Tag: Foxconn

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Suppler Report: 5/10/2019

Apple and Microsoft are starting the push for the cloud… services. Apple is expected to derive 30% of their profits from services this year and much more in the future.  For Microsoft, it isn’t enough to host, they want to be a platform for productivity, IOT, and blockchain.

And as those companies succeed, others like Verzion and Oracle are struggling with their cloud services and acquisitions. Verizon is now looking to sell off Yahoo assets like Tumblr after users have fled from the platform. Oracle is expecting weaker companies to consolidate.

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM’s decision to halt sales of Watson AI: strategic move or admission of failure?

    At present, IBM says it will no longer develop or market the drug discovery application but will continue to support existing users of the software. It may be that the technology is simply not yet mature enough for deployment in certain capacities such as drug discovery, diagnosis and treatment recommendations despite indications of some success by other AI companies.

    However, given that AI employs machine learning, with further input of data from a variety of sources, the abilities and accuracy of the AI will most likely increase. With the pressure to commercialize a driving factor for many companies, there may not be enough time set aside for the numerous iterations and human participation necessary for developing and fine-tuning the technology.

    https://www.verdict.co.uk/ibm-watson-ai-healthcare/

Cloud

  • Accenture sued over website redesign so bad it Hertz: Car hire biz demands $32m+ for ‘defective’ cyber-revamp

    As Hertz endured the delays, it found itself immersed in a nightmare: a product and design that apparently didn’t do half of what was specified and still wasn’t finished. “By that point, Hertz no longer had any confidence that Accenture was capable of completing the project, and Hertz terminated Accenture,” the car rental company complained in a lawsuit [PDF] lodged against Accenture in New York this month.

    Hertz is suing for the $32m it paid Accenture in fees to get to that aborted stage, and it wants more millions to cover the cost of fixing the mess. “Accenture never delivered a functional website or mobile app,” Hertz claimed.

    Accenture told El Reg on Tuesday this week it believes Hertz’s lawsuit is “without merit.”

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_lawsuit/

  • Verizon Looks to Unload Tumblr Blogging Site

    It is unclear how much Verizon might get for Tumblr, a free service with more than 400 million blogs. Yahoo paid about $1.1 billion for the New York-based site in 2013, when it was among a number of fast-growing startups such as online scrapbook Pinterest and news aggregation and commenting site Reddit.

    But Tumblr struggled to generate meaningful revenue for Yahoo and was eclipsed by other social media, such as Medium, Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012. Yahoo wrote down Tumblr’s value by $230 million in 2016.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-looks-to-unload-tumblr-blogging-site-11556823135

  • Microsoft’s Satya Nadella uses a subtle fear tactic to win cloud business away from Amazon

    Nadella was reminding Read that unlike giant cloud provider Amazon, Microsoft isn’t competing with WPP. It isn’t a retailer competing with WPP’s customer’s either. And although it does have Bing and does sell ads, it also has an ad sales partnership with WPP.

    Nadella’s sales pitch is simple, and one used not just with ad agency giant WPP but with retailers, an industry Amazon has really clobbered: Do you trust a technology partner to store their data, handle their transactions, know the most intimate details of their business, if that tech partner is also a competitor?

    https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-subtle-fear-tactic-win-cloud-business-amazon-2019-5

  • Oracle CEO Mark Hurd says that consolidation is coming as ‘underfunded’ cloud software companies get bought up: ‘Many of the companies will go away’

    “Hurd’s analysis is correct,” Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, told Business Insider.

    “Smaller SaaS companies are underfunded and will have trouble competing with the big players in this market. If they have unique technology they could become M&A targets. It is expensive to market and serve the SaaS markets and being under-capitalized will hurt their chances to compete for the same businesses big SaaS companies go after today.”

    Ray Wang, president of Constellation Research, agreed, saying: “We are still in a market of consolidation.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-cloud-software-consolidation-2019-5

Security/Privacy

  • Zero-day attackers deliver a double dose of ransomware—no clicking required

    Attackers have been actively exploiting a critical zero-day vulnerability in the widely used Oracle WebLogic server to install ransomware, with no clicking or other interaction necessary on the part of end users, researchers from Cisco Talos said on Tuesday.

