Tag Archive for Artificial intelligence

| April 26, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence on the Throne

Artificial Intelligence on the ThroneThe Internet of Things (IoT) is covering the world with all kinds of devices for the home and industry. Tech prognosticator IDC estimates that by 2025 there will be 41.6 billion IoT devices. The market research firm predicts the IoT devices will dump 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data. One class of IoT device for the home has gotten a major upgrade from California’s Stanford. Stanford University medical researchers have created a smart toilet by adding artificial intelligence to the throne. Before Stanford, the smart toilet was often the butt of jokes. The “smart toilet” offered ambient colored lighting, wireless Bluetooth music sync, heated seats, foot warmers, and automatic opening and closing lids. All nice but not really smart. The Stanford Precision Health Toilet (advanced Smart Toilet for healthcare) is really smart it can diagnose diseases. 

Artificial intelligence on the toilet

The Stanford Precision Health Toilet project led by Lead author, Seung-min Park, Ph.D., published A mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of excreta.” In the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, they describe a toilet designed to detect early warning signs of cancer and other diseases. The Stanford team believes it will be useful for people at an increased risk of developing certain health issues. Dr. Gambhir – a Ph.D., Stanford professor, chair of radiology, and the senior author of the research paper says that currently, the toilet can measure 10 different biomarkers. The device is fitted inside a regular toilet bowl and is connected to an app for evaluation. Dr. Gambhir envisions it as part of an average home bathroom. The sensors would be an add-on that’s easily integrated into “any old porcelain bowl.” Stanford Precision Health Toilet The extra-smart toilet uses cameras and test strips to collect number one and number two samples. It then analyzes both your pee and poo with artificial intelligence to generate diagnoses—a trend in the medical industry. Stanford News says the smart toilet’s algorithms “can distinguish normal ‘urodynamics.’ Urodynamics is the flow rate, stream time, and total volume, among other parameters of urine. The Smart toilet can also check “stool consistencies from those that are unhealthy.” analyze white blood cell countChanges in urine can reveal multiple disorders. The dipsticks can be used to analyze white blood cell count, consistent blood contamination. Certain levels of proteins, that can signify bad things. Including a spectrum of diseases, including infection, irritable bowel syndrome, kidney failure, bladder cancer, and prostate cancer.

A very unique biometric factor

The toilet’s built-in identification system uses fingerprints and analprints to identify users in order to match users to their data. Apparently, analprints turn out to be unique biometric factor like fingerprints or iris prints. Professor Gambhir said, “We know it seems weird, but as it turns out, your anal print is unique.” Stanford says no human will see you analprint biometric data. If the artificial intelligence detects something questionable the smart toilets’ app would alert the user’s healthcare team to conduct a full diagnosis and further tests. researchers are planning upgradesThe researchers are planning upgrades to the Precision Health Toilet. Mr. Park told The Verge the upcoming number two version of the toilet will help detect tumor DNA and viral RNA to help them track the spread of diseases like COVID-19. Dr. Gambhir told NakedSecurity his team is working to customize the toilet’s tests to fit a user’s individual needs. For example, a diabetic’s smart toilet could monitor glucose in the urine. Or if a person with a family history of bladder or kidney cancer could benefit by having a smart toilet that monitors for blood. The Stanford researchers tested the toilet and more than half of their pilot test subjects were comfortable using the extra-smart toilet. 37% were “somewhat comfortable.” 15% were “very comfortable” with the idea of “baring it all in the name of precision health.” rb- Salvador DaliUsing analprints to match your poo with you is based on “work” by 20th-century surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Stanford’s Gambhir pointed out in an interview with Bioengineering that Dali studied anal creases for his unconventional erotic art (NSFW). Dr. Gambhir’s assurances that the health data would be stored with “privacy protections” in “secure, cloud-based systems.” Followers of the Bach Seat know that cloud-based systems is also known as “somebody else’s computer.” That sounds like a bad idea. We know cloud-based storage can be very leaky. And healthcare systems have come under increased attack during the COVID pandemic. The Feds could track people around coming and goingAnother problem with the ultra-smart toilet. When the FBI gets hold of this data, they could literally be up in everybody’s business. The Feds could track people around the world coming and going by adding analprints to their massive facial recognition surveillance database. Dr. Gambhir is quoted by NakedSecurity, 

