Tag: Microsoft

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Supplier Report: 12/31/2016

Alas… the last supplier report of the year.

We had an insane year of M&A and corporate entity disintegration (I am looking at you HP).  AI is getting popular not only in enterprise but also in your home thanks to Amazon and Google. Cloud continues to expand in function and use and AWS is the uncontested champ in 2016.

Year-end news cycles dictate a deluge of retrospective and predictive slop. Who am I to reject this time-honored tradition? Prepare yourself for a summary of summaries!

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • 2016: The Year That Deep Learning Took Over the Internet

    As they push this technology into their own products as services, the giants of the internet are also pushing it into the hands of others. At the end of 2015, Google open sourced TensorFlow, and over the past year, this once-proprietary software spread well beyond the company’s walls, all the way to people like Amanda Hodgson. At the same time, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon began offering their deep learning tech via cloud computing services that any coder or company can use to build their own apps. Artificial intelligence-as-a-service may wind up as the biggest business for all three of these online giants.

    https://www.wired.com/2016/12/2016-year-deep-learning-took-internet/

  • AI was everywhere in 2016

    The technology that has long been aimed at replicating human intelligence now seems to be paying attention to human patterns and behaviors. Recent advances in deep learning have enabled that kind of insight, but it’s not limited to beating humans at games. In 2016, AI broke out of the confines of research labs to transform the way we live, communicate and even conserve the planet. Chatbots popped up in group texts. Personal assistants invaded our homes. Cognitive systems are detecting cancer. Bots are writing movie scripts. And car makers are gearing up to unleash a bevy of autonomous vehicles onto public roads.

    https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/25/ai-was-everywhere-in-2016/

  • Apple Publishes Its First Artificial Intelligence Paper (thanks JD!)

    To improve training with synthetic image data, the paper suggests what the Apple researchers call Simulated+Unsupervised learning, where the realism of a simulated image is boosted. The Apple researchers use a modified version of a new machine learning technique called Generative Adversarial Networks, which pits two neural networks against each other and has been used to generate photorealistic images.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/12/26/apple-publishes-its-first-artificial-intelligence-paper/#2bfa800c4cfe

  • IBM Working On Robot To Help Elderly

    The MERA uses IBM’s Watson AI to provide assistance to the elderly and monitor vital signs and environmental changes in a non-invasive manner.

    IBM Research also plans to work with Sole Cooperativa, a healthcare provider in Italy, to install sensors in senior housing communities to monitor day-to-day activities of residents.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/ibm-working-on-robot-to-help-elderly-20161228-00307
    If only IBM can create a robot to help an elderly bank robber make one last score…

Cloud

  • Cleveland Clinic, IBM bolster technology partnership

    In addition, Smith points to IBM’s 2015 acquisition of Explorys, a population health analytics vendor, which was developed by Cleveland Clinic physicians and IT experts before becoming a spin-off company in 2009—as an example of the technological cross-pollination between the two organizations.

    “It’s been a mutually beneficial relationship. We’re creating value for each other,” concludes Smith. “That’s the kind of partnership it has been, and it will continue. The sky’s the limit.”

    http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/cleveland-clinic-ibm-bolster-technology-partnership

Datacenter

  • Pure Storage: The Best House In The Worst Street?

    The storage market is too competitive to support new entrants unless they can truly disrupt the competition and industry. For the reasons explained above, we believe PSTG is doing just this and is hurting NMBL, EMC and NTAP. NMBL is growing, but is facing intense competition as described earlier and we don’t believe it will become profitable and independent. NMBL will struggle.

    We believe PSTG is strengthening its competitive position and is consistently rolling out new products such as M10 and FlashBlade to provide a consistent increase in its TAM. This continuous strengthening of its competitive position and innovation gives PSTG a real chance to succeed. Success means independent and profitable.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/4032940-pure-storage-best-house-worst-street

Software/SaaS

Other

  • Mass. lost public companies and saw few IPOs in 2016

    And this year’s IPO class raised just under $19 billion, the smallest amount since 2003, when 68 companies brought in a combined $15.2 billion, Renaissance reported.

