Why rivals Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up to take on Amazon

A partnership between Oracle Cloud and Microsoft's Azure cloud service will help the companies compete with Amazon Web Services in the growing cloud computing marketplace

Courtesy: CNN Business
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/13/tech/microsoft-oracle-amazon-cloud/index.html

New York (CNN Business) Amazon Web Services has dominated the growing cloud computing business, but a new partnership between industry rivals aims to unseat it.

Microsoft and Oracle, formerly competitors in the cloud business, announced a deal last week to link their cloud computing services. Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud will now be connected over a high-speed, direct network, allowing clients to upload and store data on both clouds and run business operations software programs on whichever cloud best supports them.

Amazon Web Services is the clear leader in the global cloud business, controlling more than 30% of the market, according to Synergy Research Group. Microsoft Azure has the second-largest share of the market — around 15% — with IBM Cloud and Google Cloud rounding out the four leading companies. Smaller cloud providers like Oracle have grown at a slower pace recently as the top four strengthen their hold on the market.

Oracle and Microsoft say their new partnership will improve the experience for customers and take advantage of a growing desire by organizations to use multiple cloud platforms at once. That could better position the companies to take on Amazon Web Services for key big business and government clients.

"With Oracle's enterprise expertise, this alliance is a natural choice for us as we help our joint customers accelerate the migration of enterprise applications and databases to the public cloud," Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft's Cloud and AI division, said in a statement.

More broadly, the move is yet another sign, along with the recent acquisitions of data analytics firm Looker by Google Cloud and data visualization company Tableau by Salesforce, that investment in cloud services and big data has become somewhat of a Holy Grail for software companies.

The battle for cloud supremacy

The cloud brings several advantages to companies, allowing businesses to outsource expensive hosting, security and storage costs.

And for market leaders like Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), the cloud's subscription model has become incredibly profitable.

Microsoft's commercial cloud services, which includes Azure as well as Microsoft Office 365 Commercial and several other commercial cloud properties, brought in $9.6 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2019, up 41% from the same period in the prior year.

During the same quarter, Amazon Web Services generated $7.7 billion in sales, a 41% increase from the prior year. AWS made up 13% of the company's total sales, but the high margins for the business meant it made up an even greater slice of Amazon's total operating income.

And the market for cloud services continues to expand, too. Synergy estimates the market totaled $70 billion in sales in 2018, with a growth rate of around 50%.

This profitability has led to fierce competition between cloud providers. Some, including Oracle, market their ability to process large quantities of data on their platforms. Others highlight the fact that their exclusive software can be used on their cloud platforms. Amazon has been helped by the fact that it was the pioneer of cloud computing.

The fight for lucrative government clients has become particularly cutthroat.

Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are the two finalists vying for a $10 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the US Defense Department. IBM (IBM) and Oracle (ORCL)have both challenged Amazon's bid for the contract, and Oracle filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month with conflict of interest allegations against Amazon.

Why Microsoft and Oracle are joining forces

Microsoft and Oracle say their partnership will give customers a "best-of-both-clouds experience."

The deal will allow customers to move data from their own on-site servers to both Microsoft Azure and Oracle clouds. It will now be possible to operate one company's software on the other's cloud platform — for example running Oracle's business operations software on Azure — or to run programs that work together on both clouds at once.

"With this partnership, our joint customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the cloud without having to re-architect anything, preserving the large investments they have already made," Don Johnson, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said in a statement.

The deal also includes some other perks for big business clients like a single sign-on for services from both companies, and tech support from either company.

Giving customers access to the top selling points of both cloud platforms at once will be a plus for both companies, Moness Crespi Hardt analyst Brian White said in a note this week.

"Microsoft's Azure is the #2 public cloud vendor in the world and Oracle is the clear #1 database vendor with a strong #2 position in enterprise applications," White said. "We believe the two clouds complement each other well."

The Microsoft-Oracle agreement may help Oracle in particular to improve its standing against Amazon, according to Piper Jaffray's Zukin. Zukin said Oracle, which has had a smaller stake in the cloud market and has historically been resistant to partnerships, may have realized the necessity of an ally in the fight against bigger players in the industry.

Microsoft clearly doesn't need Oracle to pose strong competition for Amazon, Zukin said, but the deal may help Microsoft grow Azure Premium Services, its higher-margin cloud product business.

"This is another great channel to sell Azure Premium Services to the Oracle customer base," Zukin said.

The agreement bears similarities to partnerships beyond the tech world where longtime competitors are linking up to take on industry disruptors. This is especially evident in the auto industry.

