Procurement & Career Guidance
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that IBM is looking to potentially sell the Watson Health Platform (consisting of AI and companies like Merge, Truven, Explorys, and Phytel).
Why did something so promising end up becoming a failure for the company?
This video explores the ups and downs of Watson Health:
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
I am sure a handful of readers have been wondering where I have been. I wanted to give an update on the lack of posts and where I plan to take the blog (and vlogs and podcasts).
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
After IBM took a stance on restricting facial recognition software, their competitors Microsoft and Amazon did the same.
While the move is being applauded by many, Amazon’s decision seems like a panic reaction. People have been asking Amazon to back off of providing this technology for a few years due to bias flaws.
And unlike IBM and Microsoft who offered more nuanced responses, Amazon announced they would restrict the technology for only a year (instead of committing to getting it right or not using it at all). It is another disappointing response from a company that has been struggling to get things right for the last 3 months.
Acquisitions/Investments
The cloud was a key driver in IBM’s buy of Red Hat. And if Cloudera – which like Red Hat has an open source focus – is indeed for sale then IBM might make a play as it continues to fight for marketshare with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google.
IBM “is the most likely strategic buyer, especially given the partnership between Cloudera and IBM,” wrote analyst Rishi Jaluria at D.A. Davidson. He noted that a deal would complement the Red Hat buy.
But CloudEra won’t come cheaply. It has a $2.9 billion dollar market cap, and shares climbed to $12 on Tuesday after Bloomberg reported that the company is open to a takeover.
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2020/06/10/ibm-could-make-another-big-cloud-acquisition-analyst/
Cloud
For the past couple of quarters, Ellison—a master storyteller—has used Oracle’s earnings call to claim that his Cloud ERP app has so much momentum that a number of SAP’s biggest and longest-term customers are on the verge of tossing out SAP and installing Oracle Cloud ERP. But with each telling, the claims get a bit more vague. My hope is that Ellison will avoid the subject unless he’s able to share some specific names and details.
However, the Oracle-SAP wars have been raging for decades, and the latest battles seem to now be centered around which company can be more convincing in persuading existing on-premises customers to move to the cloud. As I noted above, SAP has flat-out denied that any of its big ERP customers are on the verge of jumping ship to Oracle. In fact, CEO Christian Klein recently told me that not only are none of his customers jumping to Oracle, but also SAP’s cloud ERP business has far more customers than Oracle’s.
https://cloudwars.co/oracle/oracle-q4-earnings-larry-ellison-will-focus-on-5-things-including-sap/
Security/Privacy
IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency. We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.
While the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has held a number of hearings on the use of facial recognition technology, it has yet to introduce a bill regulating the technology. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Ca., who serves on the committee told CNBC in a phone interview he is hopeful Congress will pass a bill this year.
“It’s a good first step, but it’s still not enough,” said Rep. Gomez of Amazon’s announcement.
“They’re saying, ‘we’ve been asking Congress to put guardrails on the use of this technology,’ – but every time we tried to get more and more data they stalled – and we had to have hearings to make movement on the issue.”
Microsoft’s president and chief counsel, Brad Smith, announced the decision and called on Congress to regulate the technology during a Washington Post video event on Thursday.
“We’ve decided we will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology,” Smith said.
Also…
Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are calling on Congress to set national rules over how police use facial recognition — something that’s now being considered as part of a police reform package sparked by the protests following Floyd’s death.
“If all of the responsible companies in the country cede this market to those that are not prepared to take a stand, we won’t necessarily serve the national interest or the lives of the black and African American people of this nation well,” Smith said. “We need Congress to act, not just tech companies alone.”
Other
California and Washington state investigators have reportedly been looking into how the company treats third-party sellers, particularly whether it’s using the data it collects to compete directly against them. The Times says the Washington attorney general’s office is also investigating whether Amazon is making it difficult for sellers to list their products on other websites.
WSJ reported back in April that the e-commerce giant scooped up data from its sellers — product information such as prices, total sales and how much vendors spend on marketing and shipping — to launch competing products under its private label division. In response to that report, US Senator Josh Hawley requested for a criminal antitrust investigation into the claims and the House Judiciary Committee called on Jeff Bezos to testify before Congress.
https://www.engadget.com/amazon-california-washington-investigation-055430238.html
As COVID-19 continues to disrupt the global economy, some companies are taking advantage and making acquisitions as other organizations are announcing expense cuts. IBM is backing out of their relationship with WeWork in NYC and Google is rescinding offers to 2,000 consultants.
Meanwhile, Google’s legal issues in the United States are expanding as Arizona is suing the company due a lack of privacy controls.
Acquisitions/Investments
ThousandEyes will be part of Cisco’s new Networking Services business unit, which is run by Todd Nightingale, the company said in the release. The purchase follow’s Cisco’s 2017 acquisition of AppDynamics for $3.7 billion, which brought in software that helps companies spot bugs in their apps and quickly fix them.
In addition to AppDynamics, Cisco’s prior software deals include the $2.35 billion purchase of Duo Security in 2018, to bulk up in the authentication space, and the $1.9 billion acquisition of Broadsoft in 2017, to add technology for contact centers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/28/cisco-acquires-thousandeyes-to-make-deeper-push-into-software.html
Inductiv Inc.’s technology automates the process of correcting flaws in data through the use of artificial intelligence. It’s one of several acquisitions Apple has made recently, following its purchase of the popular weather app DarkSky and virtual reality entertainment platform NextVR.
Although Apple doesn’t disclose the purpose behind its acquisitions, Bloomberg reports that Inductiv’s engineering team is working on Siri, data science, and machine learning. Apple launched Siri back in 2011 on the iPhone 4S, long before Amazon introduced Alexa and Google launched the Google Assistant.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-buys-ai-startup-inductiv-siri-catch-up-amazon-google-2020-5
The proximate cause of Hertz’s demise was of course the sudden collapse in bookings caused by coronavirus travel restrictions. The company’s monthly revenue fell 73% year-on-year in April, a shortfall that even the most resilient companies would struggle to withstand for long.
But Hertz’s complicated financial plumbing contributed to it becoming one of the most high-profile companies to seek protection from creditors during the corona crisis. In the decade preceding its collapse, Hertz took on too much debt, participated in overpriced M&A and was accused of playing accounting games to pad its earnings.
So when disaster struck and a request for a government bailout was rejected (rightly in my view considering top shareholder Carl Icahn is worth some $18 billion), Hertz was already standing far too close to the precipice. Regrettably Covid-19 will probably expose more of this type of corporate frailty, both in America and around the world.
Hertz’s debt binge began when it was acquired by private equity firms from Ford Motor Co. in 2005; the new owners quickly took out a $1 billion dividend. Piling on debt juiced the potential returns for the owners and helped pay the inflated $2.3 billion price tag for the Dollar and Thrifty brands in 2012, which Hertz struggled to integrate.
Artificial Intelligence/Robotics
In contrast, Dr. Shneiderman has sketched out a two-dimensional alternative that allows for both high levels of machine automation and human control. With certain exceptions such as automobile airbags and nuclear power plant control rods, he asserts that the goal of computing designers should be systems in which computing is used to extend the abilities of human users.
This approach has already been popularized by both roboticists and Pentagon officials. Gill Pratt, the head of the Toyota Research Institute, is a longtime advocate of keeping humans “in the loop.” His institute has been working to develop Guardian, a system that the researchers have described as “super advanced driver assistance.”
“There is so much that automation can do to help people that is not about replacing them,” Dr. Pratt said. He has focused the laboratory not just on car safety but also on the challenge of developing robotic technology designed to support older drivers as well.
Similarly, Robert O. Work, a deputy secretary of defense under Presidents Trump and Barack Obama, backed the idea of so-called centaur weapons systems, which would require human control, instead of A.I.-based robot killers, now called lethal autonomous weapons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/technology/ben-shneiderman-automation-humans.html
The team working on the Microsoft site did not report original stories but still exercised editorial control, selecting stories produced by other news organisations – including the Guardian – and editing content and headlines where appropriate to fit the format. The articles were then hosted on Microsoft’s website, with the tech company sharing advertising revenue with the original publishers.
Manual curation of news stories also ensured that headlines were clear and appropriate for the format, while encouraging a spread of political opinions and avoiding untrustworthy stories, while highlighting interesting articles from smaller outlets.
Some of the journalists now facing redundancy had longstanding experience in the industry, while for others it offered a foot in the door and a job in an industry which has seen wave after wave of cuts. They now face a tough challenge to get jobs elsewhere when the whole industry is looking to cut costs. Other teams around the world are expected to be affected by Microsoft’s decision to automate the curation of its news sites.
Security/Privacy
The state argued that Google made it too complicated to completely disable tracking, forcing users to dig into granular Android system settings. “When consumers try to opt out of Google’s collection of location data, the company is continuing to find misleading ways to obtain information and use it for profit,” Brnovich told The Post. The state is asking the court to force Google to pay back Arizona profits earned through ads that monetized the data, as well as potential fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
“The Attorney General and the contingency fee lawyers filing this lawsuit appear to have mischaracterized our services,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. “We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We look forward to setting the record straight.”
https://www.engadget.com/arizona-google-lawsuit-android-smartphone-tracking-080511589.html
Half of the 70% are use-after-free vulnerabilities, a type of security issue that arises from incorrect management of memory pointers (addresses), leaving doors open for attackers to attack Chrome’s inner components.
The percentage was compiled after Google engineers analyzed 912 security bugs fixed in the Chrome stable branch since 2015, bugs that had a “high” or “critical” severity rating.
The number is identical to stats shared by Microsoft. Speaking at a security conference in February 2019, Microsoft engineers said that for the past 12 years, around 70% of all security updates for Microsoft products addressed memory safety vulnerabilities.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-70-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/
Other
IBM will ditch its office at 88 University Place — which it has occupied for three years for its marketing division — after Labor Day and already gave notice to WeWork it was leaving, Business Insider reported.
“The company continually looks at our real estate to ensure it services the needs of IBMers and how we serve our clients,” Doug Shelton, a spokesman for IBM, said in a statement. “WeWork was a terrific partner and we’re very grateful for the WeWork staff at 88 University, who served us during our tenure at that site.”
A spokesman for WeWork did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
https://commercialobserver.com/2020/05/ibm-leaving-70k-sf-wework-outpost-in-union-square/
The 2,000 contract positions would have been located across the globe, according to the Times, and they represent a small fraction of Google’s workforce. The company reportedly has more than 130,000 contractors on top of 123,000 employees.
Still, it speaks to the significant hiring slowdown that Porat telegraphed last month. The pandemic has caused a slowdown in the advertising market, which is where Google makes the vast majority of its money. Revenue from advertising was still up year over year for Google’s first quarter, but growth was slowing.
These rescinded offers pose bigger problems for the people who are now out of work. The Times reports that some people left full-time positions to accept the contract jobs with Google. Because they left their positions voluntarily, they may not be eligible for unemployment benefits.
Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash
The impact of COVID-19 continues to unfurl as more technology companies announce significant staff and spending reductions.
IBM, Uber, and HPE have recently announced major head count reductions joining dozens of other companies over the last two months.
As organizations try to conserve cash, there are rumors and articles predicting a spike in acquisitions in the technology and retail industries.
Acquisitions/Investments
“For the largest players, we certainly see this immediate period as a potential opportunity to make plays to aggregate capabilities by acquiring smaller businesses that may need liquidity,” said J. Neely, managing director and global M&A lead at consulting firm Accenture PLC.
Large companies across the economy are seizing similar opportunities to grow, sparking worries about market consolidation in several industries.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/large-tech-companies-prepare-for-acquisition-spree-11590053401
Intel has acquired Rivet Networks, the maker of Killer-branded NICs (network interface cards responsible for managing your connection) found in some laptops from popular brands like Dell, Alienware, HP, and other manufacturers. Killer’s own networking products were noteworthy for providing gaming-centric features like minimizing latency to keep you from missing a beat in-game, and prioritizing network traffic for games and other applications that need it the most.
Rivet Networks has been a competitor to Intel in the NIC space for over a decade. With this acquisition, Intel can capitalize on the gaming market.
While it’s crystal clear that video conferencing is a hot item during the pandemic, all sides maintained that this deal was about much more than the short-term requirements of COVID-19. In fact, Verizon saw an enterprise-grade video conferencing platform that would fit nicely into its 5G strategy around things like tele-medicine and online learning.
They believe these needs will far outlast the current situation, and BlueJeans puts them in good shape to carry out a longer-term video strategy, especially on the burgeoning 5G platform. As BlueJean’s CEO Quentin Gallivan and co-founders, Krish Ramakrishnan and Alagu Periyannan reiterated in a blog post today announcing the deal has been finalized, they saw a lot of potential for growth inside the Verizon Business family that would have been difficult to achieve as a stand-alone company.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/18/verizon-wraps-up-bluejeans-acquisition-lickety-split/
Amid the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the retail industry, today the retail giant quietly announced in its quarterly report that it would be discontinuing Jet.com, the online-only marketplace that it acquired when it was just over one year old for $3 billion (plus $300 million in earn-outs over time), as it struggles to bring its e-commerce operations into that black after reportedly seeing a loss of $2 billion in the division in 2019 and shifting how to deliver its e-commerce strategy: by betting on giant stores, rather than online warehouses, as the hubs of its online delivery model.
Jet.com’s fate was disclosed as part of a Walmart’s Q1 earnings report, in which the company said it saw growth of less than 10% in its core US market, and said that it would be withdrawing guidance for fiscal 2021.
Cloud
While the company would not get specific about the number, the new contract involves using Anthos, the tool the company announced last year to secure DIU’s multi-cloud environment. In spite of the JEDI contract involving a single vendor, the DoD has always used solutions from all three major cloud vendors — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — and this solution will provide a way to monitor security across all three environments, according to the company.
“Multi-cloud is the future. The majority of commercial businesses run multi-cloud environments securely and seamlessly, and this is now coming to the federal government as well,” Mike Daniels, VP of Global Public Sector at Google Cloud told TechCrunch.
The idea is to manage security across three environments with help from cloud security vendor Netskope, which is also part of the deal. “The multi-cloud solution will be built on Anthos, allowing DIU to run web services and applications across Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure — while being centrally managed from the Google Cloud Console,” the company wrote in a statement.
Software/SaaS
There were disagreements, as you’d expect, but there were some of a fundamental nature where we could not delay the decisions. I’m fully convinced that the hyperscalers will also go up the stack. In the partnerships, we are closing, we have to own the business platform, we have to own the application layer. I want to be more prescriptive on that because when you are losing more and more of the control of the customer transformation when you’re not sitting on the table anymore, when they’re making the decision how to transform the business model, then it gets difficult. I just want to make sure that now in these partnerships, we try our best to make sure that we are in the lead when it comes to business model transformation, when it comes to talks about how to move the system landscape, the application layer in the cloud. And it’s also important that we position our platform there, as we cannot afford to lose the platform game either, as this is the platform which keeps our applications together, makes the integration work. And it’s of course also very important for the extension of our solution. So, this is something where I would like to to draw a much clearer line going forward, because in the past, I feel we were not clear enough in some of these partnerships.
https://diginomica.com/christian-klein-ceo-sap-we-have-own-application-layer
There’s another reason Musk thinks the ultimate value of Autopilot is so high. He has promised that once Tesla’s cars are able to drive themselves, the company will leverage that capability into a “robotaxi fleet.” The goal is to make it so that each Tesla customer’s car can double as an autonomous vehicle that other people can hail while the owner isn’t using it.
Not only would operating a robotaxi service generate more revenue for Tesla, but Musk has said this would allow owners to make as much as $30,000 a year as well. In fact, Musk believes the value of this idea is so high that he’s talked about raising the sticker price of Tesla’s cars, not just the cost of the Full Self-Driving package.
“[C]onsumers will still be able to buy a Tesla, but the clearing price will rise significantly, as a fully autonomous car that can function as a robotaxi is several times more valuable than a non-autonomous car,” he said last year.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/20/21264345/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-driving-autopilot-price-increase
TL;DR – Because he can.
Other
In the less than two months since then, the warehouse in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania has become Amazon’s biggest Covid-19 hot spot. More employees at AVP1 have been infected by the coronavirus than at any of Amazon’s roughly 500 other facilities in the United States.
Local lawmakers believe that more than 100 workers have contracted the disease, but the exact number is unknown. At first, Amazon told workers about each new case. But when the total reached about 60, the announcements stopped giving specific numbers.
The disclosures also stopped at other Amazon warehouses. The best estimate is that more than 900 of the company’s 400,000 blue-collar workers have had the disease. But that number, crowdsourced by Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker, almost certainly understates the spread of the illness among Amazon’s employees.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/technology/amazon-coronavirus-workers.html
It wasn’t clear how many jobs were being cut, though a source told the Journal that it’s several thousand, out of a massive staff of about 350,000 people.
Bloomberg said the cuts are in several units, including its Global Technology Services division, which does information technology outsourcing, as well as its Watson artificial intelligence unit, a longtime key focus of IBM’s recovery efforts. Cuts are being made in five states: California, Missouri, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
“IBM’s work in a highly competitive marketplace requires flexibility to constantly remix to high-value skills, and our workforce decisions are made in the long-term interests of our business,” the company said in a statement. It added in an apparent reference to the coronavirus pandemic that it will offer subsidized coverage to all affected U.S. employees through June 2021.
https://siliconangle.com/2020/05/21/ibm-hands-first-layoffs-new-ceo-arvind-krishna/
Mr. Khosrowshahi announced the plans in an email to staff Monday, less than two weeks after the company said it would eliminate about 3,700 jobs and planned to save more than $1 billion in fixed costs. Monday’s decision to close 45 offices and lay off some 3,000 more people means Uber is shedding roughly a quarter of its workforce in under a month’s time. Drivers aren’t classified as employees, so they aren’t included.
Stay-at-home orders have ravaged Uber’s core ride-hailing business, which accounted for three-quarters of the company’s revenue before the pandemic struck. Uber’s rides business in April was down 80% from a year earlier.
“We’re seeing some signs of a recovery, but it comes off of a deep hole, with limited visibility as to its speed and shape,” Mr. Khosrowshahi said in his note to employees. The company’s food-delivery arm, Uber Eats, has been a bright spot during the crisis, but “the business today doesn’t come close to covering our expenses,” he wrote.
Neri said that beginning July 1, HPE will implement salary cuts for all employees through Oct. 31, 2020, with the executive team taking the biggest hit. Neri and EVPs will see their base salaries cut 25%. Senior VPs’ base salaries will be cut by 20%, and board members will also take a 25% cut to their annual cash retainer.
Employees that live in countries that prohibit pay reductions will instead take unpaid leave. “In addition, we have implemented cost containment measures across the company, and restricted external hiring through the end of our fiscal year, and put salary increases on hold,” Neri said.
Overall, HPE expects the cuts to save at least $1 billion by the end of fiscal 2022.
Neri pointed to a couple of bright points during the quarter. HPE exited Q2 with more than $1.5 billion in backlogged compute, storage, HPC, and Aruba networking orders, which Neri said represents two-times the average historical quarterly backlog despite the challenging economic backdrop.