März 2017 - Seite 200 von 221 - Cloud Computing Köln

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Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, shot out of a cannon Thursday as it began trading on the open markets. Its stock, priced at $17 at its initial public offering Wednesday, immediately jumped to $24 as markets opened, and ended the day slightly above that price. When the dust settled, a company that brought in slightly over $400 million in revenue (while losing more than half a billion dollars) last year found itself valued at approximately $34 billion.

As the market’s optimistic judgment of Snap became clear, the Wall Street Journal published a post about the company with the headline “Submitted Without Comment…” In it, the Journal simply posted the stock charts of Twitter, GoPro, Groupon and Fitbit, each showing a price spike after IPO, and each showing a grueling downward zig zag as the companies fell back down to earth.

While the Journal didn’t “comment,” its implication was clear. Consumer-facing companies can generate an outsized amount of demand for their stock out of the gate. But when quarterly earnings reports come into play, investors will have no qualms dropping these companies like a rock if they don’t perform up to the market’s big expectations. Often, they must execute to near perfection, or they’ll be labeled a bust.

Snap certainly falls into this category. Its investors provided it with a decidedly steep hill to climb on its first day of trading, and now that it’s public, it will have to grow revenue significantly while keeping costs in check in order to justify its value.

Snap’s plan to grow revenue is a risky one. It’s in the hits business. In its S-1 document, the company essentially said its plan is to keep churning out new products (such as selfie filters and stories) to get people to spend more time on the app, and then selling more ads. “Our strategy is to invest in product innovation and take risks to improve our camera platform,” the company said. “We do this in an effort to drive user engagement, which we can then monetize through advertising.”

A few analysts have already begun question’s Snap’s ability to do so, warning investors to stay away. “We see Snap's revenue opportunity as constrained relative to expectations and, as such, we think shares are fairly valued at best at the IPO price.” Anthony DiClemente, an analyst at Instinet, wrote in a note to clients, slapping Snap’s stock with a “Sell” rating. And Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group, went a step further. “It is significantly overvalued,” he wrote in a note of his own, setting a price target of $10, less than half the current trading price, while also advising investors to sell.

In a phone interview, Wieser recited a list of risks: There’s a chance that Facebook (which has already copied a number of Snap’s features) could crush it. Evan Spiegel’s intimate involvement in the minutia of products makes the operation difficult to scale, he said. Also concerning: Keeping secrets inside your own company, as Snap reportedly does.

“My view is what I call cautiously optimistic and I’m a sell,” he said. “$10 should be if everything goes right.”

Another analyst who couldn’t speak on record told BuzzFeed News that he’s not sold on Snap’s ability to grow revenue meaningfully, since its volume of users above 35 is so small — the majority of Snap’s users are 18-34, according to its S-1 — that entire buckets of ad dollars will be impossible to crack. “The enthusiasm can hang around for a while, but my guess is that it comes back to earth,” he said.

Jeremy Liew, Snap’s first investor, said companies competing against Facebook and Google for ad money have a real chance to make their businesses work. “On Madison Avenue, there’s someone asking their team, ‘What’s our Twitter strategy? What’s our Facebook strategy? What’s our Snapchat strategy? What’s our GIF strategy? In each instance, if you can become part of popular culture then you get to carve a piece of the [advertising] pie out for yourself,” he said.

Today, many people associated with Snap made a boatload of money. It was a big success if you consider the cash out alone. But the longer term picture for Snap looks decidedly more daunting. It’s day one, and the pressure is on.

Quelle: <a href="Snap Will Remember Its IPO Day For The Cash It Made And The Expectations It Set“>BuzzFeed

3. März 20173. März 2017

da Agency

Uber Says It Is Not Investigating Former Female Engineer "Personally"

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Uber on Thursday rebutted claims that it is investigating Susan Fowler Rigetti, a former female engineer who penned a viral essay accusing it of systemic sexism.

“The law firm Perkins Coie is looking into the specific allegations raised by Susan,” Uber said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “They will report into Eric Holder, who is responsible for the overall investigation into Uber's workplace practices. To be clear: they are investigating Susan&039;s claims, not Susan personally.”

Uber&039;s statement on what appears to be a new facet of the probe former attorney general Eric Holder is conducting on its behalf followed a Thursday morning tweet from Rigetti suggesting that the ride-hailing company has been investigating her. In the same tweet, Rigetti — whose essay has caused a sprawling public relations crisis for Uber — claimed the company has “blamed/named” her for Uber account deletions and said that she&039;s retained legal counsel.

Rigetti and the law firm she says she&039;s retained have not yet responded to a request for comment.

Since Rigetti’s blog published on Feb. 19, Uber has faced an unrelenting public relations disaster. During an all hands meeting held shortly after its publication, CEO Travis Kalanick promised employees the company would hold itself accountable and “do better.” But a few days later, The New York Times published a blistering story with additional details of Uber&039;s aggressive workplace culture. BuzzFeed News subsequently published leaked audio of an internal meeting in which a group of more than 100 of Uber’s female engineers, implored Kalanick to admit that the company had a systemic sexism problem. Then, earlier this week Bloomberg published dashcam-shot video of Kalanick berating an Uber driver who complained to him about falling fares. Kalanick later apologized for his outburst in a company-wide email. “I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up,” he wrote, adding that he plans to seek “leadership help.”

This isn&039;t the first time Uber has been accused of investigating former employees. In March 2016, a former Uber employee told BuzzFeed News that an investigator claiming to work on behalf of the ride-hail giant entered her apartment without permission while investigating a BuzzFeed News article about leaked internal data regarding rape and sexual assault. At the time, an Uber spokesperson confirmed that the company was investigating the source of a leak, saying “we have an obligation to look into situations like this where sensitive confidential and personal information has been shared.”

Quelle: <a href="Uber Says It Is Not Investigating Former Female Engineer "Personally"“>BuzzFeed

3. März 20173. März 2017

da Agency

While storage is on your mind, considerations to protect against outages

Let’s admit it: Storage is not the sexiest thing to talk about. But when it’s gone or unavailable, people notice, whether it’s your customers, employees or constituents. If you can’t get to your data, nothing else in your system matters.
When it comes to storage of images, audio, video or other unstructured content, organizations need technology designed for the needs of business, and that’s IBM Cloud Object Storage.
IBM Cloud Object Storage encrypts and slices up data as soon as it comes in, with the slices dispersed across multiple regions automatically. With the “immediate consistency” capability, if a write operation is confirmed, data is protected immediately. That’s really important, because if a region goes down, data can still be delivered from the slices that exist in remaining regions. Applications that rely on that data remain up and running. They can survive regional outages we often hear about.
Given the explosion of data in just about every enterprise, managing the storage of data in a reliable and cost-effective way is a business imperative. Protecting data with IBM Cloud Object Storage Cross Region service is actually 30 to 40 percent less expensive than competitors.
With IBM Cloud Object Storage services on the IBM Cloud, business leaders can feel confident in:

Technology which reflects over 400 patents and has been recognized by Gartner and IDC as top in class is up to the task
The combination of slicing, geo dispersal and immediate consistency is unique and protects organizations against similar outages
Our offerings are lower priced than competitors
IBM is synonymous with enterprise IT, and Cloud Object Storage is designed around the needs of enterprises

So maybe storage can be sexy.
Learn more about IBM Cloud Object Storage.
The post While storage is on your mind, considerations to protect against outages appeared first on #Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

The women’s fashion brand Reformation has a futuristic new store located in San Francisco’s Mission district.

If you don’t like interacting with salespeople, this is the store for you.

Once you walk in, you can browse clothing racks IRL in the showroom.

But no one covered Snap’s IPO as hard as Miranda Kerr, Spiegel’s supermodel fiancée and avid Snapchat user.

Kerr’s Snapchat story started out in a dressing room looking super dreamy with the butterfly filter.

There’s her boo, Evan.

Here she is snapping in front of a news story about Snap’s IPO adorned in the purple flower filter like the glowing fiancee of an internet billionaire.