Digital Transformation Digest: FCC Chair Avoids Saying 'Net Neutrality,' Oracle Shipping Java EE to Eclipse Foundation, and More

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.  Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.  Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998. Twitter: @chriskanaracus , Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members. ...

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U.S. FCC head talks about the future of networking: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai took the keynote stage at this week's Mobile World Congress event in San Francisco and laid out his vision for the future of networking. Pai's remarks emphasized the expansion of mobile broadband, versus fixed networks, and he also failed to say two very controversial words: net neutrality.

The FCC is considering an overhaul of the net neutrality rules passed in 2015 under the Obama administration. Net neutrality forbids ISPs from blocking or slowing down Internet traffic that points to legal content, and also from favoring traffic based on payments or other considerations. But critics, in particular Pai, say the rules classified ISPs as "common carriers" under Title II of the Communications Act, which was an anti-competitive overreach.

Pai did acknowledge the net neutrality debate by referring to the FCC's proposal, which is dubbed "Restoring Internet Freedom," and made it clear where he stands:

I believe that the FCC’s most powerful tool for expanding digital opportunity is setting rules that maximize private investment in high-speed networks. For the plain reality is that the more difficult government makes the business case for deployment, the less likely it is that broadband providers, big and small, will invest the billions of dollars needed to connect consumers. Too often, unnecessary rules make it more expensive to construct these networks than it needs to be.

POV: A transcript of Pai's full remarks is available at this link and they are well worth a read. A public comment period on the proposed changes ended on Aug. 17, and a decision is expected as early as this year. The net neutrality debate, like so many others, has been waged on partisan lines, but there is still a chance for compromise. Net neutrality—or the dissolving of it—will be a crucial factor in the development of next-generation network infrastructure and it's worth following the outcome closely.

Java EE heads to Eclipse Foundation: Oracle is relinquishing a good deal of control over Java Enterprise Edition, as Java EE's new home will be at the Eclipse Foundation, software evangelist David Delabassee said in a blog post.

Oracle announced its intentions to move Java EE to an open-source foundation in August. Since then, it has worked with IBM and Red Hat, the two next largest contributors to Java EE, on how to proceed, Delabassee said. Here's how he describes Oracle's plan for Java EE:

Relicense Oracle-led Java EE technologies, and related GlassFish technologies, to the foundation.

Demonstrate the ability to build a compatible implementation, using foundation sources, that passes existing Java EE 8 TCKs.

Define a branding strategy for the platform within the foundation, including a new name for Java EE to be determined. We intend to enable use of existing javax package names and component specification names for existing JSRs to provide continuity.

Define a process by which existing specifications can evolve, and new specifications can be included in the platform.

Recruit and enable developers and other community members, as well as vendors, to sponsor platform technologies, and bring the platform forward within the foundation.

Oracle intends to continue supporting existing Java EE licenses including ones moving to the upcoming Java EE 8. It will also support Java EE 8 in future versions of the widely used WebLogic Server.

POV: Notably, Oracle is maintaining control of Java SE, upon which EE is built. Many organizations are beginning new application projects with SE, seeing no need for the more complicated, heavier EE stack. Moreover, Java EE has been losing ground to lighter-weight frameworks such as Spring, which have also benefited from a nimbler release schedule.

While Oracle maintains the move to Eclipse will help Java EE evolve faster, one might wonder whether the vendor simply doesn't see enough of an economic opportunity for the platform. No question: There are countless custom enterprise applications out there that were built upon Java EE, but the question is whether the future holds continuous innovation or a decline into maintenance mode.

Legacy watch: Troubled Minnesota DMV system driving citizens crazy: A recently launched computer system for the Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles is wracked with problems, despite the fact it ended up costing twice its original budget and went well over schedule.

The $90 million Minnesota Licensing and Registration System is causing long lines, erronous billing, failed transactions such as new car registrations, and holding up car sales because dealers can't obtain new titles, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. State officials are being apologetic, while still offering excuses:

Officials with DPS and Minnesota IT Services said Monday that they had made a number of mistakes in developing MNLARS, including poor training of deputy registrars and not being responsive to the public once issues arose.

They also said that some of the missing features were deliberately not ready, as part of the state’s software development strategy.

