Tag: Tableau

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Supplier Report: 6/15/2018

The DOJ said it would not block AT&T’s $85B acquisition of Time Warner on Thursday, within hours the acquisition was deemed complete. AT&T wasn’t the only company making moves… Workday bought TWO companies and data analytics companies Slack and Tableau both announced acquisitions this week.

Amazon was in the press for poor labor conditions in their Alexa supply chain. Foxconn workers making the devices have been found to be mistreated and underpaid. Amazon’s own audit of the situation confirms the report.

Oracle shares dropped due to a JP Morgan CIO report documenting a decrease of purchasing interest of Oracle products and services from IT executives.

Acquisitions

  • AT&T Completes Acquisition of Time Warner Inc.

    Under the terms of the merger, Time Warner Inc. shareholders received 1.4 shares of AT&T common stock, in addition to $53.75 in cash, per share of Time Warner Inc. As a result, AT&T issued 1,185M shares of common stock and paid $42.5B in cash. Including net debt from Time Warner, we now have $180.4B in net debt.

    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180614006343/en/ATT-Completes-Acquisition-Time-Warner

  • Workday acquires Rallyteam to fuel machine learning efforts

    In this case, Workday appears to be acquiring the talent. It wants to take the Rallyteam team and incorporate it into the company’s engineering unit to beef up its machine learning efforts, while taking advantage of the expertise it has built up over the years connecting employees with interesting internal projects.

    “With Rallyteam, we gain incredible team members who created a talent mobility platform that uses machine learning to help companies better understand and optimize their workforces by matching a worker’s interests, skills and connections with relevant jobs, projects, tasks and people,” Workday’s Cristina Goldt wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/workday-acquires-rallyteam-to-fuel-machine-learning-efforts/

  • Workday acquires financial modelling startup Adaptive Insights for $1.55B

    Workday, the cloud-based platform that offers HR and other back-office apps for businesses, is making an acquisition to expand its portfolio of services: It’s buying Adaptive Insights, a provider of cloud-based business planning and financial modelling tools, for $1.55 billion. The acquisition is notable because Adaptive Insights had filed for an IPO as recently as May 17.

    Workday says that the $1.55 billion price tag includes “the assumption of approximately $150 million in unvested equity issued to Adaptive Insights employees” related to that IPO. This deal is expected to close in Q3 of this year.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/workday-acquires-financial-modelling-startup-adaptive-insights-for-1-55b/

  • Tableau gets AI shot in the arm with Empirical Systems acquisition

    The startup was born just two years ago from research on automated statistics at the MIT Probabilistic Computing Project. According to the company website, “Empirical is an analytics engine that automatically models structured, tabular data (such as spreadsheets, tables, or csv files) and allows those models to be queried to uncover statistical insights in data.”

    The product was still in private Beta when Tableau bought the company. It is delivered currently as an engine embedded inside other applications. That sounds like something that could slip in nicely into the Tableau analytics platform. What’s more, it will be bringing the engineering team on board for some AI knowledge, while taking advantage of this underlying advanced technology.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/13/tableau-gets-ai-shot-in-the-arm-with-empirical-systems-acquisition/

  • Splunk to Acquire Software Problem-Solver VictorOps for $120 Million

    Big data-cruncher Splunk is acquiring VictorOps, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup whose tools help software developers collaborate and resolve engineering issues, for $120 million mostly in cash with some stock equity. The deal is expected to close before August.

    VictorOps’ tech brings together software engineers so they can overcome technical issues as they arise. The system generates notifications, pulls relevant parties into chat groups, presents pertinent documents, and keeps detailed records as teams work through coding problems.

    http://fortune.com/2018/06/11/splunk-acquire-software-startup-victorops/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Accenture wants to beat unfair AI with a professional toolkit

    “We’re seeing increasing focus on algorithmic bias, fairness. Just this past week we’ve had Singapore announce an AI ethics board. Korea announce an AI ethics board. In the US we already have industry creating different groups — such as The Partnership on AI. Google just released their ethical guidelines… So I think industry leaders, as well as non-tech companies, are looking for guidance. They are looking for standards and protocols and something to adhere to because they want to know that they are safe in creating products.

    “It’s not an easy task to think about these things. Not every organization or company has the resources to. So how might we better enable that to happen? Through good legislation, through enabling trust, communication. And also through developing these kinds of tools to help the process along.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/09/accenture-wants-to-beat-unfair-ai-with-a-professional-toolkit/

Cloud

  • Oracle shares drop after JP Morgan downgrades on lost business to Amazon and Microsoft

    Oracle’s “specific metrics in our large-scale CIO survey have arced over into negative territory, which makes us uncomfortable because the results of our CIO surveys over the years have been highly predictive,” analyst Mark Murphy said in a note to clients Thursday. “Oracle spending intentions have only looked lukewarm in our CIO survey work in the recent past, but the data takes a dive in the current survey. … In our discussions, CIOs have clarified that they are migrating Oracle databases to Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon databases and PostgreSQL.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/14/oracle-shares-drop-after-jp-morgan-downgrades-on-lost-business-to-amazon-and-microsoft.html

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO

    “We are buying GitHub because we like GitHub; our plan is to continue to invest in the GitHub roadmap, and make GitHub better at being GitHub,” Friedman wrote.

    That means no ads in public repos, because Friedman said Sourceforge became “a swamp of banner ads and pop ups and delayed downloads to expose users to more ads”. He added that “GitHub’s clean interface and developer-centric approach can be seen in part as a reaction against Sourceforge” and suggested GitHub’s ascendency shows a no-ads approach has proven the correct approach.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/08/nat_friedman_github_ceo_elect_ama_session/

  • Yahoo Messenger is shutting down on July 17, redirects users to group messaging app Squirrel

    “There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).” Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo started testing last month. You can request access to the beta here.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/yahoo-messenger-is-shutting-down-on-july-17-redirects-users-to-group-messaging-app-squirrel/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IBM and the DoE launch the world’s fastest supercomputer

    Summit, which has been in the works for a few years now, features 4,608 compute servers with two 22-core IBM Power9 chips and six Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs each. In total, the system also features over 10 petabytes of memory. Given the presence of the Nvidia GPUs, it’s no surprise that the system is meant to be used for machine learning and deep learning applications, as well as the usual high performance computing workloads for research in energy and advanced materials that you would expect to happen at Oak Ridge.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/ibms-new-summit-supercomputer-for-the-doe-delivers-200-petaflops/

  • Qualcomm Is Cutting Up to Half of Jobs in Data-Center Unit

    The company will eliminate 241 positions at its design center in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 43 in California, according to notices filed with those states. The total number of cuts, including those not covered by such notices, will represent a third to half of the server-chip unit’s employees, according to a person familiar with the process. The reduction comes on top of the previously announced elimination of about 1,500 workers across the company.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-14/qualcomm-is-said-to-cut-up-to-half-of-jobs-in-data-center-unit

Other

  • Verizon CEO to Retire, Succeeded by a Newcomer

    Verizon Communications Inc. VZ 0.35% named Hans Vestberg as its next chief executive, choosing a relative newcomer to run the wireless giant at a time when its industry is being reshaped by megadeals.

