Tag: Oracle

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Supplier Report: 1/18/2019

IBM had a week of making excuses: First CEO Ginni Rometty had to defend Watson medical after reports from oncologists that the system is incorrectly diagnosing medical issues. Then the company had to defend the lack of growth in blockchain by essentially saying companies need to invest first and hope to see results. Finally, the company is failing to meet their hiring targets in Baton Rouge and are having a job fair – but someone needs to question why the company has a consulting hub in Baton Rouge in the first place.

Acquisitions

  • Amazon Web Services Acquires CloudEndure – Confirmed

    “As an AWS Advanced Technology Partner since 2016, CloudEndure has long joined forces with AWS to help customers future-proof their businesses. This acquisition expands our ability to deliver innovative and flexible migration, backup, and disaster recovery solutions.”

    Israeli media outlets estimate the deal to be worth about $200 to $250 million Dollars.

    https://esellercafe.com/amazon-web-services-acquires-cloudendure-confirmed/

  • Alibaba acquires German big data startup Data Artisans for $103M

    Alibaba has paid €90 million ($103 million) to acquire Data Artisans, a Berlin-based startup that provides distributed systems and large-scale data streaming services for enterprises.

    Data Artisans was founded in 2014 by the team leading the development of Apache Flink, an open source large-scale data processing technology. The startup offers its own dA Platform, with open source Apache Flink and Application Manager, to enterprise customers that include Netflix, ING, Uber and Alibaba itself.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/08/alibaba-data-artisans/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM CEO: Watson has not failed

    “Watson for Oncology is doing very well — very well,” Ms. Rometty told STAT during a photo opportunity at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where she delivered a keynote address. STAT has requested interviews with Ms. Rometty and other company executives for months with no success.

    In 2018, STAT reported several controversies involving IBM’s health division, including one of its physician customers calling Watson for Oncology a “piece of sh–,” and numerous employee layoffs. A key complaint about Watson for Oncology, which offers cancer treatment recommendations, is that it’s biased toward American treatment methods. However, IBM said it plans to add regional treatment guidelines to Watson for Oncology, as well as real-world data on patient outcomes, to boost user satisfaction.

    https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/artificial-intelligence/ibm-ceo-watson-has-not-failed.html

  • Microsoft Could Help Kroger Counter Amazon’s Growth

    Kroger recently partnered with Microsoft to test out two data-driven connected stores. The two renovated stores will use a smart retail system powered by Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and digital shelves, which display prices, promotions, and nutritional information on screens in front of products. Kroger introduced the shelves, which are already being used in nearly 100 stores, last year. The test stores will help guide shoppers through the aisles to the products they want to buy.

    All those devices will be tethered to Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, which is already Kroger’s preferred cloud platform. Microsoft and Kroger will also jointly market a commercial retail as a service (RaaS) product to the grocer’s industry peers.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/01/11/microsoft-could-help-kroger-counter-amazons-growth.aspx
    After Amazon-Whole Foods, Microsoft-Kroger: The Grocery Revolution Is Happening

    “The two outfitted Kroger locations, in Monroe, Ohio and Redmond, Wash., will feature digital shelving displays with real-time price updates and product information, as well as digital advertisements personalized to each shopper,” CNBC published on Monday.

    The news of the Microsoft-Kroger partnership dovetails with a report from RBC Capital Markets indicating that Amazon’s cashierless grocery stores take in 50% more revenue than conventional counterparts. Amazon has said it may open up as many as 3,000 Amazon Go stores by 2021, suggesting the possibility of a $4.5 billion business.

    https://streetfightmag.com/2019/01/09/after-amazon-whole-foods-microsoft-kroger-the-grocery-revolution-is-happening/

Cloud

  • Microsoft wins $1.76 billion defense contract: Pentagon

    Microsoft Corp has been awarded a five-year contract worth $1.76 billion for delivering enterprise services for the Defense Department, Coast Guard and intelligence services, the Pentagon said on Friday.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-defense/microsoft-wins-1-76-billion-defense-contract-pentagon-idUSKCN1P52HB

  • AWS gives open source the middle finger

    AWS argues that while MongoDB is great at what it does, its customers have found it hard to build fast and highly available applications on the open-source platform that can scale to multiple terabytes and hundreds of thousands of reads and writes per second. So what the company did was build its own document database, but made it compatible with the Apache 2.0 open source MongoDB 3.6 API.

    If you’ve been following the politics of open source over the last few months, you’ll understand that the optics of this aren’t great. It’s also no secret that AWS has long been accused of taking the best open-source projects and re-using and re-branding them without always giving back to those communities.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/09/aws-gives-open-source-the-middle-finger/

  • AWS, Coupa Expand IT Spend Visibility For Corporates

    Coupa users can link their accounts to Amazon Web Services to automatically have AWS invoices sent to the Coupa platform. The integration means companies using both Coupa and AWS can more quickly process those invoices, while gaining enhanced visibility into their spend with AWS services.

    The integration deploys Coupa’s InvoiceSmash solution, which accelerates invoice processing and payments for users, aimed at enabling companies to capture early payment discounts from their suppliers.

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/aws-coupa-it-spend-visibility-management/

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle inks stadium naming rights deal with San Francisco Giants

    The deal appears to be one of the richest of its kind in North American professional sports, which seemingly would trickle through to the Giants’ product on the field. The team already boasted the second-highest payroll in the majors last season at around $203 million.