We have taken rigorous steps to ensure that all the information is de-identified when it’s sent to the cloud and that the information – when sent to health care providers – is protected under [HIPAA],… 

NakedSecurity points out that time and time again Big Data can be dissected, compared, and contrasted to draw inferences about individuals. In other words, it’s not hard to re-identify people from anonymized records, be they records pertaining to location tracking, faceprints, or now-anuses. Dr. Gambhir reminds us all that while the Stanford Precision Health ultra-smart Toile has clear benefits as a diagnostic tool, it should not be a replacement for a doctor.

Stay safe out there!

Related article   Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
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| February 6, 2020
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VMware Had a Bad Week

VMware Had a Bad WeekVMware (VMW) had a bad week last week. First, a  jury in the U.S. federal district court for the District of Delaware ruled that the virtualization giant infringed on two patents owned by Densify. Densify is a Toronto-based startup that makes cloud and container resource management software. The ruling will cost VMware about $237 million dollars. Of course, VMware will appeal.

VMware logoIn an emailed statement, to sdxcentral VMware wrote, “VMware intend[s] to vigorously pursue all legal remedies that are available to us to prove that we are not liable here.”

Next, it was announced that over 200 VMware employees will lose their jobs as part of a “workforce rebalancing.” TargetTech noted that IBM has historically used the same term to describe its periodic layoffs.

In addition to workers losing their jobs, the VMware executive suite has undergone purging too. Reports are that

  • VMware Executative layoffsChief Customer Officer Scott Bajtos, an 11-year VMware veteran who oversaw VMware’s global services team which includes customer success, technical support, professional services support, and customer advocacy.
  • Mark Ritacco, VP of operations and customer intelligence, after almost 11 years,
  • Kate Woodcock, VP of customer advocacy, after almost eight years.
  • Scott Bajtos – global chief customer officer, is leaving after 11 years.
  • Alexa Erjavic, senior director of global services strategy.

VMware acquisitions

Could it be buyer’s regret? Not even cutting a handful of executive salaries can cover the billions VMware has spent on acquisitions over the past 2 years.

In 2018 VMware bought:

  • billions VMware has spent on acquisitionsE8 Security for machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for cybersecurity intelligence and analytics.
  • CloudCoreo to manage cloud configurations and identify risks when deploying public clouds to prevent breaches and compliance violations.
  • EMC Service Assurance Suite for monitoring telco network health, performance, and root cause analysis.
  • CloudHeath for multi-cloud management platform across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for $500 million.
  • Heptio VMware plans to use Heptio assets to enhance Kubernetes life-cycle management $550 million.

In 2019 VMware bought:

  • VMwareacquisitions over the past 2 yearsAetherPal for remote IT support software to remotely view, control, troubleshoot, and fix devices and applications.
  • BitFusion to support Artificial Intelligence and machine learning-based workloads on graphics processor units (GPUs) (no acquisition price announced).
  • Uhana for 5G mobile network optimization.
  • Intrinsic for secure serverless functions on AWS, Azure, and GCP.
  • Bitnami brings simplified app development with a curated marketplace for VMware customers.
  • Veriflow for network monitoring software for multi-cloud management.
  • Avi Networks for multi-cloud application delivery to enhance performance, resource utilization, automation, and scalability.
  • Pivotal for multi-cloud application software strategy across AWS, Azure & GCP for $2.7 billion. and;
  • Carbon Black to provide an enterprise-grade security platform to protect workloads, applications and networks from device to cloud for $2.1 billion.

