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☆ Amazon's $1 billion cloud deal with Microsoft includes 550,000 licenses for corporate employees and 1 million for warehouse workers
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon's multiyear commitment to use Microsoft 365 includes more than 1.5 million license seats across different tiers of Microsoft's cloud-based productivity suite, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal. The pact includes around 550,000 seats of Microsoft's M365 E5 product for corporate workers and 1 million seats of M365 F5 for frontline staff such as fulfillment center employees, the person said. A person familiar with Amazon's operations said the company stayed off of the cloud version of Microsoft's 365 products because they didn't previously want to save anything on a competitor's cloud. F5 is an upgraded version of Microsoft's M365 product for frontline workers. M365 F5 starts at $8 per user per month, which would be $480 million for all 1 million licenses over 5 years.

Persons: Amazon's, It's Organizations: Microsoft, Amazon

☆ WhatsApp clampdown highlights video call compliance threat for finance firms
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Sinead Cruise | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Video calls are broadly considered proxies for face-to-face meetings and therefore are currently subject to little or no formal record-keeping obligations. At least two major global banks are now recording Zoom calls, said sources with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named because the information is not public. One bank is recording Zoom calls undertaken by certain staff, including traders, while the other is recording all Zoom calls so content can be reviewed later if needed. FINRA declined to comment on how many firms were subject to the rule or whether the rule also extended to video calls. Video calls pose "unique risks" and technology needed to efficiently screen video calls is not widely used, said Matt Smith, CEO of communications surveillance firm SteelEye.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Brad Levy, Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Matthew Nunan, Gibson, Dunn, Morgan Stanley, Sarah Pritchard, Claire Garrett, Michael Watling, Seward, FINRA, Matt Smith, Ryan, Yonk, Symphony's Levy, Chris Prentice, Michelle Price, Huw Jones, Sharon Singleton Organizations: REUTERS, U.S . Securities, Exchange Commission, SEC, Finance, Reuters, U.S, EMEA, Microsoft, Britain's, Authority, HSBC, Bloomberg, U.S . Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Employees, American Institute for Economic Research, Washington D.C, Thomson Locations: Marsh, U.S, New York, Washington, London

☆ Microsoft swerves to avoid EU speeding ticket
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft Teams app is seen on the smartphone placed on the keyboard in this illustration taken, July 26, 2021. Yet Microsoft has arguably created a lot more value using its market clout. Back in 2016, Slack was the hottest new product for helping office workers communicate with over 4 million users. Combining Teams with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software bundles gave the messaging and collaboration app a big leg up. Microsoft said on a call in April that Teams had over 300 million monthly users.

Persons: Slack, Robert Cyran, Pernod Ricard, Mukesh Ambani’s, Peter Thal Larsen, Sharon Lam Organizations: Microsoft, Reuters, Big Tech, European Union, Apps, X, Thomson Locations: Europe

☆ Multiple brides and grooms say they don't know how they'll get their outfits, or if they'll get their money back after a Texas-based formal wear chain abruptly closed
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-15 | by ( Kai Xiang Teo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Al's Formal Wear's sudden closure left many brides and grooms in the lurch just before their weddings. —🚨 Rusty Surette 🚨 (@KBTXRusty) August 8, 2023Al's Formal Wear had 26 stores in Texas and had operated in the area for over 70 years. Other than Texas-based Al's Formal Wear, sister brands Tip Top Tux, Nedrebo's Formal Wear, Savvi Formal Wear, and American Commodore have also shut down, local news outlet Atlanta News First reported. Rival Atlanta-based formal wear chain Men's Wearhouse said in a statement on Wednesday that it would offer a $100 discount for customers with unfulfilled orders from any of Dapper & Dashing's subsidiaries. Dapper & Dashing and Al's Formal Wear did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, sent outside regular business hours.