“The system by design did not have all functionality at launch,” said Paul Meekin, the chief business technology officer at MN.IT. “To ship a system following modern development practices, you have to pick a point and you have to pick the features you’re going to have in your first release.”

Critics said the problems with MNLARS were known well before its debut. The dealers association asked for a rollout delay in January but was rebuffed.

POV: The project dates back nine years, and the state initially contracted with Hewlett-Packard to built it. It terminated HP's contract for lack of performance in 2014 and took the project in-house. A state audit released in June pinpointed a number of issues as problematic, including a lack of communication from project leaders and failure to deliver training on the new system effectively. Overall, the situation is familiar music with respect to many large-scale IT projects in both the public and private sector.

Digital Transformation Digest: iOS 11's Enterprise Implications, Rackspace Continues Services Push with Datapipe Buy, Microsoft Adds Key Feature to Teams

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.  Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.  Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998. Twitter: @chriskanaracus , Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members. ...

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Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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Apple iOS 11 and the enterprise: This week, Apple held its much-anticipated launch event for the iPhone 8, iPhone X, new Apple Watch and other hardware. But for enterprises, just as much attention—if not more—to the implications of iOS 11, which will arrive on Sept. 19. Here's a look at just a few of the bullet points to consider.

• iOS 11 supports only 64-bit devices, which means iPhone 5 and iPhone 4 users are out of luck. It also means, however, that applications written for 32-bit devices won't work on iOS 11. Apple has been discussing this since last year, but many time and resource-strapped enterprises may not be prepared. Assessing that level of readiness is a crucial task.
• A revamped App Store is coming along with iOS 11, with the redesign said to improve discoverability. Concurrently, enterprises need to review their app restrictions policies, lest employees end up downloading a few too many undesirable apps.
• iOS 11 introduces a large number of productivity improvements that could make the case for iPads replacing Macbooks as a primary work platform. These include a new app called Files, an expanded Dock, and Drag and Drop, which as the name implies allows users to easily move images and other files between apps.
• Business Chat, a new feature within iMessage, lets companies communicate directly with customers on iOS devices when they opt-in. A user can start a conversation natively from apps such as Safari or Maps. The feature works in conjunction with customer service platforms from Salesforce, Nuance and other vendors. For now, Business Chat supports human-to-human conversations, not chatbots.

Microsoft Teams adds guest access to Teams: Six months after its general availability, there are now more than 125,000 organizations using Microsoft's Teams group communication software, which is included with Office 365 subscriptions, Redmond says. Now the company is hoping to build up that momentum with a much-requested new feature: Guest access. Here are some key details from Microsoft's announcement:

We designed guest access in Teams with three principles at the forefront:

Teamwork—Teams come in all shapes and sizes, and you need to be able to easily communicate and share with others you want to work with, including people outside your organization. Beginning today, anyone with an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account can be added as a guest in Teams. That means anyone with one of the more than 870 million user accounts—across Microsoft commercial cloud services and third-party Azure AD integrated apps—can be added as a guest in Teams.

Security and compliance—Customers have told us they expect guest access in Teams to provide enterprise-grade security and compliance assurances. In Teams, guest accounts are added and securely managed within Azure AD through Azure AD B2B Collaboration. This enables enterprise-grade security, like conditional access policies for guest user access.

Microsoft has also built in tools that enable IT to manage guest users in a centralized manner. It also places a fair number of limitations on guest users, as this document shows, but none of them are unexpected. 

POV: Microsoft needed to deliver guest access to Teams in order to keep pace with Slack, which already offered a similar feature. Nor is Slack standing still; one day after Microsoft's announcement, it unveiled Shared Channels, which allow different organizations to communicate within Slack without any need for guest accounts.

Still, Microsoft's Teams update is extremely important, since they enable external people to participate in collaborative processes with Microsoft teams, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky: "It opens a much broader range of use cases."

Rackspace buys Datapipe—the implications for CIOs: Continuing its shift away from IaaS delivery to managed cloud services, Rackspace is buying Datapipe in a deal it calls the biggest in its history. (Terms were not disclosed). Here are the key details from its announcement:

Customers have been asking Rackspace to rapidly expand its abilities in managing multiple clouds at scale, and with the acquisition of Datapipe, Rackspace will be able to meet this growing demand.

