Tag: Uber

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Supplier Report: 5/29/2020


Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash

The impact of COVID-19 continues to unfurl as more technology companies announce significant staff and spending reductions.

IBM, Uber, and HPE have recently announced major head count reductions joining dozens of other companies over the last two months.

As organizations try to conserve cash, there are rumors and articles predicting a spike in acquisitions in the technology and retail industries.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Large Tech Companies Prepare for Acquisition Spree

    “For the largest players, we certainly see this immediate period as a potential opportunity to make plays to aggregate capabilities by acquiring smaller businesses that may need liquidity,” said J. Neely, managing director and global M&A lead at consulting firm Accenture PLC.

    Large companies across the economy are seizing similar opportunities to grow, sparking worries about market consolidation in several industries.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/large-tech-companies-prepare-for-acquisition-spree-11590053401

  • Intel is acquiring the company behind Killer gaming networking cards

    Intel has acquired Rivet Networks, the maker of Killer-branded NICs (network interface cards responsible for managing your connection) found in some laptops from popular brands like Dell, Alienware, HP, and other manufacturers. Killer’s own networking products were noteworthy for providing gaming-centric features like minimizing latency to keep you from missing a beat in-game, and prioritizing network traffic for games and other applications that need it the most.

    Rivet Networks has been a competitor to Intel in the NIC space for over a decade. With this acquisition, Intel can capitalize on the gaming market.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/20/21265297/intel-acquires-rivet-networks-killer-gaming-networking-cards-wifi

  • Verizon wraps up BlueJeans acquisition lickety split

    While it’s crystal clear that video conferencing is a hot item during the pandemic, all sides maintained that this deal was about much more than the short-term requirements of COVID-19. In fact, Verizon saw an enterprise-grade video conferencing platform that would fit nicely into its 5G strategy around things like tele-medicine and online learning.

    They believe these needs will far outlast the current situation, and BlueJeans puts them in good shape to carry out a longer-term video strategy, especially on the burgeoning 5G platform. As BlueJean’s CEO Quentin Gallivan and co-founders, Krish Ramakrishnan and Alagu Periyannan reiterated in a blog post today announcing the deal has been finalized, they saw a lot of potential for growth inside the Verizon Business family that would have been difficult to achieve as a stand-alone company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/18/verizon-wraps-up-bluejeans-acquisition-lickety-split/

  • Walmart says it will discontinue Jet, which it acquired for $3B in 2016

    Amid the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the retail industry, today the retail giant quietly announced in its quarterly report that it would be discontinuing Jet.com, the online-only marketplace that it acquired when it was just over one year old for $3 billion (plus $300 million in earn-outs over time), as it struggles to bring its e-commerce operations into that black after reportedly seeing a loss of $2 billion in the division in 2019 and shifting how to deliver its e-commerce strategy: by betting on giant stores, rather than online warehouses, as the hubs of its online delivery model.

    Jet.com’s fate was disclosed as part of a Walmart’s Q1 earnings report, in which the company said it saw growth of less than 10% in its core US market, and said that it would be withdrawing guidance for fiscal 2021.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/19/walmart-says-it-will-discontinue-jet-com-which-it-acquired-for-3b-in-2016/

Cloud

  • Google Cloud earns defense contract win for Anthos multi-cloud management tool

    While the company would not get specific about the number, the new contract involves using Anthos, the tool the company announced last year to secure DIU’s multi-cloud environment. In spite of the JEDI contract involving a single vendor, the DoD has always used solutions from all three major cloud vendors — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — and this solution will provide a way to monitor security across all three environments, according to the company.

    “Multi-cloud is the future. The majority of commercial businesses run multi-cloud environments securely and seamlessly, and this is now coming to the federal government as well,” Mike Daniels, VP of Global Public Sector at Google Cloud told TechCrunch.

    The idea is to manage security across three environments with help from cloud security vendor Netskope, which is also part of the deal. “The multi-cloud solution will be built on Anthos, allowing DIU to run web services and applications across Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure — while being centrally managed from the Google Cloud Console,” the company wrote in a statement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/20/google-cloud-earns-defense-contract-win-for-anthos-multi-cloud-management-tool/

Software/SaaS

  • Christian Klein, CEO SAP – “We have to own the application layer”

    There were disagreements, as you’d expect, but there were some of a fundamental nature where we could not delay the decisions. I’m fully convinced that the hyperscalers will also go up the stack. In the partnerships, we are closing, we have to own the business platform, we have to own the application layer. I want to be more prescriptive on that because when you are losing more and more of the control of the customer transformation when you’re not sitting on the table anymore, when they’re making the decision how to transform the business model, then it gets difficult. I just want to make sure that now in these partnerships, we try our best to make sure that we are in the lead when it comes to business model transformation, when it comes to talks about how to move the system landscape, the application layer in the cloud. And it’s also important that we position our platform there, as we cannot afford to lose the platform game either, as this is the platform which keeps our applications together, makes the integration work. And it’s of course also very important for the extension of our solution. So, this is something where I would like to to draw a much clearer line going forward, because in the past, I feel we were not clear enough in some of these partnerships.

    https://diginomica.com/christian-klein-ceo-sap-we-have-own-application-layer

  • Here’s why Elon Musk keeps raising the price of Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ option

    There’s another reason Musk thinks the ultimate value of Autopilot is so high. He has promised that once Tesla’s cars are able to drive themselves, the company will leverage that capability into a “robotaxi fleet.” The goal is to make it so that each Tesla customer’s car can double as an autonomous vehicle that other people can hail while the owner isn’t using it.