Persons: I've, Rusty Surette Organizations: Service, CBS, Microsoft, NBC, Twitter Locations: Wall, Silicon, The Texas

☆ Microsoft says Russia-linked hackers behind dozens of Teams phishing attacks
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Zeba Siddiqui | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft Teams app is seen on the smartphone placed on the keyboard in this illustration taken, July 26, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File PhotoSAN FRANCISCO, Aug 2 (Reuters) - A Russian government-linked hacking group took aim at dozens of global organizations with a campaign to steal login credentials by engaging users in Microsoft Teams chats pretending to be from technical support, Microsoft researchers said on Wednesday. These "highly targeted" social engineering attacks have affected "fewer than 40 unique global organizations" since late May, Microsoft researchers said in a blog, adding that the company was investigating. The hackers used already-compromised Microsoft 365 accounts owned by small businesses to make new domains that appeared to be technical support entities and had the word "microsoft" in them, according to details in the Microsoft blog. Accounts tied to these domains then sent phishing messages to bait people via Teams, the researchers said.

Persons: Dado, Washington didn't, Midnight Blizzard, Zeba Siddiqui, Gerry Doyle Organizations: Microsoft, REUTERS, FRANCISCO, Midnight, Thomson Locations: Russian, Washington, Russia, U.S, Europe, San Francisco

The ADA is a federal law requiring employers to make "reasonable accommodations" — adjustments or modifications — for qualified job applicants or employees with a "known disability." How companies can create 'a culture of inclusion'Rob Koch speaks to CNBC on Zoom with ASL interpreter, Amelia Fruehsamer. Yet, employees with disabilities make up a sizeable share of the global workforce, by some estimates. PSEG held a yearlong campaign to try to build empathy and destigmatize what it means to have a disability. After its awareness campaign, PSEG found the percentage of people who identified as disabled in its workplace tripled.

Persons: Rob Koch, Amelia Fruehsamer, Koch, " Koch, Emily Ladau, PSEG, Steven Fleischer, Fleischer Organizations: CNBC, Slalom, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group Locations: Seattle, Newark , New Jersey

☆ Mark Cuban says this is the No. 1 biggest time waster: ‘It kills so much time'
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-23 | by ( Rebecca Picciotto | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

And he thinks meetings are the number one workplace habit killing people's productivity and eating away at their time. In a conversation with bestselling author Chris Voss on the interactive streaming platform Fireside, which Cuban co-founded, he said that people "over-meet and over-call." "I try to only do meetings if I have to come to a conclusion or there's no other way — same with phone calls," Cuban told Voss in late June. The result: According to Microsoft research, people are in three times more Teams meetings per week today compared to February 2020. Take your business to the next level: Register for CNBC's free Small Business Playbook virtual event on August 2 at 1 p.m.

Persons: Mark Cuban, Chris Voss, it's, Cuban, Voss, Korn Organizations: Dallas Mavericks, Cuban, huddles, Microsoft Locations: Cuban

☆ Teladoc Health expands Microsoft tie-up to automate documentation with AI
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

July 18 (Reuters) - Teladoc Health (TDOC.N) is expanding a partnership with Microsoft (MSFT.O) to use the tech giant's artificial intelligence services to automate clinical documentation on its telehealth platform. The integration of AI services including Microsoft's OpenAI, owner of viral chatbot ChatGPT, will help ease the burden on healthcare staff during virtual exams, Teladoc said on Tuesday. The companies have been collaborating since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, wherein Teladoc integrated its Solo virtual healthcare platform into Microsoft Teams. Teladoc will now also use Microsoft's Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience, an AI-powered voice-enabled solution that uses the GPT4 AI service, to automatically document patient encounters, the telehealth company said. Reporting by Leroy Leo in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika SyamnathOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Microsoft's OpenAI, Teladoc, Leroy Leo, Devika Organizations: Teladoc, Microsoft, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru

☆ Zoom is 'extremely optimistic' about growth in Asia-Pacific despite weaker outlook
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

watch nowZoom is "doubling down" on its technical investments in the Asia-Pacific region as it seeks to strengthen growth, said the video communications company on Friday. We made a strong commitment about two years ago to really turn on the speed and step on the gas," Abe Smith, Zoom's head of international, told "Squawk Box Asia." watch nowHowever, Smith said Zoom is "extremely optimistic" about the growth of its phone product in Asia Pacific. Zoom's A.I. Zoom's big bet on AI also includes an investment in Anthropic, an AI safety and research company, back in May.