    The vulnerability and working exploit code first became public two weeks ago on the Chinese National Vulnerability Database, according to researchers from the security educational group SANS ISC, who warned that the vulnerability was under active attack. The vulnerability is easy to exploit and gives attackers the ability to execute code of their choice on cloud servers. Because of their power, bandwidth, and use in high-security cloud environments, these servers are considered high-value targets. The disclosure prompted Oracle to release an emergency patch on Friday.

    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/zeroday-attackers-deliver-a-double-dose-of-ransomware-no-clicking-required/

  • Large GDPR Fines Are Imminent, EU Privacy Regulators Say

    Helen Dixon, Ireland’s data-protection commissioner, said at an event here that her office has received about 6,000 complaints since GDPR went into effect. Most have been minor, such as individuals having problems deleting their accounts with certain firms. But her office is now investigating 18 cases involving large data breaches, systemic privacy issues and other serious violations at technology firms, she said.

    Ms. Dixon said she plans to bring her first draft decisions for enforcement actions to the European Data Protection Board this summer. Other data protection authorities can raise objections.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/large-gdpr-fines-are-imminent-eu-privacy-regulators-say-11556829079

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft launches a fully managed blockchain service

    We’re not talking cryptocurrencies here, though. This is an enterprise service that is meant to help businesses build applications on top of blockchain technology. It is integrated with Azure Active Directory and offers tools for adding new members, setting permissions and monitoring network health and activity.

    The first support ledger is J.P. Morgan’s Quorum. “Because it’s built on the popular Ethereum protocol, which has the world’s largest blockchain developer community, Quorum is a natural choice,” Azure CTO Mark Russinovich writes in today’s announcement. “It integrates with a rich set of open-source tools while also supporting confidential transactions—something our enterprise customers require.” To launch this integration, Microsoft partnered closely with J.P. Morgan.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/02/microsoft-launches-a-fully-managed-blockchain-service/

  • Services really are becoming a bigger part of Apple’s business

    This shift is already playing out in the company’s financials. While product sales dipped a bit year-over-year — down from $51.3 billion in the quarter that ran from January to March 2018 to $46.6 billion in the same quarter of 2019 — revenue from the services business climbed from $9.9 billion to $11.5 billion.

    In this fiscal Q2 quarter of 2018, Apple’s total revenue came in at roughly $61.1 billion; in the same quarter of 2019, it dipped to $58 billion. This works out to services accounting for 16.1% of Apple’s revenue in fiscal Q2 2018, but nearly 20% in fiscal Q2 2019. Apple CFO Luca Maestri says services now account for “one-third” of the company’s gross profits.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/services-really-are-becoming-a-bigger-part-of-apples-business/

Other

  • Foxconn Chairman Meets With Trump as Wisconsin Plant Plans Fall Behind

    The Foxconn project is one of the biggest U.S. public-incentive deals ever offered to a foreign company, a more than $4 billion package of state and local tax breaks and infrastructure investment.

    President Trump has been involved with the Wisconsin project since its inception, and said he was the one who advised Mr. Gou to build in rural southeastern Wisconsin. At last year’s groundbreaking, President Trump touted the plant as a pillar of his plan to bring advanced-manufacturing jobs to the industrial Midwest and described Chairman Gou as “one of the most successful businessmen in the world, very few people even close.”

    But President Trump didn’t mention Foxconn in a Saturday night rally in Green Bay, a rare omission for a project he has described as “the eighth wonder of the world.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/foxconn-chairman-heads-to-wisconsin-plant-site-after-meeting-with-president-trump-11556810035

  • Alphabet Falls $1 Billion Short of Revenue Forecasts, Blaming Strong Dollar

    The law of large numbers is simple: As a company gets bigger, it becomes difficult to find new ways to make money and maintain rapid growth. The issue has dogged other big tech companies like Apple in recent years.

    Alphabet explained the revenue shortfall with a very big-company answer. It said the strong United States dollar dented revenue by $1.2 billion. Google executives rattled off a long list of currencies weakening against the dollar, including the euro, the British pound, Brazilian real and Indian rupee. The company said it expected foreign currency to be an issue again in the current quarter.