For example, Honda announced a $2.75 billion investment in General Motors' self-driving car unit in October, a partnership that would help the pair take on competition from Silicon Valley companies like Uber and Google (GOOG) that have been developing their own autonomous vehicle technology. In January, BMW and Daimler inked a $1 billion deal in February to develop driverless vehicles and pay-per-use cars together. Ford and Volkswagen have long been rumored to sign a similar partnership.

The multi-cloud model

The cloud has become so crucial to corporations' business strategies that cloud customers are beginning to build redundancy into their networks.

This "multi-cloud" strategy reduces reliance on a single cloud provider, according to Piper Jaffray's Zukin. Redundancy helps keep a business operational if one provider goes down, as Google's cloud did for a few hours earlier this month. It also allows companies to take advantage of the specific benefits provided by multiple cloud platforms.

With their partnership, Microsoft and Oracle have codified this strategy into a formally connected system for their mutual clients, including Albertsons and Gap.

"One of the biggest trends we've seen this year is the emergence of mutli-cloud businesses wanting to be able to choose which programs they want to deploy on which cloud environment," Zukin said.

Microsoft and Oracle's partnership is set to launch in the eastern United States, with plans to expand in the future.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/13/tech/microsoft-oracle-amazon-cloud/index.html

CCleaner hacked with malware

More than 2 million users possibly at risk.

Courtesy: Michael Simon, PCworld- Staff Writer,
Source:  https://www.pcworld.com/article/3225407/security/ccleaner-downloads-infected-malware.html

It seems that CCleaner, one of PCWorld’s recommendations for the best free software for new PCs, might not have been keeping your PC so clean after all. In an in-depth probe of the popular optimization and scrubbing software, Cisco Talos has discovered a malicious bit of code injected by hackers that could have affected more than 2 million users who downloaded the most recent update.

On Sept. 13, Cisco Talos found that the official download of the free versions of CCleaner 5.33 and CCleaner Cloud 1.07.3191 also contained “a malicious payload that featured a Domain Generation Algorithm as well as hardcoded Command and Control functionality.” What that means is that a hacker infiltrated Avast Piriform’s official build somewhere in the development process build to plant malware designed to steal users’ data.

Cisco Talon suspects that the attacker “compromised a portion of (CCleaner’s) development or build environment and leveraged that access to insert malware into the CCleaner build that was released and hosted by the organization.” As such, customers’ personal information was not at risk.

According to Avast, the malware doesn’t seem to have affected any machines in the wild. In a blog post by vice president of products Paul Yung, he states that the company identified the attack on Sept. 12 and had taken the appropriate action even before Cisco Talos notified them of their discovery. Yung says the attack was limited to CCleaner and CCleaner Cloud on 32-bit Windows systems—fortunately, most modern PCs will likely be running the 64-bit version. 

Yung assures customers that the threat has been resolved and the “rogue server” has been taken down. He also says Piriform has shut down the hackers’ access to other servers. Additionally, the company is moving all users to the latest version of the software, which is already available on the company’s website (though the release notes only mention “minor big fixes.”)

Most reassuringly, Yung states that Avast was seemingly able to disarm the threat before it was able to do any harm. The intent of the attack is unclear at this time, though Avast says the code was able to collect information about the local system.

Users can download CCleaner 5.34 from Avast’s website if they haven’t already done so. Previous releases are also still available on the company’s website, but the infected version has been removed from the company’s servers. You’ll also want to perform an antivirus scan on your computer. If you're affected, Cisco Talos recommends using a backup to restore your PC to a state prior to August 15, 2017, which is when the hacked version was released.

The impact on you at home: While users within the target area shouldn’t see any impact from this attempted attack, it’s still a scary notion. While Avast got in front of the issue and resolved it without incident, smaller companies might not be able to react so quickly. For example, earlier this year, it was found that a breach at Ukranian software company MeDoc was responsible for the NotPetya ransomware. Ransomware is becoming a troubling trend, and if hackers are able to infect infect update servers they can spread malware to as many machines as possible.

Amazon is quietly building a digital advertising powerhouse

Source: https://qz.com/1065717/amazons-ad-business-may-already-be-bigger-than-snapchats/
Courtesy: Ashley Rodriguez, Quartz

While Snapchat and other digital-advertising entrants have burst onto the scene—vying for ad dollars against juggernauts like Google and Facebook—Amazon has stealthily snatched market share and introduced new tools to make it easier for marketers to buy ads on its platforms.

eMarketer estimates that Amazon will bring in $1.8 billion in digital-advertising revenue worldwide this year, up from $1.4 billion last year. (Amazon does not break out revenue from advertising.) That’s double the $900 million Snapchat, which just had a disappointing second quarter as a public company, is forecasted to make.

