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Technology
Ladies, gentlemen, aardvarks, and everything in between: Hell has frozen over. Or so it would seem this wacky winter.
Much of the Android-watchin' community's in a tizzy this week over word that Samsung — better known 'round these parts as the company that's never truly cared about timely Android upgrades — has actually managed to get the latest Android release onto some of its U.S. flagships within the same year of the software's launch.
It be true, all right: Multiple reports indicate Android 10 is indeed in the midst of rolling out to Galaxy S10 owners on Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint as we speak. And compared to Samsung's typical slow-as-molasses software delivery habit, well, that's quite the feat.
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Enterprise technology continues to evolve at an incredibly rapid rate, with emerging technologies creating a business environment of constant change. What challenges should Apple-using enterprises think about in 2020?
Prepare for 5G
Apple is expected to introduce 5G devices in 2020. Meanwhile 5G networks are being put in place so that when the iPhone 5G does appear, it will have a network to run on.
We&re in the early days of this deployment, but itlikely your enterprise is already looking at how the latest network standard can support work.Smart cities, smart factories, IoT deployments, smart homes and an array of high-bandwidth consumer and enterprise service developments loom.
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In four weeks, Microsoft will push Windows 7 down a flight of stairs, proving that it thinks the decade-old OS has outlived its purpose and must give way to a sleeker, shinier, newer Windows 10, which, by the way, will live forever.
How humiliating for Windows 7, the OS that once powered 1 billion-plus PCs.
Microsoft has made exceptions, as it often does, for its most valued customers. Enterprises can fork over fees for what Microsoft has tapped as "Extended Security Updates," or ESU; in exchange they'll receive patches that repair critical and important vulnerabilities. The ESU program will run for three years, starting in January, in one-year increments. A company that paid for the first year would receive updates through January 2021, at which time it would decide whether to continue another year - for double the price of the previous period - or drop out.
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This small software company does almost all its customer support through email, reports a pilot fish there.
&For the first two years I was there, all support email was handled via Outlook,& fish says. &However, we started to grow, and using Outlook became impractical; people started double-answering the same message.&
So company invests in a new support ticketing system that will allow better tracking of tickets and who is assigned to what.
The companylead support tech tests the new system for several weeks, and everything appears to be working fine. The rest of the techs are trained. The system is announced to customers as a big step forward in support. As a last step before launch, the support people create signatures to attach to all their outgoing messages to customers.
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As the number of privately held companies continues to grow — and privately held companies stay private longer than ever — public market shareholders who&d earlier benefited from the growth of companies like Google and Amazon are missing out, fears the Securities - Exchange Commission.
It wants to do something about it, too.
Toward that end, the agency today proposed amendments to the definition of &accredited investor& and the definition of &qualified institutional buyer& that would expand the list of people and institutions currently capable of investing in the private capital markets — meaning startups, hedge funds, venture funds and private equity funds.
What would change? Right now, as the SEC defines accredited investors, a person has to have at least $1 million in liquid assets and $200,000 in annual income.
The SECnew proposal would enable investors with an entry-level stockbrokerlicense or other credentials issued by an accredited educational institution to invest in private securities; &knowledgeable& employees of funds who might not currently meet the SECwealth thresholds; family offices with at least $5 million in assets under management and their family clients; and &spousal equivalents& who could pool their assets for the purposes of qualifying as accredited investors.
The proposed amendments would also add limited liability companies and RBICs to the types of entities that are eligible for qualified institutional buyer status if they meet the $100 million in securities owned and investment threshold in the definition, and the SEC wants to add a new category for any entity, including Indian tribes, that owns &investments,& as defined in Rule 2a51-1(b) under the Investment Company Act, that are valued at more than $5 million and that weren&t formed for the specific purpose of investing in the securities offered.
The proposal is now open to a 60-day comment period. In the meantime, expect there to be strong arguments both for and against the SECmoves to expand the private investing pool.
On the one hand, parties focused on investor protection will surely argue that vulnerable investors will be taken advantage of by startups that already have access to more than enough capital (especially startups worth funding). On the other side, expect to hear from the growing number of voices concerned that mom and pop investors have been shut out of Americaninnovation economy, and that income inequality is worsening quickly because of it.
You can check out the SECspecific proposals here, as well as find instructions on where to submit a comment.
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One of Americalargest banks has just poured some money to help millions of Indians without a credit score secure loans and make purchases online for the first time in their lives.
Bangalore-based ZestMoney announced today it has raised $15 million from Goldman Sachs and existinginvestors Naspers Fintech, Quona Capital, and Omidyar Network. Lizzie Chapman, co-founder and chief executive of ZestMoney, told TechCrunch in an interview that the new investment is part of an extended Series B round, the first tranche of which it announced in April this year.
The extended Series B round brings ZestMoney total raise to-date to $63 million, she said.
The penetration of credit cards remains very low in India; roughly three in 100 people in the country have a credit card. This has meant that very few people in the nation have a traditional credit score, which banks heavily rely on to establish onecredit worthiness before issuing them a loan.
Moreover, small loans don&t generate lucrative returns for banks, giving them less incentive to write such cheques. In recent years, a growing number of Indian startups has stepped in to address this void.
ZestMoney assesses other data points and uses AI to help these people build a profile and become credit-worthy. The startup haspartnered with over 3,000 merchants (up from some 800 in late April), including Flipkart, Amazon, and Paytm, to offer financing options at point-of-sale.
It has amassed more than 6 million users, who can access credit of $140 to $3,000. To make the deal even better, many of these merchants offer interest-free option to customers, provided they could pay back in a specified amount of time.
The startup, which has partnership with nearly every online payments processor including Razorpay, BillDesk, Cashfree, CCAvenue, and PayU,has also made a push in the brick and mortar market by inking deals with Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, and Pine Labs, which has over 300,000 point-of-sale machines across the country.
ZestMoney has also raised an unspecified amount of debt, which it uses to finance credit to customers. It recently entered ina strategic partnership with Credit Saison, a Japanese financial services company affiliated to Mizuho Financial Group, to deploy $100 million towards expanding digital lending in the country.
Philip Aldis, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, said its investment in ZestMoney would enable more households in India to access credit. &We look forward to leveraging our global experience and network for the continued growth of ZestMoney,& he said in a statement.
Goldman Sachs has invested in a handful of startups in India, including logistics startupBlackBuck, home rental platform NextAway, news aggregator DailyHunt, and online furniture store PepperFry.
The New York-headquartered firm, which is one of the worldlargest trading banks, has also invested in a number of financial startups including NuBank, a Brazilian startup that offers digital credit card to smartphone users. It is also the banking partner for Apple Card.
ZestMoney aims to disburse credit of worth $1 billion in 18 months and reach 300 million users one day.
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