Tag: SAP

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Supplier Report: 1/24/2020


Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Even though Google is under investigation for monopoly tactics, the company announced another acquisition. The search giant is set to purchase cloud sales company Pointy, which helps small companies sell their products online.

The company also announced a long-term strategy to kill browser cookies, with the aim to better protect end-user privacy (and likely unleash their own tracking-standard for advertisers).

Apple also announced an acquisition this week (AI startup Xnor.ai), but that news was overshadowed by the company’s refusal to unlock phones involved with the Pensacola shooting. Should tech companies intentionally open back doors for the government (even with the best of intentions) which could lead to much larger security issues?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google acquires Pointy, a startup to help brick-and-mortar retailers list products online, for $163M

    The search giant is acquiring Pointy, a startup out of Dublin, Ireland, which has built hardware and software technology to help physical retailers — specifically those that might not already have an extensive e-commerce storefront detailing in-store inventory — get their products discoverable online without any extra work.

    The companies are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal, but a source tells us it is €147 million ($163 million).

    A source notes that this was a “good outcome” because Pointy has a “one of a kind” product that didn’t really have any comparables in the market. Pointy had also managed to pick up quite a lot of traction as a small startup, working with around 10% of all physical retailers in the U.S. in certain categories (pets and toys were two of those, I was told).

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/14/google-is-buying-pointy-a-startup-that-helps-brick-and-mortar-retailers-list-products-online/

  • Equinix is acquiring bare metal cloud provider Packet

    Sara Baack, chief product officer at Equinix, says bringing the two companies together will provide a diverse set of bare metal options for customers moving forward. “Our combined strengths will further empower companies to be everywhere they need to be, to interconnect everyone and integrate everything that matters to their business,” she said in a statement.

    While the companies did not share the purchase price, they did hint that they would have more details on the transaction after it closes, which is expected in the first quarter this year.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/14/equinix-is-acquiring-bare-metal-cloud-provider-packet/

  • Apple acquires Xnor.ai, edge AI spin-out from Paul Allen’s AI2, for price in $200M range

    The three-year-old startup’s secret sauce has to do with AI on the edge — machine learning and image recognition tools that can be executed on low-power devices rather than relying on the cloud. “We’ve been able to scale AI out of the cloud to every device out there,” co-founder Ali Farhadi, who is the venture’s CXO (chief Xnor officer) as well as a UW professor, told GeekWire in 2018.

    Xnor.ai also developed a self-service platform that made it possible for software developers, even those who aren’t skilled in AI, to drop AI-centric code and data libraries into device-centric apps.

    Those two threads of innovation are woven into the startup’s motto: “AI Everywhere, for Everyone.”

    https://www.geekwire.com/2020/exclusive-apple-acquires-xnor-ai-edge-ai-spin-paul-allens-ai2-price-200m-range/

Cloud

  • Google Cloud gets a premium support plan with 15-minute response times

    Google stresses that the team that will answer a company’s calls will consist of “content-aware experts” that know your application stack and architecture. As with similar premium plans from other vendors, enterprises will have a Technical Account manager who works through these issues with them. Companies with global operations can opt to have (and pay for) technical account managers available during business hours in multiple regions.

    The idea here, however, is also to give GCP users more proactive support, which will soon include a site reliability engineering engagement, for example, that is meant to help customers “design a wrapper of supportability around the Google Cloud customer projects that have the highest sensitivity to downtime.” The Support team will also work with customers to get them ready for special events like Black Friday or other peak events in their industry. Over time, the company plans to add more features and additional support plans.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/google-cloud-gets-a-premium-support-plan-with-15-minute-response-times/

Security/Privacy

  • Apple Said It Is Helping In The Pensacola Shooting Investigation, But It Won’t Unlock The Shooter’s iPhones

    “We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation. Our responses to their many requests since the attack have been timely, thorough and are ongoing,” the company said in a statement. “We responded to each request promptly, often within hours, sharing information with FBI offices in Jacksonville, Pensacola and New York. The queries resulted in many gigabytes of information that we turned over to investigators. In every instance, we responded with all of the information that we had.”

