Tag: Microsoft

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Supplier Report: 5/25/2018

The Source: 5/25/2018

Security was a hot topic this week with news that Amazon is working with law-enforcement throughout the US on facial recognition software.  The ACLU is pleading with Amazon to stop developing this technology (which is high unlikely).

Another big story is GDPR and the fact that more than 60% of companies will not be ready or compliant with regulations which happen to start TODAY.

Intel continues to have security issues with their chips. A new variation of Spectre was recently discovered. Fixes for this new flaw will also likely impact cpu performance.

Acquisitions

  • Microsoft acquires conversational AI startup Semantic Machines to help bots sound more lifelike

    According to Crunchbase, Semantic Machines was founded in 2014 and raised about $20.9 million in funding from investors, including General Catalyst and Bain Capital Ventures.

    In a 2016 profile, co-founder and chief scientist Dan Klein told TechCrunch that “today’s dialog technology is mostly orthogonal. You want a conversational system to be contextual so when you interpret a sentence things don’t stand in isolation.” By focusing on memory, Semantic Machines claims its AI can produce conversations that not only answer or predict questions more accurately, but also flow naturally, something that Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Microsoft’s own Cortana and other virtual assistants still struggle to accomplish.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/20/microsoft-acquires-conversational-ai-startup-semantic-machines-to-help-bots-sound-more-lifelike/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM gets green light for AI-managed traffic lights

    “Responsive to determining the change in the state of the traffic signal for the first intersection should occur, the computer calculates a change to a traffic signal timing based on the determined change in the state of the traffic signal. The computer initiates an adaptation to the traffic signal timing based on the determined change to the traffic signal timing.”

    If it works, and there’s a ton of people currently stuck in traffic right now wondering what’s happened to their lives and if they will ever see there loved ones again that are really hoping it does, then it could go some way in easing congestion.

    https://www.techradar.com/news/ibm-gets-green-light-for-ai-managed-traffic-lights

  • Bank of America debuts its AI-powered assistant, Erica

    “Erica’s knowledge of banking and financial services increases with every client interaction,” Aditya Bhasin, head of consumer and wealth management technology at Bank of America, said in a statement. “In time, Erica will have the insights to not only help pay a friend or list your transactions at a specific merchant, but also help you make better financial decisions by analyzing your habits and providing guidance.”

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/bank-of-america-debuts-its-ai-powered-assistant-erica/

    I don’t want this – and even if I did, I have a sense of dread that they will get things so wrong.

Cloud

  • Microsoft wins nine-figure cloud contract with the US intel community

    The agreement expands an existing contract among Microsoft, Dell Technologies Inc. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to include more products. Chief among these offerings is Azure Government. It’s a version of the company’s cloud platform that is specifically geared toward the public sector and runs in dedicated data centers not used by any commercial customers.

    On top of providing separate infrastructure, Azure Government has also been cleared by several of the cybersecurity assessment programs that the government uses to evaluate technology products. Other Microsoft products such as Office 365 boast similar public-sector credentials.

    https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/05/17/microsoft-snags-nine-figure-cloud-contract-us-intel-community/

  • Amazon Just Confirmed My Biggest Fear About Cloud Applications

    But scary, too. Because what happens when your other cloud solution providers do the same? Let’s say you’ve spent hundreds of hours, and thousands of dollars, migrating your accounting, inventory, order entry, human resources, design, customer relationship management, project manager and whatever other system you have to that awesome online application. All of a sudden, just a short period later when your employees are all happily dependent on their servers in their cars and from their homes on their iPads and laptops, the vendor, like Amazon, decides to just up your price 20 percent?

    You’re stuck, my friend.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/313444

Security

  • Amazon Rekognition was always destined to be a privacy nightmare

    Thanks to its ability to simultaneously recognize up to 100 people in a crowd at a time and compare them against extensive databases in real time, it’s already proving popular with some law enforcement agencies, including the city of Orlando, Florida, and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon, according to the ACLU. Washington County built a database of at least 300,000 mugshot photos to be used with Rekognition while also building a mobile app so law enforcement agents can scan for a match against this database. In Orlando, according to documents obtained by the ACLU, Rekognition facial surveillance is already operating across the city, allowing Amazon to scan and track “people of interest” from the footage of “cameras all over the city.” Law enforcement agencies in California and Arizona have also contacted Washington County, inquiring about Rekognition in addition to what the ACLU terms multiple “fusion centers,” which “collect information about people for dissemination across agencies at the local and federal level.”

    https://www.dailydot.com/debug/amazon-rekognition-surveillance-history/

  • Google to Hold Talks With Publishers Over Their GDPR Concerns

    Google has told publishers using its advertising-technology tools they will need to obtain user consent on its behalf to gather personal information on European users to target ads at them. Elsewhere, the company hasn’t yet signed up to an industry-wide framework many publishers will be using to ask for user permission on behalf of their various ad-tech partners—further complicating an already confusing situation.

    And some publishers are concerned that Google’s optional alternative to that service, a free consent management platform called Funding Choices, requires that they limit the number of ad-tech vendors they work with.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-hold-talks-with-publishers-over-their-gdpr-concerns-1526661229?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Only 36% of firms will be fully compliant with GDPR by its deadline

    At the time of this writing, the deadline for compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is only nine days away—May 25, 2018. Despite the fast-approaching deadline, only 36% of company leaders believe they’ll be fully compliant by that time, according to a recent IBM report.