Among the new capabilities that Datapipe will bring to Rackspace are:

Experience serving high-profile public sector customers, including the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, and Treasury, as well as the U.K. Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice, and Department of Transport

Professional services, software and tooling that will help better serve enterprise customers

Data centers and offices in key markets where Rackspace today has little or no presence, including the West Coast of the U.S., Brazil, mainland China, and Russia

Rackspace also cited synergies Datapipe's existing customers will enjoy, such as its experience in Microsoft, VMWare and OpenStack-based private cloud deployments as well as managed services for enterprise applications.

Datapipe has 825 employees and 29 data centers spread across nine countries. Key customers include Johnson & Johnson and McDonalds, according to a statement.

POV: The deal shows how Rackspace is transforming from IaaS to services, but there's a possibility it will rev up its IaaS play in Europe, where cloud uptake lags the Americas, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. This opportunity only has a three to five-year window, he adds.

For CIOs, the deal has implications that vary depending on their role and location, Mueller says.

U.S. CIOs using Rackspace should look for the same services abroad and determine when Rackspace will offer them, he says. U.S. CIOs that aren't Rackspace customers but have operations outside the U.S. should investigate combined offerings from Rackspace. European CIOs using Datapipe should check over their contracts and be ready for a potential migration over time, Mueller adds.

Digital Transformation Digest: Unpacking the Equifax Breach, AT&T's New IoT Push, Open Source Advocates Decry Proposed EU Copyright Reform

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.  Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.  Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998. Twitter: @chriskanaracus , Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members. ...

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Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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Andy Mulholland

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Andy Mulholland is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on cloud business models. Formerly the Global Chief Technology Officer for the Capgemini Group from 2001 to 2011, Mulholland successfully led the organization through a period of mass disruption. Mulholland brings this experience to Constellation’s clients seeking to understand how Digital Business models will be built and deployed in conjunction with existing IT systems. Coverage Areas Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: BYOD, Internet of Things, IoT, technology and business use Previous experience: Mulholland co authored four major books that chronicled the change and its impact on Enterprises starting in 2006 with the well-recognised book ‘Mashup Corporations’ with Chris Thomas of Intel. This was followed in…...

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Taking measure of the massive Equifax data breach: The post-mortem on Equifax's massive data breach is just beginning, and the incident—which exposed the personal information of as many as 143 million people—won't be soon forgotten. Equifax is also getting harsh grades for how it's handling the announcement of the breach, which it says it knew of in July.

The credit reporting agency is offering consumers a free year of identity theft protection services, but those affected still face significant risks to their credit. Overall, the matter is a boondoggle of massive proportions.

But the response should include much, much more than apologies and promises by Equifax to do better. In fact, the breach demands for a broad reasessment of how personal information should be viewed, handled and protected, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Steve Wilson.

"It's simply incredible that such important data could be exposed," Wilson says. "The economics of security would suggest that no company anywhere on the planet can be safe." Say the records are worth $5 each, which is actually a conservative figure for Social Security numbers and dates of birth, which are gold to identity thieves, he adds. That means the Equifax trove was worth up to $750 million. "We have to ask, what kind of security can safeguard an asset worth nearly a billion dollars?" Wilson says.  

Knowledge-based authentication measures are dead, he adds. Rather, the world is headed toward an 'attributes economy,' where data provenance is what matters most: "How do you know it is real and current, and hasn't been stolen?"

There may also be a need for new jurisprudence over data. "It's not good enough that data brokers are left to their own devices like this," Wilson says. "In fact,we might call it market failure, given that these sorts of breaches are repeated, and clearly businesses don't seem to have adequate free market pressure to do better."

AT&T rolls out new IoT asset-tracking platform: Strategic partnerships are becoming de rigeur in the industry, and AT&T is no exception to the rule. This week the telco announced AT&T Asset Management — Operations Center, which is geared toward monitoring and managing large numbers of IoT devices. 

While the service uses AT&T's Flow, a web-based development environment for IoT applications, it is relying on Microsoft Azure for infrastructure and a number of Microsoft services, including Cosmos DB and Power BI. Here are the key details from AT&T's announcement:

AT&T Asset Management – Operations Center enables a single IoT application, which supports multiple devices, communication protocols, networks and cloud environments.  It comes with a built-in dashboard that lets customers tailor data visualization or use APIs to integrate it into existing enterprise systems.  The solution supports a plug and play environment for configuring devices, sensors on device, grouping of assets by location and type, rules for alerts and reporting.