    Not only would operating a robotaxi service generate more revenue for Tesla, but Musk has said this would allow owners to make as much as $30,000 a year as well. In fact, Musk believes the value of this idea is so high that he’s talked about raising the sticker price of Tesla’s cars, not just the cost of the Full Self-Driving package.

    “[C]onsumers will still be able to buy a Tesla, but the clearing price will rise significantly, as a fully autonomous car that can function as a robotaxi is several times more valuable than a non-autonomous car,” he said last year.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/20/21264345/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-driving-autopilot-price-increase
    TL;DR – Because he can.

Other

  • ‘Way Too Late’: Inside Amazon’s Biggest Outbreak

    In the less than two months since then, the warehouse in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania has become Amazon’s biggest Covid-19 hot spot. More employees at AVP1 have been infected by the coronavirus than at any of Amazon’s roughly 500 other facilities in the United States.

    Local lawmakers believe that more than 100 workers have contracted the disease, but the exact number is unknown. At first, Amazon told workers about each new case. But when the total reached about 60, the announcements stopped giving specific numbers.

    The disclosures also stopped at other Amazon warehouses. The best estimate is that more than 900 of the company’s 400,000 blue-collar workers have had the disease. But that number, crowdsourced by Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker, almost certainly understates the spread of the illness among Amazon’s employees.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/technology/amazon-coronavirus-workers.html

  • IBM hands down first layoffs under new CEO Arvind Krishna

    It wasn’t clear how many jobs were being cut, though a source told the Journal that it’s several thousand, out of a massive staff of about 350,000 people.

    Bloomberg said the cuts are in several units, including its Global Technology Services division, which does information technology outsourcing, as well as its Watson artificial intelligence unit, a longtime key focus of IBM’s recovery efforts. Cuts are being made in five states: California, Missouri, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

    “IBM’s work in a highly competitive marketplace requires flexibility to constantly remix to high-value skills, and our workforce decisions are made in the long-term interests of our business,” the company said in a statement. It added in an apparent reference to the coronavirus pandemic that it will offer subsidized coverage to all affected U.S. employees through June 2021.

    https://siliconangle.com/2020/05/21/ibm-hands-first-layoffs-new-ceo-arvind-krishna/

  • Uber Cuts 3,000 More Jobs, Shuts 45 Offices in Coronavirus Crunch

    Mr. Khosrowshahi announced the plans in an email to staff Monday, less than two weeks after the company said it would eliminate about 3,700 jobs and planned to save more than $1 billion in fixed costs. Monday’s decision to close 45 offices and lay off some 3,000 more people means Uber is shedding roughly a quarter of its workforce in under a month’s time. Drivers aren’t classified as employees, so they aren’t included.

    Stay-at-home orders have ravaged Uber’s core ride-hailing business, which accounted for three-quarters of the company’s revenue before the pandemic struck. Uber’s rides business in April was down 80% from a year earlier.

    “We’re seeing some signs of a recovery, but it comes off of a deep hole, with limited visibility as to its speed and shape,” Mr. Khosrowshahi said in his note to employees. The company’s food-delivery arm, Uber Eats, has been a bright spot during the crisis, but “the business today doesn’t come close to covering our expenses,” he wrote.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-cuts-3-000-more-jobs-shuts-45-offices-in-coronavirus-crunch-11589814608

  • HPE Cuts Salaries Companywide as COVID-19 Wrecks Q2

    Neri said that beginning July 1, HPE will implement salary cuts for all employees through Oct. 31, 2020, with the executive team taking the biggest hit. Neri and EVPs will see their base salaries cut 25%. Senior VPs’ base salaries will be cut by 20%, and board members will also take a 25% cut to their annual cash retainer.

    Employees that live in countries that prohibit pay reductions will instead take unpaid leave. “In addition, we have implemented cost containment measures across the company, and restricted external hiring through the end of our fiscal year, and put salary increases on hold,” Neri said.

    Overall, HPE expects the cuts to save at least $1 billion by the end of fiscal 2022.

    Neri pointed to a couple of bright points during the quarter. HPE exited Q2 with more than $1.5 billion in backlogged compute, storage, HPC, and Aruba networking orders, which Neri said represents two-times the average historical quarterly backlog despite the challenging economic backdrop.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/hpe-cuts-salaries-companywide-as-covid-19-wrecks-q2/2020/05/

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Supplier Report: 5/22/2020

The walls are starting to close in on Google. Rumors of an anti-trust lawsuit have been brewing for months. William Barr and the Department of Justice have been making claims in the press this week that actions will happen soon and that States may join their case or start their own for other infractions.

Gartner produced reports that IT spending will be down $300B this year due to COVID. But not for some companies as Microsoft, Uber, and Facebook are continuing to purchase companies like Grubhub and Giphy.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Microsoft acquires Metaswitch in telecom push

    The move shows Microsoft’s efforts to target a single industry through inorganic deals rather than building expertise and technology in house. These efforts could help Microsoft gain further adoption of its Azure public cloud, which challenges market leader Amazon Web Services.

    “The convergence of cloud and communication networks presents a unique opportunity for Microsoft to serve operators globally via continued investment in Azure, adding additional depth to our hyperscale cloud infrastructure with the specialized software required to run virtualized communication functions, applications and networks,” Yousef Khalidi, a Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post.