    The effect was felt strongly in Massachusetts, where a dozen companies held IPOs, just two of them from the state’s important tech sector. It was the lowest tally for Massachusetts since 2012, when nine companies went public, Renaissance said.

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/12/26/mass-lost-companies-saw-few-ipos/S1v4ii4lronznWHgWPZ4rO/story.html

  • The Highest Paid Tech CEOs Of 2016

    Larry Ellison often topped the charts of the highest paid tech CEOs. Now his successors – who made $53 million last year – share the distinction of the highest paid tech CEO. Hurd is the former Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Hewlett-Packard. As Oracle’s co-CEO, he received a 41% raise in 2015, driving the value of his pay package to $53.2 million. Nearly all of Hurd’s compensation came in the form of stock and option awards valued at $52.3 million.

    Catz is an Israeli-born American, who joined Oracle Corporation in 1999. She is credited for having driven Oracle’s efforts to acquire software rival PeopleSoft in a $10.3 billion takeover in 2005. Like her co-CEO, Catz received a $53.2 million pay package – up 41% from $37.7 million in the previous year – that consists nearly entirely of stock and option awards (with the exception of a $950,000 salary and miscellaneous perks.)

    http://www.cxotoday.com/story/the-highest-paid-tech-ceos-of-2016/

  • Will Amazon or Microsoft be the first trillion-dollar technology company?

    A writer for Equities.com – a financial website that accepts submitted articles from users – on Monday predicted Microsoft’s recent LinkedIn acquisition will propel the company to become the first to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization. Michael Markowski wrote in a widely reported post on the website that Microsoft will reach the milestone largely because of the applications for LinkedIn in the online equity crowdfunding space.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2016/12/27/amazon-microsoft-first-trillion-dollar-tech.html

  • Why 2017 Might Be a Difficult Year for Microsoft

    First and foremost, Microsoft, under Satya Nadella—who stepped in as chief executive, replacing Ballmer about three years ago—must prove it can do big acquisitions well. Microsoft’s record there is checkered following misfires with Nokia and aQuantive—both purchases resulting in huge write-offs. That means all eyes will be on how the software giant does with its just completed $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn.

    http://fortune.com/2016/12/28/microsoft-2017/

Photo: Chris Lawton

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Supplier Report: 12/24/2016

Analysts are questioning Amazon’s strength as they see competition drive prices down. AWS has also caught the attention of President-elect Trump and not in a good way. Trump is calling the cloud provider a monopoly (which is not an accurate statement).

The future POTUS is also causing technology companies staffing issues as a small percentage of “new collar” workers are quitting as their CEOs embrace the Trump regime.

IBM is pushing Blockchain as they close out 2016.  “Big blue” sees endless possibility with the bitcoin technology and they want everybody to know it.

Facebook is getting in the AI game and Morgan Freeman has something to say about it…?

Acquisitions

Looks like everyone is taking a break this week on M&A… no complaints from the peanut gallery.

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Watson finding its way into real-world image interpretation

    The ultimate goal is to improve value, based on efficiency of clinicians, how radiologists receive, prioritize and validate data, and how a report will have an effect on patient outcome, including cost and length of stay, Cury explained.

    The first phase of the program involves concept, design and validation of data sets. “We are working with IBM Watson to define strategies and case studies for machine learning to explore,” Cury said. In the next phase, which Cury hopes to have underway by the end of 2017, radiologists will apply cognitive learning prospectively in their practice.

    http://medcitynews.com/2016/12/ibm-watson-image-interpretation/
    IBM is behind Google in this area and it is good to see them taking steps to address imagine analysis.

  • Microsoft Releases MARCO Data Set to Develop More Insightful AI Apps

    The aim is to help get beyond today’s AIs, which can answer simple fact-based answers that digital assistants like Cortana and Siri can, to intelligent systems that are attuned to the nuances of how people pose questions in a conversational context and the answers they expect in return.