Already in 2020 VMware bought:

  • Nyansa to provide network traffic analytics that covers the SD-WAN and the wired and wireless LAN.

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While the hyper-scale cloud vendors AWS, Azure, GCP, and the Chinese giants battling it out for cloud supremacy. Most enterprises have adopted a multi-cloud strategy. VMware is in the incumbent position as it competes with IBM, maybe Cisco, and HPE to be the glue that binds private and public clouds as well as owned data centers into an enterprise multi-cloud strategy. This is a long-term play.

In the near term – all of the acquisitions since 2018, VMware does not have a lot to show for it financially. VWM has been basically flat. VMW spiked to $150.00 in January 2018, hit a peak of $203.64 in, 2019 and has settled back to $157.50 in February 2020.

Related article

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| May 1, 2019
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Mitel – Avaya Hook Up?

Updated August 28, 2019 – Rumors confine to swirl about the future of Avaya. Channel Partners is reporting there are 2 offers on the table. They cite reports from Bloomberg that Avaya is considering a bid by Mitel and Reuters is reporting that Avaya is considering an all-cash offer from private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice.

Channel Partners speculates that the Mitel-Avaya deal would “…result in a company with a market share that would rival key industry players Cisco and Microsoft.”

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Avaya buy-out rumors are back. Last month it was thought that a PE firm, possibly Searchlight Capital Partners was going to buy Avaya. The unknown private equity firm valued Avaya at more than $5 billion, including debt.

The newest report is that Ottawa-based Unified-Communications-as-a-Service provider Mitel is looking to acquire Avaya in an all-stock merger valued at between $2.2 billion and $2.4 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The reported deal would value communications equipment and software provider Avaya at $20 to $22 per share, a premium based on its current stock price of about $18 per share on Monday 04/29/2019. If Avaya and Mitel are able to strike a deal, the merger could happen as soon as next month, the WSJ said, citing mysterious people familiar with the matter.

compete against their larger UC competitorsCRN says that the Avaya-Mitel deal could help the two companies compete against their larger UC competitors. Mitel typically plays well in the small to midsize market, while Avaya has a large install base of enterprise customers because of its legacy in the UC hardware arena.

Zeus Kerravala at NoJitter points out that the reported $2 billion purchase price doesn’t into account Avaya’s roughly $3 billion in debt. With debt included, the offer would have to come in for a total enterprise value of $5 billion to be of interest to shareholders.

Mr. Kerravala believes that a successful merger between Avaya and Mitel would create a behemoth of a company, bringing the number two and number three voice vendors together. He cites Synergy Research Group data that shows Cisco (CSCO) the leader with about 44% market share, Avaya second at 10%, and Mitel third at 8%. He believes a combined Avaya and Mitel would hold the industry’s biggest installed base.

Synergy enterprise voice market share estimate

Source: Synergy Research Group

The merger would also be beneficial as the industry becomes more artificial intelligence (AI)-centric, data and scale are must-haves. Mr. Kerravala believes Avaya and Mitel are stronger together than apart on AI. That said, if a deal doesn’t happen, the companies should still be fine continuing down their current trajectories, optimizing their internal resources while leveraging partners for AI. They can still do this, although it would be easier as a bigger company.

private equity firm Searchlight Capital PartnersAn investment group led by private equity firm Searchlight Capital Partners acquired Mitel in April 2018 with a $2.6 billion deal that took the company private. Mitel has a history of growing via acquisitions. In 2017 the company completed the acquisition of competing UC provider ShoreTel for $530 million. The move helped Mitel become one of the largest UCaaS providers in the world. The company lost out on its deal to acquire videoconferencing provider Polycom in 2016 to Siris Capital Group.

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This is just more of the same for Avaya. The crowning jewel in this deal is Avaya’s corporate call center business. Avaya’s call center business is the product of the acquisition of Nortel assets, after the Canadian networking giant’s bankruptcy in 2009.

