Tag: IBM

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Supplier Report: 4/19/2019

IBM and Oracle have been eliminated from the Pentagon’s “Project JEDI” RFP, after almost a year of complaints and public accusations that the bidding event was rigged in Amazon’s favor.

Meanwhile Google, who bowed out of Project JEDI bidding early, made several cloud-based announcements this week to differentiate themselves from AWS and Microsoft. Thomas Kurian is wasting no time.

Foxconn is getting blasted in the press this week due to their (lack of) plans at their Wisconsin manufacturing plant. There are reports that rented office buildings are almost completely empty and the overall strategy for the new plant make absolutely no sense.

Acquisitions

  • Accenture announces intent to buy French cloud consulting firm

    Accenture says that Cirruseo’s strength and deep experience in Google’s cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions should help as Accenture expands its own AI practice. Google TensorFlow and other intelligence solutions are a popular approach to AI and machine learning, and the purchase should help give Accenture a leg up in this area, especially in the French market.

    “The addition of Cirruseo would be a significant step forward in our growth strategy in France, bringing a strong team of Google Cloud specialists to Accenture,” Olivier Girard, Accenture’s geographic unit managing director for France and Benelux said in a statement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/accenture-announces-intent-to-buy-french-cloud-consulting-firm/

Artificial Intelligence

  • A Google Brain Program Is Learning How to Program

    In a new paper, Google Brain researchers propose using neural networks to model human source code editing. Effectively this means treating code editing as a sequence and having a machine learn how to “write code” like in a natural language model — by analysing a short paragraph of editing, the model can extract intent and leverage that to generate subsequent edits.

    To understand the intent behind developers’ source code editing actions, the main challenge was how to learn from earlier editing sequences in order to predict upcoming edits. Researchers explain the AI models needed to understand “the relationship of the change to the state” rather than “the content of the edits” or “the result of the edit.”

    https://medium.com/syncedreview/a-google-brain-program-is-learning-how-to-program-27533d5056e3
    (Thanks JD!)

Cloud

  • Google’s hybrid cloud platform is coming to AWS and Azure

    So with Anthos, Google will offer a single managed service that will let you manage and deploy workloads across clouds, all without having to worry about the different environments and APIs. That’s a big deal and one that clearly delineates Google’s approach from its competitors’. This is Google, after all, managing your applications for you on AWS and Azure.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/googles-anthos-hybrid-cloud-platform-is-coming-to-aws-and-azure/

  • What’s Been Lacking at Google’s Cloud? Enough Humans

    Google Cloud had prioritized developing technology over sales and support, said Gene Reznik, strategy chief at the consulting firm Accenture PLC, which helps clients deploy tech from major cloud services including Google’s.

    “There is a lot of hand-holding required” with big corporate customers, Mr. Reznik said. But Google often had product engineers rather than account managers handle customer calls. “It really wasn’t their day job,” he said, adding that Mr. Kurian brings a corporate credibility to Google’s “consumer-centric culture.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-been-lacking-at-googles-cloud-enough-humans-11554724802

  • Amazon and Microsoft Are 2 Finalists for $10 Billion Pentagon Contract

    The Pentagon said Wednesday that Amazon and Microsoft were the final candidates for a hotly contested $10 billion contract to bring modern cloud computing to the Defense Department.

    IBM and Oracle had also bid for the project, known as the joint enterprise defense infrastructure, or JEDI. But the Defense Department concluded that they did not meet the minimum requirements for the program.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/technology/amazon-microsoft-jedi-pentagon.html

  • Why IBM Is Leaving The Marketing Cloud Business

    Rather than scrabbling over marketshare in the marketing cloud space, where Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle have been dropping billions, IBM is focusing on core technologies and infrastructure, AI, blockchain, global services, consulting and creating a cloud environment to compete with Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

    “That’s the big game IBM is hunting,” Stanhope said.

    But even back when IBM seemed like it was ramping up its focus on marketing technology, there wasn’t necessarily buy in from the big wigs at the top. IBM also lost one of its marketing product cheerleaders when David Kenny, who led efforts at IBM Watson, left to take on the CEO role at Nielsen in November 2018.

    https://adexchanger.com/platforms/why-ibm-is-leaving-the-marketing-cloud-business/

Security

  • Amazon’s Alexa isn’t just AI — thousands of humans are listening

    What the company doesn’t tell you explicitly, as highlighted by an in-depth investigation from Bloomberg published this evening, is that one of the only, and often the best, ways Alexa improves over time is by having human beings listen to recordings of your voice requests. Of course, this is all buried in product and service terms few consumers will ever read, and Amazon has often downplayed the privacy implications of having cameras and microphones in millions of homes around the globe. But concerns about how AI is trained as it becomes an ever more pervasive force in our daily lives will only continue to raise alarms, especially as most of how this technology works remains beyond closed doors and improves using methods Amazon is loathe to ever disclose.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18305378/amazon-alexa-ai-voice-assistant-annotation-listen-private-recordings

  • Nearly 70 percent of hotel websites leak personal data, Symantec study finds

    The main issue involved booking confirmation emails, according to Symantec principal threat researcher Candid Wueest. Many of the messages include an active link that directs to a separate website where guests can access their reservation having to log in again. The booking code and the guest email are often in the URL itself, which in and of itself isn’t a big deal.

    But, like many businesses, hotels share your personal data with third parties, meaning that your booking code and email are visible to them as well. The attacker would only need access to your booking code and email in order to find your address, full name, cell phone number, passport number and other highly sensitive information. Symantec also found that a smaller number of hotels didn’t encrypt the links sent in confirmation emails, giving attackers another window of opportunity.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/10/nearly-70-percent-of-hotel-websites-leak-personal-data-symantec/

  • Hackers publish personal data on thousands of US police officers and federal agents

    TechCrunch spoke to one of the hackers, who didn’t identify his or her name, through an encrypted chat late Friday.

    “We hacked more than 1,000 sites,” said the hacker. “Now we are structuring all the data, and soon they will be sold. I think something else will publish from the list of hacked government sites.” We asked if the hacker was worried that the files they put up for download would put federal agents and law enforcement at risk. “Probably, yes,” the hacker said.

