Tag: Oracle

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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

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Supplier Report: 4/20/2018

Dog not happy about IBM stock

IBM had a rough week with stock prices dropping almost 6% due to stagnating sales.  Some analysts are saying that “big blue” is now too small to compete against the cloud giants and does not have enough cash reserves ($12B) to make any major acquisitions to help them catch up. Bad news aside, the company did unveil the world’s smallest computer which costs 10 cents to make and has the computer power of a 1990’s era PC (think IoT applications).

Qualcomm is planning on cutting 4% of their workforce to yield $1B in cost reductions.  Apple would like to find and cut the person leaking insider information, which was discovered by the press… due to a news leak. The company is also having problems finding customers for their HomePod personal assistant in a market saturated with devices listening to every conversation you have in your home.

Acquisitions

  • Adobe acquires voice interface platform Sayspring

    Adobe today announced that it has acquired Sayspring, a startup that helps developers prototype and build the voice interfaces for their Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant apps. The company says the Sayspring team will join Adobe tomorrow and that it’ll then start integrating the company’s technology into its own products.

    All of Saysprings services are now available for free — but there is a catch. If you want to sign up for the service now, you’ll need an invite. Sayspring says it’ll select invitations and roll out new invites on a rolling basis.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/16/adobe-acquires-voice-interface-platform-sayspring/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Elon Musk says ‘humans are underrated,’ calls Tesla’s ‘excessive automation’ a ‘mistake’

    “Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake,” Musk wrote, responding to a Wall Street Journal reporter’s tweet. “Humans are underrated.” He also talked about this with CBS News’ Gayle King, adding “we had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts….And it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.”

    Tesla has faced mounting public pressure amid a production slowdown for its Model 3, its lower-priced car. The company recently revealed that it missed its target to produce 2,500 cars a week, disappointing investors.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/13/elon-musk-says-humans-are-underrated-calls-teslas-excessive-automation-a-mistake/

  • AI isn’t ready for prime time because of bad data, say marketers

    During a closed-door town hall session on April 12, one brand executive asked fellow marketers if the data being fed to AI programs today is bad data that may lead to ill-informed results. “I don’t think it’s a question. We’re making decisions off of bad data,” responded one.

    Fortunately for marketers, they aren’t yet using AI to make major business decisions. The examples that attendees most frequently cited during the summit were tailoring product recommendations and personalizing marketing communications. And even to the extent that marketers use AI to make major decisions, they are using it as a gut check. “I think AI is all about decision support. It’s there to tell you what not to do,” said one attendee.

    But brands hope to eventually use AI to automate more of their businesses. One brand exec said she hopes AI can automate approval processes and ensure her company adheres to regulatory requirements.

    https://digiday.com/marketing/ai-isnt-ready-primetime-bad-data-say-marketers/

  • Half of all jobs can today be automated — and within 50 years, all of them can be

    “A large part of the increased income from productivity accrues to already rich people…you may get a proliferation of low-income service jobs rather than a further increase in productivity,” said Turner.

    An example of this effect is the British online food delivery company Deliveroo where, as a result of improved technology, minimum-wage jobs of delivering food on a bicycle have proliferated, he said.

    This phenomenon is also evident in the United States, as the jobs expected to grow the most from 2014 to 2024 are personal care aides, food serving workers, and operation managers, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    “These low-paying service jobs are growing because they for now cannot be automated and because wages are low enough to make automation uneconomic,” Turner explained.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-all-jobs-can-today-be-automated-and-within-50-years-all-of-them-can-be-2018-04-11?ns=prod/accounts-mw

Cloud

  • Oracle Is Leading Anti-Amazon Lobby on Pentagon Cloud Bid

    The Oracle-led effort relies on a loose coalition of technology companies also seeking a slice of the Pentagon work, including Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp., said the people, who described the matter on condition of anonymity. Dell Technologies Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. are also participating, said one of the people.

    Their goal is to make sure that the award process is opened up to more than one company and unseat Amazon as the front-runner for the multibillion-dollar deal. As part of the campaign, the people said, Oracle is holding regular calls with tech allies, courting trade and mainstream media and lobbying lawmakers, defense officials and the White House.