    But Apple said nothing about actually unlocking the gunman’s two iPhones. Instead, it reiterated its stance on privacy.

    “We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys,” the company explained. “Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers. … We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users’ data.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scottlucas/william-barr-apple-request-unlock-iphones

  • Google Says Chrome Will End Support for Third-Party Cookies That Track You. Here’s Why That’s Not All Good News

    So, let’s look at the good news and the bad news. If you’re a user, there’s mostly good news, because ending third-party cookies is generally good for privacy. The caveat here is that it’s not yet entirely clear how Google plans to have it both ways. Meaning, it’s not clear how Google thinks it can provide a privacy-protected browsing experience that also provides targeted ads.

    There’s also the fact that some less ethical advertisers will no doubt resort to other types of more nefarious tracking, like browser and device fingerprinting. Those technologies create a profile of you based on information sent by your browser about your device, the operating system, your location, and other unique identifiers. Safari has introduced protection against that, and it will be interesting if Google takes a similar approach with Chrome.

    https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/google-says-chrome-will-end-support-for-third-party-cookies-that-track-you-thats-not-all-good-news.html

Software/SaaS

  • Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue

    In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization’s new revenue-generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this action. The overall number may still be higher, though, as Mozilla is still looking into how this decision will affect workers in the U.K. and France. In 2018, Mozilla Corporation (as opposed to the much smaller Mozilla Foundation) said it had about 1,000 employees worldwide.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-waits-for-subscription-products-to-generate-revenue/?guccounter=1

  • Daily Crunch: Goodbye Hipmunk

    Founded by Adam J. Goldstein and Reddit co-founder Steve “spez” Huffman, Hipmunk was one of the first well-made “metasearch” travel sites. It scrounged up flights (and hotels/car rentals/etc.) from across myriad services like Expedia, Priceline, etc., presenting all the times and prices in one big, skimmable interface.

    Now the Hipmunk team says the website and app are both shutting down. Oh, and we’ve confirmed that Goldstein and Huffman tried to buy the company back from SAP Concur, but that doesn’t seem to have panned out.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/daily-crunch-goodbye-hipmunk/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Report: Intel CPU Supply Issues Will Likely Persist Through 2020

    Intel has previously admitted to being stuck between a rock and a hard place and their CEO, Bob Swan, gave a very candid explanation for the situation they are in right now. It does, however, mean that AMD *will* be eating away more market share from Intel as OEMs and AIBs have to switch to AMD parts to maintain their volume as Intel’s foundries are running at peak capacity and cannot keep up with demand. Every chip order that Intel is not able to meet means market share gained by AMD.

    It also doesn’t help that Intel’s chips ship at a premium (and it makes no sense to kill that premium right now when demand exceeds supply) and OEMs/AIBs have to pass that cost down to consumers who may prefer to go with AMD alternatives anyways. If there is one thing we know for sure it is that 2020 is going to be a make or break year for Intel and things won’t start looking up for the company till late 2021.

    https://wccftech.com/report-intel-cpu-supply-issues-will-likely-persist-through-2020/

Other

  • Silicon Valley Abandons the Culture That Made It the Envy of the World

    Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, said much the same last year. “Chinese companies are growing faster, they have higher valuations, and they have more users than their non-Chinese counterparts,” he said. “It’s very important to understand that there is a global competition around technology innovation, and China is a significant player and likely to remain so.”

    This is a full reversal of the language that tech promoters used to sell Silicon Valley–style innovation and competitiveness for decades. Saxenian has noticed the change in how the Valley describes itself, or at least in how the dominant firms do. “Advocacy of the small, innovative firm and entrepreneurial ecosystem is giving way to more and more justifications for bigness (scale economics, competitive advantage, etc.),” Saxenian wrote to me in an email. “The big is beautiful line is coming especially from the large companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple) that are threatened by antitrust and need to justify their scale.”