    Kevin Bartram, principal of Bartram Partnerships, a brand sponsorship consultancy, told Bloomberg the $200 million to $350 million price tag “seems very fair.” He was one of the consultants who brokered the Pacific Telesis-Giants partnership, according to the news outlet.

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/09/oracle-inks-stadium-naming-rights-deal-with-san-francisco-giants/

    Is this the best use of Oracle’s money at the moment?

  • Why more people aren’t using blockchain, according to IBM

    “We believe that blockchain is a team sport. For a blockchain-based solution to work successfully, it requires multiple entities to come together in a symbiotic relationship and agree on common principles, operating model and governance,” Parzygnat says. “The very nature of blockchain-based solutions require the vision and leadership of a governing body to convene the ecosystem in a common blockchain-based network. Then it requires each enterprise member to acknowledge their core competencies and compete in the market by defending or enhancing them.”

    https://www.finder.com.au/why-more-people-arent-using-blockchain-according-to-ibm

    Translation: “Pay for the roads first, and maybe we will built them”

Other

  • Chinese Huawei Executive Is Charged With Espionage in Poland

    The Chinese national’s detention follows the December arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer in Canada, at the U.S.’s request, on allegations the company violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Unlike that case, the Polish charges relate directly to suspicions by Washington and other Western governments that China could use Huawei equipment, or its employees, to help it spy on foreign governments and companies.

    Polish officials said Huawei itself wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing. They didn’t detail the charges or say whether any sensitive information was compromised. Officials also arrested a Polish national on the same charge.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-huawei-executive-is-charged-with-espionage-in-poland-11547201100?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Google Nears Win in Europe Over ‘Right to Be Forgotten’

    At issue in the case is the right, established by the court in 2014, for EU residents to demand that search engines remove links containing personal information—such as a home address—from searches for their names. Under the 2014 ruling, search engines must balance those requests against the public’s right to access a link associated with the searched-for name, taking into account, for instance, whether the person is a public figure.

    Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general for the court, argued in Thursday’s nonbinding opinion that if the EU orders removal of content from websites accessed outside the region, there is a danger that other jurisdictions would use their laws to block information from being accessible within the EU.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-court-adviser-recommends-limited-scope-for-right-to-be-forgotten-11547112114

  • Apple’s trillion-dollar market cap was always a false idol

    It’s worth noting that Apple has hardly been in alone taking a huge hit on its stock price, especially tech stocks, which have been taking a beating since November on Wall Street. Want to talk a trillion dollars, how about the biggest names in tech losing a trillion (that’s with a T, folks) in value in one stretch in November. When Apple halted trading last week to announce lower than expected revenue, the stock dove even further, as it confirmed the worst fears of investors.

    Worse, Chinese consumers have driven iPhone sales just as the Chinese economy has hit a massive speed bump this year. In June, Reuters reported shockingly weak growth. In November, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese economy was slowing down long before the president started a trade war.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/apples-trillion-dollar-market-cap-was-always-a-false-idol/

  • IBM now heading to Lafayette to recruit workers for Baton Rouge hub

    The company will conduct a career fair Jan. 19 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at South Louisiana Community College in the Devalcourt Building at 320 Devalcourt St., a news release from Louisiana Economic Development said. IBM is looking to fill 75 available positions in Baton Rouge, the release said.

    IBM fell short on its promise to create 800 jobs in Baton Rouge by 2017 in exchange for state incentives. The company reached an agreement with the state to meet that goal next year and will have to pay a penalty of $10,000 for each job below the threshold of 800.

    https://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2019/01/11/ibm-now-heading-to-lafayette-to-recruit-workers-for-baton-rouge-hub/
    No offense to Louisiana – but it is an odd place to start a work hub. Yes, there are colleges (36 4-year schools), but it isn’t overflowing with students compared to other states, and it doesn’t seem like people want to stay there.
    IBM laying off more than 300 workers in RTP

    The jobs, which were part of an IBM subsidiary called Seterus, will be permanently terminated “no earlier than March 11,” according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification on Jan. 9.

    The 310 job cuts come a week after IBM agreed to sell Seterus to the mortgage services company the Mr. Cooper Group.

    https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article224283465.html

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 1/11/2019

Apple is having a rough week because they (finally) realized that people don’t want to pay $1,400 for a new phone every year (can we make rotten apple jokes now?). The company needs to shift to a services model ASAP – will they build or will they buy?

IBM is selling IP because they need to get cash quickly to cover their acquisition of Red Hat. Their most recent sell off is a mortgage platform called Seterus to a company called Mr. Cooper Group. I am left wondering why IBM had a mortgage group in the first place.

Continuing 2018’s trend of “you data is never going to be safe” – password management app Blur accidentally exposed user data on their AWS platform.

Acquisitions

  • Mr. Cooper buys IBM mortgage platform that brought in $200 million last year

    Coppell-based Mr. Cooper Group Inc. is continuing to expand its mortgage servicing business with Thursday’s purchase of IBM’s Seterus platform.

    Mr. Cooper said the deal bolsters its portfolio by adding servicing rights to $24 billion in mortgages and a subservicing contract for an additional $24 billion in mortgages. Terms of the transaction weren’t immediately disclosed.

    https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2019/01/03/mr-cooper-buys-ibm-mortgage-platform-brought-200-million-last-year

  • Google picks up company behind Q&A app

    Google has quietly acquired Superpod, a startup that had built a question-and-answer mobile app, Axios has learned. Google paid less than $60 million to “acqui-hire” the founders and purchase some of Superpod’s assets, according to a source.