    This doesn’t mean that these organizations aren’t embracing GDPR—they’re just not able to do it quickly enough. And some are looking to the coming regulation as a catalyst for cleaning house: 60% said they’re using it as a jumping off point for improving privacy, security, and data management, or as a means for creating a new business model.

    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/only-36-of-firms-will-be-fully-compliant-with-gdpr-by-its-deadline/
    No one’s ready for GDPR

    To be fair, GDPR as a whole is a bit complicated. Alison Cool, a professor of anthropology and information science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, writes in The New York Times that the law is “staggeringly complex” and practically incomprehensible to the people who are trying to comply with it. Scientists and data managers she spoke to “doubted that absolute compliance was even possible.”

    It’s not a pleasant position to be in, because GDPR can allow regulators to fine companies up to 4 percent of their global revenue for violations of GDPR. To put that in perspective, a 4 percent fine on Amazon would be $7 billion. (Interestingly, since a company like Amazon reports huge revenues and relatively small profits, a 4 percent fine could cost them over two years of profit.)

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/22/17378688/gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-eu

  • Google Removes ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Clause From Its Code of Conduct

    Despite this significant change, Google’s code of conduct says it has not been updated since April 5, 2018.

    The updated version of Google’s code of conduct still retains one reference to the company’s unofficial motto—the final line of the document is still: “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!”

    https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle wins payday in Micros Systems lawsuit saga

    The litigation conduct prompted a subsequent sanction motion by Oracle, which four of the firms involved have agreed to settle rather than defend.

    Oracle said in a statement published on 23 May that four of the plaintiffs’ law firms agreed to pay Oracle Corporation US$270,000 to avoid the vendor’s motion for sanctions over their alleged misconduct in a lawsuit related to Oracle’s acquisition of Micros Systems.

    “This substantial monetary settlement reflects the strength of our sanctions motion for what Oracle believes was clearly a “strike” suit brought against Oracle,” Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley said.

    https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/641532/oracle-wins-payday-micros-systems-lawsuit-saga/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • New Intel Chip Flaws Found—And They Likely Won’t Be the Last

    Security researchers say this latest bug, a twist of the Spectre flaw called Variant 4, is complex, making it less of a threat since it is more difficult for hackers to exploit than the Meltdown bug. But it won’t be the last such discovery, they say.

    “There are going to be lots more vulnerabilities found over the next five years; no question about it,” Mr. Kocher said.

    Research into hardware attacks has heated up in recent years and was given a further boost from the publicity generated by Spectre and Meltdown.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/bug-hunters-see-more-intel-chip-flaws-ahead-1527007092?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Other

  • Trump reportedly pushed USPS to double Amazon’s shipping rates

    But Trump’s criticism of Amazon clearly has a personal element. Here’s a nice compendium of the many times he’s gone after the company and its owner Jeff Bezos on Twitter — at least through late-March. The criticism really started to hit its stride around 2015. Bezos, of course, also own The Washington Post, a paper Trump has regularly called out for reporting “fake news.”

    Further clouding all of this is the fact that the USPS hasn’t released the specifics of its pricing deals with Amazon, for fear of given competing delivery services “an unfair advantage.” It has, however, insisted that it’s made money on its deals with Amazon, in spite of the fact that the service reported a $2.7 billion loss in 2017.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/18/trump-reportedly-pushed-usps-to-double-amazons-shipping-rates/

  • IBM denies it is looking for a new CEO to replace Rometty

    IBM spokesman Ed Barbini told the news site: “IBM is not looking for a new CEO, and any information to the contrary is absolutely and unequivocally false.”

    However, Business Insider reported that Rometty is “bucking a long-standing tradition at IBM by not retiring at age 60, and her reign has been controversial.”

    The news comes as news site ProPublic reports that IBM is being investigated by the federal government for alleged age discrimination related to layoffs.

    The publication also reported that “we’ve heard several top executive recruiting firms have been approaching people about throwing their names in the hat, including at least two outsiders and one IBM insider, according to someone knowledgeable of the situation.”

    https://www.wraltechwire.com/2018/05/17/report-ibm-denies-it-is-looking-for-a-new-ceo-to-replace-rometty/

  • Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Start-Up Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

    As President Trump pursues an increasingly protectionist agenda for the United States, and Britain veers away from the European Union, Mr. Macron has promoted a policy of open borders and being business-friendly in a country that has long had a reputation for being anything but. Multinationals are venturing to create more jobs in France as Mr. Macron overhauls French labor laws, despite protests by French workers.

    Symbolic statements, like the opening last year of Station F, a mammoth incubator project in Paris representing France’s start-up ambitions, have also generated buzz. And the government is luring research activity with tax credits worth up to €5 billion a year and other inducements. This month, Mr. Macron announced France would invest €1.5 billion into artificial intelligence research through 2022.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/business/emmanuel-macron-france-technology.html
    IBM adding 1,800 jobs in France and new tech training

    “President Macron is making a big bet, and a smart one, that AI is going to transform every job, every profession and every industry,” said Rometty. “At IBM, we share this belief and see evidence of it every day with Watson driving exponential impact here in France and around the world. That is why we are bringing 1,800 new jobs to France to meet growing demand for AI from our clients.”

    IBM plans to hire business consultants, IT architects, developers and technical experts, including both new graduates and experienced professionals. The 1,800 new jobs include 400 AI-related roles IBM announced in March at the French AI for Humanity summit.