    Shares of Alphabet fell more than 7 percent in early trading on (last) Tuesday.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/alphabet-quarterly-results-2019.html

  • Eric Schmidt to Leave Alphabet Board

    Mr. Schmidt, 64 years old, was appointed CEO in 2001, when Google was still privately traded and just three years old. Already a Silicon Valley veteran, he was brought in to provide managerial heft to the less experienced founders of the company, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The interview process included a trip by the three men to the free-spirited Burning Man festival in Nevada.

    Board member Diane Greene, who was replaced as chief executive of the cloud division in January, also will leave the board, the company announced. Cloud has been a sore spot for Google, despite a big hiring push and the attention of some of the company’s top executives.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-schmidt-to-leave-alphabet-board-11556659629

Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 4/26/2019

Google continues to make moves in the cloud with new hires and policy changes that should make their services more attractive under the leadership of Thomas Kurian but news continues to leak about failing AI ethics boards and past behavior with open source competitors that makes me wonder if Google is actually evil (sometimes). But there is good news… Google’s streaming beef with Amazon seems to be squashed…for now.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile is facing an uphill battle with the DOJ on their Sprint merger plans and Wisconsin might actually push back against Foxconn.


Acquisitions

  • T-Mobile-Sprint Deal Runs Into Resistance From DOJ Antitrust Staff

    The nation’s third- and fourth-biggest carriers by subscribers are facing challenges on several fronts, but their most immediate hurdle comes from the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which is considering whether the deal would present an unacceptable threat to competition.

    In a meeting earlier this month, Justice Department staff members laid out their concerns with the all-stock deal and questioned the companies’ arguments that the combination would produce important efficiencies for the merged firm, the people said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/t-mobile-sprint-deal-runs-into-resistance-from-doj-antitrust-staff-11555446461

  • Salesforce is buying MapAnything, a startup that raised over $84 million

    The companies did not reveal the selling price, and Salesforce didn’t have anything to add beyond a brief press release announcing the deal.

    “The addition of MapAnything to Salesforce will help the world’s leading brands accurately plan: how many people they need, where to put them, how to make them as productive as possible, how to track what’s being done in real time and what they can learn to improve going forward,” Salesforce wrote in the statement announcing the deal.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/salesforce-is-buying-mapanything-a-startup-that-raised-over-84-million/

  • Why it just might make sense that Salesforce.com is buying Salesforce.org

    Salesforce has always made a lot of hay about being a responsible capitalist. It’s something it highlights at events and really extends with the 1-1-1 model it created, which gives one percent of profit, time and resources (product) to education and nonprofits. Its employees are given time off and are encouraged to work in the community. Salesforce.org has been the driver behind this, but something drove the company to bring Salesforce.org into the fold.

    While it’s easy to be cynical about the possible motivations, it could be a simple business reason, says Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research. As he pointed out, it didn’t make a lot of sense from a business perspective to be running two separate entities with separate executive teams, bookkeeping systems and sales teams. What’s more, he said there was some confusion over lack of alignment and messaging between the Salesforce.com education sales team and what was happening at Salesforce.org. Finally, he says because Salesforce.org couldn’t issue Salesforce.com stock options, it might not have been attracting the best talent.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/16/why-it-just-might-make-sense-that-salesforce-com-is-buying-salesforce-org/

  • Microsoft acquires Express Logic for its real-time internet of things operating system

    Microsoft today announced that it’s acquired Express Logic, a 23-year-old San Diego, California-based developer of real-time operating systems (RTOS) for internet of things (IoT) and edge devices powered by microcontroller units (MCUs), for an undisclosed amount.

    “With this acquisition, we will unlock access to billions of new connected endpoints, grow the number of devices that can seamlessly connect to Azure and enable new intelligent capabilities,” wrote Microsoft’s director of IoT Sam George in a blog post. “Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS joins Microsoft’s growing support for IoT devices and is complementary with Azure Sphere, our premier security offering in the microcontroller space.”

    https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/18/microsoft-acquires-express-logic-for-its-real-time-internet-of-things-operating-system/

  • CloudBees acquires Electric Cloud to build out its software delivery management platform

    CloudBees, the enterprise continuous integration and delivery service (and the biggest contributor to the Jenkins open-source automation server), today announced that it has acquired Electric Cloud, a continuous delivery and automation platform that first launched all the way back in 2002.