    The bigger picture: The search giant hasn’t been shy about its ambitions for Google Assistant, the voice-activated virtual assistant that it debuted in 2016. Superpod, which lets users ask questions and receive answers from experts, could help Google bolster its virtual assistant’s ability to answer users’ questions.

    https://www.axios.com/google-acquires-superpod-qa-app-38d68263-7122-447b-9d81-58fadc404cb9.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • Forbes is building more AI tools for its reporters

    Over the summer, the business publisher, which just had its most profitable year in more than a decade, rolled out a new CMS, called Bertie, which recommends article topics for contributors based on their previous output, headlines based on the sentiment of their pieces and images too. It’s also testing a tool that writes rough versions of articles that contributors can simply polish up, rather than having to write a full story from scratch. The CMS is currently available to Forbes’ editorial staff and senior contributors in North America, and will be rolled out to all of its contributors in North America and Europe in the first quarter of 2019. The AI story-writing tool, which Forbes’s product team is experimenting with, does not have an immediate roll-out date.

    https://digiday.com/media/forbes-built-a-robot-to-pre-write-articles-for-its-contributors/

  • PepsiCo is using robots to deliver snacks to college students

    The autonomous snackbots, built by Y-Combinator startup Robby Technologies, can travel 20 miles on a charge, and are equipped with a camera, headlights and all-wheel drive to handle rough or wet terrain. Once it arrives, you simply release the lid, grab your snacks and close it to complete the sale. The app presumably takes care of the security and dispensing end of things.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/04/pepsico-robot-snack-delivery/

Cloud

  • What’s Behind Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud: Q&A with Oracle VP Kyle York

    Why is Oracle calling the new technology “Gen 2”—what is different from other cloud technology?
    As with most new things, the first rev is not always built for the long-term success. First generation public cloud offerings were not architected to accommodate traditional application architectures. They were architected for net-new cloud native applications. Think websites, mobile apps, or ecommerce storefronts—certainly not financial systems, government workloads, or data-intensive applications. Many enterprise workloads simply cannot run in hypervisor-based environments, as they don’t provide the performance predictability and high availability often required by traditional enterprise applications. They also don’t play nice with the tooling and security infrastructure historically deployed on-premise, in a complex ecosystem cultivated over decades.

    Oracle offers the most flexibility in the public cloud, allowing companies to run traditional and cloud-native workloads on the same platform. This enables our customers to reduce operational overhead and costs and enable connectivity and shared data between these workloads.

    http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/Whats-Behind-Oracles-Gen-2-Cloud-QandA-with-Oracle-VP-Kyle-York-129198.aspx

Security

  • Marriott Says Hackers Swiped Millions of Passport Numbers

    The incident marked one of the largest data breaches in history, rivaled only by a hack of Yahoo Inc. in 2013 and 2014.

    The company said early Friday in a release that the number of guests involved in the data breach is lower than the original 500 million, but it didn’t specify a number.

    Marriott said a total of about 383 million records was “the upper limit” for the number potentially compromised in the incident. That figure includes passport numbers, email addresses and payment-card data of some guests, the company said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-says-hackers-swiped-millions-of-passport-numbers-11546605000?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Hackers Dump Data on Merkel, Politicians in Giant German Leak

    It’s unclear at this point whether the data release is linked to the 2015 Bundestag hack, and how significant it is. It includes two email addresses and a fax number the perpetrators link to Merkel, and a letter by SPD lawmakers sent to the chancellor in 2016 that criticizes her handling of the refugee crisis. The data connected to Merkel was not considered sensitive, Fietz said.

    The data, which Germany is trying to remove, also includes what appears to be chat transcripts from Economy Minister Peter Altmaier. More mundane material includes rental-car contracts and letters, some of them several years old. The attack appears to have affected all major German political parties with the exception of the populist Alternative for Germany.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/hackers-release-personal-data-of-hundreds-of-german-politicians

  • Blur password manager exposes 2.4M users on misconfigured AWS cloud instance

    While finding no evidence that the document had been accessed, Abine is nonetheless warning users that their accounts may have been compromised. Users are being asked to reset their master passwords for Blur and to set up two-factor authentication as an additional security measure.

    Blur is not the first password manager to have had security issues. LastPass was infamously hacked in 2015 before having to issue an urgent patch in 2017 after it was discovered that plugins related to the product could expose customer passwords.

    LastPass, though, was a different case because it was specifically targeted by hackers. The fact that a company offering password protection software would “accidentally” expose user data on an AWS S3 instance is a different level of incompetence.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/01/03/blur-password-manager-exposes-2-4m-user-details-misconfigured-aws-instance/

Software/SaaS

  • Apple’s Precarious and Pivotal 2019

    Today, the stock is down nearly 10%. Tens of billions of dollars have been shaved off of Apple’s market cap, literally overnight. The company is now the 4th most valuable corporation in the world. That sounds like a great thing until you remember that until recently, it was the most valuable company in the world — and for much of the past several years, this was the case by far.

