Tag: SAP

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Supplier Report: 10/18/2019


Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Facebook’s eCurrency platform Libra continues to lose support with payment vendors as scrutiny increases from the Government.

Huawei remains a security concern both in the US and EU as nations and communities try to figure out a way to replace billions of dollars of Huawei infrastructure.

Large corporation’s leadership is still in a season of change.  SAP’s Bill McDermott is stepping down and more details are being shared in Red Hat’s CFO Eric Shander’s dismissal.

Acquisitions/Investments

None this week

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM unveils Sterling Supply Chain Suite

    The “IBM Sterling Supply Chain Suite,” built on the foundation of Sterling B2B Network and Sterling Order Management, enables manufacturers and retailers to integrate critical data, business networks, and supply chain processes, Armonk, New York-based IBM said. The system’s open-architecture capabilities are a result of IBM’s recent acquisition of enterprise open-source solution provider Red Hat.

    These intelligent, self-correcting supply chains can continually learn from experience, creating greater reliability, transparency, and security while providing new competitive advantages, according to the company.

    “Supply chains are the central nervous system of global trade,” Bob Lord, IBM’s senior vice president for Cognitive Applications and Developer Ecosystems, said in a release. “Many organizations have risen to the top of their industries by building efficient and agile supply chains. But the technical infrastructure underlying many of these systems is still largely based on siloed, monolithic applications, which leads to inefficiencies throughout the supply chain.”

    https://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20191008-ibm-unveils-sterling-supply-chain-suite/

Cloud

  • Texas attorney general, Google’s new competition cop, says everything is ‘on the table’

    Since then, Paxton said, Washington has failed to pursue key signs that Google and Silicon Valley are in violation of federal law. “Antitrust seems like it hasn’t been focused on for decades, through several administrations, not just Democrats but also Republicans,” he said, later adding: “I think this should have been looked at sooner than it is.”

    The result is a significant legal and political challenge on the horizon for Google and its executives. Bipartisan in nature, and born out of a belief that the tech industry has escaped government accountability for too long, Paxton and his team said nothing is off limits — words that threaten a broad review of Google’s business in a way that could reshape not only the company but the rest of Silicon Valley.

    “If we end up learning things that lead us in other directions, we’ll certainly bring those back to the states and talk about whether we expand into other areas,” he said.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/texas-attorney-general-googles-new-competition-cop-says-everything-is-table/

  • Oracle Hiring Cloud Experts, Despite Cloud Chaos

    The announcement of these cloud-based hires comes four months after Oracle reportedly laid off hundreds of employees from the Seattle facility that served as the nucleus for much of its cloud operations. At the time, Business Insider suggested that the layoffs stemmed from vicious infighting among the cloud teams, along with a broader struggle to determine the company’s direction.

    Indeed, a new article in Bloomberg suggests that Oracle is retreating from its previous vision of competing directly against Amazon Web Services in the cloud-infrastructure arena. Instead, Oracle is focusing on cloud-based platforms and applications that serve its clients’ database and analytics needs. On top of that, the company is reportedly abandoning its previous strategy of going it alone in favor of partnerships with companies such as Microsoft, Box, and VMware.

    https://insights.dice.com/2019/10/10/oracle-hiring-cloud-experts/

Security/Privacy

  • No one could prevent another ‘WannaCry-style’ attack, says DHS official

    Jeanette Manfra, the assistant director for cybersecurity for Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF that the 2017 WannaCry cyberattack, which saw hundreds of thousands of computers around the world infected with ransomware, was uniquely challenging because it spread so quickly.

    “I don’t know that we could ever prevent something like that,” said Manfra, referring to another WannaCry-style attack. “We just have something that completely manifests itself as a worm. I think the original perpetrators didn’t expect probably that sort of impact,” she added.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/06/government-prevent-wannacry-style-dhs/

  • EU Warns of 5G Risks Amid Scrutiny of Huawei

    The new assessment has raised alarm among officials in European capitals over Huawei, in particular, according to officials familiar with the report. Huawei has been a big supplier of network gear in large European economies like the U.K. and Germany. European leaders will lay out specific guidelines for member states on how best to approach issues of security within 5G networks later this year.

