Data-Backup Startup Rubrik Raises Funds at $1.3 Billion Valuation

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-28/data-backup-startup-rubrik-raises-funds-at-1-3-billion-valuation

Bloomberg Business Week – May 1-7, 2017

The article I chose to write about this week focuses on a company called Rubrik, a startup company and a maker of data backup and recovery software. The company is turning heads because it has raised $180 million and is valued at $1.3 billion…unheard of for a startup company.

Information technology professionals have faced challenges in recent years with the approach they use for data backups. For most companies, their data is no longer in once place, but in a combination of on premise servers and various cloud solutions.  Some of the other main players in the backup and recovery industry have software solutions that are two decades old and weren’t designed with cloud storage in mind. This is where Rubrik thinks they have an advantage.

Rubrik’s solution works in the cloud and can run directly on cloud products from Amazon.com and Microsoft. It also has on premise backup capabilities. This flexibility is making the solution appealing to potential customers, and the company is adding 75-85 new customers every period.

Robots Will Build Your Next House

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-17/robots-may-help-build-your-next-home-and-solve-a-labor-shortage

Bloomberg Business Week – April 24-30, 2017

This week, the article that caught my attention was in the Market/Finance section. It was about how companies are using technology to help solve a labor shortage in the construction industry. Construction that has traditionally taken place at the building site by humans (many of whom are immigrants) is being shifted to indoor manufacturing facilities where much of the construction is performed by robots.  These factories produce houses like cars, on an assembly line, and the robots are able to fire thousands of nails into studs each day and never miss. By utilizing technology, these manufacturing plants can produce houses and apartment buildings for less money and in a fraction of the time.

And, the article stresses, “these aren’t trailer homes…multifamily buildings, dorms, and hotels are increasingly being made indoors”. Marriott opened a 97 room hotel in December that was manufactured this way and apartment developers are currently building apartment complexes in Denver, Nashville, and other cities utilizing this manufacturing method.

Traders New Favorite Way to Swap Secrets

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/wall-street-s-whatsapp-secret-illegal-texting-is-out-of-control

Bloomberg Business Week – April 10-23, 2017

I usually look for Businessweek articles about how companies are using technology in a way to gain a competitive advantage or to disrupt an industry in some way. The article I chose this week is a little different; it focuses on how Wall Street traders are using technology to get around some SEC regulations without getting caught.

U.S. financial companies are required by the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to keep records of all written business communication. Wall Street employees have turned to encrypted messaging apps in order to get around the regulations without getting caught.

Among the reasons given are that “they are tired of having every written word — work-related or not — ingested into vast, Big Brother-like databases and scrutinized for tone and taste in ways that strike many as overbearing. They’ve learned even the slightest misinterpretation can land them in hot water — not only with compliance, but with prosecutors on the lookout for financial crimes.”

Wall Streeters are turning to apps like WhatsApp and Signal to make conversations hard to track. Other popular apps include iMessage, Confide and Dust.

In an attempt to catch employees using these apps, Banks have implemented software to immediately flag certain phrases in company email and messaging systems, such as “check your phone”, or “sent you a text”.  The managing director at ACA Compliance Group Holdings LLC admits though, technology can only go so far.

Sweetening The Deal

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-21/apple-s-app-store-gets-a-makeover

Bloomberg Business Week – April 3-9, 2017

I decided to stick with Apple again this week. This week’s Businessweek article takes a look at how the company is changing its strategy towards developers who provide applications for the App Store, giving them (the developers) a better deal than in the past by shortening approval times and sharing a bigger portion of the fees charged to the customer.

The article notes how famously controlling Apple has been in the past when it comes to applications that are made available on the App Store. The company has been slow to approve new apps, taking as long as two weeks, compared to a few hours for Play, their Google counterpart. Developers have also complained that Apple has been restrictive with the statistics it shares with the developers about the apps, such as how often and when they are accessed.

Apple is now making concessions to app makers by offering more favorable revenue sharing and allowing access to more user data. The reason  behind the shift in ideology, the article points out, is that Apple can no longer afford to “brush off” developers, especially with the sales of iPhones, iPads, and Macs slowing. The company is now targeting more revenue from the services arm of the business, which includes the App Store. Revenue from the App store was up 40% in 2016, to $8.6 billion.

Apple’s Alternative to Virtual Reality

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/apple-s-next-big-thing

Bloomberg Business Week – March 27-April 2, 2017

Apple has a long history of innovative products including Macintosh computers, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and to some degree the Apple Watch. When Apple executives talk about the next big thing, people take notice. This week’s article, ‘Apples Next Big Thing: Augmented Reality’ discusses how Apple CEO Tim Cook has recently been talking a lot about virtual reality’s cousin, augmented reality.

Augmented reality overlays images, video, and games onto the real world (for example, Pokémon Go). Apple has been making big investments in this technology in an attempt to bring augmented reality to the masses. They have assembled an impressive team, combining hardware and software veterans along with Hollywood special effects editors.

Among the products that the company has been working on are digital glass that will probably connect wirelessly to the iPhone in the same way that the Apple Watch does. Video images or maps will then be fed to the glasses from the iPhone and overlay reality. The “iGlasses” are probably a few years away, but the article suggests that AR apps on the iPhone will probably happen first.

It is estimated that the global AR market is currently $90 billion worldwide, and that figure will increase by 80% by 2024. Those figures alone are enough to lure Apple into the AR market, but the article mentions another reason that may be even more alluring, “Apple leaders see [AR] as the best way for the company to keep users wedded to its software and dominate the next generation of hardware”.