    This sort of talk prompts one obvious, knee-jerk response: It’s simply hypocrisy. When Google and Facebook were start-ups, their executives said start-ups were good. Now that Google and Facebook are huge, their executives say huge companies are good. It’s cynical, if not unexpected.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/why-silicon-valley-and-big-tech-dont-innovate-anymore/604969/

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Supplier Report: 12/13/2019


Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

Google’s founders are leaving the company at a time when employees are actively protesting leadership decisions and the US Government is building a monopoly case. Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is going to be very busy.

Google is not the only IT firm with labor issues… The Labor Department’s case against Oracle for underpaying women and minorities is underway and Oracle isn’t looking very woke (is that still a thing?).

Finally… It seems that the e-Scooter fad is slowing down. Bird, one of the more popular companies is laying off staff after an acquisition and a knock-off company named Unicorn is closing their doors before they ever even ramped up (I hope this is a sign of things to come).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Adobe is buying the Oculus Medium VR sculpting app

    Why is Oculus selling Medium? It could be Facebook scaling back its non-gaming VR efforts. But Medium is also slightly redundant for Oculus. The company also launched a professional-oriented art app called Quill, which was relaunched as Quill 2.0 in August with expanded animation capabilities. And where Quill is a 3D painting app in the style of Tilt Brush (which is owned by Google), Medium works a lot more like a traditional 3D modeling program, so it fits better with Adobe’s existing offerings. As for its impact on VR in general, it depends on where Adobe takes the product in 2020 — and how deeply it integrates Medium into its larger creative suite.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/6/20999185/adobe-facebook-oculus-medium-vr-sculpting-app

Cloud

  • Google Co-Founders Page, Brin Give Up Management Roles

    Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from active management of the internet giant’s parent, surrendering immediate control to a low-key company veteran who must navigate global regulatory threats as well as employee discontent.

    Page and Brin, who had been chief executive and president, respectively, of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said Tuesday they would hand control immediately to Sundar Pichai, Google’s existing CEO. They remain on Alphabet’s board and will still together control a majority of voting power over company decisions under Alphabet’s dual-class share structure.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/sundar-pichai-to-replace-larry-page-as-ceo-of-alphabet-11575409229

    Why Alphabet’s days could be numbered under its new CEO

    Shielding Google from those “other bets” such as driverless cars no longer seems so urgent. Alphabet and other tech titans — particularly those effectively controlled by their founders — have a relatively long leash from investors to invest in both the projects that generate earnings now and on whatever comes next. Amazon, for example, spent $14 billion to buy a niche grocery store chain, and it’s investing in far-flung businesses such as health care and entertainment.

    Amazon has always received a longer leash to tinker than most other companies, but I think Google’s cash firepower also lets it experiment without creating an artificial structure to shield Google from its less mature corporate cousins. There may be a reason that Alphabet never became a blueprint for other technology companies that wanted to keep up with the times.

    https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/12/5/20995520/alphabet-obsolete-sundar-pichai-ceo-page-brin

Security/Privacy

  • How Ring Went From ‘Shark Tank’ Reject to America’s Scariest Surveillance Company

    Although there’s no credible evidence that Ring actually deters or reduces crime, claiming that its products achieve these things is essential to its marketing model. These claims have helped Ring cultivate a surveillance network around the country with the help of dozens of taxpayer-funded camera discount programs and more than 600 police partnerships.

    When police partner with Ring, they are required to promote its products, and to allow Ring to approve everything they say about the company. In exchange, they get access to Ring’s Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal, an interactive map that allows police to request camera footage directly from residents without obtaining a warrant.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp53/how-ring-went-from-shark-tank-reject-to-americas-scariest-surveillance-company
    A World With a Billion Cameras Watching You Is Just Around the Corner

    The report, from industry researcher IHS Markit, to be released Thursday, said the number of cameras used for surveillance would climb above 1 billion by the end of 2021. That would represent an almost 30% increase from the 770 million cameras today. China would continue to account for a little over half the total.

