Supplier Report: 8/10/2018
Big mergers seems to be getting push back. The AT&T acquisition of Time-Warner is still under scrutiny (as is the Judge that approved it) and the Sinclair acquisition of Tribune was officially shut down. Elon Musk also might be over running a publicly traded company and is thinking about taking Telsa private.
In other news, IBM is still struggling with Watson and bots might pick your veggies in the near future.
Acquisitions
- AT&T Not Out of the Legal Woods Yet
In the original case, the government argued that AT&T would be able to dictate higher carriage fees to competing distributors by threatening to withhold its cable networks from rival pay-TV providers, leading to higher prices for consumers. Judge Leon concluded that the facts didn’t uphold that. Antitrust experts say the government is likely to argue that the judge defined the market too loosely, allowing AT&T’s argument that its competition includes tech firms like Netflix , Facebook and Amazon.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-not-out-of-the-legal-woods-yet-1533549600
DOJ’s Behind-the-Scenes Struggles With Judge in AT&T CaseJeffrey Jacobovitz, an antitrust lawyer with Arnall Golden Gregory LLP who isn’t connected with the case, said judges have their own styles for administering trials, though sidebar conferences generally happen more in jury trials, so jurors won’t be influenced. There was no jury in the AT&T trial.
“It’s unusual for a judge to have voluminous sidebars when it’s the judge resolving the ultimate issues,” Mr. Jacobovitz said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dojs-behind-the-scenes-struggles-with-judge-in-at-t-case-1533682305
- Sinclair’s Bid to Monopolize Local TV News Is Officially Dead
Said behavior included what critics say were “sham” divestment deals, where Sinclair attempted to offload some stations to companies it still controlled in a bid to pretend the deal would fall within media ownership limits. Currently, the law states no one broadcaster can reach more than 38% of households (Sinclair would have reached 72% had the deal been approved).
Sinclair’s efforts were so brazen, they forced even the historically mega-industry-friendly FCC chief Ajit Pai to shovel the deal off to an administrative law judge, a move traditionally seen as a death knell for such megadeals.
- Elon Musk is seriously considering taking Tesla private
“The reason for doing this is all about creating the environment for Tesla to operate best,” Musk began. Being a public company means being subjected to wild swings in stock prices (it even spiked earlier today after his tweet talking about taking the company private), and such volatility can be a “major distraction” for both Tesla’s workforce and shareholders. It’s the latter Musk seems to want to mute by going private, as he lamented the pressure that putting out quarterly reports (which are mandated by law for public companies) puts on the company to make decisions that will look better in the short term but not serve Tesla best in the long run. He also noted that going private would avoid stock shorting attempts to harm the company.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/07/elon-musk-admits-want-take-tesla-private/
Artificial Intelligence
- Employees at Google, Amazon and Microsoft Have Threatened to Walk Off the Job Over the Use of AI
There is certainly a lot to worry about. Widespread use of facial-recognition technology by law enforcement can spell the end of speech, association and privacy rights (just think about the ability to identify, catalog and store thousands of facial images from a boisterous political rally). As O’Neill reminds us in her book, the algorithms employed in large chain store hiring processes and credit worthiness decision are opaque and lack self-correction mechanisms. They give off an air of objectivity and authority while encoding the prejudices of the people who programmed them. Weapons systems combining face recognition and social-media access can pick off opponents more efficiently than the most ruthless assassin. The images of swarm-drone warfare in Slaughterbots are the stuff of nightmares.
- Your vegetables are going to be picked by robots sooner than you think
Root AI is focused on the 2.3 million square feet of indoor farms that currently exist in the world and is hoping to expand as the number of farms cultivating crops indoors increases. Some estimates from analysis firms like Agrilyst put the planned expansions in indoor farming at around 22 million square feet (much of that in the U.S.).
While that only amounts to roughly 505 acres of land — a fraction of the 900 million acres of farmland that’s currently cultivated in the U.S. — those indoor farms offer huge yield advantages over traditional farms with a much lower footprint in terms of resources used. The average yield per acre in indoor farms for vine crops like tomatoes, and leafy greens, is over ten times higher than outdoor farms.
- IBM Has a Watson Dilemma
Recommending personal medical treatment is a taller order. The software needs to be trained with data on what has worked in the past, including details on patients’ medical histories and treatment outcomes. That information is often recorded in different formats and owned by different companies, and isn’t always complete or consistent.