    Mr. Vestberg, who joined the company about a year ago and is its chief technology officer, will succeed longtime CEO Lowell McAdam on Aug. 1. Mr. McAdam will remain executive chairman until the end of the year and then become nonexecutive chairman.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-ceo-to-retire-replaced-by-a-newcomer-1528455600?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • After report on ‘appalling’ conditions, Foxconn will investigate plant that makes Amazon devices

    Though regular workers were better compensated in terms of wages and benefits, China Labor Watch says both groups were subjected to long hours and low wages, with workers putting in more than 100 overtime hours during peak season, even though the legal limit is 36 hours, and some working consecutively for 14 days. Workers on average earned wages between 2000 to 3000 RMB ($312.12 to $468.19), significantly less than Hengyang’s monthly average wage of 4,647 RMB ($725.22), but often had their overtime hours as punishment for taking leave or having unexcused absences.

    The report also claimed that the factory had poor fire safety in its dormitories, lack of sufficiently protective equipment, verbally abusive managers and the “absence of a functioning labor union.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/10/after-report-on-appalling-conditions-foxconn-will-investigate-plant-that-makes-amazon-devices/
    Workers not paid legally by Amazon contractor in China

    Amazon disclosed that its own auditors visited the Foxconn factory in March and found that it had hired an illegally high number of agency workers and was not paying them properly for working overtime.

    Agency staff – known as dispatch workers in China – do not get sick pay or holiday pay and can be laid off without wages during lulls in production. China changed its labour laws in 2014 to limit their use to 10% of any workforce in an attempt to stop companies exploiting them to cut costs.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/09/amazon-contractor-foxconn-pay-workers-illegally

Photo by Michael Prewett on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 5/6/2017

Big blue is having a week. They started with some positive news announcing the acquisition of Verizon’s remaining cloud business, bolstering their customer base. IBM is ending the week on bad news with the announcement that Warren Buffett is selling off 1/3 of his investments in the company.

In an oddly parallel announcement,  Oracle announced a strategic partnership with Verizon’s competitor AT&T. The agreement mandates that AT&T say nice things about Oracle in the press… and they have “global access” to Oracle’s cloud offerings.

There were also some industry articles questioning how to best position a company for A.I. use and implementation.

Acquisitions

  • Cisco scoops up San Jose software-defined networking startup for $610M (Viptela)

    The 170-person company provides a cloud-based to manage wide-area networks that are spread over large geographies or multiple sites.

    “Together, Cisco and Viptela will be able to deliver next-generation SD-WAN solutions to best serve all size and scale of customer needs, while accelerating Cisco’s transition to a recurring, software-based business model,” Rob Salvagno, Cisco’s lead executive for M&A, said in a blog post.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/05/01/cisco-viptela-acquisition.html?page=all

  • What Apple Can’t Buy

    That still leaves a lot to play around with. Net of debt, Apple now sits on $158.3 billion. That would be enough to buy Netflix or Tesla with suitable takeout premiums, to address some of the more recent fantasy matchups. Disney , alas, is currently valued at $181 billion. It is worth reminding that Apple has never done a deal for more than $3 billion, and that was for a nascent music service that also sold overpriced headphones.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-apple-cant-buy-1493818279

  • IBM to snap up remnants of Verizon’s cloud business

    Verizon Enterprise Solutions on Tuesday said it had reached a deal for IBM to buy its cloud and managed hosting services. It has not revealed the value of the sale, but says it and IBM will be working on “strategic initiatives involving networking and cloud services”.

    The sale to IBM marks the end of Verizon’s venture into the cloud infrastructure business, and allows it to focus on reselling datacenter services in conjunction with its own managed network, security, and communications services.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-to-snap-up-remnants-of-verizons-cloud-managed-hosting-business/

  • Oracle and AT&T Enter into Strategic Agreement

    The agreement gives AT&T global access to Oracle’s cloud portfolio offerings both in the public cloud and on AT&T’s Integrated Cloud. This includes Oracle’s IaaS, PaaS, Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) which will help increase productivity, reduce IT costs and enable AT&T to gain new flexibility in how it implements SaaS applications across its global enterprise. AT&T has also agreed to implement Oracle’s Field Service Cloud (OFSC) to further optimize its scheduling and dispatching for its more than 70,000 field technicians. With OFSC, for example, AT&T will combine its existing machine learning and big data capabilities with Oracle’s technology to increase the productivity, on-time arrivals and job duration accuracy of AT&T’s field technicians.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oracle-t-enter-strategic-agreement-130000355.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • CEOs rate productivity ‘very low’ from emerging tech

    Of those four GPTs, only 2% of the 388 CEOs and senior executives in the survey listed IoT as their top enabling technology for improving productivity, while just 1% of respondents each picked blockchain, 3D printing and A.I. Older and existing technology fared better, with ERP at 10%, following by cloud (7%), analytics (7%), CRM (4%), mobile (3%) and marketing tools (3%). “We notice very low mentions for the four potential breakthrough GPTs,” Raskino noted.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3192085/internet-of-things/ceos-rate-productivity-very-low-from-emerging-tech.html

  • Can Ansible be the automation platform for the enterprise? Red Hat thinks so

    Ansible was founded to provide a new way to think about managing systems and applications that better fit this new world. Historically, management vendors and home-grown scripting solutions were created to manage stacks of software on servers. In contrast, Ansible was created to orchestrate multi-tier applications across clouds. From configuration to deployment to zero-downtime rolling upgrades, Ansible is a single framework that can fully automate today’s modern enteprise apps.

    http://www.networkworld.com/article/3194006/data-center/can-ansible-be-the-automation-platform-for-the-enterprise-red-hat-thinks-so.html

  • How Echo Look could feed Amazon’s big data fueled fashion ambitions

    Buying clothes is a recurring need; both a practical necessity and a way to keep up with changes in style and taste. Like buying groceries, it’s a type of shopping without end. Which is why Amazon is fixated on both spaces. “In order to be a $200bn company we’ve got to learn how to sell clothes and food,” Jeff Bezos said as long ago as a decade — displaying the long term thinking that has enabled the ecommerce giant to slow-grow its business over more than 20 years from an upstart online bookseller into today’s sprawling digital marketplace whose upwardly thrusting arrow declaims its mission to deliver everything.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/29/how-echo-look-could-feed-amazons-big-data-fueled-fashion-ambitions/?ncid=rss

  • Should your next big hire be a chief A.I. officer?