    Metaswitch has a 5G product for handling network traffic that can run on public cloud infrastructure. Customers could rely on the company’s software atop cloud infrastructure rather than adding capacity in their own data centers to support additional network use at higher speeds.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/14/microsoft-acquires-metaswitch-in-telecom-push.html

  • Restaurants should fear an Uber-Grubhub merger

    Companies like Uber, which dispatch contracted drivers and cyclists to pick up and deliver food from local and chain restaurants, have faced a wave of new criticism during the pandemic over their substantial markups and the steep revenue cuts they take from restaurants. Consolidating Uber and Grubhub would narrow an already-narrowed field, after GrubHub acquired Seamless and Eat24 and DoorDash bought Caviar. Meanwhile, delivery fees have generally been on the rise, and with less competition there would presumably be less pressure on Uber to compete for dollars from hungry shoppers.

    If the deal comes through, it will likely attract scrutiny from progressive Democrats. At the end of April, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York proposed the Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act, a bill that would pause large mergers and acquisitions until “small businesses, workers, and consumers are no longer under severe financial distress.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90504454/restaurants-should-fear-an-uber-grubhub-merger

  • Facebook Buys Giphy, Will Make It Part of Instagram Operations

    Facebook said the graphics interchange format, or GIF, platform will be part of the company’s Instagram operations but didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. Facebook—which said its apps make up half of Giphy’s traffic—is going to “further integrate their GIF library into Instagram and our other apps.”

    Facebook also said Giphy will keep running its library of GIFs and digital stickers.

    News site Axios reported Facebook agreed to buy the GIF platform for around $400 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-buys-giphy-will-make-it-part-of-instagram-operations-11589561384

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft makes OneDrive multi-page scanning available to all for free

    With so many people now working from home, few of us have access to office equipment like printers and scanners. Scanning documents from home, or outside the office, should be easy. Microsoft OneDrive has long offered a free scanning feature from the OneDrive mobile app which lets you scan and digitize single documents, receipts and more. Up until now, scanning multiple pages and saving them as single document was a premium feature that required a Microsoft 365 subscription. Today we’re making multi-page scanning available for everyone using a OneDrive personal account.

    https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-makes-onedrive-multi-page-scanning-available-to-all-for-free/

  • Chrome will start blocking resource-demanding ads in August

    Google has discovered that a small percentage of ads (0.3 percent) are using a disproportionate amount (27 percent) of the network data used by ads in Chrome. These resource-demanding ads can drain battery life, saturate already strained networks and cost money, Google wrote in a blog post. So beginning this summer, Google will cap the resources a display ad can use in Chrome in order to protect users’ batteries and data plans.

    Chrome will set a threshold at 4MB of network data, 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30-second period or 60 seconds of total CPU usage. If an ad reaches its limit before a user interacts with it, the ad frame will navigate to an error page and inform the user that the ad has used too many resources.

    Google plans to experiment with the feature over the next several months and to introduce it near the end of August. This should give ad creators and tool providers time to adapt.

    https://www.engadget.com/google-chrome-block-resource-heavy-ads-190622725.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Gartner Predicts IT Spending Will Plummet By $300 Billion In 2020 As CIOs Slash Budgets

    Gartner’s estimate is the latest in a series of predictions by research firms that have become more and more pessimistic as the crisis has deepened. Last month, Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), which regularly polls IT leaders about their spending intentions, came up with a forecast suggesting a drop of around 5% in global spend for 2020. In the latter part of March, the feedback ETR had been getting from executives suggested spending would be flat year-on-year.

    While some companies are cutting big IT projects altogether, others are ploughing ahead but delaying some elements of their plans to save money. During an earnings call in April, Hershey CEO Michele Buck revealed the confectionery giant has paused parts of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It plans to advance with finance and data work streams but will delay supply chain and order-to-cash ones—moves that will push out full implementation of the ERP system by a year or so. On the same call, Hershey’s CFO said the company’s capital spending would be between $400 million and $450 million in 2020 versus an estimate of $500 million it had released in January.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2020/05/13/gartner-it-spending-will-plummet-in-2020-as-cios-slash-budgets/#7f41043711ca

  • U.S. Moves to Cut Off Chip Supplies to Huawei

    The restrictions stop foreign semiconductor manufacturers whose operations use U.S. software and technology from shipping products to Huawei without first getting a license from U.S. officials, essentially giving the U.S. Commerce Department a veto over the kinds of technology that Huawei can use.

    Under the new rules, the department can block the sale of semiconductors manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., for Huawei’s HiSilicon unit, which designs chips for the company, as well as chips and other software produced by manufacturing facilities in China and South Korea, which use American chip-making technology. The Commerce Department already had the ability to license software shipments from U.S.-based facilities.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-moves-to-cut-off-chip-supplies-to-huawei-11589545335

Other

  • Justice Department, State Attorneys General Likely to Bring Antitrust Lawsuits Against Google

    Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business. The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The Justice Department likewise is making Google’s ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said.

    Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.

    Though the coronavirus pandemic has complicated work for the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barrhas devoted considerable resources to the Google probe and continues to treat it as a top priority. Mr. Barr told The Wall Street Journal in March that he wanted the Justice Department to make a final call this summer. “I’m hoping that we bring it to fruition early summer,” Mr. Barr said at the time. “And by fruition I mean, decision time.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-state-attorneys-general-likely-to-bring-antitrust-lawsuits-against-google-11589573622

  • A seventh Amazon employee dies of COVID-19 as the company refuses to say how many are sick

    Amazon has instituted new safety measures, including temperature checks, face masks, and increased cleaning. “Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees, and we expect to invest approximately $4 billion from April to June on COVID-related initiatives to get products to customers and keep employees safe,” the company said in a statement. The company also says infection rates at its warehouses are at or below the rates in the communities where they are located.