    The hacker claimed to have “over a million data” [sic] on employees across several U.S. federal agencies and public service organizations.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/12/police-data-hack/

Software/SaaS

  • Google’s new AI tools scan documents, take phone calls, and search for products

    Google today launched Document Understanding AI in beta, a serverless platform that automatically classifies, extracts, and structures data within contained within scanned physical and digital documents. It integrates with existing products from Iron Mountain, ​Box​, DocuSign, ​Egnyte​, ​Taulia​, UiPath, ​Accenture, and others, and Google says that customers who’ve tapped it for custom document classification have seen up to 96% accuracy.

    “Most companies have billions of documents — and moving that information into digital or cloud-native solutions where it can be easily accessed and analyzed can involve many hours of manual entry,” Besik said. “Document Understanding AI can help automate document processing workflows. This means you can … start making data-driven business decisions faster and more accurately.”

    https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/10/googles-new-ai-tools-scan-documents-take-phone-calls-and-search-for-products/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft says its data shows FCC reports massively overstate broadband adoption

    Part of the issue is that internet providers essentially just report their own coverage via a form, and the FCC reports it more or less as fact. That’s a problem not just when a mistake on a form adds tens of millions of subscribers that don’t actually exist, but when large ISPs overstate their coverage so they don’t have to pay to fill in the gaps.

    Microsoft’s suggestions, which it has made to Members of Congress and the FCC (though it won’t, as I originally wrote here, testify in the Senate on Wednesday) would make it far more difficult to fib on the Form 477, which as written seems to provide enormous leeway for a company to imply coverage that isn’t actually there.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/microsoft-says-its-data-shows-fcc-reports-massively-overstate-broadband-adoption/

Other

  • Thousands of Amazon employees ask the company to adopt a climate change plan

    Employees, citing Amazon’s work for oil and gas companies and what they describe as insufficient plans for action on climate change, are asking the company to commit to several goals. Among them, they ask the company to make “a complete transition away from fossil fuels,” and to advocate politically for climate-friendly policies. They also ask the company to adopt a shareholder resolution calling for a climate change plan.

    In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson highlighted company initiatives, like work to reduce the carbon footprint of shipments, and described Amazon’s commitment to environmental issues as “unwavering.”

    “Amazon’s sustainability team is using a science-based approach to develop data and strategies to ensure a rigorous approach to our sustainability work,” the spokesperson said. “We have launched several major and impactful programs and are working hard to integrate this approach fully across Amazon.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18304800/amazon-employees-open-letter-climate-change-plan

  • Foxconn is confusing the hell out of Wisconsin

    In February, a Foxconn executive cheerfully likened the company’s vague, morphing plans to designing and building an airplane midflight.

    Such statements have not been particularly reassuring to residents of Wisconsin, where state and local governments have already taken very concrete actions to prepare the way for what was supposed to be an enormous manufacturing facility. Taxpayers have already spent more than $300 million on roadwork, infrastructure, and land acquisition related to the project. In August, Moody’s downgraded Mount Pleasant’s credit rating over the extreme levels of debt it took on for the area’s $763 million incentive package, costs that have since grown closer to a billion, in part because it had to take out higher interest long-term loans after Foxconn’s plans changed. Dozens of residents have been relocated, some under threat of eminent domain.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18296793/foxconn-wisconsin-location-factory-innovation-centers-technology-hub-no-news

  • Google Sued Over Abuse of Search Power, Opening Path for More Claims

    In the suit filed in a Berlin court Friday, Idealo internet GmbH, a leading price-comparison service that is majority-owned by publisher Axel Springer SPR 2.61% SE, alleged that Google made it harder for users of its search engine to find links to Idealo after the U.S. company started promoting its own price-comparison offering, now called Google Shopping. Alphabet’s European entity, Google Ireland Ltd., is also targeted by the suit.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/suit-could-raise-googles-liabilities-in-price-comparison-case-11555056397

  • Net Neutrality Vote Passes House, Fulfilling Promise by Democrats

    But the legislation, the Save the Internet Act, faces long odds in the Republican-led Senate. The Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, said this week that the legislation would be “dead on arrival.” Earlier this week, the Office of Management and Budget advised the White House to veto the law if it reached the president’s desk. The office said in a letter that since the law had been overturned, the broadband industry had thrived, a good sign of how deregulation helped the economy.

    The legislation would prohibit blocking and throttling web traffic and would categorize broadband as a service open to heavy regulation. Supporters say the regulation would prevent companies from blocking or slowing the delivery of content like videos. Opponents say it would strap broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast with heavy-handed restrictions, and could lead to price controls.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/technology/net-neutrality-vote.html

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 4/12/2019

Google had a very rough week.

First it was discovered that they lost AI researcher Ian Goodfellow to Apple, who has made a habit of stealing Google’s AI talent of late.

Then the company announced the dissolution of their AI ethics board…after only one week. Some of their board selections received critical feedback both internally and externally.

Finally, Google’s temp labor teams published a letter requesting better treatment. Google responded to these demands by announcing their temporary labor services suppliers will provide better pay and benefits, but the temps say that isn’t enough, as they are looking to be treated with dignity.

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Watson knows when you’re planning to quit your job

    At CNBC’s Work Talent + HR Summit, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty revealed that the company AI has got so adept at detecting employee satisfaction that it’s now in the “95 per cent accuracy range.”

    Rometty wouldn’t be drawn on what data points Watson consults, but Googling the spelling of “curriculum vitae”, alongside extended periods on LinkedIn would be our first clue. Nobody has ever visited LinkedIn recreationally, after all.

    Watson’s “predictive attrition program” is used to retain talent, because as Rometty says, “the best time to get to an employee is before they go.” The company estimates that the early interventions will have saved it nearly $300m in retention costs.

    https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3073744/ibm-watson-knows-when-youre-planning-to-quit-your-job

  • What AI Will Do to Corporate Hierarchies

    The obvious answer may be that the management structure is likely to get more centralized and rigid. After all, AI will help managers track more detailed data about everything their subordinates are doing, which should make it easier—and more inviting—to exercise stricter controls.