    “A.I. is still immature and evolving quickly, so it is unreasonable to expect everyone in the C-suite to understand it completely,” wrote Andrew Ng, a renowned A.I. scientist, in an article posted in November in the Harvard Business Review. “But if your industry generates a large amount of data, there is a good chance that A.I. can be used to transform that data into value. To the majority of companies that have data but lack deep A.I. knowledge, I recommend hiring a chief A.I. officer or a VP of A.I.”

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3192399/artificial-intelligence/should-your-next-big-hire-be-a-chief-ai-officer.html

Cloud

  • Google says it doesn’t need to get into a cloud price war with Amazon, Microsoft to win

    “We don’t need to compete on price to be honest. We definitely compete on value more than price … but if you look at the products, (they) are hard to compare side by side,” Shaukat told CNBC.

    “We believe that our pricing models are much more friendly. So just simply by adopting the more flexible pricing models we have, things like billing by the minute rather than the hour, we think we can save a typical company 20 to 30 percent without having a unit price different to the competition.”

    http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/05/google-cloud-price-battle-amazon-microsoft.html

  • Why the Red Hat-Amazon partnership is a big deal in the cloud

    Here are the key details: Red Hat announced native access to Amazon Web Services products in its Red Hat OpenShift product. OpenShift is the company’s platform as a service (PaaS) application development software, and it’s also the company’s main tool for helping enterprises deploy application containers, including those from Docker.

    Deeper integration between OpenShift and AWS means that OpenShift users can access services such as Amazon Aurora, the company’s cloud-based database, the Amazon RedShift data warehouse product and other cloud-based AWS services directly through OpenShift.

    http://www.networkworld.com/article/3194416/cloud-computing/why-the-red-hat-amazon-partnership-is-a-big-deal-in-the-cloud.html

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Surface sales sag and Windows Phones fade, as Microsoft’s hardware business takes a hit

    Microsoft’s hardware woes contrast sharply with the welfare of the company as a whole, as Microsoft’s cloud services bolstered the bottom line. Microsoft reported profits of $4.8 billion on $22.1 billion in revenue, up 28 percent and 8 percent, respectively, from a year ago. “I’m proud of the progress we’ve made,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft. While the company has repeatedly insisted Windows Phone isn’t dead, however, the slow fade of its own phones doesn’t help the platform’s prospects.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3193084/hardware/surface-sales-sag-and-windows-phones-fade-as-microsofts-hardware-business-takes-a-hit.html

  • Windows 10 S laptops won’t let you switch from Edge or Bing

    When Microsoft revealed the details of Windows 10 S on Tuesday, it sounded awfully similar to the beleaguered Windows RT. But it looks like there’s a little Windows 8.1 with Bing in there too: Microsoft will not allow Windows 10 S device owners to change the default web browser or the default search engine, as first spotted by The Verge.

    That means Microsoft Edge and Bing are the inescapable defaults for Windows 10 S, a stripped-down version of Windows 10 that only allows programs to be downloaded and installed from the Windows Store.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/3193799/windows/windows-10-s-laptops-wont-let-you-switch-from-edge-or-bing.html

  • Dell EMC to launch hybrid Azure cloud stack

    The product, which consists of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and Dell EMC Networking, “delivers a consistent experience across Azure public cloud and private with Azure Stack”, according to the vendor.

    It added that the platform also offers a “consistent programming surface between Azure and Azure Stack” so that organisations can create and share traditional and cloud-native applications securely in private and public clouds.

    “Cloud is an operating model, not a place, and adopting a hybrid model has become the clear choice,” said Peter Cutts, senior VP, of hybrid cloud platforms at Dell EMC.

    http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/hybrid-cloud/6785/dell-emc-to-launch-hybrid-azure-cloud-stack

Software/SaaS

  • Tableau subscription pricing – a proxy for software acquisition

    The problem for buyers comes in determining how many licenses to buy. Tableau, like many other vendors, operates a ‘land and expand’ strategy where it gets into a department with a handful of licenses and then seeks to grow that out into the enterprise. It’s a legitimate model but one that Tableau struggled to scale in large enterprise, where the influence of IT is much more important and where Tableau has sometimes come unstuck.

    http://diginomica.com/2017/05/04/tableu-things-consider-buying-subscription-pricing/

  • Shots fired: IBM and Red Hat vote “no” on Project Jigsaw, may cause delays for Java 9

    IBM and Red Hat are just two members of the 25-member Java Community Process Executive Committee. This committee approves all the new Java standards, including major Java versions. These proposals require a 2/3 majority to be passed. Right now, IBM and Red Hat are alone in their public disagreement, but they’re probably not the only ones. Jigsaw’s proposed changes to the Java ecosystem are controversial, to say the least.

    https://jaxenter.com/jigsaw-dispute-means-possible-delays-java-9-133723.html

  • Does Gartner Group Matter?

    Not making it on to the Gartner Magic Quadrant is a very big deal for a software company. That is why software companies pay ridiculous amounts of money to get on (and stay on) the Quadrant. And the fact that Gartner Group accepts money from the companies that are being evaluated, makes their independence very much open to question. And yet, even people like me, who have serious doubts about Gartner’s legitimacy are influenced by the Magic Quadrant more than we would like to admit.

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-gartner-group-matter-kevin-hunt?