Moreover, human doctors still have a lot to learn about the science of disease, including cancer.
Oncology won’t be “a great space for making [AI] products” until there’s better data about patients, spanning genetic, environmental, lifestyle and health information, said Bob Kocher, a medical doctor and partner at venture-capital firm Venrock in Palo Alto, Calif. In the near term, most of the benefits from AI in the health-care field will come in administrative tasks such as billing, he added.
Cloud
- AWS error exposed GoDaddy business secrets
The information involved in the security breach appeared to describe GoDaddy’s architecture, as well as “high-level configuration information for tens of thousands of systems and pricing options for running those systems in Amazon AWS, including the discounts offered under different scenarios,” according to UpGuard.
Configuration files for hostnames, operating systems, workloads, AWS regions, memory, CPU specifications, and more were included in the exposed cache, which described at least 24,000 systems.
“Essentially, this data mapped a very large scale AWS cloud infrastructure deployment, with 41 different columns on individual systems, as well as summarized and modeled data on totals, averages, and other calculated fields,” the cybersecurity firm said.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-error-exposed-godaddy-server-secrets/
- DXC Technology and AWS join forces for new integration practice
DXC Technology and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are joining forces to build a new integrated practice focused on delivering IT migration, application transformation and industry-specific cloud services.
The multibillion-dollar DXC – AWS Integrated Practice is part of a multi-year, global agreement that also encompasses joint development, marketing, sales, and delivery of AWS solutions. Specifically, these services include managed security and compliance services for AWS; dedicated VMware Cloud on AWS migration solutions and analytics and application services on AWS.
Security
- iPhone supplier TSMC shut down factories after virus attack
TSMC is the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, and supplies components for companies like ADM, Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. The company told Bloomberg that the virus infected a “number of its fabrication tools,” but that the “degree of infection varies” from factory to factory. Several have resumed their operations, but others won’t come back online until tomorrow. The company indicated that its factories weren’t infected by a hacker.
Software/SaaS
- Oracle introduces autonomous transaction processing database – pounds on AWS
We’re the easiest database in the world to use. There’s nothing to learn, there’s nothing to do. It’s much much less labor involved so it’s much, much lower in cost. It’s truly elastic because you only pay for the infrastructure that you use. So when the application is not running then Oracle deactivates servers – it’s called a serverless system. And if you’re at a busy time then it will automatically add servers while the system is is still running.
- SAP Ariba Named a Leader in Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Strategic
SAP Ariba today announced it has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites. (Gartner, Inc. Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites, Magnus Bergfors, Patrick M. Connaughton, et al., August 1, 2018). In May, SAP Ariba was also recognized in the Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites alongside SAP Fieldglass.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180806005442/en/SAP-Ariba-Named-Leader-Gartner-2018-Magic
- Salesforce Promotes Keith Block to Co-CEO
Mr. Block, a former Oracle Corp. executive who joined Salesforce in 2013 as vice chairman and president, now will report directly to Salesforce’s board of directors. Mr. Benioff, who will go from being sole CEO to co-CEO, will continue leading the company’s “vision and innovation in areas including technology, marketing, stakeholder engagement and culture,” while Mr. Block will run the company’s “growth strategy, execution and operations,” Salesforce said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/salesforce-promotes-keith-block-to-co-ceo-1533704207
Datacenter/Hardware
- Samsung is still trying to make DeX happen
The idea of a pocketable laptop-like machine has its merits, and in theory, DeX is promising. It’s the combination of a small accessory for the Galaxy S8, Note 8 and S9 with a software mode (like on the Tab S4) that provides a faux desktop system. To minimize the number of loose accessories you have to carry around, Samsung introduced HDMI compatibility on the Note 9, so you can plug it into any supported display with an HDMI to USB-C converter and use the DeX software to immediately get to work. You can leave the converter cable on your desk or attached to the screen, so all you need to bring is your phone. Neat.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/10/samsung-dex-success-outside-mainstream/
I am all about this type of technology. It needs to happen and corporations should get behind it.
Other
- The greedy ways Apple got to $1 trillion
We still turn to Apple because it makes the best core products. But the edges of the customer experience have frayed like the wires of a Lightning cable. The key to Apple’s fortune is obviously selling high margin iPhones, not these ways it nickels and dimes us. But the company has an opportunity to raise its standards after this milestone, and win back the faith that could push it to a $2 trillion market cap.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/04/the-greedy-ways-apple-got-to-1-trillion/
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
Supplier Report: 7/13/2018
Amazon is sending computer networking technology stocks into a dive with rumors they are getting into the router business. Can the “eater of worlds” break into a market with low margins, demanding customers, and ever-present threat of hacks and security issues – and maintain customer satisfaction?
