Tag: Google

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Supplier Report: 11/5/2016

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Cloud providers are growing fast, but nobody is growing faster than Amazon.  Such growth requires power, and Amazon is following in Google’s footsteps in trying to convert to all renewable energy.

Google combined their renewable energy goals with their AI systems to gain efficiencies, and the whole situation is reminding me of the not-so-great Johnny Depp movie Transcendence (the AI creates an awesome solar farm so it can’t be cut off).

While Amazon figures out their power needs, Microsoft is trying to take down the communication hub site Slack with their new Teams offering.  Dell is also improving their document management applications… right before they sell them off to OpenText?

Acquisitions

  • CenturyLink to Buy Level 3 Communications for $25 Billion

    Level 3 runs one of the largest internet backbones in the world but has turned its focus to small and midsize business customers to reverse slowing sales growth in its core operations. CenturyLink, traditionally a rural phone company, has sought to upgrade its network with fiber-optic lines in a bid to compete with AT&T Inc.,Verizon Communications Inc. and rivals in the cable industry.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/centurylink-to-buy-level-3-communications-for-25-billion-1477911639

  • IBM buys Expert Personal Shopper from Fluid to build out Watson’s conversation skills

    IBM has made another acquisition to beef up Watson, a week after it announced a raft of new features and milestones for its artificial intelligence effort: it has acquired a business called Expert Personal Shopper (XPS), a platform, and bot, that holds conversations with people online to help figure out what they need to buy, and to help them buy it. XPS had originally been built by Fluid, a strategic partner (and investment) of IBM’s, to run on Watson.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/01/ibm-buys-expert-personal-shopper-from-fluid-to-build-out-watsons-conversation-skills/

  • Jim Cramer — Tableau Not a Target for Salesforce

    Shares are now down more than 11% Wednesday. The M&A catalyst has been removed, and while Tableau beat on earnings-per-share estimates, its sales results missed expectations. Simply put, the company didn’t close enough deals during the quarter to make the results compelling. It was a letdown, Cramer concluded.

    Furthermore, Tableau is not a potential acquisition target for Salesforce at this time, Cramer added.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13877565/1/jim-cramer-tableau-not-a-target-for-salesforce.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • Detecting pre-symptom cancer at the nanoscale
  • IBM Introduces New Watson Solution for Supply Chain Professions

    Part of IBM’s new cognitive solutions for supply chain professionals, IBM Watson Supply Chain Insights, continuously learns about a company’s normal supply chain patterns by analyzing and spotting trends in the data from multiple systems including trade partners, which can account for up to 65 percent of the value of a company derives from its products and services. The solution then alerts practitioners to potential disruptions, provides insights into estimated time delays and financial costs of the issue and recommends specific experts who can gather in a virtual workroom to quickly solve the problem.

    http://www.arcweb.com/Blog/Post/1511/IBM-Introduces-New-Watson-Solution-for-Supply-Chain-Professions

  • Why Peter Diamandis doesn’t fear AI

    1. There are currently 3 billion people online, but due to dropping bandwidth costs and private investors building satellite networks, low estimates project 6 billion people online by 2020.
    2. Peter talks about Moonshots: A moonshot, in a technology context, is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits.
    3. Diamandis wants to increase the average human lifespan by 30 years. AI (Watson) is a huge part of that goal as it can analyse data from genome sequencing, advanced diagnostics, and providing medical care in remote areas without doctors.
    4. He wants to mine asteroids for resources (platinum) and fuel.  His company is building rockets (Arkyd Spacecraft) to prospect asteroids.  These ships will have AI (of course).
    5. Wants basic software to be able to teach children to read in the most remote areas with simple devices (there are current 1 billion illiterate people on the planet).

Cloud

  • AWS Accounts for 45 Percent of Public IaaS Market Share: Synergy

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a 45 percent share of the worldwide public cloud market, more than twice the size of the next three public IaaS providers combined, according to new data from Synergy Research Group.

    http://talkincloud.com/iaas/aws-accounts-45-percent-public-iaas-market-share-synergy
    sn_cloudmarketleadership

  • Amazon orders new wind farm in Ohio to help power cloud business

    Amazon Web Services, as the tech giant’s cloud computing division is known, has vowed to fulfill at least half of the energy needs of its big data centers with renewable energy by 2017. That’s up from 40 percent in 2016, a goal that Amazon says it is on track to meet or exceed.

    http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-orders-new-wind-farm-in-ohio-to-help-power-cloud-business/
    Trent Alert: Pay attention to power related issues for cloud providers. I have covered what Google is doing to manage their energy costs, but I see this becoming a much bigger DataCenter issue as these cloud blocks grow. 
    Amazon Adds their Fifth Renewable Energy Project in Ohio

    ‘In November 2014, AWS shared its long-term commitment to achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage for the global AWS infrastructure footprint. Ambitious sustainability initiatives over the last 18-24 months have put AWS on track to exceed its 2016 goal of 40 percent renewable energy use and enabled AWS to set a new goal to be powered by 50 percent renewable energy by the end of 2017.’

    http://crescentvale.com/2016/11/amazon-adds-fifth-renewable-energy-project-ohio/

  • A peek inside Microsoft Azure’s open-source server and rack designs

    “With this announcement you have one of the industry’s leading cloud providers sharing what they think the optimal cloud server design looks like,” says Ed Anderson, Research vice president, Cloud Services at Gartner. “Microsoft is deploying servers based on OCP in their cloud data centers, which provides a pretty good guide for hardware vendors to target that market.” Microsoft says about 90% of servers it buys for Azure data centers are based on OCP specifications.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3137488/cloud-computing/a-peek-inside-microsoft-azures-open-source-server-and-rack-designs.html

  • Is HPE ditching OpenStack? Company laying off a number of developers

    The layoffs in the Stackato may indicate HPE is further retreating from the ultra-competitive cloud market amidst tough competition from AWS and Microsoft. Last year, HPE pulled the plug on its Helion hybrid cloud offering. In August, Bill Hilf, HPE’s current cloud leader, announced he was leaving the company to “pursue other opportunities.”

    http://www.ciodive.com/news/is-hpe-ditching-openstack-company-laying-off-a-number-of-developers/429535/

Datacenter/Desktop

  • Microsoft Takes Apple by Surprise, Pours on the Heat

    One of the things that may have assisted in this assessment was the Surface Dial (US$99) which, on the surface, has the instinctive technical feel of something from a science fiction future in contrast to Apple’s touch sensitive Touch Bar which is merely cool. (But see page 2 here for more.) Time will tell if Microsoft’s instincts prove superior or are simply a trade-off in concepts. In the meantime, Jason Snell at Six Colors looks at the relative merits of touching your work or touching the Touch Bar in “Perpendicular philosophy.”

    https://www.macobserver.com/columns-opinions/microsoft-takes-apple-surprise-pours-heat/

  • NetApp Plans Yet Another Round of Layoffs

    The company said in regulatory filing on Thursday that it would lay off 6% of its workforce, or about 640 employees based on its total headcount of 10,700 workers.

    http://fortune.com/2016/11/03/netapp-layoff-employees/

Software/SaaS

  • Dell EMC Sweetens ECD Products Before OpenText Acquisition

    Today at Momentum — Dell EMC’s ECD user conference in Barcelona — the company unveiled long sought solutions around its three primary products: Documentum, InfoArchive and LEAP.

    About a week after closing on its purchase of EMC, Dell signed a definitive agreement to sell ECD to OpenText. That acquisition is expected to close in early next year.

    So all these new capabilities — many of which customers have been pleading to have for years — will benefit OpenText.

    http://www.cmswire.com/information-management/dell-emc-sweetens-ecd-products-before-opentext-acquisition/

  • Can Microsoft Teams out-Slack Slack?

    Slack’s freemium model also puts these tools in the hands of small businesses, giving them a free taste with the option to pay for advanced features. The fact that Microsoft Teams is tied to Office 365 means it will struggle to win over some small operations, but its tight integration with the Office suite might tempt larger businesses to defect from services like Slack.

    http://www.smh.com.au/technology/gadgets-on-the-go/can-microsoft-teams-outslack-slack-20161103-gshta3.html
    Rapidly-growing startup goes after Microsoft in full-page New York Times ad

    http://www.aol.com/article/finance/2016/11/03/s/21598333/

  • Software licencing gets easier in the cloud? Not if your name is Microsoft

    Features and functionality have been added to Plan 1 – including PowerApps that lets users create custom-made business apps – but if a customer doesn’t need them, then the price of their software has ramped massively, channel folk claimed. Depending on what employees were using, they may now pay more. Power users may actually pay less.