    Also: (this ties back to SourceCast 113)

    While Oracle’s $187 billion market value is less than a third of Amazon’s, it punches way above its weight in Washington, where it has a team of seasoned policy officials and personal relationships that go all the way to the top.

    Trump personally ordered the Justice Department to hire Oracle’s Ezra Cohen-Watnick to advise Attorney General Jeff Sessions on national security matters, according to people familiar with the matter. Cohen-Watnick went to Oracle in August after leaving the National Security Council, where he had been caught up in a controversy over the release of intelligence material to a member of Congress, according to people familiar with the matter.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/oracle-is-said-to-lead-anti-amazon-lobby-on-pentagon-cloud-bid

  • A Tech Giant No More: IBM Is Too Small to Compete in the Cloud Era

    Its latest quarter shows revenue of $19.1 billion, and net income of $1.7 billion, $1.81 per share. That’s just two thirds of what Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) brought in last quarter. Microsoft’s market cap of $742 billion is more than five times IBM’s $137 billion market cap.

    The best reason to buy IBM for years has been its dividend, now yielding 4.03%. But that dividend, $1.50 per share per quarter, is soaking up an ever-greater portion of earnings and will take almost $1.4 billion to service. It means the company only has $12 billion in cash. By contrast Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), the least well-capitalized of the “Cloud Czars,” has $40 billion in cash and short-term securities to sustain its investments.

    IBM simply lacks the financial firepower to win the DoD contract, because it prioritized shareholders over investment early in this decade. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) did make the commitment to investment, and as a result, history passed IBM by.

    https://investorplace.com/2018/04/international-business-machines-corp-ibm-too-small-to-compete-in-the-cloud-era/

Security

  • In a Leaked Memo, Apple Warns Employees to Stop Leaking Information

    Leaked information about a new product can negatively impact sales of current models, give rivals more time to begin on a competitive response, and lead to fewer sales when the new product launches, according to the memo. “We want the chance to tell our customers why the product is great, and not have that done poorly by someone else,” Greg Joswiak, an Apple product marketing executive, said in the memo.

    The crackdown is part of broader and long-running attempts by Silicon Valley technology companies to track and limit what information their employees share publicly. Firms like Google and Facebook Inc. are pretty open with staff about their plans, but keep close tabs on their outside communications and sometime fire people when they find leaks.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/apple-warns-employees-to-stop-leaking-information-to-media

  • Smart Speakers And Their Potential Privacy Concerns

    “‘When you read parts of the applications, it’s really clear that this is spyware and a surveillance system meant to serve you up to advertisers,” Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court told The New York Times. These companies are “basically going to be finding out what our home life is like in qualitative ways.”

    He supports his notions through the patent details.

    “The processor [of the computing system] is configured to use the first data to determine which user is occupying a smart-device environment” and “the properties comprising age, gender, fashion-taste, mood, preferred activities, medical condition, or some combination thereof,” the official filing reads.

    http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/14/smart-speakers-privacy-concerns-alexa/

Software/SaaS

  • Why Amazon Now Wants to Disrupt the P2P Payments Industry

    Just weeks after news leaked that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) might be interested in launching a checking account-like product, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company might also be looking into debuting a new peer-to-peer (P2P) payment platform. While details are far from set on how such a service might operate, one idea being floated is to enable Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based smart-home companion, to make payments to friends and family members.

    If the information leaked to The Wall Street Journal is accurate, it wouldn’t be Amazon’s first foray into P2P payments. Years ago, Amazon operated WebPay, a service that allowed Amazon Payments members to send and request money by entering the amount and a contact’s email address on a web page. Amazon eventually shut the service down after it failed to gain traction. As the company explained on its site at the time, “We are not addressing a customer pain point particularly better than anyone else.”