  • IBM Report Highlights Blockchain’s Value in Healthcare

    According to the researchers, blockchain technology offers the industry ” long data” versus “big data ,” that is, data that reaches as far back in time as possible. The potential could capture a patient’s full health history, including every vital sign ever recorded and medicine ever taken.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/ibm-report-highlights-blockchains-value-in-healthcare-cm782220

Other

  • Massive Oracle sales re-org to accelerate cloud cash drive

    The re-org has been described as Oracle’s biggest for a decade. From the start of June there will be one account manager for each of Oracle’s Pillar products – database, middleware, BI and hardware. Pillar sales engineers are, as a result, being chopped and will be replaced by a breed of Oracle employee currently in short supply – enterprise cloud architects.

    The exact size of the cuts is uncertain, but one report has Oracle preparing to cut up to two-thirds of its current sales force as soon as this summer. Oracle has a total head count of 136,000.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/03/oracle_sales_reorganisation/

  • Best be Nimble, best be quick. You’re out of a job at HPE

    HPE bought Nimble for $1.2bn in March, and a fairly obvious way of making synergies in the acquisition playbook is to absorb Nimble’s engineering organization into its own, but use its existing back office, sales and marketing functions to handle the Nimble products. Then you can lay off unwanted staff and save cost. And lo, it is so.

    We’re hearing laid-off execs may get up to a year’s salary plus immediate vesting of some portion their stock options. Folks in the trenches may just get standard redundancy terms. Before it was swallowed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Nimble employed roughly 1,100 people.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/03/hpe_lays_off_nimble_staff/

  • Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Cuts IBM Stake by About a Third

    Mr. Buffett told CNBC that IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty met with him ”a few weeks ago” and asked him about reports that he was selling IBM stock. Mr. Buffett said he confirmed the selling but didn’t provide the rationale or the details.

    Berkshire first bought IBM in 2011. Mr. Buffett had avoided technology stocks for years, saying he didn’t understand them. After Berkshire’s IBM stake was first revealed, Mr. Buffett told The Wall Street Journal that IBM “fits all my principles…it’s something we expect to own indefinitely.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/warren-buffetts-berkshire-hathaway-trims-position-in-ibm-1493956123

Photo: Joshua Ness

 

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Supplier Report: 4/8/2017

Google is investing in a new subsea cable that connects Singapore to Australia that should greatly improve international bandwidth to those countries and within the countries (especially Australia). But Google shouldn’t celebrate too hard, their Deepmind AI was recently defeated by an open AI solution playing old Atari games.

Analytic companies Tableau and Teradata announced changes to their software models. Tableau is shifting to a subscription model for their BI tools and Teradata was forced to admit their products are falling behind and need a refresh.

IBM is teaming up with Walmart to track food supply chains using blockchain’s general ledger system… once again trying to convince companies that blockchain has commercial applications outside of bitcoin.

Acquisitions

  • Oracle and Accenture? A non-starter and here’s why

    To give you a flavor of what this means, in its latest filing, Accenture recorded operating income of 13.7%. For its part, Oracle reported operating income of 32%. As you can readily see, there is no comparison between the two companies, despite the fact Accenture has been acquiring and developing its own software for solutions outside the ‘mainstream’ of solutions that Oracle sells.

    If a deal was on the table then Oracle would have some very difficult explaining to do about how margins would work given that it is under enough pressure over ambitious cloud based growth numbers. In short, it doesn’t make sense to distract Oracle management with profit table juggling when the company is already focused on other things.

    http://diginomica.com/2017/04/03/oracle-accenture-non-starter/
    Oracle rejects Accenture buyout speculation

    An ORCL spokesperson initially declined comment on Saturday but sent Fortune a categorical denial via email on Sunday.

    https://seekingalpha.com/news/3255046-oracle-rejects-accenture-buyout-speculation

  • Amazon and Google’s reported interest in Toshiba’s chip unit could be a sign of things to come

    While Amazon and Google’s flash needs are large and growing, it’s quite unlikely that either company (unlike Apple) could single-handedly consume all of the flash currently sold by Toshiba, or come close to doing so. Toshiba has been estimated to control about a fifth of a NAND market worth about $35 billion, and expected to see strong growth this year.

    Thus in the event that Amazon and Google are eying Toshiba’s flash business, it’s likely to buy a minority stake. One that would let the companies guarantee a stable supply of NAND in the coming years, and the chance to procure it at reasonable prices via long-term contracts.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/14073764/1/amazon-and-google-s-reported-interest-in-toshiba-s-chip-unit-could-be-a-sign-of-things-to-come.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • OpenAI Just Beat Google DeepMind at Atari With an Algorithm From the 80s

    In one hour training on the Atari challenge, the algorithm reached a level of mastery that took a reinforcement-learning system published by DeepMind last year a whole day to learn. On the walking problem the system took 10 minutes, compared to 10 hours for Google’s approach.

    One of the keys to this dramatic performance was the fact that the approach is highly “parallelizable.” To solve the walking simulation, they spread computations over 1,440 CPU cores, while in the Atari challenge they used 720.

    This is possible because it requires limited communication between the various “worker” algorithms testing the candidate policies. Scaling reinforcement algorithms like the one from DeepMind in the same way is challenging because there needs to be much more communication, the researchers say.

    https://singularityhub.com/2017/04/06/openai-just-beat-the-hell-out-of-deepmind-with-an-algorithm-from-the-80s/
    Thanks JD!

  • Honda, IBM create Dave to solve recall riddle

    Dave — for Digital Assisted Virtual Engineer — is a virtual online agent Honda created in conjunction with IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence system. Essentially a highly developed online chat bot run out of Honda’s Chino, Calif., call center, Dave is designed to answer consumer questions about Honda and Acura recalls 24/7.

    “The concept of this was to say if we want to really service our customers in general, what is the gap?” Tony Gomes, assistant vice president of the parts, service and technical division at Honda, told Automotive News. “The gap is when the centers are closed.”

    http://www.autonews.com/article/20170401/MOBILITY/304039963/honda-ibm-create-dave-to-solve-recall-riddle

Cloud

  • IBM’s cloud adds support for Nvidia’s fastest GPUs yet

    There is still a chance that Google could beat IBM to the market, though. Late last year, Google also announced that it would support Nvidia’s newest GPUs early this year, but we haven’t heard when exactly the company plans to launch this feature. We asked Google for an updated timeline but haven’t heard back yet.