That said, Amazon has quite a few years on Snapchat, which only went public this year. And it’s revenue is nowhere near what Google and Facebook, who together control about half the global digital-advertising market, rake in. Facebook posted $27 billion in advertising revenue last year, and Google, $60 billion (pdf).

But the e-commerce giant is positioning itself to become a strong potential “third force” in the space, as Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, the world’s largest advertising group, puts it. “Amazon is becoming a force in advertising,” said Sorrell, on his company’s August earnings call. “Surrounding all of this for our clients is the question of who controls the data.”

It’s a role that Snapchat, Verizon’s new AOL-Yahoo combination Oath, Twitter, and others are contending for as well.

Amazon works in a wide swath of businesses from retail to media to grocery. Advertisers are also drawn to Amazon, because unlike some of its rivals, the platform was built for buying things. That makes it an ideal space to push products. Sorrell estimated that about half of all product searches in the US now start on Amazon.

He says the e-commerce giant keeps him up at night, because he’s wary of embracing another opaque player that holds its data and the way it measures ad effectiveness close to the vest. Facebook and Google have been criticized by advertisers for not being as transparent as traditional media. And, in some instances, not showing where ads are placed until it’s too late.

It’s unclear how forthcoming Amazon, which keeps a tight lid on data and hasn’t even revealed how many members subscribe to its Prime subscription service, will be.

With more than 50 million US subscribers, Netflix has finally surpassed cable TV

Courtesy: Quartz,  Written by Ashley Rodriguez
Source:  https://qz.com/1007227/netflix-nflx-now-has-more-us-subscribers-than-cable-tv/

The reign of cable television is officially over.
The largest cable-TV providers in the US now have fewer combined subscribers than the streaming service Netflix. At the end of March 2017, cable TV had a combined 48.6 million subscribers in the US, versus 50.9 million at Netflix, according to data from Statista and Leichtman Research Group, which tracked major cable-TV operators including Comcast, Charter, Altice, Mediacom, and Cable ONE.

If other major streaming services, like Hulu, which had 12 million paying subscribers as of last May, were included, streaming’s lead over cable would be starker.

Netflix and other subscription-video-on-demand platforms are significantly cheaper than cable TV. The standard Netflix package costs $9.99 a month in the US, while the average expanded basic-cable package, which includes broadcast and standard cable channels like Fox News and ESPN, goes for $69.03 a month.

Some people buy Netflix as well as pay-TV. And providers like Comcast let customers access Netflix through their set-top boxes.

Netflix’s US subscriber base still pales in comparison to the broader pay-TV market, which includes satellite operators like DirecTV and Dish Network, TV services from phone companies like Verizon Fios, and internet-TV services such as SlingTV and DirecTV Now.
But Netflix’s subscriber base is still climbing, while the pay-TV market is shrinking. As a whole, the top pay-TV operators tracked by Leichtman, which represented roughly 95% of US subscribers, had 93.3 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2017—a 1% dip from the same period a year earlier.

TV isn’t the only market that Netflix and streaming rivals like Amazon Prime Video are upending. They’re also competing with cinemas with made-for-streaming movies—only some of which run in theaters.

The US subscription-video-on-demand market, made up of players like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, is expected to overtake the country’s cinema industry in terms of annual revenue by 2019, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in its annual media outlook report this month.

FCC hit with DDoS attacks after John Oliver takes on net neutrality

Source: Grant Gross, Senior Editor, IDG News Service
Courtesy: PCWorld.com

The agency's website slowed to a crawl late Sunday and early Monday

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's website slowed to a crawl after comic and political commentator John Oliver urged viewers to flood the agency with comments in support of net neutrality, in what appeared to be a repeat of a 2014 incident.

With the FCC headed toward a repeal of net neutrality rules it passed in early 2015, Oliver on Sunday echoed his "Last Week Tonight" commentary on the topic from three years ago. (Note to viewers: The link to Oliver's new diatribe is not safe for work.) As in 2014, the FCC's website seemed to buckle under the load late Sunday and early Monday, but the cause may have been more sinister than a flood of people expressing their support for net neutrality rules.

In this case, the FCC website was hit with a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks starting about midnight Eastern Time, FCC CIO David Bray said Monday. 

"These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC's comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host," Bray said in an emailed statement. "These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC."

The DDoS attacks "tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments," he said.

An FCC spokesman declined to speculate on the motivation for the DDoS attacks. If they were inspired by Oliver's commentary, they acted against its purpose. The attacks would have prevented net neutrality supporters from filing comments.