    This will no doubt be true in some cases. But look more closely, and I believe the opposite is much more likely to happen in many cases. That’s because when AI does the routine tasks, much of the remaining nonroutine work is likely to be done in loose “adhocracies,” ever-shifting groups of people with the combinations of skills needed for whatever problems arise.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-ai-will-do-to-corporate-hierarchies-11554158120

  • Apple has poached another of Google’s top AI researchers

    Ian Goodfellow is one of the most prominent names in artificial intelligence, and previously worked at both Google and the Elon Musk-founded lab OpenAI. But, as first reported by CNBC, Goodfellow recently updated his LinkedIn profile to note that he is now working at Apple as a director for machine learning at the company’s Special Projects group.

    It’s not the first time Apple has used Google as an AI talent incubator, with the iPhonemaker luring away Goodfellow’s former boss, Google’s head of AI, John Giannandrea, last April.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18296473/apple-google-ai-research-poached-ian-goodfellow

  • Google dissolves AI ethics board just one week after forming it

    Google today disclosed that it has dissolved a short-lived, external advisory board designed to monitor its use of artificial intelligence, following a week of controversy regarding the company’s selection of members. The decision, reported first today by Vox, is largely due to outcry over the board’s inclusion of Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James, a noted conservative figure who has openly espoused anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and, through the Heritage Foundation, fought efforts to extend rights to transgender individuals and to combat climate change.

    The advisory board, called the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC), included a number of prominent academics in fields ranging from AI and philosophy to psychology and robotics. But it also included those with policy backgrounds, like James and members of former US presidential administrations.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/4/18296113/google-ai-ethics-board-ends-controversy-kay-coles-james-heritage-foundation

Cloud

Security

  • Facebook will stop asking new users for their email passwords

    Facebook told Axios that “a very small group of people have the option of entering their email password to verify their account when they sign up for Facebook,” but noted that people could choose instead to confirm their account with a code or link sent to their phone or email.

    “That said, we understand the password verification option isn’t the best way to go about this, so we are going to stop offering it,” the company said in a statement.

    https://www.axios.com/facebook-will-stop-asking-new-users-for-their-email-passwords–355c2e94-793f-47b7-a582-9ee0a4f01ae3.html

Software/SaaS

  • PwC Tests Blockchain for Validating Job Candidates’ Credentials

    If the technology becomes widely used, staffers won’t have to verify a candidate’s credentials by calling universities and previous employers, which can sometimes take weeks, Mr. Cushley said. The challenge, though, will be getting enough schools and companies on board to make blockchain truly valuable for validating credentials, he said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/pwc-tests-blockchain-for-validating-job-candidates-credentials-11554324777

  • American Express, SAP Ariba join forces for End-to-End B2B payments

    Sources close to the move claim that American Express, as a network extension partner, will use Ariba Network APIs to allow its virtual Card potentials within the SAP Ariba platform & process to facilitate secure payments, seamless commerce, and easy settlement between businesses on a single platform.

    Moreover, businesses, through the new integration, will have the opportunity to use their current American Express® Corporate Cards to make virtual Card payments, further making it easy for customers to get started without the need to create and maintain a standalone account.

    http://solutionrocket.com/american-express-sap-ariba-join-forces-end-end-b2b-payments/

  • Why Oracle is happy to lose to AWS and MongoDB

    Put another way, how is it that Oracle can be such a miss with developers and yet still print billions of dollars in revenue? I’m guessing Hurd doesn’t care much about developer adoption. He likely doesn’t care that, measured in popularity, Oracle has been in terminal decline for many years, as DB-Engines’ data suggests. In fact, if you look at the database technologies for which developers ask the most questions (indicating production use) on Stack Overflow, only MongoDB and PostgreSQL are booming (of the top-five database technologies).

    No, what Hurd cares about, as he acknowledges in his remarks to CNBC, is the fact that Oracle still controls roughly half of the global database market, worth tens of billions of dollars. Never mind that, as Gartner analyst Merv Adrian has highlighted, Oracle has lost market share every year since 2013, and collectively the old guard relational database players have shed nearly five percentage points.

    https://www.infoworld.com/article/3387123/why-oracle-is-happy-to-lose-to-aws-and-mongodb.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Samsung Expects 60% Decline in First-Quarter Operating Profit

    The world’s largest smartphone and memory chips maker by shipments has felt the economic slowdown acutely. Companies and consumers, hesitant to spend amid the U.S.-China trade fight, according to tech industry executives, have delayed smartphone purchases and moderated investments into areas like data servers.

    Samsung’s results are closely watched because of its dual role as one of the world’s biggest hardware makers and a major supplier of electronics companies—including to rivals such as Apple Inc., which buys displays and chips from the Suwon, South Korea, company.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/samsung-expects-60-decline-in-first-quarter-operating-profit-11554426661?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Verizon’s 5G network is blazing fast, but it barely exists

    Yesterday, the leading US carrier triumphantly announced the debut of 5G service in “select areas of Chicago and Minneapolis,” and said that “for the first time ever, customers can access a commercial 5G network with the world’s first commercially available 5G-enabled smartphone.” Verizon welcoming customers onto its 5G network came a week earlier than initially planned. Verizon hasn’t said why it abruptly moved things up, but carriers in South Korea also went live with 5G yesterday, so it’s possible the company didn’t want to get beat by its global peers.

    I know you want speed tests, so to get started, yes, Verizon’s 5G data speeds are quite fast compared to what your smartphone can handle right now. I’m hitting between 400 and 600 Mbps on downloads. I can also tell you that, at least in Chicago, this feels like a premature launch, and 5G can be awfully hard to come by. When you do find it, you’ve basically got to stay where you are to see what it’s capable of.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/4/18295600/verizon-5g-network-first-tests-data-speed

Other

  • Jeff Bezos, Amazon C.E.O., and MacKenzie Bezos Finalize Divorce Details

    Mr. Bezos will keep 75 percent of the couple’s Amazon stock and all of their ownership of The Washington Post and the Blue Origin space company, Ms. Bezos wrote. Mr. Bezos will also have “sole voting authority” over Ms. Bezos’ Amazon shares, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    After the divorce, Ms. Bezos will own roughly 4 percent of Amazon, a stake that was worth almost $36 billion on Thursday. By keeping 75 percent of the couple’s Amazon shares, or about 12 percent of the company, Mr. Bezos will most likely remain the richest person in the world. His remaining stake in the company was worth almost $108 billion on Thursday. (Bill Gates, the second wealthiest, is worth $102 billion, according to Bloomberg.)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/technology/bezos-divorce-mackenzie.html

  • UN says US fears over Huawei’s 5G are politically motivated

    The secretary general of the UN’s internet and telecoms agency has suggested US concerns about 5G networks built using Huawei equipment have more to do with politics and trade, rather than legitimate worries over security. “There is no proof so far,” Houlin Zhao, head of the International Telecommunication Union, said regarding claims about Huawei’s security. He noted it’s in telecoms’ best interests to make sure their infrastructure is secure as they might otherwise feel the wrath of authorities.

    “I would encourage Huawei to be given equal opportunities to bid for business, and during the operational process, if you find anything wrong, then you can charge them and accuse them,” Zhao said, according to Reuters. “But if we don’t have anything then to put them on the blacklist — I think this is not fair.”

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/05/un-huawei-5g-network-security-allegations/

  • Google staff condemn treatment of temp workers in ‘historic’ show of solidarity

    TVCs make up 54% of Google’s global workforce, and more than half of the people on the personality team, according to the letter. The TVCs on the personality team sit alongside Google FTEs in offices around the world, but they are employed by a staffing agency on contracts ranging from two to six months at a time.

    On 8 March, about 80% of the TVCs on the team – 34 people – were informed that their contracts were ending ahead of schedule, either on 5 April or, in a few cases, on 31 July, according to the letter.

    The layoffs took place around the globe, starting in Seoul, and hitting London just as TVCs in New York were heading to work.

    “During the process, our managers and the full-time workers on our team were silent,” the letter states. “Google told them that offering support or even thanking us for years of work would make the company legally liable. Our teammates were told to distance themselves from us at the moment when we were most in need – just so that Google could avoid legal responsibility.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/02/google-workers-sign-letter-temp-contractors-protest

  • The EU Is Pissed at Steam for Region-Locking Games

    “Valve believes that the EC’s extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law,” he wrote. Lombardi claimed that without the ability to geo-block games in the EU, publishers will have to raise prices in “less affluent regions” to avoid people in more affluent regions buying games there rather than at home. Traditionally, prices on Steam vary from region to region.

    The recipients of the Commission’s objections will now have the opportunity to examine the Commission’s investigation files, respond in writing, and request a hearing. If the Commission concludes that there was an infringement, it could prohibit the alleged conduct and impose a fine of “up to 10% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/panj7v/the-eu-is-pissed-at-steam-for-region-locking-games

Photo by DJ Johnson on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/5/2019

March went out with a fizzle when it came to major tech news, but there are a few trends to be aware of…

The EU continues to regulate complex technology with far reaching effects on European users and the entire global population. If critics are correct, the EU’s Copyright Directive Article 13 could split the internet in 3 (Europe, China, and the rest of the world).

Microsoft is showing more aggression against SalesForce via partnerships with Adobe and SAP to leverage LinkedIn to improve marketing integrations and to ensure customers have an easier time moving their cloud data around.

…And Google is getting back into robotics.

Acquisitions

  • Alibaba has acquired Teambition, a China-based Trello and Asana rival, in its enterprise push

    There were rumors of an acquisition circulating yesterday in Chinese media. Alibaba has now confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch but declined to provide any other details.

    Teambition had raised about $17 million in funding since 2013, with investors including Tencent, Microsoft, IDG Capital and Gobi Ventures. Gobi also manages investments on behalf of Alibaba, and that might have been one route to how the two became acquainted. Alibaba’s last acquisition in enterprise was German big data startup Data Artisans for $103 million.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/alibaba-has-acquired-teambition-a-china-based-trello-and-asana-rival-in-its-enterprise-push/

  • Daimler Trucks buys a majority stake in self-driving tech company Torc Robotics

    Daimler Trucks is the world’s largest truck manufacturer and a division of the larger Daimler Group.

    Torc, meanwhile, was founded in 2005. For most of its history, it specialized in self-driving software and sensors for commercial, industrial and military use, before recently shifting its attention to consumer vehicles. Earlier this year, it announced a partnership with public transportation company Transdev to create autonomous shuttles that connect people to transit.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/daimler-acquires-torc-robotics/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google is taking a cautious step back into the world of robotics

    The new operation is simply named Robotics at Google and will be led by AI scientist Vincent Vanhoucke. According to the Times, Google is focusing on using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp objects and navigate environments, but it’s far from clear where the company’s ambitions in this area lie.

    Although Google is a pioneer in AI research, its efforts in robotics have produced no commercial successes to date. The company’s last significant foray into the field started in 2013 with a program named “Replicant” led by Android co-founder Andy Rubin. An initial flurry of activity led to the purchase of six up-and-coming robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics and DARPA challenge winner Schaft.

    But these efforts stuttered, likely because the ambitious machines Google purchased were far away from commercialization

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283645/google-robotics-program-ai-manipulation-vincent-vanhoucke

Cloud

  • Sundar Pichai met with President Trump about Google’s ‘commitment to working with the US government’

    “I just met with Sundar Pichai, President of Google, who is obviously doing quite well,” President Trump tweeted after the meeting. “He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military. [We] also discussed political fairness and various things that Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!”

    Reached by The Verge, Google confirmed the meeting and its subject matter. “We were pleased to have productive conversations with the President about investing in the future of the American workforce, the growth of emerging technologies and our ongoing commitment to working with the U.S. government,” a Google representative said in a statement.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18284415/sundar-pichai-donald-trump-meeting-white-house

  • Microsoft, Adobe and SAP prepare to expand their Open Data Initiative

    The core principle of the alliance is that the customers own their data and they should be able to get as much value out of it as they can. Ideally, having this common data schema means that the customer doesn’t have to figure out ways to transform the data from these vendors and can simply flow all of it into a single data lake that then in turn feeds the various analytics services, machine learning systems and other tools that these companies offer.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/27/microsoft-adobe-and-sap-prepare-to-expand-their-open-data-initiative/

Security

  • Android users’ security and privacy at risk from shadowy ecosystem of pre-installed software, study warns

    The researchers behind the paper, which has been published in preliminary form ahead of a future presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, unearthed a complex ecosystem of players with a primary focus on advertising and “data-driven services” — which they argue the average Android user is unlikely to be unaware of (while also likely lacking the ability to uninstall/evade the baked in software’s privileged access to data and resources themselves).

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/25/android-users-security-and-privacy-at-risk-from-shadowy-ecosystem-of-pre-installed-software-study-warns/

  • How IBM is Rethinking its Data Protection Line-Up

    In this particular case, data protection, you now have two products:

    IBM Spectrum Data Protect: the good, old, TSM. While this product is one of those that have written Backup’s history and supports a myriad of Operating Systems and applications as well as backup, it is complex to operate and designed for large environments. Furthermore, it was designed well before the advent of hypervisors and modern applications, making it really tough to protect this environment efficiently.

    IBM Data Protect Plus: a new product designed from the ground up for modern environments, including hypervisors, NoSQL DBs and more. It has a very modern snapshot-based design that pairs nicely with VMWARE CBT (change block tracking) for example. It’s easy to use and can be adopted by IT organizations of all sizes.

    https://gigaom.com/2019/03/29/how-ibm-is-rethinking-its-data-protection-line-up/

Software/SaaS

  • Adobe, Microsoft team to take on Salesforce

    Adobe (ADBE) today announced an extension of its partnership with Microsoft and a new integration with LinkedIn that will accelerate account-based experiences (ABX) through new marketing solution integrations. Adobe and Microsoft are aligning key data sources to populate account-based profiles in Adobe Experience Cloud, including Marketo Engage and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales. This will empower B2B marketers and sellers to easily identify, understand and engage B2B customer buying teams. This partnership will drive better orchestration, measurement and delivery of targeted content for a more personalized experience at both the individual and account level on key B2B platforms like LinkedIn.

    https://seekingalpha.com/news/3445688-adobe-microsoft-team-take-salesforce

  • Cisco CEO: ‘People Didn’t Think We Could Do’ Network Subscriptions

    Robbins says the company is “on track” to meet its pledge to have software and services account for 30 percent of its revenue over the next three years.

    Cisco’s focus on software and services is helping ePlus not only gain new customers, but go deeper with its existing client base, he said. It’s also making the renewal process a “nonevent.”

    “When you start selling software in a multi-year fashion, you don’t want to sell services only when it’s time to do the renewal,” he said. “The solutions we are selling today are taking a different course in terms of how we interact with customers to make them successful.”

    https://www.crn.com/news/networking/cisco-ceo-people-didn-t-think-we-could-do-network-subscriptions

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Tech companies not ‘comfortable’ storing data in Australia, Microsoft warns

    This week the Australian tech industry renewed calls for further amendments to controversial encryption-cracking legislation at an industry forum in Sydney.

    Also on Wednesday, Labor’s spokesman on the digital economy, Ed Husic, told the StartupAus forum in Sydney he wished he could “turn back time”, expressing regret for Labor’s role in passing the bill and explaining the opposition feared it would be blamed for a terrorist attack over Christmas if it refused.

    In Canberra, Smith told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia the law had not yet changed Microsoft’s operations in Australia, but the company was worried about the law’s “potential consequences”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/27/tech-companies-not-comfortable-storing-data-in-australia-microsoft-warns

Other

  • Europe is splitting the internet into three

    Despite setbacks, the most controversial clauses of the Copyright Directive — Article 11 or the ‘link tax’ and Article 13 — have remained pretty much intact.

    Article 11 lets publishers charge platforms like Google News when they display snippets of news stories, while Article 13 (renamed Article 17 in the most recent draft of the legislation) gives sites like YouTube new duties to stop users from uploading copyrighted content.

    In both cases, critics say these well-intentioned laws will lead to trouble. Article 13, they say, will lead to the widespread introduction of “upload filter,” that will scan all user content uploaded to sites to remove copyrighted material. The law does not explicitly call for such filters, but critics say it will be an inevitability as sites seek to avoid penalties.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283541/european-union-copyright-directive-internet-article-13

  • IBM purged “gray hairs” and “old heads” as it launched “Millennial Corps”: lawsuit

    “In 2015 and 2016, IBM doubled down on its efforts to replace its long-tenured, older employees with the younger Millennials it sought to recruit,” the suit alleged. “IBM made presentations to its senior executives calling for IBM to evaluate its long-term employees more harshly, to use those negative evaluations to justify selecting long-term employees for lay-off, and to replace these employees with ‘EPs’– IBM management short-hand for ‘early professionals.’”

    A 2016 presentation concerning one section of the company “specifically called for managers to exempt all ‘early professional hires’ from layoff, regardless of performance,” the suit claimed. “The long-serving, older employees were provided no such exemption.”

    https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/28/ibm-ageism-lawsuit-millennial-corps/

  • Amazon To Create 800 New Jobs At Austin Tech Hub

    In a press release, Amazon said the jobs will be in the areas of software and hardware engineering, research science and cloud computing. Amazon said that since it opened its Austin Tech Hub, it has created more than 22,000 full-time jobs in Texas and has invested more than $7 billion in the state, including on infrastructure and compensation to workers.

    “In the last four years, we have created more than 1,000 jobs in Austin,” said Terry Leeper, general manager of Amazon’s Austin Tech Hub, in the press release. “With a strong pool of technical talent in Austin and a dynamic quality of life, we are excited to continue to expand and create more opportunity in this vibrant city.”

    https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2019/austin-tech-hub-jobs-ecommerce/

Photo by Kido Dong on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/1/2019

Microsoft employees are pushing back on the company’s newest government contract. The $480m deal is to provide VR headsets to the military and despite the feedback the company does plan to move forward.

Speaking of government contracts, Amazon is still fighting to win the JEDI cloud deal with the DoD after new conflict of interest information coming to light.

Meanwhile, there is more information about how Facebook uses other phone applications to collect data on users, even if you don’t have a Facebook account.

Acquisitions

  • Palo Alto Networks to acquire Demisto for $560M

    The company sees a tool that can help enhance the Palo Alto security portfolio by adding a higher level of automation. “The addition of Demisto’s orchestration and automation technologies will accelerate Palo Alto Networks Application Framework strategy and serve as a critical step forward in the company’s aim to deliver immediate threat prevention and response for security teams,” the company explained in a statement.

    Palo Alto also hopes that Demisto’s automated solutions will help accelerate its AI and machine learning capabilities to bring intelligent automation across the platform. The company brings more than technology, of course. It also brings its 150 customers to Palo Alto, a quarter of which are in the Fortune 500.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/palo-alto-networks-to-acquire-demisto-for-560m/

  • Google acquires a small cloud start-up as it looks to catch up to Amazon and Microsoft

    Google is making another play in the cloud space with a new acquisition. The company announced Tuesday it plans to acquire cloud migration company Alooma, which helps other companies move their data from multiple sources into one data warehouse.