Persons: Abe Smith, Zoom's, Smith Organizations: Microsoft Locations: Asia, Pacific, Singapore, India, Chennai, Bangalore, Asia Pacific, Anthropic

☆ A lawsuit claims OpenAI stole 'massive amounts of personal data,' including medical records and information about children, to train ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A lawsuit alleges OpenAI stole personal data from "millions of Americans" to train ChatGPT. It also stored chat-log data from ChatGPT users, including via apps like Snapchat and Spotify, the lawsuit alleges. OpenAI stole "massive amounts of personal data" to train ChatGPT, a lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI crawled the web to amass huge amounts of data, including vast quantities taken from social-media sites. OpenAI's propertiatary AI corpus of personal data, WebText2, for example, scraped huge amounts of data from Reddit posts and the websites they linked to, the lawsuit claims.

Persons: OpenAI, Sam Altman's, Defendants, —, Slack Organizations: Spotify, Court, Northern, Northern District of, Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung Locations: Northern District, Northern District of California, Italy

☆ How Palantir is helping hospitals with tasks that used to require spreadsheets and whiteboards
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-17 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

In this article PLTR Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTThe Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020. The Cleveland Clinic was in the midst of trying new AI-powered software from Palantir . But by accurately predicting patient discharges, Palantir's system saved Pappas, her team and the emergency department a lot of time and effort. Palantir partnered with two health-care systems, Cleveland Clinic and Tampa General Hospital in Florida, during the summer of 2021 to develop software called Palantir for Hospital Operations. Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards Schedule review within Palantir for Hospital Operations Palantir

Persons: Dustin Franz, Rita Pappas, Pappas, —, Palantir, Shyam Sankar, Sankar, Alex Karp, Dr, Peggy Duggan, Drew Goldstein, Jeremy David, Palantir Drew Goldstein, Palantir's, I'm, David, Goldstein, whiteboards, Drew didn't, They've Organizations: Cleveland Clinic, Ohio Department of Health, Bloomberg, Getty Images Bloomberg, Getty, Cleveland, CNBC, Tampa General Hospital, Hospital Operations, U.S, Intelligence, Hospital Operations Palantir Nurses, American Medical Association . Companies, Tampa General, Cleveland Clinic's, Microsoft Locations: Cleveland , Ohio, U.S, Ohio, Tampa, Florida, Palantir, Florida and Ohio

☆ Zoom invests in AI startup Anthropic in latest effort to spruce up offerings
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 16 (Reuters) - Zoom Video Communications Inc (ZM.O) said on Tuesday it has invested an undisclosed sum in Anthropic and will integrate the artificial intelligence start-up's technology into its video-conferencing platform. The move marks the latest effort by Zoom to spruce up its offerings with AI as it competes against Microsoft Teams, the dominant video-conferencing tool for enterprises. Under the collaboration, Anthropic's Claude - a large language model that competes directly with offerings from Microsoft-backed OpenAI - will be integrated with Zoom's platform. In March, Zoom had announced a partnership with OpenAI to add AI-driven capabilities such as conversation summaries and message drafts to its Zoom IQ assistant. Reporting by Akshita Toshniwal in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu; Editing by Shailesh KuberOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Google just showed how Big Tech will win again in AI
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

OpenAI and other AI startups will struggle to match this reach, unless they team up with other tech giants, like Microsoft. After Google I/O this week, it's looking like AI will be another 80/20 situation where a few Big Tech companies benefit the most. Some examples:In Google Docs, ask Google's AI model to help you write a job description. For a Google Slides presentation with photos, you can ask the company's AI model to create speaker notes based on the images. Insider ran into a high-level Google product manager at the conference who'd just watched a developer presentation.

