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December 3, 2016November 1, 2023

Supplier Report: 12/3/2016

Amazon is all over the news this week as they are introducing more AI/machine learning tools, more industry specific platforms, and more flexible GPU pricing.

Last week there were rumors that IBM was having issues with their cloud hosting financials, but they bounced back this week by securing American Airlines as a Bluemix customer and also bringing more focus on their blockchain solutions.

HPE is… just confusing me with every public action and comment they make.

Acquisitions

SUSE Acquires HPE OpenStack Cloud Technology and Talent

Linux vendor SUSE is acquiring OpenStack cloud and Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology and staff from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in a deal announced on November 30. Financial terms of the acquisition are not being publicly disclosed and the deal is set to close in the first quarter of 2017.

http://www.eweek.com/cloud/suse-acquires-hpe-openstack-cloud-technology-and-talent.html
IBM closes acquisition of financial consulting firm Promontory (old news)

The firm’s statement continues, “The acquisition complements IBM’s Industry Platforms business, formed to develop open vertical platforms – the first comprehensive ‘as a service’ offerings designed from the ground up for individual industries. These platforms will integrate IBM Cloud, Watson and capabilities from across digital ecosystems of specialized providers, and serve multiple clients in an industry – delivering dramatically reduced costs for outcomes spanning speed, quality, audit-ability, security and transparency.”

http://www.consultancy.uk/news/12849/ibm-closes-acquisition-of-financial-consulting-firm-promontory
Twitter buys startup Yes, Inc. and scores a new VP of product in the process

The new VP of Product, Keith Coleman, steps into the role as part of Twitter’s purchase of seven-person mobile app startup Yes, Inc., where he served as CEO. Prior to that gig, the exec worked as a product manager for another little startup called Google.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/01/twitter-vp/?ncid=rss
Fitbit is buying troubled smartwatch maker Pebble for around $40 million

A source close to the company told TechCrunch that watch maker Citizen was interested in purchasing Pebble for $740 million in 2015. This deal failed and before the launch of the Pebble 2 Intel made an offer for $70 million. The CEO, Eric Migicovsky refused both offers. Our source said that Fitbit is now paying between $34 and $40 million for the company and is “barely covering their debts.”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/fitbit-pebble/?ncid=rss
I am putting this news item on the report as now there is one less IoT/wearable company that could be making health related devices
Related News:
Smartwatches wear out their welcome with Motorola

Android Wear has had a rough year. What started with a promising announcement of Android Wear 2.0 at Google I/O has ended with a delayed launch, an utter lack of new models and now, a disillusioned manufacturer. In an interview with the Verge, Shakil Barkat, Motorola’s head of global product development, said in no uncertain terms that the company has soured on smartwatches and doesn’t “see enough pull in the market” to release a new model anytime soon.

http://www.greenbot.com/article/3146360/android/smartwatches-wear-out-their-welcome-with-motorola.html
Can CSC spin-merger help HPE strike the infrastructure-services balance?

“With ES moving out, it gives us the opportunity to partner far more with the likes of [professional services company] Accenture,” he said.

Also:
HPE VP Alistair Winner says this:

When asked if HPE is still primarily a product and hardware company, Alastair answered resolutely, “No.”

He said where once customers just wanted to buy gear from them and move on, “now customers are saying, ‘Actually, I don’t want to buy gear anymore. Help me consume it, whether that’s on premise or on the cloud.’”

This is a total copout BS statement and Alistair needs to be called out on that.

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/11/29/can-csc-spin-merger-help-hpe-strike-infrastructure-services-balance-hpediscover/

Artificial Intelligence

AWS comes out swinging with A.I. services

The three services being rolled out are Amazon Rekognition for image recognition; Amazon Polly for text-to-speech services; and Amazon Lex, the technology inside its smart device Alexa, offering speech recognition services.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3146089/artificial-intelligence/aws-comes-out-swinging-with-ai-services.html
Should Microsoft be your AI and machine learning platform?

The cloud-based machine-learning marketplace is increasingly crowded, with competing services from the likes of Google, IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Mike Gualtieri, VP at analyst house Forrester, said that while Microsoft offered simpler tools for firms building their own machine-learning models, the quality of the firm’s on-demand, pre-trained speech, vision and language recognition services would likely be less effective than Google’s because of the search giant’s access to huge amounts of training data.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/should-microsoft-be-your-ai-and-machine-learning-platform/
Pfizer to use IBM Watson to devise immunotherapies for cancer

“With the incredible volume of data and literature available in this complex field, we believe that tapping into advanced technologies can help our scientific experts more rapidly identify novel combinations of immune-modulating agents,” said Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s president of worldwide research and development. “We are hopeful that by leveraging Watson’s cognitive capabilities in our drug discovery efforts, we will be able to bring promising new immuno-oncology therapeutics to patients more quickly.”

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20161201/NEWS/161209996

Cloud

How Amazon Web Services is luring banks to the cloud

Jassy said the trend started at last year’s re:Invent, where Capital One Financial Chief Information Officer Rob Alexander talked publicly about recreating the consumer banking experience in the cloud. On Tuesday, Amazon said that over the next five years, Capital One will migrate “many core business and customer applications to AWS.”

