Tag: IBM

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Supplier Report: 7/26/2019


Photo by Chris Hall on Unsplash

Microsoft has been performing very well in the cloud space, beating expectations and increasing profits. Other companies like IBM… not so much. In fact IBM’s performance (while growing) is causing some analysts to call Big Blue a “zombie company”.

The drama between the Pentagon, Amazon, and Oracle may not be over. The suppliers that were down-selected (Oracle and IBM) likely complained directly to President Trump (he is friendly with Safra Catz) and he has vowed to “look into it”.

And it looks like Broadcom isn’t so interested in buying Symantec. That deal is said to be dead.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • VMware acquires ML acceleration startup Bitfusion

    VMware today announced that it has acquired Bitfusion, a former participant in our Startup Battlefield competition. Bitfusion was one of the earliest companies to help businesses accelerate their complex computing workloads on GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs. In its earliest iteration, over four years ago, the company’s focus was less on AI and machine learning and more on other areas of high-performance computing, but, unsurprisingly, that shifted as the interested in AI and ML increased in recent years.

    VMware will use Bitfusion’s technology, which is vendor- and hardware-agnostic, to bring similar capabilities to its customers. Specifically, it plans to integrate Bitfusion into its vSphere platform.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/18/vmware-acquires-ml-acceleration-startup-bitfusion/

  • Symantec and Broadcom cease deal negotiations: Sources

    People familiar with the matter added that Broadcom indicated in early conversations that it would be willing to pay $28.25 per share for Symantec, but that following due diligence knocked that figure down below $28.

    Symantec had surged earlier this month after it was revealed that Broadcom was in advanced talks to acquire the security software vendor. Faber had reported the two sides were negotiating a price and had seen possible synergies of $1.5 billion.

    Symantec shares dropped 12.8% to $22.30 on Monday.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/symantec-and-broadcom-cease-deal-negotiations-sources.html

Cloud

  • Microsoft’s Cloud Business Drives Record Sales

    Revenue rose 12% to $33.72 billion from the year-earlier period, the company said Thursday, beating Wall Street estimates. Profit also topped expectations.

    The results for Microsoft’s fiscal fourth quarter ended in June reflected continued strength in corporate spending on the cloud services that have revolutionized business computing over the past decade. Companies increasingly are paying subscriptions for software and renting computer power, rather than buying applications that run on their own servers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsofts-cloud-business-drives-record-sales-11563481232

  • IBM Revenue Lags as Cloud Pivot Remains a Challenge

    Revenue fell 4.2% from a year earlier to $19.16 billion. Profit rose 3.9% to $2.5 billion, as the company worked to scale back its exposure to businesses with smaller profit margins.

    IBM has trailed Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. as customers race to do more of their computing in the cloud—online services that free companies from the need to buy and maintain their own systems. As competitors report consistently strong revenue growth, buoyed by sales of their cloud services, IBM has absorbed a string of declines.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-revenue-lags-as-cloud-pivot-remains-a-challenge-11563395020

  • Trump says he’s looking into a Pentagon cloud contract for Amazon or Microsoft because ‘we’re getting tremendous complaints’

    “We’re getting tremendous complaints from other companies,” Trump said in a press pool at the White House during a meeting with the prime minister of The Netherlands. “Some of the greatest companies in the world are complaining about it.” He named Microsoft, Oracle and IBM.

    Since April, Microsoft and Amazon have been the only remaining competitors for the contract after IBM and Oracle were ruled out by the Defense Department. The contract, known as JEDI, is viewed as a marquee deal for the company that ultimately wins it, particularly as Microsoft and Amazon are aggressively pursuing government work for their expanding cloud units.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/18/trump-says-seriously-looking-into-amazons-pentagon-contract.html

    House Republicans to Trump: Stay Out of Pentagon Cloud Acquisition

    “We believe that it is essential for our national security to move forward as quickly as possible with the award and implementation of this contract,” said the Republican lawmakers, who sit on one of the two Congressional committees with Pentagon oversight responsibilities. “It meets only a portion of DOD’s needs for cloud, but it is an important first step. Moving to the cloud will help DOD operate faster, more efficiently and compete with adversaries, like China.

    “Our committee has conducted oversight of this contract from the beginning. As you know, the courts have upheld DOD’s handling of this competition. While it is understandable that some of the companies competing for the contract are disappointed at not being selected as one of the finalists, further unnecessary delays will only damage our security and increase the costs of the contract.”

    https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/07/house-republicans-trump-stay-out-pentagon-cloud-acquisition/158557/

  • Google officially closes ‘Dragonfly,’ its controversial Chinese search project

    Google’s controversial Project Dragonfly has officially been shelved. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week, Google’s vice president of public policy, Karan Bhatia, said that work on its censored Chinese search engine had been “terminated.” A spokesperson later confirmed that Google has no plans to launch Search in China, and that there is no work being undertaken on such a project.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/17/google-officially-closes-dragonfly-chinese-search/

Security/Privacy

  • Equifax to Pay Around $700 Million to Resolve Data-Breach Probes

    Under the agreement, the credit-reporting firm would pay around $700 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and most state attorneys general, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal would also resolve a nationwide consumer class-action lawsuit, they said.

