Tag: Oracle

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Supplier Report: 6/21/2019


Photo by Adi Constantin on Unsplash

There is a looming trade war with China that is getting closer to reality as companies are trying to determine if they can survive without the Chinese manufacturing supply chain. It is getting so serious that some companies (like Foxconn) are firing off press releases that they have capacity outside of China to meet their production goals.

And as China prepares to face off against Trump, the country continues to interfere with communication applications and protocols (like Telegram) impeding their own citizens ability to communicate due to fears of protests (and those efforts didn’t really matter).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Salesforce is buying data visualization company Tableau for $15.7B in all-stock deal

    On the heels of Google buying analytics startup Looker last week for $2.6 billion, Salesforce today announced a huge piece of news in a bid to step up its own work in data visualization and (more generally) tools to help enterprises make sense of the sea of data that they use and amass: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7 billion in an all-stock deal.
    **
    This is a huge jump on Tableau’s last market cap: it was valued at $10.79 billion at close of trading Friday, according to figures on Google Finance. (Also: trading has halted on its stock in light of this news.)

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/10/salesforce-is-buying-data-visualization-company-tableau-for-15-7b-in-all-stock-deal/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Amazon CTO says AI tools like Lex are the next big thing after AWS and it’s not Amazon’s responsibility to make sure Rekognition is used accurately or ethically

    For instance, Rekognition is being used by an anti-sex-trafficking non-profit organisation, Thorn, to scrape classified ad sites and search for matches against a database of missing teenagers.

    But events like Re:Mars demonstrate that Amazon knows it has work to do in gaining the public’s trust in order to go ahead with its ambitions.

    One non-Amazon guest on stage, the AI pioneer Andrew Ng, gave a pretty scathing review of the technology industry’s reputation – and food for thought for his hosts.

    “Even as we lead the world through multiple waves of technological disruption, we’ve not always provided the best leadership. With the rise of the internet, we’ve created tremendous wealth, but we also contributed to wealth inequality. Let’s make sure that this time, with the rise of AI, we take everyone along with us.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48634676

Cloud

  • Amazon executives slam Oracle and Microsoft as the cloud wars heat up

    Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy derided other providers of traditional on-premises database services at the company’s 10th annual public sector conference in Washington DC on Wednesday. AWS has battled Microsoft, Oracle and others for the Department of Defense cloud services contract, which is worth $10 billion and runs for 10 years.

    “I think that most people are pretty frustrated with the older guard database solutions,” Jassy said. “They’re expensive, proprietary, high lock-in. They’re constantly auditing you, fining you unless you buy more from them. It’s just a model that people are sick of. And it’s why people are moving as quickly as possible to more open engines.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/12/economy/aws-jedi-contract-amazon/index.html

Security/Privacy

  • CFOs Grapple With How Much Cybersecurity Spending is Enough

    Finding comfort on cybersecurity spending comes down to developing strong relationships with the chief information security officer and other information technology managers, said Steve Priest, the CFO of JetBlue Airways Corp. “You can’t do everything.” he said during an interview. “You have to trust the subject matter experts to do the job that they’re paid to do.”

    Finance can help, though, by encouraging coordination between IT managers and the teams purchasing equipment, and by requiring purchases go through a competitive bidding process to ensure the company is getting the best deal, he said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cfos-grapple-with-how-much-cybersecurity-spending-is-enough-11560378386

  • Telegram faces DDoS attack in China… again

    The company went on to describe a distributed denial of service attack as when “your servers get GADZILLIONS of garbage requests which stop them from processing legitimate requests. Imagine that an army of lemmings just jumped the queue at McDonald’s in front of you – and each is ordering a whopper,” according to Telegram. “The server is busy telling the whopper lemmings they came to the wrong place – but there are so many of them that the server can’t even see you to try and take your order.”

    This isn’t the first time that someone has tried to take down Telegram at a time when China was experiencing significant unrest. Four years ago, a similar attack struck the company’s service, just as China was initiating a crackdown on human rights lawyers in the country.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/telegram-faces-ddos-attack-in-china-again/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple’s U.S. iPhones Can All Be Made Outside of China If Needed

    “Twenty-five percent of our production capacity is outside of China and we can help Apple respond to its needs in the U.S. market,” said Liu, adding that investments are now being made in India for Apple. “We have enough capacity to meet Apple’s demand.”

    Apple has not given Hon Hai instructions to move production out of China, but it is capable of moving lines elsewhere according to customers’ needs, Liu added. The company will respond swiftly and rely on localized manufacturing in response to the trade war, just as it foresaw the need to build a base in the U.S. state of Wisconsin two years ago, he said.

    The U.S. market accounts for one in every four iPhones sold worldwide, “so it represents a huge portion of Foxconn’s manufacturing business inside China,” Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston said.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/hon-hai-has-enough-ex-china-capacity-to-make-u-s-bound-products

  • Broadcom to Take $2 Billion Hit From Huawei Ban

    Broadcom’s gloomier guidance could spread across the semiconductor industry as other big players, including Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. , begin to reconsider their outlooks in light of the Huawei ban and a broader anxiety about the geopolitical future, analysts say. Huawei is one of the U.S. chip industry’s most lucrative customers.

    “Everybody probably has to cut just due to Huawei if nothing else,” said Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “Almost everybody has some exposure.”