    But workers at IND8 and elsewhere say cleaning has been uneven and conditions are often too crowded to allow for proper social distancing. Many worry that recent policy changes put them at greater risk. This month, Amazon reversed a policy it instituted at the onset of the pandemic that allowed workers to take unlimited time off without pay. (Amazon is set to end another coronavirus policy, an additional $2 per hour of hazard pay, on June 1st.) The leave policy had allowed workers who feared for their safety — and could afford to go without a paycheck — to stay home without being fired for overdrawing their quarterly allotment of 20 hours of unpaid time off. When the policy ended on May 1st, workers say their facilities became far more crowded.

    “Before we had the unlimited UPT [unpaid time off] so if people didn’t feel safe, they didn’t have to come to work,” said a worker at IND8. “When that went away, we went from having one hundred twenty five people back to four to five hundred people per shift. It’s really crowded.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21259474/amazon-warehouse-worker-death-indiana

  • Eric Schmidt reportedly left Google in February

    Schmidt hasn’t had a leading role at Google or Alphabet for a while. He left Google’s CEO role in 2011, and bowed out as Alphabet’s executive chairman in 2017 before departing the company’s board in 2019. An exit may have been more of a formality, especially as Schmidt was said to have made $1 per year as an advisor.

    Still, it’s the end of an era. Schmidt ran Google during its rapid growth from a search startup to a tech colossus that branched out into smartphones, email and numerous other fields. Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired him to offer Google serious business credibility and leadership, and to that extent he succeeded.

    https://www.engadget.com/eric-schmidt-leaves-google-201819195.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/3/2020


Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Big Tech is trying to make good on promises like leaving acquisitions alone and not using your personal data for evil things. But when the pressure to earn rises to unbearable levels, will those words still hold true?

California is trying to hold these companies responsible and give consumers more control over the data collected about them, but will these laws help or confuse an already complicated situation?

Finally, since we are on the topic of privacy, you might want to think twice before sending your cheek swab to one of those DNA companies… there isn’t much governance on what they are (and what the authorities) are doing with that data.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner: ‘Satya Has Made Good’ On Microsoft’s Acquisition Agreement

    One of the biggest reasons why Microsoft is taking its time on pushing integrations is to avoid making mistakes. LinkedIn is Microsoft’s largest acquisition to date so it has to move with caution.

    Microsoft wants to avoid making integration mistakes that it made in the past. In 2012, Microsoft had written off the $6.2 billion acquisition of digital ad company aQuantive. And Microsoft also saw a quarterly loss in 2015 due to $8.3 billion in charges related to the restructuring of its phone hardware operations following the $9.5 billion acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business.

    Microsoft CFO Amy Hood pointed out that one of the goals of the LinkedIn acquisition was to accelerate the growth of the professional social network along with Office 365 and Dynamics 365.

    https://pulse2.com/linkedin-satya-has-made-good-on-acquisition/

  • Remembering the startups we lost in 2019

    A cursory look at this year’s batch of companies doesn’t find any story quite as spectacular as last year’s big Theranos flameout, which gave us a best-selling book, documentary, podcast series and upcoming Adam McKay/Jennifer Lawrence film. Some, like MoviePass, however, may have come close.

    And for every Theranos, there are dozens of stories of hardworking founders with promising products that simply couldn’t make it to the finish line. There’s also room for debate about what is and isn’t a startup. For our purposes, we’re focusing here on independent startups, not digital initiatives from larger companies — though in at least one case, the startup was acquired by a larger company before shutting down.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/26/startups-lost-in-2019/

Security/Privacy

  • GDPR was just a warmup. CCPA will arrive with a bang.

    “We’ve already talked to some companies who either have decided or are considering to pull their marketing programs from California. So there may be some fallout. It might just be a temporary thing for them to see where the cards fall,” said Rachel Glasser, global chief privacy officer at Wunderman Thompson.

    Even if only temporarily, advertiser pullback would put publishers’ and ad tech companies’ businesses in a bind. But those companies are also facing more permanent predicaments.

    Any company that sells California residents’ personal information under the law’s broad definition of sale is required to put a “clear and conspicuous” link on its homepage titled “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” for people to request the company to stop selling their information.

    https://digiday.com/marketing/gdpr-just-warmup-ccpa-will-arrive-bang/
    What Does California’s New Data Privacy Law Mean? Nobody Agrees

    “Companies have different interpretations, and depending on which lawyer they are using, they’re going to get different advice,” said Kabir Barday, the chief executive of OneTrust, a privacy management software service that has worked with more than 4,000 companies to prepare for the law. “I’ll call it a religious war.”

    The new law has national implications because many companies, like Microsoft, say they will apply their changes to all users in the United States rather than give Californians special treatment. Federal privacy bills that could override the state’s law are stalled in Congress.

    The California privacy law applies to businesses that operate in the state, collect personal data for commercial purposes and meet other criteria like generating annual revenue above $25 million. It gives Californians the right to see, delete and stop the sale of the personal details that all kinds of companies — app developers, retailers, restaurant chains — have on them.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/29/technology/california-privacy-law.html

  • What You’re Unwrapping When You Get a DNA Test for Christmas

    But is using one of these kits also opening the door to letting the police use your DNA to arrest your cousin? The answer in this rapidly evolving realm depends largely on which sites you join and the boxes you check off when you do. And even if you never join any of these sites, their policies could affect you so long as one of your 800 closest relatives has.
    **
    To identify a suspect’s blood, for example, investigators do not need to find the person who cut his hand smashing through a window. They just need to match to a couple of his second or third cousins in a DNA database. From there, a genetic genealogist can puzzle out how these cousins are related to one another and the suspect by building out a series of family trees. Often this leads to an arrest.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/science/dna-testing-kit-present.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • IBM’s Seawater Battery Making Waves

    IBM is essentially announcing a potential alternative to lithium-ion batteries – and not just an alternative to some of the main ingredients. What’s more, IBM states the batteries perform even better than current lithium-ion batteries. Citing greater efficiency, faster charging, as well as higher power and energy density. These batteries are not just environmentally sound, but are also more capable in general. Further adding to their appeal, IBM states they are cheaper to produce thanks to their lack of heavy metals.