    AWS, too, offers GPU support, of course, and its machines can be outfitted with up to 16 GPUs (those are the older K80 cards, though 16 of those obviously offer a lot of raw computing power, too). Microsoft’s Azure offers a similar setup with support for up to 4 of Nvidia’s slightly older GPUs.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/ibms-cloud-adds-support-for-nvidias-fastest-gpus-yet/?ncid=rss

  • Why Amazon may eventually touch everything we do online

    Most of the websites that you already go to run through Amazon. Increasingly, their devices are actually coming into your home, you know, they’re delivering groceries. You will, at some point, not conduct business online without Amazon getting a cut of it. And so, they’ve been very good at slow and steady execution so far, and if they make money off everything you do online, there may be no such thing as stretched too thin.

    http://ualrpublicradio.org/post/why-amazon-may-eventually-touch-everything-we-do-online#stream/0

  • New Study Shows AWS Losing Ground to Azure in Enterprises

    “In the early days of the cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) took the lead as the cloud computing vendor of choice,” the survey report said. “But the survey revealed that as the cloud matures, organizations are becoming more comfortable with vendors other than AWS and are using multiple cloud vendors. In fact, while other reports show that AWS still has a lead in cloud market share, the top cloud vendor in this survey — which included only organizations with at least 500 employees — was Microsoft Azure.

    https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/04/04/aws-losing-ground-to-azure-in-enterprises.aspx

Software/SaaS

  • Tableau switches to subscription pricing for its BI products

    Businesses will need to pay $70 per user per month for a license of Tableau Desktop Professional, and $35 per user per month for Tableau Server. That compares to the company’s boxed software prices of $2000 for Desktop, plus a $400 annual renewal fee for software updates, and $800 for Server, plus a $200 annual fee.

    It’s a move that will provide additional flexibility, scalability and risk mitigation for Tableau customers, according to Francois Ajenstat, the company’s chief product officer.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3187842/business-intelligence/tableau-switches-to-subscription-pricing-for-its-bi-products.html

  • Walmart and IBM Will Use Blockchain to Ensure Food Safety

    Yiannas explains in an article by Fortune that his company was inspired to utilize blockchain technology for supply chain monitoring by a deadly E. coli scare that happened about a decade ago. The tainted food was, in this case, spinach, and Yiannas believes it goes back to poor practices of sourcing and tracing the contaminated food products. “Consumers, in general, stopped eating spinach…if you could track and pinpoint where that came from faster, you could alleviate all that and ensure consumer confidence continues,” he said. Beyond that, in a case like this one, you could also potentially reduce the number of people who were sickened or killed by poisoned food.

    With an effort at retaining consumer confidence in the event of a similar scare, Walmart has worked with IBM and Beijing’s Tsinghua University to use blockchain to digitally track how pork products in China move. Walmart’s experiment makes use of blockchain technology designed specifically for this purpose by the Hyperledger Project. This is an open source project that was based out of the Linux Foundation and which aims to create blockchain applications for non-cryptocurrency purposes.

    http://www.investopedia.com/news/walmart-and-ibm-will-use-blockchain-ensure-food-safety-wmt-ibm/

  • Teradata CEO aims to regain ‘customer focus’ with embrace of cloud and open source

    He added: “We were shying away from new technologies like open source and cloud. We weren’t being as aggressive as we should be in moving forward to drive our offering to the point where the customer wanted.”

    However, he said that the vendor has moved at “lightning speed” over the last year to address some of the concerns.

    http://www.computerworlduk.com/applications/teradata-ceo-aims-regain-customer-focus-by-embracing-cloud-open-source-3656964/

Other

  • Google invests in new subsea cable that connects Singapore to Australia

    The cable will feature two fiber pairs with a total capacity of about 18 terabits per second — with the option to expand in the future.

    As Google notes, that’s enough to power 8 million simultaneous Google Hangout video calls (or are those Hangout Meet calls now?). Google, however, is obviously sharing the capacity here, so it won’t quite be able to handle all of those calls at any given time. It’s also worth noting that 18 terabits isn’t extremely fast by today’s standard. The subsea cable between Hong Kong and Los Angeles Google and Facebook invested in last year tops out at 120 terabits per second.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/google-invests-in-new-subsea-cable-that-connects-singapore-and-australia/?ncid=rss

  • Expect to see BlackBerry’s name (and tech) on more devices

    On the company’s earnings call, CEO John Chen said (via Seeking Alpha) that “We are now expanding to the next phase of our licensing program. This will focus on a broader set of endpoints. What this might mean, and I make no promise, is that you may soon see a BlackBerry tablet, and it will also extend to cobranded handset with IoT and Enterprise of Things to EoT devices. These endpoints will run our software and security features and be cobranded Secure by BlackBerry.”

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/01/expect-to-see-blackberrys-name-and-tech-on-more-devices/

  • EFF: Verizon will install spyware on all its Android phones (update)

    But the EFF spent a little time staring at AppFlash’s privacy policy, where it’s revealed that the software will vacuum up any and all of your private data. For instance, it’ll snag your cell number, device type, operating system and the apps or services that you use. More crucially, the app will also harvest the details of everything installed on your device, your location and the contact details of everyone in your phonebook.

    Verizon admits that the information will be shared within “the Verizon family of companies,” including that of (Engadget parent) Aol. From there, the data will be used to “provide more relevant advertising within the AppFlash experiences and in other places.” The other places being a euphemism for banner and display advertising all across the web.

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/31/eff-verizon-will-install-spyware-on-all-its-android-phones/

  • Follow-up to SourceCast Episode 65: H-1B Visa Overhaul Could Actually Benefit Big Tech Companies

    “The top 15 job shops are all pretty much all from India. They get 85 percent of the H-1Bs. If they cut that number, then the American firms will get the bigger slice of the pie,” Shusterman said. “A lot of the Apples or Googles are paying over $100,000 a year. They’re going after top talent. This memo is really going after the lowest paid people.”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-04/u-s-visa-revamp-poised-to-benefit-big-u-s-tech-punish-outsourcers

Photo: Thomas Shellberg

Posted on

Supplier Report: 8/6/2016

Drowning

Yet another week where M&A dominates the news.

Verizon bought another company (Fleetmatics), SalesForce purchased Quip, and there are rumors that HPE might be up for sale (all of it or some of it). IBM is showing interest in purchasing point of sale company Revel.