    Some smaller chip companies have already warned that the Huawei ban will ding their revenue. Qorvo Inc., which makes radio-frequency products, and Lumentum Holdings Inc., which makes optical networking products, both reduced their quarterly revenue guidance last month by about $50 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/broadcom-lowers-revenue-outlook-amid-trade-tensions-11560459528

Other

  • IBM to inherit over 13,000 workers from Red Hat

    IBM (IBM) is planning to cut around 1,700 jobs, according to a report from CNBC. The job cut comes as IBM prepares to add Red Hat (RHT) to its corporate family. IBM last year agreed to purchase Red Hat, an open-source software company, for $34 billion. Red Hat had more than 13,000 employees at the end of February this year. IBM itself has more than 340,000 employees worldwide. Therefore, IBM’s headcount is set to swell once the Red Hat deal closes. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

    https://marketrealist.com/2019/06/ibm-cutting-jobs-as-red-hat-deal-closing-nears/

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Supplier Report: 6/14/2019


Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

A week after news broke that Google will likely be under anti-trust investigation, the company announced it plans to acquire data analytics company Looker. I am curious if the Justice Department’s activity will impact this acquisition (Google isn’t doing so well in cloud hosting).

Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up to weaken cloud leader Amazon. Azure will now support some of Oracle’s database products, which should lead to quicker cloud migration for (formerly) on-prem applications.

FedEx is ending their priority shipping relationship with Amazon. Amazon has been building out their own shipping and logistic services for years and FedEx was tired of the customer/competitor dynamic.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google to Acquire Data Analytics Firm Looker for $2.6 Billion

    The Alphabet Inc. unit unveiled a deal on Thursday to acquire Looker, a business-intelligence software and big- data analytics platform, for $2.6 billion in cash. The two companies were well acquainted; Alphabet earlier invested in Looker through its venture-capital arm CapitalG.

    The move indicates Google will continue to pour resources into its Google Cloud division as it remains far behind rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp in cloud computing. The area is a priority of Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, who replaced the unit’s head, Diane Greene, with ex- Oracle executive Thomas Kurian earlier this year. Analysts have long speculated an acquisition as likely.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-acquire-data-analytics-firm-looker-for-2-6-billion-11559829249

  • German Chip Maker Infineon Buys U.S. Rival in $9.4 Billion Deal

    German chip maker Infineon IFNNY 0.18% Technologies AG has agreed to acquire Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CY 0.23% for €8.4 billion ($9.4 billion), the latest in a series of transactions reshaping the industry.

    Infineon shares fell 8.1% to €14.79 on Monday, as analysts questioned whether the company was overpaying for Cypress, especially as global economic fears roil markets. Infineon itself cut its full-year targets in March due to the uncertainty, including a slowdown in the Chinese car market.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/infineon-to-buy-cypress-semiconductor-in-multibillion-dollar-deal-11559540811

  • The Fiat Chrysler-Renault merger is dead over suboptimal ‘political conditions’

    FCA confirmed to TechCrunch that it has withdrawn its offer, largely due to political conditions.

    “FCA remains firmly convinced of the compelling, transformational rationale of a proposal that has been widely appreciated since it was submitted, the structure and terms of which were carefully balanced to deliver substantial benefits to all parties,” according to a company statement provided to TechCrunch. “However, it has become clear that the political conditions in France do not currently exist for such a combination to proceed successfully.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/the-fiat-chrysler-renault-merger-is-dead-over-suboptimal-political-conditions/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Germ-detecting AI and virtual farms: How tech will revolutionize food across the globe in the next 5 years

    AI sensors installed in mobile phones and other portable devices will allow the detection of food-borne pathogens wherever they may appear.

    With this sort of tech, we’ll easily be able, for example, to detect the presence of E. coli or Salmonella in food and to prevent outbreaks. According to IBM: “Mobile bacteria sensors could dramatically increase the speed of a pathogen test from days to second.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-virtual-farms-to-revolutionise-diets-across-the-globe-2019-6

Cloud

  • The Google Outage Highlights the Perils of a Centralized Internet

    Sunday’s issues once again highlighted how fragile the modern internet really is, and how reliant we are on Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud), who collectively dominate the $70 billion cloud computing market.

    The outage also again showcased that however carefully engineers may plan, having a centralized point of failure will inevitably cause headaches—especially when you’ve trusted your entire backend computing power or storage to just one company.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzdak/the-google-outage-highlights-the-perils-of-a-centralized-internet

  • Microsoft (MSFT) Ups Ante in Cloud With Oracle Partnership

    Through this partnership, Oracle will support its software which includes Oracle’s Autonomous Database on Microsoft’s Azure services, comprising AI and analytics capabilities. Meanwhile, Microsoft will offer Oracle’s software to its Windows Azure customers. Further, Oracle will make its software available to Microsoft’s cloud computing customers.

    For instance, customers can now run Oracle software and other applications including Oracle E-Business Suite on Azure. Further, Oracle applications are enabled to utilize Azure Active Directory.

    This flexibility is expected to accelerate digital transformation of business database to public cloud platforms significantly. Overall, the partnership is aimed at providing direct and secure network connectivity, and fast data exchange between the two cloud platforms.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-msft-ups-ante-cloud-142502667.html

Security/Privacy

  • U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers

    Municipalities in general are less prepared than companies due to limited resources and difficulty competing for cybersecurity talent, security professionals say. They are also increasingly reliant on technology to deliver city services and some have aging computer systems, according to Standard & Poor’s.

    Ransomware attacks often start when an employee opens a link or an attachment in a phishing email. Hackers can also exploit vulnerabilities in a security system. The ransomware then blocks files the cyberattackers say they will unlock in return for a payment, typically in bitcoin.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-cities-strain-to-fight-hackers-11559899800

  • Microsoft deletes massive face recognition database

    Microsoft has deleted a massive database of 10 million images which was being used to train facial recognition systems, the Financial Times reports. The database was released in 2016 and was built of online images of 100,000 well-known people.