    The issue is that they are currently far from being in a finished state. IBM’s announcement does not even suggest the company intends to build the batteries itself. Instead, the collaboration with the other vested companies is intended to flesh out the technology and create an environment where it becomes easier for other companies to produce the seawater-sourced batteries in the future.

    https://screenrant.com/ibm-seawater-battery-tech/

  • Huawei reportedly got by with a lot of help from the Chinese government

    Huawei reportedly had “access to as much as $75 billion in state support,” according to a piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Christmas Day.

    That massive figure is culled from poring over various forms, including grants and tax breaks. Huawei, for its part, isn’t denying any government support, but said in response that what it received was “small and non-material,” in line with the usual variety of grants awarded to tech startups and companies.

    Per WSJ’s accounting of public records, Huawei got around $46 billion in loans and other support, coupled with $25 billion in tax cuts used to accelerate tech advances.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/26/huawei-reportedly-got-by-with-a-lot-of-help-from-the-chinese-government/

Other

  • Accenture: Remaining Bullish And Raising Target Price Post Earnings

    Per our industry-wide analysis and Accenture’s favorable fundamentals, and given the company’s strong top-line growth, we believe that ACN shares merit ~29x P/E multiple on 2019 earnings. When we apply it to our 2019 EPS estimate of $8.65 (up from $8.49), we get the target price of $251 (up from $245). We note that this P/E multiple is contingent on the S&P multiple of ~18x, and may expand/contract together with the multiple.

    Risks:

    While Accenture strives to make the pricing structure attractive to its core clients and, henceforth, attract greater business, we see a number of Indian players, such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy, and Wipro, potentially lowering prices in the foreseeable future. In addition, there are smaller players that are threatening Accenture in Europe, such as Epam and Luxoft.

    The company heavily relies on H1-B and L-1 visas; over the last several years Congress attempts to heavily regulate the number of visa works each company can hire. Should the H1-B and L-1 visas become even more limited, there could be a 40-60 bps negative impact to Accenture’s margin.

    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4314133-accenture-remaining-bullish-and-raising-target-price-post-earnings

  • Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Departs Board, Sells All His Shares

    The exit punctuates a decade in which Silicon Valley investors pumped startups with extraordinary sums of money and granted their founders vast power and a mandate to grow at breakneck speeds.

    Uber and Mr. Kalanick were the archetype of this model, as Mr. Kalanick raised over $14 billion in equity and debt from outside investors who bought into his expansive vision and energetic approach. At its peak, Uber was the most valuable startup in the U.S., with a valuation of about $68 billion.

    The move by Mr. Kalanick to sell his shares was set in place multiple months ago, said people familiar with the matter, and called for him to sell shares daily until his holdings wound down to zero.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-co-founder-travis-kalanick-to-depart-companys-board-11577196747

Posted on

Supplier Report: 11/22/2019


Photo by Andrew Pons on Unsplash

The fight for the Pentagon’s JEDI contract might not be over as Amazon announced they would contest due to the final decision being biased against them. I know it is $10B, but everybody needs to move on.

Meanwhile JEDI winner Microsoft continues to push new technology in AI and Blockchain. Microsoft is testing medical AI technology to diagnose cervical cancer in India. Sometimes I feel that this medical review tech is more hype than reality, and my suspicions are higher when companies don’t test technology in the US first… but there is value if it truly works.

Finally, the State of New Jersey is hitting Uber with a $650M employee tax bill… good.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise

    With this deal, Mirantis is acquiring Docker Enterprise Technology Platform and all associated IP: Docker Enterprise Engine, Docker Trusted Registry, Docker Unified Control Plane and Docker CLI. It will also inherit all Docker Enterprise customers and contracts, as well as its strategic technology alliances and partner programs. Docker and Mirantis say they will both continue to work on the Docker platform’s open-source pieces.

    The companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but it’s surely nowhere near Docker’s valuation during any of its last funding rounds. Indeed, it’s no secret that Docker’s fortunes changed quite a bit over the years, from leading the container revolution to becoming somewhat of an afterthought after Google open-sourced Kubernetes and the rest of the industry coalesced around it.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-enterprise/

  • Yahoo-Line Merger Plan Raises Hopes for Japanese ‘Super App’

    SoftBank wants to gain greater control of Line in years to come, the person said.

    Another challenge is the two companies’ focus on the Japanese market, where the population is shrinking and growth prospects are limited. The market for the services they offer—such as texting, internet shopping and online financial services—is already dominated in most other countries by larger rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc.

    Still, analysts said the new entity, if designed well, could become Japan’s first “super app,” a gateway on smartphones for a broad range of everyday needs. That model has driven growth for China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Tencent’s WeChat app for chatting with friends spawned a payment service, WeChat Pay, that along with Alibaba’s Alipay is now almost universally used for retail purchases in China.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-line-merger-plan-raises-hopes-for-japanese-super-app-11573726726?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • OpenText buys data security firm Carbonite for $1.42B

    The deal marks a 78% premium on Carbonite’s share price on September 5, when it was first rumored the company was preparing to buy the backup and data recovery company. Carbonite said the board “strongly believes” the deal will return “substantial” cash value to shareholders, said Steve Munford, chairman of Carbonite’s board.