    Also:

    And then there’s the real standout part of the paragraph: “consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies”. Once again, this translates into English as: we pushed the price of the iPhone too far. And whereas before, such prices were obfuscated by things like carrier contracts, that world is shifting. And Apple hasn’t shifted fast enough or strongly enough to account for this.

    https://500ish.com/apples-precarious-and-pivotal-2019-f4f8cea3993a

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Why the iPhone Is Finally Fading

    You’ve probably heard before that A.I. and voice are the future. That’s still on track to be true, even though it hasn’t happened overnight. (The future rarely does.) It’s coming first in the form of speakers such as Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, with Apple’s HomePod and others playing catch-up. While the big tech companies don’t yet report sales figures for these devices, studies show the market expanding rapidly, with nearly a quarter of U.S. households owning one as of last fall, according to Nielsen. Some analysts predict that figure will top 50 percent by 2022.

    Meanwhile, the sector is growing at rates reminiscent of smartphones’ early days. A report by Strategy Analytics estimated that Amazon’s Echo business grew 64 percent from 2017 to 2018, while Google’s Home sales boomed 420 percent. That’s before we even start counting all the other devices that are being sold with Alexa, Google Assistant, or other voice AI services built in, or the many more that are voice-compatible.

    https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/apple-iphone-decline-china-replacement-alexa-siri.html

Other

  • Salesforce’s Marc Benioff unplugged for two weeks, and had a revelation that could change the tech industry

    All that relaxation led Benioff to one big revelation: He’s too busy.

    Weeks at work are filled with dinners, parties, events and business council meetings exclusively for CEOs, meaning that if anyone from Salesforce is to attend, it has to be him. Meanwhile, he’s trying to run a 30,000-person company, build Salesforce towers across the globe, bolster his philanthropy, invest in start-ups, mentor other business leaders and become a louder voice on a number of social and political issues.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/30/salesforce-marc-benioff-talks-tech-ethics-time-magazine-and-vacation.html

  • The case for why Big Tech is violating antitrust laws

    The nearly 20-year-old case of US v. Microsoft illustrates how today’s tech giants are breaking the law. The court held that Microsoft used its monopoly power in “Intel-compatible desktop PC operating systems” to squash the Netscape browser by requiring computer makers to instead install Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser. Rather than competing on the merits, Microsoft used its monopoly power to try to take over the internet browser market. Ironically, if the Department of Justice had not sued Microsoft to stop its anticompetitive behavior, Google might not exist! After taking over the internet browser market, Microsoft could have required computer makers to use its own search engine, too.

    Google, Amazon and Facebook are following the same playbook. The tech giants have “platform privilege” — the incentive and ability to prioritize their own goods and services over those of competitors that depend on their platforms. By doing so, they contend they are improving their products and benefiting customers. An entrepreneur can create a superior product or service and still get crushed because Big Tech is controlling the game and playing it, too.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/02/perspectives/big-tech-facebook-google-amazon-microsoft-antitrust/index.html

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Supplier Report: 1/4/2019


This edition of Supplier Report is a bit more reflective than forward facing thanks to several end-of-year posts. This week we get some context on how Huawei grew and how Amazon is potentially hiding its growth. There is speculation about acquisitions and what some companies are doing with their excess cash.

And I can’t properly close out 2018 without some Larry Ellison news!

Acquisitions

  • Will Microsoft Acquire Oath (Verizon Media Group)?

    The business unit, Verizon Media Group, faces tough competition. Revenue for the division fell from $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017 to $1.8 billion in the third quarter of 2018.

    Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, who joined the business in August 2018, set out to restructure the company. He told investors during the third quarter investors’ call that he doesn’t expect to meet the company’s “previous target of $10 billion of [annual] revenue [for Oath] by 2020.”

    Apparently, the company really just wants to build Oath’s technical capabilities such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality into its other businesses across Verizon. But the company could license those patents from Microsoft, if they choose to sell the assets to the Redmond, Washington-based company.

    https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/329813/will-microsoft-acquire-oath-verizon-media-group.html

  • 3 Tech Companies That Are Spending Billions to Buy Back Their Own Stock

    Earlier this year, memory specialist Micron announced a share-repurchase program good for $10 billion. While that’s not quite in the same ballpark as Microsoft’s $40 billion buyback, let alone Apple’s enormous $100 billion share-repurchase authorization, the size of a buyback needs to be considered in the context of a company’s market capitalization. Microsoft’s and Apple’s market capitalizations are each north of $700 billion, while Micron’s is currently around $35 billion.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/12/30/3-tech-companies-that-are-spending-billions-to-buy.aspx

Artificial Intelligence

  • The Verge 2018 tech report card: AI

    This reckoning has been most visible as a parade of negative headlines about algorithmic systems. This year saw the first deaths caused by self-driving cars; the Cambridge Analytica scandal; accusations that Facebook facilitated genocide in Myanmar; the revelation that Google helped the Pentagon train drone surveillance tools; and ethical questions over the tech giant’s human-sounding AI assistant. The research group AI Now described 2018 as a year of “cascading scandals” for the field, and it’s an accurate, if disheartening, summary.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/30/18137429/2018-tech-recap-artificial-intelligence-robot-machine-learning-facial-recognition

Cloud

  • What Amazon Isn’t Telling Investors About Its Revenue

    The rule doesn’t require companies to break down their revenue in any specific way. But if they discuss particular sources of revenue in earnings announcements or conference calls, or if they provide their top decision-makers with particular details about revenue, such as how individual products are selling, then they are supposed to consider breaking out the revenue on that basis for investors too.

