The Bulldozer and Bray: Amazon and Its People Policies in Action
May 4, 2020
I read “Bye, Amazon.” The author is Tim Bray. Some may remember him as one of the spark plugs of Open Text. He did some nifty visualization work. He did the Google thing until 2014. From 2014 until a couple of days ago he worked at Amazon, the Bezos bulldozer, the online bookstore, and all-around economic engine of Covid America.
The write up states:
I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.
When Amazon terminated with prejudice the Amazonians protesting.
Mr. Bray’s reaction was
Snap!
Mr. Bray was upset, went through Amazon channels, and resigned.
He states about the warehouse worker action:
It’s not just workers who are upset. Here are Attorneys-general from 14 states speaking out. Here’s the New York State Attorney-general with more detailed complaints. Here’s Amazon losing in French courts, twice.
On the other hand, he points out:
Amazon Web Services (the “Cloud Computing” arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire its leadership.
In his penultimate paragraph he offers:
At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance. So they’re gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength.
Several observations:
- Mr. Bray has a moral compass. DarkCyber finds that of value.
- Amazon’s “power” has been largely unchecked since the mid 1990s, and only now are actions building like storm clouds on the horizon.
- Mr. Bray was able to continue working for the Google but he could not continue working at Amazon. That’s interesting in itself.
Net net: Will Amazon take steps to deal with what seems to be the Tim Bray situation? Do Prime customers get orders delivered on time? Not if warehouse employees put sand in the Bezos bulldozer’s differential.
Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2020
DARPA AI Contract Goes to BAE
May 2, 2020
We have been waiting for this announcement, but anyone rooting for a startup to snag this DARPA contract will be disappointed. Digital Battlespace reports, “DARPA Awards Machine Learning Analytics Contract to BAE Systems.” Yes, they went with the big, established, and experienced firm. The machine learning analytics services project is part of the agency’s Geospatial Cloud Analytics program. The brief write-up informs us:
“The services will be the first of their kind and will be cloud-based, according to BAE Systems. It will harvest open source data including commercial information and satellite imagery to provide situational awareness reports for the US government. The Multi-INT Analytics for Pattern Learning and Exploitation (MAPLE) technology will be used by BAE Systems FAST Labs to provide an approach which will free operators to query data for specific situations in real-time thus reducing the need for manual analysis. The cloud-based nature of the software makes it flexible and it can easily be scaled up as required by the end user.”
Established in 1999, BAE has grown into a huge operation—it now employs about 83,100 people around the world. The company specializes in a wide range of defense and aerospace systems for military and intelligence agencies. BAE’s DC activities flow from the firm’s Virginia offices.
Cynthia Murrell, May 2, 2020
Zoom to the Oracle
April 30, 2020
One Dolphin Way is flipping with excitement. DarkCyber spotted “Oracle Wins Cloud Computing Deal with Zoom as Video Calls Surge.” From the truthy real news outfit DarkCyber learned:
Zoom and Oracle did not disclose the size of the deal, but said traffic for “millions” of meeting participants is being handled by Oracle’s cloud service and about 7 million gigabytes of Zoom data per day is flowing through Oracle servers.
With a nifty new computer security wizard providing advice, Zoom is taking steps to become a more reliable outfit. (Never mind that the security wizard was on watch when the unfortunate Yahoo and Facebook glitches took place. It is the PR that counts.)
Will Oracle deal with the Zoom feature of disallowing connections?
What’s interesting is that Oracle is working overtime to gain traction in what looks like a two horse race: Microsoft Azure on the outside and the Bezos bulldozer’s AWS on the inside rail.
Worth watching; that is, if one can connect to a meeting.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2020
Sigma Gets $30 Million In Key Funding
April 30, 2020
Once the economic ramifications from the COVID-19 pandemic are underway and you are adjusting your investment portfolio, data analytics company stocks should not lose any value. Why? Data analytics platforms are in high demand and Sigma Computing recently nabbed: “Sigma Computing Raises $30 Million More For Cloud Data Analytics Tools” says Venture Beat.
Sigma Computing held a series B round of founding and added another $30 million to their fund. Investors in the second funding round include Sutter Hill Ventures and Altimeter Capital. CEO for Sigma Computing Rob Woollen said the money would be used for product development and product support.