This deal is really about the cloud. TechCrunch notes that Searchlight has a strategic stake in Rackspace, another legacy company that it took private for $4.3B in 2016.

Will Searchlight leverage its investments in Rackspace, Mitel, and now Avaya to build a cloud-based UCaaS juggernaut to take on the likes of Cisco, Microsoft, Slack, RingCentral, 8×8, even Google and Amazon?

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 9, 2018
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The Truth About Cyber Security Jobs

The Truth About Cyber Security JobsSites like Monster and CSO.com are predicting a massive wave of new cyber security jobs. Some industry pundits claim there will be up to 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions by 2021. Despite this euphoria. a recent survey by Computer Economics found that security staffing is declining despite security being a top priority for organizations.  The research firm’s annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study found that after two years of increases, IT security personnel have declined as a percentage of total IT staff.

Cyber Security staff members declined

The Computer Economics report found that IT security staff members declined to 2.9% of the total IT staff in 2018. This is on par with the percentage in 2016, It is down slightly from 2017. Previously, the ratio was stable from 2013-2015 at 2.6%.

IT Security Staffing Ratios

Computer Economics – IT Security Staffing Ratios

A net 75% of organizations that responded to the survey are increasing their spending on security. However, the researchers found that increases in spending do not necessarily lead to headcount growth. Improved technology continues to allow IT staff to be more productive.

Technologies reduce IT security staff count

Major growth areas in IT security include using artificial intelligence (PDF) and machine learning to track anomalies before humans can detect them. Other technologies reducing the IT security staff are Software-defined networking, better awareness around application development to ensure better security from the start. The reduction of in-house infrastructure due to software as a service (SaaS) and the public cloud also contributes to staff numbers holding steady.

However, despite these trends, the need for increased and improved security may eventually lead to increases in security staffing, especially as cloud usage decreases the need for other types of in-house IT support personnel.

In the presser announcing their new report, David Wagner, vice president of research at Computer Economics said, “I’d still expect to see slow and steady increases over the next few years, But it is unlikely we will see major jumps. Beyond the efficiency aspects, it is still difficult to find skilled IT security personnel. We’ve seen it before that when a job requires skills that are difficult to find, technology is quickly built to fill in the gaps.”

In the face of these challenges, IT executives must ensure that their IT organizations have the proper skills to respond to the latest security threats. For instance, IT security experts are realizing that intrusion-prevention measures must be complemented by the ability to quickly detect an intrusion, stop it from spreading, and remediate it. Privacy must also be top of mind, in the wake of the European Union enacting the General Data Protection Regulation.

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Based on these findings, it seems likely that the cybersecurity boom just went bust. For those who still want to try o change careers into cybersecurity, take a look at the Cybersecurity Supply/Demand Heat Map from CyberSeek. This tool could help you make some good decisions about how to crack the hiring game. According to CyberSeek data, there is an over 500% over-supply of CompTIA Security+ credential holders in metro Detroit. As one would expect, the CISSP credential has the most demand and has a shortage of holders.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 24, 2018
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Barracuda Networks Has Been Bought

Barracuda Networks Has Been BoughtWhile the massive Equifax data breach is still fresh in everyone’s minds and the cybersecurity workforce is expected to be short nearly 2 million people. IT security expenditures to top $1 Trillion by 2022. Private equity giant Thoma Bravo, LLC has jumped back into the IT security market with both feet. Barracuda Networks has been bought by the private equity firm in a deal that’s valued at $1.6 billion.

BarracudaBarracuda (CUDA) sells appliance and cloud-based cybersecurity and data protection services. Clients include; Boeing, Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Defense. Barracuda says it has over 150,000 customers. Upon the close of the transaction, Barracuda will operate as a privately held company.

Barracuda Networks has been bought

Barracuda Network was founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2003. From Ann Arbor, it raised at least $46 million in venture funding prior to its IPO. CUDA went public on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2013, pricing its IPO at $18. Barracuda acquired Yosemite Technologies in 2009 to expand its offerings into the storage market.