    In Amazon’s case, the SEC noted in an August letter that the company said publicly it had topped 100 million paid Prime members globally and shipped more than five billion items with Prime world-wide in 2017. It asked Amazon to disclose its percentage of sales attributable to Prime members.

    Amazon declined, telling the SEC it didn’t believe sales to Prime customers was useful information and that Prime membership is “only one element” of its business. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment further.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-amazon-isnt-telling-investors-about-its-revenue-11545480000

Software/SaaS

  • How Facebook Keeps Messenger From Crashing on New Year’s Eve

    In addition to shifting loads, the Messenger team has developed other levers that it can pull “if things get really bad,” says Ahdout. Every new message sent to a server goes into a queue as part of a service called Iris. There, messages are assigned a timeout—a period of time after which, that message will drop out of the queue to make room for new messages. During a high-volume event, this allows the team to quickly discard certain types of messages, such as read receipts, to focus its resources on delivering ones that users have composed.

    “We set up our systems so that if it comes to that, they start shedding the lowest-priority traffic,” says Ahdout. “So if it came to it, Iris would rather deliver a message and drop the read receipt, rather than drop the message and deliver the read receipt.”

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/how-facebooks-software-engineers-prepare-messenger-for-new-years-eve

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Intel to get 700 million shekel grant for Israel expansion

    Israel will give Intel Corp (INTC.O) a 700 million shekel ($185 million) grant in return for a planned $5 billion expansion of its production operations in Israel.

    Intel is one of the biggest employers and exporters in Israel, where many of its new technologies are developed. Earlier this year it submitted plans to upgrade its Kiryat Gat manufacturing plant in southern Israel.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-intel-idUSKCN1OO0JD

  • 911 emergency services go down across the US after CenturyLink outage

    CenturyLink, one of the largest telecommunications providers in the U.S., provides internet and phone backbone services to major cell carriers, including AT&T and Verizon. Data center or fiber issues can have a knock-on effect to other companies, cutting out service and causing cell site blackouts.

    In this case, the outage affected only cellular calls to 911, and not landline calls.

    Several states sent emergency alerts to residents’ cell phones warning of the outage.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/28/911-service-outage-centurylink/

Other

  • How Huawei Took Over the World

    In its early days, Huawei was accused of stealing technology, including by Cisco Systems Inc. in a 2003 lawsuit, which Huawei settled without admitted wrongdoing. Now it has the biggest R&D budget of any tech company in China, pouring $13 billion last year into developing its own technologies, outpacing Intel Corp. and spending almost as much as Google parent Alphabet Inc. Huawei says that 80,000 people—45% of its employees—work on R&D. They make chips, design phones and work on 5G technology.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-huawei-took-over-the-world-11545735603

  • JD.com Tries to ‘Change the Narrative’ With Business Restructuring

    Investors have become increasingly worried about Mr. Liu’s unusually tight grip over his company. He controls nearly 80% of the company’s voting rights and the board can’t meet without him unless he recuses himself. His concentration of authority became a focus of concern among some analysts after Mr. Liu’s brief arrest in August and during the subsequent months when accusations against him were pending.

    JD.com’s American depositary receipts have fallen 49.1% in the past year, closing at $21.10 on Wednesday. While shares of the nation’s large tech firms have been beaten down by concerns about China’s slowing economy and government regulation, JD.com’s fall was especially dramatic. Some analysts attributed the swoon to the uncertainty surrounding a criminal prosecution.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/jd-com-to-change-the-narrative-with-business-restructuring-11545902638?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Tesla adds Oracle founder Larry Ellison to board of directors

    Tesla is Ellison’s second-largest investment as of October, Ellison said then. Ellison owns 3 million shares in the company, according to the announcement. He also said that he and Musk are close friends. Wilson-Thompson spent 17 years as an executive at the Kellogg Company, and currently serves as the executive vice president and global chief human resources officer of the Walgreens Boots Alliance, the holding company that sits above Walgreens.

    Tesla was required to add two new independent board members as part of the settlement Elon Musk and the company signed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this year. The SEC had charged Musk with securities fraud in September over the “false and misleading” statements he made on Twitter in August, when he suddenly announced plans to turn Tesla back into a privately held company. He quickly settled with the agency two days after rejecting its initial offer.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/28/18158832/tesla-larry-ellison-board-of-directors-oracle-founder

Photo by Thomas Lipke on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 12/28/2018

Phone companies are taking over my report this week for a variety of reasons: T-mobile’s acquisition of Sprint is happening, AT&T is lying about 5G access (which is nothing new apparently), and Samsung is making chips for IBM.

And while these companies try to grow from their core businesses, Oracle is struggling with their big shift to cloud… but they have options.

Acquisitions

  • T-Mobile Takeover of Sprint Clears U.S. National Security Panel

    Neither Deutsche Telekom nor SoftBank is required to significantly change its own business or operations as a result of Cfius’s demands, according to the terms of the merger. Any potential changes are limited to T-Mobile, Sprint and their respective subsidiaries, deal documents show.

