Tag: Google

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Supplier Report: 8/17/2018

The Source: All about the chip: joey lombardi

CPUs are the main story this week. As companies like AMD develop better processors and better manufacturing methods, former CPU champ Intel is finding ways to divest. The company purchased another AI company to add to their Movidius unit.  Can Intel fend off AMD and companies like Foxconn (who are supporting China’s agenda of creating their own processors)?

Cisco’s strategy to focus on software seems to be paying off as the company saw growth of 6% over last year.

Acquisitions

  • Intel buys deep-learning startup Vertex.AI to join its Movidius unit

    Vertex says that Intel will continue to develop PlaidML as an open source project (see its Github page here), where it will continue to support a variety of hardware under an Apache 2.0 license with an Intel nGraph backend. “We are excited to advance flexible deep learning for edge computing as part of Intel,” the company said.

    Intel, once a pace-setter and leader in the computing industry on the strength of its processors, has lost some momentum amid a new wave of companies building processors for mobile and other next-generation devices.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/16/intel-buys-deep-learning-startup-vertex-ai-to-join-its-movidius-unit/

  • Amazon in Running to Acquire Landmark Movie Chain

    Pushing into movie theaters would follow Amazon’s expansion into myriad other forms of media, including a film and TV studio and music service. With Landmark, it gets a chain focused on independent and foreign films that was founded in 1974. The company has more than 50 theaters, including high-profile locations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with about 250 screens in 27 markets.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM pushes back on negative Watson Health stories

    In response to the claims, Kelly noted a number of positives for the company, including a Mayo Clinic poster presentation showing improved enrollment in breast cancer trials following implementation of Watson for Clinical Trial Matching and training from Memorial Sloan Kettering on 13 different cancers, which he says represents 80% of the global cancer incidence and prevalence.

    Kelly also noted an extended contract with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, research showing that its Watson for Genomics found new actionable mutations in 32% of patients and high rates of concordance in breast cancer at Manipal Hospital’s multidisciplinary tumor board.

    https://www.massdevice.com/ibm-pushes-back-on-negative-watson-health-stories/

Cloud

  • Google defends controversial China project in meeting with employees

    “Our stated mission is to organize the world’s information,” Pichai added. “China is one-fifth of the world’s population. I think if we were to do our mission well, I think we have to think seriously about how we do more in China. I genuinely do believe we have a positive impact when we engage around the world and I don’t see any reason why that would be different in China.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/16/17707324/google-china-search-engine-censorship-response-meeting

Security

  • Teen Allegedly Hacked Into Apple’s Network, Got Caught With ‘Hacky Hack Hack’ Folder

    It’s unclear whether the data he accessed was particularly sensitive. Apple caught the teen and alerted the FBI, which in turn worked with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to track down the hacker. Authorities seized two laptops, a phone, and a hard drive. They found a folder on one of his computers titled “Hacky Hack Hack,” according to reports.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb44nn/autralian-teen-hacked-apple-network

  • FBI Is Reportedly Warning Banks That Hackers Are Planning to Make A Global Run on ATMs

    “The FBI has obtained unspecified reporting indicating cyber criminals are planning to conduct a global Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cash-out scheme in the coming days, likely associated with an unknown card issuer breach and commonly referred to as an ‘unlimited operation,’” the FBI letter to banks reads.

    Unlimited operations use malware to gain access to the card information of bank customers and access to the banks’ networks.

    “The cyber criminals typically create fraudulent copies of legitimate cards by sending stolen card data to co-conspirators who imprint the data on reusable magnetic strip cards, such as gift cards purchased at retail stores,” the FBI letter said. “At a pre-determined time, the co-conspirators withdraw accounts funds from ATMs using these cards.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywke7w/fbi-is-reportedly-warning-banks-that-hackers-are-planning-to-make-a-global-run-on-atms

Software/SaaS

  • Cisco Extends Growth Streak on Strong Software Sales

    Cisco’s streak—the company generated $12.84 billion in total revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter, up 6% from a year earlier—comes after two years of declines during which it faced increasing pressure from competitors while it relied heavily on slower-growth hardware sales.

    And the company expects the run to continue, providing guidance that calls for revenue growth of between 5% and 7% in the current quarter.