    “These vulnerabilities are not ones which can be remedied by making small technical changes, but are strategic and lasting in nature,” said a person familiar with the debate inside the European Council, the bloc’s top political policy-making body.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-warns-of-5g-risks-amid-scrutiny-of-huawei-11570814799
    Huawei helped bring Internet to small-town America. Now its equipment has to go

    Other rural telecom companies face a similar predicament. About a dozen small rural carriers have purchased gear over the years from Huawei or ZTE, another Chinese company that has raised security concerns, according to their trade group, the Rural Wireless Association. The carriers often bought the equipment with U.S. government subsidies intended to help bring Internet service to sparsely populated areas that larger telecom companies deemed unprofitable.

    Replacing the gear would cost roughly $1 billion, the association says, and Pine and other small companies are calling for federal funding to help. “If not, rural America takes a hit,” Whisenhunt said, adding that it would take Pine years and tens of millions of dollars to strip its Huawei equipment off more than 140 cell towers.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/10/huawei-helped-bring-internet-small-town-america-now-its-equipment-has-go/

Other

  • SAP’s Bill McDermott on stepping down as CEO

    SAP’s CEO Bill McDermott today announced that he wouldn’t seek to renew his contract for the next year and step down immediately after nine years at the helm of the German enterprise giant.

    Shortly after the announcement, I talked to McDermott, as well as SAP’s new co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein. During the call, McDermott stressed that his decision to step down was very much a personal one, and that while he’s not ready to retire just yet, he simply believes that now is the right time for him to pass on the reins of the company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/10/saps-bill-mcdermott-on-stepping-down-as-ceo/

  • Mastercard, Visa, eBay Drop Out of Facebook’s Libra Payments Network

    The moves came after lawmakers, central bankers and regulators expressed deep concerns about the libra project.

    The loss of four of the largest payments companies in the world leaves Facebook without much of the muscle it assembled for libra, a digital currency it hoped would make it a player in e-commerce and global money transfers. The project now mostly hinges on smaller payments companies, telecommunications providers, venture-capital firms, e-commerce merchants and nonprofits.

    “I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update,” David Marcus, the Facebook executive overseeing the project, wrote Friday on Twitter. “Of course, it’s not great news in the short term, but in a way it’s liberating. Stay tuned for more very soon. Change of this magnitude is hard. You know you’re on to something when so much pressure builds up.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/mastercard-drops-out-of-facebook-s-libra-payments-network-11570824139

  • Red Hat CFO Loses Out on Retention Bonus Following Standards-Related Ouster

    Red Hat Inc.’s finance chief Eric Shander has been dismissed from the company, forfeiting a $4 million retention award that was agreed to ahead of Red Hat’s acquisition by International Business Machines Corp.

    The Raleigh, N.C.-based software company confirmed late Thursday that Mr. Shander was no longer working at Red Hat. “Eric was dismissed without pay in connection with Red Hat’s workplace standards,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-hat-cfo-loses-out-on-retention-bonus-following-standards-related-ouster-11570825819

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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: 11/23/2018

Amazon executed a master maneuver via the split HQ2 announcement. The company is moving into 3 locations (NYC, Virginia, and Nashville) and gained invaluable access and data about cities across the east coast.

While some are unhappy about the news (including the places that won), the company set a precedent with local governments about how to frame a RFP to get maximum shareholder value. The question is… will there be backlash?

Meanwhile Facebook continues to fail in their attempts to regain the public’s and government’s trust.

Acquisitions

  • Microsoft acquires AI and bot development house XOXCO

    Microsoft is acquiring conversational AI and bot development software vendor XOXCO Inc. for an undisclosed amount. Microsoft announced its acquisition plans on November 14, the same day it is going public with a number of other AI product and service announcements.

