Supplier Report: 3/13/2020
Photo by DDP on Unsplash
The Coronavirus continues to dominate the news feeds this week. Several companies are pulling out of or cancelling conferences and directing employees to stop traveling and work from home.
Articles from the New York Times and other respected news outlets are calling these preventative measures “unprecedented”. These actions beg the question, when will things go back to normal and how do firms plan around a global pandemic?
Acquisitions/Investments
- BMC Software buys Compuware from Thoma Bravo
By combining with Compuware, BMC said the companies will be better equipped to serve the enterprise technology stack. Together they plan to focus on mainframe operations, cybersecurity, application development, data, and storage as part of their enterprise DevOps strategies.
“BMC continues to be focused on evolving and investing in our portfolio to address and even anticipate the needs of our customers, helping them to succeed today and into tomorrow,” said BMC chief executive Ayman Sayed. “It’s the ideal time to bring Compuware into our portfolio as the traditional mainframe AppDev market transitions to DevOps. We’re excited to welcome the Compuware team as we build best-of-breed modern mainframe solutions.”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/bmc-software-buys-compuware-from-thoma-bravo/
- Nvidia acquires data storage and management platform SwiftStack
Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments.
The company’s recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most interested in here.
The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but SwiftStack had previously raised about $23.6 million in Series A and B rounds led by Mayfield Fund and OpenView Venture Partners. Other investors include Storm Ventures and UMC Capital.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/05/nvidia-acquires-data-storage-and-management-platform-swiftstack/
- HP Rejects Xerox’s Raised Takeover Offer
Xerox this week launched an effort to acquire all HP shares outstanding, valuing HP at nearly $35 billion, or $24 a share in cash and stock. It had raised the offer from $22 a share. HP said the value of the offer’s equity component poses a risk to the company and would lead to uncertainties.
The offer would leave Xerox “burdened with an irresponsible level of debt and which would subsequently require unrealistic, unachievable synergies that would jeopardize the entire company,” HP Chairman Chip Bergh said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hp-rejects-xerox-takeover-offer-11583408223
Cloud
- Judge says Amazon is ‘likely to succeed’ on key argument in Pentagon cloud lawsuit
The document provides the first indication of how Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims might rule in a high-stakes bid protest over the Pentagon’s JEDI cloud computing contract, which was awarded to Microsoft in October following intervention from the White House and members of Congress.
In a blow to Microsoft and the Defense Department, Campbell-Smith recently ordered the Pentagon to halt work on JEDI. In a lengthy opinion explaining her reasoning, she sided with Amazon’s contention that the Pentagon had made a mistake in how it evaluated prices for competing proposals from Amazon and Microsoft.
Security/Privacy
- Halting $9.8 Billion in Theft Is Key to Crypto Growth, KPMG Says
At least $9.8 billion in digital assets have been stolen by hackers since 2017 because of lax security or poorly written code, the accounting firm wrote in a report released Monday. Adoption of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether among institutional investors has led to competition for a place in portfolios, making safeguarding the tokens more important that ever, KPMG said.
“Institutional investors especially will not risk owning crypto assets if their value cannot be safeguarded in the same way their cash, stocks and bonds are,” Sal Ternullo, co-leader of KPMG’s crypto-asset services and co-author of the report, said in a statement. Among the first companies to offer custody services for crypto are Fidelity Investments and units of the exchanges run by Intercontinental Exchange Inc., Coinbase Inc. and Gemini Trust Co.
Infrastructure/Hardware
- Honeywell says it will soon launch the world’s most powerful quantum computer
Honeywell has long built the kind of complex control systems that power many of the world’s largest industrial sites. It’s that kind of experience that has now allowed it to build an advanced ion trap that is at the core of its efforts.
This ion trap, the company claims in a paper that accompanies today’s announcement, has allowed the team to achieve decoherence times that are significantly longer than those of its competitors.
**
The result of this is a quantum computer that promises to achieve a quantum Volume of 64. Quantum Volume (QV), it’s worth mentioning, is a metric that takes into account both the number of qubits in a system as well as decoherence times. IBM and others have championed this metric as a way to, at least for now, compare the power of various quantum computers.
So far, IBM’s own machines have achieved QV 32, which would make Honeywell’s machine significantly more powerful.