    “There isn’t a direct one-for-one ratio, so Microsoft can wheedle out of it and tell customers they are getting more features. This is the challenge of explaining this to customers who want to know, ‘How do I get what I’m getting today and pay the same?'” a Microsoft supplier said.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/04/software_licencing_gets_easier_in_the_cloud_not_if_your_name_is_microsoft/

Other

  • Amazon posts disappointing Q3 results, but AWS continues to grow

    Amazon Web Services earned $3.231 billion in revenue, up nearly 55 percent year-over-year. Its operating income came to $861 million — more than three times the operating income of Amazon’s North American e-commerce business, which came to $255 million. Meanwhile, its international business lost $541 million.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-posts-disappointing-q3-results-as-aws-continues-to-grow/
    sn_aws_2016_10

  • IBM: From Firing To Hiring Spree

    IBM has hired more than 100,000 new IBMers since January 2015, cloud advisors, digital representatives, data scientists, etc. This includes about 700 executives (not including acquisitions).

    IBM’s hiring spree follows a massive shift of resources from traditional computing business to the emerging cognitive business. This includes what the company invested in in terms of CAPEX, R&D (which is up this year) and acquisitions (26 since the beginning of 2015). It also includes significant investments to amass the skills most valued by the market as the company pioneers new fields such as Cognitive and Cloud.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2016/10/30/ibm-from-firing-to-hiring-spree/#646bb6b7ce8a

  • Google reveals dangerous Windows 10 bug – and Microsoft is NOT happy about it

    Google has incurred the wrath of fellow tech megacorp Microsoft by publicly flagging up a flaw in Windows and claiming hackers are exploiting it.

    The search giant says it told Microsoft about the bug back on October 21, but as yet nothing has been done about it.The bug itself is found in the Windows kernal and can be used “as a security sandbox escape.”

    Microsoft, in turn, has issued a statement to tech site Venturebeat , saying that Google is putting customers at risk.

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/google-reveals-dangerous-windows-10-9169924

Photo: Karsten Würth

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/29/2016

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IBM had a big week due to their World of Watson conference. As one would imagine, an event called the World of Watson was heavily focused on AI and how it will integrate into our lives. They also used the event to announce the acquisition of another cloud-focused company.  But IBM better watch out because Google’s Deepmind created an encryption protocol by itself.

There was also an OpenStack conference this week for cloud services. The event tested the ability to easily switch between 16 different cloud providers.

IBM announced it was much cheaper to support Macs over Window machines (which is actually old news), but Microsoft introduced some beautiful new desktops.

Acquisitions

  • IBM To Acquire Sanovi Technologies For Hybrid Clouding

    The announcement for the procurement event held on October 27, 2016, carried off with a deal which would help IBM to enhance its elasticity capabilities. It would further support to meet the complexities of the hybrid environment through advanced analytics. The following deal would help IBM to boost its Software Defined Resiliency strategy, delivering Business Continuity, along with providing Disaster Recovery services for its clients who are in the middle of hybrid and digital cloud transformation.

    http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/102816/ibm-buys-another-hybrid-cloud-specialist-ibm.aspx
    Also:

    US software giant IBM on Thursday announced that it has signed a deal to acquire Bengaluru-based Sanovi Technologies for an undisclosed sum. The deal would enable IBM to bolster its Software Defined Resiliency strategy, delivery of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services for clients who are undergoing digital and hybrid cloud transformation.

    http://www.ibtimes.co.in/ibm-buys-bengaluru-based-hybrid-cloud-firm-sanovi-technologies-701488

  • AT&T’s Time Warner Deal Comes at a Huge Cost

    AT&T’s deal values Time Warner at 22 times the cash it generated from its operations. That seems high. When Comcast bought NBCUniversal in 2013 it paid around 8 times operating cash flow. WhenVerizon bought AOL in 2015, a number of commentators suggested that it had paid through the roof for the former Internet whiz kid. But even in that deal, Verizon only paid about 9 times AOL’s adjusted operating income.

    http://fortune.com/2016/10/24/att-time-warner-deal-share-price/

  • Who Will Win This $9 Billion Game Of Chicken?

    Who, if anyone, will blink? NetSuite’s weak quarter make it decreasingly likely that Oracle’s Larry Ellison will blink first. As for T. Rowe, they might not either. They opposed the Dell LBO and intended to vote against it (their shares were mistakenly voted for it, so perhaps they will tender to Oracle by accident). But with no available alternative to realize more value than the current deal, both NetSuite and T. Rowe holders will quickly regret it.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/4014664-will-win-9-billion-game-chicken

  • Oracle CEO Hurd Says NetSuite Deal ‘Done from Our Perspective’

    “Well it’s done from our perspective. We had special boards, special committees of both boards negotiate the transaction. We think we’ve made a fair offer of $109 a share,” he said.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13868773/1/oracle-orcl-ceo-hurd-says-netsuite-deal-done-from-our-perspective.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • The World of Watson
    Talking points from the 2 hour video:

    1. Watson will be almost everywhere in 5 years.  It will be in doctors offices and assist companies with M&A (it will have profiles on every company on the planet).
    2. John Kelly predicts that due to Watson’s modeling abilities, it will be able to predict future events in medical applications.
    3. Tom Friedman states that 2008 was a milestone year in technology, in part due to Watson and the advent of cloud technology (high speed internet, cheaper storage) and we missed it for what it really is and society has been stuck not taking advantage of it.
    4. Due to this technology, human interaction and sharing ideas has never been higher and the potential for quicker social change is more possible.
    5. Friedman goes down an interesting path of how people (not nations) have the ability to destroy and also repair everything (you just have to watch it).
    6. The video then shifts to new speakers doing their best Steve Jobs impressions talking about managing data via AI (nothing we haven’t discussed here already).

  • IBM, Teva to Use A.I. for Drug Repurposing Program

    First, the companies formed a three-year research collaboration aimed at using human input, real-world data, and machine learning algorithms to support drug repurposing efforts, wrote FierceBiotech.

    Watson will sift through all of this information to try and find relationships between drug molecules and certain diseases. A successful initiative like this could install an efficient, cost-effective process that the entire pharmaceutical industry can adopt to help bring new therapies to market.

    https://www.rdmag.com/article/2016/10/ibm-teva-use-ai-drug-repurposing-program

  • Google’s AI created its own form of encryption

    As the New Scientist reports, Abadi and Andersen assigned each AI a task: Alice had to send a secret message that only Bob could read, while Eve would try to figure out how to eavesdrop and decode the message herself. The experiment started with a plain-text message that Alice converted into unreadable gibberish, which Bob could decode using cipher key. At first, Alice and Bob were apparently bad at hiding their secrets, but over the course of 15,000 attempts Alice worked out her own encryption strategy and Bob simultaneously figured out how to decrypt it. The message was only 16 bits long, with each bit being a 1 or a 0, so the fact that Eve was only able to guess half of the bits in the message means she was basically just flipping a coin or guessing at random.

    https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/28/google-ai-created-its-own-form-of-encryption/

Cloud

  • ‘Unprecedented’ cyberattack involved tens of millions of IP addresses

    The attackers took advantage of traffic-routing services such as those offered by Alphabet Inc’s Google and Cisco Systems Inc’s OpenDNS to make it hard for Dyn to root out bad traffic without also interfering with legitimate inquiries, Drew said.

    But hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, of those security cameras and other devices have been infected with a fairly simple program that guessed at their factory-set passwords – often “admin” or “12345” or even, yes, “password” – and, once inside, turned them into an army of simple robots. The company also has offices in England and Singapore, and field operations across several USA cities, including San Francisco and Seattle.

    http://crcconnection.com/2016/10/24/unprecedented-cyberattack-involved-tens-of-millions-of-ip.html

  • Switching clouds: What Spotify learned when it swapped AWS for Google’s cloud

    “Now that we’ve done the move, we are generally really happy but we have some wishes for the future.

    We would love to see cross-continental replication, like the fact we now run in a US Central regional bucket, that causes a slight latency for our European users.

    We ideally would like to have another bucket in Asia. At the moment, the GCS does not allow cross-continental replication.

    We’re also seeing slightly lower cold read latencies than with S3, the good news is that Google has improvements upcoming and we’ve worked with them to shear off 30ms.”

    http://www.techrepublic.com/article/switching-clouds-what-spotify-learned-when-it-swapped-aws-for-googles-cloud/

  • IBM’s cloud move: New unified platform buries SoftLayer under Bluemix brand

    As part of that shift, IBM today also announced its unified cloud platform, allowing customers to manage all Bluemix and SoftLayer assets from a single console using an IBM ID.

    IBM isn’t planning on changing the substance of SoftLayer’s systems, products, services, and support, but it will phase the name out as it moves everything, including the SoftLayer blog over to Bluemix domains.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibms-cloud-move-new-unified-platform-buries-softlayer-under-bluemix-brand/
    Smart. Every time I mention SoftLayer, people ask “what is that?”

  • You can run the same programs on 16 different OpenStack clouds

    Sixteen different vendors did a live demo at OpenStack Summit showing that you could run the same software stack on 16 separate OpenStack platforms.

    Here’s the amazing part. All 16 vendors had the program running on their platforms in under 10 minutes. Try moving your application from say Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft Azure that easily.

    Don Rippert, IBM’s general manager of cloud strategy, explained, “Yes all 16 companies will compete, but interoperability is a rising tide. It makes things better for all of us.” Jonathan Bryce, the OpenStack Foundation’s executive director, added “SUSE, Canonical, Red Hat, you all hate each other right? But, the program works on all your systems.”

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-run-the-same-programs-on-16-different-openstack-clouds/

Datacenter/Desktop

  • NetApp boss not deterred by Dell EMC

    When asked whether Dell EMC’s extended reach in the industry would hurt NetApp’s business, Kurian took the stance that bigger wasn’t always better.

    “Very simply, we’re taking share from EMC today. We’re the fastest growing SAN vendor in the market. We’re the fastest growing all-flash array vendor in the market. And despite their reach, we have better solutions,” he said.

    http://www.crn.com.au/news/netapp-boss-not-deterred-by-dell-emc-440089

  • The New Microsoft Surface Studio

Software/SaaS

  • Slack Announces Partnership With IBM

    Watson will be available to Slack’s developers and enterprise users, will work to develop new communication tools, and will be incorporated into Slack’s Slackbot; the customer relations account for the service.

    “Making Watson’s capabilities and Slack’s capabilities available to third-party developers to make those more intelligent,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said about the partnership during Wednesday afternoon’s “Power Lunch” on CNBC.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13868522/1/slack-announces-partnership-with-ibm.html

Other

  • IBM official says Macs much cheaper to own than Windows PCs

    Previn also said that while a Mac initially cost from US$117 to US$454 more than a Windows PC that had similar specs, IBM was able to save between US$273 and US$543 over four years per Mac compared to a similarly configured Windows PC.

    When one added up all the software that one had to buy from Microsoft to run and manage IBM’s Windows devices, Windows PCs were thrice as expensive as Macs, he said.

    “It ends up being US$57.3 million more expensive per 100,000 Windows machines, or exactly three times the cost,” he said. “And this is a conservative number. This represents the best pricing we’ve ever gotten from Microsoft.”

    http://www.itwire.com/business-software/75376-ibm-official-says-macs-much-cheaper-to-own-than-windows-pcs.html

  • Microsoft hikes prices for British businesses in wake of Brexit vote

    The tech giant announced in a blog post that it would be raising fees for its UK business clients in order to “realign close to euro levels,” and harmonise prices across the EU.

    “We periodically assess the impact of local pricing of our products and services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across the region and this change is an outcome of this assessment,” Microsoft said.

    While enterprise software prices will increase by 13%, cloud prices will jump by as much as 22% for clients paying in pounds.

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/microsoft-reveals-british-businesses-pay-9116171

  • IBM board approves additional $3 billion stock buyback

    The board today also authorized $3 billion in additional funds for use in the company’s stock repurchase program. IBM said it will repurchase shares on the open market or in private transactions from time to time, depending on market conditions.

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161025006267/en/IBM-Board-Approves-Quarterly-Cash-Dividend-Authorizes

  • “Dirty COW”, the most dangerous Linux Bug for the last 9 years

    Talking to Ars Technica, Senior Security Researcher at Azimuth Security, Dan Rosenberg states that this particular bug is so far the most serious of all bugs ever found in Linux systems. The fact that this bug has been there for the last 9 years makes the situation even more concerning.

    “It’s probably the most serious Linux local privilege escalation ever. The nature of the vulnerability lends itself to extremely reliable exploitation. This vulnerability has been present for nine years, which is an extremely long period of time,” said Rosenberg.

    https://www.hackread.com/dirty-cow-the-most-linux-bug/

  • Google Jamboard:

    Yeah, this product really doesn’t have a place on this post, but I really want one!

Photo: Robson Hatsukami Morgan

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/22/2016

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Big IT firms are clearly focused on the cloud, but as these companies grow out their infrastructure, we will focus on the differences between the cloud providers and try to find sweet spots.

SalesForce had some very sensitive M&A information leaked.  Will Pega Systems and Tableau get bought or was this some kind of trick to drive up stock prices?

And are the days of the Chinese factory workers numbered?

Acquisitions

  • Wipro To Buy Salesforce Superstar Appirio for $500 Million

    Business process services goliath Wipro says it will spend half a billion dollars to purchase cloud services powerhouse Appirio so it can improve its market share and position around Salesforce and Workday.

    The $500 million all-cash acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year, according to a statement. Wipro did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

    http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/300082500/wipro-to-buy-salesforce-superstar-appirio-for-500-million.htm

  • Salesforce.Com, Inc To Buy Tableau Software Inc (NYSE:DATA) Shortly After Declining Twitter Inc Buyout

    Tableau Software Inc. explored a potential sale in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter, as technology companies scramble for partners amid a wave of mergers in the industry.

    The Seattle company was working on a potential sale as recently as this summer before the effort stalled, the people said.

    The Wall Street Journal reported on the document in a front-page article Wednesday that pushed up shares of Tableau as much as 7%, giving it a market value of nearly $4 billion.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/software-maker-tableau-explored-a-sale–wsj-20161020-00076

  • HP Enterprise services merger with CSC could ‘mean more churn’ for company’s federal contractors

    “The combination of these two companies will create a new company with billions in global revenue, including a sizable U.S. federal government business,” it added. “However, the government sector of the new, yet unnamed company may be impacted by the cost take-outs planned by the merger and the distraction of yet another major company reorganization.”

    http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2016/10/20/report-hp-enterprise-services-merger-with-csc.html

  • Salesforce’s M&A Target List Had 14 Names, But Not Twitter Inc

    Citing an internal presentation allegedly obtained from former Secretary of State and Salesforce Director Colin Powell the WSJ lists 14 companies, including Marketo, Adobe Systems, Hubspot, PegaSystems, Demandware, Tableau, and LinkedIn, as possible candidates.

    According to the presentation, Box and Zendesk were mentioned as well, but their chief executives had less interest. The presentation, which was marked “draft and confidential” and titled “M&A Target Review,” is a 60-slide document which identified 14 possible acquisition targets.

    http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/10/salesforces-list-14-names-not-twitter/

Artificial Intelligence

  • DeepMind’s differentiable neural computer helps you navigate the subway with its memory

    DeepMind’s technique merges notions of memory with more traditional neural networks using a “controller.” The controller saves information by either storing it in a new location or overwriting a previously occupied location. Throughout this process, an association between the information is formed via the timeline of when new data was written in.

    The controller uses that same chronology along with the actual content of what has been saved to retrieve information. The framework created is navigable and proves itself effective for drawing insights from graph data structures.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/13/__trashed-2/

  • Fighting Diabetes with Watson: Medtronic and IBM Health
  • No More Humans: Foxconn Deploys 40,000 Robots In China

    Dai said currently Foxconn can produce 10,000 robots annually. In the future, those robots are all potential replacements for human labor. For the Kunshan factory alone, Foxconn has cut 60,000 employees.

    Prior to this, labor costs in mainland China were lower than robots; therefore, Foxconn maintained nearly one million workers. However, with the increase of labor costs and the younger generation’s lack of interest in production line work, many companies have launched huge investments in automation.

    https://www.chinatechnews.com/2016/10/13/24329-no-more-humans-foxconn-deploys-40000-robots-in-china
    What I predicted in this post is starting to come true

  • IBM Watson Will Run On IBM and IBM Alone

    You’ve got to give UBS analyst Steven Milunovich major props. During IBM’s earnings call on Monday, he asked whether IBM Watson, the company’s golden child, will run on rival Amazon Web Services—and he was promptly shot down. “No. Watson runs on our cloud, and our technology will run on IBM’s cloud,” IBM chief financial officer Martin Schroeter responded tersely.

    http://fortune.com/2016/10/17/ibm-watson-belongs-to-ibm/

Cloud

Datacenter

  • IBM and other giants to reform servers and make them faster

    Servers current circuitry is not fast enough, and International Business Machines Corp. has promised to speed the data transfer in servers up to ten times. The group hopes more companies will be part of the team to improve servers speed. Standard microprocessors are getting faster, but their performance is usually delayed because they need to fetch data from nearby memory chips, graphic chips or other elements used to handle certain tasks.

    http://www.pulseheadlines.com/ibm-giants-reform-servers-faster/52692/

  • Lenovo’s attack plan against Dell EMC? A partnership with Nimble Storage

    The Chinese company, which has what it calls its “dual” headquarters in Morrisville and its server division in Research Triangle Park, just signed a deal with Nimble that allows it to sell Nimble’s all-flash array technology, as well as to use the firm’s predictive analytics capabilities.

    Also:

    And it’s a segment of the business that has seen major change, particularly as its relationship with longtime partner EMC severed completely when rival technology firm Dell acquired it. Since Dell announced the buy last year, Lenovo has been working to fill the gap. McRae says it’s been a systematic effort.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2016/10/17/lenovo-nimble-storage-partnership.html

Other

  • IBM Shares Fall Despite Higher-Than-Expected Sales

    Revenue from those areas, which the company calls “strategic imperatives,” rose 16% to $8 billion in the third quarter. Cloud revenue jumped 44% compared with a 30% rise in the second quarter, it said. However, shares of IBM, which reported its 18th straight quarter of declining revenue, were down 3.1% at $150.60 in after-market trading.

    http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/ibm-shares-fall-beat-estimates/
    sn_ibm_realist_2016_10

  • HP: We’ll Put Laid-Off Workers on Contract

    In light of massive job cuts, HP Inc. has indicated to Business Insider that it may offer affected workers the opportunity to continue their roles as employees at contract agencies. The company stated, “HP has a strong record of success in placing employees in outsourced roles to mitigate the headcount number.” HP has a track record of shifting employees to positions as contract workers from before its 2015 split with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

    http://www.investopedia.com/news/hp-well-put-laidoff-workers-contract-hpq/

  • HP Enterprise announces more layoffs as cloud business struggles

    The layoffs in the Stackato may indicate HPE is further retreating from the ultra-competitive cloud market amidst tough competition from AWS and Microsoft. Last year, HPE pulled the plug on its Helion hybrid cloud offering. In August, Bill Hilf, HPE’s current cloud leader,announced he was leaving the company to “pursue other opportunities.”

    http://www.ciodive.com/news/hp-enterprise-announces-more-layoffs-as-cloud-business-struggles/428563/

  • Microsoft employees love Satya Nadella a lot more than they did Steve Ballmer

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella looks especially good, by the report’s reckoning. At the close of 2013, the final days of former chief executive Steve Ballmer’s reign, Microsoft only gave a 51% rating for CEO approval. Nadella took the reigns in February 2014, and the CEO approval rating hit 88% by the end of 2015.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-employees-love-satya-nadella-2016-10

  • Broadcom, Harris Vet Bill Miller Joins NetApp as CIO

    Bill Miller, former senior vice president and chief information officer at Broadcom, has joined NetApp in the same role of CIO and will be responsible for both the company’s information technology organization and ongoing transformation initiatives.

    http://www.govconexecutive.com/2016/10/broadcom-harris-vet-bill-miller-joins-netapp-as-cio/

Photo: Rob Roy

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/15/2016

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Large IT companies are running into some M&A trouble. Verizon wants a discount on their Yahoo acquisition, Saleforce is trying to block the Microsoft’s purchase of Linkedin, and Oracle is struggling to make their purchase of Netsuite a reality.

Cloud was a big topic this week – Google has officially rebranded their cloud offerings as “Google Cloud” due to customer confusion (good move), IBM CEO Ginni Rometty explains her company’s position on blockchain (and discusses if AI can replace her), and VMWare is available on AWS.

HP Inc is cutting 4,000 jobs but former EMC CEO Joe Tucci found one!

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • Could Watson Replace Ginni Rometty? What She’s Not Saying About AI, Jobs & Disruption

    IBM has bet it’s future on AI, cloud computing and data/information/knowledge management. All three areas are about reducing costs and improving productivity by decreasing human labor.Cloud computing, for example, could easily be described as the technology delivery model that kills software developers, applications support professionals and data center managers. There’s a straight line from the number of jobs IBM eliminates and its stock price. If Watsonbecomes a friendly assistant that charges for its pedantic services, IBM will fail. But if Watson enables large-scale labor replacement, IBM’s stock will rise.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveandriole/2016/10/10/could-watson-replace-ginni-rometty-what-shes-not-saying-about-ai-jobs-disruption/2/#60361b211579

  • Artificial intelligence positioned to be a game-changer (follow link for the video)

    One of the technologies just hatched is called Gabriel. It uses Google Glass to gather data about your surroundings and advises you how to react. It’s like an angel on your shoulder whispering advice or instructions. In this case trying to direct us how to win a game of ping pong but the possibilities go beyond bragging rights.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-artificial-intelligence-charlie-rose-robot-sofia/

Cloud

  • IBM wins $62 million contract to run private cloud pilot at Army’s Redstone Arsenal

    IBM won the work as a task order under the Army’s Private Cloud II indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract. The $62 million award includes one base year and four option years, during which the company will build, then own and operate a data center on Army property at Redstone Arsenal, near Huntsville, Alabama.

    http://federalnewsradio.com/army/2016/10/ibm-wins-62-million-contract-run-private-cloud-pilot-armys-redstone-arsenal/

  • VMware and AWS Announce New Hybrid Cloud Service, “VMware Cloud on AWS”

    Amazon and VMWare today announced a strategic alliance to build and deliver a seamlessly integrated hybrid offering that will give customers the full software-defined data center (SDDC) experience from the leader in the private cloud, running on the world’s most popular, trusted, and robust public cloud. VMware Cloud™ on AWS will enable customers to run applications across VMware vSphere®-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. Delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service, VMware Cloud on AWS will allow VMware customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics, and more

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161013006574/en/VMware-AWS-Announce-Hybrid-Cloud-Service-%E2%80%9CVMware

  • IBM CEO Rometty’s position on blockchain

    Good to hear IBM’s direct stance on the platform and what their vision is
  • IBM’s Cleversafe storage platform is becoming a cloud service

    Cleversafe’s innovation in object storage was to combine encryption with erasure coding and geographic dispersal of data. SecureSlice encrypts unstructured data, stores the key with the data, and then breaks up that data and puts it on several different storage nodes. In IBM Cloud Object Storage, those nodes can be in data centers spread across an entire continent.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3130792/ibms-cleversafe-storage-platform-is-becoming-a-cloud-service.html

  • Google’s Diane Greene providing a status on Google’s cloud platform:
  • IBM says its new Cloud Object Storage allows easily moving and splitting data

    The service is built on technology dubbed SecureSlice, which combines encryption, erasure coding and geographic dispersal of data. Erasure coding is a form of data protection. IBM acquired the SecureSlice technology when it bought Cleversafe last year for $1.3 billion. The technology automatically encrypts each segment of data before it’s erasure-coded and dispersed, and the data can only be reassembled where it was originally received.

    http://www.geekwire.com/2016/ibm-says-new-cloud-object-storage-allows-easily-moving-splitting-data/

  • Amazon cloud boss Andy Jassy fires back at Oracle’s Larry Ellison, says stats were ‘made up’

    Instead, Jassy pointed to what analysts are saying about AWS. For example, Gartner said in its Magic Quadrant report last year that AWS is 10-times bigger than its next 14 competitors combined, while putting it at the top of the list against this year.

    Deutsche Bank also wrote in a recent note, “Oracle talked up its ‘next-gen’ infrastructure as a cheaper rival to AWS, but we don’t believe it will be competitive anytime soon.

    http://www.ctpost.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Amazon-cloud-boss-Andy-Jassy-fires-back-at-9970490.php

Datacenter

  • IBM, Google, others to unveil new open interface to take on Intel

    The new standard, called Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI), is an open forum to provide a high bandwidth, low latency open interface design specification.

    The open interface will help corporate and cloud data centers to speed up big data, machine learning, analytics and other emerging workloads.

    The consortium plans to make the OpenCAPI specification available to the public before the end of the year and expects servers and related products based on the new standard in the second half of 2017, it said in a statement.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-consortium-idUSKCN12E0C5

  • Dell shows off new logo…

    This looks like something Silicon Valley would do to make fun of an IT company.

Other

  • Joe Tucci Named Chairman of Bridge Growth Partners

    Bridge Growth Partners, LLC, a sector-focused, growth-oriented private equity firm, today announced that Joseph M. Tucci, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EMC Corporation and former Chairman of VMWare, has been named Chairman of the firm. Tucci has served on the firm’s Investment Committee and Advisory Board since Bridge Growth Partners was established in late 2013.

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161011005926/en/Joe-Tucci-Named-Chairman-Bridge-Growth-Partners

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise will have approximately $9 billion in net cash at the end of FY17

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise is expected to host analyst meeting event on October 18, and according to Mr. Hosseini, the management will surely divulge information regarding the high level of cash in the company’s balance sheet. Furthermore, the analyst expects insight regarding growth initiatives and the strategy used by the company in order to promote secular growth trends in key areas of business.

    http://www.thecountrycaller.com/22995-hewlett-packard-enterprise-co-hpe-liquidity-situation-continues-to-improve/

  • HP Inc will cut up to 4,000 jobs by 2019

    The world’s second-largest PC supplier has struggled in a dwindling market, and hopes the cutbacks will save the company between $200 to $300 million annually by 2020.

    However, HP will also incur an estimated $350 million to $500 million in restructuring costs.

    The announcement comes during a global decline in PC sales, dropping 5.7% in the third quarter compared to last year according to a report by Gartner. This represents the longest period of decline in the history of the PC industry.

    http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/27410/hp-will-cut-up-to-4000-jobs-by-2019

Photo: Tao Wen