    Among its products are Howdy.ai, which Microsoft describes as “the first commercially available bot for Slack that helps schedule meetings.” Howdy assists with the creation of custom bots, including bots for work chat, bots for customer support and bots for marketing. XOXCO also sells Botkit, a collection of development tools for those working on GitHub. Microsoft has partnered with XOXCO for a number of years.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-acquires-ai-and-bot-development-house-xoxco/

  • Oracle buys SD-WAN company Talari Networks

    Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    Talari’s main product is its Failsafe technology, which is an SD-WAN platform used to connect enterprise networks such as branch offices and data centers over large geographic distances. WAN connections traditionally required special proprietary hardware, but the SD-WAN movement does away with this by moving network control into the cloud using a software approach.

    https://siliconangle.com/2018/11/15/oracle-buys-sd-wan-company-talari-networks/

  • Analysts weighing in on $8B SAP-Qualtrics deal don’t see a game changer

    Tony Byrne, founder and principal analyst at Real Story Group, says he likes what Qualtrics brings to SAP, but he is not sure it’s quite as big a deal as McDermott suggests. “Qualtrics enables you to do more sophisticated forms of research which marketers certainly want, but the double benefit is that — unlike SurveyMonkey and others — Qualtrics has experience on the digital workplace side, which could complement some of SAP’s HR tooling.” But he adds that it’s not really the central CEM piece, and that his company’s research has found that SAP still has holes, particularly when it comes to marketing tools and technologies (MarTech).

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/12/analysts-weighing-in-on-8b-sap-qualtrics-deal-dont-see-a-game-changer/

  • Kofax to buy Nuance’s imaging division for $400M in cash

    The acquisition is a notable move for Kofax — itself acquired by Thoma Bravo last year in a $1.5 billion deal — as it continues to build up its business in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), the area of enterprise IT services that uses machine learning, computer vision and other AI-based tools to bring automation to repetitive or mundane back-office tasks that would have in the past been done by humans. (The idea is that this frees up the humans to make more sophisticated assessments in specific cases, or focus on entirely different tasks.)

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/12/kofax-to-buy-nuances-imaging-division-for-400m-in-cash/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Amazon Says It Has Over 10,000 Employees Working on Alexa, Echo

    Amazon announced its decision Tuesday on those two locations, after its yearlong review of possible cities to establish a second headquarters. Mr. Limp said Amazon picked them because of the availability of talent.

    “The tie went to where we could recruit and where people would want to live,” Mr. Limp said.

    Amazon said in September 2017 it had 5,000 employees working on Alexa and Echo. The company’s total workforce has grown 13% to more than 600,000 over the past year.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-says-it-has-over-10-000-employees-working-on-alexa-echo-1542138284

  • Did IBM overhype Watson Health’s AI promise?

    In July, the healthcare news publication Stat published a report claiming “internal IBM documents” showed the Watson supercomputer often spit out erroneous cancer treatment advice and that company medical specialists and customers identified “multiple examples of unsafe and incorrect treatment recommendations,” even as IBM was promoting its AI technology.

    Stat cited several slide decks it had obtained from a presentation made by IBM Watson Health’s deputy chief health officer in 2016. The slides mostly blamed problems on the training of Watson by IBM engineers and staff at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC).

    https://www.computerworld.com/article/3321138/healthcare-it/did-ibm-put-too-much-stock-in-watson-health-too-soon.html

Cloud

  • Former Oracle exec Thomas Kurian to replace Diane Greene as head of Google Cloud

    The company had a disparate set of cloud services when she took over, and one of the first things Greene did was to put them all under a single Google Cloud umbrella. “We’ve built a strong business together — set up by integrating sales, marketing, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Google Apps/G Suite into what is now called Google Cloud,” she wrote in the blog post.

    As for Kurian, he stepped down as president of product development at Oracle at the end of September. He had announced a leave of absence earlier in the month before making the exit permanent. Like Greene before him, he brings a level of enterprise street cred, which the company needs as it continues to try to grow its cloud business.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/16/former-oracle-exec-thomas-kurian-to-replace-diane-greene-as-head-of-google-cloud/
    Google’s Cloud-Computing Boss, Diane Greene, to Step Down

    Google’s hiring of Mr. Kurian could suggest the company will consider making a bid for Red Hat Inc., the software-and-services company that International Business Machines agreed to acquire last month for $33 billion, Mr. Reback said. Red Hat would provide Google with the sales and support muscle, as well as credibility with corporate tech buyers, that it lacks, Mr. Reback said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-cloud-computing-boss-diane-greene-to-step-down-1542396164?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Oracle’s JEDI protest denied

    GAO denied Oracle’s protest and said that a single award strategy did not violate federal laws and procurement regulations — one of Oracle’s key arguments.