Woollen stated that data is useless without making it comprehendible and capable of delivering actionable BI insights. Sigma makes data useable, but also keeping in mind the importance of governance, security issues, and compliance. Sigma uses a spreadsheet-like UI that transforms data from any source into useful insights, plus the search tool is powerful:
“Searches can be performed by natural language and by filter, the results of which can be compiled in an embeddable report and delivered via email. Where collaboration is concerned, Sigma’s link feature enables users to map data relationships and add linked data to documents. The platform’s workspaces are conducive to sharing — they can be circulated among teams, departments, or entire organizations — and spotlight important data blocks, worksheets, and interfaces with visual badges and a range of visualizations.”
Sigma Computing includes Zumper, Navis, LendUp, Clover, Volta, and Olivela among their clients. They sell software for data visualization and big data/business analytics, both markets combined are worth over $11 million. It sounds like a good investment.
Whitney Grace, April 30, 2020
Google Meet: A Zoom Challenger
April 29, 2020
DarkCyber thought that Google Hangouts was the Zoom challenger. Wrong again it seems.
Google Meet will be rolling out in the near future, possibly now. Google’s Zoom is a digital place to hangout. Errr, no. Google Meet is a place to meet. There’s a difference, probably best understood by someone who used one of Google’s numerous chat applications. Meet seems to be another Google “me too” play, but apparently it’s a mature, deep, and unique way to hangout, I mean, meet.
According to “Google Meet Premium Video Conferencing—Free for Everyone”:
Today [April 29, 2020] , we’re making Google Meet, our premium video conferencing product, free for everyone, with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. We’ve invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that’s trusted by schools, governments and enterprises around the world, and in recent months we’ve accelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful.
Okay, just get a Google account and anyone can use Google Meet. Will Google Meet be available in China? Russia? Errr. DarkCyber does not know.
Several points from the Google announcement:
- Meet was available to G Suite customers. I am a G Suite customer, and I did not know there was a Google Meet. Hangouts, yes. Meet, no.
- Meet will allow me to stream for up to “100,000 viewers within your domain.” What’s a domain? The write up does not say.
- The write up says, “Free G Suite Essentials for enterprise customers.” Will there be a for fee service offering more than essentials.
Like many Googley announcements, the sizzle is evident. But does the steak have Zoomy features like animated backgrounds, transcripts, and a reasonably coherent interface.
Will Google Meet face the same fate as Shoelace? What? Who? Exactly.
PS. The Meet anigif is retro, even MySpacey.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2020
HPE Signals That Its Channel Partners Cannot Move Product and Services
April 27, 2020
I was not surprised when I worked through “HPE Outlines Additional Channel Partner Relief Measures.” The language of the write up worked overtime to dodge the basic message: Channel partners cannot move HPE’s products and services.
This is a surprise?
The write up explains:
The HPE Partner Ready program has suspended revenue target thresholds so partners can keep their eligibility for the 2021 program, as well as Aruba’s Partner Ready for Networking Program.
and this:
HPE Financial Services has also allocated $2 billion towards helping customers and partners. Initiatives include providing liquidity for buying partners, virtual solutions for partner enablement, and hybrid IT solutions for partners and customers.
or this:
HPE aims to provide liquidity to partners, particularly in North America and Europe through early pay discount terms and factoring terms. The company has not stated whether these also apply to Asia Pacific partners. The company has also suspended or reduced strategic development initiative targets in most geographies – however, this incentive does not apply to partners in Asia Pacific and China (APAC). Hybrid IT solutions for partners and customers include the free-of-charge use of remote server management Integrated Lights-Out Advanced. It will be offered free for the remainder of 2020. Additionally, HPE is working to support service provider partners by providing increased business continuity services to customers, via a centralised Spotlight page on Cloud28+.
The angles of this particular nine-ball pool game are challenging.
But taken as whole cloth, the moths appear to be ruining the fabric in which HPE wanted to craft a new prom gown.
What will the HPE partners’ wear? Maybe Amazon AWS or Google Cloud t shirts?
Stephen E Arnold, April 27, 2020
IBM: Respond to a Hungry Tiger with Deflection and Delay
April 24, 2020
I stumbled across an essay by a former IBM Watson professional writing in his new role at a real estate company. The career choice struck me as interesting, and I decided to read “How to Manage During A Crisis: Sort Everything Into “Now, Next, or Later“. The advice and opinion article appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine. I rarely associated IBM Watson, real estate, and entrepreneurial spirit. Time to learn I decided.