    Still, the global campaign by the other U.S. national security officials outside of Cfius was bearing some fruit. Deutsche Telekom on Friday said it was reviewing its procurement strategy for vendor equipment given “the global discussion about the security of network elements from Chinese manufacturers.” SoftBank last week made similar comments about its network in Japan.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/t-mobile-takeover-of-sprint-clears-u-s-national-security-panel-11545076651

Artificial Intelligence

  • This Health Startup Won Big Government Deals—But Inside, Doctors Flagged Problems

    To prove their point, the doctors had spent about a day carrying out an audit on their own initiative, according to one current and one former staff member, who asked not to be named for fear of legal repercussions. They found that around 10% to 15% of the chatbot’s 100 most frequently suggested outcomes, such as a chest infection, either missed warning signs of a more serious condition like cancer or sepsis or were just flat-out wrong, according to one insider. The clinicians had gone directly to Parsa that Friday in the hope of stalling the new release. They made their case, and after some negotiation he agreed to delay the rollout.

    But the doctors were still troubled. Interviews with current and former Babylon staff and outside doctors reveal broad concerns that the company has rushed to deploy software that has not been carefully vetted, then exaggerated its effectiveness.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/12/17/this-health-startup-won-big-government-dealsbut-inside-doctors-flagged-problems/#724a98c2eabb

Cloud

  • Oracle Revenue Flat as Push to Bolster Cloud Business Continues

    Oracle officials sought to reassure investors about the cloud business during a Monday conference call with analysts, highlighting strong software-as-a-service bookings in the latest period and Oracle’s competitive edge from its autonomous database.

    “We need more than just a great database,” said Larry Ellison, the company’s co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer. “We also need first-class infrastructure to run the database on, and we know finally have that.”

    Overall, Oracle reported second-quarter profit rose 5% to $2.33 billion, or 61 cents a share. Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, profit rose to 80 cents a share from 69 cents a share.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracle-revenue-flat-as-push-to-bolster-cloud-business-continues-11545084073

Security

  • China appears to have breached HPE and IBM, hacked into clients’ computers

    The attacks were part of a Chinese campaign known as Cloudhopper, which the United States and Britain on Thursday said infected technology service providers in order to steal secrets from their clients.

    While cybersecurity firms and government agencies have issued multiple warnings about the Cloudhopper threat since 2017, they have not disclosed the identity of technology companies whose networks were compromised.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/china-hacked-hpe-and-ibm-and-then-went-after-their-clients-reports-2018-12
    IBM says no evidence that ‘sensitive’ data was hacked by China

    “IBM has been aware of the reported attacks and already has taken extensive counter-measures worldwide as part of our continuous efforts to protect the company and our clients against constantly evolving threats,” Ed Barbini, vice-president for external relations and spokesman for New York-headquartered IBM, said in a text message.

    “We take responsible stewardship of client data very seriously, and have no evidence that sensitive IBM or client data has been compromised by this threat,” stated Mr Barbini.

    https://www.thenational.ae/business/technology/ibm-says-no-evidence-that-sensitive-data-was-hacked-by-china-1.804980

Software/SaaS

  • There’s ‘no way’ customers would migrate from Oracle to Amazon database software, Ellison says

    Amazon made its database technology available on the cloud long before Oracle did, Ellison said, but now Oracle is making its database technology readily available to customers in the cloud. The move lessens the chance customers will opt to move off Oracle technology. Such migrations are “just incredibly expensive and complicated and you’ve got to be willing to give up tons of reliability, tons of security, tons of performance to go ahead and do it,” Ellison said.

    https://www.ciodive.com/news/theres-no-way-customers-would-migrate-from-oracle-to-amazon-database-sof/544639/

  • Red Hat Flat as IBM’s $34B Purchase Nears

    Red Hat’s total revenues increased 13.2 percent year over year to $847 million for the third quarter of its fiscal 2019. That was lower than the 21.5 percent surge the company posted for the same quarter last year, and just shy of forecasts.

    The company closed 100 deals during the quarter valued in excess of $1 million. Red Hat CFO Eric Shander added that, “Strong renewals of our largest deals also helped drive these results with all of our top 25 deals renewing at an upsell rate above 120 percent.”

    Red Hat CEO and President Jim Whitehurst said that the company added more than 100 new customers to both its OpenShift and Ansible platforms during the quarter. OpenShift is Red Hat’s Kubernetes-focused enterprise container product while Ansible is its DevOps automation platform.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/red-hat-flat-as-ibms-34b-purchase-nears/2018/12/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Samsung to Manufacture IBM’s 7nm Power CPUs

    IBM’s announcement noted that it has had a strong alliance in developing new process technologies with Samsung for the past 15 years. Back in 2015, IBM announced that its IBM Research Alliance, which includes Samsung, was able to produce the first 7nm EUV test chip. IBM will soon be able to take advantage of this node, too, although it doesn’t look like it will be among the first to use it.

    “This collaboration is an important milestone for Samsung’s foundry business as it signifies confidence in Samsung’s cutting-edge high performance EUV process technology,” Ryan Lee, Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-ibm-7nm-power-cpu-hpc,38278.html

Other

  • AT&T will put a fake 5G logo on its 4G LTE phones

    According to FierceWireless, AT&T will display an icon reading “5G E” on newer phones that are connected to LTE in markets where the carrier has deployed a handful of speed boosting — but still definitively 4G — technologies. The “E,” displayed smaller than the rest of the logo, refers to “5G Evolution,” the carrier’s term for networks that aren’t quite 5G but are still faster than traditional LTE.