IBM is also actually responsible for some technology news this week.  Their health AI systems are starting to target cancer symptoms as a means of early detection. They also maybe created an artificial neuron for super computers.

IBM

  • IBM IC detects cancer before symptoms appear

    “The societal impact of this research is that it could enable physicians to detect cancer early…when there are more possibilities of being cured,” Stolovitzky said. “We wanted this research to be in the area of cancer and also the area of detecting DNA and viruses like Zika. Everything reduces down to the same thing: being able to have a small and affordable diagnostic tool that can detect minute quantities of biomarker particles that tell physicians something about a person’s health.”scale of biology

    http://www.electronicsweekly.com/market-sectors/medical-electronics/ibm-ic-detects-cancer-before-symptoms-appear-2016-08/

  • IBM is reportedly in talks to buy point-of-sale software firm Revel Systems

    Bloomberg reports IBM (IBM) is in early talks to acquire Revel Systems, provider of an iPad-based point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software system for merchants.

    Revel competes with Square, PayPal (PYPL) , NCR (NCR) and others in the iPad POS market; its customers include Cinnabon, Chobani, and Popeyes. It has 750 employees, and was valued at more than $500 million in a $13.5 million 2015 funding round.

    https://www.thestreet.com/story/13660304/1/verizon-makes-a-telematics-acquisition-ibm-reportedly-mulls-a-retail-acquisition.html
    Is IBM Setting Up To Buy Revel Systems?

    With a Revel acquisition, IBM could theoretically refill a hole in its product line that has existed since the firm sold its point-of-sale business to Toshiba for $800 million in 2012. Revel, on the other hand, could possibly find itself with a soft exit from a market where funding rounds are getting fewer and further between.

    http://www.pymnts.com/news/point-of-sale/2016/ibm-acquire-revel-rumors/

  • IBM creates first-ever artificial neurons that behave like the real thing

    IBM researchers in Switzerland have created an artificial neuron that behaves just like the real thing. For the first time in history, artificial phase-change neurons have been grouped together (in a population of 500 synthesized in a lab) to process a neurological signal in more or less the same way that biological neurons transmit messages. They can be made exceptionally small and are similar in power and energy usage to biological neurons, and can even produce results with random variations, also just like biological neurons.

    http://inhabitat.com/ibm-creates-first-ever-artificial-neurons-that-behave-like-the-real-thing/

  • IBM’s Wager on Open Source Is Still Paying Off

    “It became apparent that open source could be the de facto standards we needed to be the engine to go out and drive things,” Moore said in his keynote at ApacheCon. “[The contributions] were bets; we didn’t know how this was going to come out, and we didn’t know if open source would grow, we knew there would be roadblocks and things we’d have to overcome along the way, but it had promise. We thought this would be the way of the future.”

    https://www.linux.com/news/ibms-wager-open-source-still-paying

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Is Hewlett Packard Enterprise up for sale?

    As explained by author Kevin McLaughlin, “a buyout would allow HPE, currently the world’s largest seller of servers and storage systems, to streamline outside the glare of public scrutiny.”

    Following McLaughlin’s claims, shares in the company spiked seven percent on the stock exchange, yet closed around 3.5 percent as more details of the potential deal emerged.

    According to Reuters, the firms are focused on acquiring certain software assets from the vendor, worth somewhere between $US6 billion and $US8 billion, rather than the entire company.

    http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/604318/hewlett-packard-enterprise-up-sale/
    HPE Reportedly Considers Going Private

    Reuters reported last week that sources familiar with the HPE private equity discussion said that buyout firms are focused on acquiring some software assets that HPE has been considering divesting, and that those are worth between $6 billion and $8 billion.

    The Reuters report added that the deal was for just the software assets and not the entire company. HPE’s software assets include technology gained in acquisitions such as Vertica Systems, Autonomy, and Mercury. The technologies include data analytics, cloud orchestration, and systems management. That group hasn’t been paying off as strongly as the company’s hardware business has.

    http://www.informationweek.com/software/hpe-reportedly-considers-going-private/d/d-id/1326467
    $40 billion buyout rumour persists as HPE cloud chief and storage boss leave company

    A number of key executives are to leave Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with the top-level departures coming at a time when rumours abound that the company is subject to a $40 billion takeover attempt.

    Head of Cloud Bill Hilf, along with Manish Goel, HPE’s storage boss, are set to leave the company for pastures new. However, the reshuffle did not stop there, with Robert Vriji, managing director of sales for the Americas also set to leave, as well as the high-profile retirement of Martin Fink, CTO and head of HP Labs. Fink will retire at the end of the year.

    http://www.cbronline.com/news/verticals/the-boardroom/40-billion-buyout-rumour-persists-as-hpe-cloud-chief-and-storage-boss-leave-company-4966767

  • PE Firms Looking to Acquire Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software Assets Worth $6B-$8B

    Private equity firms, including KKR NYSEKK, Apollo and Carlyle Group are seeking to acquire certain software assets from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, according to sources reported by Reuters on Friday. Earlier in the day, The Information reported those firms might make a bid for all of HPE.

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise declined comment on the report, while KKR, Apollo and Carlyle did not comment.

    http://www.benzinga.com/news/16/07/8282979/bemzingas-weekend-m-a-chatter

Storage

  • INFINIDAT Reports 60% Quarter Over Quarter Growth in Q2

    INFINIDAT continued to achieve significant sales traction in key vertical markets in Q2, reporting that 32 percent of sales was to leading firms in the finance sector, 28 percent was in technology, telecommunications and cloud services, and 24 percent was in healthcare and life sciences. INFINIDAT added several new customers in Q2, including BT (world-leading communications services provider), HMSA/Hawaii Medical Service Association (health insurer), Triple C (cloud services provider), and Credit Andorra (financial services).

    http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/27834/infinidat-reports-60-quarter-over-quarter-growth/

  • How Dell Raised $67 Billion for the Biggest Tech Deal Ever

    Some of Dell’s own potential banks balked early on, arguing that they simply could not sell enough junk bonds to finance the deal, and other lenders refused to participate if they could not easily resell some of the loans to other investors.