Amazon does control half of all online sales in the US… HALF. So they do know a thing or two about network traffic optimization.
IBM is finding that big data breaches cost corporations on average about $3.5M per event. Better make sure those routers are updated.
Acquisitions
- Broadcom acquires CA Technologies for $18.9B in cash
Broadcom, the massive semiconductor supplier you may remember from its failed attempt to acquire Qualcomm, today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with CA Technologies, a major IT management software and solutions provider. The price of the acquisition is $18.9 billion in cash. CA’s shareholders will receive $44.50 per share, a 20 percent premium over the closing price of the company’s stock today.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/11/broadcom-acquires-ca-technologies-for-18-9b-in-cash/
- The Department of Justice isn’t done fighting the AT&T-Time Warner merger
“The Court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based, and well-reasoned,” said AT&T General Counsel David McAtee in a statement. “While the losing party in litigation always has the right to appeal if it wishes, we are surprised that the DOJ has chosen to do so under these circumstances. We are ready to defend the Court’s decision at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/12/doj-appeals-att-time-warner/
- AT&T acquires threat intelligence company AlienVault
AT&T has announced plans to acquire cybersecurity company AlienVault. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2007, AlienVault offers a number of tools for detecting and responding to security threats through its Unified Security Management (USM) platform, while its Open Threat Exchange (OTX) platform serves as an online community where security professionals and researchers can share their latest findings and threat data.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/10/att-acquires-threat-intelligence-company-alienvault/
- Intel To Acquire eASIC: Lower Cost ASICs in FPGA Design Time
Intel is also announcing that it will acquire a company called eASIC which develops FPGA-like design tools to roll out ‘structured ASICs’. These structured ASICs an intermediary between a full FPGA and a full ASIC that allow for a quick roll out time and cheaper production cost. Technically Intel has been using eASIC technology since at least 2015 in its custom Xeons, however today’s announcement means that the eASIC team will become part of Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group (PSG). The deal is expected to close within the next month.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13075/intel-acquires-easic-lower-cost-asics-in-fpga-design-time
Artificial Intelligence
- Google Is Reportedly Looking to Take Over Call Centers With Its Duplex AI Assistant
A report from The Information suggests Google may be making a play to find other applications for its human-sounding assistant and has already started experimenting with ways to use Duplex to do with away roles currently filled by humans—a move that could have ramifications for millions of people.
Citing a person familiar with Google’s plans, The Information reported the company is already in conversation with at least one potential customer that would like to integrate Duplex into its operations. That firm, an unnamed large insurance company, is reportedly interested in using the voice assistant to handle simple, straightforward customer service calls.
https://gizmodo.com/google-is-reportedly-looking-to-take-over-call-centers-1827379911
Cloud
- Oracle Set to Merge Its Cloud Business
Oracle (ORCL) is gradually converting its cloud service types—SaaS1, PaaS2, and IaaS3—into a single standard data center. These data warehouses are supported by a bare-metal infrastructure managed by a single unified operations team.
The consolidation of these cloud services may help offer Oracle huge economies of scale by sharing data warehouse costs across the three categories, expanding margins. By bringing all three categories under one roof, the company can also improve efficiency.
https://marketrealist.com/2018/07/oracle-set-to-merge-its-cloud-business
Security
- ‘Mega’ Data Breaches Cost Companies a Staggering Fortune, IBM Study Finds
According to the IBM study, while the average cost of a data breach globally hovers just under $4 million—a 6.4 percent increase over the past year—costs associated with so-called mega breaches (an Equifax or Target, for example) can reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The average cost of a breach involving 1 million records is estimated at around $40 million, while those involving 50 million records or more can skyrocket up to $350 million in damages.
Of the 11 mega breaches examined by IBM, 10 were a result of criminal attacks.
The average amount of time that passes before a major company notices a data breach is pretty atrocious. According to IBM, mega breaches typically go unnoticed for roughly a year.
https://gizmodo.com/mega-data-breaches-cost-companies-a-staggering-fortune-1827510737
- Microsoft urges lawmakers to regulate facial recognition technology
The company, one of the key makers of software capable of recognizing individual faces, said it would take steps to make those systems less prone to bias; develop new public principles to govern the technology; and move more deliberately to sell its software and expertise in the area. While Microsoft said the technology industry bears responsibility for its products, it argued that government action is also needed.