☆ I was laid off from LinkedIn and it stunned me. Here's how I got through the next 48 hours.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Arthi Raghu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Arthi Raghu is a former sales development leader at LinkedIn and part-time yoga instructor. I've now had 48 hours to process the news (and my emotions), and I wanted to share what's helped me feel grounded again. On a personal front, I'm going to enjoy a little downtime before my days get filled with Zoom meetings again. I'm going to write as much as I can and spend some much needed time with the people I love. Arthi Raghu is a former sales development leader at LinkedIn, part-time yoga instructor, certified mindset coach, and avid marathon runner.

☆ The No. 1 workplace distraction that kills productivity, according to Microsoft
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Morgan Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

But new research from Microsoft shows how out of hand our work calendars have gotten: Since February 2020, people are in 3 times more Microsoft Teams meetings and calls per week at work, a whopping 192% increase. The heaviest Teams users are spending close to 8 hours, or an entire workday, each week in online meetings alone. Meetings, at their core, aren't the issue, says Colette Stallbaumer, the general manager for Microsoft 365 and the "future of work" at Microsoft. 1 workplace distraction that hurts productivity, followed closely by having too many meetings, according to a Microsoft survey of 31,000 workers across the globe, which was conducted between February and March 2023. How companies are fighting 'meeting fatigue'Workers can only do so much to fight "meeting fatigue," says Stallbaumer.

☆ Google tells staff it plans to limit publishing AI research to 'compete and keep knowledge in house' as its rivalry with Microsoft's OpenAI heats up
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Google told staff it will be more selective about the research it publishes. Recently, information like code and data has become accessible on a "much more on a need-to-know" basis, according to a Google AI staffer. LaMDA, a chatbot technology that forms the basis of Bard, was originally built as a 20 percent project within Google Brain. (The company has historically allowed employees to spend 20% of their working days exploring side projects that might turn into full-fledged Google products.) Google's AI division has faced other setbacks.

☆ Russia's VTB to launch digital bank on VKontakte social network
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Elena Fabrichnaya | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

MOSCOW, April 26 (Reuters) - Russian state-owned bank VTB (VTBR.MM) will launch a digital bank within the mobile messaging app of leading social network VKontakte, Russia's answer to Facebook, as Moscow seeks technological solutions to disrupted banking transfers. That made operations with banks abroad particularly challenging as many bank cards stopped working overseas and Russia was disconnected from global payment systems. The digital bank will enable customers to carry out everyday financial transactions such as money transfers, some bill payments and mobile phone top-ups, within the VKontakte app. VTB, which had launched banking services through Telegram in January, said it was prepared to shut down its bank on Telegram once Roskomnadzor had come to a final decision. "As of today, there has been no such decision, so the bank in Telegram works, although we have stopped actively promoting it."

☆ Here's the 15-page pitch deck a startup helping Wall Street monitor employees' use of messengers like WhatsApp and Signal used to raise $22 million
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Paige Hagy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

LeapXpert used this 15-page pitch deck to raise a $22 million Series A+ round. This startup is helping companies ensure the messaging channels employees use to communicate professionally are safe and in compliance with regulation. On Wednesday, the startup announced a $22 million Series A+ round led by Rockefeller Asset Management's Technology Ventures Group. He wants to grow the startup's global reach, add more supported messaging channels, and increase its team. Read the 15-page pitch deck LeapXpert used to raise a $22 million Series A+ round.

☆ Microsoft says its new version of Teams is twice as fast
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Microsoft said Monday it is starting to roll out a faster new version of its Teams communication app for Windows to commercial clients enrolled in a preview program. The software will become available to all customers later this year, and Microsoft also promises new versions of Teams for Mac and the web. Since its 2017 debut, Teams has become the jewel of Microsoft 365, the subscription-based productivity software bundle formerly known as Office 365. Microsoft Teams had some performance issues in 2020, which the company resolved. The new version also includes enhancements meant to simplify Teams, building on the more than 400 feature updates Microsoft delivered last year, some of them meant to help Microsoft catch up with rivals, Teper said.