Intuit, whose tax and payroll software exposes it to strict regulations, has moved completely to Amazon’s cloud. And the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, is headed in that direction.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/30/how-amazon-web-services-is-luring-banks-to-the-cloud.html
How to compare cloud costs between Amazon, Microsoft and Google

One advantage of IaaS is that customers can spin resources up and down as needed. But the most expensive way to buy cloud-based virtual machines is to pay for them on-demand. If customers plan and commit to a long-term contract, they will save money.

In AWS, the primary way to do this is by using Reserved Instances (RIs). “You get the discount in exchange for making a one-year or three-year commitment with the longer commitment giving a higher discount,” RightScale engineers explain. “If you also pay for some or all of that committed usage upfront, the discount gets larger.” RightScale says discounts of RIs compared to on-demand VMs range from 24% to 75%.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3145470/cloud-computing/how-to-compare-cloud-costs-between-amazon-microsoft-and-google.html
American Airlines selects IBM as its Cloud provider

As part of the partnership, American Airlines will move select enterprise applications to IBM’s Cloud. The airline will be able to leverage the global footprint of IBM Cloud, which consists of more than 50 data centers spanning 17 countries, as well as a wide range of application development capabilities through IBM Bluemix. In addition the company will have access to IBM advanced analytics capabilities and technologies, all of which will enable the company to advance its enterprise into a cognitive infrastructure that offers greater resiliency and better customer experiences.

https://www.traveldailynews.com/post/american-airlines-selects-ibm-as-its-cloud-provider
Amazon Web Services is rolling out a way to use to use just the GPU power you need

That means companies can tap into just a sliver of GPU power, or a larger amount, on demand as they need it and pay for that amount. GPUs can run a ton of tasks in parallel and have a lot of advantages in certain compute situations, like rendering games. But some lightweight processes don’t necessary require a full GPU cluster, which running for a company — especially a smaller one — might become prohibitively expensive very quickly. The new product, introduced at AWS Re:Invent, is called Elastic GPU for EC2.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-web-services-is-rolling-out-a-way-to-use-to-use-just-the-gpu-power-you-need
Docker for AWS: Who’s it really for?

The biggest clue as to who Docker for AWS is aimed at: its use of CloudFormation as its interface to AWS. Cloud Formation was created to allow AWS services to be stood up as a single unit, without the user needing intimate knowledge of how to configure each piece. Configuring services like Elastic Load Balancing or CloudWatch isn’t a trivial process, and most AWS components have a learning curve associated with them.

Docker for AWS reduces the overall learning curve for those who want to use Docker—and Docker Swarm—on AWS. But users can also manually configure a setup later on if the need arises.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3145696/application-development/docker-for-aws-whos-it-really-for.html

Datacenter

Here’s More Bad News for Tech Hardware Makers

Spending by small and medium businesses (SMBs) on laptops, PCs, peripherals, and other hardware will show a just a 1.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next four years compared to 6.6% growth in software spending, and 3.8% growth in IT services spending, according to IDC.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/28/tech-hardware/

Note: This article is a bit of a mess. Cloud is not called out specifically but is probably included in business services, which includes outsourcing.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Demonstrates World’s First Memory-Driven Computing Architecture

“We have achieved a major milestone with The Machine research project — one of the largest and most complex research projects in our company’s history,” said Antonio Neri, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Group at HPE. “With this prototype, we have demonstrated the potential of Memory-Driven Computing and also opened the door to immediate innovation. Our customers and the industry as a whole can expect to benefit from these advancements as we continue our pursuit of game-changing technologies.”

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/news-archive/press-release/2016/11/1287610-hewlett-packard-enterprise-demonstrates-worlds-first-memory-driven-computing-architecture.html

Software/SaaS

IBM is continuing its blockchain push

Putting blockchain to use for real-world transactions is likely not that far off. If working groups’ tests are successful, firms could be using it to transact real value as early as the end of this year and we could see widespread industry application within the next few years.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-is-continuing-its-blockchain-push-2016-12

Other

Why Have IBM’s Global Business Services Failed to Grow?

The government remained tight-lipped about the specifics of what was discussed, but did say that among the topics of discussion was the IT skills gap and the Digital Single Market – an initiative to ensure people and businesses across the continent can access digital services seamlessly and are subject to the same rules and regulations.

http://marketrealist.com/2016/11/ibms-global-business-services-failed-grow-2/

Photo: vedanti

November 26, 2016November 26, 2016

Supplier Report: 11/26/2016

GE is getting in on the artificial intelligence game with the acquisition of two AI firms. As the company tries to bolster their Predix cloud platform, Amazon and Google are about to officially unleash their own machine learning platforms.

As GE, Amazon, and Google grow their services, is IBM faced with the possibility of having to write off their cloud solution? It seems the company vastly overpaid for SoftLayer ($2B to buy, another $1B in enhancements) and it is bringing in a fraction of that cost.

AWS continues to quietly chalk up wins. They scored a hosting and platform provider deal with Tableau this week.

Acquisitions

Oracle Buys Santa Monica Offices for $368 Million

Software giant Oracle Corp. has purchased a Santa Monica office building for $368 million, according to a source familiar with the deal. At roughly $1,165 a square foot, the transaction is one of the priciest ever per square foot for a large office complex in Los Angeles.

http://www.labusinessjournal.com/news/2016/nov/18/oracle-buys-santa-monica-offices-368-million/
This is the 2nd real estate transaction Oracle has been involved in over the last two months..
Oracle acquires DNS provider Dyn, subject of a massive DDoS attack in October

Oracle plans to add Dyn’s DNS solution to its bigger cloud computing platform, which already sells/provides a variety of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products and competes against companies like Amazon’s AWS.

Oracle and Dyn didn’t disclose the price of the deal but we are trying to find out. Dan Primack reports that it’s north of $600 million. We’ve also asked for a comment from Oracle about Dyn’s recent breach, and whether the wheels were set in motion for this deal before or after the Mirai botnet attack in October, but our guess is that it was likely before.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/oracle-acquires-dns-provider-dyn-subject-of-a-massive-ddos-attack-in-october/
Symantec will acquire identity protection firm LifeLock in $2.3B deal

The deal will create what the two companies described as the world’s largest consumer security business with over $2.3 billion in annual revenue based on last fiscal year revenue for both companies.

The immediate opportunity for Symantec comes from the large number of consumers worldwide that have been victims of cybercrime, generating as a result greater user concern in digital safety. The companies estimate the market at $10 billion, and growing in the high single digits. In the U.S. alone, the total addressable market is estimated to be about 80 million people.

http://www.cio.com/article/3143445/security/symantec-will-acquire-identity-protection-firm-lifelock-in-23b-deal.html
Google acquires Qwiklabs to teach developers cloud skills

Qwiklabs, which launched in 2012, has only focused on teaching skills for Amazon’s AWS platform so far. Given AWS’ dominance in the marketplace, that made perfect sense. Amazon even uses Qwiklabs as its go-to service for offering self-paced labs for developers on its platform.

Google says it will use Qwiklabs’s platform to focus “on offering the most comprehensive, efficient, and fun way to train and onboard people across all our products on Google Cloud, including Google Cloud Platform and G Suite.”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/google-acquires-qwiklabs-to-teach-developers-cloud-skills/
What does Trump mean for tech M and A?

On Monday, Trump announced that Mark Jamison and Jeff Eisenach were joining his “agency landing team.” These FCC appointees have both written about how they weigh antitrust issues.

They could potentially make it harder for industry leaders like Alphabet to make large strategic purchases. “Potential headwinds include issues relating to increased regulatory review on deals,” said Page.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/21/what-does-trump-mean-for-tech-ma/?ncid=rss

Artificial Intelligence

GE wants to be the next AI powerhouse

Today GE revealed the purchase of two AI companies that Ruh says will get them there. Bit Stew Systems, founded in 2005, was already doing much of what Predix Cloud promises—collecting and analyzing sensor data from power utilities, oil and gas companies, aviation, and factories. (GE Ventures has funded the company.) Customers include BC Hydro, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Scottish & Southern Energy.

The second purchase, Wise.io is a less obvious purchase. Founded by astrophysics and AI experts using machine learning to study the heavens, the company reapplied the tech to streamlining a company’s customer support systems, picking up clients like Pinterest, Twilio, and TaskRabbit. GE believes the technology will transfer yet again, to managing industrial machines. “I think by the middle of next year we will have a full machine learning stack,” says Ruh.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3065692/mind-and-machine/ge-wants-to-be-the-next-artificial-intelligence-powerhouse
AWS launching cloud-based machine learning service

Colin Sebastian, an analyst for R.W. Baird, recently said he believes Google’s machine learning and AI efforts give it an edge over Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services in the enterprise. “Google would ultimately be able to differentiate its enterprise offering from competitors by leveraging advanced ML capabilities and monetize ML through a range of business services,” said Sebastian

http://www.ciodive.com/news/report-aws-launching-cloud-based-machine-learning-service/430808/

Cloud

Amazon becomes one of the largest corporate backers of solar (wind, now solar)

US electronic commerce giant Amazon has become the largest corporate backer of solar east of the Mississippi River with the launch of five new solar PV projects in Virginia totalling 180MW.

Four of the projects, with a capacity of 20MW each, will be brought online before the end of next year and are located in New Kent, Buckingham, Sussex and Powhatan.

The largest project in the bundle is the 100MW facility in Southampton County, known as Amazon Solar Farm US East 6. The five new projects join Amazon’s existing 80MW facility in Accomack County which is already operational.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/amazon-becomes-one-of-the-largest-corporate-backers-of-solar
IBM And SoftLayer: Is A $3 Billion Write-Off Looming?

We believe a write-off of SoftLayer of similar magnitude (85%-90%) is almost certainly in the forefront of CFO Schroeter’s mind these days. To comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, a sizable write-down is necessary, since SoftLayer is likely worth a tiny fraction of what IBM has invested. As we’ll explain in a bit, SoftLayer is niche cloud player with limited functionality and limited upside. Its infrastructure products are not competitive in mid- and enterprise-level markets.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4025920-ibm-softlayer-3-billion-write-looming

Datacenter

HPE is creaming Dell in HPC

If we add SGI revenues to HPE’s we get $480,343,000, which makes HPE more than twice as big as Dell EMC in this sector.

IDC’s overall world-wide server supplier revenue market share numbers also show HPE comfortably ahead of Dell EMC. In the second 2016 quarter, HPE had a 25.4 per cent market share with $3.4bn in sales. Dell was second with $2.6bn in sales and a 19.3 per cent market share. No other supplier was in the double-figure market share percentage area.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/18/hpe_is_creaming_dell_in_hpc/

Software/SaaS

Red Hat CEO explains why tech giants are turning to open source

The big issue is when you want to run something in production. The example I’ll use is Linux. You’re running your SAP application on Linux and that’s great, but now there’s a bug that needs to get fixed, and the open source community fixes that on the brand new version of Linux. If you’re running on a three-year old version of Linux, nobody’s looking at that version for a bug or a security hole, but you don’t want to re-integrate and re-test your SAP system every time there’s a new version. That’s what Red Hat does.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/18/red-hat-ceo-james-whitehurst-microsoft-google-software/
Tableau Cozies Up to Amazon Cloud

The news, to be formally announced next week at the annual AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas is that Tableau Online will run on Amazon’s massive public cloud and that customers will be able to buy it through the AWS Marketplace.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/23/tableau-cozies-up-to-aws/

Other

Salesforce, Inc.: This Is Sending CRM Stock Soaring Today

Salesforce, the business software provider and CRM leader, posted revenue of $2.14 billion for the third quarter, beating consensus Wall Street estimates of $2.12 billion. Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce said, “Salesforce delivered an exceptional quarter with year-over-year revenue growth of 25% in dollars and 27% in constant currency.”

http://www.profitconfidential.com/stock/salesforce-inc-this-is-sending-crm-stock-soaring-today/

Photo: Urbex Clan

November 19, 2016November 19, 2016

Supplier Report: 11/19/2016

IT suppliers are looking to get more open. Microsoft not only joined Elon Musk’s OpenAI, they also join the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation… remember when Ballmer called linux a cancer?

But even as Microsoft and Google promote their open technology, they are targeting SaaS as the main driver for future growth. While the infrastructure may be open, their SaaS offerings will be decidedly less so. Smaller companies like Slack are promoting a more connected world, but will Microsoft shut that business model down?

And who will be the big winner in this open world of closed ecosystems? Probably Amazon. They seem to be winning most of the hosting business (ala the $400M agreement with SalesForce).

Acquisitions

Samsung is buying Harman for $8B to further its connected car push

Terms of the deal will see Samsung pay $112.00 per share. That’s a healthy premium on Harman’s current share price of $87.65, and it gives the deal a total value of approximately $8 billion. The transaction is expected to close by mid-2017, at which time Harman will become a standalone subsidiary of Samsung. Dinesh Paliwal will continue to lead the firm as its Chairman, President and CEO, both Harman and Samsung said.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/13/samsung-harman/?ncid=rss
Verizon buys LQD WiFi to expand its IoT strategy into “smart cities”

Verizon today has made another acquisition to build out its IoT business: the carrier has purchased LQD WiFi, a developer of outdoor interactive displays that provide WiFi connectivity along with news, emergency alerts and community information. They also act as sensors collecting crowd, weather and other data.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/14/verizon-buys-lqd-wifi-to-expand-its-iot-strategy-into-smart-cities/?ncid=rss
Ex-Autonomy CFO Indicted For Alleged Fraud In H.P. Acquisition

A federal grand jury in San Francisco has indicted the former chief financial officer of a British software maker on charges he engaged in fraud to artificially increase the company’s share price and make it attractive to Hewlett-Packard.

The grand jury indicted former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain on Thursday on wire fraud and conspiracy charges.

Hussain’s attorney, John Keker, said his client defrauded no one and acted at all times with the highest standards of honesty and competence.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/11/hp-autonomy-fraud/
I honestly did not expect anything like this to happen.
Is Netflix Disney’s next big buy and is Reed Hastings its next CEO?

And, despite its rosy Q3 numbers, Netflix ultimately needs a buyer. As I recently wrote, Netflix faces fundamental long-term existential business challenges of its own. Its singular content-focused subscription-based business model can’t compete with the complex multi-faceted, multi revenue-streamed business models of AT&T, Amazon, YouTube (Google), Verizon, Apple and Amazon.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/13/is-netflix-disneys-next-big-buy-and-is-reed-hastings-its-next-ceo/?ncid=rss
HPE Eyeing Purchase of SimpliVity (HPE)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), is rumored to have its eye on leading hyperconvergence infrastructure (HCI) vendor SimpliVity. The Westborough, Mass.-based niche market leader is estimated to go for $3.8 billion to $3.9 billion, reports the Register. The rumored price stands at quadruple the company’s valuation in its latest series of funding in March 2015.

http://www.cnmeonline.com/news/dell-emc-unveils-new-additions-to-its-all-flash-portfolio/
AOL lays off 500 employees as Verizon-Yahoo acquisition looms

The cuts, which Armstrong said would consolidate recent AOL acquisitions, presage the type of staffing changes that could affect Yahoo in early 2017 as Verizon closes its $4.8 billion acquisition of the Silicon Valley icon.

https://news.fastcompany.com/aol-lays-off-500-employees-as-verizon-yahoo-acquisition-looms-4025323

Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft teams up with Elon Musk’s OpenAI project (thanks JD!)

OpenAI will also make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform, in part because of its existing support for AI workloads with the help of Azure Batch and Azure Machine Learning, as well as Microsoft’s work on its recently rebranded Cognitive Toolkit. Microsoft also offers developers access to a high-powered GPU-centric virtual machine for these kind of machine learning workloads. These N-Series machines are still in beta, but OpenAI has been an early adopter of them and Microsoft says they will become generally available in December.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/microsoft-teams-up-with-elon-musks-openai-project/
MIT students and others teaching IBM Watson about cybersecurity

Several universities involved with that project began having students train the system within the past several weeks, explained IBM Watson’s Jeb Linton, chief security architect.

“We’re ramping up from the phase where we have a little over 30 people selecting documents and annotating documents, to the phase where we’re… a much larger group by bringing in these college students,” Linton explained.

“It’s very much an interactive process. You put the machine-learning process into Watson and see what you get from it. I wouldn’t say anything has really surprised us so far,” Linton said. “We added in a level of complexity a few months ago that was a little less than optimal, and we trimmed some of that complexity back out.”

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/mit-students-and-others-to-teach-ibm-watson-about-cybersecurity/
IBM’s Watson would do a better job at being a bank teller than most current staff

Watson can take all of a bank’s rules and regulations and data about customer’s requirements and behaviours and provide an intelligent interface for customers to get things done with the confidence that Watson understood what the customer wanted and also understood what the bank could provide to satisfy those requirements.

Not surprisingly however, banks worldwide are not investing in innovations like cognitive computing. Innovation is often lumped in the general IT budget and often forms a tiny part of that spend. By viewing it in the same category as buying computers or complying with regulatory requirements, the overall value and benefit is much harder to see.

http://theconversation.com/ibms-watson-would-do-a-better-job-at-being-a-bank-teller-than-most-current-staff-68725

Cloud

Microsoft, Amazon turn to wind energy to power cloud data centers

Microsoft is also pushing for more renewable energy sources. Referring to the new agreement, Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith said “these agreements represent progress toward our goal of improving the energy mix at our data centers.”

http://www.ciodive.com/news/microsoft-amazon-turn-to-wind-energy-to-power-cloud-data-centers/430405/
Microsoft now runs one data center entirely on wind power

Microsoft has a stated goal of using 50 percent renewable energy in its data centers across the U.S. by 2018, and it just took a big step forward in that plan, purchasing additional 237 megawatts of wind energy capacity.

In the process, this helps allow its Cheyenne, Wyoming, data center run entirely on wind power and brings the company’s total wind capacity to 500 megawatts across the U.S.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3142785/data-center/microsoft-now-runs-one-data-center-entirely-on-wind-power.html
Google’s cloud GPU undercuts, outperforms AWS, Microsoft

Google’s plan to stand apart from the competition is to be more granular. Amazon’s machine-learning-oriented GPU instances are rented by the hour and come in a discrete instance type. Google, however, is planning to allow users to “attach up to 8 GPU dies to any non-shared-core machine,” regardless of instance type.

Even more critical, Google’s GPU pricing will follow its existing model: by the minute, same as Google’s VMs. This isn’t about consistency alone; it also reflects how GPU-powered machine learning is actually used. If a machine learning application employs only GPUs for training, it makes sense to be able to toggle off the GPU when it’s not needed instead of changing instance types.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3142028/cloud-computing/googles-cloud-gpu-undercuts-outperforms-aws-microsoft.html

Datacenter

Dell EMC unveils new additions to its all-flash portfolio

The deployment of the new Data Domain Cloud Tier software within Data Domain, according to Dell EMC, increases the total volume of data that can be managed through a single appliance by 200 percent, with a maximum logical capacity of 150PB. Data Domain Cloud Tier establishes Data Domain as the only protection storage to natively tier de-duplicated data to public, private, or hybrid clouds for long-term retention, including Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage and Virtustream Storage Cloud.

http://www.cnmeonline.com/news/dell-emc-unveils-new-additions-to-its-all-flash-portfolio/
NetApp tops 2Q profit forecasts

On a per-share basis, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said it had net income of 38 cents. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 60 cents per share.

The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 54 cents per share.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/netapp-tops-2q-profit-forecasts-211649286.html
Infinidat’s energy efficient offerings

Below is an Infographic that takes a bottoms up look at INFINIDAT’s InfiniBox and how its underlying technology drives more efficiency than any other array on the market today. InfiniBox keeps your data center footprint from sprawling out of control and keeps your power costs low by taking only 2kW/TB to operate.

http://www.infinidat.com/blog/infinibox-energy-efficient-storage/

Software/SaaS

In five years, SaaS will be the cloud that matters

Over time, more “infrastructure” services will become software services. Because once it’s SaaS, the boundaries between infrastructure, platform, and software don’t matter to the IT customer—it’s merely a service. That’s a mental shift from IT’s on-premises view, where the boundaries matter in how IT delivers the ultimate service. Those boundaries will still exist for the provider, but won’t be IT’s concern.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3142407/iaas/in-five-years-saas-will-be-the-cloud-that-matters.html
Why the next great SaaS company will look nothing like Salesforce

Conversely, once a startup’s product is being used every day like Slack, it may start keeping more information within it and over time wean people off whatever they were using before (Outlook, Sharepoint, etc).

The game-changer could well be artificial intelligence: if AI software could extract signal from the unstructured product feedback in Intercom or the sales forecasting information in Clari, the data in those systems could become more valuable than the limited fields captured in today’s systems of record.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/13/why-the-next-great-saas-company-will-look-nothing-like-salesforce/
Is Google crashing the Microsoft open source party?

So Microsoft’s move is a giant retraction of that sentiment, one which it has been trying to undo for the past couple of years with various announcements regarding a more open approach to Linux and the open source community.

Unlike Microsoft, Google has already established itself as having a pedigree in open source and so its joining of the .NET Foundation isn’t a huge surprise.

Google is already an active contributor and joining the Technical Steering Group just expands its participation.

The Alphabet subsidiary has already begun labeling itself as the ‘Open Cloud’ and Microsoft has revealed that it needs to be a bit more willing to work with the open source community because of its growing popularity.

http://www.cbronline.com/news/enterprise-it/software/google-crashing-microsoft-open-source-party/

Other

Salesforce’s Benioff thinks Microsoft is up to its old tricks again

“The message was ‘Why don’t you meet with Scott Guthrie? He runs Azure and would really like to walk you through the details of your business because maybe we could get Salesforce to run on Azure’… and I’m like OK, and it was clear also that he was someone not in our business, he was running Azure.”

Benioff notes a few weeks later Guthrie was suddenly promoted to also run Microsoft’s CRM business, which is a direct competitor to Salesforce and not long after Salesforce was disinvited from a Microsoft customer event without prior notice.

https://mspoweruser.com/salesforces-benioff-thinks-microsoft-is-up-to-its-old-tricks-again/
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is done cozying up to Microsoft — now he’s BFFs with Amazon

Instead, Benioff has turned to Amazon this year, striking a number of major deals. In May, Salesforce announced a $400 million deal to use AWS, while Amazon rolled out Salesforce’s software company-wide. Salesforce said Amazon added even more Salesforce services this quarter, during the call with investors.

http://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-stops-cozying-up-to-microsoft-befriends-amazon-2016-11
You Can Thank Twitter For Trump, According To Salesforce CEO

I think it’s a great company, I think it’s a great CEO. I think it has a huge vision and has a unique position in the world. As evidenced by this election, I think it’s more important than ever… Without Twitter, I don’t think you would have President-elect Trump. I mean, that’s reality. He said it very well. He said, “I have a beautiful Twitter account.”

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/11/you-can-thank-twitter-for-trump-according-to-salesforce-ceo/
Hewlett Packard Enterprise to outsource global IT team to CSC borg

“To ensure that all three companies are successful going forward, HPE intends to partner with ES/CSC to receive IT services through an IT Services Agreement that includes IT infrastructure and application development/support. This will result in a majority of our IT family moving to ES/CSC, which will become a leading provider of independent IT services in the world,” Spradley and Nefkens stated in the memo.

The HPE contract is in addition to outsourced service provision for HP Inc, and Micro Focus, which by next summer will be the new home of HPE’s Software business.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/16/hpe_to_outsource_global_it_team_to_csc_borg/
I believe this is called “eating your own dogfood”

Photo: Álvaro Serrano

November 17, 2016November 16, 2016

SourceCast: Episode 48: Making Green Clouds

November 12, 2016November 12, 2016

Supplier Report: 11/12/2016

IBM continues their fight against cancer. This week they announced they are investigating why certain cancers are resistant to certain treatments and what leads to re-occurrence. As Watson fights cancer, it is also trying to figure out how to get installed into every electronic device you own.

A mass of people greater than the size of the entire US population ditched Internet Explorer and Edge this year in favor of alternatives like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. While Microsoft ponders how to get those users back, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told the press why he and Bill Gates are no longer friends (hint: its because of mobile).

Acquisitions

Oracle Set to Complete $9.3 Billion Deal to Buy NetSuite

The deal has been complicated by opposition from NetSuite’s largest institutional shareholder, T. Rowe Price Group Inc. The investment firm, which held 14.4 million NetSuite shares or 17.7% of the company’s outstanding stock as of Nov. 1, said in September that it wouldn’t tender its shares in support of the deal. It cited the conflict of interest created by the substantial NetSuite stockholdings by Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and his family, saying the $109 a share price was too low.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-set-to-complete-9-3-billion-deal-to-buy-netsuite-1478324011
How LinkedIn Drove a Wedge Between Microsoft and Salesforce

The two companies stayed close and by the spring of 2015 their conversations evolved into another deal: Microsoft would acquire Salesforce. In May 2015, CNBC reported that the talks had fallen apart because Salesforce was demanding around $70 billion, about $22 billion more than the company’s market value at the time.

Several people briefed on the talks said that account was accurate, though two of them said another factor was that Mr. Benioff thought Microsoft was not respectful enough of his accomplishments in building Salesforce. It was unclear whether Mr. Benioff would be happy in a subordinate role at Microsoft after building Salesforce from the ground up, and it was equally hard to imagine a successful Salesforce without him.

Also:

For the next several months, Microsoft and Salesforce privately made competing offers for LinkedIn, each sweetening their bids as the competition increased. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and a board member, wooed Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn founder and chairman, according to the LinkedIn filing. Salesforce code-named its LinkedIn effort Project Burgundy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/technology/how-linkedin-drove-a-wedge-between-microsoft-and-salesforce.html
Why Google really spent $625 million on a company generating $92 million in revenue

It’s not like Google needed an API platform,” this person said. “But they did need revenue. They did need executive talent, they did need logos.”

Apigee has an experienced enterprise salesforce who have landed a long list of enterprise customers such as Allstate, AT&T, Burberry, First Data, Kaiser Permanente, Walgreens etc. All told, Apigee has more than 335 customers, it says.

More importantly, Apigee is a big AWS customer. Apigee’s cloud service is built on Amazon’s Web Service and a number of its customers also host their API apps on AWS as well. Once Google moves Apigee to Google’s cloud, it has a compelling inside sales track to convince 335 more enterprise customers to do the same.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-google-spent-625-million-on-apigee-2016-11

Artificial Intelligence

How AI (Artificial Intelligence) Creates A Better Customer Service Experience

Some may think that Watson would eventually be able to replace a call center rep. No doubt that Watson can deliver a better self-service solution. But, what if rather than replacing the employee, it supported the employee. This would allow for the company to keep the human touch with its customers, but also provide quick and accurate support. This, according to Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, is when AI, or artificial intelligence, takes on a new meaning. This is when AI becomes augmented intelligence.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2016/11/05/how-ai-artificial-intelligence-creates-a-better-customer-service-experience/#4ba9bd47ef2c
IBM’s Watson to use genomic data to defeat drug-resistant cancers

While a growing number of treatments can hold cancers in check for months or years, most cancers eventually recur, according to the Broad Institute researchers. This is in part because tumors acquire mutations that make them drug resistant.

That cancer drug resistance is a major cause of nearly 600,000 annual deaths in the U.S. alone, according to Eric Lander, the founding director of the Broad Institute. While scientists have discovered the cause of drug resistance in a small number of cancer cases, which has led to the development of new, successful treatments, most cases are not fully understood.

The new five-year, $50 million genome project will study thousands of drug resistant tumors and draw on Watson’s computational and machine learning methods to help researchers understand how cancers become resistant to therapies.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3140188/healthcare-it/ibms-watson-to-use-genomic-data-to-defeat-drug-resistant-cancers.html
Additional information on their partners:
IBM Watson Health partners with MIT, Harvard on 5-year cancer initiative

IBM Watson Health and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have launched a five-year $50 million research project to delve into cancer drug resistance.

Researchers will study thousands of drug-resistant tumors and draw on Watson’s computational and machine learning methods to understand how cancers become resistant to therapies.

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ibm-watson-health-partners-mit-harvard-5-year-cancer-initiative
IBM’s Watson AI could soon be in devices from PCs to robots, thanks to Project Intu

“Intu is an architecture that enables Watson services in devices that perceive by vision, audition, olfaction, sonar, infrared energy, temperature, and vibration. Intu-enabled devices express themselves and interact with their environments, other devices, and people through speakers, actuators, gestures, scent emitters, lights, navigation, and more,” IBM explains on its GitHub page.

The project is in search of all manner of developers, whether they’re hacking together Raspberry Pi with various sensors to create robots, or businesses exploring bots for customer service.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibms-watson-ai-could-soon-be-in-devices-from-pcs-to-robots-thanks-to-project-intu/

Cloud

Greening the cloud: How Amazon, Microsoft and Google are pursuing the goal of renewable power

AWS, along with its rivals, is trying to cut the pollution its data centers emit by building wind and solar farms. Most recently, the cloud leader announced plans to built a 189-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Hardin County, Ohio, that will generate 530,000 megawatt hours of power per year starting in December 2017. That’s enough to power about 50,000 homes U.S. homes for a year.

http://www.geekwire.com/2016/greening-cloud-amazon-microsoft-google-pursuing-goal-renewable-power/
Hewlett Packard Emphasizes Importance, Potential of Blockchain, Decentralization

However, Dare notes that irrefutability and decentralization are two of the most important features of the Blockchain network as they enable participants in the network to send payments to each other without mediators. They could also allow banks and major financial institutions to conduct labor-saving operations.

Currently, a massive number of banks and financial establishments are gearing towards the development and implementation of the Blockchain technology. But, even multi-billion dollar institutions like Accenture have proposed the concept of editable Blockchain.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/hewlett-packard-emphasizes-importance-potential-of-blockchain-decentralization
Why IBM Is Betting Big on Blockchain

Another example is a project involving Visa and DocuSign that would allow car buyers to configure a lease and drive away with a new car immediately, without the time-consuming process of filling out mountains of paperwork. La’Zooz, a start-up in Israel, is using blockchain in a ride-sharing app that allows drivers and customers to connect directly, without the need for a middleman ride-sharing company.

Making supply chains more efficient is another area where blockchain could potentially shine. IBM estimates that blockchain could generate more than $100 billion of efficiencies annually if applied to global supply chains — a staggering number. Both Toyota and the U.S. Postal Service are currently looking into using blockchain for exactly that purpose.

http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/10/why-ibm-is-betting-big-on-blockchain.aspx

Datacenter/Desktop

Ex-Microsoft CEO Ballmer says his push on smartphones strained relationship with Bill Gates

“There was a fundamental disagreement about how important it was to be in the hardware business,” Ballmer said. “I had pushed Surface. The board had been a little — little reluctant in supporting it. And then things came to a climax around what to do about the phone business.”

Microsoft entered the market in 2012 with the Surface RT, a tablet that sold poorly and required Microsoft to take a $900 million charge to write down the value of inventory. Now, the rejiggered Surface business is profitable and generated more than $4 billion in sales for the most recent year.

http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/ex-microsoft-ceo-ballmer-says-his-push-on-smartphones-strained-relationship-with-bill-gates/

Software/SaaS

331 million people ditched Internet Explorer and Edge this year

Microsoft is trying to keep its users, no doubt, by trying to convince everyone that Edge is much better at battery management. It introduced features like Cortana support, pinned tabs and more, but none of those functions seem to be worth sticking around for. Chrome, a notorious system hog, wasn’t the main beneficiary this time, though. Instead, Computerworld said that Mozilla’s Firefox saw a user increase of about 2 percentage points, gathering a large chunk of the 2.7 percent of the user’s bailing from Microsoft’s ship. The pace doesn’t seem to be slowing, either, with a decline predicted to continue into the next several months according to Computerworld.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/11/04/331-million-people-ditched-internet-explorer-and-edge-this-year/
Is IBM Cool Again?

Bots are one feature of Slack’s platform, and the first step of the partnership will see Watson used to power an improved version of Slackbot, Slack’s customer-service bot. Eventually, developers will be able to use various Watson services when building bots and other tools for the platform. Since Watson is a machine learning system, it has the capability to become more accurate and useful over time.

In terms of revenue, this partnership with Slack is likely to be a drop in the bucket for IBM. But it’s notable because it’s an example of a tech start-up choosing IBM for — well, anything. My guess is that IBM rarely comes up in the conversation at small tech companies like Slack. That was certainly true a few years ago, and it’s probably still true today. That Slack turned to IBM is a fairly significant development, and it could spur more deals and further expand Watson’s presence.

http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/06/is-ibm-cool-again.aspx
Salesforce users: if you buy it, you integrate it

That’s the finding of a recent survey of 300 Salesforce users by Jitterbit, an integration vendor. While the vendor obviously has a horse in this race, the results underscore the urgency of application and data integration between Salesforce and on-premises systems. Yet, respondents are divided as to whom should take responsibility for the effort. Forty-four percent said that integration projects were the responsibility of the non-IT users adopting the solution. Another 43 percent said the IT department is expected to own the responsibility for integrating these solutions.

The result: integration chaos from the cloud. Integrating information from other business applications with Salesforce is crucial to gaining a 360-degree view of the customer, yet users often don’t have a clear integration strategy in place.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/salesforce-achilles-heel-integration/

Other

CEO lured from Amazon AWS with millions in cash, stock options

Selipsky, who joined Tableau in September, got a $1 million signing bonus, $500,000 in base salary and up to $500,000 in annual performance bonuses. He was also granted $14 million in restricted class A stock with an option to purchase 75,000 shares.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2016/11/07/tableau-ceo-amazon-adam-selipsky-cloud-computing.html
IBM moved jobs to India: Trump

“IBM laid off 500 workers in Minneapolis and moved their jobs to India and other countries. A Trump administration will stop the jobs from leaving America, and we will stop the jobs from leaving Minnesota,” Trump said in his speech yesterday in Minneapolis, as part of efforts to woo voters in Minnesota state which has been a Democrat stronghold.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/ibm-moved-jobs-to-india-trump/1/804146.html
Turbonomic Grabs Former HP COO Bill Veghte As New Top Exec

Former Hewlett-Packard executive Bill Veghte has joined Turbonomic, an application performance management developer and Hewlett Packard Enterprise strategic technology partner, as its full-time executive chairman.

Turbonomic, which until August was known as VMTurbo, Thursday unveiled the appointment along with the news that the privately held company has closed its 25th consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300082785/turbonomic-grabs-former-hp-coo-bill-veghte-as-new-top-exec.htm

Photo: Alphacolor 13