    If this sounds sadly familiar, it’s because AT&T pulled this exact same stunt during the transition to LTE. The company rolled out a speed-boosting 3G tech called HSPA+, then got all of its phone partners — even Apple! — to show a “4G” logo when on that kind of connection.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/21/18151764/att-5g-evolution-logo-rollout-fake-network

Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 12/21/2018

Verizon is taking a $4.6B write down of their AOL and Yahoo acquisitions, discovering what most people said at the time of their Yahoo purchase – they made a bad decision.

The company also announce over 10,000 Verizon employees will be volunteering to leave their positions.

Oracle continues to struggle with their cloud position in the wake of Thomas Kurian leaving for Google. The company continues to protest and take legal action against the DoD over the way they conducted the JEDI RFP… because that’s how you endear yourself to someone you want to do business with later.

Acquisitions

  • Intel and TPG in talks to sell McAfee to Thoma Bravo for significantly more than $4.2 billion

    Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is in early discussions to acquire security software company McAfee from TPG and Intel for a significant premium over the company’s 2016 $4.2 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Talks may still fall apart and a deal announcement isn’t expected soon, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/14/intel-tpg-in-talks-to-sell-mcafee-to-thoma-bravo.html

  • SoftBank invests in parking startup ParkJockey pushing valuation to $1 billion

    Along with the SoftBank investment news, ParkJockey also announced that it was acquiring two of the largest parking operators in North America. The startup, with help from Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Capital and debt financing from Owl Rock, said it had reached an agreement to acquire Imperial Parking Corporation, a North American-based parking management company often referred to as Impark. The agreement follows ParkJockey’s acquisition of parking management operator Citizens Parking Inc.

    The investment puts the ParkJockey valuation to more than $1 billion, reported Miami Herald.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/softbank-invests-in-parking-startup-parkjockey-pushing-valuation-to-1-billion/

  • GE Announces New Industrial IoT Software Business

    In establishing GE Digital as a separate, wholly owned subsidiary, GE CEO Larry Culp is giving GE Digital perhaps its best chance of survival. He’s also creating an opportunity for GE shareholders to leverage any success down the road. But can GE Digital be successful as a standalone company?

    The opportunity before a new GE Digital is to capitalize on the reputation of Predix as a solid platform for industrial IoT. Unencumbered by having to supply IT services to the various GE industrial divisions, the new GE Digital should be more nimble and responsive to market opportunities.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2018/12/14/ge-announces-new-industrial-iot-software-business/#fc03cc94b1ce

  • Trello acquires Butler to add power of automation

    What Butler brings to Trello  is the power of automation, stringing together a bunch of commands to make something complex happen automatically. As Trello’s Michael Pryor pointed out in a blog post announcing the acquisition, we are used to tools like IFTTT, Zapier and Apple Shortcuts, and this will bring a similar type of functionality directly into Trello.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/trello-acquires-butler-to-add-power-of-automation/

Artificial Intelligence

  • The Deadly Recklessness of the Self-Driving Car Industry

    The newest and most glaring example of just how reckless corporations in the autonomous vehicle space can be involves the now-infamous fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, where one of Uber’s cars struck and killed a 49-year-old pedestrian. The Information obtained an email reportedly sent by Robbie Miller, a former manager in the testing-operations group, to seven Uber executives, including the head of the company’s autonomous vehicle unit, warning that the software powering the taxis was faulty and that the backup drivers weren’t adequately trained.

    “The cars are routinely in accidents resulting in damage,” Miller wrote. “This is usually the result of poor behavior of the operator or the AV technology. A car was damaged nearly every other day in February. We shouldn’t be hitting things every 15,000 miles. Repeated infractions for poor driving rarely results in termination. Several of the drivers appear to not have been properly vetted or trained.”

    https://gizmodo.com/the-deadly-recklessness-of-the-self-driving-car-industr-1831027948

Cloud

  • Oracle earnings: Chronic cloud concerns create crisis of confidence

    In a quarterly survey of 36 Oracle partners, J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Murphy found most results to be “underwhelming.”

    “In the aftermath of former President Thomas Kurian’s departure to Google, metrics are listless and dull for Pace of Business, Revenue Expectation, and Oracle’s Momentum / Technology Vision,” Murphy wrote. “‘Failure to innovate’ is being mentioned.”

    “Amazon, Microsoft MSFT SAP SAP and Google are most frequently mentioned as becoming more competitive with Oracle,” the J.P. Morgan analyst said. “Partners view Oracle as being ‘way back in the cloud arms race’ and ‘not sure they can catch up at this point.’”

    https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/1FF18130-FD69-11E8-95C1-5E5DFA743B98

  • Amazon Intervenes in Oracle’s JEDI Lawsuit

    In addition to the alleged conflicts of interest, Oracle’s lawsuit takes issue with the Pentagon’s decision to award the contract to a single company, similar to arguments it made in a bid protest the Government Accountability Office denied in November.

    In its motion to intervene, AWS called Oracle’s allegations “meritless” and contended it has “direct and substantial economic interests at stake” in the lawsuit; the granted motion gives AWS the legal right to defend its proprietary, financial and reputational interests that could arise in the case.

    https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/12/amazon-intervenes-oracles-jedi-lawsuit/153559/

  • Verizon Admits Defeat With $4.6 Billion AOL-Yahoo Writedown

    The wireless carrier slashed the value of its AOL and Yahoo acquisitions by $4.6 billion, an acknowledgment that tough competition for digital advertising is leading to shortfalls in revenue and profit.

    The move will erase almost half the value of the division it had been calling Oath, which houses AOL, Yahoo and other businesses like the Huffington Post.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/verizon-writes-down-4-6-billion-of-value-of-aol-yahoo-business

Security

  • Chinese Hackers Breach U.S. Navy Contractors

    The data allegedly stolen from Navy contractors and subcontractors often is highly sensitive, classified information about advanced military technology, according to U.S. officials and security researchers. The victims have included large contractors as well as small ones, some of which are seen as lacking the resources to invest in securing their networks.

    One major breach of a Navy contractor, reported in June, involved the theft of secret plans to build a supersonic anti-ship missile planned for use by American submarines, according to officials. The hackers targeted an unidentified company under contract with the Navy’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-is-struggling-to-fend-off-chinese-hackers-officials-say-11544783401

  • Equifax breach was ‘entirely preventable’ had it used basic security measures, says House report

    The report confirmed most of what was already known, but added new color and insights that were previously unreported. The credit agency failed to patch a disclosed vulnerability in Apache Struts, a common open source web server, which Homeland Security had issued a warning about some months before. The unpatched Apache Struts server was powering its five-decades-old(!) web-facing system that allowed consumers to check their credit rating from the company’s website. The attackers used the vulnerability to pop a web shell on the server weeks later, and managed to retain access for more than two months, the House panel found, and were able to pivot through the company’s various systems by obtaining an unencrypted file of passwords on one server, letting the hackers access more than 48 databases containing unencrypted consumer credit data.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/equifax-breach-preventable-house-oversight-report/

    The people at Equifax want you to forget about this, we have to keep reminding ourselves that this was not acceptable and ensure other companies with this data are held to higher standards.

Software/SaaS

  • IBM Hopes To Strengthen ‘Do Not Call’ Registries With Blockchain

    The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is hoping that by using blockchain to keep tabs on the system, it will make it easier to figure out who is abusing the system and how. The proposed platform would record who made a “Do Not Call” request, the telephone numbers accused of violating the request, and mobile telephone portability data. By having this information on a shared ledger, it will theoretically be easier to identify fraud quickly.

    https://www.ethnews.com/ibm-hopes-to-strengthen-do-not-call-registries-with-blockchain

Other

  • Verizon announces 10,400 employees will voluntarily leave the company

    Verizon today announced 10,400 employees are taking buyouts to leave the company. That’s about 7 percent of the company’s worldwide workforce. This is part of an effort to trim the telecom giant’s workforce ahead of its push toward 5G.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/verizon-announces-10400-employees-will-voluntarily-leave-the-company/

  • Why Apple Chose Austin, Seattle and Culver City for Its New Jobs Push

    Each location where it announced expansion plans Thursday reflects a different facet of Apple’s evolving model. Culver City gives Apple a Hollywood homebase as it pushes into video programming. Seattle is a machine-learning hub where it can develop algorithms that personalize streaming-music playlists and improve Siri. San Diego and Austin offer semiconductor engineers who can advance the customized-chip efforts that help Apple wring more money out of its iPhones, iPads and Macs.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-new-job-push-reflects-shifting-strategy-and-changing-identity-11544792403

  • Why the Amazon Invasion in New York and Virginia Will Be Slow

    Before workers can move in, Amazon needs to remodel temporary offices it is leasing in Long Island City and Crystal City, which will take several months. Amazon already has plenty of office space in both metro areas, so it won’t need to rush construction, these people said. It could take roughly two years before Amazon is able to break ground on its new New York campus, and potentially a little sooner for Northern Virginia, due to various needed site approvals and other preconstruction

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-amazon-invasion-in-new-york-and-virginia-will-be-slow-11544697000

  • Huawei CFO freed on bail ahead of extradition

    A British Columbia Supreme Court justice has granted Meng bail after her attorney and family made a case for her conditional release. She’s paying $10 million CAD ($7 million of it in cash) and must stay in the province, report to a supervisor, agree to around-the-clock surveillance, pay for security, live in a Vancouver area house owned by her husband (Liu Xiaozong) and remain home between 11PM and 6AM.

    Liu also promised both $1 million in cash as well as the $14 million value of two Vancouver homes.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/11/huawei-cfo-freed-on-bail/

    Inside Huawei’s Secret HQ, China Is Shaping the Future

    In the past two years, the largest internet companies formed semiconductor units to improve their cloud offerings and AI applications, such as image recognition and voice assistance. Huawei’s chip design unit, HiSilicon, has been around since 2004. It started working on customized chips to handle complex algorithms on hardware before the cloud companies did. Research firm Alliance Bernstein estimates that HiSilicon is on pace for $7.6 billion in sales this year, more than doubling its size since 2015.

    “Huawei was way ahead of the curve,” said Richard, the analyst.

    Yet in terms of sales and operations, Huawei’s cloud business is meager next to its larger rivals. The company spent about $13 billion on research and development in 2017, up more than 17 percent from the previous year. Its rivals in the cloud market have cut similarly sized checks. “Huawei has concluded that if it does not offer future solutions via the cloud, where its customers are migrating, someone else will,” said Siow Meng Soh, a research manager for GlobalData Plc.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/huawei-furthers-china-s-grand-tech-ambitions-amid-meng-detention

Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash