Author Archives: Matt Kapko

Apple this week reported a decline in both annual sales and profit for the first time in 15 years. The company banked $45.7 billion in profit on revenues of $215.6 billion during the last year, an annual profit decline of nearly 15 percent and an 8 percent drop in revenue compared to the company’s fiscal year 2015 results. 

Apple saw its first year-over-year decline in revenue last April, and that downward trend continued despite new product releases and steady growth in its services business. With the important holiday quarter now underway, Apple faces heightened scrutiny as it projects record high revenues of between $76 and $78 billion, a number that would reverse its last six months of declines. 

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More than half of all the online training courses available in LinkedIn’s Learning catalogue are free to all of its 450 million users through the month of October. The number of people who file job applications on the site spikes in October, according to the company’s data, so the professional social network is promoting its new training service with a free offer. 

[ Related: LinkedIn Learning puts Lynda.com to work ]

“Chances are you or someone you know is thinking about landing a new gig,” wrote Catherine Fisher, LinkedIn’s career expert and senior director of corporate communications, in a related post. The “week of learning” promotion kicked off a month after LinkedIn repackaged the training materials from the Lynda.com deal as part of its main service. LinkedIn acquired the company for $1.5 billion in April 2015. 

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Data is the lifeblood of social media of companies, the currency with which they operate and the glue that keeps users coming back for more. The data people share on social sites can also come back to haunt them in ways they never imagined. Embarrassing incidents on social are hardly rare, but a recent case of malfeasance suggests individuals should be even more careful about what they share. 

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed widespread abuse of social data collected from popular sites for the purpose of unwarranted surveillance. Geofeedia, a company that had privileged access to data from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and at least nine other social networks, reportedly helped law enforcement spy on activists and protesters, according to the ACLU. 

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Apple and IBM this week merged strengths in a new way to target the education market. IBM Watson Element for Educators, a new iPad app from the companies, is designed to provide teachers with a more holistic view of students’ academic progress, accomplishments, interests and learning activities in grades K-12. 

IBM began working on the initiative in 2013 and accelerated development following its 2014 partnership with Apple, which led to the creation of the MobileFirst for iOS program. The companies want to remake the educational experience for teachers and students by coupling IBM data, analytics and cognitive computing with Apple’s design and user experience, according to Chalapathy Neti, vice president of education innovation for IBM Watson.

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By the end of 2016, roughly one in four IBM employees will use a Macintosh computer. The tech giant, which employs 400,000 people, bought and provisioned 90,000 Macs since it started to support Apple laptops in June 2015. It expects to have at least 100,000 Macs deployed by 2017.

IBM now has the largest enterprise Mac deployment in the world, and it is Apple’s biggest business customer for Macs, according to Mac maker. Apple declined to provide details on the other leading enterprise Mac customers, but SAP, Kelly Services and Intuit are among the company’s most recognizable clients. In total, IBM says it manages 217,000 Apple devices for its employees today, including those 90,000 Macs, 81,000 iPhones and 48,000 iPads. 

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Facebook does many things for its 1.7 billion users, but it still has work to do before it can close some lingering loops that exist between businesses and potential customers who use the social network. To that end, the company this week introduced a series of new ecommerce features, including food delivery, appointment booking and ticket purchase options, that let customers make direct transactions with businesses on Facebook. 

The social giant enabled the features through a mix of partnerships and new technical capabilities. No, Facebook employees won’t be delivering food any time soon, instead, partner companies including Delivery.com and Slice will handle the logistics. The third-party food delivery service puts Facebook in competition with alternatives such as Grubhub, Postmates and Seamless. 

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LOS ANGELES — Ted Ross is one of the busiest CIOs in the country. 

Serving a city that spans 469 square miles and houses at least 4 million people and 100,000 businesses carries serious challenges and responsibilities. As CIO of Los Angeles, Ross’s IT shop supports 41 city departments, with a combined 40,000 employees, but he turns his attention to the areas that can benefit most from effective government technology. 

“Ultimately we’re in the business of helping people,” Ross said last week during a speech at a tech conference at the University of Southern California. “Government is a target-rich environment. There’s so many good, valuable things that can be improved. There’s never a lack of priorities.” 

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Enterprise software makers have tried to blend social tools and consumer technology for at least a decade. It’s been a slow process, but by 2020 the biggest names in business software will likely be well-known consumer brands, instead of the stalwarts that dominated the market for decades, according to Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud storage service Box. 

Outsiders are redefining the future of workplace collaboration, and some of these companies, including Facebook, are focused on specific tools or technologies instead of platforms that try to serve every business need. The one-vendor-for-all-things-enterprise approach has no place in today’s business landscape, Levie says.

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Facebook at Work, the company’s social network for business, has a new name, but it features many of the same tools that 1.71 billion people use every month — without all the ads. Now called simply “Workplace,” the service is now publicly available to any organization. Facebook is a dominant force among consumers and marketers, and now it is setting its sights on the enterprise market. 

Workplace is free for the first three months, and then Facebook will charge a range of monthly prices, per active user: $3 each for up to 1,000 users, $2 for up to 10,000 users and $1 each for enterprises with more than 10,000 users. Nonprofit organizations and academic institutions will get Workplace at no cost, according to Facebook. In comparison, the popular collaboration service Slack, now a Workplace rival, offers a free app with limited features, and it currently charges $15 per month per active user for its premium offering. 

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