Big Earl

And you thought Apple was the world’s most profitable company?

Ha!

You’d be off by a factor by 2, at least for 2018.

According to financial data revealed in a note from Moody’s the Saudi oil company Aramco made $111 billion last year.

By comparison, Apple, currently the world’s most profitable public company, made $59.4 billion, which is about half as much as Aramco.

Aramco’s total revenues last year were $355.9.

And now for some golf news. Kevin Kisner won the WGC Dell Technologies Match Play championship here in Austin, Texas this weekend, beating out Matt Kuchar on a very windy and chilly Sunday final match, 3 and 2.

It was sweet vindication after Kisner took a drubbing by Bubba Watson in last year’s final match.

And ICYMI, Sergio Garcia brought more drama to the Austin Country Club golf course in his new adopted hometown (his wife went to UT). Here’s the deets. 

This Saturday, be prepared for a new marquis event, the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur played at — can you guess — Augusta National, where The Masters will be played a week later. Golf season is in full swing (See what I did there?)

Airbnb is taking over some rooms in India, having invested between $150 and $200 million in Indian hotel startup OYO, ahead of its IPO. 

TechCrunch is reporting that the deal had been rumored for a couple of months and was additional to OYO’s prior $1 billion Series E round. The background:

OYO and Airbnb had previously been rivals of sorts, but OYO has pivoted towards hospitality services — including logistics and management — rather than simply aggregating budget hotels. Airbnb, with its HotelTonight acquisition, has shown it wants to be a booking destination across different types of verticals.

Geographically, the deal makes even more sense. Airbnb has been keen to take a larger bite out of India for some time. It has begun to see progress, with co-founder and CSO Nathan Blecharczyk recently revealing that the country is one of its five fastest growing markets worldwide. In that light, the companies are exploring opportunities to collaborate which could see OYO properties — in this case more likely villas and Airbnb-like properties — listed on Airbnb’s service.

AI continues to be put hard to work in China.

According to a report from Reuters, demand for online censoring services provided by Shanghai-listed People.cn has soared since last year after China tightened its already strict online censorship rules.

In recent years, China has shut tens of thousands of websites and social media accounts that contained what it said was illegal content as well as “vulgar” and pornographic material.

Tibet, Taiwan, the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square, and even local government scandals, are also sensitive topics prone to censorship.

Considering this May/June will be the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, you can rest assured the AI and facial recognition algos will be working overtime.

Saudi Cyber

Don’t miss this doozy of a story from The New York Times’ Nicole Perlroth and Clifford Krauss about last year’s cyberattack in Saudi Arabia.

The executive summary: Last August, a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia was struck by a cyberassault that intended to sabotage the firm’s operations and trigger an explosion.

The only thing that prevented the explosion was a mistake in the attackers’ computer code. 

For cyber warriors on the front line, it’s a must read.

On the flip side, Google recently released its “Android Security 2017 Year in Review” report earlier today, and it cited that 60.3 percent of Potentially Harmful Apps were detected via machine learning.

As reported by VentureBeat, its detection is done by a service called Google Play Protect, which is enabled on over 2 billion devices (running Android 4.3 and up) to constantly scan Android apps for malicious activity.

In other words, artificial intelligence and machine learning are the future of cyber monitoring, and the future has already arrived.

Speaking of the future and cybersecurity, at next week’s IBM Think 2018 conference in Las Vegas, you’ll be able to tune in to over 100 sessions LIVE via the IBM UStream. 

Be sure to check out the schedule here, and to case the cyber keynote from 12:30-1:10 PST on Tuesday, March 20th, entitled “Ready for Anything: Build a Cyber Resilient Organization.”

IBM And Mobily: Spoken Like A True, Modern Mobile Network

IBM’s mobile computing juggernaut continues with a new deal just announced in Saudia Arabia.

Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) and IBM announced today a 5-year agreement worth approximately $280 million to provide comprehensive IT solutions for the Saudi Arabian company.

Saudi Arabia: 870,000 Square Miles

Riyadh is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. It is also the capital of Riyadh Province, and belongs to the historical regions of Najd and Al-Yamama (Source: Wikipedia) IBM and Mobily, the Saudi Arabian telecommunications firm, will collaborate on future innovation with the help of IBM Research, using IBM’s Spoken Web solution. The basic principle of Spoken Web uses speech to create voice sites using the mobile phone network to establish a spoken version of the internet. The opportunity to collaborate with leading IBM researchers has become a key differentiator for IBM.

Saudi Arabia is a big place, encompassing some 870,000 square miles with a population approaching 30 million people.  Mobily, as the fastest growing telecommunications company in Saudia Arabia, has experienced an explosion in demand from the growing number of subscribers using mobile devices, and so in turn needed to boost its IT capacity and innovation in the market.

This new agreement with IBM will provide Mobily with faster, targeted access to new technologies and expertise so it can build a strong infrastructure to keep up with the company’s business growth.

As Mobily gears up for further expansion, it wanted to improve the quality and speed of its operations using IBM best practices.

As part of the agreement, Mobily and IBM will collaborate on future innovation with the help of IBM Research, for example, using IBM’s Spoken Web solution.

The basic principle of Spoken Web uses speech to create voice sites using the mobile phone network to establish a spoken version of the internet. The opportunity to collaborate with leading IBM researchers has become a key differentiator for IBM.

IBM’s Growth Market Strategy

The agreement highlights IBM’s continued geographic expansion initiative to strategically increase its presence in key growth markets like Saudi Arabia in support of its global growth strategy.

IBM is ramping up its investment across the Middle East and Africa, harnessing the company’s Smarter Planet initiative to help both public and private sector clients do more with fewer resources.

The strategic management of IT remains with Mobily, ensuring continuation of its standards of excellence and cutting-edge architecture, and enabling Mobily to meet the explosion in demand it is seeing from the growing number of subscribers using mobile devices.

“Partnering with one of the largest technology companies in the world offers Mobily a broad portfolio of modern IT solutions that will have a positive impact on our customers in terms of the quality of products and innovative services, in addition to solutions that will enrich their lives. We are pleased to sign with IBM, which has a significant presence in this strategic sector,” said Khalid Al Kaf, CEO, Mobily.

“The agreement is part of our efforts and vision of transforming Mobily into an integrated telecommunications operator. It also supports the Saudi government’s initiative of creating a knowledge-based community, adopting state of the art services and solutions” Al Kaf added.

IBM And Saudi Arabia: Remaking The Kingdom’s Future

IBM is involved in a range of key initiatives in Saudi Arabia, including a joint project with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology using innovative membrane technology and solar power to address the shortage of drinking water.

In another project, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and IBM are collaborating using the most complex, high performance computing system in the region.

The agreement with Mobily was signed in August 2012.