    The database is believed to have been used to train a system operated by police forces and the military.The deletion comes after Microsoft called on US politicians to do a better job of regulating recognition systems.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48555149
    Microsoft Deleted a Massive Facial Recognition Database, But It’s Not Dead

    “Despite the recent termination of the msceleb.org website, the dataset still exists in several repositories on GitHub, the hard drives of countless researchers, and will likely continue to be used in research projects around the world,” Harvey wrote on Megapixels. A facial recognition challenge this year at Imperial College London plans to use a variant of the MS-Celeb-1M database, and offers download links.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3x4mp/microsoft-deleted-a-facial-recognition-database-but-its-not-dead

  • Google is reportedly arguing that cutting Huawei off from Android threatens US security

    Because Huawei phones are already banned in the US, understanding how Google is making that case that a forked version of Android being sold elsewhere in the world is a serious threat to US national security might seem like a bit of a jump. Although the Financial Times’ sources don’t explicitly lay out Google’s argument, it’s not difficult to imagine how it would go.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/7/18656163/google-huawei-android-security-ban-claims

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Infinidat Announces Data Rescue Program for IBM Storage Customers

    “IBM created the high-end storage market, but aside from its commitment to storage for z/OS mainframes, layoffs at their Tel Aviv development center and their lack of architectural innovation together show an apparent lack of commitment to the open systems storage market,” said Stan Zaffos, Senior Vice President at Infinidat. “The company’s reliance on obsolescent storage architectures and their willingness to lay off developers, most recently its XIV and A9000 developers, has left many IBM storage customers searching for an exit strategy.”
    **
    As part of the program, every IBM customer, globally, with an active support contract for A9000/R, XIV, or other IBM storage solutions, is eligible for no-cost data migration to InfiniBox. The InfiniBox FLX program provides ultra-high performance, simple pay-as-you-go pricing, a 100% availability guarantee, and free total hardware refresh every three years – for life. For customers wishing to purchase the storage, Infinidat also offers a Capacity-on-Demand CapEx model to purchase what you use as you need it. To further mitigate risk, Infinidat will also provide the data migration services to InfiniBox or InfiniBox FLX at no charge for most installations.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/infinidat-announces-data-rescue-program-120000975.html

Other

  • Google Gets Ready for Legal Fight as U.S. Mulls an Antitrust Probe

    Google’s competitors are pressing antitrust enforcers to look far and wide at the company’s practices. Perhaps the most common complaint against Google around the world in recent years is that it uses its search engine to privilege its own content at the expense of its competitors’.

    For example, it created new design features like the “knowledge graph,” which populates the boxes that appear at the top of search, often answering a query without requiring the user to click through to another website. In March, 62% of Google searches on mobile were “no-click” searches, according to research firm Jumpshot. Google has argued that if consumers don’t find the rearranged content useful, they won’t click on it.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-gets-ready-for-legal-fight-as-u-s-weighs-an-antitrust-probe-11559521581
    Google appeals $1.7BN EU AdSense antitrust fine

    The AdSense antitrust decision is the third fine for Google under the Commission’s current antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager — who also issued a $5BN penalty for anti-competitive behaviors attached to Android last summer; following a $2.7BN fine for Google Shopping antitrust violations, in mid 2017.

    Google is appealing both earlier penalties but has also made changes to how it operates Google Shopping and Android in Europe in the meanwhile, to avoid the risk of further punitive penalties.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/google-appeals-1-7bn-eu-adsense-antitrust-fine/

  • FedEx Says It’s Ending Express Shipping Service for Amazon

    Friday’s move also reflects how Amazon has gone from simply a sought-after customer to a direct competitor of FedEx. As Amazon has built its own delivery capacity through a fleet of airplanes and same-day couriers, the internet giant has been able to ship more of its products on its own and control its costs. That has put FedEx in an untenable position of essentially competing with Amazon for Amazon’s own business.

    FedEx is betting on other retailers, which are expanding their e-commerce businesses but still need shipping companies to help them fulfill their express orders. FedEx said e-commerce was expected to double to 100 million packages a day in the United States by 2026.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/business/fedex-amazon-express-delivery.html

  • IRS Wins Again in Closely Watched Intel Tax Case

    The case involves what is known as share-based compensation and where it should be deducted as a business expense. The IRS wrote a regulation that required companies to deduct more of it abroad as opposed to deducting it in the U.S. Especially before the 2017 federal-tax overhaul that lowered corporate rates, companies had an incentive to claim those deductions against the higher U.S. tax rate—and thus pack more of their profits into low-taxed foreign jurisdictions.

    “We disagree with the Tax Court that the 2003 regulations are arbitrary and capricious,” wrote Chief Judge Sidney Thomas, who was appointed by President Clinton. “While the rulemaking process was less than ideal, the [law] does not require perfection.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-wins-again-in-closely-watched-intel-tax-case-11559928738

  • Not Your Daddy’s Regulation: Tech Giants Face A Complicated Reckoning In Washington

    Amazon is ferociously aggressive in many of its business lines, yet it faces fierce competition in nearly all of them. There’s Amazon.com vs. Walmart, Whole Foods vs. the broader grocery industry, AWS vs. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Echo vs. Google Home.

    With such a diverse set of businesses, Amazon will make it hard for regulators to reign in the “bigness” many are hoping it will tackle. Amazon and its fellow tech giants are nothing like the Bell Telephone Company or Standard Oil, which grew dominant by finding a core advantage and defending it at all costs. They have instead built their empires through continual reinvention, and they are far more nimble than their corporate predecessors. Regulators will therefore have to comb through each business line, consider the market dynamics in each, and toe the line between policing anti-competitive behavior and picking winners and losers.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/not-your-daddys-regulation-tech-giants-face-a-complicated

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Supplier Report: 5/31/2019

There were several privacy/security events disclosed over the last week that continues the conversation about how our data is secured…

Google stored passwords in plain text for over a decade,  Snapchat employees spied on users, and a real estate company leaked 885 million real estate documents to the web.

