Tag: Microsoft

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Big Tech’s Job Eliminations

Over the last six months, several technology companies announced job eliminations. Recently, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) companies were hit hard…

Pegasystems, a software company that specializes in CRM, announced a 4% reduction of its workforce. The company cited the need to “streamline its operations” and focus on key growth areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

CRM giant Salesforce announced the elimination of about 8,000 jobs worldwide as well as closing some offices. The reductions seemingly focused Tableau employees and there are rumors of more reductions in Salesforce sales teams.

Additional job eliminations in the last 6 months:

As companies reduce their workforce and thus their redundancy, how does that impact their ability to support their customers?

According to Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, layoffs don’t work to improve company performance. Academic studies have shown that time and time again, workplace reductions don’t do much to reduce costs:

  • Severance packages cost money
  • Layoffs increase unemployment insurance rates
  • Cuts reduce workplace morale and productivity as remaining employees are left wondering, “Could I be fired too?”

The trend of recent tech layoffs highlights the post-pandemic economic reality of labor shortages and the disappearance of cheap money. As organizations focus on streamlining their operations and redirecting resources towards key growth areas like automation, digital, and AI – layoffs and cost reductions will continue to be the reality.

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Supplier Report: 6/19/2020


Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

After IBM took a stance on restricting facial recognition software, their competitors Microsoft and Amazon did the same.

While the move is being applauded by many, Amazon’s decision seems like a panic reaction. People have been asking Amazon to back off of providing this technology for a few years due to bias flaws.

And unlike IBM and Microsoft who offered more nuanced responses, Amazon announced they would restrict the technology for only a year (instead of committing to getting it right or not using it at all). It is another disappointing response from a company that has been struggling to get things right for the last 3 months.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • IBM could make another big cloud acquisition: Analyst

    The cloud was a key driver in IBM’s buy of Red Hat. And if Cloudera – which like Red Hat has an open source focus – is indeed for sale then IBM might make a play as it continues to fight for marketshare with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google.

    IBM “is the most likely strategic buyer, especially given the partnership between Cloudera and IBM,” wrote analyst Rishi Jaluria at D.A. Davidson. He noted that a deal would complement the Red Hat buy.

    But CloudEra won’t come cheaply. It has a $2.9 billion dollar market cap, and shares climbed to $12 on Tuesday after Bloomberg reported that the company is open to a takeover.

    https://www.wraltechwire.com/2020/06/10/ibm-could-make-another-big-cloud-acquisition-analyst/

Cloud

  • Oracle Q4 Earnings: Larry Ellison Will Focus on 5 Things

    For the past couple of quarters, Ellison—a master storyteller—has used Oracle’s earnings call to claim that his Cloud ERP app has so much momentum that a number of SAP’s biggest and longest-term customers are on the verge of tossing out SAP and installing Oracle Cloud ERP. But with each telling, the claims get a bit more vague. My hope is that Ellison will avoid the subject unless he’s able to share some specific names and details.

    However, the Oracle-SAP wars have been raging for decades, and the latest battles seem to now be centered around which company can be more convincing in persuading existing on-premises customers to move to the cloud. As I noted above, SAP has flat-out denied that any of its big ERP customers are on the verge of jumping ship to Oracle. In fact, CEO Christian Klein recently told me that not only are none of his customers jumping to Oracle, but also SAP’s cloud ERP business has far more customers than Oracle’s.

    https://cloudwars.co/oracle/oracle-q4-earnings-larry-ellison-will-focus-on-5-things-including-sap/

Security/Privacy

  • IBM ends all facial recognition business as CEO calls out bias and inequality

    IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency. We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/08/ibm-ends-all-facial-recognition-work-as-ceo-calls-out-bias-and-inequality/

  • Amazon bans police use of facial recognition technology for one year

    While the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has held a number of hearings on the use of facial recognition technology, it has yet to introduce a bill regulating the technology. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Ca., who serves on the committee told CNBC in a phone interview he is hopeful Congress will pass a bill this year.

    “It’s a good first step, but it’s still not enough,” said Rep. Gomez of Amazon’s announcement.