    The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but CloudBees has raised a total of $113.2 million while Electric Cloud raised $64.6 million from the likes of Rembrandt Venture Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, RRE Ventures and Next47.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/cloudbees-acquires-electric-cloud-to-build-out-its-software-delivery-management-platform/

Artificial Intelligence

  • The most overlooked path to commercialize AI is for companies to do it themselves

    Scaling these teams is expensive and operationally intensive. Going full stack opens up opportunities for companies to integrate labeling workflows into other jobs. Employees traditionally tasked with performing a consumer or enterprise service can take on the extra task at reduced expense. And if their role is assisted by a machine, they will gradually become more productive over time as their assistive models get more accurate with more labeled data.

    A second and inherently related benefit of going full stack is that these startups are able to generate — and own — powerful virtuous data feedback loops. Owning data flows creates more impressive moats than merely locking down static data sets. Deep Sentinel has a natural moat in the consumer security space, for example, as it not only has accurate classifiers, but accurate classifiers that continue to improve with real-world data generated in an environment it can control.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/15/the-most-overlooked-path-to-commercialize-ai-is-for-companies-to-do-it-themselves/

  • What HIPAA Compliance Means for Amazon

    Amazon is currently working with six business partners — Livongo, Express Scripts, Cigna Health Today, Swedish Health Connect, Atrium Health and ERAS, a program of Boston Children’s Hospital — to help customers make appointments, access medical instruction, track a prescription and other services. It’s a big step for one of the world’s most powerful companies, giving it a stronghold in the $3.5 trillion health care industry.

    Amazon had been working for some time to develop software that would meet federal HIPAA regulations, and it even created a health team within its Alexa division a year ago to work on the project, according to Business Insider. Meeting HIPAA standards is important, but the professors questioned whether it is enough.

    “I’m not sure that Amazon’s checking off the regulatory box on HIPAA compliance begins to answer the privacy concerns that we ought to have,” Rosoff said.

    https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/alexa-hipaa-compliant/

Cloud

  • Google Cloud brings on 27-year SAP veteran as it doubles down on enterprise adoption

    Unsurprisingly, Kurian is also looking to put his stamp on the executive team, too, and today announced that former SAP executive Robert Enslin is joining Google Cloud as its new president of Global Customer Operations.

    Enslin’s hire is another clear signal that Kurian is focused on enterprise customers. Enslin, after all, is a veteran of the enterprise business, with 27 years at SAP, where he served on the company’s executive board until he announced his resignation from the company earlier this month. After leading various parts of SAP, including as president of its cloud product portfolio, president of SAP North America and CEO of SAP Japan, Enslin announced that he had “a few more aspirations to fulfill.” Those aspirations, we now know, include helping Google Cloud expand its lineup of enterprise customers.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/google-cloud-brings-on-27-year-sap-veteran-as-it-doubles-down-on-enterprise-adoption/

Security

  • Facebook admits harvesting 1.5 million people’s email contacts without consent

    Facebook has admitted to accessing and storing the email contacts of as many as 1.5 million of its users without their consent. Business Insider reports that between May 2016 and last month, the social media platform asked some of its new users to verify their email address by providing the password to their email account. After doing so, the users’ contacts would be automatically imported, without any option for the user to opt out.

    Responding to the report, a Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that email contacts were “unintentionally uploaded” as part of the process. They said that these contacts had never been shared with anyone, and that the company is now deleting the contacts that were uploaded. Facebook also claims to have fixed the “underlying issue” that led to the problem.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18485089/facebook-email-password-contacts-upload-1-5-million-security-cybersecurity

Software/SaaS

  • Former Mozilla exec: Google has sabotaged Firefox for years

    “Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We’ll fix it soon. We want the same things. We’re on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe?”