    In February, Carbonite bought endpoint security company Webroot for $618.5 million in an all-cash deal, as the company pushed to protect against emerging threats like ransomware. Only a year earlier, Carbonite bought Mozy for $145 million, a cloud backup service.

    Carbonite said at the time of its acquisition by OpenText the backup company had losses of $14 million on revenues of $125.6 million, an increase by 62% year-over-year.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/11/opentext-buys-carbonite/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Microsoft AI helps diagnose cervical cancer faster

    In some cases, AI-assisted cancer detection might be more than a convenience — it could be the key to getting a diagnosis in the first place. Microsoft and SRL Diagnostics have developed an AI tool that helps detect cervical cancer, freeing doctors in India and other countries where the sheer volume of patients could prove overwhelming. The team trained an AI to spot signs of the cancer by feeding it “thousands” of annotated cervical smear images to help it spot abnormalities (including pre-cancerous examples) that warrant a closer look. Doctors would only have to look at those slides that justify real concern.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/10/microsoft-ai-diagnoses-cervical-cancer-faster/

  • Microsoft’s A.I. and research chief Harry Shum is leaving

    Microsoft said on Wednesday that Harry Shum, the executive vice president in charge of its artificial intelligence and research group, is leaving the company in early 2020. Kevin Scott, the company’s chief technology officer and formerly a LinkedIn executive, is taking on Shum’s responsibilities in addition to his own. It’s not clear what Shum will do next.

    Shum has been a figurehead in the more integrated approach to research that has taken hold at Microsoft during the tenure of CEO Satya Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer in 2014. His group has been one of the most prominent technology research institutions outside academia, alongside the likes of Google parent-company Alphabet and Facebook.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/microsoft-ai-and-research-chief-harry-shum-leaves.html

Cloud

  • AWS confirms reports it will challenge JEDI contract award to Microsoft

    In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson suggested that there was possible bias and issues in the selection process. “AWS is uniquely experienced and qualified to provide the critical technology the U.S. military needs, and remains committed to supporting the DoD’s modernization efforts. We also believe it’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence.

    “Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/14/aws-confirms-reports-it-will-challenge-jedi-contract-award-to-microsoft/

  • Privacy uproar shows Google cloud business has a trust problem

    This sounds like the leak of Facebook data to Cambridge Analytica. But it also describes this week’s portrayal by the media of US healthcare provider Ascension’s decision to hand the records of 50 million of its patients to Google.

    In reality, this is far from the scandal it was painted. But the huge attention it has received points to both the risks and opportunities as large troves of valuable data are moved, wholesale, to the cloud. How this information is handled, and who reaps the value from it, are questions that will stir much wider concern.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/privacy-uproar-shows-google-cloud-business-has-a-trust-problem-1.4084291
    Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Triggers Federal Inquiry

    The data on patients of St. Louis-based Ascension were until recently scattered across 40 data centers in more than a dozen states. Google and the Catholic nonprofit are moving that data into Google’s cloud-computing system—with potentially big changes on tap for doctors and patients.

    At issue for regulators and lawmakers who expressed concern is whether Google and Ascension are adequately protecting patient data in the initiative, which is code-named “Project Nightingale” and is aimed at crunching data to produce better health care, among other goals. Ascension, without notifying patients or doctors, has begun sharing with Google personally identifiable information on millions of patients, such as names and dates of birth; lab tests; doctor diagnoses; medication and hospitalization history; and some billing claims and other clinical records.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-googles-project-nightingale-a-health-data-gold-mine-of-50-million-patients-11573571867

  • IBM and Oracle are so far behind in the cloud, they might stop trying to compete with

    Amazon altogether and go a different route, analyst says
    Rather than compete directly with those giants, lagging players like Oracle will focus on its applications and databases, while IBM will focus on hybrid cloud and its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, the report says.

    Dave Bartoletti, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, tells Business Insider that they won’t get out of the game entirely: “It’s really a shifting of positioning,” he said. “I don’t think IBM and Oracle will get that much bigger. They will just refocus on what they do best.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-oracle-amazon-forrester-report-2019-11

Security/Privacy

  • But Actually, How Scary Is Critical Infrastructure Hacking?

    Critical infrastructure hacking was brought to the public’s attention by former Secretary of State and CIA director Leon Panetta in a much-maligned 2012 speech where he warned of a coming “Cyber Pearl Harbor.”

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xwpav/but-actually-how-scary-is-critical-infrastructure-hacking

  • Amazon-Owned Ring Shared Data About Tracking Kids On Halloween

    In a company blog and series of Instagram stories, posted Monday and Tuesday, the company showed that it collects, stores, and analyzes sensitive data about how, when, and where people use its doorbell cameras. Ring said that nationwide, its doorbell cameras were activated 15.8 million times on Halloween. The company makes several other types of surveillance cameras in addition to its doorbell camera.

    As it has on other occasions, like Super Bowl Sunday, Ring turned Halloween into a marketing opportunity. As reported by Mashable, Ring circulated videos of children on Halloween on Twitter. Ring also promoted Halloween-themed skins to decorate doorbell cameras on its company blogs and Instagram. However, in promoting itself as a family-friendly company, Ring showed that it collects user data on a granular level.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/ring-boasted-about-surveilling-trick-or-treaters-on

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple’s Phil Schiller says kids with Chromebooks in classrooms are ‘not going to succeed’

    “Kids who are really into learning and want to learn will have better success. It’s not hard to understand why kids aren’t engaged in a classroom without applying technology in a way that inspires them. You need to have these cutting-edge learning tools to help kids really achieve their best results.