    “They’re saying, ‘we’ve been asking Congress to put guardrails on the use of this technology,’ – but every time we tried to get more and more data they stalled – and we had to have hearings to make movement on the issue.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/10/amazon-bans-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-for-one-year.html

  • Microsoft joins Amazon, IBM in pausing face scans for police

    Microsoft’s president and chief counsel, Brad Smith, announced the decision and called on Congress to regulate the technology during a Washington Post video event on Thursday.

    “We’ve decided we will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology,” Smith said.

    Also…

    Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are calling on Congress to set national rules over how police use facial recognition — something that’s now being considered as part of a police reform package sparked by the protests following Floyd’s death.

    “If all of the responsible companies in the country cede this market to those that are not prepared to take a stand, we won’t necessarily serve the national interest or the lives of the black and African American people of this nation well,” Smith said. “We need Congress to act, not just tech companies alone.”

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Microsoft-joins-Amazon-IBM-in-pausing-face-scans-15333452.php

Other

  • Two states are reportedly looking into how Amazon treats sellers

    California and Washington state investigators have reportedly been looking into how the company treats third-party sellers, particularly whether it’s using the data it collects to compete directly against them. The Times says the Washington attorney general’s office is also investigating whether Amazon is making it difficult for sellers to list their products on other websites.

    WSJ reported back in April that the e-commerce giant scooped up data from its sellers — product information such as prices, total sales and how much vendors spend on marketing and shipping — to launch competing products under its private label division. In response to that report, US Senator Josh Hawley requested for a criminal antitrust investigation into the claims and the House Judiciary Committee called on Jeff Bezos to testify before Congress.

    https://www.engadget.com/amazon-california-washington-investigation-055430238.html

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Supplier Report: 5/22/2020

The walls are starting to close in on Google. Rumors of an anti-trust lawsuit have been brewing for months. William Barr and the Department of Justice have been making claims in the press this week that actions will happen soon and that States may join their case or start their own for other infractions.

Gartner produced reports that IT spending will be down $300B this year due to COVID. But not for some companies as Microsoft, Uber, and Facebook are continuing to purchase companies like Grubhub and Giphy.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Microsoft acquires Metaswitch in telecom push

    The move shows Microsoft’s efforts to target a single industry through inorganic deals rather than building expertise and technology in house. These efforts could help Microsoft gain further adoption of its Azure public cloud, which challenges market leader Amazon Web Services.

    “The convergence of cloud and communication networks presents a unique opportunity for Microsoft to serve operators globally via continued investment in Azure, adding additional depth to our hyperscale cloud infrastructure with the specialized software required to run virtualized communication functions, applications and networks,” Yousef Khalidi, a Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post.

    Metaswitch has a 5G product for handling network traffic that can run on public cloud infrastructure. Customers could rely on the company’s software atop cloud infrastructure rather than adding capacity in their own data centers to support additional network use at higher speeds.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/14/microsoft-acquires-metaswitch-in-telecom-push.html

  • Restaurants should fear an Uber-Grubhub merger

    Companies like Uber, which dispatch contracted drivers and cyclists to pick up and deliver food from local and chain restaurants, have faced a wave of new criticism during the pandemic over their substantial markups and the steep revenue cuts they take from restaurants. Consolidating Uber and Grubhub would narrow an already-narrowed field, after GrubHub acquired Seamless and Eat24 and DoorDash bought Caviar. Meanwhile, delivery fees have generally been on the rise, and with less competition there would presumably be less pressure on Uber to compete for dollars from hungry shoppers.

    If the deal comes through, it will likely attract scrutiny from progressive Democrats. At the end of April, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York proposed the Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act, a bill that would pause large mergers and acquisitions until “small businesses, workers, and consumers are no longer under severe financial distress.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90504454/restaurants-should-fear-an-uber-grubhub-merger

  • Facebook Buys Giphy, Will Make It Part of Instagram Operations

    Facebook said the graphics interchange format, or GIF, platform will be part of the company’s Instagram operations but didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. Facebook—which said its apps make up half of Giphy’s traffic—is going to “further integrate their GIF library into Instagram and our other apps.”