    Fast-growing, populous nations such as India, Brazil and Indonesia would also help drive growth in the sector, the report said. The number of surveillance cameras in the U.S. would grow to 85 million by 2021, from 70 million last year, as American schools, malls and offices seek to tighten security on their premises, IHS analyst Oliver Philippou said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-billion-surveillance-cameras-forecast-to-be-watching-within-two-years-11575565402

Software/SaaS

  • SAP customers are revolting – here’s why

    The problem for both customers and SAP can be summed up in the words of a retiring executive with close on 30 years SAP experience. He said that his greatest disappointment is that SAP has not really delivered what it promised in terms of end to end integrated business processes and that the addition of many new acquired technologies only makes the ability to create a seamlessly integrated landscape nigh on impossible. The R/3 days when integration was a reality are long gone. It should therefore be no surprise that even showcase customers like Jazz describe a business technology landscape that includes SAP, Workday and Salesforce.

    Equally worrying for me was the degree of frustration across the SAP ecosystem at what one partner described as ‘appalling communication’ around what SAP is doing to help customers get across the S/4 line. Hillary Blinds, an early Suite for HANA customer for example shrugged at the prospect of moving to S/4, despite its commitment to SAP across departments other vendors could own.

    https://diginomica.com/sap-customers-are-revolting-heres-why

  • Oracle allegedly underpaid women and minorities by $400 million. Now the details are set to come out in court.

    The first witness, former employee Kirsten Hanson Garcia, who worked for Oracle for more than 16 years, most recently in human resources as senior director of talent development, testified that during a meeting in the mid-2000s with top executives, the head of human resources said, “Well, if you hire a woman, she will work harder for less money.”

    Palantir, a data-mining company, settled the claims in 2017, while the department’s investigation into Google has been mired in a dispute over access to compensation data. That makes the Oracle hearing a rare airing of testimony from the employees who allegedly faced discrimination, as well as compensation data at a major tech company. Oracle and Google are also facing private pay, promotion, or hiring discrimination lawsuits filed by current and former employees.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/05/oracle-allegedly-underpaid-women-minorities-by-million-now-details-are-set-come-out-court/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Bernie Sanders’ Broadband Plan Is Comcast’s Worst Nightmare

    The plan would restore the FCC’s authority and net neutrality rules stripped away by the Ajit Pai FCC, subjecting ISPs to far greater oversight. It also proposes banning ISPs from imposing arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees, which critics have long said are little more than punitive price hikes on captive customers.

    But Sanders’ plan also spends a lot of time advocating for community broadband. First by proposing $150 billion in new funding to aid the growing roster of towns and cities that have begun building their own networks after years of industry neglect. Secondly by eliminating the 19 protectionist state laws big ISP lobbyists have used to try and crush those efforts.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjjmn/bernie-sanders-broadband-plan-is-comcasts-worst-nightmare
    Love the idea Bernie – but where is the $150B coming from? How does this idea become reality?

  • Ericsson to pay over $1 billion to resolve U.S. corruption probes

    The bribery took place over many years in countries including China, Vietnam and Djibouti, the department said. The total charges include a criminal penalty of more than $520 million, plus $540 million to be paid to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a related matter.

    The company admitted it had conspired with others to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) from at least 2000 to 2016 by engaging in a scheme to pay bribes and to falsify books and records and by failing to implement reasonable internal accounting controls, the Justice Department said in a statement.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ericsson/ericsson-to-pay-over-1-billion-to-resolve-u-s-corruption-probes-idUSKBN1YA2HU

Other

  • Elon Musk Cleared by Jury in Defamation Case Over ‘Pedo’ Tweet

    The legal battle stems from Mr. Musk’s involvement in a high-profile effort to rescue a youth soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand last year. British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth, who helped in the early days of the operation, criticized Mr. Musk’s effort to use a mini-sub to save the boys as a public-relations stunt. The device was never used, and Mr. Unsworth told CNN that Mr. Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-cleared-by-jury-in-defamation-case-over-pedo-tweet-11575678498

  • Amazon Leases New Manhattan Office Space, Less Than a Year After HQ2 Pullout

    The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on Manhattan’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees. The new lease represents Amazon’s largest expansion in New York since the company stunned the city by abandoning plans to locate its second headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City.