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/13/why-amazon-now-wants-to-disrupt-the-p2p-payments-i.aspx

  • Microsoft built its own custom Linux kernel for its new IoT service

    Why use Linux? “With Azure Sphere, Microsoft is addressing an entirely new class of IoT devices, the MCU,” Rob Lefferts, Microsoft’s partner director for Windows enterprise and security told me at the event.” Windows IoT runs on microprocessor units (MPUs) which have at least 100x the power of the MCU. The Microsoft-secured Linux kernel used in the Azure Sphere IoT OS is shared under an OSS license so that silicon partners can rapidly enable new silicon innovations.” And those partners are also very comfortable with taking an open-source release and integrating that with their products.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/16/microsoft-built-its-own-custom-linux-kernel-for-its-new-iot-service/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IBM Unveils World’s Smallest Computer And Its Amazing

    For the terribly tiny size, it sure packs a punch of processing power. It has a processing power of an X86 chip from 1990. You may think that it is not that powerful but remember, we need a microscope to clearly see the chip.

    The computer will cost less than ten cents to manufacture, and will also pack “several hundred thousand transistors,” according to the company. These will allow it to “monitor, analyze, communicate, and even act on data.”

    https://www.technotification.com/2018/04/ibm-worlds-smallest-computer.html

  • Is Apple’s HomePod failing?

    For me, it’s Apple’s refusal to compromise on the practical things that kills any reason for me to buy the HomePod, despite being a fully paid-up Apple fanboy. I’d love, for instance, to use the HomePod with Spotify like I do with the Google Home Mini. Or, even better, use an optical-in connection to connect it to my TV and use it as my home’s primary speaker. The same product with one tiny concession to the real world would be a much more popular product, for sure. And don’t get me started on the lack of Bluetooth. You can argue that even with AptX it’s lower quality audio, but its omission is a raised middle finger to everyone.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/13/apple-homepod-failing-editorial/

Other

  • Supreme Court Weighs Widening States’ Reach on Online Sales Taxes

    The current tax rules—from the era of mail-order catalogs—helped fuel the rise of internet commerce and spurred frustration among brick-and-mortar retailers, shopping-mall owners and state governments.

    Tax and legal experts expect the court to overturn the precedent, freeing states to collect levies on future cross-state transactions. It isn’t clear what new standard might take its place or what rules states might impose.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-set-to-weigh-online-sales-taxes-1523790801?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Backpage.com CEO pleads guilty to human trafficking

    Documents unsealed today by the Justice Department (PDF) reveal Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges in Arizona on April 5th, a day before the site was seized and shut down. Additionally, attorneys general in California and Texas announced today that the site itself has entered a guilty plea to charges of human trafficking in Texas, while Ferrer pleaded guilty to conspiracy and three counts of money laundering in California. Several corporate entities tied to the site, including Backpage.com LLC, also entered guilty pleas to charges of money laundering.

    As a part of the deal that will see him serve a maximum of five years in prison, the prosecutors say Ferrer has surrendered the URLs of the site and its data to law enforcement, and that he will cooperate in the prosecution against others involved with the company — namely co-founders and controlling shareholders Michael Lacey and James Larkin, who were indicted April 9th.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/12/backpage-ceo-pleads-guilty-to-human-trafficking-money-launderin/

  • IBM Falls After Quarterly Margins Narrow and Sales Stagnate

    International Business Machines Corp. reported first-quarter sales of $19.1 billion, beating the average analyst estimate of $18.8 billion. That’s a 5 percent gain since last year, but only when the weak U.S. dollar was factored in. Without it, revenue growth was unchanged. Growth in the key “strategic imperatives” business lines — which includes the company’s cloud, analytics and mobile-focused businesses — was up 10 percent from a year earlier to $9 billion when adjusted for currency changes.

    The stock dropped as much as 5.8 percent, to $151.54, in extended trading after ending the day up 1.9 percent.

    Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty is working to pull IBM back from over five years of revenue declines. She reversed the trend late last year though that boost wasn’t fueled as much by the new businesses as by cyclical demand for mainframe servers. Investors are watching closely to see whether she can ramp up gains in IBM’s newer software and services to sustain the improvement when the bump from hardware sales fades.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/ibm-sales-buoyed-by-weaker-u-s-dollar-shift-to-new-businesses

  • Qualcomm Job Cuts Total 4.4% of Workforce So Far

    Qualcomm is cutting 4.4% of its workforce starting in June, according to documents filed with the state of California. The layoffs include 1,231 employees in San Diego, where the chip maker has its headquarters, and 269 in San Jose and Santa Clara, according to the documents.

    The company employed 33,800, including part-time workers, as of September 2017, according to a regulatory filing.