    Facebook also said Giphy will keep running its library of GIFs and digital stickers.

    News site Axios reported Facebook agreed to buy the GIF platform for around $400 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-buys-giphy-will-make-it-part-of-instagram-operations-11589561384

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft makes OneDrive multi-page scanning available to all for free

    With so many people now working from home, few of us have access to office equipment like printers and scanners. Scanning documents from home, or outside the office, should be easy. Microsoft OneDrive has long offered a free scanning feature from the OneDrive mobile app which lets you scan and digitize single documents, receipts and more. Up until now, scanning multiple pages and saving them as single document was a premium feature that required a Microsoft 365 subscription. Today we’re making multi-page scanning available for everyone using a OneDrive personal account.

    https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-makes-onedrive-multi-page-scanning-available-to-all-for-free/

  • Chrome will start blocking resource-demanding ads in August

    Google has discovered that a small percentage of ads (0.3 percent) are using a disproportionate amount (27 percent) of the network data used by ads in Chrome. These resource-demanding ads can drain battery life, saturate already strained networks and cost money, Google wrote in a blog post. So beginning this summer, Google will cap the resources a display ad can use in Chrome in order to protect users’ batteries and data plans.

    Chrome will set a threshold at 4MB of network data, 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30-second period or 60 seconds of total CPU usage. If an ad reaches its limit before a user interacts with it, the ad frame will navigate to an error page and inform the user that the ad has used too many resources.

    Google plans to experiment with the feature over the next several months and to introduce it near the end of August. This should give ad creators and tool providers time to adapt.

    https://www.engadget.com/google-chrome-block-resource-heavy-ads-190622725.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Gartner Predicts IT Spending Will Plummet By $300 Billion In 2020 As CIOs Slash Budgets

    Gartner’s estimate is the latest in a series of predictions by research firms that have become more and more pessimistic as the crisis has deepened. Last month, Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), which regularly polls IT leaders about their spending intentions, came up with a forecast suggesting a drop of around 5% in global spend for 2020. In the latter part of March, the feedback ETR had been getting from executives suggested spending would be flat year-on-year.

    While some companies are cutting big IT projects altogether, others are ploughing ahead but delaying some elements of their plans to save money. During an earnings call in April, Hershey CEO Michele Buck revealed the confectionery giant has paused parts of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It plans to advance with finance and data work streams but will delay supply chain and order-to-cash ones—moves that will push out full implementation of the ERP system by a year or so. On the same call, Hershey’s CFO said the company’s capital spending would be between $400 million and $450 million in 2020 versus an estimate of $500 million it had released in January.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2020/05/13/gartner-it-spending-will-plummet-in-2020-as-cios-slash-budgets/#7f41043711ca

  • U.S. Moves to Cut Off Chip Supplies to Huawei

    The restrictions stop foreign semiconductor manufacturers whose operations use U.S. software and technology from shipping products to Huawei without first getting a license from U.S. officials, essentially giving the U.S. Commerce Department a veto over the kinds of technology that Huawei can use.

    Under the new rules, the department can block the sale of semiconductors manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., for Huawei’s HiSilicon unit, which designs chips for the company, as well as chips and other software produced by manufacturing facilities in China and South Korea, which use American chip-making technology. The Commerce Department already had the ability to license software shipments from U.S.-based facilities.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-moves-to-cut-off-chip-supplies-to-huawei-11589545335

Other

  • Justice Department, State Attorneys General Likely to Bring Antitrust Lawsuits Against Google

    Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business. The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The Justice Department likewise is making Google’s ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said.

    Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.

    Though the coronavirus pandemic has complicated work for the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barrhas devoted considerable resources to the Google probe and continues to treat it as a top priority. Mr. Barr told The Wall Street Journal in March that he wanted the Justice Department to make a final call this summer. “I’m hoping that we bring it to fruition early summer,” Mr. Barr said at the time. “And by fruition I mean, decision time.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-state-attorneys-general-likely-to-bring-antitrust-lawsuits-against-google-11589573622

  • A seventh Amazon employee dies of COVID-19 as the company refuses to say how many are sick

    Amazon has instituted new safety measures, including temperature checks, face masks, and increased cleaning. “Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees, and we expect to invest approximately $4 billion from April to June on COVID-related initiatives to get products to customers and keep employees safe,” the company said in a statement. The company also says infection rates at its warehouses are at or below the rates in the communities where they are located.