"Once again, net neutrality is in trouble," Oliver said Sunday night. "It seems, once more, we the people must take this matter into our own hands. Every internet group needs to come together like you successfully did three years ago.

Before its 2015 vote to impose net neutrality rules, the FCC received 4 million public comments on the issue, with a large majority supporting strong regulations.

Broadband providers and many Republicans oppose the net neutrality rules, saying they have slowed broadband investment and created unnecessary regulations. Some opponents of the 2015 version of the rules have pointed to small decreases in broadband investment in 2015 and 2016, but it's unclear how much impact the rules had.

As of Monday afternoon, Oliver's commentary had been viewed more than 900,000 times on YouTube.

Amazon is worth almost twice as much as Walmart

Courtesy: by Paul R. La Monica CNN.com
Source: CNN.com

Shares of the e-commerce king, which is also now a cloud computing giant, connected-home leader, drone company, freight airline, Hollywood studio and even a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, rose above $900 for the first time Tuesday.

It's another all-time high.

Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) stock is on a seven-day winning streak. The shares have gained 7% during that stretch and more than 20% this year.
As a result, Amazon is worth more than $430 billion. That's nearly twice the market value of its rival Walmart (WMT), which has a market cap of a mere $220 billion.

Only Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL, Tech30) and Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) are worth more than Amazon. The Jeff Bezos-led company is now more valuable than Facebook (FB, Tech30) and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB).
And with that $900 stock price, Amazon is approaching some rarefied air.

The only company in the S&P 500 with a stock price in the quadruple digits is Priceline (PCLN, Tech30), which is trading at about $1,770 a share.

The latest surge in Amazon stock comes after news last week that it is buying Middle Eastern e-commerce site Souq.com.

Amazon's success is causing significant pain for other retailers, especially mass merchandisers like Macy's (M), Kohl's (KSS), Sears (SHLD), JCPenney (JCP) and Target. (TGT)

Several analysts have also lavished praise on Amazon for its Sponsored Products business, which lets sellers place ads on Amazon search listings for specific products and keywords.

Some tech and advertising experts are starting to think that Amazon could even challenge Google and Facebook for digital ad supremacy.
Investors are also excited about the success of Amazon's Echo home speaker, which features its Alexa voice assistant. Amazon has the lead over Google Home so far.

So will Amazon continue to climb?

The stock is extremely expensive, trading at more than 125 times its estimated earnings this year and nearly 75 times its forecast profit next year.

But amazingly enough, most Wall Street analysts still think it's a buy. According to FactSet, two dozen analysts have a stock price target above the current price. Seven put it above $1,000.
Daniel Salmon of BMO Capital Markets raised his price target on Monday to $1,200. And that's still not the highest on Wall Street. Shyam Patil of Susquehanna Financial Group has a price target of $1,250.

That's nearly 40% higher than the current price. And that level, Amazon would have a market value of about $600 billion. Not bad for a company that started out selling books and CDs (remember them?) online.

Source: CNN.com

Move over, Amazon: Here comes Walmart

Courtesy: Paul R. La Monica
Source: CNN.com http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/21/investing/walmart-earnings-amazon/index.html

Walmart's online sales grew at a faster pace in the fourth quarter than Amazon's.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Walmart reported its latest results Tuesday: Earnings topped forecasts, while overall sales missed estimates slightly.

The surprising news was that Walmart's e-commerce revenue in the United States rose 29% from a year ago. That compares with a 22% increase in total sales at Amazon.

Walmart didn't say how much money it generated from its digital business. And Walmart (WMT) is still smaller than Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) online. But the pride of Bentonville, Arkansas, is catching up fast.

In prepared remarks, CEO Doug McMillon said that Walmart was the second-largest online retailer in America by sales and that the Walmart mobile app is among the three most popular retail apps.

Last year, Walmart bought the e-commerce startup Jet, which also owns online furniture seller Hayneedle, for $3 billion. Walmart has also expanded its online grocery business. It offers curbside pickup and home delivery in some places.
The company also acquired ShoeBuy, a competitor to Amazon-owned Zappos, last month. It will be run by the Jet team. And just last week, Walmart bought Moosejaw, an online retailer of outdoor apparel and sporting equipment.

And Walmart now has a stake in JD.com (JD), a Chinese e-commerce company that competes with both China's market leader Alibaba (BABA, Tech30)and Amazon.

That investment should help Walmart increase online sales for both the core Walmart brand and its Sam's Club warehouse in China.

So Walmart is clearly taking the threat from Amazon seriously. Investors seem pleased, too. They were sporting a big yellow Walmart smiley face Tuesday. The stock rose 3%.