    The settlement could be announced as soon as Monday, the people said. The amount Equifax ultimately pays could shift based on the number of consumer claims that are eventually filed, they added.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/equifax-to-pay-around-700-million-to-resolve-data-breach-probes-11563577702

  • Hackers breach 62 US colleges by exploiting ERP vulnerability

    The vulnerability is in Ellucian Banner Web Tailor, a module of the Ellucian Banner ERP that lets universities customize their front-facing web applications. The vulnerability also impacts Ellucian Banner Enterprise Identity Services, a module for managing user accounts.

    Earlier this year, a security researcher named Joshua Mulliken discovered a vulnerability in the authentication mechanism used by the two modules that can allow remote attackers to hijack victims’ web sessions and gain access to their accounts.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-breach-62-us-colleges-by-exploiting-erp-vulnerability/

  • Florida DMV sells your personal information to private companies, marketing firms

    The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles told the I-Team under the law, it must provide driver information but said federal privacy laws and its own rules limit how outside companies can access Floridian’s personal information.

    One of the data brokers accessing Florida DMV information is Arkansas-based marketing firm Acxiom, which has an agreement with the state to buy driver and ID cardholder data for a penny a record.

    On its website, Acxiom claims it has collected information from almost every adult in the United States.

    https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigates/i-team-florida-dmv-sells-your-personal-information-to-private-companies-marketing-firms

Software/SaaS

  • IBM is a ‘zombie company’: Analyst

    Yes, IBM’s cloud business is growing, but it pales in comparison to the competition. Its second-quarter cloud revenue climbed 5%. Microsoft’s Azure enjoyed revenue growth of 64% in the company’s fourth quarter of its fiscal year, while AWS jumped more than 41% in its first quarter.

    Just this week AT&T inked a reported $2 billion deal with Microsoft to move most of its internal business applications used by its largest unit to Microsoft’s Azure cloud. As part of the agreement, AT&T’s (T) employees will use Azure’s productivity tools and services.

    The deal came one day after IBM said that AT&T would move internal applications used by its business services unit to IBM’s Cloud. The exact terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but an IBM spokesperson describes it as a “multi-billion dollar deal.”

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-is-a-zombie-company-analyst-122944734.html

Other

  • EU opens Amazon antitrust investigation

    The EU’s Competition Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon to investigate whether the company is using sales data to gain an unfair advantage over smaller sellers on the Marketplace platform. The Commission says it will look into Amazon’s agreements with marketplace sellers, as well as how Amazon uses data to choose which retailer to link to using the “Buy Box” on its site. The announcement comes on the same day that Amazon announced changes to its third-party seller service agreement in response to a separate antitrust investigation by German regulators.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/17/20696214/amazon-european-union-antitrust-investigation-third-party-seller-marketplace

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Supplier Report: 7/5/2019


Photo by Trent Yarnell on Unsplash

Former Equifax CIO Jun Ying is going to prison for insider trading.  He sold off stock prior to the breach announcement (but he was well aware of) avoiding over $100K in loses… finally someone is getting held accountable.

Google’s peers are petitioning the US Government to hold the company accountable for anti-trust behavior. It is one thing for the government to investigate but I do find it troubling when other companies start pointing the government at one of their competitors. I certainly don’t think they have end user’s best interests at heart.

Finally the EU, who collectively are very sensitive to monopoly behavior, are allowing IBM to move forward with their acquisition of Red Hat.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • EU Gives Unconditional Green Light to IBM’s $34B Purchase of Red Hat

    The Commission said the acquisition would not create any competition problems in relevant markets.

    In its investigation, the commission looked at the impact the transaction would have on the markets for middleware and system infrastructure software. Middleware is software used for making and operating enterprise application software, such as online payment processing. System infrastructure software allows companies to control hardware resources, such as servers, across enterprise application software.

    The commission found that the merged company would continue to face significant competition from other players in all potential markets.

    https://www.law.com/2019/06/27/eu-gives-unconditional-green-light-to-ibms-34b-purchase-of-red-hat-292-48931/?slreturn=20190530072301

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google will now tell you how crowded your bus or train is likely to be

    Google is basing these details on past rides. For months, Google has been asking some people who use Google Maps to provide additional details about the level of crowdedness of their transit trips. After completing their trips, riders were given four options: many empty seats, few empty seats, standing room only, or cramped standing room only.

    Now, the company has collected enough data that it can begin offering predictions to customers who use Google Maps to plan their daily commute. The new feature is available starting today in 200 cities around the globe. (About one-quarter of cities are in the US, according to The Wall Street Journal.)

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18761187/google-maps-transit-crowded-delays-predictions-train-bus-subway

  • Amazon’s Facial Analysis Program Is Building A Dystopic Future For Trans And Nonbinary People

    As Os Keyes, a PhD student at the University of Washington, writes in their 2018 study of the subject:

    If systems are not designed to include trans people, inclusion becomes an active struggle: individuals must actively fight to be included in things as basic as medical systems, legal systems or even bathrooms. This creates space for widespread explicit discrimination, which has (in, for example, the United States) resulted in widespread employment, housing and criminal justice inequalities , increased vulnerability to intimate partner abuse and[35], particularly for trans people of colour, increased vulnerability to potentially fatal state violence.

    https://jezebel.com/amazons-facial-analysis-program-is-building-a-dystopic-1835075450

Cloud

  • The Real Cloud Wars: The $6 Billion Battle Over The Future Of Weather Forecasting

    For decades, private weather forecasting has been a cozy industry, dominated in the U.S. by AccuWeather, The Weather Company (founded as The Weather Channel in 1982 and bought by IBM for $2.3 billion in 2016) and DTN, which focuses on industrial concerns and was purchased by a Swiss holding company for $900 million in 2017.

    But now a perfect storm of macro-trends—ever cheaper processing power, cloud computing, vastly improved AI and a proliferation of low-cost sensors—has opened up the field to a fresh crop of ambitious startups. In aggregate, they have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, who think the incumbents look vulnerable to creative new business models.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/06/24/the-real-cloud-wars-the-6-billion-battle-over-the-future-of-weather-forecasting/#1dcd097d298f

Security/Privacy

  • U.S. May Outlaw Messaging Encryption Used By WhatsApp, iMessage And Others, Report

    Politico cited several unnamed sources in reporting that “the encryption challenge, which the government calls ‘going dark,’ was the focus of a National Security Council meeting Wednesday morning that included the No. 2 officials from several key agencies.” The discussion focused on the lockdown of messaging apps, billed as “a privacy and security feature,” which “frustrates authorities investigating terrorism, drug trafficking and child pornography.”

    The challenge for governments, the U.S. included, is that the privacy of messaging has become a central theme in the ongoing debate around privacy, data security and information integrity. People around the world are shifting from public social media posting to closed groups, and messaging platforms have been a major driver of that. Even Facebook has put messaging security and privacy at the center of its new strategy.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/06/29/u-s-may-outlaw-uncrackable-end-to-end-encrypted-messaging-report-claims/#2fb8053c6c87

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle Hot Takes: Workday “Not Competitive,” SAP a Time Bomb, Microsoft Valued Partner

    Here’s Hurd’s reply about a competitor that’s growing faster than Oracle in the cloud:

    “I think Workday does – again, my sense of Workday is they do a decent job in upmarket HCM where they can divorce the HCM buyer from the ERP buyer. When the ERP buyer and the HCM buyer are aligned and combined, they’re really in a position with no chance because they don’t have much of a financials product,” Hurd said.

    **

    “What that means is, they have to roll up a big new build to move to this thing Larry called earlier, HANA. It’s a big damn build and so the poor CIO or CFO or whoever this guy is, has to show up to the board, and says to the board of directors, ‘We’ve got a $500-million build to move to HANA.’”

    Hurd continued: “So yeah, I mean, I think it’s an incredibly interesting strategy on their part to put all their customers at play. Do we get calls from customers that we haven’t been called or talked to in 20 years? The answer is yes, and is it because – and remember… that when we sold to customers 15 years ago, they never really talked to SAP after that and vice versa, because you’re expected to stay with these ERP systems forever.

    https://cloudwars.co/oracle-workday-not-competitive-sap-time-bomb/

  • Bill Gates accidentally makes the case to regulate the hell out of platform companies

    The important thing to know is that it’s well-established that the network effect enables the winning platforms to achieve massive scale and preclude competition. It’s a devastating combination that Gates calls “complete doom.” There’s a reason so many tech markets tend toward monopoly or duopoly, like Android and iOS, or Google search, or Facebook, or Uber and Lyft — the network effect makes it basically impossible to build a competitor because you can’t populate the network. And you can’t buy your way out of this problem: Microsoft famously paid app developers to write Windows Phone apps when there weren’t enough users to otherwise draw developer attention, and… it didn’t work.

    Gates might be saying this to describe why Windows Phone didn’t succeed — it didn’t have the app ecosystem to compete with Apple and Android — but what he is describing is the exact reason regulating tech platforms is the subject of so much conversation around the world: you can’t count on competition to keep these companies in line, because it’s virtually impossible to build a competitor. Even Microsoft couldn’t do it!

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715702/bill-gates-regulate-platforms-network-effect-android-mistake-microsoft

    Don’t buy Bill Gates’ outrageous claim that Microsoft just missed out on dominating the smartphone market

    But his comments this week were a bit self-serving. And I almost choked when he said: “We knew the mobile phone would be very popular so we were doing what was called Windows Mobile. We missed being the dominant mobile operating system by a very tiny amount.”

    And things became laughable when he went on to claim: “We were distracted during our antitrust trial. We didn’t assign the best people to do the work. So it’s the biggest mistake I made in terms of something that was clearly within our skill set. We were clearly the company that should have achieved that – and we didn’t.”

    Utter rubbish.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/113849252/dont-buy-bill-gates-outrageous-claim-that-microsoft-just-missed-out-on-dominating-the-smartphone-market

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple will reportedly manufacture its $6,000 Mac Pro in China

    According to Wall Street Journal sources, Apple will work with Quanta Computer Inc., out of a factory near Shanghai. That facility is close to other Apple suppliers, which could help the company lower its shipping costs, and manufacturing labor costs in China are still much lower than those in the US. Apple has a long-standing relationship with Quanta, which makes MacBooks and Apple smartwatches at its other facilities.

    The decision to move Mac Pro production to China comes even as trade tensions between the Trump administration and China escalate. The proposed 25 percent tariffs on imports from China would affect all of Apple’s major devices. The company has asked suppliers to study shifting assembly of some products out of China, and Foxconn said it could produce US-bound iPhones outside of China if necessary.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/28/apple-manufacture-mac-pro-china/

  • Huawei can buy from US suppliers again — but things will never be the same

    All told, Huawei founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei said recently that the ban would cost the Chinese tech firm — the world’s third-larger seller of smartphones — some $30 billion in lost revenue of the next two years.

    Now, however, the Trump administration has provided a reprieve, at least based on the President’s comments following a meeting with Chinese premier Xi Jinping at the G20 summit this weekend.

    “US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it,” the U.S. President said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/29/huawei-us-supplier-ban-lifted/

Other

  • Former Equifax executive sentenced to prison for insider trading prior to data breach

    The Justice Department announced this week that former Equifax CIO Jun Ying has been sentenced to four months in prison for insider trading. He pled guilty earlier this year for for selling his stock in the company prior to the announcement that it had been hit with a massive data breach in 2017.

    The Security and Exchanges Commission charged Ying with insider trading last year. The Department of Justice says that in August 2017, after learning about the breach, he began researching the impact that a similar breach had on another company’s stock price. Later that morning, he promptly exercised and sold all of his stock options, earning nearly a million dollars from the sale. In doing so, he avoided a loss of $117,000 that he otherwise would have incurred when the company’s stock price dropped after the disclosure. More than 150 million people had their personal information leaked in the incident.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/29/20056655/jun-ying-equifax-breach-jail-time-insider-trading-department-of-justice

  • Google’s Enemies Gear Up to Make Antitrust Case

    The stable of Google critics includes TripAdvisor Inc. and Yelp Inc., which accuse the search giant of unfairly favoring its own content.

    Oracle Corp. , which has a long-pending copyright case against Google, has briefed European antitrust regulators about Google’s use of data to target ads and was part of a successful coalition of plaintiffs against Google’s alleged anticompetitive behavior in its Android operating system for smartphones, which led to a record fine issued by the European Commission last year, of €4.3 billion.

    News Corp , which owns The Wall Street Journal, and other publishers say Google and other tech platforms siphon ad revenue from content creators.

    All these companies say they would welcome further antitrust scrutiny. They and others are expected to seek out Justice Department officials as they prepare a Google probe, according to industry executives and antitrust lawyers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-enemies-gear-up-to-make-antitrust-case-11561368601

  • Jony Ive leaving Apple after nearly 30 years to start new design firm

    Apple’s chief design officer Jonathan Ive will depart the company later this year, bringing an end to a tenure spent crafting some of technology’s most influential products, including the iPhone. Ive, who has led Apple’s design team since 1996, is leaving “to form an independent design company which will count Apple among its primary clients.” The company is called LoveFrom, and Ive will be joined by famed designer Marc Newson on the new venture. Despite stepping down from his executive position, Ive and Apple both claim he will still work “on a range of projects with Apple.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18761736/jony-ive-apple-leave-iphone-chief-design-officer-lovefrom-company-quit
    History Will Not Be Kind to Jony Ive

    Ive’s Apple has been one in which consumers have been endlessly encouraged to buy new stuff and get rid of the old. The loser is the environment, and the winner is Apple’s bottom line. Apple has become famous for its design, and Ive has become famous, too. Let’s hope the next great consumer electronics designer is nothing like him.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywyjmw/history-will-not-be-kind-to-jony-ive

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/28/2019


Photo by Craig Sybert on Unsplash

Automation and artificial intelligence will likely change the world, for both good and bad.

The dark side of automation is making itself known through robocalls. We all get them, including hospitals. Many help lines are getting clogged with robocalls which are preventing people with urgent care needs from getting through.

Meanwhile, Oracle is on a roller-coaster ride this month. Their financials are up, but people are calling out financial engineering due to $36B in stock buy back.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Blue Prism acquires UK’s Thoughtonomy for up to $100M to expand its RPA platform with more AI

    Blue Prism, which helped coin the term RPA when it was founded back in 2001, has announced that it is buying Thoughtonomy, which has built a cloud-based AI engine that delivers RPA-based solutions on a SaaS framework. Blue Prism is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange — where its market cap is around £1.3 billion ($1.6 billion), and in a statement to the market alongside its half-year earnings, it said it would be paying up to £80 million ($100 million) for the firm.

    The deal is coming in a combination of cash and stock: £12.5 million payable on completion of the deal, £23 million in shares payable on completion of the deal, up to £20 million payable a year after the deal closes, up to £4.5 million in cash after 18 months, and a final £20 million on the second anniversary of the deal closing, in shares. Thoughtonomy had never raised outside funding, although that was not for lack of interest.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/18/blue-prism-acquires-uks-thoughtonomy-for-up-to-100m-to-expand-its-rpa-platform-with-more-ai/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Microsoft PowerPoint gets an AI presentation coach

    Microsoft’s AI can’t tell you if your jokes will land, of course, but the new coaching feature gives you real-time feedback on your pacing, for example, tells you whether you are using inclusive language and how many filler words you use. It also makes sure that you don’t commit the greatest sin of presenting: just reading the slides.

    After your rehearsal session, PowerPoint will show you a dashboard with a summary of your performance and what to focus on to improve your skills.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/18/microsofts-powerpoint-will-use-ai-to-make-you-a-better-public-speaker/

Security/Privacy

  • Robocalls are overwhelming hospitals and patients, threatening a new kind of health crisis

    “These calls to health-care institutions and patients are extremely dangerous to the public health and patient privacy,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), the Democratic chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who has put forward legislation to try to clamp down on robocalls. “The FCC and Justice Department need to go after these criminals with the seriousness and urgency this issue deserves.”

    The absence of immediate relief spells particular trouble for medical professionals. Scammers often adopt a technique known as spoofing to cover their tracks, a practice that results in people receiving calls from numbers that look similar to their own. For a hospital, that often can mean calls appear to come from local area codes, tricking health care workers into thinking it’s a nearby patient in need of care.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/17/robocalls-are-overwhelming-hospitals-patients-threatening-new-kind-health-crisis/?utm_term=.3184fc47f8f7

  • Your used Nest camera could be spying on you

    A member of the Facebook Wink Users Group discovered that after selling his Nest cam, he was still able to access images from his old camera—except it wasn’t a feed of his property. Instead, he was tapping into the feed of the new owner, via his Wink account. As the original owner, he had connected the Nest Cam to his Wink smart-home hub, and somehow, even after he reset it, the connection continued.

    We decided to test this ourselves and found that, as it happened for the person on Facebook, images from our decommissioned Nest Cam Indoor were still viewable via a previously linked Wink hub account—although instead of a video stream, it was a series of still images snapped every several seconds.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90366910/your-used-nest-camera-could-be-spying-on-you

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle shares rise on bullish earnings report

    Good numbers: Oracle Corp. shares rose 7.5% to $56.63 Thursday after the business software maker reported a bigger-than-expected 14% rise in quarterly profit driven by growth in its cloud services and license-support business. The shares closed Friday at $56.12.

    http://www.startribune.com/market-recap-oracle-shares-rise-on-bullish-earnings-report/511662182/
    Oracle investors breathe a sigh of relief on rising sales

    “We are focused on our star products and our star products are now driving the top line higher,” Ellison said on the call. “We have these other businesses that are melting away and we just don’t care.”

    Cloud licence and on-premise licence sales increased 12 per cent to US$2.52 billion, suggesting that Oracle is doing a good job of signing on new customers. The company said that revenue from NetSuite grew 32 per cent, and Fusion HR and financial suites gained by the same amount.

    https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/technology/oracle-investors-breathe-a-sigh-of-relief-on-rising-sales
    Oracle spent $36 billion in one year buying its own stock back, and it raises some uncomfortable questions about how it’s spending its cash

    For example, in contrast to the $36 billion spent on stock buybacks, Oracle spent $1.66 billion on capital expenditures in 2019, down from the $1.73 billion it spent in 2018.

    Remember, Oracle is trying to build itself into a cloud computing giant to take on the likes of mighty Amazon Web Services and, more importantly, keep itself relevant in an age where its customers want the cloud.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-stock-buybacks-growth-cloud-investors-2019-6
    The New Oracle Looks Like the Old IBM

    Oracle is an aging tech company that lacks real growth engines and repeatedly props up its earnings with buybacks. It’s stuck in the same downward spiral as IBM used to be, and it lacks the motivation of IBM under Ginni Rometty to break the cycle. Therefore, I’d avoid Oracle and stick with stronger tech companies — like Amazon or Microsoft — even though they trade at higher valuations.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/20/the-new-oracle-looks-like-the-old-ibm.aspx

Other

  • IBM CIO Focuses on User Experience to Keep Staff Happy

    New employees expect that the IT services they use at work will be as good as or better than the technology they use at home, he said. To be competitive and attract talent, “we have to create an environment where talented engineers want to work,” he added.

    To that end, Mr. Previn and the design team have created new ways for employees to get and set up new devices. Device provisioning, or the act of assigning employees laptops, desktops and mobile phones with the appropriate encryption, email and productivity software, can be costly and time-consuming for IT departments.

    Mr. Previn’s user-research team oversaw a monthslong project in which they observed how much friction was involved for employees setting up their laptops. Many of the steps are now automated and cloud-based, similar to the way a consumer would be able to set up a device out of the box. “That’s materially different from an experience standpoint,” Mr. Previn said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-cio-focuses-on-user-experience-to-keep-staff-happy-11560984488

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/21/2019


Photo by Adi Constantin on Unsplash

There is a looming trade war with China that is getting closer to reality as companies are trying to determine if they can survive without the Chinese manufacturing supply chain. It is getting so serious that some companies (like Foxconn) are firing off press releases that they have capacity outside of China to meet their production goals.

And as China prepares to face off against Trump, the country continues to interfere with communication applications and protocols (like Telegram) impeding their own citizens ability to communicate due to fears of protests (and those efforts didn’t really matter).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Salesforce is buying data visualization company Tableau for $15.7B in all-stock deal

    On the heels of Google buying analytics startup Looker last week for $2.6 billion, Salesforce today announced a huge piece of news in a bid to step up its own work in data visualization and (more generally) tools to help enterprises make sense of the sea of data that they use and amass: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7 billion in an all-stock deal.
    **
    This is a huge jump on Tableau’s last market cap: it was valued at $10.79 billion at close of trading Friday, according to figures on Google Finance. (Also: trading has halted on its stock in light of this news.)

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/10/salesforce-is-buying-data-visualization-company-tableau-for-15-7b-in-all-stock-deal/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Amazon CTO says AI tools like Lex are the next big thing after AWS and it’s not Amazon’s responsibility to make sure Rekognition is used accurately or ethically

    For instance, Rekognition is being used by an anti-sex-trafficking non-profit organisation, Thorn, to scrape classified ad sites and search for matches against a database of missing teenagers.

    But events like Re:Mars demonstrate that Amazon knows it has work to do in gaining the public’s trust in order to go ahead with its ambitions.

    One non-Amazon guest on stage, the AI pioneer Andrew Ng, gave a pretty scathing review of the technology industry’s reputation – and food for thought for his hosts.

    “Even as we lead the world through multiple waves of technological disruption, we’ve not always provided the best leadership. With the rise of the internet, we’ve created tremendous wealth, but we also contributed to wealth inequality. Let’s make sure that this time, with the rise of AI, we take everyone along with us.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48634676

Cloud

  • Amazon executives slam Oracle and Microsoft as the cloud wars heat up

    Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy derided other providers of traditional on-premises database services at the company’s 10th annual public sector conference in Washington DC on Wednesday. AWS has battled Microsoft, Oracle and others for the Department of Defense cloud services contract, which is worth $10 billion and runs for 10 years.

    “I think that most people are pretty frustrated with the older guard database solutions,” Jassy said. “They’re expensive, proprietary, high lock-in. They’re constantly auditing you, fining you unless you buy more from them. It’s just a model that people are sick of. And it’s why people are moving as quickly as possible to more open engines.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/12/economy/aws-jedi-contract-amazon/index.html

Security/Privacy

  • CFOs Grapple With How Much Cybersecurity Spending is Enough

    Finding comfort on cybersecurity spending comes down to developing strong relationships with the chief information security officer and other information technology managers, said Steve Priest, the CFO of JetBlue Airways Corp. “You can’t do everything.” he said during an interview. “You have to trust the subject matter experts to do the job that they’re paid to do.”

    Finance can help, though, by encouraging coordination between IT managers and the teams purchasing equipment, and by requiring purchases go through a competitive bidding process to ensure the company is getting the best deal, he said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cfos-grapple-with-how-much-cybersecurity-spending-is-enough-11560378386

  • Telegram faces DDoS attack in China… again

    The company went on to describe a distributed denial of service attack as when “your servers get GADZILLIONS of garbage requests which stop them from processing legitimate requests. Imagine that an army of lemmings just jumped the queue at McDonald’s in front of you – and each is ordering a whopper,” according to Telegram. “The server is busy telling the whopper lemmings they came to the wrong place – but there are so many of them that the server can’t even see you to try and take your order.”

    This isn’t the first time that someone has tried to take down Telegram at a time when China was experiencing significant unrest. Four years ago, a similar attack struck the company’s service, just as China was initiating a crackdown on human rights lawyers in the country.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/telegram-faces-ddos-attack-in-china-again/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple’s U.S. iPhones Can All Be Made Outside of China If Needed

    “Twenty-five percent of our production capacity is outside of China and we can help Apple respond to its needs in the U.S. market,” said Liu, adding that investments are now being made in India for Apple. “We have enough capacity to meet Apple’s demand.”

    Apple has not given Hon Hai instructions to move production out of China, but it is capable of moving lines elsewhere according to customers’ needs, Liu added. The company will respond swiftly and rely on localized manufacturing in response to the trade war, just as it foresaw the need to build a base in the U.S. state of Wisconsin two years ago, he said.

    The U.S. market accounts for one in every four iPhones sold worldwide, “so it represents a huge portion of Foxconn’s manufacturing business inside China,” Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston said.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/hon-hai-has-enough-ex-china-capacity-to-make-u-s-bound-products

  • Broadcom to Take $2 Billion Hit From Huawei Ban

    Broadcom’s gloomier guidance could spread across the semiconductor industry as other big players, including Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. , begin to reconsider their outlooks in light of the Huawei ban and a broader anxiety about the geopolitical future, analysts say. Huawei is one of the U.S. chip industry’s most lucrative customers.

    “Everybody probably has to cut just due to Huawei if nothing else,” said Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “Almost everybody has some exposure.”

    Some smaller chip companies have already warned that the Huawei ban will ding their revenue. Qorvo Inc., which makes radio-frequency products, and Lumentum Holdings Inc., which makes optical networking products, both reduced their quarterly revenue guidance last month by about $50 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/broadcom-lowers-revenue-outlook-amid-trade-tensions-11560459528

Other

  • IBM to inherit over 13,000 workers from Red Hat

    IBM (IBM) is planning to cut around 1,700 jobs, according to a report from CNBC. The job cut comes as IBM prepares to add Red Hat (RHT) to its corporate family. IBM last year agreed to purchase Red Hat, an open-source software company, for $34 billion. Red Hat had more than 13,000 employees at the end of February this year. IBM itself has more than 340,000 employees worldwide. Therefore, IBM’s headcount is set to swell once the Red Hat deal closes. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

    https://marketrealist.com/2019/06/ibm-cutting-jobs-as-red-hat-deal-closing-nears/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/14/2019


Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

A week after news broke that Google will likely be under anti-trust investigation, the company announced it plans to acquire data analytics company Looker. I am curious if the Justice Department’s activity will impact this acquisition (Google isn’t doing so well in cloud hosting).

Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up to weaken cloud leader Amazon. Azure will now support some of Oracle’s database products, which should lead to quicker cloud migration for (formerly) on-prem applications.

FedEx is ending their priority shipping relationship with Amazon. Amazon has been building out their own shipping and logistic services for years and FedEx was tired of the customer/competitor dynamic.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google to Acquire Data Analytics Firm Looker for $2.6 Billion

    The Alphabet Inc. unit unveiled a deal on Thursday to acquire Looker, a business-intelligence software and big- data analytics platform, for $2.6 billion in cash. The two companies were well acquainted; Alphabet earlier invested in Looker through its venture-capital arm CapitalG.

    The move indicates Google will continue to pour resources into its Google Cloud division as it remains far behind rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp in cloud computing. The area is a priority of Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, who replaced the unit’s head, Diane Greene, with ex- Oracle executive Thomas Kurian earlier this year. Analysts have long speculated an acquisition as likely.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-acquire-data-analytics-firm-looker-for-2-6-billion-11559829249

  • German Chip Maker Infineon Buys U.S. Rival in $9.4 Billion Deal

    German chip maker Infineon IFNNY 0.18% Technologies AG has agreed to acquire Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CY 0.23% for €8.4 billion ($9.4 billion), the latest in a series of transactions reshaping the industry.

    Infineon shares fell 8.1% to €14.79 on Monday, as analysts questioned whether the company was overpaying for Cypress, especially as global economic fears roil markets. Infineon itself cut its full-year targets in March due to the uncertainty, including a slowdown in the Chinese car market.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/infineon-to-buy-cypress-semiconductor-in-multibillion-dollar-deal-11559540811

  • The Fiat Chrysler-Renault merger is dead over suboptimal ‘political conditions’

    FCA confirmed to TechCrunch that it has withdrawn its offer, largely due to political conditions.

    “FCA remains firmly convinced of the compelling, transformational rationale of a proposal that has been widely appreciated since it was submitted, the structure and terms of which were carefully balanced to deliver substantial benefits to all parties,” according to a company statement provided to TechCrunch. “However, it has become clear that the political conditions in France do not currently exist for such a combination to proceed successfully.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/the-fiat-chrysler-renault-merger-is-dead-over-suboptimal-political-conditions/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Germ-detecting AI and virtual farms: How tech will revolutionize food across the globe in the next 5 years

    AI sensors installed in mobile phones and other portable devices will allow the detection of food-borne pathogens wherever they may appear.

    With this sort of tech, we’ll easily be able, for example, to detect the presence of E. coli or Salmonella in food and to prevent outbreaks. According to IBM: “Mobile bacteria sensors could dramatically increase the speed of a pathogen test from days to second.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-virtual-farms-to-revolutionise-diets-across-the-globe-2019-6

Cloud

  • The Google Outage Highlights the Perils of a Centralized Internet

    Sunday’s issues once again highlighted how fragile the modern internet really is, and how reliant we are on Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud), who collectively dominate the $70 billion cloud computing market.

    The outage also again showcased that however carefully engineers may plan, having a centralized point of failure will inevitably cause headaches—especially when you’ve trusted your entire backend computing power or storage to just one company.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzdak/the-google-outage-highlights-the-perils-of-a-centralized-internet

  • Microsoft (MSFT) Ups Ante in Cloud With Oracle Partnership

    Through this partnership, Oracle will support its software which includes Oracle’s Autonomous Database on Microsoft’s Azure services, comprising AI and analytics capabilities. Meanwhile, Microsoft will offer Oracle’s software to its Windows Azure customers. Further, Oracle will make its software available to Microsoft’s cloud computing customers.

    For instance, customers can now run Oracle software and other applications including Oracle E-Business Suite on Azure. Further, Oracle applications are enabled to utilize Azure Active Directory.

    This flexibility is expected to accelerate digital transformation of business database to public cloud platforms significantly. Overall, the partnership is aimed at providing direct and secure network connectivity, and fast data exchange between the two cloud platforms.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-msft-ups-ante-cloud-142502667.html

Security/Privacy

  • U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers

    Municipalities in general are less prepared than companies due to limited resources and difficulty competing for cybersecurity talent, security professionals say. They are also increasingly reliant on technology to deliver city services and some have aging computer systems, according to Standard & Poor’s.

    Ransomware attacks often start when an employee opens a link or an attachment in a phishing email. Hackers can also exploit vulnerabilities in a security system. The ransomware then blocks files the cyberattackers say they will unlock in return for a payment, typically in bitcoin.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-cities-strain-to-fight-hackers-11559899800

  • Microsoft deletes massive face recognition database

    Microsoft has deleted a massive database of 10 million images which was being used to train facial recognition systems, the Financial Times reports. The database was released in 2016 and was built of online images of 100,000 well-known people.

    The database is believed to have been used to train a system operated by police forces and the military.The deletion comes after Microsoft called on US politicians to do a better job of regulating recognition systems.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48555149
    Microsoft Deleted a Massive Facial Recognition Database, But It’s Not Dead

    “Despite the recent termination of the msceleb.org website, the dataset still exists in several repositories on GitHub, the hard drives of countless researchers, and will likely continue to be used in research projects around the world,” Harvey wrote on Megapixels. A facial recognition challenge this year at Imperial College London plans to use a variant of the MS-Celeb-1M database, and offers download links.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3x4mp/microsoft-deleted-a-facial-recognition-database-but-its-not-dead

  • Google is reportedly arguing that cutting Huawei off from Android threatens US security

    Because Huawei phones are already banned in the US, understanding how Google is making that case that a forked version of Android being sold elsewhere in the world is a serious threat to US national security might seem like a bit of a jump. Although the Financial Times’ sources don’t explicitly lay out Google’s argument, it’s not difficult to imagine how it would go.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/7/18656163/google-huawei-android-security-ban-claims

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Infinidat Announces Data Rescue Program for IBM Storage Customers

    “IBM created the high-end storage market, but aside from its commitment to storage for z/OS mainframes, layoffs at their Tel Aviv development center and their lack of architectural innovation together show an apparent lack of commitment to the open systems storage market,” said Stan Zaffos, Senior Vice President at Infinidat. “The company’s reliance on obsolescent storage architectures and their willingness to lay off developers, most recently its XIV and A9000 developers, has left many IBM storage customers searching for an exit strategy.”
    **
    As part of the program, every IBM customer, globally, with an active support contract for A9000/R, XIV, or other IBM storage solutions, is eligible for no-cost data migration to InfiniBox. The InfiniBox FLX program provides ultra-high performance, simple pay-as-you-go pricing, a 100% availability guarantee, and free total hardware refresh every three years – for life. For customers wishing to purchase the storage, Infinidat also offers a Capacity-on-Demand CapEx model to purchase what you use as you need it. To further mitigate risk, Infinidat will also provide the data migration services to InfiniBox or InfiniBox FLX at no charge for most installations.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/infinidat-announces-data-rescue-program-120000975.html

Other

  • Google Gets Ready for Legal Fight as U.S. Mulls an Antitrust Probe

    Google’s competitors are pressing antitrust enforcers to look far and wide at the company’s practices. Perhaps the most common complaint against Google around the world in recent years is that it uses its search engine to privilege its own content at the expense of its competitors’.

    For example, it created new design features like the “knowledge graph,” which populates the boxes that appear at the top of search, often answering a query without requiring the user to click through to another website. In March, 62% of Google searches on mobile were “no-click” searches, according to research firm Jumpshot. Google has argued that if consumers don’t find the rearranged content useful, they won’t click on it.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-gets-ready-for-legal-fight-as-u-s-weighs-an-antitrust-probe-11559521581
    Google appeals $1.7BN EU AdSense antitrust fine

    The AdSense antitrust decision is the third fine for Google under the Commission’s current antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager — who also issued a $5BN penalty for anti-competitive behaviors attached to Android last summer; following a $2.7BN fine for Google Shopping antitrust violations, in mid 2017.

    Google is appealing both earlier penalties but has also made changes to how it operates Google Shopping and Android in Europe in the meanwhile, to avoid the risk of further punitive penalties.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/google-appeals-1-7bn-eu-adsense-antitrust-fine/

  • FedEx Says It’s Ending Express Shipping Service for Amazon

    Friday’s move also reflects how Amazon has gone from simply a sought-after customer to a direct competitor of FedEx. As Amazon has built its own delivery capacity through a fleet of airplanes and same-day couriers, the internet giant has been able to ship more of its products on its own and control its costs. That has put FedEx in an untenable position of essentially competing with Amazon for Amazon’s own business.

    FedEx is betting on other retailers, which are expanding their e-commerce businesses but still need shipping companies to help them fulfill their express orders. FedEx said e-commerce was expected to double to 100 million packages a day in the United States by 2026.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/business/fedex-amazon-express-delivery.html

  • IRS Wins Again in Closely Watched Intel Tax Case

    The case involves what is known as share-based compensation and where it should be deducted as a business expense. The IRS wrote a regulation that required companies to deduct more of it abroad as opposed to deducting it in the U.S. Especially before the 2017 federal-tax overhaul that lowered corporate rates, companies had an incentive to claim those deductions against the higher U.S. tax rate—and thus pack more of their profits into low-taxed foreign jurisdictions.

    “We disagree with the Tax Court that the 2003 regulations are arbitrary and capricious,” wrote Chief Judge Sidney Thomas, who was appointed by President Clinton. “While the rulemaking process was less than ideal, the [law] does not require perfection.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-wins-again-in-closely-watched-intel-tax-case-11559928738

  • Not Your Daddy’s Regulation: Tech Giants Face A Complicated Reckoning In Washington

    Amazon is ferociously aggressive in many of its business lines, yet it faces fierce competition in nearly all of them. There’s Amazon.com vs. Walmart, Whole Foods vs. the broader grocery industry, AWS vs. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Echo vs. Google Home.

    With such a diverse set of businesses, Amazon will make it hard for regulators to reign in the “bigness” many are hoping it will tackle. Amazon and its fellow tech giants are nothing like the Bell Telephone Company or Standard Oil, which grew dominant by finding a core advantage and defending it at all costs. They have instead built their empires through continual reinvention, and they are far more nimble than their corporate predecessors. Regulators will therefore have to comb through each business line, consider the market dynamics in each, and toe the line between policing anti-competitive behavior and picking winners and losers.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/not-your-daddys-regulation-tech-giants-face-a-complicated