    The $1 billion cost-reduction program is part of a profit-boosting plan unveiled in January, intended to persuade investors the company would be more valuable on its own than combined with Broadcom Corp. , which at the time was pursuing a hostile takeover bid. President Donald Trump scuttled Broadcom’s overture with a March executive order blocking a deal on national security grounds.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/qualcomm-cuts-jobs-to-boost-profit-1524115042?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Brianna Santellan on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/13/2018

Supply Report - 4/13 - this dog knows something

The Department of Defense’s huge cloud contract is still up for grabs and Amazon’s competitors are raising a stink about Amazon’s glaring advantage.  The government RFP requires their hosting service to be able to handle data designated as top secret. At the moment, AWS is the only cloud hosting service to be certified to host information at that level.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg survived over 600 questions from Congress during a 2-day session. Almost every news outlet summarized the effort as boring, but agreed that Zuckerberg likely resolved the company’s issues with the government.  He also made $3B while taking those questions.

IBM released a new “skinny mainframe” this week and Oracle helped to send a rival company’s CEO to jail (he did kind of deserve it).

Acquisitions

  • HPE acquires leading Microsoft Azure partner to bolster cloud play

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise has unveiled plans to acquire RedPixie, a cloud consultancy and application developer specialising in Microsoft Azure.

    Terms of the deal – of which financial details were not disclosed – will see the tech giant merge the partner into its Pointnext division, in a bid to expand capabilities across hybrid cloud.

    Headquartered in the UK, RedPixie specialises in cloud advisory services, as well as application development and migration offerings specific to moving workloads to the public cloud.

    https://www.reseller.co.nz/article/635989/hpe-acquires-leading-microsoft-azure-partner-bolster-cloud-play/

  • KPMG Acquires Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integrator Adoxio

    KPMG in Canada is acquiring Adoxio Business Solutions, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 integrator and gold-level partner. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close this month.

    Adoxio has 80 employees across Canada and in the United States, including offices in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Regina and Redmond, Washington. The company serves roughly 300 customers worldwide, including Dynamics 365 clientele within multiple vertical markets — particularly public sector, regulatory, manufacturing, retail and energy.

    https://www.channele2e.com/investors/exits/kpmg-acquires-microsoft-dynamics-365-integrator-adoxio/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Artificial Intelligence Becoming Top Corporate Spending Priority

    “We expect market share will continue to shift among leading vendors given the infancy of the AI/machine learning market,” Huberty said.

    Chief information officers surveyed by Morgan Stanley on average expect their information technology spending to rise 5.8% this year.

    “This is the most bullish CIOs have ever been in overall IT budget growth in the past 10 years,” Huberty said.

    Cloud computing and security are the top priorities, followed by digital transformation initiatives, she said. AI and machine learning initiatives ranked sixth in the latest survey, up from No. 20 a year ago.

    https://www.investors.com/news/technology/artificial-intelligence-ai-spending/

Cloud

  • Don’t count on Amazon winning the $10 billion Defense Department deal — it’s still wide open

    U.S. Navy Commander Patrick Evans, a Department of Defense spokesperson, reiterated that the Pentagon’s process is “transparent” and will remain “a full and open competition.”

    “No companies were pre-selected. We have no favorites, and we want the best solution for the department,” Evans told CNBC.

    Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White also addressed speculation Thursday that Amazon was in the lead to take the lucrative defense contract.

    “The secretary has been very clear that we need to be good stewards of the American people’s money,” White said. “So, nothing is taken for granted and nothing is presumed. We will get a full, open and transparent competition, and this is the first of many competitions with respect to the cloud.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/aws-not-close-to-winning-jedi-government-cloud-deal.html

  • Amazon’s Rivals Fear They Will Lose Out on Pentagon’s Cloud-Computing Contract

    One of the greatest advantages Amazon has is the Pentagon’s insistence that bidders provide a cloud that can handle unclassified, secret and top-secret data. Only Amazon so far has received government approvals to house its most highly classified data in the cloud, though representatives from other companies said they are making progress toward earning the same certification.

    Mr. Van Name said the Pentagon believes a number of companies, including Amazon, are qualified to produce what the Defense Department is demanding in the contract. The department also says companies could form a joint venture to meet the qualifications to win the award.

    Pentagon officials plan to offer the contract as a two-year base award, followed by options of five and three years, respectively, Mr. Van Name said. The department hopes to award the contract by the end of September.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-rivals-fear-they-will-lose-out-on-pentagons-cloud-computing-contract-1523534400?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Security

  • Zuckerberg’s boring testimony is a big win for Facebook

    By the conclusion of the five hours of questioning, the senators themselves were admitting they hadn’t watched the day’s full testimony. Viewers at home had likely returned to their lives. Even the press corps’ eyes were glazing over. But Zuckerberg was prepared for the marathon. He maintained pace through the finish line. And he made it clear why marathons aren’t TV spectator sports.

    The question is no longer what revelations would come from Mr. Zuckerberg going to Washington. Tomorrow’s testimony is likely to go similarly. It’s whether Facebook can coherently execute on the data privacy promises it made leading up to today. This will be a “never-ending battle” as Zuckerberg said, dragging out over many years. And again, that’s in Facebook’s interest. Because in the meantime, everyone’s going back to scrolling their feeds.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/10/zzzuckerberg/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IBM announces launch of ‘skinny’ mainframe

    The IBM z14 Model ZR1, launched today, is a cloud-ready system with a 19-inch server rack that can easily fit into any standard cloud centre or private cloud environment, a shift from the traditional, bulky pieces of hardware that can barely fit anywhere and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    IBM says the new z14 offers 10 per cent more capacity and approximately 8 terabytes of memory, twice the amount compared to its predecessor, the z13 mainframe.

    https://www.computerdealernews.com/news/ibm-announces-skinny-mainframe/59330

Other

  • The CEO of one of Oracle’s rivals has been sentenced to 2 years of prison — and Oracle is ‘pleased’

    “Oracle is pleased that the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio accepted the guilty pleas of James Olding and Bernd Appleby, the principals of Terix, for their roles in misappropriating Oracle’s intellectual property and sentenced them both to prison for their criminal acts,” says Oracle spokesperson Deborah Hellinger.

    “Oracle takes violations of its intellectual property rights very seriously and, as demonstrated by Oracle’s lawsuits against Terix, Rimini Street and other IP violators, Oracle will not hesitate to go after those who do so. Oracle appreciates the fine work of the law enforcement officials whose efforts led to the criminal penalties assessed against Terix’s principals,” she said.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/bernd-appleby-ceo-of-oracle-rival-tetrix-computer-sentenced-to-24-months-in-prison-2018-4

Photo by Jennifer Regnier on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/6/2018

This dog is looking for a better perspective

President Trump’s fight with Amazon continues to be the dominant technology story this week.  Pundits on both sides are weighing in on the government’s options to go after Amazon. As Trump’s team devise a potential battle plan, the Department of Defense could give Jeff Bezos billions of dollars of new business (much to Oracle’s frustration).

Apple is making headlines this week for poaching Google’s head of AI to bolster their lagging division.  The company also announced they will produce their own CPUs starting in 2020 causing Intel stock to drop 9%.

Facebook’s data security problems continue as Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify in front of Congress on April 11th.

Acquisitions

  • The Curious Case of the Belkin Buy

    “I can’t put my finger on why, but this acquisition seems weird to me,” writes John Gruber, describing Foxconn’s decision to buy Belkin for $866 million. It is not that weird, especially when you take into account the competitive landscape.

    TL: DR version: Foxconn needs to boost margins. Belkin has a great brand but faces an increasingly competitive landscape. It is weirdly about Taiwan vs. China.

    https://om.co/2018/03/28/the-curious-case-of-the-belkin-buy/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Retailers Race Against Amazon to Automate Stores

    Companies are testing robots that help keep shelves stocked, as well as apps that let shoppers ring up items with a smartphone. High-tech systems like the one used by Amazon Go completely automate the checkout process. China, which has its own ambitious e-commerce companies, is emerging as an especially fertile place for these retail experiments.

    If they succeed, these new technologies could add further uncertainty to the retail work force, which is already in flux because of the growth of online shopping. An analysis last year by the World Economic Forum said 30 to 50 percent of the world’s retail jobs could be at risk once technologies like automated checkout were fully embraced.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/technology/retailer-stores-automation-amazon.html

  • Emmanuel Macron Talks to WIRED About France’s AI Strategy

    The key driver should not only be technological progress, but human progress. This is a huge issue. I do believe that Europe is a place where we are able to assert collective preferences and articulate them with universal values. I mean, Europe is the place where the DNA of democracy was shaped, and therefore I think Europe has to get to grips with what could become a big challenge for democracies.

    And

    We had some innovations that I saw several times in medicine to predict, via better analysis, the diseases you may have in the future and prevent them or better treat you. A few years ago, I went to CES. I was very impressed by some of these companies. I had with me some French companies, but I discovered US, Israeli and other companies operating in the same field. Innovation that artificial intelligence brings into healthcare systems can totally change things: with new ways to treat people, to prevent various diseases, and a way—not to replace the doctors—but to reduce the potential risk.

    https://www.wired.com/story/emmanuel-macron-talks-to-wired-about-frances-ai-strategy/

  • AI Beats Human Lawyers At Their Own Game (Thanks JD!)

    LawGeex pitted 20 experienced attorneys against a three-year-old algorithm trained to evaluate contracts. Spoiler alert: the computer won.

    Lawyers and the AI, for instance, were penalized for missing an exemption relevant to the contract, or mistakenly identifying an exemption where it was irrelevant.

    In the end, LawGeex’s neural network achieved an average 94 percent accuracy rate, compared to the lawyers’ average of 85 percent. And while it took humans anywhere from 51 minutes to more than 2.5 hours to complete all five NDAs, the AI engine finished in 26 seconds.

    https://www.geek.com/tech/ai-beats-human-lawyers-at-their-own-game-1732154/

  • Our Robot Overlords Might Be Delayed

    Then there’s the question of reliability. Despite computer scientists’ best efforts, algorithms are prone to make spectacular errors — such as mistaking a law-abiding person for a criminal. Worse, it’s often impossible to understand what went wrong: With billions of parameters involved, even an algorithm’s creators often do not know how and why it works. The reliability of an aircraft engine can be predicted, because it’s made of many parts for which we can mostly guarantee performance. Not so with algorithms. This limits their use in situations — such as making financial trades or medical diagnoses — where errors can be disastrous and it’s important to understand the process by which decisions are made.

    In other words, there’s nothing very deep about deep learning.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-04/artificial-intelligence-research-might-have-hit-a-wall

  • Apple Hires Artificial-Intelligence Executive From Rival Google

    Apple, which is famously secretive, has lagged its peers in publishing research in the field, and that has made it difficult for the company to recruit professors and Ph.D. students from university computer-science programs, say academics and students.

    The company’s flagship AI product, Siri, also has fallen behind competitors such as Amazon.com ’s Alexa and Google Voice in the number of tasks it can perform and accuracy. The HomePod, a smart speaker released in February, put a spotlight on some of those shortcomings, according to reviewers.

    Mr. Giannandrea, known to colleagues as “JG,” was well-regarded at Google where he was considered a skilled manager adept at leading the engineering team, a person familiar with his work said. He joined the company in 2010 and led efforts to incorporate AI into Google products such as Photos and its Inbox app. He was tapped in 2016 to run its search engine.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-hires-artificial-intelligence-executive-from-rival-google-1522811544

Cloud

  • Oracle’s CEO Might Have Given Trump Another Reason to Slam Amazon

    Oracle chief executive Safra Catz criticized the bidding process for a huge Pentagon cloud computing contract in a private dinner with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, complaining that it seemed designed for Amazon to win, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Trump heard her out and said he wants the contract competition to be fair, but made no indication he’d interfere in the bidding, the people said. Oracle (ORCL, +1.38%), where Catz shares the CEO title with Mark Hurd, is competing with Amazon (AMZN, +3.09%) for the contract, a point she didn’t emphasize to Trump, the people said.

    http://fortune.com/2018/04/05/safra-catz-donald-trump-oracle-amazon/

    I predicted Safra was going to get more involved on SourceCast 113

  • As Trump Bashes Amazon, the Government Increasingly Relies on It

    The company doesn’t release specifics, but GBH Insights, a research firm, predicts that Amazon’s government business will grow to $2.8 billion in 2018 and $4.6 billion in 2019, up from less than $300 million in 2015. Other company analysts say those projections are optimistic, but not implausible.