    Then Dell, Silver Lake and the bankers came up with an idea, pushed hard by Mr. Durban: Sell more high-rated loans and bonds, a questionable idea for a junk-rated company like Dell.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/business/dealbook/how-dell-pieced-together-67-billion-to-buy-emc.html

Other

  • Oracle’s Latest Purchase Opens the Door for More Pricey Tech Deals

    Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies like Salesforce, which deliver software over the Internet, are of particular interest because that sales delivery model is becoming more successful with corporate customers. Neeraj Agrawal, a general partner with Battery Ventures, estimates that SaaS—as hot as it’s been—still represents just 15% of current software market, but he suggests that won’t be the case for long.

    http://fortune.com/2016/07/29/oracle-netsuite-tech-mergers/

  • Verizon buys Fleetmatics for $2.4B in cash to step up in telematics

    More generally, the acquisition of Fleetmatics points to ways that Verizon is continuing to use its balance sheet to finance investments into newer areas to offset continuing declines in its core, legacy business of basic phone services. As that market has become increasingly commoditized and people turn to other, digitised forms of communication away from traditional voice services, Verizon is hoping to invest into newer areas to move beyond “dumb pipe” status to keep its margins up, and revenues growing.

    While its acquisition of AOL (and now Yahoo) will help Verizon scale up its media, advertising and content operations, Fleetmatics is pointing straight to Verizon’s ambitions in enterprise services, and specifically enterprise mobility.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/01/verizon-buys-fleetmatics-for-2-4b-in-cash-to-step-up-in-telematics
    sn_ryback_fmm

  • Salesforce buys word processing app Quip for $750M

    It’s not clear why Quip — which was growing and in the enviable position of being very selective about taking funding from VCs — decided to sell up to Salesforce. But it’s an interesting turn in the ongoing consolidation that we’ve seen in the enterprise market, and how that is transforming the bigger companies that are doing the buying.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/01/salesforce-buys-word-processing-app-quip-for-750m/

  • AWS prints money for Amazon, but can Microsoft, Google and IBM catch up?

    As revealed last week, the AWS division of Amazon reported 58 percent year-to-year growth to almost $US2.9 billion, supported by continued operating efficiency that enabled the business to reach $US718 million in operating profit.

    Worldwide Cloud infrastructure services expenditure grew 52.3 percent year on year in Q2 2016, with Canalys findings pitching AWS as the leading Cloud infrastructure services provider, accounting for 30.4 percent of total spend.

    http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/604414/aws-prints-money-amazon-can-microsoft-google-ibm-catch-up/

  • Is the End Near for Tableau Software Inc?

    Data visualization company, Tableau is scheduled to report second quarter earnings tonight, after the market closes. The stock is perpetually one of the most beaten down during earnings season. After Q4 earnings, shares dropped nearly 50%, only to drop an additional 10% following Q1 earnings. Early indications appear as if they are heading in the same direction ahead of tonight’s report. Just this week Deutsche Bank downgraded the stock to “hold” from “buy” on concerns of slow margin growth. For Tableau to stop the slow bleed, it will have to convince investors that this and future quarters can generate sustainable growth.

    http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/08/tableau-software-inc-data-shortsell-earnings/

  • Teradata: Could This Be The Start Of Something Big?

    At this point, TDC has more than $7.20/share in cash although 98% of the cash is offshore. It also has long-term debt of $552 million. The current enterprise value is $3.44 billion which produces an EV/S for the current year of 1.49X. Based on the company’s current projection, the free cash flow yield for TDC will be 8% or so. The company indicated that there is potential upside to the free cash flow estimate based on the year-ending profile of assets and liabilities, particularly A/R. The company has a P/E of 12X current year non-GAAP earnings. Stock-based comp is quite low at around 10% of reported non-GAAP earnings. The other adjusting items have to do with one-time charges related to the disposition of the company’s marketing assets business as well as reorganization costs. With those kind of valuation metrics, there is plenty of upside if the company’s efforts to re-invent itself are even marginally successful. With that level of valuation, the company presents a very attractive acquisition target to both strategic and private equity investors. In the wake of the company’s guidance for the next two quarters, I think downside exposure is very limited as well.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3994915-teradata-start-something-big
    Big Data acquisitions: All about the enterprise

    Why would Teradata execute a services play not just once, but twice? Ultimately, it would seem to come down to Enterprise sales. Implementing big data — and doing it successfully — is still hard, and experienced consulting shops/Systems Integrators (SIs) can make enterprise customers feel a lot more confident moving forward with it. That puts them in the perfect position to recommend tools and technologies. So, having a manageably small, but geographically distributed, services organization can be very helpful to Teradata indeed.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/big-data-acquisitions-all-about-the-enterprise/

Photo: Phoebe Dill

Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/13/2016

sn_dice_Pierre Rougier

Mark your calendars, a week has gone by and IBM has not purchased a marketing company!

But they have started blocking citizens living in sanctioned countries from accessing their cloud services.  Speaking of blocking, Microsoft is preventing new Lumia phones from seeing the light of day.  Microsoft is expected to kill the brand in the coming months.

Dell is struggling with securing finances for the EMC acquisition.  However, EMC’s William Green stated that only an “act of God” would prevent the deal from taking place.

IBM

  • IBM Aims To Make Enterprises Agile With Cloud Data Services

    The introduction marks an expansion of the company’s Cloud Data Services with more than 25 services and 150 publicly available datasets available to help developers build, deploy, and manage Web and mobile applications, and enable data scientists to discover hidden trends using data and analytics in the cloud, IBM said in a Feb. 4 statement announcing the marketplace.

    This new marketplace comprises several existing IBM services, including IBM Compose Enterprise, IBM Graph, IBM Predictive Analytics, and IBM Analytics Exchange.

    http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/ibm-aims-to-make-enterprises-agile-with-cloud-data-services/d/d-id/1324199

  • IBM Has Blocked SoftLayer Cloud Users In Iran
    Via a letter to customers posted on Reddit:

    “Currently, at customer sign-up, SoftLayer blocks IP addresses that originate from countries that are subject to U.S. trade and economic sanctions,” read the email, according to Reddit user Borayeris.

    “At this time, these countries are Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Starting February 1, 2016, SoftLayer will implement network-wide blocking of these IP addresses.”

    http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-regulation/ibm-block-softlayer-cloud-iran-185733

  • IBM Rolls Out a Slew of New Cloud Data Services for IBM Cloud

    “Data is the common thread within the enterprise, regardless of where its source might be,” said Derek Schoettle, general manager of analytics platform and cloud data services at IBM, in a statement. “In the past, data handlers have relied on disparate systems for data needs, but our goal is to move data into the future by providing a one-stop shop to access, build, develop and explore data.”

    http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=020000BXV9EW

Microsoft

  • Is Microsoft Corporation About to Kill One of Its Major Brands?