    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-adding-1-800-jobs-in-france-and-new-tech-training-300653464.html

Photo by Cristian Escobar on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 5/11/2018

Google’s I/O conference took place this week and they introduced groundbreaking AI assistant technology… but not everyone is in love with the idea of not knowing when they are talking to a robot.

Equifax (finally) released the full impact of their 2017 security breach.  147 million American’s social security numbers were breached.  Why did it take so long to get the whole picture?  Speaking of security, hackers found a way to bypass two factor authentication.

And…Microsoft might buy Netflix (I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this rumor).

Acquisitions

  • Google to acquire cloud migration startup Velostrata

    Velostrata helps companies migrate from on-premises datacenters to the cloud, a common requirement today as companies try to shift more workloads to the cloud. It’s not always a simple matter though to transfer those legacy applications, and that’s where Velostrata could help Google Cloud customers.

    As I wrote in 2014 about their debut, the startup figured out a way to decouple storage and compute and that had wide usage and appeal. “The company has a sophisticated hybrid cloud solution that decouples storage from compute resources, leaving the storage in place on-premises while running a virtual machine in the cloud,” I wrote at the time.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/google-to-acquire-cloud-migration-startup-velostrata/

  • Microsoft Will Acquire Netflix Within the Next 2 Years: Top Analyst

    “Netflix, while a pioneer as a streaming service, doesn’t have a business model that is sustainable,” said Bibb. “For every one in two movies, one makes a significant loss while one makes a significant gain…No one has cracked the code to fix this, although Netflix doesn’t have to deal with the ticket sales.”

    He believes that the Microsoft-Netflix merger could be announced in 18-24 months, but added that there will be “a few bumps in the road before anything happens.”

    https://www.thestreet.com/technology/microsoft-acquire-netflix-says-analyst-14583140

Artificial Intelligence

  • Intelligent Machines Will Teach Us—Not Replace Us

    That is the real promise of this new generation of AI: creating new knowledge, not just good results. Instead of processing human instructions at incredible speed, they create their own guidelines from scratch and discover patterns invisible to us. Instead of analyzing millions of human games to find the best way to play, they can generate their own data and find rules that apply to the real world. These machines will be able to go beyond “what” and tell us “why.”

    Whenever there’s a brilliant advance in robotics or machine intelligence, people send it to me on social media with messages proclaiming, “We’re all doomed!” But the notion that these machines could become human-hunting Terminators is absurd. Intelligence and autonomy of movement don’t equal free will and killer instinct.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligent-machines-will-teach-usnot-replace-us-1525704147?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Google Duplex: A.I. Assistant Calls Local Businesses To Make Appointments

    https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural-conversation.html
    Duplex shows Google failing at ethical and creative AI design

    At one point the bot’s ‘mm-hmm’ response even drew appreciative laughs from a techie audience that clearly felt in on the ‘joke’.

    But while the home crowd cheered enthusiastically at how capable Google had seemingly made its prototype robot caller — with Pichai going on to sketch a grand vision of the AI saving people and businesses time — the episode is worryingly suggestive of a company that views ethics as an after-the-fact consideration.

    One it does not allow to trouble the trajectory of its engineering ingenuity. A consideration which only seems to get a look in years into the AI dev process, at the cusp of a real-world rollout — which Pichai said would be coming shortly.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/10/duplex-shows-google-failing-at-ethical-and-creative-ai-design/

  • Trump Administration Vows to Maintain U.S. Edge in AI Technology

    At a White House conference on artificial intelligence, Trump technology adviser Michael Kratsios pledged that the administration would make a priority of advancing artificial-intelligence research, through greater research funding and other steps.

    “America has been the global leader in AI, and the Trump administration will ensure our great nation remains the global leader in AI,” said Mr. Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology policy, according to prepared text of a keynote speech.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-vows-to-maintain-u-s-edge-in-ai-technology-1525972043?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Amazon Reportedly Building Healthcare Team for Alexa So You Can Ask If That Cut Looks Infected

    The company’s primary hurdle in that task will be making the voice assistant compliant with the privacy requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The law sets some pretty stringent requirements for handling sensitive health-related data, and Alexa currently does not meet those standards. The company’s cloud platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) does support HIPAA compliance and the new health and wellness team reportedly has a HIPAA expert on board, so Alexa may soon be able to properly handle your medical data—assuming you’re willing to trust the voice assistant with that information.

    Amazon’s increased interest in the healthcare industry comes as the company is reportedly bowing out of the pharmaceutical business. CNBC reported last month that Amazon was shelving a plan to sell drugs directly to hospitals through its Amazon Business platform, and experts have suggested the barrier to entry in the filed may prove too high even for the tech giant.

    https://gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedly-building-healthcare-team-for-alexa-so-1825938924

Cloud

  • Microsoft needs to prove it’s not another IBM

    Microsoft can’t afford to become the next IBM and lose any relevance it still holds with consumers, but if it’s not careful, that might be inevitable. Even tomorrow’s Windows-focused keynote is all about Microsoft 365, the company’s subscription service for businesses that combines Windows 10 and Office 365. Microsoft has an opportunity at Build this week to show developers that it’s not just another IBM and that it’s not going to turn into a company that lacks the mindshare and technological influence it possessed in its heyday.