The write up states:
In normal times, every business should have a plan. But you can’t plan for contingencies when the business climate might change, when new laws and regulations are imminent, or, as in our current crisis, public health threats are in flux. At that point, planning is simply a waste of time. What to do instead? React fast.
Management with minimal thought strikes me as a fight or flight approach. The idea of figuring out how to avoid a hungry tiger is one thing, dealing with business challenges seem slightly different.
The desire to react fast may be why this individual abandoned the relative safety and security of IBM for the thrilling world of property management. As those renting properties close their offices, I imagine that property management is becoming slightly more thrilling than it was a few years ago.
This management advice strikes me as the type of thinking that does not match up with IBM. The essay notes:
The U.S. Air Force has a conceptual model for fighter pilots called OODA—or, “observe, orient, decide and act”—that might help you think about crisis management.
This is an updated version of the hungry tiger situation. Humans may be hard wired to get an adrenaline boost from OODA situations — if the enemy’s air to air missile is picked up by the aircraft’s defensive systems AND the systems react in the time available to neutralize the attack. Modern air warfare, if I understand the upside of the F 35 platform, is to never get into this surprise situation.
Are IBM’s problems a surprise like this tiger ruining a nice walk in the bush? Perhaps IBM embraces the hungry tiger as a way to buy time and create a plausible explanation for its revenue decrease and disappointing financial outlook?
What about IBM?
The author just mentions IBM Watson, so I think he is either proud of having worked on that outstanding collection of smart technology, he wants to bask in Watson’s halo effect, or he is making a distinction between the real estate way and the IBM way.
IBM has had its share of minor troubles: Litigation related to RIFFing workers, management turnover at the top, and financial disruptions.
“IBM Q1 2020 Earnings Call Highlights: Withdraws 2020 Outlook Amid Covid-19 Crisis” suggests that IBM is shifting into the adrenaline charged world of facing one or more hungry tigers.
The write up reports:
As the impact of COVID-19 intensified in March, [IBM] clients began to deprioritize some of their projects. In this environment, the company deployed its resources to engage customers virtually, modernize and migrate the applications to the cloud, empowering a remote workforce with cybersecurity and IT resiliency. The company expects its Global Business Services customers to continue to delay and replan some of their projects in the near term.
Okay, Covid was a surprise to almost everyone except the Chinese and BlueDot in Canada. Yes, the virus has created some economic pressure. But IBM’s issues began long before Covid became the alleged surprise.
IBM has bought back about $140 billion in its stock to put some shine on the Big Blue operation. The write up points out:
IBM withdrew its earlier profit outlook for the full-year 2020 given the uncertain environment in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. The company said that with better clarity on the economic recovery it will reassess the situation and will give an update at the end of the second quarter of 2020. When IBM announced fourth-quarter 2019 results in January, it had projected GAAP EPS to be at least $10.57 and non-GAAP EPS to be at least $13.35 for fiscal 2020. The company expects the second quarter to be more challenging if the customers continue their same buying pattern.
The translation in my lexicon means, “We are losing revenue and costs remain a problem. Circle the wagons. Blame the virus.”
DarkCyber believes that IBM’s entrepreneurial behavior will mean more staff cutbacks, more wild and crazy marketing, and acquisitions which deliver a RedHat type of boost. Yep, fast, decisive action.
What does the former IBM Watson professional advise:
But when an extreme or unprecedented event takes place, those plans almost always come up short—because they’re geared toward maintaining business as usual, instead of coping with the kind of massive disruption that nobody could prepare for… Right now it’s better to ditch those five-year plans… and get ready for curve balls we know we can’t predict.
Whoa, Nellie. I thought that IBM Watson made it possible to make sense of disparate information. Watson can process data and generate “answers.” What this former IBMer recommends and what IBM itslef is doing is rationalizing fear, uncertainty, and dread.
One would think that anyone injected with the Big Blue antiviral would do more than dodge reality. The problme is not a particular hungry tiger; the problem is the IBM systems and methods.
The IBM way has not worked well for years, and it is unlikely that the duck-and-delay approach will deliver what stakeholders expect: Growth, sustainable revenue, and a healthy bottom line.
Never fear, gentle IBM workers, there are opportunities in real estate or as management consultants.
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2020
The JEDI Spat: A Dead End?
April 24, 2020
An online publication called GoCurrent.com published “No Winner Likely In JEDI Court Battle; ‘Just Pull The Plug?’: Greenwalt.”
Neither Amazon nor Microsoft will find the observations in the article acceptable.