Barracuda NexGen FirewallBarracuda continued to innovate in the run-up to its acquisition. eWeek reports that in March 2017, Barracuda debuted new data backup and recovery capabilities for VMware and Microsoft virtual machines. In June 2017 Barracuda announced its new Sentinel service. The service uses artificial intelligence (AI) and container-based technologies to improve email security.

Barracuda also enhanced its network security products and services in 2017. eWeek reported in November that the company expanded the cloud capabilities for its Web Application Firewall (WAF) and NexGen Firewall products. The new capabilities include usage-based billing for the NextGen firewall running in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. The firewall included automated configuration capabilities for the WAF, thanks to an integration with the Puppet DevOps tool.

CEO BJ Jenkins commented on the transaction, “We will continue Barracuda’s tradition of delivering easy-to-use, full-featured solutions that can be deployed in the way that makes sense for our customers.”

Thoma Bravo

Thoma Bravo is a Chicago-based private equity firm with $17 billion under management. Their appetite for IT firms is rather broad. Some of it’s most notable purchases have been:

  • Thoma Bravo is a Chicago-based private equity firmSeptember 2014 – $2.4 billion purchase of Detroit-based Compuware.
  • December 2014 – $3.6 billion acquisition of Riverbed.
  • In October 2015, they teamed up with Silver Lake to buy IT infrastructure management vendor SolarWinds for $4.5 billion.
  • April 2017 – Purchased a minority stake in the freshly re-spun McAfee.
  • June 2017 they purchased Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), IT security management vendor Continuum.

Their portfolio has included brands such as; Bomgar, Digicert, Digital Insight, Dynatrace, Hyland Software, Imprivata, iPipeline, Nintex, PlanView, Qlik, SailPoint, and SonicWall.

Thoma Bravo has resold many of its holdings in recent years.

TechCrunch notes that private equity firms began more aggressively buying up software companies last year. The thinking seems to be they can generate reliable returns from such investments. The biggest take-private deals lately include:

  • Marketo, a marketing software maker. Went public in 2013 and was taken private again by Vista Equity Partners in 2017 for $1.79 billion in cash;
  • The sale of event-management company Cvent last year to Vista Equity Partners in a $1.65 billion deal.
  • Cybersecurity risk-monitoring platform SecurityScorecard raised $27.5 million from the VC arms of Google, Nokia, and Intel.

Other notable IT security equity funding recipients include; Attivo Networks, Darktrace, and SentinelOne.

Investopedia speculates that Thoma Bravo is paying a pretty high premium for Barracuda. CUDA now trades at 139 times earnings and 4 times sales. But under private management, its products will likely be integrated with the firm’s other software products to generate synergies.

CRN notes that being a privately owned company will give Barracuda a stronger ability to chart its own destiny. They will not have to “tap-dance to the Wall Street music,” Michael Knight, president and chief technology officer at solution provider Encore Technology Group, Greenville, S.C., said. He hopes Thoma Bravo’s infusion of capital will enable Barracuda to continue driving its public cloud business, a more solidified SD-WAN toolset, and more integrated endpoint security protection.

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I have used Barracuda products at past jobs. Including their SPAM-Email firewall appliances and their cloud-based backup up system. The pricing was adequate. Renewals were easy. The email firewalls were really robust and almost set and forget.

The few times when I needed tech support, it was available in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Barracuda, founded in Ann Arbor, was one of the early believers in the area as a high-tech hub. Barracuda has plans to spend  $2.3 million on the expansion of its operations center in the former Borders Books offices at 317 Maynard Street. The expansion will add 115 new jobs in downtown Ann Arbor over the next four years. I hope that after Barracuda Networks has been bought by Thoma Bravo, the deal does not have a “Chainsaw Al” that will kill that growth.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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