    Build is a chance to show off the good bits of the new Microsoft and where exactly the company will be heading in the next five years. Vague promises of AI and quantum computing won’t be enough without a good demonstration of its software prowess in action. Microsoft has the opportunity to show the world this week what it really stands for and why people should still care.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17325540/microsoft-build-conference-2018-preview

Security

  • Equifax filing reveals hack was somehow even worse than previous estimates

    Today’s information was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of the company’s disclosures regarding the hack. It provided first a handy table listing what was stolen as raw strings of data from Equifax’s inadequately protected databases:

    Full name: 146.6M
    Date of Birth: 146.6M
    Social Security number: 145.5M
    Full address: 99M
    Gender: 27.3M
    Phone number: 20.3M
    Driver’s license number (incl. 2.4M partials): 17.6M
    Email address: 1.8M
    Credit card numbers (with expiration dates): 209,000
    Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN/Tax ID): 97,500
    Driver’s license state: 27,000

    Previous estimates of driver’s license numbers leaked were around 10.9 million, and total affected put at 143 million. Sure, the difference between 143 million and 146.6 million is relatively small, but it’s still 3.6 million people.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/equifax-filing-reveals-hack-was-somehow-even-worse-than-previous-estimates/

  • Hacker Kevin Mitnick shows how to bypass 2FA

    Chief Hacking Officer Kevin Mitnick showed the hack in a public video. By convincing a victim to visit a typo-squatting domain liked “LunkedIn.com” and capturing the login, password, and authentication code, the hacker can pass the credentials to the actual site and capture the session cookie. Once this is done the hacker can login indefinitely. This essentially uses the one time 2FA code as a way to spoof a login and grab data.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/10/hacker-kevin-mitnick-shows-how-to-bypass-2fa/

  • Flash Drives Are Contraband at IBM Now

    In a seemingly unenforceable move, IBM has banned its employees “from using removable memory devices such as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.” The company’s global chief information security officer Shamla Naidoo said that “the possible financial and reputational damage from misplaced, lost or misused removable portable storage devices must be minimised.”

    http://goingconcern.com/flash-drives-banned-ibm-inchan/
    Lots of headlines about this, but it isn’t like IBM is the first company to do this.

Software/SaaS

  • SAP Ariba tightens supplier risk monitoring with new vetting process

    “When it comes to some indirect spend, the role of procurement is changing from negotiating deals to creating a dynamic marketplace within a compliant environment where users can get what they need,” said Robert Ward, procurement process and performance manager, NSG Group. “And with SAP Ariba Spot Buy, we can do this.”

    GRMS evaluates and continuously monitors suppliers against more than 1500 global governmental watch lists and enforcement and sanctions sources. The service also offers the risk assessment modules in regulatory compliance, financial stability, insurance management, reputational protection, health and safety, social responsibility, cyber security and document management.

    http://www.insidesap.com.au/sap-ariba-tightens-supplier-risk-monitoring-new-vetting-process/

  • Oracle’s autonomous database could leave DBAs unemployed

    The autonomous self-patching, self-healing database, the first version of which is 18c, is a part of a long-term play to help draw the company’s customers into Oracle’s piece of the cloud – which is increasingly packing itself with cloud-based applications and services.

    Hurd said it could take almost a year to get on-premise databases patched, whereas patching was instant with the autonomous version. “If everyone had the autonomous database, that would change to instantaneous,” he said.

    So where does that leave Oracle DBAs around the world? Possibly in the unemployment queue, at least according to Hurd. “There are hundreds of thousands of DBAs managing Oracle databases. If all of that moved to the autonomous database, the number would change to zero,” Hurd said at an Oracle media event in Redwood Shores, California.

    https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252440766/Oracles-autonomous-database-could-leave-DBAs-unemployed

Other

  • One of net neutrality’s biggest enemies ‘retires’ from AT&T amid Michael Cohen scandal

    AT&T has decided to join the growing coalition of people who regret paying President Trump’s lawyer. In a message to AT&T employees today, first obtained by CNN, AT&T President Randall Stephenson said “our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged. There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.” Regardless, Stephenson insists that “everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate.”

    But while Stephenson says he takes “full responsibility” for the mistake, it actually seems like AT&T’s top lobbyist Bob Quinn is taking the hit. Stephenson also announced in his message that Quinn “will be retiring,” and that the company’s lobbying shop will now be reporting to AT&T General Counsel David McAtee.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/11/17344040/at-t-michael-cohen-lawyer-lobbyist-bob-quinn

  • Apple is no longer building its $1 billion data center in Ireland

    Apple has announced it will no longer build a $1 billion (€850 million) data center in Ireland after planning delays lasting over three years, reports Reuters. Since 2015, Apple has wanted to build the data center in Athenry to be close to green energy sources, but the plans have been met with stalls in the approval process. The company had yet to even beginconstruction on the center. Apple was also set to face an appeal in Dublin’s Supreme Court on Thursday over initial approval of the planned first phase of building.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/10/17338734/apple-data-center-ireland-scrapped-athenry

Photo by Patrik Göthe on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 5/4/2018

Boston

Amazon announced job expansions in the cities of Boston and Vancouver. This expansion is fueled by the company’s explosive cloud growth (and the riches gained from the ever-increasing Amazon Prime subscription fees). AWS and Prime profits are also covering Amazon’s losses in the retail space, which makes it much harder for their competition.

Fans of WhatsApp should pay attention to the data Facebook is collecting from the app, but alternatives like Signal are running into issues in their attempts to protect user data.