Huawei is a good example of what happens to a company that the US government does not trust. Could this be the first draft of a playbook, or is Huawei unique in their punishment?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • As Amex scoops up Resy, a look at its history of acquisitions

    In addition to Resy, AmEx has been on a buying spree as of late. In March, we reported on its purchase of LoungeBuddy, a former partner that helped travelers with reviews of various airport lounge areas. Also this year, AmEx picked up Pocket Concierge, a firm that we wrote “helps book in-demand restaurants and is similar to OpenTable.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/19/as-amex-scoops-up-resy-a-look-at-its-history-of-acquisitions/

Cloud

  • As Oracle’s growth stagnates, insiders say that its all-important cloud business has suffered layoffs, infighting, and confusion

    But the interesting thing isn’t just how many people Oracle is cutting. It’s also the business units being targeted.

    Specifically: 300 people were cut from Oracle’s Seattle offices in the early rounds of layoffs, including 25% of of the all-important group known internally as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI, one employees told us and another, who was laid off in Seattle, confirmed. Corporations do not have to report layoffs in the state of Washington unless 500 people are impacted in a single location at one time, and Oracle has not publicly reported layoffs in the state.

    This Seattle team is Oracle’s second cloud engineering and development group, but arguably its most important one. Its mission is to build what Oracle calls its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Generation 2 cloud, which is also known internally as OCI. The new cloud has become the centerpiece of Oracle’s whole technology strategy. Gen 2 was announced in the fall.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-insiders-describe-slow-growth-chaotic-cloud-unit-2019-5

  • An Amazon employee explains why thousands of workers want the company to stop selling cloud services to oil companies, just like it won’t sell guns

    Amazon employees submitted a shareholder proposal and held a press conference calling for the company to become a leader in sustainability by vowing to quickly reduce its carbon footprint in line with recommendations by climate scientists.

    They also want their company to ditch the unit that sells cloud computing services to oil and gas companies.

    Their efforts seem to be having an impact, as Amazon has finally promised to share its carbon-footprint data and to reduce the impact of its massive shipping operations.But one leader of the employee protest explains that thousands of employees don’t think Amazon is doing all it can, and haven’t given up the fight.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employee-explains-climate-change-protest-2019-5

Security/Privacy

  • Snapchat employees reportedly snooped on users with ‘SnapLion’ tool

    In total, Motherboard spoke to four former employees and a current employee that verified the existence of the SnapLion tool. Two former employees said that the abuse of the SnapLion tool occurred “several years” ago, but it’s unknown whether it’s still happening today. Emails obtained by Motherboard revealed an employee using the tool to look-up a user email address in a non-law enforcement related context. Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request from Engadget for comment.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/23/snapchat-employees-spied-snaplion-tool/

  • Amazon under greater shareholder pressure to limit sale of facial recognition tech to the government

    Months earlier, shareholders tabled a resolution to limit the sale to law enforcement and government agencies Amazon’s facial recognition tech, called Rekognition. It followed accusations of bias and inaccuracies with the technology, which they say can be used to racially discriminate against minorities. Rekognition, which runs image and video analysis of faces, has been sold to two states so far, and Amazon has pitched Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A second resolution will require an independent human and civil rights review of the technology.

    Now the ACLU is backing the measures and calling on shareholders to pass the resolutions.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/amazon-shareholder-pressure-face-recognition/

  • Google says some G Suite user passwords were stored in plaintext since 2005

    The search giant disclosed the exposure Tuesday but declined to say exactly how many enterprise customers were affected. “We recently notified a subset of our enterprise G Suite customers that some passwords were stored in our encrypted internal systems unhashed,” said Google vice president of engineering Suzanne Frey.

    Passwords are typically scrambled using a hashing algorithm to prevent them from being read by humans. G Suite administrators are able to manually upload, set and recover new user passwords for company users, which helps in situations where new employees are on-boarded. But Google said it discovered in April that the way it implemented password setting and recovery for its enterprise offering in 2005 was faulty and improperly stored a copy of the password in plaintext.

    Google has since removed the feature.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/21/google-g-suite-passwords-plaintext/

  • First American security flaw leaked 885 million real estate documents

    First American Financial Corporation left as many as 885 million real estate documents dating as far back as 2003 exposed, according to Krebs on Security. The company, one of the largest real estate title insurance firms in the US, has already fixed the vulnerability as of Friday afternoon after the security researcher notified it of the flaw. Before the patch rolled out, however, anybody armed with a link to one of the documents hosted on its website could simply change a single digit in the URL to access somebody else’s files. The documents didn’t require a password or any kind of authentication.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/25/first-american-leak/

Software/SaaS

  • Google suspends Huawei’s Android support

    Reuters sources claim Google has suspended transactions with Huawei that require transferring proprietary hardware and software, hobbling much of its smartphone business outside of China. It “immediately” loses access to future OS updates beyond the Android Open Source Project, according to the insider, and upcoming phones would have to go without official apps like the Google Play Store and Gmail.

    The company is still “internally” discussing which services are going away, the source said. Google would cut off all tech support and collaboration for Android and services, however.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/19/google-pulls-android-support-from-huawei/

  • Microsoft, once considered a stodgy software maker, has outperformed tech unicorns since 2015

    For example, ride-hailing company Uber was valued at $55 billion at the time, and is now only at $68 billion following its IPO this month. Investors valued Snap at $16 billion in late 2015, and the company’s inability to find a profitable business model since its 2017 IPO has left it worth $15 billion on the public market. Pinterest went public in April and has a market cap of $12.9 billion, up just a bit from its $11 billion valuation in 2015. Dropbox has slipped from $10 billion then to a market value of $9.4 billion now.