    For example, virtual assistants today are adept at solving math problems and reciting facts and figures like the number of days leading up to major holidays or the height of major landmarks, like the Empire State Building in New York City (1,250 feet or 1,454 feet at the top of its spire).

    http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/microsoft-releases-marco-data-set-to-develop-more-insightful-ai-apps.html

  • Artificial intelligence finds its way into business through sales

    Even as companies like these try to help salespeople work smarter in various aspects of the sales process, the CRM industry took to artificial intelligence in a big way this year with companies as diverse as Salesforce, Oracle and Base coming out with CRM tools to not just record sales interactions, but drive more sales with built-in intelligence.

    Also

    We are also seeing intelligence being applied to customer service with the increasing use of bots to handle initial contact with customers. The idea is to have the bot deal with simple tasks, handing off more complex interactions and requests to human operators to handle. This week, Salesforce released LiveMessage, a tool for incorporating messaging apps in their Service Cloud platform, combining the use of bots and live customer service agents.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/17/artificial-intelligence-finds-its-way-into-business-through-sales/?ncid=rss

  • Facebook is getting in on the AI game…

    If you build a system where I can talk to Morgan Freeman all day, I will buy it.

Cloud

  • IBM Launches New Features for Serverless Cloud Platform

    IBM said it is expanding and tightening integrations with the growing ecosystem of applications surrounding OpenWhisk, which offers an open, non-proprietary engine. By building OpenWhisk with open standards from the ground up and rooting its code in active developer communities, such as Apache, the company aims to expand the range of capabilities developers can access. An open serverless platform also provides freedom to choose where apps can run, according to IBM.

    OpenWhisk acts as an underlying force within apps running on Bluemix, binding together relevant events and triggers such as the uploading of an image or the clicking of a mouse. When triggered by such events, OpenWhisk automatically taps cloud services as needed such as cognitive intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), and analytics. IBM said OpenWhisk is designed to help make traditional cloud infrastructure invisible, enabling developers to focus on writing code instead of configuring servers.

    http://www.cio-today.com/article/index.php?story_id=1000037XT4SG

  • Worrisome Signs for A Crucial Amazon Business

    In 2014, the last time AWS had this many cuts, revenue growth slowed considerably, Graham notes. “In the two quarters following the six pricing reductions in the first quarter of 2014, AWS revenue growth decelerated from 69% year over year to 43% in the second and third quarter each.”

    http://www.barrons.com/articles/worrisome-signs-for-a-crucial-amazon-business-1482187879

  • After losing big backers, what’s next for OpenStack?

    The rumors of OpenStack’s demise may have been a bit exaggerated. While HPE and Cisco both recently announced they are downsizing their respective OpenStack-based public cloud efforts, Red Hat remains fully committed.

    Some are still holding on to the promise of OpenStack and its open source tools for managing public and private clouds. A few large organizations, outside the traditional IT space, are standing by the platform as well. Retail behemoth Walmart is still banking on OpenStack as the foundation for its private cloud efforts, Fortune reports.

    http://www.ciodive.com/news/after-losing-big-backers-whats-next-for-openstack/432694/

  • Trump says Amazon is a monopoly — this chart shows he’s wrong

    The chart shows e-commerce penetration is less than 5% in two of the largest retail segments (“Grocery, Food & Beverage” and “Health and Personal Care”) and less than 15% in other segments like clothing, electronics, and home furnishings.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-amazon-monopoly-false-2016-12

Datacenter

  • Partners that push all product lines will shine for Dell EMC

    “Tier levels align with key business models of partners, enabling flexibility where needed to meet customer needs,” said Byrne, when launching a preview of the program in October.