The platform will enter beta later this year. AT&T's announcement notes that it is the "first in a series of multi-market, multi-cloud reference solutions," which suggests that it and others will end up on the likes of Amazon and Google Cloud Platform at some point.

POV: AT&T made its announcement one day in advance of the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona. Much more IoT-related news should come out of the event. It's important to look at the current IoT market at a high level, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland.

"We are entering into a new phase around where and how IoT fits into digital business and this autumn we can expect to see most, if not all, major technology vendors making both announcements of significant products and on their business positioning," he says.

Meanwhile, "Microsoft Azure's strategy of being the engine room to connect and process IoT devices and together with added-value services seems to be working as this announcement proves," Mulholland adds.

Advocacy group says proposed European copyright reform could hurt OSS: Last year, the European Union introduced a set of copyright reform proposals. Open source software advocates say that Article 13 in the proposals would prove particuarly problematic for OSS.

Article 13 calls for content-scanning measures to be implemented by "information society providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users," in order to prevent the misuse of copyright-protected material.

Open source software communities fit that description, but an imposition of "permanent compliance assessment" measures would be burdensome to the point of inhibiting innovation significantly, OpenForum Europe argues in a white paper:

This is usually a specialised acti vity, typically reserved only to software vendors for software included in their products, intended to assess the appropriate use of code, and respect for the applicable license terms and conditions. Such compliance is painstaking and expensive, and it includes extensive human assessment. Already a specialist consulting industry has grown up around such compliance assessment (such as BlackDuck, Nexb, and Triplecheck); moreover, it is not feasible fully to automate this activity or to apply it to any piece of content uploaded to a developer platform, ranging from source code to text, audio, video.

In practical terms this would be impossible, especially because automated detection mechanisms do not exist for software as they do for audio-visual material. Licence compliance problems exist even for big companies, let alone the small ones. The impossibility of applying such recognition measures to software, and the associated legal uncertainty, could undermine the distribution ecosystem.

POV: The European Parliament is still in session, and EuroForum Europe, along with other advocacy groups, is hoping to get their attention trained on Article 13 before the session ends. OSS advocates aren't the only constituency arguing against Article 13, with more general Internet privacy and freedom voices also in the fray. But OpenForum and its peers may have more luck than other groups, given the progressive stance most EU governments have taken toward OSS for years.

Microsoft, Facebook Team Up On Deep Learning Interoperability

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.  Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.  Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998. Twitter: @chriskanaracus , Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members. ...

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Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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Facebook and Microsoft have created the Open Neural Network Exchange format, which provides a means for creating deep learning models that can be moved to different frameworks. Here's how Facebook describes the value proposition, in a blog post:

When developing learning models, engineers and researchers have many AI frameworks to choose from. At the outset of a project, developers have to choose features and commit to a framework. Many times, the features chosen when experimenting during research and development are different than the features desired for shipping to production. Many organizations are left without a good way to bridge the gap between these operating modes and have resorted to a range of creative workarounds to cope, such as requiring researchers work in the production system or translating models by hand.

We developed ONNX together with Microsoft to bridge this gap and to empower AI developers to choose the framework that fits the current stage of their project and easily switch between frameworks as the project evolves.

The Caffe2, PyTorch and Cognitive Toolkit frameworks will begin supporting ONNX this month. Overall, ONNX should help AI researchers innovate faster. 

POV: Engineers and researchers do have many AI frameworks to choose from, but the frameworks that will prevail will be those that enjoy broad adoption, active use and, as a result, innovative contributions from their communities, notes Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.  

"Engineers and researchers will flock to frameworks that are powerful yet easy to use, and ONNX is clearly an effort to make machine learning work easier by getting laborious, non-value-add grunt work out of the way," he adds. "Google’s TensorFlow framework has been getting a lot of attention and has attracted a large community, but this ONNX move could well boost interest in using Cognitive Toolkit, Caffe2, PyTorch and other frameworks that may join the exchange."

Digital Transformation Digest: Amazon's Plan for A Second Headquarters, MIT and IBM Team Up for AI, and Atlassian Launches Its Slack Competitor

Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.  Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.  Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998. Twitter: @chriskanaracus , Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members. ...

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Doug Henschen

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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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.