    “The Defense Department’s decision to pursue a single-award approach to obtain these cloud services is consistent with applicable statutes (and regulations) because the agency reasonably determined that a single-award approach is in the government’s best interests for various reasons, including national security concerns, as the statute allows,” GAO said in a statement announcing its ruling.

    https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2018/11/oracle-lost-jedi-protest.aspx

Software/SaaS

  • Zuckerberg Defends Company in Friday Meeting With Employees

    Some Facebook employees indicated that they believe The Times and other news outlets are unfairly targeting the company because of its outsize influence — a sentiment shared in the session on Friday when employees asked executives what would happen to employees who leak information to the press.

    Mr. Zuckerberg made it clear that Facebook would not hesitate to fire employees who spoke to The New York Times or other publications. But after an employee asked whether the company should issue a report about how many leakers Facebook had found and fired, Mr. Zuckerberg played down the idea.

    Leaks, he said, are usually caused by “issues with morale.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/technology/facebook-mark-zuckerberg.html

  • Facebook Fallout Ruptures Democrats’ Longtime Alliance With Silicon Valley

    Facebook previously signaled that it was ready to work with Mr. Warner and others in Congress on new regulation. Yet at the same time, Facebook turned to a conservative opposition research firm that sought to undermine detractors by publicizing financial links to Mr. Soros, a harsh critic of both Facebook and Google.

    The revelations angered Democrats, who accused Facebook of tapping into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros — the very kind of propaganda the company has claimed to be battling. Facebook has denied that the effort was anti-Semitic.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/technology/facebook-democrats-congress.html

Other

  • Amazon, Google Poised for Race to Hire High-Tech Talent

    Amazon will bring more than 25,000 jobs to New York and another 25,000 to Northern Virginia, it announced Tuesday. Google, meanwhile, plans to double its workforce in New York City to more than 14,000 workers over the next ten years, its chief financial officer said Monday at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech D.Live conference.

    The competition for talent will be stiff, recruiters say. But the two companies each have some distinct requirements that set them apart from other employers—and from each other, according to an analysis that labor-analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies conducted for the Journal. For example, the companies favor different coding languages and technical approaches for software projects.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-google-chase-software-developersbut-not-the-same-ones-1542133719
    New York politicians push back on Amazon HQ2 plans

    “Amazon is a billion-dollar company,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/14/new-york-politicians-push-back-on-amazon-hq2-plans/

    What Is Amazon Getting From New York City and Virginia?

    Incentives from New York state: $1.525 billion, including:

    • $1.2 billion in refundable tax credits from state’s Excelsior Program over 10 years, based on the creation of 25,000 jobs that pay an average of $150,000.
    • $325 million from Empire State Development based on how much space Amazon takes over the next decade.

    Incentives from New York City:

    • Amazon said it would apply for a New York City subsidy program that would provide it property-tax abatements for up to 25 years.
    • The company also is to seek incentives under a city program that could provide $3,000 in tax credits per eligible employee over 12 years, implying a $900 million benefit if all 25,000 workers are eligible. Amazon may also be eligible for other tax credits.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-is-amazon-getting-from-new-york-city-and-virginia-1542127124

Photo by Mael BALLAND on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 11/16/2018

Activism within technology companies remains a major topic due to headlines about Google and Amazon’s internal cultures.

Google workers remain unhappy with company’s response to repeated sexual harassment accusations from high level management.

Amazon employees remain frustrated with CEO Jeff Bezos’ willingness to support ICE with facial recognition software.

Silicon Valley is doing some collective soul searching because of these issues as well as the industry dependence on Saudi Arabian funding (via Softbank).

This is a good time to ask questions, but not a good time for clear answers.