    The deal comes the same day The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is in talks to lease 700,000 square feet in a neighborhood nearby. Combined with Facebook’s other recent deals in the city, such a move would catapult the social-media company into the top ranks of the city’s largest corporate tenants, alongside JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. , which have had a major presence in New York for many years.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-leases-new-manhattan-office-space-less-than-a-year-after-hq2-pullout-11575671243

  • Bird lays off several Scoot employees

    Bird has laid off less than two dozen employees, The San Francisco Chronicle first reported. The layoffs affect employees Bird brought on board as part of its ~$25 million acquisition of Scoot earlier this year.

    Those affected were salaried employees and/or people with technical backgrounds, according to Bird.

    “The integration of Bird and Scoot does not impact or change our previous or future commitments to San Francisco or to providing its residents and visitors access to the highest quality and most reliable shared micromobility vehicles and services,” a Bird spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are planning to relocate a number of Scoot team members to our Santa Monica headquarters while also maintaining an office in San Francisco for our operations and maintenance teams as well as a number of regionally specific roles.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/06/bird-lays-off-several-scoot-employees/

    I was hoping this stupid scooter fad was dying down, but this is just corporate restructuring. Oh wait…
    Unicorn, e-scooter startup from co-creator of Tile, shuts down with no money for refunds

    Unicorn, the electric scooter startup from the co-creator of gadget tracker Tile, is shutting down operations after blowing all its cash on Facebook and Google ads but only receiving 350 orders for its glossy white e-scooters, it claims. In an email to customers, the company says it lacks the resources to deliver any of its $699 two-wheelers, and won’t be issuing refunds “as we are completely out of funding.”

    In a remorseful email, Unicorn CEO Nick Evans said the company had “totally failed as a business” and has also “spread the cost of this failure to you, the early customers that believed in us.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/7/21000094/unicorn-electric-scooter-shut-down-refund-tile

Posted on

Supplier Report: 11/1/2019


Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Microsoft pulled off the upset victory! They beat AWS for the lucrative $10B+ Government cloud project known as JEDI. Several large IT firms like IBM and Oracle protested the procurement process saying Amazon was favored. Did the Pentagon pivot to quiet down the criticism or did Microsoft really deliver the best solution?

Google continues to have a rough time. They are being investigated for anti-trust behavior (as is Facebook) and now their years-long effort to consolidate texting/chat protocols is moving forward without them. Mobile service providers have joined forces and agreed to adopt RCS but are pushing Google out. Many tech journalists are proclaiming this to be disaster for Google.

Finally, Foxconn continues to fail in Wisconsin. Those buildings are still empty and all those promised jobs still haven’t arrived.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Amazon acquires Health Navigator for Amazon Care, its pilot employee healthcare program

    This is the second health startup acquired by Amazon. The first was online pharmacy PillPack, purchased by the company in 2018 for slightly less than $1 billion. PillPack’s services have also been integrated into Amazon Care, which offers deliveries of prescriptions with remotely communicated treatment plans.

    Health Navigator’s platform was created to be integrated into online health services, including telemedicine and medical call centers, to standardize the process of working with patients. Its platform includes natural language processing-based tools for documenting health complaints and care recommendations, and is integrated into apps with APIs.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/amazon-acquires-health-navigator-for-amazon-care-its-pilot-employee-healthcare-program/

  • Microsoft Acquires Cloud File-Migration Company Mover

    Microsoft commented that as customer demand continues to grow for moving content to the cloud, Mover should make it easier for customers to migrate files to Microsoft 365.

    The company is headquartered in Edmonton, Canada, has fewer than 11 employees and has raised less than $1 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Owler estimates its annual revenue at $5.2 million.