    The end of Lumia may not mean the end of Windows Phone, however. Microsoft could consolidate its smartphone efforts under its Surface brand instead. Rumors of a “Surface Phone” have been around for months. They gained new steam late last month, when a poster on Reddit discovered that surfacephone.com redirected to Microsoft’s general Surface page.

    The Surface remains a modest contributor to Microsoft’s financials, but has enjoyed growth in recent quarters. Last quarter, Surface devices generated $1.35 billion, up more than 20% on an annual basis. With the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book, Microsoft is slowly establishing a brand of high-end, innovative Windows devices.

    http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/fool/article/Is-Microsoft-Corporation-About-to-Kill-One-of-Its-6813440.php

  • Cloud now makes up one third of Microsoft revenues as Azure soars

    Cloud services are going so well for Microsoft that Business Insider suggests it is growing faster than Amazon’s reported 127% in revenue gain.

    On the other side, revenue for Windows Surface devices increased 29 percent driven by the launch of Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book while online gaming “Xbox Live” monthly active users grew 30 percent year-over-year to a record 48 million.

    http://cops2point0.com/2016/02/cloud-now-makes-up-one-third-of-microsoft-revenues-as-azure/

  • Microsoft Lays Off ‘Dozens’ as It Cuts Costs in Mobile Division: Report

    The report comes courtesy Finnish publication Helsigin Sanomat, which says that dozens of employees have been let go from the company. The report claims that the company is handing out pink slips to employees in an attempt to curtail the expenses in its mobile division. The division saw a significant drop in the revenue last quarter.

    “The job reductions were spread across more than one business area and country and reflect adaptations to business needs. We go through this process in the most thoughtful manner possible, with the deepest respect for affected individuals,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet in a statement. We’ve reached out to the company to check whether employees at Microsoft India are also being let go.

    http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/microsoft-lays-off-dozens-as-it-cuts-costs-in-mobile-division-report-801109

EMC | Dell

Oracle

  • Will 2016 Be Oracle Corporation’s Best or Worst Year Yet?

    To generate fresh cloud growth, Oracle might need to make more acquisitions. In January, Oracle agreed to acquire AddThis, a provider of social sharing, content recommendation, personalized marketing tools, and analytics services for web publishers. Industry sources told TechCrunch that Oracle paid $100 million to $200 million for the company.

    Oracle suggests that AddThis’ tools, which power 15 million sites, will be integrated into its Data Cloud platform. The acquisition of AddThis complements Oracle’s previous acquisitions of online-to-offline provider Datalogix, cloud marketing services provider BlueKai, online ad campaign firm Maxymiser, and cloud marketing automation firms Eloqua and Responsys. In addition to boosting its SaaS revenues, those acquisitions can widen Oracle’s moat against other major players in the marketing cloud space, like Adobe, Salesforce, and IBM.

    Oracle finished last quarter with $17.4 billion in cash and equivalents and $34.9 billion in marketable securities, so it still has the firepower to keep growing its cloud business inorganically.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/07/will-2016-be-oracle-corporations-best-or-worst-yea.aspx

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HP Inc

  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman’s Total Pay Drops 13%

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. Chief Executive Meg Whitman’s total compensation was valued at $17.1 million last year, down 13% from 2014.

    Ms. Whitman’s base salary remained at $1.5 million, but she received a smaller bonus. Her nonequity incentive compensation declined to $2.5 million from $4.3 million a year earlier.

    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/hewlett-packard-enterprise-ceo-meg-whitmans-total-pay-drops-13-20160212-00258

  • A PR’s perspective on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise/Financial Times spat: The medium is not your messageSo HPE got into a fight with a Financial Times writer:

    Kellaway received an email from Gomez objecting to an article she had written the previous week which criticised Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s chief executive, Meg Whitman. In the article Kellaway repeated the advice Whitman gave to an audience at Davos — “You can always go faster than you think you can” — and made light of the assertion by saying that “sometimes, when you go faster you fall flat on your face.”

    The writer goes on to call the HPE Rep a bully:

    His full letter, released this morning by the HP comms team, shows how easy it is to wade too deep. “Obviously”, he writes, “you and the FT are free to write about the topics you select. I’ve read your bio and respect your right to ‘poke fun’ at management. But you still have an obligation to get it right. And FT management should consider the impact of unacceptable biases on its relationships with advertisers.”

    Unfortunately, even prefaced by a declaration of respect for editorial independence, the last line has a hard time distancing itself from a veiled threat. A little too Tucker-ish, perhaps.

    http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/02/08/prs-perspective-hewlett-packard-enterprisefinancial-times-spat-medium-not-your

Other

  • Tableau Struggling To Keep Up With Market Expectations

    Recently there has been increasing competition in the Big Data analytics space that is hurting Tableau. Qlik Technologies (NASDAQ:QLIK) launched its version of a data analytics software Qlik Sense. The product is getting positive reviews from enterprise and mid-market consumers, especially since the Sense Desktop is available for free. Additionally, bigger vendors are offering a similar product. Of note is Microsoft’s Power BI data-analytics software that is offered for free and compares with Tableau’s premium priced offering. Additionally, Microsoft’s Power BI is more likely to attract its existing Excel users – a market that Tableau targets. Other bigger competitors include Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) which are coming up with similar offerings of their own. Market research suggests that among the available data visualization solutions, Tableau has the most expensive product.

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/3889526-tableau-struggling-keep-market-expectations

  • Tumultuous Times for BI and Analytic Tool Vendors

    Last year’s report featured nine vendors in the Leader’s Quadrant, but only three made the cut this year. Sent packing from the prestigious perch were MicroStrategy, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and SAS, each of which you can now find in the Visionaries’ quadrant, thanks to lower abilities to execute compared to last year. And Info Builders lost even more cred, falling into the Niche Players category after scoring lower in ability to execute (Y axis) and completeness of vision (X axis).

    sn_bi_2016_magquad
    http://www.datanami.com/2016/02/10/tumultuous-times-for-bi-and-analytic-tool-vendors/

Photo: Pierre Rougier