    Microsoft, meanwhile, is cranking out earnings from its dominant Windows products and its ability to push legacy clients to emerging cloud products like Azure and Office 365. Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has recorded eight straight quarters of year-over-year double-digit sales growth. In April, it became the third public company to reach a $1 trillion market cap, though it’s fallen some since then.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/25/microsoft-has-grown-more-than-a-basket-of-unicorns-since-2015.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft and Sony strike partnership for gaming and AI services

    “The two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services,” Microsoft said in a statement.

    Sony’s existing game and content-streaming service will also set to be powered by Microsoft Azure in the future. The companies also hope to build better development platforms for the content creator community.

    On top of this, the Microsoft and Sony will work together on AI, semiconductor and image sensing technology.

    https://www.gigabitmagazine.com/ai/microsoft-and-sony-strike-partnership-gaming-and-ai-services

  • China’s largest chipmaker is delisting from the Nasdaq

    Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) announced in a filing published Friday that it plans to delist next month ending a 15-year spell as a public company in the U.S. The firm will file a Form 25 to delist on June 3, which is likely to see it leave the NYSE around ten days later. SMIC, which is backed by the Chinese government and state-owned shareholders, will focus on its existing Hong Kong listing going forward but there will be trading options for those holding U.S-based ADRs.

    In its announcement, SMIC said it plans to delist for reasons that include limited trading volumes and “significant administrative burden and costs” around the listing and compliance with reporting.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/24/smic-nasdaq-delisting/

Other

  • With Barry Padgett leaving SAP, what’s next for new Intelligent Spend Group?

    Barry Padgett has left SAP only weeks after being named president of the newly created SAP Intelligent Spend Group (ISG), a combination of SAP Ariba, SAP Concur and SAP Fieldglass.

    Padgett had previously served as president of SAP Ariba, before being promoted to the new role as leader of the combined group. Spend Matters sources suggest he has accepted a new role as chief revenue officer for Stripe, a payments company, although this is unconfirmed at this time.

    https://spendmatters.com/2019/05/21/barry-padgett-leaving-sap-and-new-intelligent-spend-group/

  • Ford will slash 7,000 salaried jobs by August

    This cuts will result in annual savings of about $600 million, Hackett said in the email. “We also made significant progress in eliminating bureaucracy, speeding up decision making and driving empowerment as part of this redesign,” he wrote.

    The layoffs were anticipated by employees. Ford informed employees last October that it would be restructuring the company, a move that would likely result in layoffs and voluntary buyouts.

    The reorganization is part of a broader strategy to prepare for a future with autonomous vehicle technology, electrification and unconventional ownership models.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/ford-will-slash-7000-salaried-jobs-by-august/

  • Hertz-Accenture lawsuit highlights billing issues inside agencies

    “This disagreement is less an indictment of the consultant model and more of a wake-up call to slow down and do a better job scoping a project,” wrote Mark Bachmann, partner and chief client officer at independent agency Marcus Thomas in an email.

    Clients have been looking more closely at agency billings, which has resulted in the further splintering of agency-client relationships. Some of that has been a direct result of the issue at play in this suit: that the rise of digital means the old model of scoping a project and therefore deciding the payment plan simply doesn’t work anymore. As Digiday previously wrote, making 10 YouTube videos isn’t the same as making one TV spot.

    This suit and the disagreement between Accenture and Hertz are likely part of that trend, a sign that the change clients were looking for in the move from agencies to consultancies may not be as great as they had anticipated.

    https://digiday.com/marketing/wake-call-hertz-accenture-lawsuit-highlights-scoping-issues-agency-model/

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 5/17/2019

There is growing public pressure on Facebook to make some kind of change. Former employees and government officials want to break up the company calling it a monopoly, but are Facebook’s services essential?

Seeing this drama unfold, Google is quickly pivoting to privacy-based position. In recent weeks the company is allowing users to limit tracking and delete information Google has stored about usage.  Very smart move… but is it enough?

Meanwhile Oracle just can’t give up on Project Jedi.

Acquisitions

  • Apple buys companies at the same rate you buy groceries

    This weekend, CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that Apple purchases a new company every two to three weeks on average, and has bought between 20 and 25 companies in the last six months alone.

    That’s roughly as often as I bought groceries during some… oh, let’s just call them “fresh vegetable adjacent” periods of my life.

    You know how human beings never fail to be surprised when they get to the cash register and see how much of their paycheck is about to turn into food? I wonder if Apple ever feels that way. I’d guess not, considering how the company’s reportedly sitting on $225.4 billion dollars of cash on hand alone — enough to settle a historic array of lawsuits with Qualcomm 50 times over, if push came to shove.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18531570/apple-company-purchases-startups-tim-cook-buy-rate

  • Marvell to Acquire Aquantia, Eying Automotive Networking Market

    Marvell on Monday announced that it had reached an agreement to buy the networking specialist firm Aquantia for $452 million. The acquisition will allow Marvell to significantly augment their current networking capabilities, with the company intending to use Aquantia’s technology in future PC, enterprise, and especially in-vehicle applications.

    Under the terms of the deal, Marvell will pay Aquantia shareholders $13.25 per share in cash, bringing the total value of the deal to $452 million. The transaction has already been approved by board of directors of both companies, and subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close by the end of calendar year 2019.

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/14300/marvell-to-acquire-aquantia-eying-automotive-networking-market

Artificial Intelligence

  • The Morning After: All the important stuff from Google I/O

    An AI-powered assistant that responds to voice commands faster than you can type or swipe, even offline? That’s what Google promised at I/O, with demos showing off how its next-generation assistant could operate across and through several apps, using voice control almost exclusively to get the information users need when they need it. Plus, it learns what you like and can even make restaurant or menu suggestions based on those preferences. Expect to see these features roll out on Pixel phones first later this year.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/08/the-morning-after-google-io-highlights/

Cloud

  • Oracle Alleges AWS Recruited DoD Officials To Influence JEDI Cloud Award

    After Oracle first raised the issue, the DoD Inspector General, assisted by the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad, reopened a prior investigation and again concluded those potential improprieties didn’t impact the integrity of the process. A previous Government Accountability Office investigation also found no flaw warranting a change in how the military was selecting a cloud vendor.