    The Mover acquisition marks Microsoft’s ninth acquisition this year, according to data from S&P Capital IQ, as outlined below. Microsoft is making acquisitions in a several diverse areas, including data migration, business intelligence, coding, games and security.

    https://coresight.com/research/microsoft-acquires-cloud-file-migration-company-mover/

  • SoftBank says it has now invested $18.5 billion in WeWork, ‘more than the GDP’ of Bolivia, which has 11.5 million people

    One possible hitch that Claure understandably didn’t raise yesterday — one in addition to the countless obvious challenges WeWork faces in trying to generate forward momentum, including convincing corporate customers not to look elsewhere for office space — is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS.

    As Bloomberg reported last night, SoftBank will seek national security approval from CFIUS for its takeover, and the committee has stymied the Japanese conglomerate before.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/24/softbank-notes-it-has-now-invested-18-5-billion-in-wework-more-than-the-gdp-of-bolivia-which-has-11-5-million-people/

  • Smart home platform Wink is dying as Will.i.am’s tech company is low on money

    Will.i.am’s technology company i.am+ is running out of money, according to current employees, company emails, and documents obtained by The Verge. As a result, two current employees of smart home platform Wink — which i.am+ acquired in 2017 — tell The Verge that workers haven’t been paid in seven weeks, and that their office in Schenectady, New York has been temporarily closed. Wink users have also reported on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook that all sorts of third-party devices have stopped working with the platform, and that the company’s customer support line is dead.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20932055/wink-smart-home-problems-iamplus-william-black-eyed-peas

Artificial Intelligence

  • Why IBM Thinks Google Hasn’t Achieved ‘Quantum Supremacy’

    In a blog post published on Monday, IBM researchers Edwin Pednault, John Gunnels and Jay Gambetta disputed Google’s claim that it would take a state-of-the-art classical computer around 10,000 years to complete the sampling task Google used to demonstrate quantum supremacy on its Sycamore quantum computer. “Supremacy” here is the point at which a quantum computer can quickly complete tasks that would take a non-quantum computer more than a human lifetime to do.

    The researchers instead claim that IBM’s Summit supercomputer could perform effectively the same job in just 2.5 days, by using hard drive storage and “performance-enhancing techniques,” which Google allegedly did not consider in its estimation.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb5jxd/why-ibm-thinks-google-hasnt-achieved-quantum-supremacy

Cloud

  • Microsoft reports a strong fiscal first quarter, but Azure’s growth rate continues to decline

    Microsoft posted quarterly results today that were well ahead of analysts’ expectations, but Azure’s growth rate continues to decline as it competes with AWS.

    The company’s revenue for the first quarter of the fiscal year rose 14% year-over-year, to $33.1 billion. Net income increased 21% to $10.7 billion, or $1.38 per share.

    Revenue from Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes its Office products and LinkedIn, grew 13%, to $11.1 billion. LinkedIn’s revenue increased by 25%.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/microsoft-reports-a-strong-fiscal-first-quarter-but-azures-growth-rate-continues-to-decline/
    But Wait…
    In a victory over Amazon, Microsoft wins $10B Pentagon JEDI cloud contract

    Microsoft beat out Amazon in the final round for this lucrative contract after the two cloud giants beat out other competitors like IBM and Oracle in an earlier round. Most pundits considered Amazon to be the frontrunner to win the deal.

    “We’re surprised about this conclusion. AWS is the clear leader in cloud computing, and a detailed assessment purely on the comparative offerings clearly lead to a different conclusion,” an Amazon spokesperson told us in an emailed comment. “We remain deeply committed to continuing to innovate for the new digital battlefield where security, efficiency, resiliency, and scalability of resources can be the difference between success and failure.”

    The process to get to this point has been anything but uncomplicated, though, with various lawsuits, last-minute recusals and other controversies, with even the president getting involved at one point.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/25/in-a-victory-over-amazon-microsoft-wins-10b-pentagon-jedi-cloud-contract/

  • SAP teams up on cloud sales with Microsoft

    “We bundled SAP’s cloud platform services to support customers around the extension, integration and orchestration of SAP systems,” Morgan told reporters, adding that Microsoft would act as a reseller for the product.

    SAP said it expected annual revenues of around 75 million euros ($84 million) from the deal: “There’s no downside to those numbers – only upside,” she told analysts on a call.