While remote workers are hitting the green on weekday afternoons, productivity isn't dropping. That's good news for leisure businesses and shows remote work has changed people's work structures. While some companies have called employees back to the office, Bloom doesn't think remote work is going anywhere. All those remote workers hitting the green doesn't necessarily mean people are working less. This will raise 'Golf productivity' — the number of golf courses played (and revenue raised) per course."

☆ Google got a pandemic boost for its Workspace software but blew it, insiders say. Now it plans to attack Microsoft with a new push in AI.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Rosalie Chan | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian spent much of his time at a partner meeting talking about Workspace, tweeted Tony Safoian, CEO of Google Cloud partner SADA Systems. "Around the globe, more than nine million paying organizations, and more than three billion users rely on Google Workspace for communication and collaboration. Other major customers like Deutsche Bank use Google Cloud for cloud infrastructure, but Microsoft Office for collaboration software. Forty-four percent of software procurers whose organization plans to or currently uses Microsoft's collaboration software also use Google Workspace, according to the 2022 Forrester study. While Google Cloud is still unprofitable, it has decreased losses to $480 million, down from $890 million last year.

☆ How I kept my Kyiv business afloat as Russia dropped bombs around my homeland
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Alexandra York | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

She shares which strategies have helped her business endure the chaos of the war. Becoming a CEOKachorovska is the company's founder, CEO, and designer. But it's because I spent two years before the war building systems inside this business, including road maps, internal processes, analytics tables, and project-planning tools. A sustainable business modelOne characteristic of our business that has been crucial during this time is that we do not have any extra inventory. But making the change to a more-streamlined business 2 ½ years ago is what has allowed us to sustain it during the war.

☆ Microsoft investigates Outlook outage as users face issues
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Feb 7 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said it was investigating issues with email service Outlook as users in North America faced problems with accessing, sending or searching emails on the platform. There were more than 2,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Outlook late Tuesday at about 23:10 ET, according to Downdetector.com, which tracks outages by collating status reports from sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. "Users primarily hosted in the North American region attempting to access Outlook.com may be unable to send, receive, or search email. Additional functionality such as Calendar consumed by other services such as Microsoft Teams would also be affected," Microsoft said in an update on its status page. A "recent change" led to the issue and the company was working to restart portions of the affected infrastructure in order to restore service, Microsoft said in a tweet.

☆ Microsoft's cloud business, a key pillar of the Club's investment case, stands to gain from the AI craze
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

"But the one good thing here is the business model side of this, because it builds on the cloud." Nadella's comments Tuesday came shortly after Microsoft unveiled its strategy to reshape its internet search engine , Bing, by incorporating generative AI capabilities. Equipped with generative AI capabilities, Bing will be able to respond to users' queries with human-like written answers. On Monday, competitor Alphabet (GOOGL) announced its response to the ChatGPT craze , a generative AI service called Bard. The Club take The rivalry between Microsoft and Google has now spilled into generative AI, which is still in its early days.

☆ Time to buy the tech rally? Wall Street pros weigh in with their top stock picks
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Zavier Ong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Investors are flocking back into tech, after shunning the sector for the better part of 2022 amid broad risk-off sentiment. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has been the best-performing Wall Street index in 2023, having gained about 15.6% since the start of the year. This could be the rebound," Wang told CNBC's "Street Signs Asia" on Thursday. " Some 87% of analysts covering the stock rate it a "buy," according to FactSet data, and give it average upside of 10.3%. Christopher Crawford, managing partner at Crawford Fund Management, told CNBC's "Street Signs Asia" on Tuesday that his firm is overweight tech "for the first time in our 10-year history."

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