    “Benefits will include generous rebates for channel partners who drive new business, attach services, sell the full portfolio and offer the portfolio exclusively.”

    http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/611896/partners-push-both-product-lines-will-shine-dell-emc/
    If you buy Dell or EMC products, it might be a good time to re-evaluate your re-sellers in 2017.

Software/SaaS

  • IBM blockchain in healthcare rallies for patients

    Are healthcare executives complacent and comfortable with the how patient care is delivered? It’s possible. However, there may be another answer. Healthcare executives predicted transformational innovation to occur for blockchain in 2017. The IBM Institute for Business Value blockchain survey identified nine areas where transformation and disruption are likely to emerge:

    1. Medical device data integration (cited as an area of “some disruption” by 65 percent of the respondents).
    2. Asset management (60 percent).
    3. Medical and health records (42 percent).
    4. Clinical trial records (40 percent).
    5. Adverse event safety monitoring (39 percent).
    6. Medication and treatment adherence (36 percent).
    7. Regulatory compliance (34 percent).
    8. Billing and claims management (33 percent).
    9. Contract management (32 percent).

    http://www.cio.com/article/3151429/innovation/ibm-blockchain-in-healthcare-rallies-for-patients.html

Other

  • Oracle’s Q2 was uninspired says Wedbush

    “Oracle’s 2Q results and guidance weren’t inspiring, and dollar strengthening is pushing out the timeline for EPS stabilization. The company continues to execute inconsistently relative to guidance, even when adjusted for currency, giving investors ample reason to question its bullishness on its cloud transition,” Wedbush said.

    http://www.proactiveinvestors.com/columns/proactive-broker-wrap/26762/oracles-q2-was-uninspired-says-wedbush-26762.html
    Larry Ellison’s Net Worth Drops $1.9 Billion In A Day As Oracle Misses Revenue Estimates

    The revenue shortfall, though seemingly insignificant, resulted in a sell-off of Oracle stock. When the market closed at 4 P.M. EST on Friday, shares were down more than 4% versus Thursday’s closing price.

    That translated into a $1.9 billion drop in net worth for Larry Ellison, the company’s largest individual shareholder. He is worth an estimated $48.4 billion as of late Friday, according to FORBES’ real-time rankings of the planet’s wealthiest people. Ellison is still the world’s sixth richest individual, trailing such figures as Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Spain’s Amancio Ortega.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2016/12/16/larry-ellison-net-worth-falls-oracle-quarterly-earnings-report/#1479141064ef

  • Microsoft scores nearly $1bn non-compete contract with US military

    The deal will give the US military “access rights to Microsoft’s proprietary (closed-source) code” when it is “required to support the Department of Defense’s mission.” The bulk of the work will be done in the US, but multiple overseas locales will also be handled by Microsofties.

    For its money the US is getting Blue Badge Cardholder support, meaning it gets first dibs on Microsoft code libraries, and technical support from actual Redmond employees instead of having to go through third-party suppliers – who typically wear orange badges when visiting the temple of St Bill.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/21/microsoft_scores_big_contract_us_military/

  • Red Hat CFO resigns, stock slides

    Calderoni will be leaving Jan. 20. In a letter dated Dec. 20 to CEO Jim Whitehurst, Calderoni said, “As we discussed, I have been given the opportunity to serve as the CEO of another company,” he writes. “Being a CEO has been a personal goal of mine for some time now.”

    http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2016/12/21/red-hat-cfo-frank-calderoni-resigns.html

  • New Trend: Quitting because of Trump
    I wrote my own article on this topic at my other blog, it summarizes the whole situation.
    http://daily.joeylombardi.com/2016/12/new-trend-quitting-because-of-trump/

Photo: John-Mark Kuznietsov

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Supplier Report: 12/10/2016

AWS continues to grow and gain customers. As their competition finds ways to differentiate themselves, Google opened their Deepmind training environment up to the masses and announced they will run their data-centers on 100% renewable energy by the end of 2017.

Speaking of data-centers… Verizon is selling theirs to Equinix for almost $4B to raise cash. Interesting number considering they are spending just over $4B on Yahoo (which I maintain they don’t need since they already own AOL).