Acquisitions

  • SAP to buy Qualtrics for $8 billion

    This would be the largest-ever purchase of a VC-backed enterprise software company, and the second-largest sale of any SaaS company (behind Oracle buying Netsuite for $9.3 billion).

    SAP CEO Bill McDermott said in a conference call that the Qualtrics IPO was already over-subscribed, and that he views this deal will mean for SAP what buying Instagram meant for Facebook — with SAP being able to merge its massive trove of operational data with Qualtrics’ collection of user experience data.

    https://www.axios.com/sap-to-buy-qualtrics-for-8-billion-1541977708-2936da4b-aeae-4ad2-9888-3dc384e08823.html

  • Microsoft buys two more video game studios

    In a broadcast from its Xbox Fanfest event this weekend, Microsoft announced the acquisition of two new video game studios: inXile Entertainment and Obsidian Entertainment.

    Both studios are headquartered in California, and both specialise in role-playing games. Both studios also have their roots in the 1990s “golden age” of computer RPGs, staffed by veteran developers from beloved 90s studio Black Isle. inXile is famous for nostalgic, strategic RPGs, such as Wasteland 2, which raised nearly $3m (£2.3m) on Kickstarter in 2012. Obsidian Entertainment is responsible for acclaimed modern RPGs Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Pillars of Eternity, and South Park: The Stick of Truth.

    https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/nov/10/microsoft-buys-two-new-video-game-studios

  • BlackBerry in talks to buy cybersecurity company Cylance

    BlackBerry Ltd is in talks to buy cybersecurity company Cylance Inc for as much as $1.5 billion, Business Insider reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

    Irvine, California-based Cylance develops AI-based products to prevent cyberattacks on companies and recently considered filing for an IPO, according to the report. (read.bi/2SYzvM9) A deal could be announced as soon as next week, Business Insider reported citing sources, who cautioned the deal could still fall apart.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cylance-m-a-blackberry-idUSKCN1NE2GW
    That is a big purchase considering BlackBerry’s current cash flow

Artificial Intelligence

Cloud

  • Oath is dead. Long live Verizon Media Group/Oath

    Anyway, Oath is now going to be Verizon Media Group/Oath as part of a corporate restructuring undertaken by Verizon’s CEO, Vestberg. The company is going to operate under three different business units — a Consumer Group, led by Ronan Dunne, a current executive vice president of Verizon and president of Verizon Wireless; a Business Group, led by Tami Erwin, currently executive vice president of wireless operations — which will focus on government, small and medium businesses, large business customers, and operate the company’s telematics arm; and a Media Group / Oath, which will be led by Guru Gowrappan, currently Oath’s chief executive.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/05/i-come-to-bury-oath/

Security

  • Jeff Bezos Fails to Explain Away Amazon’s Partnership with ICE

    So far, employees tell me, Amazon has not taken any action in response to its workers’ concerns. In fact, they said, a Thursday all-hands meeting was the first time executives addressed the controversy. Although the meeting wasn’t intended to focus on Rekognition, Bezos and co. fielded a pre-screened question that reportedly asked, “What is being done in response to the concerns voiced by both Amazon employees and civil-rights groups regarding Amazon selling facial-recognition technology to government and police organizations, including ICE?” Bezos passed the question to Andy Jassy, the Amazon Web Services C.E.O., who has defended the company’s decision, arguing that the terms of service for its products protects against misuse

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/jeff-bezos-fails-to-explain-away-amazons-partnership-with-ice
    Bezos has stated in several interviews that he supports the government. To say that he hasn’t responded or made his position clear is inaccurate.

Datacenter/Hardware

  • AMD stock jumps as Amazon starts using Epyc chips in the cloud

    Amazon, the largest provider of cloud computing services, is now offering three of its most popular products based on AMD’s Epyc server chips, Matt Garman, vice president of computing at Amazon Web Services, said Tuesday at an AMD presentation in San Francisco. The AMD chips allow for a 10 percent saving in computing costs, Garman said.