    But Oracle argued Tuesday the military’s contracting officer was wrong to take Ubhi’s claims at face value during the investigation, noting he actively sought to return to AWS, where he previously worked, during his short stint at DoD, where for a time he worked as a JEDI project manager.

    https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/oracle-alleges-aws-recruited-dod-officials-to-influence-jedi-cloud-award

  • SAP embraces cloud customization – with interesting partners

    SAP is launching SAP Embrace, a new initiative to enable users of the SAP S/4 HANA ERP system to move it to the cloud, with platform, software, services and infrastructure customized to their specific industry needs. Interestingly, SAP is collaborating with cloud competitors Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud. SAP Embrace customers will be able to select one of those three cloud services providers as a hyperscaler, and also leverage SAP’s network of global strategic service partners.

    https://www.chainstoreage.com/technology/sap-embraces-cloud-customization-with-interesting-partners/

Security/Privacy

  • Google Says It Has Found Religion on Privacy

    Google plans to permit users to navigate its maps, watch videos on YouTube and search for information in “incognito mode,” limiting the amount of information shared with the company. It will also allow users to delete web and app activity history automatically after three months or 18 months.

    Google added incognito mode to its Chrome browser a decade ago.

    The company also said it would make it easier for users to find and delete information they have shared with the company, including location data in maps. For its Android operating system, Google said a new update would simplify how to limit the sharing of location data with app providers.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/technology/google-privacy-tools.html

Software/SaaS

  • Symantec CEO Abruptly Resigns Amid Financial Turmoil

    Symantec CEO Greg Clark abruptly resigned yesterday immediately before the embattled security company reported its fourth-quarter 2019 earnings, which included weak enterprise sales and disappointing forecasts for the first quarter and full 2020 fiscal year.

    The company appointed Richard Hill, current Symantec director and former chairman and CEO of Novellus Systems, as interim president and CEO, effective immediately, and said it will begin a search to find a permanent CEO.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/symantec-ceo-abruptly-resigns-amid-financial-turmoil/2019/05/

  • IBM sells $28.6b of bonds to help fund Red Hat buy

    The Red Hat purchase will push the combined company’s borrowings above $US60 billion with debt that’s more than three times a key measure of earnings, said Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Schiffman and Mike Campellone. Though IBM won’t buy back shares in the next two years, it still risks a potential downgrade to the BBB range, the tier of corporate debt that’s just above junk, they wrote.

    IBM took out a $US20 billion bridge loan to fund the Red Hat deal and will use some of its cash pile, the company said in October when the transaction was announced. S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings cut IBM one level to A at the time, the sixth-highest investment-grade rating, while it remains on review for downgrade at Moody’s Investors Service.

    https://www.afr.com/markets/debt-markets/ibm-sells-28-6b-of-bonds-to-help-fund-red-hat-buy-20190509-p51li8

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft open-sources its quantum computing development tools

    This move, the company says, is meant to make “quantum computing and algorithm development easier and more transparent for developers.” In addition, it will make it easier for academic institutions to use these tools, and developers, of course, will be able to contribute their own code and ideas.

    Unsurprisingly, the code will live on Microsoft’s GitHub page. Previously, the team had already open-sourced a number of tools and examples, as well as a library of quantum chemistry samples, but this is the first time the team is open-sourcing core parts of the platform.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/06/microsoft-open-sources-its-quantum-computing-development-tools/

  • Apple’s would-be sapphire glass supplier charged with fraud

    Apple loaned $578 million to a company called GT Advanced Technologies, which was supposed to build highly scratch-resistant screen covers from synthetic sapphire crystals. Instead, it produced flawed “boules” of sapphire that couldn’t be cut into displays and went bankrupt months after it started. Now, the SEC has announced that it’s charging the company and its ex-CEO with fraud for allegedly withholding key information from stockholders.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/06/apple-sapphire-glass-supplier-charged-with-fraud/

Other

  • Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, calls for Facebook to be broken up

    The tl;dr of Hughes’ argument against Facebook/Zuckerberg being allowed to continue its/his reign of the internet knits together different strands of the techlash zeitgeist, linking Zuckerberg’s absolute influence over Facebook, and therefore over the unprecedented billions of people he can reach and behaviourally reprogram via content-sorting algorithms, to the crushing of innovation and startup competition; the crushing of consumer attention, choice and privacy, all hostage to relentless growth targets and an eyeball-demanding ad business model; the crushing control of speech that Zuckerberg — as Facebook’s absolute monarch — personally commands, with Hughes worrying it’s a power too potent for any one human to wield.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/09/facebook-co-founder-chris-hughes-calls-for-facebook-to-be-broken-up/

    Facebook is not a monopoly, and breaking it up would defy logic and set a bad precedent

    Hughes and others have cited historical precedents such as the government’s breakup of Standard Oil and AT&T as a justification for stricter antitrust regulation against tech giants. But these companies not only had clear monopolies with pricing power that hurt consumers, they also offered products that were vital to the economy.

    Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are only three of many ways people can communicate digitally, and while many people spend hours every week using them, they are replaceable and inessential — and, in fact, getting away from Facebook and Instagram might make people happier. Even Hughes acknowledges, when he finds himself scrolling through Instagram at idle hours, “The choice is mine, but it doesn’t feel like a choice.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/09/facebook-should-not-be-broken-up-commentary.html

  • Elon Musk is going to trial for calling a cave diver a pedophile on Twitter

    Defamation law doesn’t apply to opinions or derogatory hyperbole, and Judge Wilson concluded that Musk’s case would be stronger if he’d simply tweeted an insult. But Musk “did not call [Unsworth] a ‘pedo guy’ and leave it there,” writes Wilson. “Rather, he made follow-up statements indicating that he believed his statements to be true.” That included the emails to BuzzFeed, where Musk “purported to convey actual facts and even suggested that the BuzzFeed reporter call people in Thailand to confirm his narrative.”

