Supplier Report: 10/29/2016

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IBM had a big week due to their World of Watson conference. As one would imagine, an event called the World of Watson was heavily focused on AI and how it will integrate into our lives. They also used the event to announce the acquisition of another cloud-focused company.  But IBM better watch out because Google’s Deepmind created an encryption protocol by itself.

There was also an OpenStack conference this week for cloud services. The event tested the ability to easily switch between 16 different cloud providers.

IBM announced it was much cheaper to support Macs over Window machines (which is actually old news), but Microsoft introduced some beautiful new desktops.

Acquisitions

  • IBM To Acquire Sanovi Technologies For Hybrid Clouding

    The announcement for the procurement event held on October 27, 2016, carried off with a deal which would help IBM to enhance its elasticity capabilities. It would further support to meet the complexities of the hybrid environment through advanced analytics. The following deal would help IBM to boost its Software Defined Resiliency strategy, delivering Business Continuity, along with providing Disaster Recovery services for its clients who are in the middle of hybrid and digital cloud transformation.

    http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/102816/ibm-buys-another-hybrid-cloud-specialist-ibm.aspx
    Also:

    US software giant IBM on Thursday announced that it has signed a deal to acquire Bengaluru-based Sanovi Technologies for an undisclosed sum. The deal would enable IBM to bolster its Software Defined Resiliency strategy, delivery of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services for clients who are undergoing digital and hybrid cloud transformation.

    http://www.ibtimes.co.in/ibm-buys-bengaluru-based-hybrid-cloud-firm-sanovi-technologies-701488

  • AT&T’s Time Warner Deal Comes at a Huge Cost

    AT&T’s deal values Time Warner at 22 times the cash it generated from its operations. That seems high. When Comcast bought NBCUniversal in 2013 it paid around 8 times operating cash flow. WhenVerizon bought AOL in 2015, a number of commentators suggested that it had paid through the roof for the former Internet whiz kid. But even in that deal, Verizon only paid about 9 times AOL’s adjusted operating income.

    http://fortune.com/2016/10/24/att-time-warner-deal-share-price/

  • Who Will Win This $9 Billion Game Of Chicken?

    Who, if anyone, will blink? NetSuite’s weak quarter make it decreasingly likely that Oracle’s Larry Ellison will blink first. As for T. Rowe, they might not either. They opposed the Dell LBO and intended to vote against it (their shares were mistakenly voted for it, so perhaps they will tender to Oracle by accident). But with no available alternative to realize more value than the current deal, both NetSuite and T. Rowe holders will quickly regret it.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/4014664-will-win-9-billion-game-chicken

  • Oracle CEO Hurd Says NetSuite Deal ‘Done from Our Perspective’

    “Well it’s done from our perspective. We had special boards, special committees of both boards negotiate the transaction. We think we’ve made a fair offer of $109 a share,” he said.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13868773/1/oracle-orcl-ceo-hurd-says-netsuite-deal-done-from-our-perspective.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • The World of Watson
    Talking points from the 2 hour video:

    1. Watson will be almost everywhere in 5 years.  It will be in doctors offices and assist companies with M&A (it will have profiles on every company on the planet).
    2. John Kelly predicts that due to Watson’s modeling abilities, it will be able to predict future events in medical applications.
    3. Tom Friedman states that 2008 was a milestone year in technology, in part due to Watson and the advent of cloud technology (high speed internet, cheaper storage) and we missed it for what it really is and society has been stuck not taking advantage of it.
    4. Due to this technology, human interaction and sharing ideas has never been higher and the potential for quicker social change is more possible.
    5. Friedman goes down an interesting path of how people (not nations) have the ability to destroy and also repair everything (you just have to watch it).
    6. The video then shifts to new speakers doing their best Steve Jobs impressions talking about managing data via AI (nothing we haven’t discussed here already).

  • IBM, Teva to Use A.I. for Drug Repurposing Program

    First, the companies formed a three-year research collaboration aimed at using human input, real-world data, and machine learning algorithms to support drug repurposing efforts, wrote FierceBiotech.

    Watson will sift through all of this information to try and find relationships between drug molecules and certain diseases. A successful initiative like this could install an efficient, cost-effective process that the entire pharmaceutical industry can adopt to help bring new therapies to market.

    https://www.rdmag.com/article/2016/10/ibm-teva-use-ai-drug-repurposing-program

  • Google’s AI created its own form of encryption

    As the New Scientist reports, Abadi and Andersen assigned each AI a task: Alice had to send a secret message that only Bob could read, while Eve would try to figure out how to eavesdrop and decode the message herself. The experiment started with a plain-text message that Alice converted into unreadable gibberish, which Bob could decode using cipher key. At first, Alice and Bob were apparently bad at hiding their secrets, but over the course of 15,000 attempts Alice worked out her own encryption strategy and Bob simultaneously figured out how to decrypt it. The message was only 16 bits long, with each bit being a 1 or a 0, so the fact that Eve was only able to guess half of the bits in the message means she was basically just flipping a coin or guessing at random.

    https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/28/google-ai-created-its-own-form-of-encryption/

Cloud

  • ‘Unprecedented’ cyberattack involved tens of millions of IP addresses

    The attackers took advantage of traffic-routing services such as those offered by Alphabet Inc’s Google and Cisco Systems Inc’s OpenDNS to make it hard for Dyn to root out bad traffic without also interfering with legitimate inquiries, Drew said.

    But hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, of those security cameras and other devices have been infected with a fairly simple program that guessed at their factory-set passwords – often “admin” or “12345” or even, yes, “password” – and, once inside, turned them into an army of simple robots. The company also has offices in England and Singapore, and field operations across several USA cities, including San Francisco and Seattle.

    http://crcconnection.com/2016/10/24/unprecedented-cyberattack-involved-tens-of-millions-of-ip.html

  • Switching clouds: What Spotify learned when it swapped AWS for Google’s cloud

    “Now that we’ve done the move, we are generally really happy but we have some wishes for the future.

    We would love to see cross-continental replication, like the fact we now run in a US Central regional bucket, that causes a slight latency for our European users.

    We ideally would like to have another bucket in Asia. At the moment, the GCS does not allow cross-continental replication.

    We’re also seeing slightly lower cold read latencies than with S3, the good news is that Google has improvements upcoming and we’ve worked with them to shear off 30ms.”

    http://www.techrepublic.com/article/switching-clouds-what-spotify-learned-when-it-swapped-aws-for-googles-cloud/

  • IBM’s cloud move: New unified platform buries SoftLayer under Bluemix brand

    As part of that shift, IBM today also announced its unified cloud platform, allowing customers to manage all Bluemix and SoftLayer assets from a single console using an IBM ID.

    IBM isn’t planning on changing the substance of SoftLayer’s systems, products, services, and support, but it will phase the name out as it moves everything, including the SoftLayer blog over to Bluemix domains.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibms-cloud-move-new-unified-platform-buries-softlayer-under-bluemix-brand/
    Smart. Every time I mention SoftLayer, people ask “what is that?”

  • You can run the same programs on 16 different OpenStack clouds

    Sixteen different vendors did a live demo at OpenStack Summit showing that you could run the same software stack on 16 separate OpenStack platforms.

    Here’s the amazing part. All 16 vendors had the program running on their platforms in under 10 minutes. Try moving your application from say Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft Azure that easily.

    Don Rippert, IBM’s general manager of cloud strategy, explained, “Yes all 16 companies will compete, but interoperability is a rising tide. It makes things better for all of us.” Jonathan Bryce, the OpenStack Foundation’s executive director, added “SUSE, Canonical, Red Hat, you all hate each other right? But, the program works on all your systems.”

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-run-the-same-programs-on-16-different-openstack-clouds/

Datacenter/Desktop

  • NetApp boss not deterred by Dell EMC

    When asked whether Dell EMC’s extended reach in the industry would hurt NetApp’s business, Kurian took the stance that bigger wasn’t always better.

    “Very simply, we’re taking share from EMC today. We’re the fastest growing SAN vendor in the market. We’re the fastest growing all-flash array vendor in the market. And despite their reach, we have better solutions,” he said.

    http://www.crn.com.au/news/netapp-boss-not-deterred-by-dell-emc-440089

  • The New Microsoft Surface Studio

Software/SaaS

  • Slack Announces Partnership With IBM

    Watson will be available to Slack’s developers and enterprise users, will work to develop new communication tools, and will be incorporated into Slack’s Slackbot; the customer relations account for the service.

    “Making Watson’s capabilities and Slack’s capabilities available to third-party developers to make those more intelligent,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said about the partnership during Wednesday afternoon’s “Power Lunch” on CNBC.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13868522/1/slack-announces-partnership-with-ibm.html

Other

  • IBM official says Macs much cheaper to own than Windows PCs

    Previn also said that while a Mac initially cost from US$117 to US$454 more than a Windows PC that had similar specs, IBM was able to save between US$273 and US$543 over four years per Mac compared to a similarly configured Windows PC.

    When one added up all the software that one had to buy from Microsoft to run and manage IBM’s Windows devices, Windows PCs were thrice as expensive as Macs, he said.

    “It ends up being US$57.3 million more expensive per 100,000 Windows machines, or exactly three times the cost,” he said. “And this is a conservative number. This represents the best pricing we’ve ever gotten from Microsoft.”

    http://www.itwire.com/business-software/75376-ibm-official-says-macs-much-cheaper-to-own-than-windows-pcs.html

  • Microsoft hikes prices for British businesses in wake of Brexit vote

    The tech giant announced in a blog post that it would be raising fees for its UK business clients in order to “realign close to euro levels,” and harmonise prices across the EU.

    “We periodically assess the impact of local pricing of our products and services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across the region and this change is an outcome of this assessment,” Microsoft said.

    While enterprise software prices will increase by 13%, cloud prices will jump by as much as 22% for clients paying in pounds.

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/microsoft-reveals-british-businesses-pay-9116171

  • IBM board approves additional $3 billion stock buyback

    The board today also authorized $3 billion in additional funds for use in the company’s stock repurchase program. IBM said it will repurchase shares on the open market or in private transactions from time to time, depending on market conditions.

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161025006267/en/IBM-Board-Approves-Quarterly-Cash-Dividend-Authorizes

  • “Dirty COW”, the most dangerous Linux Bug for the last 9 years

    Talking to Ars Technica, Senior Security Researcher at Azimuth Security, Dan Rosenberg states that this particular bug is so far the most serious of all bugs ever found in Linux systems. The fact that this bug has been there for the last 9 years makes the situation even more concerning.

    “It’s probably the most serious Linux local privilege escalation ever. The nature of the vulnerability lends itself to extremely reliable exploitation. This vulnerability has been present for nine years, which is an extremely long period of time,” said Rosenberg.

    https://www.hackread.com/dirty-cow-the-most-linux-bug/

  • Google Jamboard:

    Yeah, this product really doesn’t have a place on this post, but I really want one!

Photo: Robson Hatsukami Morgan

Supplier Report: 10/15/2016

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Large IT companies are running into some M&A trouble. Verizon wants a discount on their Yahoo acquisition, Saleforce is trying to block the Microsoft’s purchase of Linkedin, and Oracle is struggling to make their purchase of Netsuite a reality.

Cloud was a big topic this week – Google has officially rebranded their cloud offerings as “Google Cloud” due to customer confusion (good move), IBM CEO Ginni Rometty explains her company’s position on blockchain (and discusses if AI can replace her), and VMWare is available on AWS.

HP Inc is cutting 4,000 jobs but former EMC CEO Joe Tucci found one!

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • Could Watson Replace Ginni Rometty? What She’s Not Saying About AI, Jobs & Disruption

    IBM has bet it’s future on AI, cloud computing and data/information/knowledge management. All three areas are about reducing costs and improving productivity by decreasing human labor.Cloud computing, for example, could easily be described as the technology delivery model that kills software developers, applications support professionals and data center managers. There’s a straight line from the number of jobs IBM eliminates and its stock price. If Watsonbecomes a friendly assistant that charges for its pedantic services, IBM will fail. But if Watson enables large-scale labor replacement, IBM’s stock will rise.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveandriole/2016/10/10/could-watson-replace-ginni-rometty-what-shes-not-saying-about-ai-jobs-disruption/2/#60361b211579

  • Artificial intelligence positioned to be a game-changer (follow link for the video)

    One of the technologies just hatched is called Gabriel. It uses Google Glass to gather data about your surroundings and advises you how to react. It’s like an angel on your shoulder whispering advice or instructions. In this case trying to direct us how to win a game of ping pong but the possibilities go beyond bragging rights.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-artificial-intelligence-charlie-rose-robot-sofia/

Cloud

  • IBM wins $62 million contract to run private cloud pilot at Army’s Redstone Arsenal

    IBM won the work as a task order under the Army’s Private Cloud II indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract. The $62 million award includes one base year and four option years, during which the company will build, then own and operate a data center on Army property at Redstone Arsenal, near Huntsville, Alabama.

    http://federalnewsradio.com/army/2016/10/ibm-wins-62-million-contract-run-private-cloud-pilot-armys-redstone-arsenal/

  • VMware and AWS Announce New Hybrid Cloud Service, “VMware Cloud on AWS”

    Amazon and VMWare today announced a strategic alliance to build and deliver a seamlessly integrated hybrid offering that will give customers the full software-defined data center (SDDC) experience from the leader in the private cloud, running on the world’s most popular, trusted, and robust public cloud. VMware Cloud™ on AWS will enable customers to run applications across VMware vSphere®-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. Delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service, VMware Cloud on AWS will allow VMware customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics, and more

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161013006574/en/VMware-AWS-Announce-Hybrid-Cloud-Service-%E2%80%9CVMware

  • IBM CEO Rometty’s position on blockchain

    Good to hear IBM’s direct stance on the platform and what their vision is
  • IBM’s Cleversafe storage platform is becoming a cloud service

    Cleversafe’s innovation in object storage was to combine encryption with erasure coding and geographic dispersal of data. SecureSlice encrypts unstructured data, stores the key with the data, and then breaks up that data and puts it on several different storage nodes. In IBM Cloud Object Storage, those nodes can be in data centers spread across an entire continent.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3130792/ibms-cleversafe-storage-platform-is-becoming-a-cloud-service.html

  • Google’s Diane Greene providing a status on Google’s cloud platform:
  • IBM says its new Cloud Object Storage allows easily moving and splitting data

    The service is built on technology dubbed SecureSlice, which combines encryption, erasure coding and geographic dispersal of data. Erasure coding is a form of data protection. IBM acquired the SecureSlice technology when it bought Cleversafe last year for $1.3 billion. The technology automatically encrypts each segment of data before it’s erasure-coded and dispersed, and the data can only be reassembled where it was originally received.

    http://www.geekwire.com/2016/ibm-says-new-cloud-object-storage-allows-easily-moving-splitting-data/

  • Amazon cloud boss Andy Jassy fires back at Oracle’s Larry Ellison, says stats were ‘made up’

    Instead, Jassy pointed to what analysts are saying about AWS. For example, Gartner said in its Magic Quadrant report last year that AWS is 10-times bigger than its next 14 competitors combined, while putting it at the top of the list against this year.

    Deutsche Bank also wrote in a recent note, “Oracle talked up its ‘next-gen’ infrastructure as a cheaper rival to AWS, but we don’t believe it will be competitive anytime soon.

    http://www.ctpost.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Amazon-cloud-boss-Andy-Jassy-fires-back-at-9970490.php

Datacenter

  • IBM, Google, others to unveil new open interface to take on Intel

    The new standard, called Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI), is an open forum to provide a high bandwidth, low latency open interface design specification.

    The open interface will help corporate and cloud data centers to speed up big data, machine learning, analytics and other emerging workloads.

    The consortium plans to make the OpenCAPI specification available to the public before the end of the year and expects servers and related products based on the new standard in the second half of 2017, it said in a statement.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-consortium-idUSKCN12E0C5

  • Dell shows off new logo…

    This looks like something Silicon Valley would do to make fun of an IT company.

Other

  • Joe Tucci Named Chairman of Bridge Growth Partners

    Bridge Growth Partners, LLC, a sector-focused, growth-oriented private equity firm, today announced that Joseph M. Tucci, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EMC Corporation and former Chairman of VMWare, has been named Chairman of the firm. Tucci has served on the firm’s Investment Committee and Advisory Board since Bridge Growth Partners was established in late 2013.

    http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161011005926/en/Joe-Tucci-Named-Chairman-Bridge-Growth-Partners

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise will have approximately $9 billion in net cash at the end of FY17

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise is expected to host analyst meeting event on October 18, and according to Mr. Hosseini, the management will surely divulge information regarding the high level of cash in the company’s balance sheet. Furthermore, the analyst expects insight regarding growth initiatives and the strategy used by the company in order to promote secular growth trends in key areas of business.

    http://www.thecountrycaller.com/22995-hewlett-packard-enterprise-co-hpe-liquidity-situation-continues-to-improve/

  • HP Inc will cut up to 4,000 jobs by 2019

    The world’s second-largest PC supplier has struggled in a dwindling market, and hopes the cutbacks will save the company between $200 to $300 million annually by 2020.

    However, HP will also incur an estimated $350 million to $500 million in restructuring costs.

    The announcement comes during a global decline in PC sales, dropping 5.7% in the third quarter compared to last year according to a report by Gartner. This represents the longest period of decline in the history of the PC industry.

    http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/27410/hp-will-cut-up-to-4000-jobs-by-2019

Photo: Tao Wen

Supplier Report: 10/1/2016

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As IBM’s plans to build the most versatile AI continues thanks to the purchase of Promontory Financial Group, their competitors are starting to get serious about AI too.

IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are so serious about their AI plans, they are agreeing to work together to create standards and transparency.  But as they buddy up, Microsoft is forming a huge team to center the company around machine learning.

Acquisitions

  • Now Disney might be interested in twitter…

    All of which adds up to a persuasive case that Disney and Twitter have … some things in common. Less clear is how that justifies Disney spending more than $20 billion on a company that produces infinite PR headaches and—at the moment—zero profit. It takes a lot of hand-waving to get from “They both live-stream sports!” to “Disney should own Twitter.” A Yahoo! Finance columnist took a stab at explaining the potential synergy last week.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/09/26/why_no_one_should_buy_twitter_not_disney_and_not_salesforce.html

  • Oracle buys San Mateo Marriott

    The hotel was purchased through Hospitality Investment LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle. The previous owner was Atrium Plaza, a limited liability company owned by Tarsadia Investments of Newport Beach (Orange County).

    This is Oracle’s first hotel purchase. Larry Ellison, the company’s executive chairman, personally owns several hotels, including the Four Seasons Resort on the Hawaiian island of Lanai and the Epiphany Hotel in Palo Alto.

    http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Oracle-buys-San-Mateo-Marriott-9455940.php

  • IBM Announces Planned Acquisition of Promontory to Transform Regulatory Compliance with Watson

    ARMONK, N.Y. – 29 Sep 2016: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced plans to acquire Promontory Financial Group, a global market-leading risk management and regulatory compliance consulting firm.  Upon close, the capabilities of Promontory combined with IBM’s deep industry expertise and Watson’s cognitive capabilities will directly address the massive operational effort and manual cost of escalating regulation and risk management requirements.

    http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/50599.wss
    Watson Financial Services is born out of IBM’s purchase of Promontory Financial Group

    To make sense of this deal, you have to avoid relegating Promontory into the small box of financial services. Instead, it’s most practical to think of it as a big data company that also has a services business. While it’s true that it works with some of the largest banks in the world, it has slowly amassed a collection of regulatory and compliance data. Promontory also has a workforce that includes over 600 experts in the space.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/watson-financial-services-is-born-out-of-ibms-purchase-of-promontory-financial-group/?ncid=rss

  • Salesforce tries to block Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition

    Salesforce Chief Legal Officer Burke Norton will argue to the EU’s competition authority that Microsoft’s control of LinkedIn’s dataset following an acquisition would be anticompetitive. EU competition chief Margarethe Vestager said in January that her agency would be looking directly at whether a company’s use of data is bad for competition, and these complaints seem aimed squarely at those comments.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3126095/legal/salesforce-tries-to-block-microsofts-linkedin-acquisition.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • Microsoft’s Satya Nadella: ‘We’re not pursuing AI to beat humans at games’

    As Nadella explained, Microsoft isn’t “pursuing AI to beat humans at games,” a clear dig at Google’s AlphaGo computer which beat Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol.

    Instead, he said, the company is trying to democratize information and access to intelligence to “empower every person and every institution that people build with the tools of AI, so that they can go on to solve the most pressing problems of our society and economy.”

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsofts-satya-nadella-were-not-pursuing-ai-to-beat-humans-at-games-221122184.html

  • IBM releases DataWorks to give enterprise data a home and a brain

    IBM’s new Project DataWorks is built with both Spark and IBM Watson at its core to prioritize speed and usability without sacrificing robust analytics. The best way to think about DataWorks is as a sort of Google Docs for data analytics. In practice, companies have huge data libraries that often end up in a variety of decentralized locations. IBM’s new product eats all this company data and puts it in one intuitively accessible place.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/ibm-releases-dataworks-to-give-enterprise-data-a-home-and-a-brain/?ncid=rss

  • Facebook, Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft created a partnership to make AI seem less terrifying

    The organization’s goals are objectively noble: to create standards for transparency, algorithmic accountability, fairness, and ethics, while teaching everyone from users to the US government how the technology works. Member companies say they’ll conduct and publish open research on these topics, and contribute financial support to further study. The frequency and content of these studies have not been solidified, and the organization isn’t launching with any initial studies or findings.

    http://qz.com/795034/facebook-google-amazon-ibm-and-microsoft-created-a-partnership-to-make-ai-seem-less-terrifying/

  • Microsoft creates artificial intelligence, research group

    Microsoft has created a 5,000-person engineering and research team focused on artificial intelligence, an effort to reposition the company to capitalize on the rapid growth of software aided by machine-learning algorithms.

    http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-creates-artificial-intelligence-research-group/

Cloud

Datacenter

  • NetApp’s CEO Sees More Growth in the Year Ahead

    And Kurian sees more growth in the year ahead, even though one of his biggest competitors, EMC, just completed a $65 billion merger with Dell. “The history of large mergers in the technology industry are ripe with lessons learned—they’re not easy to pull off,” he tells Fortune’s Susie Gharib. “We see this as a real opportunity to take share at least over the next couple of years.”

    http://fortune.com/video/2016/09/26/netapps-ceo-sees-more-growth/

Software/SaaS

Other

  • The EFF calls on HP to remove DRM from its printers

    In an open letter to HP Inc. President and CEO, Dion Weisler, activist Cory Doctorow calls on the company to take five steps immediately including apologizing to its customers and resorting the original functionality to its printers. HP seemingly knowingly activated the printer ink DRM under the guise of a security update, simultaneously removing features from its printers and violating the trust of its customers.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/the-eff-calls-on-hp-to-remove-drm-from-its-printers/?ncid=rss

  • Oracle cuts pay of top executives [somewhat bogus headline]

    Co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison received $41.5 million, a 35 percent decrease from last year. Co-Chief Executive Officers Safra Catz and Mark Hurd each received about $41 million, a 23 percent decline. The drop for the co-CEOs is accentuated by one-time stock awards valued at $9 million that they received when they were promoted at the end of 2014.

    The three executives were among the 20 highest-paid in the U.S. last year, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index, which values equity awards at the end of the fiscal year, continuing a trend of generous pay for Oracle’s bosses. More than half the company’s investors have voted against its pay practices in each of the last four years, making the company an outlier. About 1 percent of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies have lost in their most recent nonbinding votes, and the average support level is 93 percent.

    http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Oracle-cuts-pay-of-top-executives-9280119.php

  • Why Salesforce might be interested in Twitter

    “Salesforce’s competitors are snapping up [data sources] and will integrate them into their platforms to add additional perspective and intelligence,” Brent Leary, co-founder at CRM Essentials told TechCrunch. “If this deal with Twitter happens, it’s to add a constant flow of information into their AI platform, to marry it with their transactional and customer information,” he added. That combination could provide additional data fuel for Einstein.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/24/why-salesforce-might-be-interested-in-twitter/
    Why Google Needs Twitter More Than Salesforce — and What Facebook Has to Do With It

    But in other circumstances there is a different way to target customers and that’s using ads based on demographics, in Google’s case that’s called display ads. With demographics essentially you can reach users who you know have an interest in what you have to offer. When it comes to this type of advertising, Facebook (FB) is king. Facebook knows your age, sex, behaviors, what you like, it knows what you like to talk about and even what you’ve said. On top of all that, Facebook buys information about its users from third parties to know even more about them.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13750679/1/why-google-needs-twitter-more-than-salesforce-and-what-facebook-has-to-do-with-it.html

  • Meg Whitman and HP Five Years Later: Mission Accomplished?

    “We haven’t done anything stupid in the last four years,” she noted on a September 2015 analyst call, “and we don’t intend to do anything stupid in the future.” (These remarks came four years and one month after HP announced the Autonomy deal.) HP insiders still refer to August 18, 2011, the date that the Autonomy deal was announced, as a dark day in the company’s history.

    http://fortune.com/2016/09/27/whitman-hp-five-year/

  • Kustomer, founded by Salesforce alums, nabs $12.5M to repair customer care

    A new startup called Kustomer is getting ready to come out of stealth with an aim to fix all that by rebuilding the CRM from the point of view of the customer rep. Ambitiously, it is also trying to change the general business mindset in the process. By building a platform that is easy enough for everyone to use and holistic in the data it contains, Kustomer believes that anyone in a company, not just those relegated to the CRM silo, could act as a customer service rep.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/kustomer-customer-care/?ncid=rss

  • Lenovo undergoes another big layoff round, mostly impacting Motorola

    The company is at it again, and while the number is less than list time, it’s still fairly significant, primarily impacting its Motorola Mobility smartphone business. In a statement issued early today, the company is looking to downplay things a bit in contrast to its overall numbers, noting that the moves “[impact] less than two percent of its approximately 55,000 employees globally.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/26/lenovo-layoffs/?ncid=rss

Photo: Jason Blackeye