Pizza Served With Tech

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-dominos-pizza-empire/

Bloomberg Business Week – March 20-26, 2017

I strayed from the technology section of Businessweek again this week and decided to write about the cover story on Domino’s. The article covered some of the reasons behind the change of fortune for the company from 2009 until now, and a lot of those reasons are technology related.

The article notes that since the end of 2008, when Domino’s was “threatened by a declining sales and distressed franchisees” the company has made an amazing turnaround. Its share price has increase by a factor of 60, and market share has increased from 9% to 15%. Other key performance indicators are positive as well.

While the article mentions some important non-tech related factors in the turnaround, such as improvements to the product and changes to the menu, the vast majority of the changes that have been made in the business have been tech related, with most of those changes being made in the area of e-commerce.

The company has placed an emphasis on the different ways customers can order pizza with minimum human/maximum digital interaction. Customers can now order pizza with Facebook, Twitter, Apple Watch, voice-activated, and the “zero-click” app, just to name a few. The article notes that in 2015, for the first time, more than half of Domino’s orders were received online, and half of those were received via mobile.

Domino’s is now eyeing technology to improve the ways pizzas are delivered. A franchise in New Zealand is experimenting deliveries by drone and robot. Executives also say that delivery by autonomous vehicles is a matter of when, not if.  “We’re thinking about the disruption of a nearly 60-year-old business model.”

Neighborhood Watch

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-09/this-vr-tool-lets-a-company-police-its-networks-like-neo

Bloomberg Business Week – March 13-March 19, 2017

As I scan Businessweek for articles for this blog, I usually focus on the technology section. This week, however, the article that caught my eye is in the Focus On/Security section. It’s about a company called ProtectWise Inc., and how they’re utilizing virtual reality to change the way network security is monitored.

The article explains how, traditionally, it is very difficult for those who work in network security to spot a crime while it is actually happening. The networks are just too complex, with too much traffic. Usually, the process involves digging through network logs after the fact to try to piece together what happened.

Recent events indicate that network security is more important than ever. It seems that there is a major cyber security breech in the news almost weekly. But as demand ramps up, there is a shortfall of security analysts. Estimates indicated that shortfall may grow to 1.8 million by 2022. ProtectWise wants to change that by making network security easier, more exciting, and more appealing to the so called “X-box generation”.

ProtectWise uses virtual reality to transform network information into a video-game-themed virtual city that gives a security analyst a bird’s eye view of everything that happening on the network, real time. Databases or departments are represented by different virtual buildings. If the system detects unusual activity in a certain area of the network, the “building” that represents it may change color, from yellow to red, to attract the attention of the analyst.

The virtual reality concept to network security has already clinched the business of a top law firm and also a phone manufacturer. One of the clients described the interface as “contagious” and that analysts say this technology is “cool” and they can “find exactly what they want”.

The $200 All-Seeing Line Judge

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-02/this-200-ai-will-end-tennis-club-screaming-matches

Bloomberg Business Week – March 6-March 12, 2017

This article is about how a French inventor is using advances in technology to change the way tennis matches are judged, at a price that is affordable to the masses.

A French inventor named Gregoire Gentil designed, in his living room, a GoPro-sized device, that can be attached to a tennis net post and detect whether tennis balls are in or out each time that they make contact with the court. The device is called In/Out. In/Out works by using two cameras to scan the lines on the court by using open source artificial intelligence software. AI helps the device to track the ball’s flight, pace, and spin. The technology that Gentil uses wasn’t available just five years ago.

Similar systems have existed for some time, but at a much steeper price. Hawk-Eye, a Sony Corp. owned system, reportedly sells for $60,000, which limits its use to only top tennis tournaments. A less expensive product called PlaySight makes a system less accurate than Hawk-Eye that sells for around $10,000.  Using advances in technology In/Out offers a comparable product (only slightly less accurate) for only $200.

Gamalon Makes it Practical for Businesses to Use AI

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-14/here-s-why-this-cat-spotting-ai-is-different

Bloomberg Business Week – February 20-March 5, 2017

This article looks at how startup Gamalon makes it possible to effectively use artificial intelligence, without “Google-level” resources.

Google demonstrated the power of its company’s artificial intelligence by training computers to recognize cats in YouTube videos. Although the technology was impressive, it required a huge amount of resources to pull this off (years of research and 16,000 computer processors). Most companies simply do not have this level of resources at their disposal for AI projects.

This is contrasted with what startup Gamalon is doing by giving their AI bots a head start. Gamalon was started by Ben Vigoda, an MIT-trained computer scientist who says he can “cut out most of the grunt work and make AI projects doable for businesses”.  His software is able to do this with something that is called “probabilistic programming”, so instead of having to analyze tons of cat images to learn what a cat looks like, Gamalon’s system can be shown only a few images and then fill in the gaps.

Practical applications for this type of software include data clean up. For example, the system could analyze a customer database and learn and clean up all of the variations for the different spelling of the word “street”, which might include “St” or “St.”, but also learn to be able to tell the difference and in the usage for something else, such as St. Louis, and ignore those.

Vigoda says his technology can be applied broadly. A handful of early customers are paying $10,000 a month for analysis of each 100,000 rows of data. One customer reported that the software was able to match 85% of day in minutes, instead of days that would be required to do this task manually.