President-elect Donald Trump announced the formation of an economic council and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty was the sole technology CEO in the group… good for IBM, bad for an economy  that is driven by technological innovation.

Acquisitions

  • Equinix to Buy Some Verizon Data Centers for $3.6 Billion

    Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam said at an investor conference Tuesday that Verizon didn’t have very much scale in data centers so it was better to sell them and put that money to better use. The carrier wants to “trim the branches of the tree so the tree can be stronger,” Mr. McAdam said.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/equinix-to-buy-some-verizon-data-centers-for-3-6-billion-1481034980

  • Oracle Corporation (ORCL) Aims To Benefit From NetSuite Inc (N) Acquisition

    Derrick Wood, Cowen analyst highlighted that Oracle did not offer any financial commentary related to the acquisition and the news is likely to come along with earnings report later this month. “NetSuite will be organized as a separate Global Business Unit (GBU) within ORCL, with Jim McGeever being the President and COO of the unit reporting to Mark Hurd. ORCL confirmed its commitment and support for N’s products with plans for investment in sales and distribution, R&D, international expansion and verticalization,” commented Mr. Wood.

    http://www.thecountrycaller.com/52336-oracle-corporation-orcl-aims-to-benefit-from-netsuite-inc-n-acquisition/

  • Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition approved by regulators, but there’s a catch

    In order to receive the approval of those in Europe, Microsoft said that it is doing several things over the next 5 years to preserve competition: ensuring that LinkedIn competitors will still receive access to participate in Office Add-in and promotional opportunities in the Office Store, not entering into agreements with PC manufacturers to pre-install a Windows LinkedIn application or tile that would “favor LinkedIn on an exclusive basis,” and more.

    http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/06/microsofts-linkedin-acquisition-approved-by-regulators-but-theres-a-catch/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google DeepMind Makes AI Training Platform Publicly Available

    DeepMind is putting the entire source code for its training environment — which it previously called Labyrinth and has now renamed as DeepMind Lab — on the open-source depository GitHub, the company said Monday. Anyone will be able to download the code and customize it to help train their own artificial intelligence systems. They will also be able to create new game levels for DeepMind Lab and upload these to GitHub.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-05/google-deepmind-makes-ai-training-platform-publicly-available

  • Zo is Microsoft’s latest AI chatbot
    Microsoft is attempting to do another chatbot after the unfortunate racist hacking of Tay a few months ago…

    And now, it seems like Microsoft is ready to introduce its next chatbot. Meet Zo — the software giant’s latest take on chatbots powered by artificial intelligence. The chatbot was spotted by Twitter user Tom Hounsell, and users can give it a try right now. At the moment, Zo is only available on Kik which is definitely an interesting platform to choose. Unlike Tay, Zo isn’t yet available on Twitter and that’s not really a surprise after what happened earlier this year. However, the app will likely come to Twitter, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat once it’s officially announced.

    https://mspoweruser.com/zo-microsofts-latest-ai-chatbot/

  • IBM creates Watson-powered robot for eldercare assistance

    IBM MERA combines Watson AI with a technology called CameraVitals, developed at Rice University, that calculates vital signs using recorded video of a person’s facial expressions. The MERA runs on the IBM Cloud and uses a Softbank Pepper robot interface to estimate an individual’s vital signs, including heart and breathing measurements in a non-invasive manner. It can view and respond if a person has fallen, alerting the caregiver that a patient may be in distress.

    https://thestack.com/world/2016/12/09/ibm-creates-watson-powered-robot-for-eldercare-assistance/