“The only effective way to manage the use of technology by a government is for the government proactively to manage this use itself,” Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, said Friday in a blog post. “And if there are concerns about how a technology will be deployed more broadly across society, the only way to regulate this broad use is for the government to do so. This in fact is what we believe is needed today — a government initiative to regulate the proper use of facial recognition technology, informed first by a bipartisan and expert commission.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facial-recognition-20180713-story.html
Software/SaaS
- OpenText CEO opens up on organic growth ambitions
But while M&A continues to be the leading growth driver for OpenText, opportunities for organic growth seem to be getting more attention at Canada’s largest software company, judging from announcements and discussions at the company’s Enterprise World 2018 event, being held this week in Toronto. And what does the company expect to be the three main sources of that growth? Cloud, AI and security.
For a start, there was CEO Mark Barrenechea’s announcement in his Tuesday keynote of two new strands to the company’s cloud strategy: first, the release of the company’s new hybrid cloud platform OT2; and second, the news that its flagship EIM platform, OpenText Release 16, will now run on cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft Azure, in addition to the existing options of on-premise or on the OpenText cloud as a managed service.
https://diginomica.com/2018/07/12/opentext-ceo-opens-up-on-organic-growth-ambitions/
Datacenter/Hardware
- Amazon Web Services Targets Cisco in Networking
Networking company stocks fell off Friday following a report by The Information that Amazon Web Services is considering selling its own network switching devices.
Cisco dropped 4 percent by the end of trading, representing a loss in stock value of roughly $8.5 billion. Juniper gave up more than 2 percent. Arista Networks dropped more than 4 percent, and F5 Networks dropped roughly a percent. Broadcom, which makes chips used in switching devices, was down more than 3 percent on the day following the report, extending a rough week for the stock.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/aws-network-devices-report-cisco-juniper-fall.html
Other
- Amazon’s share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%, or 5% of all retail spend
Amazon is set to clear $258.22 billion in US retail sales in 2018, according to eMarketer’s figures, which will work out to 49.1 percent of all online retail spend in the country, and 5 percent of all retail sales.
Now, it is fast approaching a tipping point where more people will be spending money online with Amazon, than with all other retailers — combined. Amazon’s next-closest competitor, eBay, a very, very distant second at 6.6 percent, and Apple in third at 3.9 percent. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer when counting physical stores, has yet to really hit the right note in e-commerce and comes in behind Apple with 3.7 percent of online sales in the US.
- Xiaomi’s Weak I.P.O. Raises Doubts About China’s Tech Boom
But many investors view Xiaomi as still largely a hardware maker, not an internet company. It has promised fatter margins from selling internet services to its smartphone users, but those services accounted for less than 9 percent of last year’s revenue.
“Xiaomi has been billing itself as a Chinese internet company, but they really are not quite yet a pure internet company,” said Dan Wang, a technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics.
“Investors haven’t really bought into that story,” Mr. Wang added.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/xiaomi-hong-kong-ipo.html
- IBM earnings: Security is growing fast, but is it enough money to matter?
Through the first quarter, IBM’s security business had generated $3.4 billion in revenue in the previous 12 months, for growth of 66% year over year, the company told MarketWatch. In the first quarter, security brought in $800 million with growth of 65% from the year-ago period, compared with SI’s 15% growth overall.
That is just a fraction of IBM’s $19.07 billion in reported revenue, however, and may not be enough to truly move the needle as other segments grow much slower. Analysts expect technology services and cloud-platform revenue to rise 2.6%, to $8.63 billion and cognitive-solutions revenue to rise 4.4% to $4.76 billion from the year-ago quarter. Technology services and cloud-platform includes IBM Cloud, formerly known as Bluemix, while cognitive solutions includes IBM’s Watson AI.
Photo by Andrew Sharples on Unsplash
Supplier Report: 7/6/2018
Dell is going public again after Founder Michael Dell took the company private 5 years ago. Keeping VMWare was a major driver in this decision as is managing the debt incurred from acquiring EMC two years ago.
IBM has lined up ANOTHER large IT contract, this time with the Australian government which is surprising considering several public failures on joint efforts over the last few years.
Acquisitions
- Dell will again become a publicly traded company in $22 billion buyout
Dell is returning to the public market in a $22 billion stock buyout that will still leave CEO / founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake firmly in charge, as reported by The Financial Times. The company went private in 2013 following a $25 billion buyout by Dell and Silver Lake. Since then, Dell has seen success both in the enterprise market and with its consumer-focused PCs.
By moving back to the public sphere, Dell and Silver Lake will retain control over VMWare — which Dell acquired back in 2015 when it purchased enterprise data company EMC to better appeal to business customers — and be placed in a better position to reduce its debts.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/2/17525450/dell-public-company-stock-buyout-market
- AT&T Jacks Up TV Prices Post Merger After Claiming That Wouldn’t Happen
AT&T last week informed its DirecTV Now streaming video customers they’ll be paying $5 more to use the service starting in August.
“To continue delivering the best possible streaming experience for both new and existing customers, we’re bringing the cost of this service in line with the market—which starts at a $40 price point,” AT&T said in a statement to Cord Cutter News, which first reported the hike.
The problem: AT&T repeatedly claimed that the company’s merger with Time Warner would lower rates, not raise them.
Artificial Intelligence
- Oracle recently offered an artificial intelligent expert as much as $6 million in total pay as Silicon Valley’s talent war heats up
Oracle offered at least one candidate a $6 million package made up of salary and equity incentives to convince them to join the company, a source told Business Insider.
That candidate had other job offers but went with Oracle because of the higher pay, the source said.
https://nordic.businessinsider.com/oracle-artificial-intelligence-expert-pay-2018-7/
Cloud
- Google Cloud’s COO has left after less than a year
Before joining Google in late November 2017, Bryant spent more than 25 years at Intel, most recently leading its data center group. She took what was supposed to be a temporary leave from that role in May due to “family matters,” but ended up joining Google instead, under Cloud CEO Diane Greene.
Bryant’s hire was a win for the search giant’s cloud business, which is widely seen as No. 3 in the public cloud market, behind Amazon and Microsoft. As the relative newcomer in the space, Google Cloud’s challenge has been to prove its capabilities to large businesses, though Greene has said that there are no more “deal blockers” in the way of new contracts.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/03/google-cloud-coo-diane-bryant-has-left-after-less-than-a-year.html
Security
- Australian National University ‘hit by Chinese hackers’
Networks at the Australian National University in Canberra, which is home to several defence-focused research units, were breached “months ago” by attackers whom authorities traced to China, said Channel Nine television and Fairfax Media websites, citing “multiple” unnamed security and intelligence sources.
Also
China has consistently and strongly denied being involved in any hacking attacks and its embassy in Australia, as well as the foreign ministry in Beijing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news comes as tension flares over new Australian laws that seek to curb foreign interference, measures the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has said were adopted to allay concerns over Chinese influence in politics and universities.
Software/SaaS
- Micro Focus sells Suse for $2.5B
Suse, one of the longest-running commercial Linux distributors and, these days, a major player in the open-source infrastructure and management space, has been through a few ownership changes in recent years. Micro Focus acquired Suse from The Attachmate Group back in 2014, which itself had acquired Novell, the then-owner of Suse, in 2010. Today, Micro Focus announced that Suse is changing owners yet again, as private equity firm and venture capital fund EQT is acquiring Suse.
While the exact terms of the deal where not disclosed, EQT says the deal valued Suse at $2.535 billion.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/02/micro-focus-sells-suse-for-2-5b/
Datacenter/Hardware
- IBM lands $740M contract to provide IT services to Australian government
The main idea is to “prioritize the introduction of new technologies to citizen services,” Australia’s government said.
One of the programs involves IBM setting up a research team in Melbourne that will be tasked with studying potential applications for AI, blockchain and quantum computing in government. Additional research units will be based in Canberra and on the Gold Coast, working on new cybersecurity tools for data protection. They’ll also be looking into how supercomputers can be used to enhance government services.
This is important…
IBM’s contract award comes despite a couple of recent calamities relating to past services it provided for Australia’s government. They include failing to provide basic protection against a distributed denial-of-service attack that led to an outage during Australia’s online census in 2016, and a botched payroll system IBM installed for Queensland’s Department of Health for which the client was later blamed.
https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/07/05/ibm-lands-740m-contract-provide-services/
Other
- How Google and Facebook Are Monopolizing Ideas
But as the companies come under growing pressure to police their platforms and weed out “fake news,” a growing range of content gets banned, labeled or deleted for often opaque or arbitrary reasons. ProPublica and Reveal, both nonprofit news publications, have had content dealing with hate groups and immigrant children, respectively, deleted or rejected by Instagram or Facebook. Video artists complain of viewership and ads being restricted because their content violated YouTube’s community standards.
Unhappy users, advertisers and content providers wouldn’t have as much to complain about if Google (which bought YouTube in 2006) and Facebook (which acquired Instagram in 2012) had strong competitors to which they could switch.
Photo by Teddy Kelley on Unsplash
Supplier Report: 6/15/2018
The DOJ said it would not block AT&T’s $85B acquisition of Time Warner on Thursday, within hours the acquisition was deemed complete. AT&T wasn’t the only company making moves… Workday bought TWO companies and data analytics companies Slack and Tableau both announced acquisitions this week.
Amazon was in the press for poor labor conditions in their Alexa supply chain. Foxconn workers making the devices have been found to be mistreated and underpaid. Amazon’s own audit of the situation confirms the report.
Oracle shares dropped due to a JP Morgan CIO report documenting a decrease of purchasing interest of Oracle products and services from IT executives.
Acquisitions
- AT&T Completes Acquisition of Time Warner Inc.
Under the terms of the merger, Time Warner Inc. shareholders received 1.4 shares of AT&T common stock, in addition to $53.75 in cash, per share of Time Warner Inc. As a result, AT&T issued 1,185M shares of common stock and paid $42.5B in cash. Including net debt from Time Warner, we now have $180.4B in net debt.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180614006343/en/ATT-Completes-Acquisition-Time-Warner
- Workday acquires Rallyteam to fuel machine learning efforts
In this case, Workday appears to be acquiring the talent. It wants to take the Rallyteam team and incorporate it into the company’s engineering unit to beef up its machine learning efforts, while taking advantage of the expertise it has built up over the years connecting employees with interesting internal projects.
“With Rallyteam, we gain incredible team members who created a talent mobility platform that uses machine learning to help companies better understand and optimize their workforces by matching a worker’s interests, skills and connections with relevant jobs, projects, tasks and people,” Workday’s Cristina Goldt wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/workday-acquires-rallyteam-to-fuel-machine-learning-efforts/
- Workday acquires financial modelling startup Adaptive Insights for $1.55B
Workday, the cloud-based platform that offers HR and other back-office apps for businesses, is making an acquisition to expand its portfolio of services: It’s buying Adaptive Insights, a provider of cloud-based business planning and financial modelling tools, for $1.55 billion. The acquisition is notable because Adaptive Insights had filed for an IPO as recently as May 17.
Workday says that the $1.55 billion price tag includes “the assumption of approximately $150 million in unvested equity issued to Adaptive Insights employees” related to that IPO. This deal is expected to close in Q3 of this year.
- Tableau gets AI shot in the arm with Empirical Systems acquisition
The startup was born just two years ago from research on automated statistics at the MIT Probabilistic Computing Project. According to the company website, “Empirical is an analytics engine that automatically models structured, tabular data (such as spreadsheets, tables, or csv files) and allows those models to be queried to uncover statistical insights in data.”
The product was still in private Beta when Tableau bought the company. It is delivered currently as an engine embedded inside other applications. That sounds like something that could slip in nicely into the Tableau analytics platform. What’s more, it will be bringing the engineering team on board for some AI knowledge, while taking advantage of this underlying advanced technology.
- Splunk to Acquire Software Problem-Solver VictorOps for $120 Million
Big data-cruncher Splunk is acquiring VictorOps, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup whose tools help software developers collaborate and resolve engineering issues, for $120 million mostly in cash with some stock equity. The deal is expected to close before August.
VictorOps’ tech brings together software engineers so they can overcome technical issues as they arise. The system generates notifications, pulls relevant parties into chat groups, presents pertinent documents, and keeps detailed records as teams work through coding problems.
http://fortune.com/2018/06/11/splunk-acquire-software-startup-victorops/
Artificial Intelligence
- Accenture wants to beat unfair AI with a professional toolkit
“We’re seeing increasing focus on algorithmic bias, fairness. Just this past week we’ve had Singapore announce an AI ethics board. Korea announce an AI ethics board. In the US we already have industry creating different groups — such as The Partnership on AI. Google just released their ethical guidelines… So I think industry leaders, as well as non-tech companies, are looking for guidance. They are looking for standards and protocols and something to adhere to because they want to know that they are safe in creating products.
“It’s not an easy task to think about these things. Not every organization or company has the resources to. So how might we better enable that to happen? Through good legislation, through enabling trust, communication. And also through developing these kinds of tools to help the process along.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/09/accenture-wants-to-beat-unfair-ai-with-a-professional-toolkit/
Cloud
- Oracle shares drop after JP Morgan downgrades on lost business to Amazon and Microsoft
Oracle’s “specific metrics in our large-scale CIO survey have arced over into negative territory, which makes us uncomfortable because the results of our CIO surveys over the years have been highly predictive,” analyst Mark Murphy said in a note to clients Thursday. “Oracle spending intentions have only looked lukewarm in our CIO survey work in the recent past, but the data takes a dive in the current survey. … In our discussions, CIOs have clarified that they are migrating Oracle databases to Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon databases and PostgreSQL.”
Software/SaaS
- Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO
“We are buying GitHub because we like GitHub; our plan is to continue to invest in the GitHub roadmap, and make GitHub better at being GitHub,” Friedman wrote.
That means no ads in public repos, because Friedman said Sourceforge became “a swamp of banner ads and pop ups and delayed downloads to expose users to more ads”. He added that “GitHub’s clean interface and developer-centric approach can be seen in part as a reaction against Sourceforge” and suggested GitHub’s ascendency shows a no-ads approach has proven the correct approach.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/08/nat_friedman_github_ceo_elect_ama_session/
- Yahoo Messenger is shutting down on July 17, redirects users to group messaging app Squirrel
“There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).” Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo started testing last month. You can request access to the beta here.
Datacenter/Hardware
- IBM and the DoE launch the world’s fastest supercomputer
Summit, which has been in the works for a few years now, features 4,608 compute servers with two 22-core IBM Power9 chips and six Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs each. In total, the system also features over 10 petabytes of memory. Given the presence of the Nvidia GPUs, it’s no surprise that the system is meant to be used for machine learning and deep learning applications, as well as the usual high performance computing workloads for research in energy and advanced materials that you would expect to happen at Oak Ridge.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/ibms-new-summit-supercomputer-for-the-doe-delivers-200-petaflops/
- Qualcomm Is Cutting Up to Half of Jobs in Data-Center Unit
The company will eliminate 241 positions at its design center in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 43 in California, according to notices filed with those states. The total number of cuts, including those not covered by such notices, will represent a third to half of the server-chip unit’s employees, according to a person familiar with the process. The reduction comes on top of the previously announced elimination of about 1,500 workers across the company.
Other
- Verizon CEO to Retire, Succeeded by a Newcomer
Verizon Communications Inc. VZ 0.35% named Hans Vestberg as its next chief executive, choosing a relative newcomer to run the wireless giant at a time when its industry is being reshaped by megadeals.
Mr. Vestberg, who joined the company about a year ago and is its chief technology officer, will succeed longtime CEO Lowell McAdam on Aug. 1. Mr. McAdam will remain executive chairman until the end of the year and then become nonexecutive chairman.
- After report on ‘appalling’ conditions, Foxconn will investigate plant that makes Amazon devices
Though regular workers were better compensated in terms of wages and benefits, China Labor Watch says both groups were subjected to long hours and low wages, with workers putting in more than 100 overtime hours during peak season, even though the legal limit is 36 hours, and some working consecutively for 14 days. Workers on average earned wages between 2000 to 3000 RMB ($312.12 to $468.19), significantly less than Hengyang’s monthly average wage of 4,647 RMB ($725.22), but often had their overtime hours as punishment for taking leave or having unexcused absences.
The report also claimed that the factory had poor fire safety in its dormitories, lack of sufficiently protective equipment, verbally abusive managers and the “absence of a functioning labor union.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/10/after-report-on-appalling-conditions-foxconn-will-investigate-plant-that-makes-amazon-devices/
Workers not paid legally by Amazon contractor in ChinaAmazon disclosed that its own auditors visited the Foxconn factory in March and found that it had hired an illegally high number of agency workers and was not paying them properly for working overtime.
Agency staff – known as dispatch workers in China – do not get sick pay or holiday pay and can be laid off without wages during lulls in production. China changed its labour laws in 2014 to limit their use to 10% of any workforce in an attempt to stop companies exploiting them to cut costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/09/amazon-contractor-foxconn-pay-workers-illegally
Photo by Michael Prewett on Unsplash