    The decision doesn’t mean Musk is guilty, but it means Unsworth’s case is strong enough to deserve a trial. A pre-trial conference will take place on October 7th. This won’t be the first time Musk has gone to court for some bad tweets. He recently settled a separate lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of making misleading financial statements on Twitter.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/10/18564625/elon-musk-vernon-unsworth-pedo-guy-tweets-defamation-lawsuit-trial-date-set

Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/19/2019

IBM and Oracle have been eliminated from the Pentagon’s “Project JEDI” RFP, after almost a year of complaints and public accusations that the bidding event was rigged in Amazon’s favor.

Meanwhile Google, who bowed out of Project JEDI bidding early, made several cloud-based announcements this week to differentiate themselves from AWS and Microsoft. Thomas Kurian is wasting no time.

Foxconn is getting blasted in the press this week due to their (lack of) plans at their Wisconsin manufacturing plant. There are reports that rented office buildings are almost completely empty and the overall strategy for the new plant make absolutely no sense.

Acquisitions

  • Accenture announces intent to buy French cloud consulting firm

    Accenture says that Cirruseo’s strength and deep experience in Google’s cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions should help as Accenture expands its own AI practice. Google TensorFlow and other intelligence solutions are a popular approach to AI and machine learning, and the purchase should help give Accenture a leg up in this area, especially in the French market.

    “The addition of Cirruseo would be a significant step forward in our growth strategy in France, bringing a strong team of Google Cloud specialists to Accenture,” Olivier Girard, Accenture’s geographic unit managing director for France and Benelux said in a statement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/accenture-announces-intent-to-buy-french-cloud-consulting-firm/

Artificial Intelligence

  • A Google Brain Program Is Learning How to Program

    In a new paper, Google Brain researchers propose using neural networks to model human source code editing. Effectively this means treating code editing as a sequence and having a machine learn how to “write code” like in a natural language model — by analysing a short paragraph of editing, the model can extract intent and leverage that to generate subsequent edits.

    To understand the intent behind developers’ source code editing actions, the main challenge was how to learn from earlier editing sequences in order to predict upcoming edits. Researchers explain the AI models needed to understand “the relationship of the change to the state” rather than “the content of the edits” or “the result of the edit.”

    https://medium.com/syncedreview/a-google-brain-program-is-learning-how-to-program-27533d5056e3
    (Thanks JD!)

Cloud

  • Google’s hybrid cloud platform is coming to AWS and Azure

    So with Anthos, Google will offer a single managed service that will let you manage and deploy workloads across clouds, all without having to worry about the different environments and APIs. That’s a big deal and one that clearly delineates Google’s approach from its competitors’. This is Google, after all, managing your applications for you on AWS and Azure.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/googles-anthos-hybrid-cloud-platform-is-coming-to-aws-and-azure/

  • What’s Been Lacking at Google’s Cloud? Enough Humans

    Google Cloud had prioritized developing technology over sales and support, said Gene Reznik, strategy chief at the consulting firm Accenture PLC, which helps clients deploy tech from major cloud services including Google’s.

    “There is a lot of hand-holding required” with big corporate customers, Mr. Reznik said. But Google often had product engineers rather than account managers handle customer calls. “It really wasn’t their day job,” he said, adding that Mr. Kurian brings a corporate credibility to Google’s “consumer-centric culture.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-been-lacking-at-googles-cloud-enough-humans-11554724802

  • Amazon and Microsoft Are 2 Finalists for $10 Billion Pentagon Contract

    The Pentagon said Wednesday that Amazon and Microsoft were the final candidates for a hotly contested $10 billion contract to bring modern cloud computing to the Defense Department.

    IBM and Oracle had also bid for the project, known as the joint enterprise defense infrastructure, or JEDI. But the Defense Department concluded that they did not meet the minimum requirements for the program.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/technology/amazon-microsoft-jedi-pentagon.html

  • Why IBM Is Leaving The Marketing Cloud Business

    Rather than scrabbling over marketshare in the marketing cloud space, where Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle have been dropping billions, IBM is focusing on core technologies and infrastructure, AI, blockchain, global services, consulting and creating a cloud environment to compete with Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

    “That’s the big game IBM is hunting,” Stanhope said.

    But even back when IBM seemed like it was ramping up its focus on marketing technology, there wasn’t necessarily buy in from the big wigs at the top. IBM also lost one of its marketing product cheerleaders when David Kenny, who led efforts at IBM Watson, left to take on the CEO role at Nielsen in November 2018.

    https://adexchanger.com/platforms/why-ibm-is-leaving-the-marketing-cloud-business/

Security

  • Amazon’s Alexa isn’t just AI — thousands of humans are listening

    What the company doesn’t tell you explicitly, as highlighted by an in-depth investigation from Bloomberg published this evening, is that one of the only, and often the best, ways Alexa improves over time is by having human beings listen to recordings of your voice requests. Of course, this is all buried in product and service terms few consumers will ever read, and Amazon has often downplayed the privacy implications of having cameras and microphones in millions of homes around the globe. But concerns about how AI is trained as it becomes an ever more pervasive force in our daily lives will only continue to raise alarms, especially as most of how this technology works remains beyond closed doors and improves using methods Amazon is loathe to ever disclose.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18305378/amazon-alexa-ai-voice-assistant-annotation-listen-private-recordings

  • Nearly 70 percent of hotel websites leak personal data, Symantec study finds

    The main issue involved booking confirmation emails, according to Symantec principal threat researcher Candid Wueest. Many of the messages include an active link that directs to a separate website where guests can access their reservation having to log in again. The booking code and the guest email are often in the URL itself, which in and of itself isn’t a big deal.