T-Mobile and Sprint finally made the move to merge. Assuming they get government approval, they will be in a better position to claim 5G bandwidth.  Cisco, Oracle, and IBM also made acquisition announcements this week.

Acquisitions

  • T-Mobile and Sprint said to be close to a $26 billion merger

    The two companies have been rumored to merge since 2014, when Sprint attempted to buy T-Mobile. Talks resumed again last year, before ending last November when T-Mobile and Sprint couldn’t find mutual ground. Earlier in April, though, The Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies were once again back at the negotiating table for the third time in four years, and if CNBC’s sources are correct, it seems that this time, the merger might finally be happening.

    The difference this time is said to be a change of heart in Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank (which owns Sprint), with factors like the lower corporate tax rate, costs of 5G deployment, and increased competition from cable providers helping tip the scales toward a merger, although it’s still possible that things could fall apart again.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/27/17293246/tmobile-sprint-merger-26-billion-telecom-deal-cell-carriers

    Sprint and T-Mobile have announced that they will merge

    The combined company will be based in Bellevue Washington and will be called T-Mobile. Current T-Mobile CEO John Legere will run the combined company, while T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert will become the new company’s COO and President. T-Mobile’s majority owner Deutsche Telekom will hold a 42 percent stake in the company, while Sprint majority owner SoftBank will hold 27 percent, with public stakeholders holding the rest. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will sit on the combined company’s board.

    The companies say that by combining, they’ll be able to lower prices and take advantage of “greater economies of scale”. The two companies have trailed their larger rivals, AT&T and Verizon, and the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile will help give them a boost as they begin to deploy their next-generation 5G network across the country. The combined company will have nearly 100 million customers.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/29/17298904/sprint-and-t-mobile-merger

  • Cisco is acquiring business intelligence startup Accompany for $270M

    Founder and CEO Amy Chang has compared the product to a digital chief of staff or personal assistant, giving executives the context they need before conversations and meetings. Cisco plans to incorporate Accompany technology into its collaboration products, for example by introducing company and individual profiles into Webex meetings.

    Cisco says it will pay $270 million in cash and stock in the deal.

    The company probably didn’t have to search too hard to find Accompany, since Chang (who previously served as the head of product for Google’s ad measurement and reporting) has been on Cisco’s board of directors since October 2016. As part of the transaction, she’s resigning from the board, effective immediately.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/cisco-acquires-accompany/

  • Oracle Acquires Vocado

    Oracle today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Vocado, which provides a leading student-centric, cloud-based financial aid solution for higher education institutions.

    Vocado works with thousands of financial aid sources to optimize funding for any type of higher education learning model. The solution helps students identify eligibility and obtain financing so they can achieve their academic goals. Vocado integrates its financial aid solution with both cloud and on-premise Student Information Systems (SIS).

    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oracle-buys-vocado-300639496.html

  • IBM acquires New Jersey fintech Armanta

    In a blog post, IBM said, “Over the past two years, Armanta and IBM have worked together to deliver financial risk solutions to clients globally. The combination of IBM’s and Armanta’s technology and expertise has allowed IBM to deliver new offerings that have already been adopted in the market. Armanta’s technology has not only enhanced our existing solutions, but also allowed IBM to rapidly develop new offerings for clients.”

    The acquisition will help IBM clients integrate their risk management practices with other front and back-office funtions, while establishing a common set of data analytics and reports for consistency, according to the blog post.

    https://www.wraltechwire.com/2018/05/03/ibm-acquires-new-jersey-fintech-armanta/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google’s Sergey Brin warns of the threat from AI in today’s ‘technology renaissance’

    But, he says, AI poses a number of problems too, “from the fears of sci-fi style sentience to the more near-term questions such as validating the performance of self-driving cars.” Brin says Alphabet is giving “serious thought” to a number of these issues, including how AI will affect employment; the challenges of making unbiased and transparent algorithms; and the fears that this technology will be used to “manipulate people.” (This is most likely a reference to recent discussions of AI-generated fake news.)

    Notably, though, Brin does not mention one controversial use of AI that is particularly relevant to Alphabet: military applications. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Google was helping the Pentagon deploy machine learning tools to analyze video surveillance footage from drones. The company has said the tech is for “non-offensive uses only,” but thousands of Google employees have demanded that the company withdraw from the project.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/28/17295064/google-ai-threat-sergey-brin-founders-letter-technology-renaissance

Cloud

  • Amazon’s Profit Swells to $1.6 Billion, Lifted by Its Cloud Business

    The company reported that its net income for the first quarter, which ended March 31, was $1.63 billion, or $3.27 per share, compared with net income of $724 million, or $1.48 per share, in the same period last year. Revenue jumped 43 percent to $51 billion, up from $35.7 billion a year earlier.

    Also:

    Revenue from A.W.S., meanwhile, rose 49 percent to $5.44 billion from the same period a year earlier.

    That increase is larger that what the A.W.S. business was seeing just a few quarters ago. It is unusual to see revenue growth increase significantly at Amazon’s size and in a hypercompetitive market, and it seems to have prompted Mr. Bezos to single out the business in his statement.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/technology/amazon-prime-profit.html

  • Cramer: Don’t let the bears fool you—Microsoft and Intel just proved the cloud is here to stay

    https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/04/27/cramer-microsoft-and-intel-proved-the-cloud-is-here-to-stay.html
    Did anyone say that the cloud wasn’t the technology of the future? I have to admit that I have a hard time watching Jim Cramer after this public beat down:

Security

  • Google accused of using GDPR to impose unfair terms on publishers

    One objection they have is that Google is apparently intending to switch its status from that of a data processor of publishers’ data — i.e. the data Google receives from publishers and collects from their sites — to a data controller which they claim will enable it to “make unilateral decisions about how a publisher’s data is used”.

    Though for other Google services, such as its web analytics product, the company has faced the opposite accusation: i.e. that it’s claiming it’s merely a data processor — yet giving itself expansive rights to use the data that’s gathered, rather like a data controller…

    The publishers also say Google wants them to obtain valid legal consent from users to the processing of their data on its behalf — yet isn’t providing them with information about its intended uses of people’s data, which they would need to know in order to obtain valid consent under GDPR.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/google-accused-of-using-gdpr-to-impose-unfair-terms-on-publishers/

  • Amazon Bends the Knee to Autocrats, Threatens to Cut Off Signal for Using Anti-Censorship Technique

    Amazon officially announced it’s increased focus on stamping out domain fronting on Friday. The statement followed closely behind a similar move by Google. On Monday, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike posted a communication from Amazon’s team informing the privacy-focused company that it must discontinue any sort of domain fronting practices if it wants to continue using Amazon Web Services. Marlinspike lamented the crackdown, saying that Signal is being censored in Egypt, Oman, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates. The technique has allowed Signal to circumvent those blocks and continue to provide service to citizens of those countries, according to Marlinspike, but for now, it will have to comply with Amazon’s demands.

    https://gizmodo.com/amazon-bends-the-knee-to-autocrats-threatens-to-cut-of-1825697153
    Stop Using WhatsApp If You Care About Your Privacy

    Facebook already harvests some data from WhatsApp. Without Koum at the helm, it’s possible that could increase—a move that wouldn’t be out of character for the social network, considering that the company’s entire business model hinges on targeted advertising around personal data.

    If you care enough about your privacy to delete Facebook (or even change the way you use the social network) you may want to ditch WhatsApp as well. If you need a new, more secure messaging app try Signal, or even iMessage for communicating between Apple devices.

    https://lifehacker.com/stop-using-whatsapp-if-you-care-about-your-privacy-1825719172

Software/SaaS

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Foxconn Just Got Permission to Start Draining Lake Michigan to Make LCD Screens

    Environmental experts have criticized the diversion. Though, as the DNR points out, it amounts to less than a 1 percent increase in the total surface water withdrawals from Lake Michigan, it would result in a loss of 2.7 million gallons per day, mostly due to evaporation (the rest of the water will be treated and then returned to the lake basin). Environmentalists are also concerned that the decision will set a new precedent allowing the fresh water to be used for predominantly commercial purposes, instead of as drinking water.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wj73x9/foxconn-just-got-permission-to-start-draining-lake-michigan-to-make-lcd-screens

  • Best & Worst Laptop Brands 2018

    Lenovo takes first place again this year, on the strength of the company’s fantastic product lineup. From the beautiful ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which was the only product to get a perfect, 5-star review in the past year, to the versatile Yoga 920, Lenovo’s laptops earned the most Editors’ Choice awards of any brand. And a full 53 percent of the company’s laptops scored 4 or higher. However, Lenovo’s tech support scores declined from last year, and stiff competition from HP and Dell made this a nail-bitingly close race.

    https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptop-brand-ratings

Other

  • Amazon Is Losing Billions From Its Retail Business and Rivals Should Be Scared

    The remaining segments are basically Prime, ads, and retail. The company does not separate out the segments from the services income on its 10-Q, but we know the general Prime numbers; 100 million prime members. This next step is an estimate. At that level, Prime brings in $10 billion in sales a year, or roughly $2.5 billion a quarter.

    Using this estimate, the overall business, without AWS and Prime, lost about $2 billion last quarter. Although advertising is included here, too, this loss is almost all from the retail side of the business.

    https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/amazon-is-losing-money-from-retail-operations-14571703

  • Amazon Expands Tech Hub in Boston

    Amazon will create 2,000 jobs in Boston in the fields of machine learning, speech science, cloud computing, and robotics engineering as it gets ready to expand its Tech Hub in the city, one of over a dozen such hubs nationwide.

    Amazon said it has invested over $400 million in the Commonwealth since 2011, from customer fulfillment infrastructure to research facilities. It’s interesting to note that on its Boston job site, Amazon calls it the “Athens of America.”

    https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2018/05/01/amazon-expands-tech-hub-in-boston/

  • Amazon to add 3,000 tech jobs in Vancouver, Canada

    Amazon said the additional jobs will be in e-commerce technology, cloud computing and machine learning. Currently, the company’s Vancouver workers produce new products and services for the company’s international retail business and Amazon Web Services.

    “Amazon’s decision to bring another 3,000 jobs to Vancouver is great news for our city’s booming innovation economy,” Mayor Gregor Robertson said. “We are home to the fastest growing, most resilient and greenest economy in Canada and Amazon’s major expansion in our city means more long-term jobs for people who want to live, work and build a future in Vancouver.”

    https://www.upi.com/Amazon-to-add-3000-tech-jobs-in-Vancouver-Canada/6691525136115/

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/27/2018

Supplier Report 4/27/2018

IBM made national headlines again, not for their products or services, but for the methods they used to eliminate older workers. As the company’s transition to AI, blockchain, and cloud progresses – are they cutting too close to the bone?

Microsoft reported excellent earnings this week (35% net income increase) bolstered by their cloud efforts and LinkedIn acquisition.

Google is reportedly taking losses in their home device market, but they have managed to avoid public ire over their data collections methods. The company is rumored to be collecting more data than Facebook and yet they have avoided public backlash (but they are still dealing with the EU over their monopoly settlement).

Acquisitions

  • LinkedIn among Microsoft’s fastest growing businesses as $26B investment begins to pay off

    LinkedIn brought in more than $1.3 billion in revenue this quarter, up from $976 million in its first full quarter under the Microsoft umbrella. LinkedIn is still operating at a loss, mostly due to long-term costs associated with the acquisition, and that figure has declined every quarter since the deal closed.

    LinkedIn is part of Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes segment, which reported just over $9 billion in revenue for the quarter. LinkedIn accounted for about 14 percent of that segment’s revenue.

    https://www.geekwire.com/2018/linkedin-among-microsofts-fastest-growing-businesses-26b-investment-begins-pay-off/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Security launches open-source AI

    The toolkit, called the Adversarial Robustness Toolbox, goes beyond the usual collection of attacks used to test an AI’s ability, Sridhar Muppidi, IBM Fellow, VP and CTO IBM Security told SC Media at RSA this week. The toolbox has been released on Github and is available for download.

    “So far, most libraries that have attempted to test or harden AI systems have only offered collections of attacks. While useful, developers and researchers still need to apply the appropriate defenses to actually improve their systems,” he said.

    The toolbox uses multiple attacks against an AI system and then the security team tasked with increasing the AI’s effectiveness can choose the most effective defense. The way it does is to try and trick an AI with intentionally modified external data. Muppidi said the data sent against the AI is made “fuzzy” causing the AI to misclassify the data.

    https://www.scmagazine.com/ibm-security-launches-open-source-ai/article/760190/

  • European Commission: “We Need to Invest €20 billion in AI”

    “AI is transforming our world. It presents new challenges that Europe should meet. The Commission is playing its part: today, we are giving a boost to researchers so that they can develop the next generation of AI technologies and applications, and to companies, so that they can embrace and incorporate them,” he added.

    Warning of a brain drain, the Commission said it will support business-education partnerships to attract and keep more AI talent in Europe, set up dedicated training schemes with financial support from the European Social Fund, and support digital skills, competencies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), entrepreneurship and creativity.

    https://www.cbronline.com/news/eu-multi-billion-ai-investment

Cloud

  • Microsoft’s Cloud Has Business Booming Again

    The company’s net income rose 35 percent from a year earlier, to $7.4 billion. Revenue rose 16 percent to $26.8 billion in the quarter, exceeding the Wall Street consensus forecast of nearly $25.8 billion.

    Microsoft’s earnings per share increased 36 percent to 95 cents a share, well above the analysts’ average estimate of 85 cents a share, compiled by Thomson Reuters.

    Since Satya Nadella became chief executive in 2014, the cloud portion of Microsoft’s revenue has soared from 3 percent to more than 21 percent this year, according to estimates by Credit Suisse.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/technology/microsoft-cloud-quarterly-report.html

Security

  • Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google

    Google also is the biggest enabler of data harvesting, through the world’s two billion active Android mobile devices. Because Google’s Android OS helps companies gather data on us, then Google is also partly to blame when troves of that data are later used improperly, says Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University.

    A good example of this is the way Facebook has continuously harvested Android users’ call and text history. Facebook never got this level of access from Apple ’s iPhone, whose operating system is designed to permit less under-the-hood data collection. Android OS often allows apps to request rich data from users without accompanying warnings about how the data might be used.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-has-more-of-your-personal-data-than-facebook-try-google-1524398401?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Advanced Hackers Infect X-Ray Machines In Healthcare Espionage

    The hacker group, dubbed Orangeworm, is mainly targeting American healthcare organizations, though there are a number of victims worldwide, including in Asia and Europe. But rather than do anything destructive, Orangeworm is likely using leverage on those medical devices – designed to process and view images from X-Ray and MRI machines – to learn more about them as part of an ongoing corporate espionage operation, Symantec said.

    “Due to the fact that the attacks attempted to keep infections active for long periods of time on these devices, it’s more likely the group are interested in learning how these devices operate. We have not collected any evidence to suggest the attackers have planned to perform any sabotage type activities at this time,” said Alan Neville, Symantec researcher.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/04/23/x-ray-machines-taken-over-by-healthcare-hackers/#6d775f9844c8

  • Cracking the Crypto War

    That public and private key pair can be used to encrypt and decrypt a secret PIN that each user’s device automatically generates upon activation. Think of it as an extra password to unlock the device. This secret PIN is stored on the device, and it’s protected by encrypting it with the vendor’s public key. Once this is done, no one can decode it and use the PIN to unlock the phone except the vendor, using that highly protected private key.

    So, say the FBI needs the contents of an iPhone. First the Feds have to actually get the device and the proper court authorization to access the information it contains—Ozzie’s system does not allow the authorities to remotely snatch information. With the phone in its possession, they could then access, through the lock screen, the encrypted PIN and send it to Apple. Armed with that information, Apple would send highly trusted employees into the vault where they could use the private key to unlock the PIN. Apple could then send that no-longer-secret PIN back to the government, who can use it to unlock the device.

    https://www.wired.com/story/crypto-war-clear-encryption/

Software/SaaS

  • Google changes its messaging strategy again: Goodbye to Allo, double down on RCS

    The company told The Verge that it is “pausing” work on Allo, which was only launched as recently as September 2016, in order to put its resources into the adoption RCS (Rich Communication Services), a messaging standard that has the potential to tie together SMS and other chat apps. RCS isn’t new, and Google has been pushing it for some time, but now the company is rebranding it as “Chat” and putting all its efforts into getting operators on board.

    The new strategy will see almost the entire Allo team switch to Android Messages, according to The Verge.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/19/google-changes-its-messaging-strategy-again-goodbye-to-allo-double-down-on-rcs/

    Chat is Google’s next big fix for Android’s messaging mess

    Google’s plan this time around is much more complicated than just launching a new messaging app. To get it started, it has had to corral more than 50 carriers and nearly a dozen manufacturers into adopting a new standard. It had to ensure that Chat would work the same, everywhere, and that it would actually have a decent set of features. Oh, and all those companies are fierce competitors who distrust each other and Google.

    It is as close to the hardest, most winding road that I can imagine for fixing the messaging mess on Android. It’s also probably one of the only roads Google had left to try.

    https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting

  • Amazon’s new blockchain service competes with similar products from Oracle and IBM

    “Some of the people that I talk to see blockchains as the foundation of a new monetary system and a way to facilitate international payments. Others see blockchains as a distributed ledger and immutable data source that can be applied to logistics, supply chain, land registration, crowdfunding and other use cases,” he wrote. “Either way, it’s clear that there are a lot of intriguing possibilities and we are working to help our customers use this technology more effectively.

    AWS Blockchain Templates give AWS users working on blockchain apps a faster way to set up Ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric networks. Its launch comes six months after Oracle unveiled its cloud service built on the open-source Hyperledger Fabric project during Oracle OpenWorld and about a year after IBM announced its own Hyperledger-based blockchain-as-a-service offering.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/22/amazons-new-blockchain-service-competes-with-similar-products-from-oracle-and-ibm/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Why Facebook is following Apple and Google to build its own computer chips

    “Big tech companies realize that silicon and hardware is a key to differentiated experiences and services,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “It’s kind of ironic, but hardware is driving software right now. The biggest reason is the simplification of software design tools and the incredible competitiveness of foundries like GlobalFoundries and TSMC” that actually manufacture the chips.

    https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/04/19/report-facebook-wants-follow-apple-google-build-computer-chips-ai/

  • LG can’t meet Apple’s demand for iPhone OLED displays

    The Wall Street Journal reports that efforts to get LG Display’s OLED screens into the iPhone production line have hit manufacturing issues. Apple is reportedly divided on whether LG will be able to succeed as the second source of OLED displays for the iPhone.

    Analysts have been warning for months that Apple is in “urgent” need of finding another iPhone OLED supplier besides Samsung. Apple currently uses Samsung’s OLED displays for the company’s iPhone X model. The reliance on a single supplier means Samsung controls pricing on the displays that Apple is buying — and there’s no other alternative at the moment.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/20/17261008/apple-iphone-x-lg-display-oled-supply-rumors
    This better explains why the company is looking to create their own screens moving forward.

  • Google is bleeding cash trying to take on Amazon in the smart home

    Because Nest was rolled back into Google proper earlier this year, Alphabet recast its quarterly earnings figures for 2017 to account for the fact that Nest revenues and losses would be moved from the “Other Bets” section of Alphabet’s business to the standard Google revenue line item. Comparing the differences in quarterly revenues and operating income, we can see that Nest made about $726 million in revenue, yet it ultimately contributed a $621 million loss to the “Other Bets” section throughout the year. In other words, Google spent more than half a billion dollars last year to establish Nest in sectors like security cameras, alarm systems, and video doorbells.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/23/17272748/alphabet-google-q1-2018-earnings-nest-smart-home-amazon-competition

Other

  • IBM Could Go From Good To Great With This One Increasingly-Likely Change

    Forbes’ Peter Cohan is one of those doubters. He said in response to the company’s first quarter earnings, “Can IBM turn this around and become a company that persistently beats analyst expectations for revenue and profit growth and raises its forecasts? I don’t think so. That’s because it lacks a sustainable competitive advantage.” The reason for the missing competitive advantage? Cohan goes on to say “The right CEO can make a big difference — just look at how well Microsoft has done thanks to the successful cultural change managed by Satya Nadella. Until IBM gets a new one, it will lack a sustainable competitive advantage.”

    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4164267-ibm-go-good-great-one-increasingly-likely-change

  • How IBM quietly pushed out 20,000 older workers
  • Ajit Pai Is Intentionally Delaying His Net Neutrality Repeal and No One Knows Why

    The most popular theory is that ISPs and the FCC wanted more time to garner support for their effort to pass a bogus net neutrality law. A law they promise will “solve” the net neutrality feud once and for all, but whose real intention is to pre-empt tougher state laws, and block the FCC’s 2015 rules from being restored in the wake of a possible court loss.

    While it may seem like ISPs scored a major victory with last December’s vote at the FCC, that’s simply not the case. Given the FCC’s bizarre behavior during the repeal (ranging from ignoring comment fraud and identity theft during the public comment period to making up a DDOS attack), the repeal remains on some shaky legal ground courtesy of FCC ethical gaffes.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wj793y/ajit-pai-net-neutrality-repeal-not-official-yet

Photo by Ryan Loughlin on Unsplash