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Today’s topics include Apple’s plans for a Sept. 12th media event to introduce the 10th anniversary iPhones; the Uber Board of Directors’ vote to appoint an Expedia senior executive as its new CEO; Oracle’s program to 5,000 new cloud professionals; and Google’s new Tiered Network Services for Enterprise Cloud Customers.
Apple will launch its upcoming iPhones and new Apple Watch models at an industry briefing on Sept. 12, according to news reports based on information from people with knowledge of the company’s plans.
Apple is expected to introduce three new iPhones as well as several new Apple Watch models. One of the new iPhones is expected to be a more-costly 10th anniversary edition commemorating the introduction the first ground-breaking iPhone in September 2007.
In July, rumors circulated that starting prices for the next iPhones could rise in price to as much as $1,200, which is substantially higher than current iPhone 7 prices. There has been widespread media speculation that will use advanced OLED screens in some of its new iPhone models.
It looks as if Uber has finally made a positive step toward recovery after a year of management upheaval with the selection of a new CEO to replace founder Travis Kalanick.
The board voted unanimously on Aug. 27 to appoint Expedia’s Dara Khosrowshahi as CEO of the privately-held ride-sharing company. The Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 29 that Khosrowshahi planned to accept Uber’s offer if he reaches agreement with the company on contract terms.
Khosrowshahi’s selection comes after weeks of wrangling between factions on the board over who was the best candidate to become Uber’s new CEO. The board considered outgoing General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman.
After Immelt and Whitman fell by the wayside, Khosrowshahi’s name was brought up and the rival Uber board factions agreed to set aside their differences voted to offer the job to him.
Oracle is intent on hiring more than 5,000 new engineers, consultants, sales and support people for its growing cloud services and infrastructure business.
This injection of talent will help Oracle sustain momentum in what it describes as “the world’s fastest growing multi-billion dollar cloud business”. According to Joyce Westerdahl, Executive Vice President of Human Resources: “We’re hiring experienced sales and engineering professionals eager to contribute to Oracle’s cloud growth and champion our products.
We are also recruiting high-performing recent college graduates and offering them a world-class training program to prepare them for a career in the technology industry.” This year, Oracle has already hired more than 2,650 cloud sales professionals and 1,500 cloud developers in the United States.
Google has announced a new two-tier network service model for its cloud services customers. One is a so-called Premium Tier for organizations that want a high-performance, low-latency cloud infrastructure for running their workloads; the other is a Standard Tier for more cost-conscious organizations.
The Premium Tier is what organizations get by default and is what Google currently offers all of its cloud customers. All traffic from enterprise endpoints to Google’s cloud hosted apps travels over the same network that Google uses to deliver its own services such as Gmail, Search and YouTube.
The lower cost new Standard Tier is designed for organizations with less stringent performance and latency requirements.