    Cisco has seen its financial fortunes improve, as it focused on software sales, particularly in the security arena. Revenue in its security segment revenue jumped 12% to $627 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-extends-growth-streak-on-strong-software-sales-1534377123

Datacenter/Hardware

  • AMD Set to Crack Intel’s Lock on Data Centers

    There is an opening for AMD because Intel has struggled to transition to a new chip-manufacturing process. One of the companies that makes AMD’s chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , or TSMC, has moved ahead of Intel and is producing the latest version of AMD’s Epyc server processor, which is expected to start shipping in volume next year. Intel doesn’t intend to launch a server chip based on its newest production process until sometime in 2020.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amd-set-to-crack-intels-lock-on-data-centers-1534439566

  • Foxconn Posts Unexpected Drop in Profit

    Taiwan-based Foxconn said Monday that its net profit for the quarter ended June 30 was 17.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($566.7 million). That compared with the NT$20.2 billion average estimate of analysts polled by S&P Capital IQ. Its net profit in the year-earlier quarter was NT$17.9 billion.

    Foxconn, known formally as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. 2317 0.12% , is the world’s largest contract electronics maker, and is best known for assembling Apple’s iPhones. Last year, Foxconn relied on Apple for about 54% of its revenue, according to Arthur Liao, an analyst at Fubon Research.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/foxconn-posts-unexpected-drop-in-profit-1534163275

  • Foxconn Pursues Chip Ambitions With Plans for China Plant

    Foxconn said it is developing plans within the partnership, which includes “other stakeholders” in the city. “We will be prepared to announce these plans when they have been finalized in the coming months,” the Taiwan-based company said.

    The initiative comes at a time when China is spending billions of dollars to nurture its own semiconductor industry and reduce its reliance on foreign technology, an effort that has grown more urgent as its attempts to acquire U.S. chip companies have met opposition from the U.S. over national-security concerns.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/foxconn-to-build-semiconductor-plant-in-chinas-pearl-river-delta-1534498173?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Brian Kostiuk on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 8/3/2018

Joey Lombardi: Apple hits a trillion

Apple crossed over the line to become a TRILLION dollar company. Will they stay at level or dip down? When will Microsoft or Amazon join them in the Trillion Dollar Club?

Google is rumored to be creating a censored search engine for China. Upon the news being released, several Google employees expressed their disdain for the project.

With Jan Koum gone, Facebook is finally monetizing WhatsApp. Will the platform continue to thrive under Facebook or fail due to competition from Signal and other messaging clients?

Acquisitions

  • GE Puts Digital Assets on the Block

    The Boston-based company has hired an investment bank to run an auction for the operations, which produced $500 million or more in revenue last year and lost money, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Though proceeds of a sale aren’t expected to mean much for a company with a market value of more than $100 billion, the move to unload the operations is symbolic of a dramatic reversal of fortune at GE, which has stumbled badly after a series of missteps.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ge-puts-digital-assets-on-the-block-1532972822?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Cisco is buying Duo Security for $2.35B in cash

    Duo Security was founded in 2010 by Dug Song and Jonathan Oberheide and went on to raise $121.M through several rounds of funding. The company has 700 employees with offices throughout the United States and in London, though the company has remained headquartered in Ann Arbor.

    Co-founder and CEO Dug Song will continue leading Duo as its General Manager and will join Cisco’s Networking and Security business led by EVP and GM David Goeckeler. Cisco in a statement said they value Michigan’s “resources, rich talent pool, and infrastructure,” and remain committed to Duo’s investment and presence in the Great Lakes State.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/02/cisco-is-buying-duo-security-for-2-35b-in-cash/

  • Logitech is buying Blue Microphones

    Logitech today announced its intention to acquire Blue Microphones, the hardware company behind popular podcasting microphones like the Yeti and Snowball. It’s a pretty logical acquisition, as far as these things go — Logitech already operates in the audio space, with speakers and gaming headsets.

    The acquisition of Blue would add an important dimension to that category and help the company take on a rapidly expanding space. Blue’s best known products aren’t high-end, exactly, but they’ve become the go-to choice for upstart podcasters looking to get in on the ground floor in the medium.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/30/logitech-is-buying-blue-microphones/

  • DocuSign acquires SpringCM for $220M to continue evolution beyond electronic signatures

    DocuSign says the acquisition will help its growth beyond its bread and butter work in electronic signatures to modernizing what it calls the System of Agreement. That includes everything from preparing, signing, executing, and managing agreements.