Walmart wasn't the only retailer that reported good news on Tuesday. Home Depot (HD) posted sales and profits that topped forecasts. Its stock gained slightly on the news. Shares are up 7% this year. But Walmart and Home Depot may be the exception, not the rule. Macy's (M) reported another quarter of weak sales, and its stock fell slightly.

CNNMoney recently reported that the struggling department store giant could be vulnerable to a takeover as well. Hudson's Bay (HBAYF), the owner of Lord & Taylor and Saks, has approached Macy's about a deal.

Sears (SHLD), Kohl's (KSS) and JCPenney (JCP) are other retailers that have fallen on hard times lately.

Even though Walmart is holding up better than many other traditional retailers, it is still lagging Amazon.

The Jeff Bezos-run company is up nearly 15% this year and trading at an all-time high. Amazon is worth nearly $410 billion -- almost double Walmart's market value of $220 billion.

And Amazon is taking steps to bolster its presence in the physical retail world, with more stores opening on college campuses and big cities. The Walmart-Amazon rivalry is only beginning.

Your data is not safe. Here's how to lock it down

Courtesy Selena LarsonCNN.com
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/08/technology/security-privacy-signal-encryption/index.html

At least, that's experts' advice for people after the U.S. election.

Between high-profile security failures and the Russian hacks before the election, we should know by now to secure our personal data.

But some people worry that government surveillance will expand under a Donald Trump presidency, especially because he tapped Mike Pompeo, who supports mass surveillance, for CIA chief.

A recent poll of 160 government and intelligence officials found that the majority are concerned about cybersecurity under a Trump administration and 73% think it won't improve during his presidency.

Encrypted apps can shield communications from hackers and the government. And Signal, from Open Whisper Systems, is the easiest place to start.

Signal encrypts communications end-to-end, so only the people involved in the conversation can access them. It prevents any third parties from decrypting and reading your messages. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger's "secret conversations," and Google's Allo app in incognito mode also use the Signal protocol for encrypting chats.

"There's a lot of increased interest in Signal post-election," Signal creator and security researcher Moxie Marlinspike told CNNMoney. "Millions of people were using Signal before, but we've never seen a single event that resulted in this amount of sustained increase and interest."

The daily install rate is 400% higher than it was before the election, he said.

Part of what makes Signal so appealing is that the interface is similar to other messaging apps, so it doesn't feel like you're using some special kind of service. The app recently added GIFs, a cutesy feature necessary to mainstream encryption -- because you're unlikely to use secure apps unless they work like the stuff you're used to.

But while encryption is important, the first line of defense is making sure you're following basic security measures to protect your devices and your accounts.

"Encryption isn't the first thing to jump on, it's actually the last," said Jessy Irwin, vice president of security and privacy at Mercury Public Affairs.

That might sound pretty basic, but if you're using a weak password or already have a virus on your computer, encryption won't protect you.

You're probably tired of hearing about creating a "strong password" -- and it's a pain to remember a string of numbers and letters -- but it's actually the most important way to protect your personal data.

Change default passwords immediately and don't use things like relatives' names or birthdays -- in fact, if a word has some significance to you, you probably shouldn't use it at all. Password managers like 1Password or LastPass can keep your strong passwords secure and easily accessible. Implement two-step verification so you'll be alerted via text when someone tries to access your account.

Take a close look at the privacy settings on all your apps, to see whether you're inadvertently sharing information with the public.

Whenever there's new software for your device, update immediately. Often companies release security updates to fix bugs that could give hackers access.

Store important documents on a separate hard drive or thumb drive to keep them out of the cloud where security breaches could leave your data vulnerable.

Related: How this 83-year-old nearly got scammed out of $10,000

It's not just Signal that's seen a spike after the U.S. election. TunnelBear, a VPN provider, has seen 25% more U.S. users sign up for its service in the last month than the month before. VPNs, or virtual private networks, protect your data while browsing online. They are especially important if you're using public Wi-Fi.

Further, VPNs can prevent companies or advertisers from collecting and sharing your data by minimizing how your activities are tracked.

"I try to help people understand a little bit about how much information is collected on them when they browse online," Ryan Dochuk, cofounder and CEO of TunnelBear, said. "Literally every single website that you use will be collected and stored, and often that's shared with third parties and sold to advertisers, insurance companies and financial institutions."

Other VPN options include VyprVPN from Golden Frog and NordVPN.
For further protection, but a potentially slower browsing experience, download the anonymity software Tor. It obscures your web activity and communications from anyone trying to track you.

Irwin says to encourage friends and family -- the people you talk to and care about the most -- to implement privacy and encryption tools as well.