    “I’m all for ‘don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence’ but I don’t believe Google is that incompetent. I think they were running out the clock. We lost users during every oops. And we spent effort and frustration every clock tick on that instead of improving our product. We got outfoxed for a while and by the time we started calling it what it was, a lot of damage had been done,” Nightingale said.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/

  • IBM’s Shares Slide as Growth Challenges Remain

    Goldman Sachs analysts said they were encouraged by IBM’s results, but added that investors remain skeptical of the company’s ability to sustain improvements. Cloud revenue accounted for one-quarter of IBM’s total revenue over the past 12 months, up from 22% a year earlier, an IBM representative said.

    Shares in IBM fell 4.2% to $139.11 on Wednesday. The stock is down 14% over the past year.

    IBM’s year-over-year revenue had fallen in virtually every quarter since Ms. Rometty took over until the last quarter of 2017. The company also posted revenue growth in the first half of last year, but that turnaround proved short-lived: Revenue declined again in the last two quarters of 2018.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibms-shares-tumble-as-challenges-remain-in-hunt-for-growth-11555526709

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple and Qualcomm settle dispute, paving way for 5G iPhone

    The two U.S. companies have been negotiating details of the settlement for weeks, sources told the Nikkei Asian Review. They have agreed to drop all litigation worldwide and struck a six-year licensing agreement, that will ensure the launch of the first 5G iPhone in 2020. The settlement included an undisclosed payment to Qualcomm by Apple, which several weeks ago asked its suppliers to begin testing the chipmaker’s 5G modems, sources said.

    Intel followed up news of the settlement by announcing its exit from 5G chips and raising questions over the future potential of the next generation technology, which the smartphone industry is hoping will help to revive a market suffering its third consecutive year of decline.

    https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/5G-networks/Apple-and-Qualcomm-settle-dispute-paving-way-for-5G-iPhone

  • Intel to Exit 5G Smartphone Modem Business, Focus 5G Efforts on

    Network Infrastructure and Other Data-Centric Opportunities
    The company will continue to meet current customer commitments for its existing 4G smartphone modem product line, but does not expect to launch 5G modem products in the smartphone space, including those originally planned for launches in 2020.

    “We are very excited about the opportunity in 5G and the ‘cloudification’ of the network, but in the smartphone modem business it has become apparent that there is no clear path to profitability and positive returns,” said Intel CEO Bob Swan. “5G continues to be a strategic priority across Intel, and our team has developed a valuable portfolio of wireless products and intellectual property. We are assessing our options to realize the value we have created, including the opportunities in a wide variety of data-centric platforms and devices in a 5G world.”

    https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-modem-statement/#gs.6hoz8p

  • Microsoft’s green plan: Our data centers will run on 60% renewable energy by 2020

    With the 60 percent milestone in sight, the company is now targeting over 70 percent renewable energy for its data centers by 2023.

    Microsoft is aiming to cut its carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030 and as part of that effort has raised its internal carbon ‘tax’ to $15 per metric ton on all carbon emissions, which is nearly double the current rate for carbon emissions, according to Microsoft president Brad Smith.

    Microsoft has had a carbon tax in place since 2012 that puts the burden on business divisions financially to cut their own carbon emissions.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-green-plan-our-data-centers-will-run-on-60-renewable-energy-by-2020/

Other

  • Gov. Tony Evers wants to renegotiate Foxconn deal, says company won’t employ 13,000

    “Clearly the deal that was struck is no longer in play and so we will be working with individuals at Foxconn and of course with (the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.) to figure out how a new set of parameters should be negotiated,” Evers told reporters in his Capitol office.

    He said it was premature to say what specific changes he would be seeking. Under existing deals, the state and local governments could provide the company up to $4 billion to establish a massive facility in Racine County and create up to 13,000 Wisconsin jobs.

    https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/17/tony-evers-says-foxconn-wont-employ-13-000-wants-new-deal/3498897002/

  • Google and Amazon end their ridiculous streaming video spat

    This should mark the end of a long, contentious relationship between Amazon and Google. For a while, Amazon declined to sell Google’s Chromecast devices, products that compete directly with Amazon’s own Fire TV products. Amazon also didn’t include support for Google Cast in the Prime Video app, which made it essentially impossible to get Prime Video on bigger screens if you used Google products. Google responded by pulling support for the YouTube apps on Fire TV as well as the Echo Show

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/18/google-amazon-youtube-firetv-prime-video-chromecast/

  • The EU has officially passed its controversial copyright law

    A total of 19 European Council members, including France and Germany, voted in favor of the new Copyright Directive. Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland and Sweden voted against adopting the directive, whereas Belgium, Estonia and Slovenia abstained — but their opposition ultimately didn’t matter. EU countries now have 24 months to apply the directive to their national legislations.