    An even bigger prize looms: Amazon is seeking a 10-year contract with the Department of Defense that could be worth $10 billion.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-trump-bashes-amazon-the-government-increasingly-relies-on-it-1522920600?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Security

  • Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica Harvested Data of Up to 87 Million Users

    Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook in Washington, said the 87 million figure was an estimate of the total number of users whose data could have been acquired by Cambridge Analytica. He said that the estimate was calculated by adding up all the friends of the people who had logged into the Facebook app from which Cambridge Analytica collected profile data.

    “We wanted to put out the maximum number of people who could have been affected,” Mr. Zuckerberg told reporters.

    It remains unclear exactly how many users had their personal information accessed by Cambridge Analytica. The firm said Wednesday that it had licensed data for no more than 30 million users of the social network.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/mark-zuckerberg-testify-congress.html

  • Saks, Lord & Taylor Hit With Data Breach

    So far, 125,000 cards that had been used at Saks or Lord & Taylor have been released for sale by the hackers, according to Gemini Advisory. Some were cards that were used by card owners as recently as last month in one of the affected stores, according to Dmitry Chorine, Gemini Advisory’s chief technology officer.

    The group behind the hack is known as JokerStash Syndicate or Fin 7. It appears to have penetrated the retailers’ point of sale systems, Mr. Chorine said.

    After previous breaches the JokerStash group has released credit-card data in smaller batches, to avoid flooding the market for illegally obtained payment credentials, Mr. Chorine said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/saks-lord-taylor-hit-with-data-breach-1522598460?mg=prod/accounts-wsj

Software/SaaS

  • Tech Thinks It Has a Fix for the Problems It Created: Blockchain

    Most of the biggest internet companies make their money from collecting personal information and using it to sell targeted advertisements. This kind of massive data collection makes them vulnerable to hackers and outsiders who want to leverage the data — as was evident when Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to 50 million Facebook profiles. And start-ups are using the blockchain in an attempt to pry control of all that data out of their hands.

    Blockstack has built a way to record the basic details about your identity on a blockchain database and then use that identity to set up accounts with other online projects that are built on top of it.

    The animating force behind the project is that users — rather than Blockstack or any other company — would end up in control of all the data they generate with any online service.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/technology/blockchain-uses.html

  • Mozilla’s radical open-source move helped rewrite rules of tech

    When Mozilla was born, open-source software was a counterculture oddity that flew in the face of a software industry used to selling proprietary products. But today, it powers just about every tech company out there — Google, Facebook and yes, even that old open-source nemesis, Microsoft. Mozilla wasn’t the first open-source project, but it fanned the flames of a way of thinking that brought us ubiquitous social networks, mobile operating systems and thousands of apps.

    “It was a Hail Mary pass,” said Chris DiBona, director of open source at Google. “But somebody caught the ball and ran with it.”

    Now it’s the norm. Google releases five or six open-source projects every single day — more than 12,000 in total so far. It’s common enough that Google automated the process so no humans are needed to review the decision. It’s hard to overstate how profound a change that is for people who program for a living.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-open-source-firefox-move-helped-rewrite-tech-rules-anniversary/

  • Oracle v. Google Proves Again Why Fair Use Is So Troublesome

    This decision understandably has far-reaching ramifications for those in the software development field. Copying even a relatively small amount of code is now unlikely to be considered “too small” to be considered an infringement. Furthermore, the re-contextualization of code from one device format to another (such as desktop to mobile) is now less likely to be considered transformative use of that code and, as a result, ultimately less likely to be found to be a fair use.

    Even outside the tech space, this decision serves as yet another example of the unpredictability of fair-use determinations and further evidence of why the doctrine of fair use is “the most troublesome in the whole law of copyright.” As courts at both the trial and appellate levels increasingly decide the issue of fair use as a matter of law – and significant questions of whether and when the issue can even be tried to a jury – it is becoming increasingly difficult to take comfort that one’s use of another’s copyrighted work will be considered “fair.”

    https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/oracle-v-google-proves-again-why-fair-52496/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs From 2020, Replacing Intel

    Apple Inc. is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, replacing processors from Intel Corp., according to people familiar with the plans.