The principle for the article is Bill Greenwalt, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. His thinking provides an interesting assessment of the JEDI spat.
Microsoft won the deal. Amazon protested. Now the can has been kicked down the road. The write up asserts:
… Because the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program is suffering so many delays while technology forges ahead, it is being litigated into irrelevance. By effectively dragging out the trial, the latest legal developments only make that worse.
DarkCyber circled this passage as well:
JEDI, likewise, tried to bypass the usual acquisition bureaucracy to get new technology in at the speed of Silicon Valley. But trying to run government procurement more like a business runs afoul of a fundamental problem. No private company lets losing bidders force it to do business with them; the government sometimes does.
The way to have avoided a winner-take-all tussle might have been for a more progressive approach; to wit, a multi-cloud approach. The article states:
Now, the Pentagon insists it won’t split the JEDI contract because it already has too many clouds. The different armed services, defense agencies, and their subunits are all signing different contracts on different terms – over 500 of them…If the Pentagon had gone multi-cloud from the start, “it would have then been, for a change, ahead of the commercial market,” Greenwalt said. “It could have been experimenting with cloud providers and other solutions that manage multiple clouds for the last two years.”
With more legal thrashing ahead, the friction in the procurement processes becomes evident. One can smell the disc brakes screeching.
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2020
Amazon: Big Game Hunting with the Bezos Bulldozer
April 23, 2020
Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft rule the gaming industry. Because there is lots of money to be made from games, Google and Amazon want those dollars. Alphabet Inc. launched Google Stadia to mixed reviews, but Tom’s Guide states that, “Amazon’s Project Tempo Could Crush Google Stadia-Here’s Why.”
Google Stadia is a cloud gaming platform and Amazon seeks to rival it with its own called Project Tempo set to arrive in 2021. It was originally going to release in 2020, but COVID-19 delayed it. Not much is known about Project Tempo, except Amazon has the cloud infrastructure and streaming capabilities to outdo Google.
Amazon already has a gaming platform:
“With Project Tempo, Amazon has a chance to succeed where Google has yet to. The company already offers a monthly gaming subscription called Twitch Prime, which comes as part of your Amazon Prime account for $119 per year or $12.99 per month. Twitch Prime provides access to free games, complementary in-game content and free monthly channel subscriptions you can use to support your favorite streamers.
If Amazon were to fold Project Tempo into this service and give Twitch Prime members an instant collection of high-quality games to stream from the cloud, it could offer one heck of a value — and drive even more Amazon Prime subscriptions.”
Google Stadia requires $129 Premium Edition kit and a $10 mostly subscription fee. If Amazon offers better game acmes through their Amazon Prime subscription service, then its would be one heck of a deal for gamers. Gamers want quality over quantity as well as the best and newest technology. Gamers, however, are quick to dismiss rip-offs and if Google Stadia continues in the same vein they will not stand a chance against Project Tempo.
Whitney Grace, April 23, 2020
Austrian Enterprise Search Gets Upgrade
April 23, 2020
When it comes to search innovation, people think about Silicon Valley or Japan. Austria, however, has its own high tech search solution from Iphos IT Solutions. Open PR shares news about Iphos IT Solutions’ newest search endeavor in the article, “SearchIT 2020-Even More Features & Functions For The Enterprise Search Solution searchIT.”
SearchIT 2020’s upgrade comes at an important time, because more employees are working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. They need quick access to their company’s network from self isolation. The enhanced features and new function for SearchIT 2020 will make telecommunication seamless and guarantee employees are as productive, if not more, during quarantine.
Based on specially designed AI, SearchIT 2020 offers:
“SearchIT indexes and processes internal company data from a wide variety of sources, such as databases, file servers, mail servers, or various cloud storage sources. Finding data across all these sources is made easy with the full-text search function. The high degree of automation as well as many additional features not only provide users with an efficient and secure search tool, but also with the possibility of easy-to-handle document management, knowledge management, or the creation of comprehensive data archives.”
Since searchIT 2020 is built on AI, it does more than basic enterprise search applications. It allows users to build automatic data archives, starting data with third parties, and media monitoring. New features that are included in the upgrade include integrations of new search sources, dynamic report creation, meta and special searches with extended query syntax, preview function, explorer view, and automated language recognition.
Iphos IT Solutions provided solutions for large corporations to small and medium sized businesses. The pricing varies for all projects, but it is made to be affordable for any business while providing large scale services.
Whitney Grace, April 23, 2020
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