dig Through Exposed Amazon Servers

    Digging through S3 buckets certainly isn’t new. Chris Vickery, director of cyber risk research at security firm UpGuard, has cornered something of a niche for himself by regularly finding noteworthy datasets in exposed buckets. According to research published in September 2017, some 7 percent of S3 servers may be exposed.

    And tools already exist for quickly grinding through leaky Amazon servers: ‘AWSBucketDump’ “is a tool to quickly enumerate AWS S3 buckets to look for loot,” the project’s Github page reads. As the BuckHacker administrator pointed out, you can also find some exposed buckets with a specific Google search.

    BuckHacker doesn’t only return results for exposed servers. It also includes entries labelled as “Access Denied”, and “The specified bucket does not exist,” meaning, obviously, you can’t simply go access whatever data they contain. But it may still be useful for scoping out whether a target is using S3 at all.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5bgm3/buckhacke-amazon-server-search-engine-aws-security

  • Don’t use Huawei phones, say heads of FBI, CIA, and NSA

    During his testimony, FBI Director Chris Wray said the government was “deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks.” He added that this would provide “the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage.”

    These warnings are nothing new. The US intelligence community has long been wary of Huawei, which was founded by a former engineer in China’s People’s Liberation Army and has been described by US politicians as “effectively an arm of the Chinese government.” This caution led to a ban on Huawei bidding for US government contracts in 2014, and it’s now causing problems for the company’s push into consumer electronics.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011246/huawei-phones-safe-us-intelligence-chief-fears

Datacenter/Hardware

  • One Man’s Quest to Make Google’s Gadgets Great

    Google could no longer afford to make ho-hum gadgets. Alphabet, its parent company, had become the world’s second-largest corporation by building software that worked for everyone, everywhere, delivered through apps and websites. But the nature of computing is changing, and its next phase won’t revolve around app stores and smartphones. It will center instead on artificially intelligent devices that fit seamlessly into their owners’ everyday lives. It will feature voice assistants, simple wearables, smart appliances in homes, and augmented-reality gadgets on your face and in your brain.

    In other words, the future involves a whole lot more hardware, and for Google that shift represents an existential threat. Users won’t go to Google.com to search for things; they’ll just ask their Echo because it’s within earshot, and they won’t care what algorithms it uses to answer the question. Or they’ll use Siri, because it’s right there in a button on their iPhone. Google needed to figure out, once and for all, how to compete with the beautiful gadgets made by Amazon, Apple, and everyone else in tech. Especially the ones coming out of Cupertino.

    https://www.wired.com/story/one-mans-quest-to-make-googles-gadgets-great/

Other

  • Amazon to Launch Delivery Service That Would Vie With FedEx, UPS

    Amazon expects to roll out the delivery service in Los Angeles in coming weeks with third-party merchants that sell goods via its website, according to the people. Amazon then aims to expand the service to more cities as soon as this year, some of the people say.

    While the program is being piloted with the company’s third-party sellers, it is envisioned as eventually accommodating other businesses as well, according to some of the people. Amazon is planning to undercut UPS and FedEx on pricing, although the exact rate structure is still unclear, these people said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-launch-delivery-service-that-would-vie-with-fedex-ups-1518175920

  • Amazon is cutting hundreds of employees to shift resources to fast-growing businesses

    The Seattle Times first reported that Amazon was laying off “hundreds” of employees and “managing out” others as the company consolidates its retail operations.

    A person familiar with the matter says the cuts are focused on Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and will affect some workers globally. The layoffs will occur in the consumer retail business, a unit that includes Amazon’s toys, books and groceries units, to make room for head count in businesses that are growing, like Alexa, AWS and digital entertainment. Jeff Bezos, in a statement in the last earnings report, said Amazon would “double down” on Alexa after blowing past projections.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/amazon-laying-off-hundreds–report.html

  • Oracle CEO Mark Hurd Says Corporate IT Spending Set to Jump

    “People have not invested in IT for a decade, so we have old stuff out there,” Mr. Hurd told senior corporate technology managers Monday at the company’s CloudWorld event in New York.

    Mr. Hurd said most companies have shied away from spending as U.S. economic growth hovered below 3% in recent years: “If the market is only growing at 2%, that means your business is only going to grow 2%,” he said.

    Business spending on IT has been flat “because GDP is flat,” he said, referring to gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic growth. To hedge against lackluster growth, companies have cut IT budgets to improve cash flow, while funneling costs into managing the increasing risk of cyber attacks, breaches and other risks, he said.

    https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/02/12/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-says-corporate-it-spending-set-to-jump/

  • Cisco to Bring $67 Billion to U.S. After New Tax Law

    The networking-gear maker said Wednesday it would repatriate $67 billion of its foreign cash holdings to the U.S. this quarter, in one of the largest repatriation plans yet revealed.

    Cisco plans to spend much of the newly repatriated cash on share buybacks and dividends, it said Wednesday while reporting earnings, amounting to about $44 billion over the next two years.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-returns-to-growth-after-two-year-sales-slump-1518645580

Photo: Anastasia Yılmaz

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/21/2017

Cloud technology is the main theme of the week. Microsoft solidified themselves as the #2 cloud company with very strong earnings. Amazon is zoning in on health cloud and lured away a Box executive to make things happen. They also removed certain ownership language in their standard contracts that rubbed many clients the wrong way. Google is attempting to push quantum computing to cloud as industry insiders ponder if their strategy is working.

IBM’s 21st consecutive quarterly loss had news organizations and investors calling for IBM to make a change… any change at this point.

Acquisitions

  • Sprint’s Chairman Has Engaged Warren Buffett About Investment

    Sprint Corp. Chairman Masayoshi Son has engaged Warren Buffett and cable mogul John Malone in discussions about participating in a deal with the wireless company, people familiar with the situation say.

    The contours of the deal the parties are discussing are unclear. The talks are at an early stage and may not result in an agreement, the people said, but one possibility would see Berkshire put more than $10 billion into a transaction.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-executives-have-engaged-warren-buffett-about-investment-1500055560

  • Uber Rival Grab in Talks for Up to $2 Billion from SoftBank, China’s Didi

    Singapore-based GrabTaxi Holdings Pte is raising as much as $2 billion from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp and Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing Technology Co., people familiar with the matter said.

    The deal could be completed in the next few weeks and would value Grab, as it is known, at more than $5 billion—making it the region’s most valuable startup. Grab launched in 2012 and operates in 65 cities across seven countries.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-rival-grab-in-talks-for-up-to-2-billion-from-softbank-chinas-didi-1500032435

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM’s AI can predict schizophrenia by looking at the brain’s blood flow

    The research team first trained its neural network on a 95-member dataset of anonymized fMRI images from the Function Biomedical Informatics Research Network which included scans of both patients with schizophrenia and a healthy control group. These images illustrated the flow of blood through various parts of the brain as the patients completed a simple audio-based exercise. From this data, the neural network cobbled together a predictive model of the likelihood that a patient suffered from schizophrenia based on the blood flow. It was able to accurately discern between the control group and those with schizophrenia 74 percent of the time.

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/20/ibms-ai-can-predict-schizophrenia-by-looking-at-the-brains-blo/

Cloud

  • Amazon nabs a top Box exec in health as it goes after the medical industry

    Missy Krasner, vice president and managing director of Box’s healthcare and life sciences group, is headed to the e-commerce company, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The sources, who asked not to be named because the hire hasn’t been announced, didn’t know exactly what role she’ll have.

    Amazon is investing heavily in health across a number of different areas, and another source said Krasner has been talking to Amazon Web Services for several years about a potential move.

    AWS, the cloud division, is bolstering its HIPAA-compliant offerings so that health-care providers and insurers can store and move customer data. Customers include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Siemens and Orion Health.

    http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/20/amazon-hires-box-vp-missy-krasner-to-beef-up-health-division.html

  • Google wants to sell quantum computing in the cloud

    Whether or not you believe Google has honest-to-goodness quantum computers, the bigger problem is their limited access: they’re largely off-limits outside of the company itself. That could change sooner than you think, though. Bloomberg sources understand that Google is gearing up toward using its quantum systems in a “faster, more powerful” computing service than it offers today. It recently started offering access to researchers in order to spur development of tools and apps (including through an open source Project Q initiative), and there’s a new lab it describes as an “embryonic quantum data center.” It’s looking at the practical realities of quantum computing, in other words.

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/17/google-puts-quantum-computers-to-work-in-cloud/

  • Is Google’s Cloud Strategy Working?

    Alphabet doesn’t break out its cloud sales, but it believes it could beat Amazon to become the world’s largest cloud infrastructure vendor in the next five years. Amazon generated $3.7 billion in revenue from its cloud division, AWS (Amazon Web Services), in 2Q17, which represented a 42.0% YoY (year-over-year) rise.

    Alphabet’s cloud business will be on the radar of many investors as it reports 2Q17 earnings, mainly due to Google’s comments about its cloud strategy. Google earlier this year suggested that it doesn’t see itself joining rivals Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle in cloud computing pricing wars.

    Instead, Google wants to compete on the basis of service quality and portray itself as the go-place for cloud services related to data analytics and artificial intelligence.

    http://marketrealist.com/2017/07/is-googles-cloud-strategy-working/

  • Amazon Cloud Service Drops Controversial Clause

    With competition heating up in the cloud computing arena, Amazon.com Inc. is removing a clause from its Amazon Web Services contracts that irked customers worried about their intellectual property (IP).

    Based on an updated version of the AWS customer agreement, the ecommerce giant has remove the non-asset clause from the contract that prevented customers from suing the company over patent infringement. With a tons of companies using AWS for computing and data storage, many were concerned that IP could end up in the hands of Amazon.

    http://www.investopedia.com/news/amazon-cloud-service-drops-controversial-clause/

  • Microsoft Profit Jumps, Fueled by Cloud Computing

    Microsoft doesn’t disclose revenue figures for its Azure and Office 365 businesses, but it said Azure revenue jumped 97% and Office 365 revenue rose 43%.

    Overall, Microsoft posted $6.51 billion in fourth-quarter net income, or 83 cents a share, compared with a profit of $3.12 billion, or 39 cents a share, a year ago. Excluding the impact of revenue deferrals and other items, adjusted earnings climbed to 98 cents from 69 cents a year earlier.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cloud-computing-helps-power-microsoft-earnings-1500583095

Datacenter

  • Michael Dell Says Public Cloud Is Important But It’s Not Everything

    “There’s a boomerang of companies moving to public cloud,” Dell said. “We’re not against it, but it’s not the right place to put all workloads.”

    For 90% of a given company’s predictable computing tasks, running them in-house or in a co-location center, costs less than public cloud, Dell said. A co-location center is a data center used by many businesses, each of which controls their own hardware and software.

    “AWS gets expensive when you scale it up,” Dell said. (That’s a contention that Amazon would likely contest.)

    http://fortune.com/2017/07/17/michael-dell-cloud-computing/

Software/SaaS

  • Rimini Street: Dispute with Oracle is contract law, not copyright

    The smaller company accepted some of the charges against it, saying it will pay $35.6m for “innocently infringing the software”, but appealed against the rest following the October 2016 judgment.

    Without being able to do this, Rimini Street is prevented from carrying out its responsibilities to its own clients, Perry added.

    He argued that Oracle had surrendered its exclusive rights to copying, and that Rimini had permission to copy the software – instead the issue was with the environment that it created and how that environment was used, and on which server it lived.

    “Cross-use and hosting are contract law,” Perry said. “Those are licence disputes… and ought to be resolved as matter of contract law and not copyright law.”

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/14/oracle_vs_rimini_street_court_latest/

Other

  • IBM Revenue Decline Continues to Pressure Bottom Line

    The 4.7% drop in second-quarter revenue, to $19.3 billion, marked the 21st consecutive quarter of declining sales at IBM. Profit margins also narrowed across all business units, including the divisions for its main cloud computing and Watson-artificial intelligence operations—two areas Ms. Rometty is counting on to propel the company’s turnaround. Profit fell 6.9% from a year earlier.

    Earnings results exceeded analysts’ expectations. Still, revenue came in below forecasts, and shares in Big Blue slid more than 3% after-hours Tuesday, extending a roughly 8% drop this year through Tuesday’s close. In contrast, the S&P 500’s has gained nearly 9% during the same period.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-revenue-decline-continues-to-pressure-bottom-line-1500411024

  • To Save IBM, Rometty Needs To Go Big Or Go Home

    Rometty should aggressively rebrand IBM by simply naming it after the one thing in which IBM remains a market leader – Watson. All efforts in the cloud should be geared towards not just acting as a service provider but differentiating IBM by tailoring Watson’s services to the given client’s data so it can augment their decision-making. While they’re at it they can rename their cloud effort Watson Cloud.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanwibberley/2017/07/19/to-save-ibm-rometty-needs-to-go-big-or-go-home/#2479fd827ac0
    Cramer: IBM is just another company that has been ‘Amazoned’

    Regarding IBM’s growth, Cramer said a lot of the initiatives the company is doing have not “kicked in yet, so the stock has not kicked in yet.” He added, “IBM is really burdened by the old business. And the new business — they’re up against these amazing companies.”

    http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/19/cramer-ibm-is-just-another-company-that-has-been-amazoned.html

Photo: Robson Hatsukami Morgan