    The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple’s devices — including Macs, iPhones, and iPads — work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-said-to-plan-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020

Other

  • Will Amazon be your next bank and health insurance?

    Yet whenever claims of monopolistic practices are levered against it, Amazon quickly points out that e-commerce represents less than 10% of brick-and-mortar sales. Furthermore, it claims that Walmart sales alone – over $500 billion in 2017 – are almost three times bigger than Amazon’s. Add to this the fact that prices are kept low at Amazon and you can dismiss any charge of Amazon abusing its dominant position.

    These arguments miss the main point raised by Khan in her “Amazon Paradox” note: Amazon should not be persecuted for antitrust based on consumer welfare criteria or overall retail market share dominance. Rather, more modern antitrust laws should focus on the methods online platforms the size of Amazon can use to inhibit competition. These methods include predatory pricing based on real-time analysis of marketplace competitors and vertical integration of logistics. Thanks to Amazon’s highly complementary business models, it has created a physical and online infrastructure empire that is quickly becoming the only competitive way to satisfy the growing need of instant gratification by online shoppers. Lured by the lock-in mechanisms built into the “Prime” subscription services (which offers free next-day delivery and video streaming to subscribers), consumers cannot help but be ecstatic with this online shopping paradise. One quickly understands why Amazon Prime now captures 46% of online shoppers in the US and why the barriers to entry are becoming increasingly insurmountable to upstarts in this field.

    https://www.econotimes.com/Will-Amazon-be-your-next-bank-and-health-insurance-1232163

  • Why a Trump-Led Antitrust Case Against Amazon Is a Long Shot

    If Mr. Trump did decide to pursue any new regulations, he would either have to push a law through a Republican Congress that is unlikely to be receptive to more regulation or involve the Justice Department and other regulators to bring a case before the courts, Mr. Melamed said.

    “It’s a huge amount of work, with a very dubious pay off,” he adds.

    A White House spokeswoman on Thursday said “the president has expressed his concerns with Amazon. We have no actions at this time.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-trump-led-antitrust-case-against-amazon-is-a-long-shot-1522501200?mg=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Justice Department asks Supreme Court to moot Microsoft email case, citing new law

    On March 23, Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the Cloud Act. The law states that a “provider of electronic communication service” shall comply with a court order for data “regardless of whether such communication, record or other information is located within or outside of the United States.”

    Microsoft supported the legislation, which also provides a way to facilitate — through bilateral agreements — foreign law enforcement agencies’ access to data held inside the United States.

    The Justice Department on Friday obtained a new search warrant requiring Microsoft to turn over the emails. “Microsoft no longer has any basis for suggesting that such a warrant is impermissibly extraterritorial,” Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco wrote in a motion to the Supreme Court. “There is thus no longer any live dispute between the parties, and the case is now moot.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-asks-supreme-court-to-moot-microsoft-email-case-citing-new-law/2018/03/31/e3c46e60-34f6-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html?utm_term=.a4254859ca62

  • Tesla is now worth less than Ford

    Tesla’s stock price is falling and in doing so, has retreated on milestones it set last year. As of publication, the company’s value is less than Ford’s for the first time in a year. At current levels, Tesla’s market cap is $42.063 billion while Ford is trading at $43.588. It was a year ago tomorrow that Tesla overtook Ford’s market cap.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/02/tesla-is-now-worth-less-than-ford/

  • Samsung surpasses IBM with most patents filed in US

    Samsung Electronics has overtaken IBM as the holder of the most US patents as of the beginning of 2018, according to new data. The South Korean tech firm owned 75,596 US patents, outdoing the second best IBM by nearly 1.6 times.

    “Even though IBM continually out-files other companies, its assets are also ageing; in addition, it is known for abandoning a number of its patents relatively early in their lifetimes.” “As (IBM’s) assets grow older, it will have to innovate more (or acquire more patent assets) to keep pace,” the report added.

    http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/samsung-surpasses-ibm-with-most-patents-filed-in-us/1118573/

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash