Amazon is sending computer networking technology stocks into a dive with rumors they are getting into the router business. Can the “eater of worlds” break into a market with low margins, demanding customers, and ever-present threat of hacks and security issues – and maintain customer satisfaction?
Amazon does control half of all online sales in the US… HALF. So they do know a thing or two about network traffic optimization.
IBM is finding that big data breaches cost corporations on average about $3.5M per event. Better make sure those routers are updated.
Acquisitions
- Broadcom acquires CA Technologies for $18.9B in cash
Broadcom, the massive semiconductor supplier you may remember from its failed attempt to acquire Qualcomm, today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with CA Technologies, a major IT management software and solutions provider. The price of the acquisition is $18.9 billion in cash. CA’s shareholders will receive $44.50 per share, a 20 percent premium over the closing price of the company’s stock today.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/11/broadcom-acquires-ca-technologies-for-18-9b-in-cash/
- The Department of Justice isn’t done fighting the AT&T-Time Warner merger
“The Court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based, and well-reasoned,” said AT&T General Counsel David McAtee in a statement. “While the losing party in litigation always has the right to appeal if it wishes, we are surprised that the DOJ has chosen to do so under these circumstances. We are ready to defend the Court’s decision at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/12/doj-appeals-att-time-warner/
- AT&T acquires threat intelligence company AlienVault
AT&T has announced plans to acquire cybersecurity company AlienVault. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2007, AlienVault offers a number of tools for detecting and responding to security threats through its Unified Security Management (USM) platform, while its Open Threat Exchange (OTX) platform serves as an online community where security professionals and researchers can share their latest findings and threat data.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/10/att-acquires-threat-intelligence-company-alienvault/
- Intel To Acquire eASIC: Lower Cost ASICs in FPGA Design Time
Intel is also announcing that it will acquire a company called eASIC which develops FPGA-like design tools to roll out ‘structured ASICs’. These structured ASICs an intermediary between a full FPGA and a full ASIC that allow for a quick roll out time and cheaper production cost. Technically Intel has been using eASIC technology since at least 2015 in its custom Xeons, however today’s announcement means that the eASIC team will become part of Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group (PSG). The deal is expected to close within the next month.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13075/intel-acquires-easic-lower-cost-asics-in-fpga-design-time
Artificial Intelligence
- Google Is Reportedly Looking to Take Over Call Centers With Its Duplex AI Assistant
A report from The Information suggests Google may be making a play to find other applications for its human-sounding assistant and has already started experimenting with ways to use Duplex to do with away roles currently filled by humans—a move that could have ramifications for millions of people.
Citing a person familiar with Google’s plans, The Information reported the company is already in conversation with at least one potential customer that would like to integrate Duplex into its operations. That firm, an unnamed large insurance company, is reportedly interested in using the voice assistant to handle simple, straightforward customer service calls.
https://gizmodo.com/google-is-reportedly-looking-to-take-over-call-centers-1827379911
Cloud
- Oracle Set to Merge Its Cloud Business
Oracle (ORCL) is gradually converting its cloud service types—SaaS1, PaaS2, and IaaS3—into a single standard data center. These data warehouses are supported by a bare-metal infrastructure managed by a single unified operations team.
The consolidation of these cloud services may help offer Oracle huge economies of scale by sharing data warehouse costs across the three categories, expanding margins. By bringing all three categories under one roof, the company can also improve efficiency.
https://marketrealist.com/2018/07/oracle-set-to-merge-its-cloud-business
Security
- ‘Mega’ Data Breaches Cost Companies a Staggering Fortune, IBM Study Finds
According to the IBM study, while the average cost of a data breach globally hovers just under $4 million—a 6.4 percent increase over the past year—costs associated with so-called mega breaches (an Equifax or Target, for example) can reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The average cost of a breach involving 1 million records is estimated at around $40 million, while those involving 50 million records or more can skyrocket up to $350 million in damages.
Of the 11 mega breaches examined by IBM, 10 were a result of criminal attacks.
The average amount of time that passes before a major company notices a data breach is pretty atrocious. According to IBM, mega breaches typically go unnoticed for roughly a year.
https://gizmodo.com/mega-data-breaches-cost-companies-a-staggering-fortune-1827510737
- Microsoft urges lawmakers to regulate facial recognition technology
The company, one of the key makers of software capable of recognizing individual faces, said it would take steps to make those systems less prone to bias; develop new public principles to govern the technology; and move more deliberately to sell its software and expertise in the area. While Microsoft said the technology industry bears responsibility for its products, it argued that government action is also needed.
“The only effective way to manage the use of technology by a government is for the government proactively to manage this use itself,” Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, said Friday in a blog post. “And if there are concerns about how a technology will be deployed more broadly across society, the only way to regulate this broad use is for the government to do so. This in fact is what we believe is needed today — a government initiative to regulate the proper use of facial recognition technology, informed first by a bipartisan and expert commission.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facial-recognition-20180713-story.html
Software/SaaS
- OpenText CEO opens up on organic growth ambitions
But while M&A continues to be the leading growth driver for OpenText, opportunities for organic growth seem to be getting more attention at Canada’s largest software company, judging from announcements and discussions at the company’s Enterprise World 2018 event, being held this week in Toronto. And what does the company expect to be the three main sources of that growth? Cloud, AI and security.
For a start, there was CEO Mark Barrenechea’s announcement in his Tuesday keynote of two new strands to the company’s cloud strategy: first, the release of the company’s new hybrid cloud platform OT2; and second, the news that its flagship EIM platform, OpenText Release 16, will now run on cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft Azure, in addition to the existing options of on-premise or on the OpenText cloud as a managed service.
https://diginomica.com/2018/07/12/opentext-ceo-opens-up-on-organic-growth-ambitions/
Datacenter/Hardware
- Amazon Web Services Targets Cisco in Networking
Networking company stocks fell off Friday following a report by The Information that Amazon Web Services is considering selling its own network switching devices.
Cisco dropped 4 percent by the end of trading, representing a loss in stock value of roughly $8.5 billion. Juniper gave up more than 2 percent. Arista Networks dropped more than 4 percent, and F5 Networks dropped roughly a percent. Broadcom, which makes chips used in switching devices, was down more than 3 percent on the day following the report, extending a rough week for the stock.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/aws-network-devices-report-cisco-juniper-fall.html
Other
- Amazon’s share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%, or 5% of all retail spend
Amazon is set to clear $258.22 billion in US retail sales in 2018, according to eMarketer’s figures, which will work out to 49.1 percent of all online retail spend in the country, and 5 percent of all retail sales.
Now, it is fast approaching a tipping point where more people will be spending money online with Amazon, than with all other retailers — combined. Amazon’s next-closest competitor, eBay, a very, very distant second at 6.6 percent, and Apple in third at 3.9 percent. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer when counting physical stores, has yet to really hit the right note in e-commerce and comes in behind Apple with 3.7 percent of online sales in the US.
- Xiaomi’s Weak I.P.O. Raises Doubts About China’s Tech Boom
But many investors view Xiaomi as still largely a hardware maker, not an internet company. It has promised fatter margins from selling internet services to its smartphone users, but those services accounted for less than 9 percent of last year’s revenue.
“Xiaomi has been billing itself as a Chinese internet company, but they really are not quite yet a pure internet company,” said Dan Wang, a technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics.
“Investors haven’t really bought into that story,” Mr. Wang added.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/xiaomi-hong-kong-ipo.html
- IBM earnings: Security is growing fast, but is it enough money to matter?
Through the first quarter, IBM’s security business had generated $3.4 billion in revenue in the previous 12 months, for growth of 66% year over year, the company told MarketWatch. In the first quarter, security brought in $800 million with growth of 65% from the year-ago period, compared with SI’s 15% growth overall.
That is just a fraction of IBM’s $19.07 billion in reported revenue, however, and may not be enough to truly move the needle as other segments grow much slower. Analysts expect technology services and cloud-platform revenue to rise 2.6%, to $8.63 billion and cognitive-solutions revenue to rise 4.4% to $4.76 billion from the year-ago quarter. Technology services and cloud-platform includes IBM Cloud, formerly known as Bluemix, while cognitive solutions includes IBM’s Watson AI.
Photo by Andrew Sharples on Unsplash