    Yet Chromebooks don’t do that. Chromebooks have gotten to the classroom because, frankly, they’re cheap testing tools for required testing. If all you want to do is test kids, well, maybe a cheap notebook will do that. But they’re not going to succeed.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963166/apple-phil-schiller-google-chromebook-classroom-not-going-to-succeed

Other

  • T-Mobile CEO John Legere isn’t taking the WeWork CEO job, sources say

    Legere, who became CEO of T-Mobile in 2012, has no plans to leave the company, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential. CNBC and The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Legere was a candidate to be WeWork’s next CEO.

    By taking himself out of the running, Legere is avoiding a potential conflict of interest. SoftBank is the controlling shareholder of Sprint, which is in the process of merging with T-Mobile, and is the majority owner of WeWork. Legere was never the front-runner to take the job, according to people familiar with the matter.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/john-legere-isnt-leaving-t-mobile-to-take-wework-ceo-job.html

  • Uber Hit With $650 Million Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

    Uber Technologies Inc. owes New Jersey about $650 million in unemployment and disability insurance taxes because the rideshare company has been misclassifying drivers as independent contractors, the state’s labor department said.

    Uber and subsidiary Rasier LLC were assessed $523 million in past-due taxes over the last four years, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said in a pair of letters to the companies. The rideshare businesses also are on the hook for as much as $119 million in interest and penalties on the unpaid amounts, according to other internal department documents.

    The New Jersey labor department has been after Uber for unpaid employment taxes for at least four years, according to the documents, which Bloomberg Law obtained through an open public records request.

    https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/uber-hit-with-650-million-employment-tax-bill-in-new-jersey

Posted on

Supplier Report: 9/27/2019


Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

The darlings of the tech world are facing the harsh embrace of reality. Both Uber and WeWork have been under fire for their valuations and other operational issues. Now leaders from other companies are commenting on their future viability.

Meanwhile many firms are clinging to the hope of artificial intelligence to improve their margins, increase their sales, and usher in a new market for customers to get excited about.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • McDonald’s Is Acquiring AI Startup Apprente

    McDonald’s is acquiring Apprente, a startup which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand speech in multiple languages. The technology will be used in the company’s drive-thrus and could also be used in its self-order kiosks and a mobile app. This is McDonald’s third tech deal this year.

    There is a new self-checkout shopping cart that makes grocery shopping easier. When you are shopping with a Caper cart, all you have to do is scan the item barcode and simply add it to your cart. Once you are done shopping you pay directly on the cart. Caper recently closed a $10 million Series A led by Lux Capital.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/339394

  • T-Mobile’s Sprint merger is opposed by 18 state attorneys general

    In July, the Department of Justice approved T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion bid to merge with Sprint — on the condition that it sell some of its business to Dish Network. And Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai endorsed the deal. But opposition from so many attorneys general could pose a legitimate threat.

    The state attorneys general fear the merger would hurt competition, raise prices for cell service, result in a loss of retail jobs and lower wages for the employees who remain. “The merger between T-Mobile and Sprint would severely undermine competition in the telecommunications sector, which would hurt Pennsylvanian consumers by driving up prices, limiting coverage, and diminishing quality,” Shapiro said in a statement.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/18/t-mobile-sprint-pennsylvania/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google’s quantum bet on the future of AI—and what it means for humanity

    The full reach of Google’s AI influence stretches far beyond the company’s offerings. Outside developers—at startups and big corporations alike—now use Google’s AI tools to do everything from training smart satellites to monitoring changes to the earth’s surface to rooting out abusive language on Twitter (well, it’s trying). There are now millions of devices using Google AI, and this is just the beginning. Google is on the verge of achieving what’s known as quantum supremacy. This new breed of computer will be able to crack complex equations a million or more times faster than regular ones. We are about to enter the rocket age of computing.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90396213/google-quantum-supremacy-future-ai-humanity

  • Artificial Intelligence Confronts a ‘Reproducibility’ Crisis

    Pineau is trying to change the standards. She’s the reproducibility chair for NeurIPS, a premier artificial intelligence conference. Under her watch, the conference now asks researchers to submit a “reproducibility checklist” including items often omitted from papers, like the number of models trained before the “best” one was selected, the computing power used, and links to code and datasets. That’s a change for a field where prestige rests on leaderboards—rankings that determine whose system is the “state of the art” for a particular task—and offers great incentive to gloss over the tribulations that led to those spectacular results.

    The idea, Pineau says, is to encourage researchers to offer a road map for others to replicate their work. It’s one thing to marvel at the eloquence of a new text generator or the “superhuman” agility of a videogame-playing bot. But even the most sophisticated researchers have little sense of how they work.

    https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-confronts-reproducibility-crisis/

Cloud

  • IBM sees Amazon and Microsoft as cloud allies, not rivals

    CEO Ginni Rometty is betting on the hybrid cloud, which lets IBM offer services on corporate customers’ cloud-based servers as well as on third-party clouds operated by the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. IBM has traditionally viewed these cloud giants as direct competitors, but it now aims to partner with them by supporting clients as they shift sensitive databases on to the cloud, regardless of which provider they use.

    After struggling to keep up in the cloud market for more than a decade, IBM has switched to a hybrid cloud strategy, cementing its future with last year’s US$34-billion acquisition of Red Hat, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based open-source software provider.

    https://techcentral.co.za/ibm-sees-amazon-and-microsoft-as-cloud-allies-not-rivals/92641/

  • Larry Ellison says Oracle will ‘write into your contract that your bill will be half’ of what you’d pay Amazon, as the database giant announces new cloud products

    Larry Ellison announced a new so-called autonomous operating system in a new initiative to challenge to Amazon Web Services, the leader in cloud computing — and took a jab at Amazon over its small role in the massive Capital One hack.