    But workers at IND8 and elsewhere say cleaning has been uneven and conditions are often too crowded to allow for proper social distancing. Many worry that recent policy changes put them at greater risk. This month, Amazon reversed a policy it instituted at the onset of the pandemic that allowed workers to take unlimited time off without pay. (Amazon is set to end another coronavirus policy, an additional $2 per hour of hazard pay, on June 1st.) The leave policy had allowed workers who feared for their safety — and could afford to go without a paycheck — to stay home without being fired for overdrawing their quarterly allotment of 20 hours of unpaid time off. When the policy ended on May 1st, workers say their facilities became far more crowded.

    “Before we had the unlimited UPT [unpaid time off] so if people didn’t feel safe, they didn’t have to come to work,” said a worker at IND8. “When that went away, we went from having one hundred twenty five people back to four to five hundred people per shift. It’s really crowded.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21259474/amazon-warehouse-worker-death-indiana

  • Eric Schmidt reportedly left Google in February

    Schmidt hasn’t had a leading role at Google or Alphabet for a while. He left Google’s CEO role in 2011, and bowed out as Alphabet’s executive chairman in 2017 before departing the company’s board in 2019. An exit may have been more of a formality, especially as Schmidt was said to have made $1 per year as an advisor.

    Still, it’s the end of an era. Schmidt ran Google during its rapid growth from a search startup to a tech colossus that branched out into smartphones, email and numerous other fields. Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired him to offer Google serious business credibility and leadership, and to that extent he succeeded.

    https://www.engadget.com/eric-schmidt-leaves-google-201819195.html

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Supplier Report: 5/15/2020


Photo by Frida Bredesen on Unsplash

Another sign that a recovery is starting… companies are starting to buy other companies again. Microsoft and Zoom are on the move. Intel announced an acquisition last week. But Covid-19 is also being used to rethink and get out of existing deals (see SoftBank).

Meanwhile, Amazon can’t get over their loss to Microsoft for the Pentagon’s JEDI contract… and they are going after each other on their own personal blogs (this is high school level drama).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Buyers’ Remorse Is Catching in the Coronavirus Era

    Several multibillion-dollar deals have already been scuttled. SoftBank Group Corp. has pulled out of a $3 billion promise to buy stock from employees of WeWork, while Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. canceled the $5.8 billion purchase of 15 U.S. luxury hotels from Anbang Insurance Group Co. WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann and Dajia Insurance Group (which took over Anbang’s assets after it was seized by the Chinese government) both contend that the buyers have used legally faulty pretexts to justify their actions, and they are suing.

    Using the fine print to renege on a deal isn’t pretty, but it’s understandable in an environment where virus-related lockdowns have ravaged economies across the world. Forecasts and valuation estimates predating the pandemic have been rendered all but meaningless.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-05/m-a-deals-founder-as-coronavirus-fuels-buyer-s-remorse

  • Microsoft to Buy Israeli Cybersecurity Startup CyberX

    The U.S. software giant Microsoft is expected to announce in the next few days that it has signed a deal to acquire the Israeli industrial cybersecurity startup CyberX for what sources say will be $165 million.

    TheMarker revealed before the coronavirus crisis that the two sides were in negotiations. They are now in the midst of getting signatures on the deal from all of CyberX’s shareholders.

    CyberX has developed an internet of things cybersecurity platform for factories and industrial control systems, using machine learning to analyze real-time activities and identifying anomalies. The IoT segment is different in many respects from cybersecurity for computers and servers, where Microsoft is active.

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-microsoft-to-buy-israeli-cybersecurity-startup-cyberx-1.8823367

  • Zoom buys Keybase — its first acquisition — as part of 90-day plan to fix security flaws

    The acquisition of the 25-person start-up is the latest move in a 90-day plan that Zoom announced on April 1 to fix its security flaws. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told CNBC the company needed a solution for users who are demanding the highest level of privacy and certainty that uninvited participants have no access to their conversations.

    When Keybase is implemented, the Zoom user who schedules a meeting will be able to choose end-to-end encryption. That setting will prevent anyone from calling in by phone, which is one way people can access meetings, and will disable cloud-based recording of the chat. Yuan said it’s critical that users know that the encryption key is not on Zoom’s servers, so the company has no access to the contents of the call.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/zoom-buys-keybase-in-first-deal-as-part-of-plan-to-fix-security.html

Cloud

  • IBM CEO Lays Out New Initiatives in Cloud, AI

    Mr. Krishna said the company believes the marketplace adoption of hybrid cloud technology is only about 20% complete, and that the adoption of AI is about 4% complete.

    The pandemic will “dramatically accelerate” the adoption of hybrid-cloud and AI, Mr. Krishna said, as companies turn to cloud services to help their employees work and serve customers remotely, as well as to AI to automate certain types of work.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-ceo-lays-out-new-initiatives-in-cloud-ai-11588651261

  • Bid high, lose, try again. Amazon continues to push for a JEDI re-do

    We received notice on Tuesday that Amazon has filed yet another protest – this time, out of view of the public and directly with the DoD – about their losing bid for the JEDI cloud contract. Amazon’s complaint is confidential, so we don’t know what it says. However, if their latest complaint mirrors the arguments Amazon made in court , it’s likely yet another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time.

    The only thing that’s certain about Amazon’s new complaint is that it will force American warfighters to wait even longer for the 21st-century technology they need – perpetuating Amazon’s record of putting its own interests ahead of theirs.

    This latest roadblock is disappointing but not surprising. As my colleague Jon Palmer made clear in a recent blog, Amazon wants a do-over on JEDI . As Jon wrote, “Amazon would have you believe that it lost the award because of bias at the highest levels of government. But Amazon, alone, is responsible for the pricing it offered. As the government explained in its brief: ‘AWS and Microsoft each had a fair chance to build pricing for the entire procurement, based on their overall business pricing.’ Amazon did build its pricing for the entire procurement, and it wasn’t good enough to win.”

    https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/05/07/amazon-jedi-re-do-dod/
    Amazon and Microsoft are trash talking each other over a DoD contract

    Drew Herdener, Amazon’s Vice President of Worldwide Communications responded in a blog post of his own today. It starts out level-headed: “Since we filed our protest, we’ve been clear in our intent: we don’t think the JEDI award was adjudicated fairly, we think political interference blatantly impacted the award decision, and we’re committed to ensuring the evaluation receives a fair, objective, and impartial review.”

    But then, things take a hard left turn. Herdener called Microsoft’s blog posts “self-righteous and pontificating,” and went on to state, “Nobody knowledgeable and objective believes they have the better offering. And, this has been further underscored by their spotty operational performance during the COVID-19 crisis (and in 2020 YTD).” Herdener even attacked the DoD: “This could have been easily avoided if [the DoD] had chosen to be responsive in any of the multiple requests we’ve made in the last two weeks.”

    https://www.engadget.com/amazon-microsoft-jedi-fight-154208730.html

Other

  • WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann accuses SoftBank of abusing its power in new lawsuit

    The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Court of Chancery, included a motion to consolidate his case with a lawsuit filed last month by a Special Committee of WeWork’s board. Both lawsuits focus on SoftBank Group and its Vision Fund’s decision to back out of a deal to buy shares of the co-working company.

    SoftBank Group pulled its $3 billion tender offer for WeWork shares April 1, citing COVID-19’s impact on the business but also closing conditions not being met. Specifically, it pointed to outstanding regulatory investigations, a growing body of litigation against the company and the failure to restructure a joint venture in China as reasons to torpedo the agreement.

    “SoftBank will vigorously defend itself against these meritless claims,” Rob Townsend, senior vice president and chief officer at SoftBank, said in a statement. “Under the terms of our agreement, which Adam Neumann signed, SoftBank had no obligation to complete the tender offer in which Mr. Neumann – the biggest beneficiary – sought to sell nearly $1 billion in stock.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/04/wework-co-founder-adam-neumann-accuses-softbank-of-abusing-its-power-in-new-lawsuit/

  • Uber lays off 14 percent of its workforce in COVID-19-related cost-cutting

    Uber will lay off 3,700 full-time employees, or around 14 percent of its global workforce, the company said in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forgo his salary for the rest of the year as the company continues to struggle in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The layoffs are expected to hit the company’s customer support and recruiting divisions. Uber says it will incur approximately $20 million in severance and other termination-related expenses. Last week, The Information reported that Uber’s top executives were considering laying off as many as 20 percent of the company’s workforce.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249131/uber-layoffs-coronavirus-pandemic-cost-cutting-ceo-salary

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Supplier Report: 5/8/2020


Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash

The shadow of COVID19 continues to loom.

Amazon is warning stockholders that they plan to spend $4B in operational expenses protecting employees and combating the strain. Pandemic darling Zoom announced a new cloud contract with Oracle (which makes sense since Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have their own competing video conference platforms).

SoftBank’s financial woes continue and they cannot rely on a strong economy for a rebound. Their investments in WeWork continue to sour due to isolation orders globally and I don’t see things getting better for WeWork or SoftBank anytime soon… but relaxed Japanese banking systems could help.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for $1B to boost its autonomous car division

    Sources tell TechCrunch that the startup — which had previously been backed by Intel Capital in a strategic investment — will become part of Intel’s Israeli automotive hub, which is anchored by Mobileye, the autonomous driving company that Intel acquired for $15.3 billion in 2017.

    It’s not clear yet what Moovit would be doing in that hub, but as a rule, ingesting and actioning reliable, real-time traffic data and intelligent routing — the crux of what Moovit does — are some of the most challenging aspects of getting autonomous vehicle services up and running.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/03/intel-to-buy-smart-urban-transit-startup-moovit-for-1b-to-boost-its-autonomous-car-division/

  • SoftBank to write down WeWork by $6.6 billion, compounding portfolio misery

    The tech conglomerate has poured more than $13.5 billion into WeWork, one of a string of troubled bets by CEO Masayoshi Son that have laid waste to SoftBank’s full-year earnings.

    The group maintained its forecast of a record annual operating loss of 1.35 trillion yen announced earlier this month.

    The darkening future for WeWork with customers in lockdown comes as deep-seated problems from SoftBank’s cash-fuelled push for rapid expansion are being compounded by the coronavirus outbeak.

    SoftBank shares pared gains to close up 0.5% compared to a 2.1% rise in the benchmark index .N255. The group has launched a record 2.5 trillion yen buyback to support its share price. CEO Son uses his SoftBank shares as collateral for loans.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-softbank-group-results/softbank-sees-84-billion-net-loss-on-wework-writedown-idUSKBN22C011

Cloud

  • Oracle wins cloud computing deal with Zoom as video calls surge

    The deal is a big win for Oracle, which wants to catch up with rivals such as Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) that have greater market share, and is selling a new generation of cloud technology after its first generation efforts failed to gain traction.

    Zoom and Oracle did not disclose the size of the deal, but said traffic for “millions” of meeting participants is being handled by Oracle’s cloud service and about 7 million gigabytes of Zoom data per day is flowing through Oracle servers.

    “It’s exciting to be able to come on to a platform and scale very rapidly,” Zoom’s Chief Technology Officer Brendan Ittelson told Reuters in an interview.

    Zoom’s service ran on a mixture of its own data center gear and cloud computing services from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure, but it began working with Oracle about six weeks ago.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-zoom-video-commn/oracle-wins-cloud-computing-deal-with-zoom-as-video-calls-surge-idUSKCN22A1R9
    And now we understand why Larry was saying nice things about Zoom. He was working the deal. It is sad that everybody was expecting news like this because it is so out of character for Ellison to compliment other technology companies not in his pocket.

  • Microsoft signs Coca-Cola to 5-year cloud technology and business software deal

    The companies describe the agreement as a strategic partnership. Microsoft says Coca-Cola’s call center managers will use artificial intelligence in Dynamics 365, for example, to determine which issues are most important for customers such as retailers and vendors in Coke’s supply chain.

    In addition to using Microsoft Teams for smaller meetings and collaboration as many of its employees work from home, the company is using Microsoft 365 Live Events for large-scale video presentations, such as employee town halls.

    The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday afternoon, providing the first official glimpse of its financial performance since the global COVID-19 pandemic began. Analysts expect Microsoft to post revenue of $33.9 billion for the quarter, up from $30.6 billion a year ago, and earnings of 1.28 per share, up from 1.14 per share a year ago.

    https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-signs-coca-cola-co-5-year-deal-cloud-tech-business-software-deal/

Software/SaaS

  • Celonis pushes beyond process mining into automated workflow tooling

    “We put all of this together — the intelligence, the action, the automation and we solve business goals for certain departments,” Rinke said.

    For starters, that involves supply chain and finance, but there are plans for building even more applications this year and beyond. The way it works for starters, is it connects to the company’s transactions systems, whether that’s SAP or Oracle or something similar. This is where the Banyas acquisition really comes into play,

    “You can basically put these applications on top of your transaction systems and tell them which business goals you have — like I want to preserve cash or I want to pay on time — and then we analyze the enterprise’s entire processes towards these business goals, and then drive everything, automate things towards these business goals intelligently,” he said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/celonis-moves-beyond-process-discovery-into-automated-workflow-tooling/

  • Can API vendors solve healthcare’s data woes?

    While hospitals, urgent care facilities and health systems have stored patient records electronically for years thanks to laws passed under the Clinton administration, those records were difficult for patients themselves to access. The way the system has been historically structured has made it nearly impossible for an individual to access their entire medical history.

    It’s a huge impediment to ensuring that patients receive the best care they possibly can, and until now it’s been a boulder that companies have long tried to roll uphill, only to have it roll over them.

    Now, new regulations are requiring that the developers of electronic health records can’t obstruct interoperability and access by applications. Those new rules may unlock a wave of new digital services.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/can-api-vendors-solve-healthcares-data-woes/

Other

  • Zoom admits it doesn’t have 300 million users, corrects misleading claims

    The misleading blog was edited on April 24th, a day after the numbers made headlines worldwide. After The Verge reached out for comment from Zoom, the company added a note to the blog post admitting the error yesterday, and provided the following statement:

    “We are humbled and proud to help over 300 million daily meeting participants stay connected during this pandemic. In a blog post on April 22, we unintentionally referred to these participants as “users” and “people.” When we realized this error, we adjusted the wording to “participants.” This was a genuine oversight on our part.”

    Zoom’s growth has been impressive, but the company has not actually provided a daily active user count. Zoom usage has soared from 10 million daily meeting participants back in December to 300 million this month. Rivals like Microsoft Teams and Google Meet appear to be closing the gap, though. Microsoft said yesterday it now has 75 million daily active users of Teams, a jump from 70 percent in a month. Microsoft also recorded 200 million meeting participants in a single day this month.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21242421/zoom-300-million-users-incorrect-meeting-participants-statement

  • Amazon says it’ll spend $4 billion or more dealing with COVID-19

    One of the more interesting bits from Bezos’ statement was that Amazon has a team of current employees that are working to build “incremental testing capacity.” So far, the team has built a lab to pilot tests for its frontline employees, and it pledges to share any progress the team makes to the greater effort against COVID-19.

    Amazon’s Q1 2020 performance fell in line with its guidance from late last year, with $4 billion in operating income. Its net sales were at $75.5 billion, which outpaced the growth that it expected last quarter. AWS, its cloud computing services, saw a huge increase year over year, bringing in $10.2 billion this quarter, which is up from $7.7 billion in the same quarter in 2019.

    Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers reveal that Amazon — at least so far — is rolling with the punches and keeping up with the unprecedented demand seen for orders around the globe.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21243112/amazon-q1-2020-earnings-covid-19-coronavirus-jeff-bezos