    “DocuSign pioneered the e-signature category, and has built a strong SaaS business around that capability. We’ve also started to offer solutions that connect and automate the entire agreement lifecycle,” DocuSign CEO Dan Springer said in a statement. “We’ve done this with Spring CM as a partner across hundreds of joint commercial and enterprise customers. And we have many more DocuSign customers asking us to provide these capabilities natively as part of our platform. That’s why we believe today’s announcement makes such great business sense.”

    https://www.geekwire.com/2018/docusign-acquires-springcm-220m-continue-evolution-beyond-electronic-signatures/

Artificial Intelligence

  • ‘The discourse is unhinged’: how the media gets AI alarmingly wrong

    According to Lipton, in recent years broader interest in topics like “machine learning” and “deep learning” has led to a deluge of this type of opportunistic journalism, which misrepresents research for the purpose of generating retweets and clicks – he calls it the “AI misinformation epidemic”. A growing number of researchers working in the field share Lipton’s frustration, and worry that the inaccurate and speculative stories about AI, like the Facebook story, will create unrealistic expectations for the field, which could ultimately threaten future progress and the responsible application of new technologies.

    Exaggerated claims in the press about the intelligence of computers is not unique to our time, and in fact goes back to the very origins of computing itself.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/25/ai-artificial-intelligence-social-media-bots-wrong

Software/SaaS

  • Facebook is making its first serious move to monetize WhatsApp

    WhatsApp has rolled out three new ways for customers to connect quickly with businesses: a shortcut button to immediately start a conversation, the ability to have businesses send you information like a boarding pass on WhatsApp, and real-time support, the company said today.

    At the same time, Facebook will now display ads of businesses that link out to WhatsApp. That means that businesses can purchase ads that lead people directly to an already loaded chat with the business on WhatsApp, and they can start talking from there. Businesses can respond to customers for free if they answer within 24 hours but Facebook will charge them for any response after 24 hours. It looks to be another way for Facebook to cash in on its many apps.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17636418/facebook-whatsapp-ads-monetize

  • Amazon reportedly plans to end its reliance on Oracle — but Oracle says Amazon bought $60 million of its tech just a year ago

    “We don’t believe that Amazon Web Services has any database technology that comes close to the capabilities of the Oracle database. That’s why our biggest competitors like Salesforce.com, SAP, and Amazon continue to rely on the Oracle database to run their business,” she said.

    The conflict between Amazon and Oracle has intensified in recent years: Amazon Web Services, the largest player in the cloud market, is attacking Oracle’s core business with tools designed to steal customers away. Oracle, for its part, has made the cloud a big strategic focus for the company, as it works to get a leg up on Amazon.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-oracle-databases-reliance-2018-8

Other

  • Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

    The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.

    Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials.

    https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/

  • Apple is now a $1 trillion company

    Apple hit the $1 trillion mark early this morning when its stock crossed $207.05 per share at 11:48am ET (the stock has since dropped back down slightly). Given the volatile nature of the market, however, it’s possible Apple may not stay a $1 trillion company for very long, or it could bounce back and forth over the $1 trillion mark in the coming days. It technically also isn’t the first to hit $1 trillion, either — PetroChina briefly reached $1 trillion back in 2007, although the stock soon fell below that mark.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17638764/apple-worlds-first-1-trillion-company-market-cap-stock-price
    Joey Lombardi: Apple hits a trillion

Photo: Ronaldo De Oliveira

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Supplier Report: 7/20/2018

The Source: Joey Lombardi: This Dude Loves Mainframes

Amazon’s super-hyped Prime Day was successful, but the extra traffic shut down Amazon.com for a few hours. There are reports that data-center employees were scrambling to find unused servers and equipment to keep the site running.

Google is facing another massive fine ($5B) from the EU over their android operating system. Assuming the EU is successful after appeals, what are they going to do with all that money?

IBM is reporting improved financial performance and mainframe sales are at the center of this success.

Acquisitions

  • Ajit Pai Finds a Spine, Sends Sinclair-Tribune Deal to Merger Purgatory

    Current law prohibits any one company from reaching more than 39 percent of all U.S. TV households in a bid to protect competition and local reporting. Sinclair had petitioned the FCC to eliminate the ownership cap entirely, but the FCC lacks the authority to overturn federal law (that apparently wasn’t stopping the FCC from considering the move anyway).

    In case that failed, Sinclair had a backup plan. Consumer advocates highlighted how Sinclair had hoped to offload numerous stations to either shell companies, subsidiaries, or allies, letting it limbo under the ownership cap.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/594b73/ajit-pai-sinclair-tribune-deal

Cloud

  • Big Tech’s Growth Comes With a Big Bill

    Apple, for instance, is expected to boost its R&D spending by 17% to $14 billion for this calendar year, outpacing the 10% revenue growth analysts expect for the same period. The iPhone maker’s R&D bill has been steadily climbing over the last several years as it seeks out new hit products to offset its slowing smartphone and tablet businesses. But Apple still underspends Google-parent Alphabet as well as Microsoft and Amazon in both whole dollars and in percent of revenue, leading Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein to note last week that the company may still be “underinvesting in innovation.”

    Capital spending will also rise sharply—especially for companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google that have to keep building out network infrastructure to deliver their growing list of cloud-based services. Google’s capex bill alone is projected to surge more than 50% this year, while analysts expect increases of more than 30% for Microsoft and Amazon. And most projections for Amazon exclude the capital leases that the company also uses.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-techs-growth-comes-with-a-big-bill-1531819800?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • DuckDuckGo slams Google following EU antitrust decision

    The allegation came in a series of tweets from the DuckDuckGo Twitter account as a response to the fine. In them, the search engine claims that the company’s “anti-competitive search behavior isn’t limited to Android,” but it also exists in other products, like the Chrome browser as well. “Every time we update our Chrome browser extension, all of our users are faced with an official-looking dialogue asking them if they’d like to revert their search settings and disable the entire extension,” the tweet said.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17595612/google-antitrust-eu-duckduckgo-chrome
    Update: Google owns Duck.com, but it’ll give rival DuckDuckGo a shoutout anyhow

    But after a new round of complaints this Friday, Google has relented. Google comms VP Rob Shilkin just quacked tweeted that a new landing page will give people an opportunity to click from Duck.com straight through to DuckDuckGo. Or to the Wikipedia page for ducks, because that’s only fair.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/google-owns-duck-com-but-itll-give-rival-duckduckgo-a-shoutout-anyhow/
    The Source: Joey Lombardi: Duck Duck No

  • Amazon’s EC2 gets faster processors, new high-memory instances

    Not only can you now run EC2 inside a Snowball Edge device, but the company also announced a bunch of new EC2 instance types in the cloud. Thanks to these new instance types, developers now have access to a new instance type (Z1d) with custom Xeon processors that can run at up to 4.0 GHz, as well as new memory-optimized instances (R5) that run at up to 3.1 GHz and that feature up to 50 percent more CPU power and 60 percent more memory than their predecessors. There also are some bare metal variants of these instances, as well as an R5d version that features local NVMe storage.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/amazons-ec2-gets-faster-processors-new-high-memory-instances/

Security

  • What Stays on Facebook and What Goes? The Social Network Cannot Answer

    In exchanges with reporters and lawmakers over the past week, its leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive — have been comically tripped up by some of the most basic questions the site faces. Mr. Zuckerberg, in an interview with the journalist Kara Swisher that was published Wednesday, argued that Facebook would not ban Holocaust denialism on the site because “there are things that different people get wrong.” He later explained there were many other ways that Holocaust deniers could be penalized by Facebook — yet lucidity remained elusive.

    Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments fit a larger pattern. Presented with straightforward queries about real-world harm caused by misinformation on their service, Facebook’s executives express their pain, ask for patience, proclaim their unwavering commitment to political neutrality and insist they are as surprised as anyone that they are even in the position of having to come up with speech rules for billions of people.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/technology/facebook-misinformation.html
    Zuckerberg: I didn’t intend to defend Holocaust deniers

    Earlier today, Recode’s Kara Swisher released an extensive interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg covering the platform’s struggles during a long, scandal-ridden year. Nestled inside was an exchange where Swisher pressed the executive on why it allows some conspiracy theorists to be allowed to post on the platform, regardless of the truth of their statements — and he explicitly explained that these users, including Holocaust deniers, deserve a voice. This predictably kicked up a ruckus online, and Zuckerberg emailed a clarification to Recode reaffirming that he finds Holocaust deniers “deeply offensive” and didn’t intend to defend them. But he did state Facebook’s goal: Not to stop fake news, but prevent it from spreading.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/18/zuckerberg-i-didn-t-intend-to-defend-holocaust-deniers/
    The Source: Joey Lombardi: Zuck has no answers

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Internal documents show how Amazon scrambled to fix Prime Day glitches

    The e-commerce giant also had to add servers manually to meet the traffic demand, indicating its auto-scaling feature may have failed to work properly leading up to the crash, according to external experts who reviewed the documents. “Currently out of capacity for scaling,” one of the updates said about the status of Amazon’s servers, roughly an hour after Prime Day’s launch. “Looking at scavenging hardware.”

    A breakdown in an internal system called Sable, which Amazon uses to provide computation and storage services to its retail and digital businesses, caused a series of glitches across other services that depend on it, including Prime, authentication and video playback, the documents show.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/amazon-internal-documents-what-caused-prime-day-crash-company-scramble.html

  • Mainframes the Unlikely Star of IBM’s Q2 Earnings

    It was systems hardware that really stood out though: the company’s IBM Z line of mainframes was up 100 percent year-on-year, “reflecting high adoption rate of [the] z14 and strong demand for new workloads”, IBM revealed in a slideshow.

    (The new IBM z14 single frame model mainframes can process 850 million encrypted transactions per day in the space of two floor tiles, and are a popular choice for data centers; it can deliver 100 percent encryption of application, cloud service and database data and allow open source machine learning to run on it.)

    https://www.cbronline.com/news/ibm-q2-mainframes

  • Amazon denies it will challenge Cisco with switch sales

    “Cisco and AWS have a longstanding customer and partner relationship, and during a recent call between Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and AWS CEO Andy Jassy, Andy confirmed that AWS is not actively building a commercial network switch,” a Cisco Systems Inc. spokesman told MarketWatch on Wednesday.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/exclusive-amazon-denies-it-will-challenge-cisco-with-switch-sales-2018-07-18
    The Source: Joey Lombardi

  • Google builds its own subsea cable from the US to France

    As Google notes, owning the cable means it can lay it exactly where it needs it to be to connect its data centers — without having to take into account the needs of other consortium partners. Owning the cable also means that Google owns all the bandwidth for the lifetime of the cable (usually 15 to 25 years).

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/google-builds-its-own-subsea-cable-from-the-us-to-france/

Other

  • Google fined a record $5 billion by the EU for Android antitrust violations

    Google has been hit with a record-breaking €4.3 billion ($5 billion) fine by EU regulators for breaking antitrust laws. The European Commission says Google has abused its Android market dominance in three key areas. Google has been bundling its search engine and Chrome apps into the operating system. Google has also blocked phone makers from creating devices that run forked versions of Android, and it “made payments to certain large manufacturers and mobile network operators” to exclusively bundle the Google search app on handsets.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/18/17580694/google-android-eu-fine-antitrust
    Again I ask – what would the EU do with this money? How does this fine help the people and companies Google impacted?

  • IBM Rides Newer Businesses to Higher Revenue, Profit

    The Armonk, N.Y., company’s profit rose 3.1% to $2.4 billion. Excluding special items, IBM had a profit of $3.08 a share. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting an adjusted profit of $3.04 a share.

    IBM shares, down 6% over the past year, rose 2.8% to $148.50 in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

    Despite reporting higher revenue and profit in the latest quarter, IBM still faces challenges on several fronts. In its Cognitive Solutions segment, which includes services tied to the Watson supercomputer, sales fell 1% after adjusting for currency moves to $4.6 billion.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-rides-new-businesses-to-higher-revenue-profit-1531946666?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Jj Mendez on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/13/2018

Amazon Networking: Joey Lombardi: The Source

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

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

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

Acquisitions

  • Broadcom acquires CA Technologies for $18.9B in cash

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

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

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

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

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

  • AT&T acquires threat intelligence company AlienVault

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

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

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

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

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

Cloud

  • Oracle Set to Merge Its Cloud Business

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

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

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

Security

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

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

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

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

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

  • Microsoft urges lawmakers to regulate facial recognition technology

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

  • OpenText CEO opens up on organic growth ambitions

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

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

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

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Amazon Web Services Targets Cisco in Networking

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted on

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

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