    Google did not disclose how much it will pay for Alooma, which is based in Israel and California, but it’s likely a relatively small acquisition. Alooma has raised about $15 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequioa Capital Israel, according to Crunchbase.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/19/google-plans-to-acquire-cloud-migration-company-alooma.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • OpenAI built a text generator so good, it’s considered too dangerous to release

    OpenAI said its new natural language model, GPT-2, was trained to predict the next word in a sample of 40 gigabytes of internet text. The end result was the system generating text that “adapts to the style and content of the conditioning text,” allowing the user to “generate realistic and coherent continuations about a topic of their choosing.” The model is a vast improvement on the first version by producing longer text with greater coherence.

    But with every good application of the system, such as bots capable of better dialog and better speech recognition, the non-profit found several more, like generating fake news, impersonating people, or automating abusive or spam comments on social media.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dangerous/

Cloud

  • Why Alphabet and Microsoft Are Better-Positioned Than You Think

    Each year, Stack Overflow polls over 100,000 professional developers to get a read on their favorite platforms — what they use most, what they love most, what they dread most, and what they want most. Linux was the winner, by far, which is really good news for both Alphabet and Microsoft.

    Why? Let’s start with Linux itself. The world’s most popular open-source operating system is available in a number of varieties commonly known as distributions. Red Hat has a very popular one that IBM is in the process of acquiring. In the cloud, Ubuntu is extremely popular. So are Fedora (a completely free version of Red Hat) and Arch Linux.

    Alphabet is far and away the biggest consumer of open-source software built for Linux and related technologies. Microsoft is the biggest overall contributor of open-source ideas to GitHub, the development community it acquired in August for about $7.5 billion in stock. Both companies are also making it easier to run Linux installations in their clouds (i.e., Azure and Google Cloud, respectively). As developers continue to up their intake of Linux — and last year usage doubled, according to Stack Overflow — they’re more likely to run into open-source offerings from Alphabet and Microsoft.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/22/why-alphabet-and-microsoft-are-better-positioned-t.aspx

  • Pentagon Cloud-Computing Contract Sought by Amazon Faces New Hurdle

    The contract was expected to be awarded this spring. Rival Oracle Corp. sued to halt the process until the government thoroughly investigates Oracle’s claims of alleged conflicts, which center on a former government employee who worked at Amazon before and after playing a role in the Pentagon’s procurement process.

    The Defense Department largely dismissed conflict of interest claims earlier, making Tuesday’s motion to seek the stay a potential turning point.

    “DoD can confirm that new information not previously provided to DoD has emerged related to potential conflicts of interest,” Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said in a statement. “As a result of this new information, DoD is continuing to investigate these potential conflicts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-cloud-computing-contract-sought-by-amazon-faces-new-hurdle-11550601359

Security

  • You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.

    The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed.

    It is already known that many smartphone apps send information to Facebook about when users open them, and sometimes what they do inside. Previously unreported is how at least 11 popular apps, totaling tens of millions of downloads, have also been sharing sensitive data entered by users. The findings alarmed some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s testing.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-give-apps-sensitive-personal-information-then-they-tell-facebook-11550851636?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • The Hot, Lucrative Market in IT Security Talent

    “What you’ve been seeing for the last year or two is more demand than supply” in cybersecurity, says Ryan Sutton, district president at the Robert Half Technology staffing agency. “As demand stays high and supply more or less stays constant,” upward pressure on wages is likely to increase, he says.

    In addition to pushing up salaries, the competition for talent is forcing companies to snatch up candidates more quickly than they have in the past, Mr. Sutton says.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-lucrative-market-in-it-security-talent-11550763976

Software/SaaS

  • Snapchat is in the middle of an identity crisis

    There are many reasons why Snapchat hasn’t caught up to Facebook or Instagram, Keath said, but the lack of public profiles and embeddable content on the web are the main ones to blame for its growth troubles. Another big issue has been the app’s janky user interface, particularly on Android, which Snapchat has been vowing to fix for a couple of years now.

    Then there’s Snapchat’s dependence on ephemeral posts, though rumors suggest it may soon allow public Stories that don’t disappear. If Snapchat were to come up with a way to make Stories last longer or be permanent on someone’s account, it could help it better compete with Instagram and other social networks.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/22/snapchat-bhad-bhabie-nike-augmented-reality-identity-crisis/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • The Dirty Energy Powering Data Center Alley

    Despite significant new investment in renewable generation by utilities in other data center hot spots such as Iowa, the dramatic expansion of Virginia’s Data Center Alley continues to fuel and increase demand in coal and natural gas. At present, power generation in Virginia is dominated by fossil fuels, with less than 5 percent coming from renewable sources, lagging far behind other regions. Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electricity provider and the primary electric utility for Data Center Alley, has strongly resisted any meaningful transition to renewable sources of electricity, currently representing only 4 percent of its generation mix, with plans to increase to only slightly over 10 percent by 2030.

    Dominion’s lack of renewable energy supply and insistence on making significant new investments in fossil fuels will both delay Virginia’s transition to cleaner sources of energy, and make it much more costly to do so. Yet many of the largest data center companies with commitments to 100 percent renewable energy have continued to rapidly expand their presence in Virginia, thus fueling even more demand for dirty electricity, with Amazon Web Services the biggest culprit. Amazon Web Services (AWS) already ranked as one of Dominion Energy’s largest electricity customers when it made its commitment to 100 percent renewable energy in late 2014, and Greenpeace‘s analysis shows AWS has tripled its data center operations in Virginia since that time. Even though AWS did add a sizable amount of renewable energy locally from 2015 to 2016, its dramatic growth in Virginia during this period continued to far exceed the additional electricity supply from its renewable projects.

    https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/click-clean-virginia/

    Amazon aims to make half of its shipments carbon neutral by 2030

    The company is calling this program “Shipment Zero.” Details on this long-term project weren’t yet available, but Amazon says it plans to share its company-wide carbon footprint “along with related goals and programs,” at a later date. That seems to indicate Amazon will offer an update on the progress of its other sustainability goals, as well.