    Under the new rules, the likes of YouTube, Facebook and Instagram will be required to obtain licenses for copyrighted works from rights holders in order to host their content. They’ll also be forced to police copyrighted material through the use of tools such as filters. Critics, including Google, fear a surge in takedown requests could turn the web into a ghost town. Internet campaigners, meanwhile, have warned that the resulting censorship could quell unique forms of online expression, from GIFs to memes.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/15/eu-officially-passed-copyright-law/

Photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 4/19/2019

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

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

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

Acquisitions

  • Accenture announces intent to buy French cloud consulting firm

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

  • A Google Brain Program Is Learning How to Program

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

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

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

Cloud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Why IBM Is Leaving The Marketing Cloud Business

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

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

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

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

Security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

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

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

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

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

Infrastructure/Hardware

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

  • Foxconn is confusing the hell out of Wisconsin

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Net Neutrality Vote Passes House, Fulfilling Promise by Democrats

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

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

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

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/15/2019

Location. Location. Location.

Amazon is scrapping their New York City plans due to severe political push-back on the incentives NYC provided and the overall impact to the city.

Meanwhile, the long discussed Foxconn LCD factory that was to be built in Wisconsin, is covered in a cloud confusion. First they were, then they weren’t, and now they are looking to build a smaller facility…maybe?

Acquisitions

  • Report: Intel bids up to $6B to buy Mellanox

    If the deal reaches fruition, the $6 billion price tag would represent a 30% premium over the last closing price of Mellanox on Nasdaq last night, according to a story by Globes.

    The news of Intel’s interest in buying Mellanox came on the heels of Monday’s news that Intel was investing $11 billion to expand its chip plant in Israel. Intel also announced on Monday that it had received a $1 billion government grant for its expansion.

    https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/report-intel-bids-up-to-6b-to-buy-mellanox

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google and Microsoft warn investors that bad AI could harm their brand

    These disclosures are not, on the whole, hugely surprising. The idea of the “risk factors” segment is to keep investors informed, but also mitigate future lawsuits that might accuse management of hiding potential problems. Because of this they tend to be extremely broad in their remit, covering even the most obvious ways a business could go wrong. This might include problems like “someone made a better product than us and now we don’t have any customers,” and “we spent all our money so now don’t have any.”

    But, as Wired’s Tom Simonite points out, it is a little odd that these companies are only noting AI as a potential factor now. After all, both have been developing AI products for years, from Google’s self-driving car initiative, which began in 2009, to Microsoft’s long dalliance with conversational platforms like Cortana. This technology provides ample opportunities for brand damage, and, in some cases, already has. Remember when Microsoft’s Tay chatbot went live on Twitter and started spouting racist nonsense in less than a day? Years later, it’s a still regularly cited as an example of AI gone wrong.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18220050/google-microsoft-ai-brand-damage-investors-10-k-filing

Cloud

  • Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

    This week, the two companies made some more noise, letting the cloud market know that they are not ceding the market to anyone. For IBM, which is holding its big IBM Think conference this week in San Francisco, it involved opening up Watson to competitor clouds. For a company like IBM, this was a huge move, akin to when Microsoft started building apps for iOS. It was an acknowledgement that working across platforms matters, and that if you want to gain market share, you had better start thinking outside the box.