Cloud

  • Google says it will hit 100% renewable energy by 2017

    While it’s not quite there, Google says it will cross the 100% mark next year due to its commitments to purchase enough direct wind and solar-sourced power to match its annual consumption for the year. Google isn’t being solely charitable with this drive to adopt green power, either; it notes in a blog post that solar, wind and renewables as a general category is becoming the cheapest source of power around, meaning that as its data center operation costs grow with an increasing investment in cloud-based services, it makes the most fiscal sense for Google to continue to invest in creating new renewable sources to help meet its growing demand.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/06/google-says-it-will-hit-100-renewable-energy-by-2017/?ncid=rss

  • AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud – Best Prices and Discounts

    The charge rate is influenced by a lot of factors such as storage, networking and computing power so users need to pay attention to those details before choosing a cloud service. The most important thing users need to pay attention to is discounts, because all providers offer up different discounts.

    http://neurogadget.net/2016/12/04/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-cloud-best-prices-discounts/48329

  • AWS Launches Managed DDoS Protection

    Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels announced Amazon Shield, new layers of protection designed against service interruptions like the cyber attack that took down top websites and affected some Amazon Web Services customers in October.

    “This will really help you protect yourselves even against the largest and most sophisticated attacks we’ve seen,” he said on Thursday at AWS re:Invent, a conference in Las Vegas that drew 32,000 attendees.

    http://mspmentor.net/cloud-computing/aws-launches-managed-ddos-protection

  • Can Oracle Really Beat AWS?

    However, Oracle’s biggest risk is that despite its platform and software strength it might gradually become irrelevant with the new waves of open source software hitting the enterprise shores. A well-defined cloud strategy which would help it leverage its strengths can save it in the long run. I believe offering customers the chance to deploy containers on bare-metal is such a strategy. Why? Well, as I said, I believe containers will be used extensively in the cloud IaaS space going forward.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/4028650-can-oracle-really-beat-aws

  • Netflix to Hand Over Infrastructure Management to Amazon Cloud Service

    ZDNET reported Netflix CPO, Neil Hunt, gave a presentation at AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas yesterday, revealing that AWS will now manage the entire infrastructure of the world’s leading online TV network, particularly where it is not Netflix-specific. With this, the streaming titan’s development team can rather focus on providing features that can deliver “most compelling service” to its subscribers.

    http://www.thecountrycaller.com/37901-netflix-to-hand-over-infrastructure-management-to-amazon-cloud-service/

  • Connectria Certifies Microsoft Azure Hosted HIPAA Compliance

    “Connectria has supported customers in Azure for the past two years,” said Rich Waidmann, Connectria President and CEO of Connectria Hosting. “We’re excited to now enable customers to host HIPAA Compliant environments in Microsoft Azure. Our extensive background in HIPAA Compliance, combined with our close partnership with Microsoft, will help ensure that healthcare providers and healthcare software companies can meet their HIPAA requirements when they store electronic PHI in Microsoft’s Azure Cloud.”

    http://hitinfrastructure.com/news/connectria-certifies-microsoft-azure-hosted-hipaa-compliance

Datacenter

  • Infinidat CEO Moshe Yanai on providing speedy, affordable, reliable storage

    We think the trend in 2017 is the rise in “hyper storage”. That is ultra-high density, enterprise-class, software defined, flexible storage for the cloud and enterprise data centers.

    One of the main characteristics of that will be that it will run on any hardware — it does not have to be proprietary, or hard wired into a particular model. People want to see a hardware stack that can adapt to any media type.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/storage-q-a-infinidat-ceo-moshe-yanai/

  • Dell posts $2B loss, but sees accelerating growth

    Dell said legacy revenues were flat but that the addition of EMC increased total revenue by 28 percent. Officials cautioned that the consolidation with EMC and its operating companies makes year-over-year comparisons extremely difficult, adding that the discontinuity is likely to continue for several years. As a quasi-public company, Dell isn’t required to issue guidance on future revenues or profits.