    It’s important for Amazon to be transparent on these plans, as the size of its business means its impact to the environment, energy consumption and, ultimately climate change, is significant.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/18/amazon-aims-to-make-half-of-its-shipments-carbon-neutral-by-2030/

  • Apple’s move to ARM-based Macs creates uncertainty

    The move could give developers a way to reach a bigger market with a single app, although the transition could be bumpy. For Intel, of course, it would mean the loss of a significant customer, albeit probably not a huge hit to its bottom line.

    The key question is not the timeline but just how smoothly Apple is able to make the shift. For developers, it will likely mean an awkward period of time supporting new and classic Macs as well as new and old-style Mac apps.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-macbook-arm-chips-ea93c38a-d40a-4873-8de9-7727999c588c.html

  • Microsoft workers demand it drop $480 million U.S. Army contract

    Microsoft won a contract in November to supply the Army with at least 2,500 prototypes of augmented reality headsets, which digitally display contextual information in front of a user’s eyes. The government has said the devices would be used on the battlefield and in training to improve soldiers “lethality, mobility and situational awareness.”

    In the petition to Microsoft executives, posted on Twitter, the workers said they “did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used.” They called on the company to develop “a public-facing acceptable use policy” for its technology and an external review board to publicly enforce it.

    Microsoft said in a statement that it always appreciates employee feedback. It also referred to an October blog post by its president, Brad Smith, in which he said the company remained committed to assisting the military and would advocate for laws to ensure responsible use of new technologies.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-army/microsoft-workers-demand-it-drop-450-million-u-s-army-contract-idUSKCN1QB2LV

Other

  • Nestlé, McDonald’s, Others Pull Ads From YouTube

    The advertisers’ withdrawals come after video blogger Matt Watson posted a video on YouTube on Sunday that showed inappropriate user comments about videos featuring underage girls, including some that identified precise segments where children appear in compromising positions.

    The video, which had received over 1.7 million views as of Wednesday afternoon, said YouTube’s recommendation algorithm leads users to similar content.

    McDonald’s Corp. , which was among the several brands whose ads ran alongside the objectionable content, also paused spending on YouTube, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/nestle-mcdonalds-others-pull-ads-from-youtube-11550705643

  • Apple is reportedly closing two stores in a Texas district to avoid patent trolls

    As MacRumors notes, the Eastern District of Texas is known for its patent cases (an SMU Dedman School of Law paper backs up that claim), and per US law, patent lawsuits can be filed in places where the defendant “has a regular and established place of business.” By closing its two stores in the district, Apple reportedly hopes to shield itself from those suits.

    The Apple Willow Bend store in Plano and the Apple Stonebriar store in Frisco are both expected to close up shop on April 12th. Apple is planning to open a new store at the Galleria Dallas shopping mall just outside of the Eastern District border to continue to have a retail presence in the area.

    https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/2/22/18236424/apple-closing-stores-eastern-district-texas-avoid-patent-trolls

  • Two Former Cognizant Executives Charged in Bribery Probe

    Gordon Coburn, the company’s former president, and Steven Schwartz, its former chief legal officer, authorized a $2 million bribe to at least one government official in India to secure permits necessary for the construction of an office campus there to support roughly 17,000 employees, prosecutors said.

    To conceal Cognizant’s role in the bribery scheme, Messrs. Coburn and Schwartz, and others, agreed to use a construction company to secure the permit, prosecutors said. The construction company would pay the bribe, and Cognizant would later reimburse the firm through disguised cost overruns on the project, located in Chennai, India, prosecutors said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cognizant-to-pay-25-million-to-settle-bribery-claims-11550252878

  • IBM is the top choice for Gen Z employees in tech: Glassdoor

    Glassdoor economics research analyst Amanda Stansell attributed Gen Zers’ top choice to a number of factors, including a good work-life balance at IBM and IBM employees’ ability to work from home.

    Another factor that may play a role in IBM being the top choice? Lack of controversy.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-glassdoor-gen-z-193615566.html

    But they are cutting back from work at home options, cutting staff, and are still in transition…

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Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/22/2019

Amazon has disappointed or energized certain groups of people (depending on who you talk to) by retreating from their NYC expansion plans. Both sides are still pondering if this is a good thing for New York.

Regardless, the company continues to grow through acquisitions and leveraging their market position to gain access to behavioral data.

Meanwhile, IBM finds itself defending Watson (again) by claiming they did not overhype their AI’s capabilities (they did). The company is looking to build off their Red Hat acquisition to help companies address real integration issues and not “just porting applications to the cloud”.

Acquisitions

  • Democrats want to take another look at the T-Mobile-Sprint merger

    In the ten months since T-Mobile first announced its intention to buy up its competitor, the company has cozied up to the Trump administration. The company’s executives spent more than 50 nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. T-Mobile CEO John Legere spent two night in the hotel and paid a rate of $2,246 per night, according to the Washington Post. That activity is likely to be viewed as an attempt to buy favor with the president and will come up during this week’s hearings.

    The hearings this week won’t have a direct influence on the government’s decision on whether to allow the purchase to go forward or not. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission get to approve or deny the merger based on their own investigations that will look into antitrust concerns and other potential harms. However, the hearings may turn up new information that would give regulators pause. Legere told investors last week that he believes the merger will be completed by June.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/democrats-house-hearings-t-mobile-sprint-merger/

  • Amazon buys Eero: What does it mean for your privacy?

    Deluged in a swarm of angry tweets and social media posts, many have taken to reading tea leaves to try to understand what the acquisition means for ordinary privacy-minded folks like you and me. Not many had much love for Amazon on the privacy front. A lot of people like Eero because it wasn’t attached to one of the big tech giants. Now it’s to be part of Amazon, some are anticipating the worst for their privacy.

    Of the many concerns we’ve seen, the acquisition boils down to a key concern: “Amazon shouldn’t have access to all internet traffic.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/amazon-eero-privacy/

  • Apple buys voice app startup Pullstring

    Pullstring was founded in 2011 by a group of former Pixar executives, and originally was used to power interactive voice apps for toys (including Hello Barbie in 2015). It later broadened its approach with the introduction of such IoT products as Amazon Echo and Google Assistant.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-voice-app-pullstring-080b45b6-bbb4-466f-b60a-b87c932e2f57.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: ‘We Never Overpromised’ on Watson A.I.

    Pretty much the entire world believes IBM overhyped its Watson artificial intelligence technology. Rometty isn’t one of those people. “We never overpromised,” she says, allowing, though, that “the world was mesmerized by this idea” and that the whole tech industry has learned that “you cannot just put AI on top of existing workflows.” Rometty somewhat shockingly re-framed how people should think about Watson, the subject of years of IBM’s marketing efforts. “People ask, ‘What’s the size of the Watson business?’” she says. “People want to call it a business. I call it a capability.”

    http://fortune.com/2019/02/14/ibm-ceo-rometty-ai-watson/

Cloud

  • After limping through chapter one of cloud computing, IBM aims to own chapter two

    Chapter one of the cloud represented about 20 percent of the workload opportunity. It was largely about moving a lot of new and customer-facing applications to the cloud. Chapter two is about the hard stuff. It’s about scaling artificial intelligence and creating hybrid clouds. It’s about bringing the cloud operating model to all those mission-critical apps and enabling customers to manage data, workloads and apps and move them between multiple clouds. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity and IBM intends to be No. 1.

    To claim a leadership position in this next chapter, IBM is spending $34 billion to acquire open-source software leader Red Hat Inc. This is a huge move on the chessboard, underscoring that the IBM Cloud and a decade of trying to commercialize the AI-powered Watson system aren’t enough to win the day. Rather, it sees open source, Kubernetes, containers, microservices and developers as a lynchpin to success in the next chapter of cloud.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/02/14/limping-chapter-one-cloud-computing-ibm-aims-chapter-two/

  • Oracle Shares End Higher After Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Dumps Stake

    Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of around 90 U.S.-listed stocks lost around $38 billion in value over the three months ending in December, the SEC filings noted, as the S&P 500 slumped nearly 15% in a global market sell-off triggered by slowing growth and a then-hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve. Berkshire Hathaway told the SEC in its November filing that it had owned 41.4 million shares in Oracle at the end of the end of the third quarter after it had exited a holding in IBM (IBM – Get Report) earlier in the year.

    Oracle surprised investors with a bullish 2019 outlook late last year when it posted stronger-than-expected second quarter earnings and said growth in its cloud computing business would support sales and improve profit margins.

    The company also said it sees current quarter earnings of between 86 cents and 88 cents a share, topping the 84 cent Street forecasts, and said it expects full year revenue growth of around 3% on a constant currency basis.

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/oracle-shares-slide-after-warren-buffet-s-berkshire-hathaway-dumps-stake-14867890

Software/SaaS

  • Barclaycard Integrates B2B Payments Tech To SAP Ariba

    The integration will roll out later this year with the addition of Precisionpay Bank Transfer within the SAP Ariba platform. Corporate buyers can pay their vendors via virtual card, with suppliers receiving payment the same way they receive a bank transfer. Barclaycard noted that its collaboration with SAP Ariba could also link business buyers to supply chain financing, giving companies up to 56 days to pay their invoices while suppliers receive payment more quickly.

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/barclaycard-sap-ariba/

  • Oracle CEO Mark Hurd throws shade at SAP’s $8 billion Qualtrics acquisition: We don’t buy companies ‘to just buy them’

    “We’re not buying somebody to just buy them. We’re buying companies that fit into our portfolio,” Hurd said onstage at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Wednesday, in response to a question from the on-stage interviewer about how Oracle and SAP approach acquisitions.

    In November, SAP announced it would acquire online market research software startup Qualtrics for $8 billion. The news came close to the last possible second, as Qualtrics was about to go public. Hurd’s comments were almost certainly in reference to this very recent mega-deal.

    Also:

    Hurd also said that he disagreed with SAP asking customers to completely transition to its cloud-based S/4HANA platform by 2025. After that, SAP will stop providing support for its very popular Business Suite enterprise software.

    “I think that is just a terrible damn idea,” Hurd said. “Let’s say you go to your board and say, ‘We’re going to move from this thing to this other thing, and it’s going to cost $350 million.’ My guess is, the board will say, ‘What do we get for $350 million?’ Well, we moved from this thing to the HANA thing.”

    https://factsand.news/2019/02/14/tech/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-throws-shade-at-saps-8-billion-qualtrics-acquisition-we-dont-buy-companies-to-just-buy-them-orcl-sap/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google will have offices and data centers in 24 states by the end of 2019

    The company is launching a $13 billion expansion in 2019 that will give it a total US footprint of 24 states, including “major expansions” in 14 states. The growth includes its first data center in Nevada, a new office in Georgia, and multi-facility expansions in places like Texas and Virginia. This is on top of known projects like its future New York City campus.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/google-expands-us-footprint/

Other

  • Amazon is becoming too pervasive, anti-competitive

    To put this in old-fashioned terms, Amazon owns the mall, rents space to retailers, controls access to customers, collects data on every sale while also operating the largest store in the mall. And if one of the smaller retailers show some success, Amazon will compete with them.

    Yet that is not enough for CEO Jeff Bezos, because 90 percent of retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar buildings. Amazon has bought grocery giant Whole Foods, launched Amazon Go convenience stores and opened Amazon kiosks in shopping malls. The company is reportedly looking at old Sears stores to add more retail and warehouse space.

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Amazon-is-becoming-too-pervasive-anti-competitive-13588822.php

  • Amazon’s HQ2 New York plans didn’t need to end this way

    While it’s fair on some level that Amazon felt stymied by this political climate, the company still seems petty at the end of all this. As a tech and retail titan that is nearly impossible to avoid in daily life, the company has come to expect a certain level of fealty from the people and organizations it deals with. It’s used to walking into a room and getting what it wants. In this case, dealing with activists, vocal critics and pressure from key lawmakers meant Amazon wasn’t going to have another typically easy time — the line of thinking appears to be that, as helpful as another campus would be, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Lots of brilliant people work at Amazon, though; is it possible that no one saw the red tape coming?

    I have a hard time believing that Amazon couldn’t have handled this better. Could it have managed the conversation better? Could it have been more transparent in its dealings? Could it have tried to work more closely, more functionally with the lawmakers involved? Does this whole thing now feel like a huge waste of time? Yes, to all of the above.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/16/amazon-hq2-new-york-waste-of-time/

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