    Separately, AMD said it has sent samples of a new chip design to customers. Those chips are being made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. with a technique called 7-nanometer production. That technology is equivalent to Intel’s announced 10-nanometer process, but will be in the market first, according to AMD’s Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster. Intel has announced issues with that 10-nanometer transition and said it won’t have server chips in the market until late next year.

    https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/amazon/amd-climbs-after-saying-amazon-will-use-its-cloud-server-chips

Other

  • Google Picks Geisinger CEO to Oversee Health-Care Initiatives

    Geisinger pioneered the use of electronic health records and other digital medical data. Its setup of integrating an insurer with a hospital system has been widely seen as a model, as more health-care companies try to blend various businesses under one roof. It has also been a leader in the broad use of genetic information to help manage and predict patients’ health conditions.

    Alphabet Inc.’s Google has launched various efforts in health care over the years with mixed success. Google Health, its first attempt to create an electronic health-records database, was launched in 2008 but was closed in 2011 after it failed to catch on with consumers and health-care providers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-picks-geisinger-health-ceo-to-oversee-health-care-initiatives-1541712775

  • Google walkout organizers aren’t satisfied with CEO’s response

    In the Medium post today, the organizers commended Google’s process while also noting how Pichai’s response did not address many of the core demands. In the post, they write:

    However, the response ignored several of the core demands — like elevating the diversity officer and employee representation on the board — and troublingly erased those focused on racism, discrimination, and the structural inequity built into the modern day Jim Crow class system that separates ‘full time’ employees from contract workers. Contract workers make up more than half of Google’s workforce, and perform essential roles across the company, but receive few of the benefits associated with tech company employment. They are also largely people of color, immigrants, and people from working class backgrounds.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/08/google-walkout-organizers-response-sundar-pichai/

  • Tesla picks telco executive Robyn Denholm to replace Elon Musk as chairman

    “I believe in this company, I believe in its mission and I look forward to helping Elon and the Tesla team achieve sustainable profitability and drive long-term shareholder value,” Denholm said in a statement.

    “Robyn has extensive experience in both the tech and auto industries, and she has made significant contributions as a Tesla Board member over the past four years in helping us become a profitable company. I look forward to working even more closely with Robyn as we continue accelerating the advent of sustainable energy,” Musk added.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/08/robyn-denholm-tesla-chair/

  • In Silicon Valley, Saudi Money Keeps Flowing to Startups Amid Backlash

    Silicon Valley startups are continuing to negotiate deals with Saudi Arabia and take its capital through its partner SoftBank Group Corp, amid the controversy over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi that has clouded the kingdom’s role as a global technology investor.

    Two startups— View Inc., which makes light-adjustable glass, and Zume Inc., which uses robots to make pizza—disclosed investments over the past week totaling a combined $1.5 billion from SoftBank’s Saudi-backed Vision Fund.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-silicon-valley-saudi-money-keeps-flowing-to-startups-amid-backlash-1541586601

Photo by Alen Rojnić on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/8/2018

That sweet Github candy - Joey Lombardi | The Source

Microsoft is purchasing code sharing site GitHub for $7.5B. The logic behind the acquisition is to push more code and development activities towards Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and away from AWS.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is worried about cloud lock-in. While Amazon does have more tools than other providers to help move off the platform, it is still a costly decision if a customer wants to go to another cloud service.

Google is opting not to continue their military AI contract and is creating corporate guidelines that prevent the company from weaponizing artificial intelligence in the future.

Acquisitions

  • Microsoft Is Buying GitHub for $7.5 Billion in Stock

    The deal values GitHub at nearly four times the $2 billion valuation given by private investors in a fundraising round three years ago. GitHub has grown into a major nexus for software developers to share and collaborate on code—it claims 28 million users. The 10-year-old company, which charges corporate customers, doesn’t disclose revenue or profit, and its financial performance isn’t clear.

    Acquiring GitHub could help Microsoft persuade more developers to create applications for its cloud-computing business, where customers rent digital resources and applications on demand. Microsoft is racing to catch up to industry leader Amazon.com Inc. in that business.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-github-for-7-5-billion-in-stock-1528118504

    Of course… it has to be weaponized…

    This is why Microsoft should buy $2 billion startup GitHub and turn it into a weapon against Amazon

    So the opportunity for Microsoft is fairly straightforward. If it can get the Microsoft Azure cloud tightly integrated with GitHub — basically, give developers an easy way to get a GitHub project up and running in the cloud — it can kill two birds with one stone. Developers could love GitHub even more, and it would drive more usage of Microsoft Azure.

    https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/This-is-why-Microsoft-should-buy-2-billion-12961533.php

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google reportedly won’t renew its controversial military AI contract

    According to three individuals who attended a weekly Google meeting this morning, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced that the Project Maven contract would not be renewed when it expires next year. She said the backlash over the deal had been bad for the company and that the contract was pursued during a time when the company was actively seeking military work.

    Internal emails obtained by Gizmodo showed that Google’s plans for the project may not have been as low-key as the company wanted people to think. Google reportedly put at least 10 employees on the project, viewed the deal as a gateway for future military and intelligence contracts and sought and received security authorizations that would allow it to work on additional government contracts. The Project Maven contract is also apparently worth more than Google executives once said, pulling in around $15 million instead of the $9 million that was previously reported. Its budget also had the possibility of growing to as much as $250 million. Additionally, emails show that Google planned to build a surveillance system for the Pentagon that would let analysts “click on a building and see everything associated with it.”

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/01/google-will-not-renew-military-ai-contract-project-maven/

  • Google pledges not to develop AI weapons, but says it will still work with the military

    While the new principles forbid the development of AI weaponry, they state that Google will continue to work with the military “in many other areas.” Speaking to The Verge, a Google representative said that had these principles been published earlier, the company would likely not have become involved in the Pentagon’s drone project, which used AI to analyze surveillance footage. Although this application was for “non-offensive purposes,” and therefore hypothetically permitted under these guidelines, the representative said it was too close for comfort — suggesting Google will play it safe with future military contracts.

    As well as forbidding the development of AI for weapons, the principles say Google will not work on AI surveillance projects that violate “internationally accepted norms,” or projects which contravene “widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.” The company says that its main focuses for AI research are to be “socially beneficial.” This means avoiding unfair bias; remaining accountable to humans and subject to human control; upholding “high standards of scientific excellence,” and incorporating privacy safeguards.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/7/17439310/google-ai-ethics-principles-warfare-weapons-military-project-maven

  • IBM says it’s reaching for the ‘moon’ with Watson Health. That hasn’t stopped layoffs.

    All told, once the Truven deal closed, IBM had “invested more than $4 billion to acquire and build an unparalleled array of cognitive healthcare capabilities,” it said, having previously stressed that each of the acquisitions came with client lists and databases.

    The databases were certainly among the most important components of the deal because machine-learning systems like Watson rely on having a large number of cases to comb through in their search for analytic breakthroughs.

    Kavanaugh published a 53-page report last summer that questioned whether the investment in Watson will ever pay off for IBM, mostly on the grounds that competitors like Google and Amazon seem better-positioned to win what he called “the A.I. war.”

    http://www.heraldsun.com/news/business/article212325914.html

Cloud

  • Bezos doesn’t want AWS customers to feel ‘trapped’

    Though cloud computing can often lead to a vendor “lock-in,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Amazon Web Services works hard to prevent customers from feeling “trapped” in its services, speaking at the annual shareholder meeting last week, reports GeekWire.

    However, Bezos pointed out that adopting another cloud provider after already implementing one because of the time and money invested in the process can be costly. Developers taking time to learn application programming interfaces (APIs) is what directs many businesses to maintain a singular cloud vendor instead of “managing two different systems,” Bezos said.

    https://www.ciodive.com/news/bezos-doesnt-want-aws-customers-to-feel-trapped/524889/

  • SAP and IBM marry their cloud services in a partnership aimed at private cloud deploymentsa

    IBM Corp. and SAP SE today announced plans to launch an edition of the SAP Cloud Platform running on the IBM Cloud for private cloud deployments. The companies said the collaboration will help clients in regulated industries build new applications on the cloud without jeopardizing security and control.