    Dell said it has already cut the $57.4 billion in debt it incurred at the time of the acquisition of EMC to $50.5 billion. The recent divestiture of its software, services and content management divisions added $7 billion to its cash hoard, enabling the company to accelerate the payment of its debt obligation and end the quarter with $15 billion in cash.

    http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/12/08/dell-posts-2b-loss-sees-accelerating-growth/

Software/SaaS

  • Slack and Google announce partnership focused on better integrating their services

    One of the new integrations is a Google Drive Bot that will post comments and requests for access into Slack. Recipients can then approve or reject requests from Slack, or settle comments, or they can launch Google Docs to work with the files directly.

    Slack will also allow users to preview Google Docs files in the app itself, and, when shared, Slack will check the permissions on the file. If you’re sharing with people who don’t have access currently, Slack will prompt you to update your sharing settings.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/07/slack-and-google-announce-partnership-focused-on-better-integrating-their-services/?ncid=rss

  • Microsoft’s Plans for LinkedIn Sound Awful
    This article is a little dramatic… but it does provide a solid overview of potentially new features.

    Tying a LinkedIn identity into Outlook and MS Office is more problematic. Let’s say I tie my LinkedIn ID to my Outlook account here at New York. Next week I am fired after fabricating several interviews and many key facts for my post “Why Google, Facebook, and Apple Are Merging Right Now at This Very Second.” When I eventually find a new job writing for one of the web’s fastest growing sites, PatriotNewsTruth.net, how will I disconnect my LinkedIn ID and my old Outlook account and connect it with my new one? Will an Outlook admin need to do it? Why did I link my LinkedIn profile to my Outlook account anyway, considering Outlook is widely only used by people at work, and LinkedIn is mainly a place to look for other jobs?

    http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/12/holy-christ-microsofts-plans-for-linkedin-sound-awful.html

Other

  • There’s only one tech CEO on Trump’s economic advisory team

    Rometty is an interesting choice for a lot of reasons. She’s not from the center of the tech universe, Silicon Valley. IBM is headquartered in New York. We don’t know if she knows Trump personally or not, but as a fellow New Yorker, its likely they’ve at least hobnobbed a time or two.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-only-tech-ceo-on-trumps-advisory-team-is-not-from-silicon-valley-2016-12

  • “Bullsh*t and spin”: Autonomy founder mocks HP’s $5B fraud suit against him

    HP originally paid Lynch $730 million for his stake in Autonomy. Now its trying to recover that money and what it thinks it overpaid for the big data company. HP ended up having to write-down nearly $9 billion of the $11 billion buyout after Autonomy fell apart in its arms. Lynch is countersuing for $160 million, claiming the fraud suit ruined his reputation.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/05/fraudtonomy/?ncid=rss

  • Two top EMCers bail from Dell EMC

    The two are Core Technologies Division President Guy Churchward and Emerging Technologies Division President CJ Desai.

    Churchward was responsible for products spanning the bulk of EMC revenues; Avamar, Data Domain, Networker, RecoverPoint, Spanning, Unity, ViPR, VMAX, VNX, VPLEX, and XtremIO. Desai looked after Isilon and IsilonSD Edge, ECS, DSSD and ScaleIO.

    This leaves Chad Sakac, rently promoted as President of Converged Platforms (Vblocks, VxRail, VxRack, XC Appliances) as the sole remaining Tucci-era product business line manager of consequence.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/07/two_senior_product_line_execs_leave_emc/

  • Nadella confirms Microsoft isn’t stepping away from Windows phones

    What we are going to do is focus that effort on places where we have differentiation. If you take Windows Phone, where we are differentiated in Windows phone is it’s manageability, it’s security, it’s continuing capability that is the ability to have a phone that in fact can even act like a PC. So, we are going to double down on those points of differentiation. In fact, the HP X3, which came out recently, is perhaps a great example of a differentiated device built using the Windows phone platform and that sort of points for the direction. We will keep looking at different forms, different functions that we can bring to mobile devices, while also supporting our software across a variety of devices. So, that’s the approach you will see us take.

    http://windowsreport.com/microsoft-windows-phone-future/
    A look at the X3:

Photo: Matt Palmer