    While becoming cross-platform compatible isn’t exactly a radical notion in general, it most certainly is for a company like IBM, which if it had its druthers and a bit more market share, would probably have been content to maintain the status quo. But if the majority of your customers are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy, it might be a good idea for you to jump on the bandwagon — and that’s precisely what IBM has done by opening up access to Watson across clouds in this fashion.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/google-and-ibm-still-trying-desperately-to-move-cloud-market-share-needle/

Security

  • Huawei Corporate Entities Conspired to Steal Trade Secret Technology and Offered Bonus to Workers who Stole Confidential Information from Companies Around the World

    According to the indictment, in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information on a T-Mobile phone-testing robot dubbed “Tappy.” In an effort to build their own robot to test phones before they were shipped to T-Mobile and other wireless carriers, Huawei engineers violated confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of “Tappy,” taking measurements of parts of the robot, and in one instance, stealing a piece of the robot so that the Huawei engineers in China could try to replicate it. After T-Mobile discovered and interrupted these criminal activities, and then threatened to sue, Huawei produced a report falsely claiming that the theft was the work of rogue actors within the company and not a concerted effort by Huawei corporate entities in the United States and China. As emails obtained in the course of the investigation reveal, the conspiracy to steal secrets from T-Mobile was a company-wide effort involving many engineers and employees within the two charged companies.

    As part of its investigation, FBI obtained emails revealing that in July 2013, Huawei offered bonuses to employees based on the value of information they stole from other companies around the world, and provided to Huawei via an encrypted email address.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-device-manufacturer-and-its-us-affiliate-indicted-theft-trade

Software/SaaS

  • SAP job cuts prove harsh realities of enterprise transformation

    SAP announced that it was restructuring in order to save between €750 million and €800 million (between approximately $856 million and $914 million).

    While the company tried to put as positive a spin on the announcement as possible, it could involve up to 4,000 job cuts as SAP shifts into more modern technologies. “We are going to move our people and our focus to the areas where the new economy needs SAP the most: artificial intelligence, deep machine learning, IoT, blockchain and quantum computing,” CEO Bill McDermott told a post-earnings press conference.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/sap-job-cuts-prove-harsh-realities-of-enterprise-transformation/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google Fiber is leaving Louisville in humiliating setback

    In Louisville, Google Fiber installation crews had been using a process called “shallow trenching” that involved laying fiber cable two inches beneath the sides of roads in the city and covering them up with sealant. The company seemed optimistic about this plan until some of the cable started becoming exposed over time, requiring a second cover-up with hot asphalt. It seems Access realized it had to go a bit deeper with the cabling; in San Antonio, a similar method is used — but the fiber is laid at least six inches deep into the ground. Google Fiber has at times faced legal challenges from rivals (like AT&T) that don’t want to share utility poles, so shallow trenching is also a way around that hurdle.

    Unfortunately, things have somehow gone so awry in Louisville that Google Fiber claims it would need to rebuild the entire network to get everything to a satisfactory point, and it seems Alphabet just isn’t interested in blowing the cash that would be necessary to do that. So instead, Google Fiber will today alert Lousville customers that their service will end on April 15th.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215743/google-fiber-leaving-louisville-service-ending

  • Intel names Robert Swan as permanent CEO

    Intel’s stock slid Thursday after the chipmaker named interim CEO Robert Swan to the position permanently, ending a months-long search following the ouster of Brian Krzanich for what it called a “consensual relationship” with an employee.

    Swan, 58, has been interim CEO for seven months and chief financial officer since 2016. He was also elected to the board, the company said. Several media outlets including Bloomberg previously reported Swan didn’t want the job.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/intel-names-robert-swan-ceo.html

  • Apple will reportedly reveal its news subscription service next month

    Apple might face some stiff opposition in its bid to launch a subscription news service this spring. Wall Street Journal tipsters claim publishers like the New York Times and Washington Post are objecting to terms that would have Apple take “about half” of the revenue from the service, dividing the rest among publishers based on the amount of time people spend reading articles. That’s a considerably higher cut than the 30 percent Apple takes during the first year of a subscription, let alone the 15 percent it takes later on.

    It also wants “at least some” outlets to commit to supplying news for at least a year. Publishers are split on this, according to the sources — some want a longer commitment, while others want a chance to back out sooner.

    The price isn’t set in stone, but it’s tentatively set to cost the same $10 per month that you pay for Apple Music.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/12/apple-news-service-publisher-objections/

  • Microsoft begs users to stop using Internet Explorer

    IE is often used by enterprises and organisations that wish to run legacy web apps, as the outdated browser still supports them, but choosing the easy way out now could come back to haunt businesses later.

    Basically, by continuing to use IE as opposed to a more modern web browser, organisations are creating additional costs for themselves later by choosing the easiest, most convenient solution now as opposed to the best long term approach.

    https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/microsoft-begs-users-to-stop-using-internet-explorer

Other

  • No one seems to know what Foxconn is doing in Wisconsin

    On January 30th, Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn chief executive Terry Gou, told Reuters that the company was rethinking the whole screen-making idea. “In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory,” Woo said. He explained that Foxconn can’t compete producing televisions in the US. Instead, it would be more profitable to manufacture LCD panels in China and Japan, ship them to Mexico, and import them in the US. On Thursday, the Nikkei Asian Review reported that work on the Wisconsin project had been suspended.

    Later that day, Woo appeared to backtrack vaguely, sending a peculiar email to the Milwaukee TV station WTMJ suggesting that it was hard to know what to call the project. “No matter how we look at it, the campus cannot be simply described as a factory,” Woo wrote. “It is a lot more than that.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206261/foxconn-wisconsin-factory-government-subsidies-investments
    After a ‘personal conversation’ with Trump, Foxconn says it will build a factory in Wisconsin after all

    “After productive discussions between the White House and the company, and after a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou, Foxconn is moving forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility,” a statement read. A Gen 6 facility is smaller than the factory Foxconn initially promised in 2017, but larger than the assembly facility Foxconn said it would build yesterday.

    Foxconn has changed its plans multiple times since 2017, when then-Governor Scott Walker wooed the company with a record-breaking $4.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies. At the time, Foxconn promised a state-of-the-art, “Gen 10.5” screen-producing facility, and Walker and Trump touted the deal for bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. In June of last year, however, the company said it would make a far smaller “Gen 6” facility. This week, the company said it wouldn’t make screens in Wisconsin at all, and would instead do a mix of assembly and “knowledge work.” The sudden change in plans seemed to catch Wisconsin officials off guard, and left locals worried about the future of their communities.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207102/trump-foxconn-wisconsin-factory-build
    Foxconn is killing a second $9B factory

    Foxconn will postpone most of the production planned in a 61 billion yuan ($9 billion) display panel project in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou for at least six months, according to internal documents obtained by the Nikkei Asian Review. In the U.S., a $10 billion investment in display production in the state of Wisconsin has been suspended and scaled back as a result of negotiations with new Gov. Tony Evers, a Foxconn document obtained by Nikkei shows.

    Foxconn’s decision to delay work on the two factories throws into doubt the promise of fresh investment and employment at a sensitive time for both economies. China’s economic growth has slowed to a 28-year low, while in the U.S., President Donald Trump continues to seek wins on his vow to bring manufacturing jobs back to America.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/foxconn-is-killing-a-second-9b-factory/

  • Amazon Is Reconsidering Plan to Put Campus in New York

    The recent change in conversation at Amazon accelerated after Monday’s nomination of New York state Sen. Mike Gianaris, a vocal opponent of the deal, to a state board that would allow him to veto the development plan, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Gianaris needs to be approved for the post by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    The governor and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, fellow Democrats who have often clashed, agreed on wooing Amazon to New York with up to $3 billion in state and city tax incentives. On Friday, Mr. Cuomo reiterated his support for the deal for Amazon as he warned that local opponents could derail the project.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-reconsidering-plan-to-put-campus-in-new-york-11549668969?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
    Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters

    Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from some lawmakers and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives.

    Amazon released a statement mentioning they will not open their search to another city at this time:

    We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queens.html

Photo by Zoltan Kovacs on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/25/2019

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

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

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

Acquisitions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • AWS makes another acquisition, grabbing TSO Logic

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

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

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

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

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

  • Robot Hotel Loses Love for Robots

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

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

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

Cloud

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

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

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

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

Security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

  • IBM Announces 2 Blockchain Pilots For The Mining Industry

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

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

Other

  • WeWork’s CEO Makes Millions as Landlord to WeWork

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

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

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

  • Foxconn might slow hiring at its Wisconsin plant

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

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

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