    But, like many businesses, hotels share your personal data with third parties, meaning that your booking code and email are visible to them as well. The attacker would only need access to your booking code and email in order to find your address, full name, cell phone number, passport number and other highly sensitive information. Symantec also found that a smaller number of hotels didn’t encrypt the links sent in confirmation emails, giving attackers another window of opportunity.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/10/nearly-70-percent-of-hotel-websites-leak-personal-data-symantec/

  • Hackers publish personal data on thousands of US police officers and federal agents

    TechCrunch spoke to one of the hackers, who didn’t identify his or her name, through an encrypted chat late Friday.

    “We hacked more than 1,000 sites,” said the hacker. “Now we are structuring all the data, and soon they will be sold. I think something else will publish from the list of hacked government sites.” We asked if the hacker was worried that the files they put up for download would put federal agents and law enforcement at risk. “Probably, yes,” the hacker said.

    The hacker claimed to have “over a million data” [sic] on employees across several U.S. federal agencies and public service organizations.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/12/police-data-hack/

Software/SaaS

  • Google’s new AI tools scan documents, take phone calls, and search for products

    Google today launched Document Understanding AI in beta, a serverless platform that automatically classifies, extracts, and structures data within contained within scanned physical and digital documents. It integrates with existing products from Iron Mountain, ​Box​, DocuSign, ​Egnyte​, ​Taulia​, UiPath, ​Accenture, and others, and Google says that customers who’ve tapped it for custom document classification have seen up to 96% accuracy.

    “Most companies have billions of documents — and moving that information into digital or cloud-native solutions where it can be easily accessed and analyzed can involve many hours of manual entry,” Besik said. “Document Understanding AI can help automate document processing workflows. This means you can … start making data-driven business decisions faster and more accurately.”

    https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/10/googles-new-ai-tools-scan-documents-take-phone-calls-and-search-for-products/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft says its data shows FCC reports massively overstate broadband adoption

    Part of the issue is that internet providers essentially just report their own coverage via a form, and the FCC reports it more or less as fact. That’s a problem not just when a mistake on a form adds tens of millions of subscribers that don’t actually exist, but when large ISPs overstate their coverage so they don’t have to pay to fill in the gaps.

    Microsoft’s suggestions, which it has made to Members of Congress and the FCC (though it won’t, as I originally wrote here, testify in the Senate on Wednesday) would make it far more difficult to fib on the Form 477, which as written seems to provide enormous leeway for a company to imply coverage that isn’t actually there.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/microsoft-says-its-data-shows-fcc-reports-massively-overstate-broadband-adoption/

Other

  • Thousands of Amazon employees ask the company to adopt a climate change plan

    Employees, citing Amazon’s work for oil and gas companies and what they describe as insufficient plans for action on climate change, are asking the company to commit to several goals. Among them, they ask the company to make “a complete transition away from fossil fuels,” and to advocate politically for climate-friendly policies. They also ask the company to adopt a shareholder resolution calling for a climate change plan.

    In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson highlighted company initiatives, like work to reduce the carbon footprint of shipments, and described Amazon’s commitment to environmental issues as “unwavering.”

    “Amazon’s sustainability team is using a science-based approach to develop data and strategies to ensure a rigorous approach to our sustainability work,” the spokesperson said. “We have launched several major and impactful programs and are working hard to integrate this approach fully across Amazon.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18304800/amazon-employees-open-letter-climate-change-plan

  • Foxconn is confusing the hell out of Wisconsin

    In February, a Foxconn executive cheerfully likened the company’s vague, morphing plans to designing and building an airplane midflight.

    Such statements have not been particularly reassuring to residents of Wisconsin, where state and local governments have already taken very concrete actions to prepare the way for what was supposed to be an enormous manufacturing facility. Taxpayers have already spent more than $300 million on roadwork, infrastructure, and land acquisition related to the project. In August, Moody’s downgraded Mount Pleasant’s credit rating over the extreme levels of debt it took on for the area’s $763 million incentive package, costs that have since grown closer to a billion, in part because it had to take out higher interest long-term loans after Foxconn’s plans changed. Dozens of residents have been relocated, some under threat of eminent domain.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18296793/foxconn-wisconsin-location-factory-innovation-centers-technology-hub-no-news

  • Google Sued Over Abuse of Search Power, Opening Path for More Claims

    In the suit filed in a Berlin court Friday, Idealo internet GmbH, a leading price-comparison service that is majority-owned by publisher Axel Springer SPR 2.61% SE, alleged that Google made it harder for users of its search engine to find links to Idealo after the U.S. company started promoting its own price-comparison offering, now called Google Shopping. Alphabet’s European entity, Google Ireland Ltd., is also targeted by the suit.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/suit-could-raise-googles-liabilities-in-price-comparison-case-11555056397

  • Net Neutrality Vote Passes House, Fulfilling Promise by Democrats

    But the legislation, the Save the Internet Act, faces long odds in the Republican-led Senate. The Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, said this week that the legislation would be “dead on arrival.” Earlier this week, the Office of Management and Budget advised the White House to veto the law if it reached the president’s desk. The office said in a letter that since the law had been overturned, the broadband industry had thrived, a good sign of how deregulation helped the economy.

    The legislation would prohibit blocking and throttling web traffic and would categorize broadband as a service open to heavy regulation. Supporters say the regulation would prevent companies from blocking or slowing the delivery of content like videos. Opponents say it would strap broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast with heavy-handed restrictions, and could lead to price controls.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/technology/net-neutrality-vote.html

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