The mega-numbers behind Amazon's second HQ: Amazon is planning to build a second, but equal in scope and stature, headquarters operation and is looking for a U.S. metro area to house it. The scale of the planned project is indeed massive, as the company's press release notes:
Amazon expects to invest over $5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs. In addition to Amazon’s direct hiring and investment, construction and ongoing operation of Amazon HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community.
The new headquarters will be a "full equal" to Amazon's current one in Seattle, according to a statement from CEO Jeff Bezos.
POV: Amazon's RFP specifies interest in metropolitan areas with more than a million people; a "stable and friendly business environment"; locations with the potential to draw strong technical talent; and "communities that think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options."
Marketwatch determined that 53 cities in the U.S. meet that criteria—or 52 when you eliminate Seattle—along with six Canadian ones. Wherever Amazon's second HQ ends up, it will make a major economic impact on that city, both directly and indirectly, as it would provide instant critical mass for the broader tech business community.
Amazon's verbiage about friendly business environments and creative thinking suggest the obvious: It's looking for tax breaks and help obtaining land and building supporting infrastructure for the headquarters. On paper, front-runners to land the deal are East Coast cities such as Boston, New York and Atlanta, along with the likes of Denver in the middle-to-west of the nation.
IBM-MIT team up on AI lab: Big Blue will invest $240 million over 10 years in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, in a bid not only to achieve AI research breakthroughs, but also to get up close and personal with the next generation of AI talent. Here are the key details from the joint announcement:
The collaboration aims to advance AI hardware, software and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas, increase AI's impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity, and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society.
The new lab will be one of the largest long-term university-industry AI collaborations to date, mobilizing the talent of more than 100 AI scientists, professors, and students to pursue joint research at IBM's Research Lab in Cambridge—co-located with the IBM Watson Health and IBM Security headquarters in Kendall Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts—and on the neighboring MIT campus.
The lab will be co-chaired by IBM Research VP of AI and IBM Q, Dario Gil, and Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of MIT's School of Engineering.
MIT and IBM researchers will submit research proposals in the following areas: AI algorithms, next-gen hardware and devices, including quantum computers; industry AI solutions; and how "AI can deliver economic and societal benefits to a broader range of people, nations and enterprises."
The lab's mission will also include encouraging MIT faculty and students "to launch companies that will focus on commercializing AI inventions and technologies" developed there.
POV: One can imagine IBM being well-poised to acquire those commercialized inventions, as well as the sharp minds behind them. IBM is in a dogfight with Microsoft, Google and others for top-level AI talent; the lab helps it get in on the ground floor with top prospects and build crucial relationships.
MIT's CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) has been a hot bed of AI research for some time, and partnerships like the new lab will help IBM keep its fingers on the pulse, notes Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.
Atlassian tees up its Slack competitor, Stride: The modern workplace is plagued by a surfeit of communication tools that can end up overwhelming workers, rather than helping them get stuff done. That's the contention of Atlassian, which has launched Stride, a team communication tool that on a competitive basis is aimed directly at Slack. Here are the key details from its announcement:
Current workplace communication solutions force users to choose between collaboration and creation, requiring them to monitor an endless conveyor belt of conversation without providing the space for deep, focused work. The burden is on the user to prioritize the firehose of communication, manually sift through and remember where critical information is hiding, and extract team decisions and actions from the barrage of text. Compounding the problem is the absence of non-verbal communication inherent in chat-based tools.
Atlassian built Stride to help solve these issues so teams can move work forward. Our brand new communication solution has best-in-class team messaging, audio and video conferencing, and collaboration tools. Stride is the only communication product teams needs to get work done.
Stride also features something called "Focus Mode," which turns off notifications and displays a special status and user presence indicator, giving them "the mental space to go into deep work." Stride keeps collecting what it deems important information while Focus Mode is turned on, and serves it up to the user once they shut it off.
Atlassian is offering a free version of Stride that has unlimited users but limits storage to 5GB, add-on apps or bots to 10, and up to 25,000 saved messages. A paid version adds functionality and removes storage and other limits for $3 per user per month.
POV: Atlassian certainly is giving a lot away for free with Stride, and is dramatically undercutting Slack on pricing for the paid version. It may have no choice given how much buzz and visibility Slack has, not to mention the fact Atlassian is still in the process of shedding its image as a collaboration company aimed mostly at software development teams, rather than all types of workers.
Microsoft Teams, which comes included with Office 365 subscriptions, is perhaps Stride's most important competitor, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky. "It's the old 20-year monopoly battle," he says. "If you're already paying for Office, why not use teams?"
Atlassian may not be trying to win large number of new customers, however; rather, the intent may be to get existing customers of its other products to buy into Stride, he adds. That may be easier than you think: Atlassian famously has no direct sales force, instead relying on word of mouth and image to sell its products, Lepofsky notes.
However, Atlassian may need to invest in market education around Stride, given it overlaps with HipChat, Atlassian's popular team chat app. Atlassian will migrate HipChat cloud users to Stride at no charge, but will continue supporting on-premises HipChat customers. However, Stride is clearly the strategic product going forward.