    A highlight of Ellison’s speech was the unveiling of what it touted as the world’s first autonomous operating system, that will automatically be maintained and updated and will not require manual management. This operating system is based on Linux, the free and open source operating system that’s ubiqitious in server rooms and data centers around the world.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-oracle-autonomous-os-free-cloud-access-2019-9

Security/Privacy

  • The FBI Tried to Plant a Backdoor in an Encrypted Phone Network

    The FBI tried to force the owner of an encrypted phone company to put a backdoor in his devices, Motherboard has learned. The company involved is Phantom Secure, a firm that sold privacy-focused BlackBerry phones and which ended up catering heavily to the criminal market, including members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, formerly run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa73dz/fbi-tried-to-plant-backdoor-in-encrypted-phone-phantom-secure

  • Thinkful confirms data breach days after Chegg’s $80M acquisition

    Thinkful, based in Brooklyn, New York, provides education and training for developers and programmers. The company claims the vast majority of its graduates get jobs in their field of study within a half-year of finishing their program. Earlier this month, education tech giant Chegg bought Thinkful for $80 million in cash.

    But the company would not say when the breach happened — or if Chegg knew of the data breach prior to the acquisition announcement.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/thinkful-data-breach-chegg-acquisition/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe

    This new investment is in addition to the $7 billion the company has invested since 2007 in the EU, but today’s announcement was focused on Google’s commitment to building data centers running on clean energy, as much as the data centers themselves.

    Of the 3 billion Euros, the company plans to spend, it will invest 600 million to expand its presence in Hamina, Finland, which he wrote “serves as a model of sustainability and energy efficiency for all of our data centers.” Further, the company already announced 18 new renewable energy deals earlier this week, which encompass a total of 1,600-megawatts in the US, South America and Europe.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/20/google-is-investing-3-3b-to-build-clean-data-centers-in-europe/

  • IBM will soon launch a 53-qubit quantum computer

    IBM notes that the new 53-qubit system introduces a number of new techniques that enable the company to launch larger, more reliable systems for cloud deployments. It features more compact custom electronics for improving scaling and lower error rates, as well as a new processor design.

    The fact that IBM is now opening this Quantum Computation itself, of course, is a pretty good indication about how serious the company is about its quantum efforts. The company’s quantum program also now supports 80 partnerships with commercial clients, academic institutions and research laboratories. Some of these have started to use the available machines to work on real-world problems, though the current state of the art in quantum computing is still not quite ready for solving anything but toy problems and testing basic algorithms.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/ibm-will-soon-launch-a-53-qubit-quantum-computer/

Other

  • Uber Vows to Fight California Legislation on Gig Economy

    The legislation, which intends to force companies to reclassify certain contract workers as employees, is considered a serious threat to Uber and Lyft, already losing billions of dollars a year combined, as their business models have relied on flexible labor and minimal worker costs.

    The bill’s passage in the state Assembly on Wednesday, after the state Senate’s passage the night before, reflects the degree to which the large Democratic majority in Sacramento has increased scrutiny of tech companies in recent years, as well as the strength of labor unions in the state.

    Given California’s size and history of creating influential business regulations, it also is the first significant step in a new paradigm for a changing workforce, fueled by people who have forgone benefits for the sake of flexibility and occasional incentives.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-governor-still-in-talks-with-uber-lyft-over-gig-workers-law-11568212014
    Oracle Founder Larry Ellison Calls Uber and WeWork ‘Almost Worthless’

    Ellison argued that while Uber raises capital to spend on gaining market share from rival Lyft (LYFT), the business they secure doesn’t necessarily stay with the company. He pointed out that Uber doesn’t own its cars and doesn’t control their drivers. And he declared that “they have an app my cat could have written.”

    Ellison said losing money to gain market share is “idiotic” if customers won’t stay with the firm. “They have nothing,” he said. “No technology. And no loyalty.”

    He mocked WeWork’s assertion that it is a technology company. “WeWork rents a building from me, and breaks it up, and then rents it,” Ellison said. “They say, ‘We’re a technology company, and we want a tech multiple.’ It’s bizarre.”

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/oracles-larry-ellison-calls-uber-and-wework-almost-worthless-51568924122

  • Avaya Goes Global With IBM Cloud

    As part of the IBM deal, Avaya gains access to Watson, to help its contact center customers improve routing and automation for dealing with customer calls, McGugan says. Additionally, IBM provides important automation tools and professional services for the cloud migration.

    In addition to IBM, Avaya has partnerships with other cloud providers, with compute resources in Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. “My customers sometimes dictate where they want their solutions housed,” McGugan said. Some workloads span multiple clouds.

    https://www.lightreading.com/services/unified-communication/avaya-goes-global-with-ibm-cloud/d/d-id/754203

  • Amazon Will Double Chicago Headcount, Add 70K SF at Tech Hub

    Amazon plans to expand its Chicago Tech Hub and create 400 new tech jobs in fields including cloud computing, advertising, and business development. To accommodate this job creation, Amazon will expand its space at Tishman Speyer’s Franklin office tower by more than 70,000 square feet.

    In all, Amazon employs more than 11,000 across Illinois, including workers at its fulfillment centers and retail stores.

    https://www.connect.media/amazon-will-double-chicago-headcount-add-70k-sf-at-tech-hub/