    In the third quarter, SAP reported a 10% increase in revenue and a 15% rise in operating profit, after adjusting one-off items and currencies, helping it to achieve an expansion of 1.7% in its operating margins. The company reiterated its forecast for the year and through to 2023.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sap-results/sap-in-three-year-cloud-partnership-with-microsoft-idUSKBN1X00DR

  • Forty-six attorneys general have joined a New York-led antitrust investigation of Facebook

    Forty-six attorneys general have joined a New York-led antitrust investigation of Facebook, officials announced Tuesday, raising the stakes in a sweeping bipartisan probe of the tech giant that could result in massive changes to its business practices.

    The expanded roster of states and territories taking part in the investigation reflects lingering, broad concerns among the country’s competition watchdogs that “Facebook may have put consumer data at risk, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, and increased the price of advertising,” New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said in a statement.

    Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) added, “By working together, state attorneys general are leading the way in ensuring digital platforms respect consumer privacy and do not engage in anticompetitive behavior.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/22/forty-six-attorneys-general-have-joined-new-york-led-antitrust-investigation-into-facebook/

Security/Privacy

  • Comcast Is Lobbying Against Encryption That Could Prevent it From Learning Your Browsing History

    The plan, which Google intends to implement soon, would enforce the encryption of DNS data made using Chrome, meaning the sites you visit. Privacy activists have praised Google’s move. But ISPs are pushing back as part of a wider lobbying effort against encrypted DNS, according to the presentation. Technologists and activists say this encryption would make it harder for ISPs to leverage data for things such as targeted advertising, as well as block some forms of censorship by authoritarian regimes.

    Also

    Of course, it’s worth noting that, in 2017, ISPs lobbied Congress to make it possible to sell your browsing data without your consent.

    “Either, they are doing something with this data today that is not transparent to users, or they are working incredibly hard to protect a future business model,” Erwin said.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kembz/comcast-lobbying-against-doh-dns-over-https-encryption-browsing-data

  • NordVPN confirms it was hacked

    “While this is unconfirmed and we await further forensic evidence, this is an indication of a full remote compromise of this provider’s systems,” the security researcher said. “That should be deeply concerning to anyone who uses or promotes these particular services.”

    NordVPN said “no other server on our network has been affected.”

    But the security researcher warned that NordVPN was ignoring the larger issue of the attacker’s possible access across the network. “Your car was just stolen and taken on a joy ride and you’re quibbling about which buttons were pushed on the radio?” the researcher said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/nordvpn-confirms-it-was-hacked/

Software/SaaS

  • Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield says that Microsoft has been ‘surprisingly unsportsmanlike’ as a competitor

    In July, Microsoft said that it had had 13 million daily active users, indicating that it both had more users than Slack, and that it was growing faster. In October, Slack released a new figure of 12 million daily active users, while also saying that its users were highly-engaged with the chat app — which it said was as important, or more so, than user metrics.

    On stage at the conference, Butterfield said that it was “kind of crazy” for Microsoft to release those numbers while Slack was in the quiet period after its direct listing. He also highlighted the fact that several of the top Google search trends for Microsoft Teams are related to how to uninstall the app.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/slack-ceo-microsoft-sees-us-as-an-existential-threat-2019-10

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have finally agreed to replace SMS with a new RCS standard

    Google is a fascinating and perhaps telling omission from the press release. Up until this point, the primary advocate for RCS has been Google, which bet on it as the only platform-level messaging service for Android. It was a bet that carriers haven’t backed until now. Verizon isn’t supporting RCS on the Pixel 4 after doing so on the Pixel 3, for example. Google recently stopped waiting for carriers in the UK and France and rolled out RCS support for Android phones using its own servers.

    Google was unable to immediately provide comment on the CCMI. That in and of itself is telling — as is the fact that the word “Google” appears precisely zero times in the carriers’ press release. Garland says the company continues to be an ecosystem partner and that this release was focused on the carriers.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/24/20931202/us-carriers-rcs-cross-carrier-messaging-initiative-ccmi-att-tmobile-sprint-verizon
    Somehow, Android’s messaging mess is about to get even worse

    At any time in the past five years, Google could have leveraged Android’s 80-plus-percent market share and told carriers that it was launching a default messaging service that works like iMessage, falling back to SMS only when necessary. It’s not in Google’s nature to push partners around (though it does make exceptions). For reasons that probably seemed reasonable every time, when it came to messaging Google always blinked.

    All that blinking and now the opportunity to simply fix Android’s messaging mess by fiat might have passed. By handing control of Android messaging over to the carriers, Google wasn’t just blinking — it was blinkered. Now the company has to scramble to make sure this entirely foreseeable outcome doesn’t end up wrecking the default texting experience on every Android phone sold in America.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20931699/android-messaging-ccmi-rcs-mess-isis-google-fiascotastrophe

Other

  • Foxconn finally admits its empty Wisconsin ‘innovation centers’ aren’t being developed

    Beyond the halted innovation centers, Foxconn’s general Wisconsin plans are similarly in flux. The company announced a partnership in September with an automated coffee kiosk company to help manufacture its product domestically, with plans to add the coffee kiosk to its manufacturing contracts for the planned Mount Pleasant factory.

    But the factory doesn’t exist yet. The company is now aiming to open it in 2020 after repeatedly shifting its deadlines. It’s also reduced the planned number of jobs and the size of the factory from the original 13,000 jobs and 20 million square feet to a 1,500-employee, 1-million-square foot facility that will no longer produce the promised big-screen LCD TVs that were part of the initial contract. Earlier this month, the company announced, scrapped, and then re-announced plans to build a giant, nine-story glass orb that would serve as a data center.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20929453/foxconn-innovation-centers-on-hold-wisconsin-mount-pleasant-trump-deal

  • Report: SoftBank is taking control of WeWork at an ~$8B valuation

    SoftBank, a long-time WeWork investor, plans to invest between $4 billion and $5 billion in exchange for new and existing shares, according to CNBC . The deal, expected to be announced as soon as tomorrow, represents a lifeline for WeWork, which is said to be mere weeks from running out of cash and has been shopping several of its assets as it attempts to lessen its cash burn.

    WeWork declined to comment.

    To be clear, it is reportedly the Vision Fund’s parent company, SoftBank Group Corp. that is taking control, with SoftBank International chief executive officer Marcelo Claure stepping in to support company management, per reports.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/report-softbank-is-taking-control-of-wework-at-an-8b-valuation/

  • Bill McDermott aims to grow ServiceNow like he did SAP

    It’s unclear how quickly the move came together but the plan for him is clear: to scale revenue like he did in his last job.

    Commenting during the company’s earning’s call today, outgoing CEO John Donahoe said that McDermott met all of the board’s criteria for its next leader. This includes the ability to expand globally, expand the markets it serves and finally scale the go-to-market organization internally, all in the service of building toward a $10 billion revenue goal. He believes McDermott checks all those boxes.

    McDermott has his work cut out for him. The company’s 2018 revenue was $2.6 billion. Still, he fully embraced the $10 billion challenge. “Well let me answer that very simply, I completely stand by [the $10 billion goal], and I’m looking forward to achieving it,” he said with bravado during today’s call.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/bill-mcdermott-aims-to-grow-servicenow-like-he-did-sap/

  • President of SAP Customer Experience departs

    Atzberger’s departure follows on the heels of Bill McDermott’s, who left his post as SAP CEO two weeks ago. McDermott was replaced by co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein. The change is not a surprise to some industry experts, but it raises questions about the future of SAP Customer Experience and its ability to compete with Salesforce in the CRM market.

    Morgan announced Atzberger’s departure in an email to SAP Customer Experience employees Tuesday. The email also said that enterprise industry veteran and former SAP employee Bob Stutz was joining SAP Customer Experience as president of engineering and operations.

    https://searchsap.techtarget.com/news/252472717/President-of-SAP-Customer-Experience-departs

Posted on

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

Posted on

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