- HPE Reports Sales That Miss Estimates on Weak Server Demand
HPE Chief Executive Officer Antonio Neri has sought to fuel growth at the hardware company by moving to a subscription business model and investing in more sophisticated server technologies. The strategy may take years to pay off. In the meantime, HPE is exposed to China, the origin of the coronavirus, through its supply chain and its H3C server joint venture in the country. The company opted not to give a profit forecast for the current period due to uncertainty over the effects of the outbreak.
HPE’s server sales decreased 16% to $3.01 billion in the period ended Jan. 31 because of macro uncertainty, supply chain disruption and a factory consolidation, Neri said in an interview. Businesses have reduced the pace of purchases for major information technology products amid slowing global economic growth.
CoronaVirus (Breaking it out into its own section)
- eBay bans face mask and hand sanitizer listings to halt coronavirus price gouging
eBay is escalating its fight against online price gouging during the coronavirus outbreak with a new outright ban on all sales of face masks, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes. The new policy, outlined in a notice to sellers posted Friday, applies both to new listings and existing ones. eBay says it is in the process of removing current listings for these items as well as listings that mention the coronavirus, COVID-19 (the illness it causes), and other popular variations of the phrases like 2019nCoV.
“We will continue to monitor the evolving situation and quickly remove any listing that mentions COVID-19, coronavirus, 2019nCoV (except books) in the title or description,” the notice reads. “These listings may violate applicable US laws or regulations, eBay policies, and exhibit unfair pricing behavior for our buyers.”
- SXSW cancels its 400K-person conference due to coronavirus
SXSW has officially announced it will cancel its tech and music conference slated for March 13th to 22nd in Austin, Texas due to concerns around coronavirus, though it’s exploring rescheduling. “Based on the recommendation of our public health officer and our director of public health . . . I’ve gone ahead and declared a local disaster in the city and associated with that, have issued an order that effectively cancels SXSW,” said Austin Mayor Steve Adler at a press conference today.
- SAP has cancelled all in-person events and says bookings on its Concur travel platform is down 20% due to coronavirus crisis
SAP said the cancelled events include its Concur Fusion conference in Orlando which was supposed to take place next week and its SAP Ariba Live convention in Las Vegas scheduled later this month.
SAP also will not participate in the upcoming SXSW gathering in Austin, Texas next week.
SAP said its own data underscore “the impact of COVID-19,” the company said in a blog post: “We have seen travel transactions in our SAP Concur network down 20% year-over-year.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/sap-cancelled-in-person-events-due-to-coronavirus-crisis-2020-3
- As coronavirus pandemic spreads, demand for remote-work startups spikes
Switching to a remote-work setup isn’t easy. Smartsheet’s Mark Mader told TechCrunch that the “challenge of remote work isn’t just about physical location,” continuing to say that it is “also about the need for people to feel connected and stay informed.” That means intelligent tooling, and smart workplaces norms and practices. (Mader also stressed low-code and no-code tooling as a possible way to empower remote workers).
The remote-work boom was recently highlighted in Zoom’s earnings report. Its results bested expectations, and in its earnings call, the company said that it was seeing rising demand for its product in the wake of COVID-19, even if most of that rising usage was for its free service. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said that in light of the spread of the coronavirus, many companies had quickly come to understand the need for a tool like Zoom. The CEO added that he expects more companies to deploy remote work tooling like his video service in the future.
- Google recommends Washington State employees work from home, citing coronavirus risk
The software giant has not closed the offices outright, nor is it planning to make an official statement regarding the recommendation, but the news certainly points to broader trend of serious precautions around the novel coronavirus outbreak. The move follows a similar decision by Lyft, which sent home employees in its San Francisco office.
Google maintains a number of different offices throughout the state. Washington has become a major concentration for the spread of the virus in the U.S. Seventy cases have been reported, resulting in 10 deaths. The majority have been in King County, which includes both Seattle and Kirkland — both homes to Google offices.
Other
- Elizabeth Warren, big tech’s sworn foe, drops out of 2020 race
Warren’s campaign raised early red flags for tech’s giants, which are now recalibrating for the threat from Sanders.
Through the 2020 race, the elite upper echelons of tech — executives, venture capitalists and the like — sought a moderate alternative to the economic upheaval they feared would be bad for business, even as their own workers aligned with the contest’s most progressive candidates.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/05/big-techs-sworn-foe-drops-out-of-2020-race/
- Amazon Warehouse Workers Are Abandoning Their Jobs in Droves
Between 2011—the year the first fulfillment center opened in California— and 2017, the turnover rate in five counties with Amazon warehouses leaped from 38 percent to 100 percent, according to the report. In other words, more warehouse workers departed from their jobs each year in counties with an Amazon presence than the total number of warehouse jobs.
“What emerges is a troubling picture of Amazon’s business model—one in which the company views its workers as disposable and designs its operations to foster high turnover,” the report’s authors wrote. “The particularly high rate [of turnover for Amazon] workers as compared to the rate for similar workers suggests that Amazon’s presence has had a unique impact.”
By comparison, overall turnover rates for warehouse workers in California are 20 percent lower than they are in counties without Amazon warehouses, at 83 percent.
Supplier Report: 2/14/2020
Photo by Finan Akbar on Unsplash
Investment company SoftBank is having trouble finding investors for the second wave of their “Vision Fund”. The company has taken heavy criticism for their investment strategies that some financial experts attribute to the over-valuation of companies like Uber and WeWork.
With less capital investments available, will the over-valuation of unprofitable tech companies end or will something or someone else fuel the next bubble?
Meanwhile Jeff Weiner is stepping down as LinkedIn CEO (he is still staying with the company) and Seeking Alpha is questioning why IBM didn’t select Jim Whitehurst as their next CEO.
Acquisitions/Investments
- Koch Industries acquires Infor in deal pegged at nearly $13B
Infor, which makes large-scale cloud ERP software, has been around since 2002 and counts Koch as both a customer and an investor, so the deal makes sense on that level. Koch was lead investor last year in a $1.5 billion investment, wherein the company indicated that it was a step before going public.
It’s not clear if that is still the goal, as sources suggested that staying private might provide the company with more capital flexibility in the future. Daniel Newman, founder and principal analyst at Futurum Research, says staying private longer could benefit Infor in the long run.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/04/koch-industries-acquires-infor-in-deal-pegged-at-nearly-13b/
- New SoftBank Tech Fund Falls Far Short of $108 Billion Fundraising Goal
Hailed by SoftBank last summer as a $108 billion sequel to its $100 billion Vision Fund, the new pool could end up being less than half that size, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself, the people said.
A failure by SoftBank to raise a big new fund would reverberate across the tech startup world. Dozens of companies from ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies to food delivery company DoorDash Inc. got big boosts from the fund’s nearly $90 billion two-year spending spree.
Less money to invest could mean cuts to SoftBank’s 500-person investing staff.
- Elliott Management Builds More Than $2.5 Billion Stake in SoftBank
Elliott Management Corp. has quietly built up a more than $2.5 billion stake in Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 7.13% and is pushing the sprawling technology giant to make changes that would boost its share price, according to people familiar with the matter.
Founded by billionaire Paul Singer, New York-based Elliott is known as a formidable activist investor, often seeking to influence company management. SoftBank is one of Elliott’s largest bets, according to people familiar with the matter. At current prices, the investment would be equivalent to about 3% of SoftBank’s market value.
- HPE acquires cloud native security startup Scytale
HPE announced today that it has acquired Scytale, a cloud native security startup that is built on the open-source Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) protocol. The companies did not share the acquisition price.
Specifically, Scytale looks at application-to-application identity and access management, something that is increasingly important as more transactions take place between applications without any human intervention. It’s imperative that the application knows it’s OK to share information with the other application.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/hpe-acquires-cloud-native-security-startup-scytale/
Artificial Intelligence/Robotics
- Laszlo Bock Thinks Machine Learning Can Make Work Better
“There are seven billion people on this planet, and work sucks for most of them,” Mr. Bock adds. “How do you make it better without waiting 200 years for it to get better? What if you could actually drive business outcomes while also making work better?”
His answer to that what-if is Humu Inc., a behavioral-change startup whose mission is to “make work better everywhere through machine learning, science and a little bit of love.” Mr. Bock, 48, serves as Humu’s CEO. He started the company in 2017 with two of his former Google colleagues, Wayne Crosby and Jessie Wisdom. Based in Mountain View, Calif., Humu seeks to expand the kind of data-driven approach to personnel management that Mr. Bock developed during his 10 years as Google’s head of human resources (or as Google calls it, “people operations”).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/laszlo-bock-thinks-machine-learning-can-make-work-better-11580492585
Cloud
- Oracle Adds Data Centers in Five New Countries to Its Cloud Platform
This week Oracle announced the addition of five new regions to its Generation 2 cloud platform across the globe. This brings the number of Oracle cloud data center availability regions to 21, with a total of 36 to be available by the end of the year, which is when the company has said it will have more global data center hubs than Amazon Web Services.
The new regions are in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Melbourne, Australia; Osaka, Japan; Montreal, and Amsterdam.
Security/Privacy
- Researcher: Backdoor mechanism still active in many IoT products
According to Yarmak, the backdoor can be exploited by sending a series of commands over TCP port 9530 to devices that use HiSilicon chips and Xiongmai firmware.
The commands — the equivalent of a secret knock — will enable the Telnet service on a vulnerable device.
Yarmak says that once the Telnet service is up and running, the attacker can log in with one of six Telnet credentials listed below, and gain access to a root account that grants them complete control over a vulnerable device.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/researcher-backdoor-mechanism-still-active-in-many-iot-products/
Infrastructure/Hardware
- Apple fined $27 million in France for throttling old iPhones without telling users
A couple of years ago, Apple released an iOS update (10.2.1 and 11.2) that introduced a new feature for older devices. If your battery is getting old, iOS would cap peak performances as your battery might not be able to handle quick peaks of power draw. The result of those peaks is that your iPhone might shut down abruptly.
While that feature is technically fine, Apple failed to inform users that it was capping performances on some devices. The company apologized and introduced a new software feature called “Battery Health,” which lets you check the maximum capacity of your battery and if your iPhone can reach peak performance.
And that’s the issue here. Many users may have noticed that their phone would get slower when they play a game, for instance. But they didn’t know that replacing the battery would fix that.
Some users may have bought new phones even though their existing phone was working fine.
- The Coronavirus Impact on Hardware Startups
It seems like most people are expecting factories to open on 2/10 as planned. However, the expectation is being set that production will take two weeks to ramp back up to normal. And, there is some concern that larger companies will likely exert pressure to be at the front of the line.
Another problem at this point is movement into and out of China. The Chinese border with Hong Kong is only open at a few places and many are afraid to enter China right now for fear that they won’t be able to leave.
Everyone anticipates a big logistics clog once things start shipping, which will introduce delay and cost, although the magnitude of this is unknown.
Finally, the downstream (or upstream – I never get that right) impact of long lead time items will add another wrinkle once people understand the volume and timing constraints when things settle down.
https://feld.com/archives/2020/02/the-coronavirus-impact-on-hardware-startups.html
Yes – I posted this video twice. Watch it. Subscribe. I might make more.
Other
- Status Quo For IBM Is Unsustainable. An Acquirer Would Treat Its Assets Better
The fact that Jim Whitehurst was given the consolation prize of President is all you need to know about where the board is, in regard to a sense of urgency about the going forward. Whitehurst was the erstwhile CEO of Red Hat; he is not some “wet-behind-the-ears” naive tech company founder. Before Red Hat, Whitehurst was the COO of Delta in what was very trying times going into the teeth of the great recession. Whitehurst understands how to perform while playing hurt. Whitehurst also knows how to grow a tech business. Red Hat was an admired company before IBM scooped it up by paying top dollar. I am sure that during the courtship Rometti whispered in Whitehurst’s ear all kinds of promises including the fact that she will retire soon and IBM may very well be his realm. That is what a lot of people who grew up in technology, in earlier more genteel times, hoped. IBM would finally get its footing by reaching outside and putting its house in order. This “business-as-usual” coronation, promoted a 40-year IBMer, who has no corporate leadership experience, no experience in restructuring, no experience in building a tech company. His claim to fame is that he bought Whitehurst’s company for top dollar? Really?
- IBM, Marriott and Mickey Mouse Take On Tech’s Favorite Law
An unusual constellation of powerful companies and industries are fighting to weaken Big Tech by limiting the reach of one of its most sacred laws. The law, known as Section 230, makes it nearly impossible to sue platforms like Facebook or Google for the words, images and videos posted by their users.
The companies’ motivations vary somewhat. Hollywood is concerned about copyright abuse, especially abroad, while Marriott would like to make it harder for Airbnb to fight local hotel laws. IBM wants consumer online services to be more responsible for the content on their sites.
But they all see an opening as both Democrats and Republicans increasingly raise their own concerns about the power of the tech industry and the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/technology/section-230-lobby.html
- Jeff Weiner will step down as CEO of LinkedIn June 1, product head Ryan Roslansky steps up
There is a major change ahead for LinkedIn, the social network for the working world, now with 675 million members. Jeff Weiner, who has been leading the company as CEO for the past 11 years, is stepping down on June 1, 2020. His new role will be executive chairman. Ryan Roslansky, who is currently head of product, will be stepping up to the role of CEO, while Tomer Cohen, who had been under Roslansky, is stepping up to lead the product team.
Supplier Report: 11/29/2019
Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash
Black Friday is upon us and consumers are not the only ones out shopping. Several acquisitions were announced this month such as Google buying yet another cloud company and PayPal snapping up Honey.
But just like Thanksgiving, families come together to celebrate (SalesForce and AWS are forming a tighter partnership) and they also fight (Google vs. their own employees).
As we start to wrap up 2019 and start to look towards the future, will 2020 be a boom year or will we see cuts and decline (WeWork announced 2,400 job cuts)?
Acquisitions/Investments
- Google buys a small cloud partner to make it easier for customers to use VMware on its cloud
Google has bought yet another small business to build its cloud-computing unit: CloudSimple, whose software enables companies to run computing workloads that are based on VMware’s widely used server virtualization technology. Terms were not disclosed.
The deal follows the buys of data integration company Alooma, storage company Elastifile and cloud migration company Velostrata. Kurian’s biggest deal to date has been the $2.6 billion acquisition of privately held data analytics company Looker, which, like CloudSimple, had been a partner prior to the deal. The Looker deal hasn’t closed yet, however, and the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division moved to seek information from the two companies as part of a review, Bloomberg reported last month.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/18/google-buys-cloudsimple-which-helps-run-vmware-workloads.html
- PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
PayPal announced today it has agreed to acquire Honey Science Corporation, the makers of a deal-finding browser add-on and mobile application, for $4 billion, mostly cash. The acquisition, which is PayPal’s largest to date, will give the payments giant a foothold earlier in the customer’s shopping journey. Instead of only competing on the checkout page against credit cards or Apple Pay, for example, PayPal will leap ahead to become a part of the deal discovery process, as well.
Currently, Honey’s 17 million monthly active users take advantage of its suite of money-saving tools to track prices, get alerts, make lists, browse offers and participate in an Ebates-like rewards program called Honey Gold. Its users tend to be younger, millennial shoppers, both male and female.
- HP Rejects Xerox Offer but Remains Open to a Deal
HP Inc. rejected a $33 billion takeover offer from Xerox Holdings Corp. as too low, but the PC and printer maker made clear it is interested in discussing a deal to combine with its smaller rival.
Xerox’s unsolicited offer of $22 a share significantly undervalues the company, HP’s board said in a public letter to Xerox Chief Executive John Visentin on Sunday. It also voiced concern about the debt a transaction would put on the combined company and said it needs more information about Xerox’s business, known as due diligence.
Still, HP said it recognizes the benefits of consolidation and is “open to exploring a potential combination with Xerox.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hp-rejects-xerox-offer-but-remains-open-to-a-deal-11574027722
- Celonis, a leader in big data process mining for enterprises, nabs $290M on a $2.5B valuation
Celonis was founded in 2011 in Munich — an industrial and economic center in Germany that you could say is a veritable Petri dish when it comes to large business in need of digital transformation — and has been cash-flow positive from the start. In fact, Celonis waited until it was nearly six years old to take its first outside funding (prior to this Series C it had picked up less than $80 million, see here and here).
The size and timing of this latest equity injection is due to seizing the moment, and tapping networks of people to do so. It has already been growing at a triple-digit rate, with customers like Siemens, Cisco, L’Oréal, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone among them.
- Report: Charles Schwab in talks to buy TD Ameritrade
Brokerage firm Charles Schwab is in talks to buy rival TD Ameritrade, reports CNBC. The organization cites a source who said the deal could be announced today. The two brokerage firms are the largest publicly traded houses, with Charles Schwab having a market cap of $57.5 billion and TD Ameritrade at $22.4 billion.
The retail brokerage industry has gone through upheaval in recent months as all of the major brokers have moved, or are moving, to commission-free trades in order to lure customers. CNBC says Charles Schwab was the first to do so, followed by TD Ameritrade.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90434433/report-charles-schwab-in-talks-to-buy-td-ameritrade
Cloud
- Salesforce and Amazon double down on cloud partnership following surprising Microsoft alliance
Amazon and Salesforce today strengthened their relationship with a new cloud partnership focused on technology for customer service centers. The announcement comes just days after Salesforce and Microsoft unveiled a cloud alliance of their own.
Under the new deal, Salesforce will use Amazon Connect, an Amazon Web Services offering for call centers, for its new Service Cloud Voice product. The new service from Salesforce will give call center workers a new set of tools to better do their jobs.
As part of the agreement, AWS content will become available on Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform, to train people in cloud technology.
- Google Scoops Up Chunk of Vodafone in Battle With Microsoft and Amazon
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2019-11-19/google-scoops-up-chunk-of-vodafone-in-battle-with-microsoft-and-amazon-video
Security/Privacy
- Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights
“The internet is vital for people to enjoy many of their rights, yet billions of people have no meaningful choice but to access this public space on terms dictated by Facebook and Google,” said Kumi Naidoo.
“To make it worse this isn’t the internet people signed up for when these platforms started out. Google and Facebook chipped away at our privacy over time. We are now trapped. Either we must submit to this pervasive surveillance machinery – where our data is easily weaponized to manipulate and influence us – or forego the benefits of the digital world. This can never be a legitimate choice. We must reclaim this essential public square, so we can participate without having our rights abused.”
This extraction and analysis of people’s personal data on such an unprecedented scale is incompatible with every element of the right to privacy, including the freedom from intrusion into our private lives, the right to control information about ourselves, and the right to a space in which we can freely express our identities.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/google-facebook-surveillance-privacy/
Infrastructure/Hardware
- HPE Dumps Recent Acquisitions Into Its Container Platform
The turnkey platform taps into HPE’s acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data software vendor BlueData last year and MapR in August.
BlueData makes a software platform that uses Docker containers to make it easier for companies to deploy large-scale machine learning and big data analytics environments. MapR, which HPE “rescued” from the brink of collapse, provides enterprise-grade file system and cloud-native storage services.
HPE’s Container Platform uses BlueData software as the control plane for container management and the MapR distributed file system and object store for persistent data with containers. It then uses Kubernetes for container orchestration. This package supports the containerization of cloud-native, microservices-architected applications and on-premises applications with persistent data.
Other
- Google Workers Protest Company’s ‘Brute Force Intimidation’
Roughly 200 workers gathered about 11 a.m. local time Friday outside a Google office overlooking San Francisco bay.
“Over the past two years, many of my coworkers have asked the company to take meaningful action to curtail sexual harassment and systemic racism, improve the working conditions of temps, vendors and contractors, and divest from harmful tech,” said Zora Tung, a Google software engineer. “Instead of listening to us, the company has chosen to silence us.”
The Google workers who protested also said the company had unjustly put Laurence Berland and Rebecca Rivers on indefinite administrative leave without warning. They demanded that Google bring the employees back to work immediately.
- WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
In a statement, a WeWork spokesperson said the cuts were being made as part of the company’s efforts to “create a more efficient organization” and refocus on the core office-sharing business. The job reductions represent 19% of WeWork’s total workforce, which amounted to 12,500 employees as of June 30, according to an SEC filing.
“The process began weeks ago in regions around the world and continued this week in the U.S.,” the spokesperson said. “This workforce reduction affects approximately 2,400 employees globally, who will receive severance, continued benefits, and other forms of assistance to aid in their career transition. These are incredibly talented professionals and we are grateful for the important roles they have played in building WeWork over the last decade.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/21/wework-lays-off-2400-employees.html
- When John Legere Leaves, Say Goodbye to the Old T-Mobile
Make no mistake, the CEO transition will usher in a new T-Mobile. That’s not because the visions of the two men are so different — they aren’t, and Legere has been grooming Sievert, 50, for quite some time. But T-Mobile is no longer the industry upstart, and Legere’s departure suggests that he feels his work there is almost done. The last step is to complete the acquisition of Sprint Corp., which is being held up by a group of state attorneys general rightly concerned about the potential harm the transaction may cause consumers.
Legere, 61, made clear that he isn’t retiring — nor is he turning his “Slow Cooker Sunday” Facebook Live series into a full-time gig. While he said the rumors of him joining WeWork aren’t true, he has fielded a “tremendous amount” of interest from companies seeking the expertise he’s demonstrated at turning around a troubled business and generating broad enthusiasm for a brand. “I’ve got 30 or 40 years and five or six good acts left in me,” Legere, the class clown of corporate events, said on Monday’s call.
- Amazon Is America’s CEO Factory
There’s one element some ex-Amazonians are leaving behind: the harsher parts of Amazon’s culture, such as hiring practices that favor skills over collegiality.
Amazon is known for disregarding social cohesion in interviewing candidates, former employees said, elevating other traits over an ability to work well with colleagues. Mr. Gordon of Latchel originally embraced that tenet.
“We approached hiring this way and it was a big, big mistake,” he said. He had to fire one employee he had hired who was capable but couldn’t get along with the team. “We need social cohesion and to like each other because we have to put in lots of additional hours and time because it’s a startup,” Mr. Gordon said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-is-americas-ceo-factory/ar-BBX3hhE?li=BBnb7Kz
Supplier Report: 9/13/2019
Photo by Luke Michael on Unsplash
The walls are once again closing in on Google. For weeks I have been tracking rumors that the DoJ is going to hit the internet giant with an anti-trust investigation and rumors are that the Department of Justice is pulling in dozens of state-level attorneys general to kick off the investigation that could start within weeks.
The bad press keeps rolling as over 40 current and former Google employees are protesting former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote at a Stanford University artificial intelligence ethics conference citing Schmidt’s lack of “ethical conduct” in the field (specifically the company’s aborted plans for China).
Meanwhile Thomas Kurian is trying to get more attention, better sales people, and of course customers for Google’s cloud services – but all this bad press can’t be helping the company attract new business.
Acquisitions/Investments
- Microsoft acquires cloud migration startup Movere to help companies transition to Azure
Microsoft didn’t have to go far for its latest acquisition. The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant today announced that it acquired Movere, an 11-year-old Seattle-area cloud migration startup. Microsoft will use the deal to help customers move their existing applications and infrastructure to Azure. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“Movere’s innovative discovery and assessment capabilities will complement Azure Migrate and our integrated partner solutions, making migration an easier process for our customers. We believe that successful cloud migrations enable business transformation, and this acquisition underscores our investments to make that happen,” Jeremy Winter, partner director for Azure Management, said in a statement.
Cloud
- Google Cloud has a new program to assign its best salespeople to go after the biggest customers — but Google employees say it makes it harder for current salespeople to advance
This change is similar to how Oracle, where Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian most recently worked, handles its largest customers. However, this isn’t sitting well with current Google employees, sources said: It’s far easier for outsiders to get hired into these account-director roles than for an existing Google salesperson to step up, even if they have the right experience.
Sources also said that there’s a perception among Google Cloud salespeople that the hiring process is “biased” toward Oracle veterans.
https://www.businessinsider.com/thomas-kurian-google-cloud-sales-account-director-2019-9
Security/Privacy
- Monster.com says a third party exposed user data but didn’t tell anyone
The server contained résumés and CVs for job applicants spanning 2014 and 2017, many of which included private information like phone numbers and home addresses, but also email addresses and a person’s prior work experience.
Of the documents we reviewed, most users were located in the United States.
It’s not known exactly how many files were exposed, but thousands of résumés were found in a single folder dated May 2017. Other files found on the exposed server included immigration documentation for work, which Monster does not collect.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/05/monster-exposed-user-data-years/
Software/SaaS
- Slack Intensifies a War of Words
World-wide spending on collaboration software is expected to rise to $16.5 billion this year and eventually reach more than $26.6 billion in 2023, according to research firm International Data Corp.
Mr. Bracelin said Slack has an advantage over Microsoft in helping businesses get more productivity out of workers by automating and streamlining routine tasks. Slack offers users more than 1,800 third-party applications that work on top of its software, compared with just a few hundred for Teams.
Slack’s user-engagement numbers are another sign of strength, D.A. Davidson & Co. analyst Rishi Jaluria said. People spend an average of 90 minutes daily using its software, Slack said, far more than the average time spent with some popular consumer applications such as Facebook and the mobile game “Candy Crush Saga.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/slack-intensifies-a-war-of-words-11567726192
Infrastructure/Hardware
- Antonio Neri and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s cultural revolution
Neri and HPE may actually have two North Stars. At the center of the company’s current strategy are two sets of platforms. The first is HPE’s Greenlake—an infrastructure management service for both cloud and on-premises that turns even local infrastructure into a “consumption-based” resource that can be scaled up and down (within limits) on demand.
The second central tenet is HPE’s pair of analytics and machine-learning based automation tools: InfoSight and OneView. Combined, these two sets of technologies will tie into HPE’s new Primera storage platform, Aruba networking hardware, and even supercomputing resources such as Silicon Graphics (and, if the transaction completes, Cray) systems to create an “as-a-service” fabric. With these two tentpoles, Neri’s long-term goal for the company is what he calls “cloudless” computing—a unified “as a service” management of all compute, storage, and network resources transparently across all public and private clouds and “edge” devices.
- In the Race to Dominate 5G, China Sprints Ahead
President Trump has said 5G is a race that the U.S. must win. But while American wireless carriers are leading in early deployment of the technology, some telecom-industry leaders say Beijing is poised to vault ahead in coming months.
While U.S. wireless carriers shuffle from city to city to introduce 5G, China plans to blanket urban areas with it by the end of next year and the rest of the country soon after. A local manager at one carrier estimated that even Tongguan, which lacks modern plumbing, could get the superfast networks by 2021.
“We look forward to 5G,” said Wu Shengmin, Tongguan’s baby-faced village chief. His locale boasts superb service on current 4G systems that would be the envy in much of the U.S., courtesy of a nearby cellular tower nestled in a tree-covered peak.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-the-race-to-dominate-5g-china-has-an-edge-11567828888
Other
- Google could face far-reaching antitrust investigation as soon as next week
The investigation is said to involve more than half of the nation’s state attorneys general. The Post says the Department of Justice has met with many of those state attorneys general, but it’s unclear whether it will be involved in the final lawsuit.
The news follows comments late last month from the DOJ’s antitrust chief Makan Delrahim that suggested the agency would be working closely with state lawmakers and regulatory authorities on future antitrust probes. Regardless, the investigation would mark a further escalation in the US government’s attempts to rein in Big Tech, and it signals that authorities at both the federal and state effort are working concurrently on a number of investigations into Silicon Valley companies.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847798/google-antitrust-investigation-us-states-attorneys-generals-doj-ftc-regulation
Google receives demand for documents from Justice Dept., acknowledging federal antitrust scrutinyGoogle said Friday that the Justice Department has requested records related to its prior antitrust investigations, marking the tech giant’s first major acknowledgment that it’s a subject of a federal competition probe.
The civil-investigative demand — acknowledged in a securities filing and a blog post — comes weeks after Justice Department officials said they would open a broad review of big tech, including search. It also comes days before more than 30 state attorneys general are expected to announce a major antitrust investigation of Google, as The Washington Post first reported.
- We Company (WeWork) reportedly mulls slashing its valuation ahead of its initial public offering
SoftBank has already balked at putting more cash into The We Company ahead of the public offering, and it’s not clear whether the company will step in as a white knight now.
What is clear is that We needs money and its long-term viability as a business is contingent on the infusion of massive amounts of cash.
Indeed, the company has a $6 billion line of credit at stake, which would be pulled if the public offering underperforms.
If the company fails to hit the $3 billion mark in its public offering, then the credit line promised from the big banks that are underwriting the public offering goes away. That would be a pretty devastating turn of events for a company that’s currently racking up losses in the billions of dollars.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/05/we-company-reportedly-mulls-slashing-its-valuation-ahead-of-its-initial-public-offering/
We Company adds a director, ditches its $5.9 million naming deal with its CEO, remains a governance nightmareAs part of the amended filing, The We Company also committed to add a director to the board that will increase the company’s gender and ethnic diversity.
In the same amendment, the company said that it was unwinding the $5.9 million transaction between itself and a holding company — WE Holdings LLC, which held the trademark for the “We” brand and was owned by We Company’s chief executive, Adam Neumann.
- AT&T Names Media Boss John Stankey as CEO Heir Apparent
Mr. Stankey, 56 years old, will serve as president and chief operating officer starting next month. He will continue to serve as the head of WarnerMedia, the unit that houses HBO, the Warner Bros. studio and cable channels like CNN.
He will report to Mr. Stephenson and is the front-runner to take over the top job, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Stankey joined one of AT&T’s predecessors in 1985 and spent most of his career in the telecommunications business.
Mr. Stephenson, 59 years old, hasn’t indicated when he plans to retire, though he has been CEO for 12 years and there are discussions for and against his retirement at the board level, the people said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-names-new-president-and-chief-operating-officer-11567525692