    IBM has recently established or tightened cloud partnerships with Red Hat Inc., VMware Inc. and New Relic Inc. with the goal of helping enterprise customers move more easily to the cloud and take advantage of recent innovations like containers. “Our goal is to provide the cloud of choice for every enterprise, and particularly for enterprise workloads,” said Bradley Knapp, IBM’s offering manager for IBM Cloud for SAP.

    https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/06/06/sap-ibm-marry-cloud-services-partnership-aimed-private-cloud-deployments/

Security

  • The damage from Atlanta’s huge cyberattack is even worse than the city first thought

    On Wednesday during a budget meeting, Daphne Rackley, Atlanta’s Interim Chief Information Officer and head of Atlanta Information Management, disclosed new details about the extent of the damage. As Reuters reports, at least one third of the 424 software programs that the city runs remain offline or partially inoperable. Almost 30 percent of those programs are deemed “mission critical” by the city meaning that they control crucial city services like the court system and law enforcement. In the meeting, Rackley explained that the city initially believed only 20 percent of the city’s software programs to be affected by the attack, none of which affected critical systems.

    While reporting the updated numbers, Rackley estimated that $9.5 million would need to be added to the department’s $35 million budget to address the remaining damage. That amount is on top of the more than two million dollars in emergency procurements sought by Atlanta Information Management following the attack.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/06/atlanta-cyberattack-atlanta-information-management/

Software/SaaS

  • Gartner recognises SAP Ariba as Procure-to-Pay leader

    With more than 3.3mn connected companies in 190 countries transacting over $1.7trn in commerce on an annual basis, the Ariba Network is the world’s largest business-to-business trading platform.

    SAP Fieldglass’ cloud-based, open platform, which has a 99% customer retention rate, has been deployed in more than 180 countries and is used by organisations around the world to find, engage and manage all types of flexible resources.

    “We feel that our standing as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant reflects our value as an integrated end-to-end solution,” said Vish Baliga, Chief Technology Officer, SAP Fieldglass.

    https://www.supplychaindigital.com/procurement/gartner-recognises-sap-ariba-procure-pay-leader

  • Coupa: Valuation At A Dangerous Tipping Point

    Coupa also possesses few of the fundamental traits that typically accompany such a highly valued stock. The 37% y/y growth rate Coupa posted this quarter was, at least relative to other high-growth SaaS stocks, fairly middling. There are companies growing at 40-50%, like MongoDB (MDB), that are valued at only 8x forward revenues. And while investors may cheer on Coupa’s ability to generate free cash flow (which is, admittedly, a rarity in the SaaS sector and impressive at Coupa’s early stage), its FCF margin of 20% still can’t be considered best-in-breed, as other companies like Dropbox (DBX) have FCF margins closer to 30%.

    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4179374-coupa-valuation-dangerous-tipping-point

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IRS to Spend Nearly $300 Million on IT in Tax Overhaul

    The Internal Revenue Service plans to spend $291 million updating 140 computer systems to help it implement the new tax law, according to a previously undisclosed agency document.

    Those information-technology costs and other back-office operations will consume more than 90% of the money Congress is giving the IRS for implementation. The IRS is also bracing for a 17% increase in phone calls, planning to revise 450 forms and publications and organizing 40,000 hours of training, according to the document.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-to-spend-nearly-300-million-on-it-in-tax-overhaul-1527871564?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Other

  • Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

    Facebook’s hands-off stance changed around 2016. WhatsApp topped one billion monthly users, and it had eliminated its 99 cent fee. Facebook told investors it would stop increasing the number of ads in Facebook’s news feed, resulting in slower advertising-revenue growth. This put pressure on Facebook’s other properties—including WhatsApp—to make money.

    That August, WhatsApp announced it would start sharing phone numbers and other user data with Facebook, straying from its earlier promise to be built “around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible.”

    With Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg pushing to integrate it into the larger company, WhatsApp moved its offices in January 2017 from Mountain View, Calif., to Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters about 20 minutes away. Facebook tried to make it welcoming, decorating the Building 10 office in WhatsApp’s green color scheme.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-messy-expensive-split-between-facebook-and-whatsapps-founders-1528208641?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Kyle Cottrell on Unsplash