The Big Story

Taking a stand

Last week, we all saw an affront to our democracy that many Americans haven't witnessed in their lifetimes; that is, unless you were alive in 1814. As the dust settled after the violent mob attack on the Capitol that left five people dead, many CEOs of top enterprise companies decried the partisan split and outlandish rhetoric that led us to this point.

For the past several years, top executives have shown more of a willingness to speak out on politically-charged issues. Remember Marc Benioff's opposition to an Indiana law that would have made it easier for companies to discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals?

But last week's events allowed CEOs to take a real stance. This wasn't a policy choice that undermined their operations or potentially discriminatory laws that could impact employees. It was a flagrant display of anti-Democratic behavior after which many staff and customers hoped their senior executives would take a strong line.

• Benioff said that leaders "must call for peace and unity now. There is no room for violence in our democracy." He also retweeted Chris Sacca's widely shared post pinning the deaths and violence on Zuckerberg and Dorsey.
• IBM CEO Arvind Krishna — who just appointed former Trump official Gary Cohn to the board — condemned the attacks and said the "actions have no place in our society."
• Sundar Pichai said that "the lawlessness and violence occurring on Capitol Hill today is the antithesis of democracy and we strongly condemn it."

Leadership at AWS took the most direct action so far, when it announced that it would stop providing services for Parler, the social network whose users played a part in organizing Wednesday's attack and hosted subsequent calls for further violence.

• "We cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others," AWS said in the letter.
• As of Monday morning, Parler is offline. Its CEO John Matze told Fox News that so far no other vendor has expressed interest in changing that.
• AWS' decision raises all kinds of complex questions about what role a cloud provider should play as a gatekeeper. And it's also likely to prompt companies such as Parler to move toward building and running their own servers in future.

But the harsh reality is more complicated: Many of these executives, despite splitting with Trump on some issues, also kept an open line of communication with the White House over the past four years, and appeared more than willing to attend the largely ceremonial roundtables or let administration officials use their facilities for publicity events.

• It's tough to fault the CEO of a major company for wanting to collaborate with the president of the country.
• But as the social media's role in fostering political division faces increasing scrutiny, it also raises a question about the role that executives like Benioff and Krishna play as a check to our political leaders.

And let's not forget the senior execs that stayed silent. Aside from Peter Thiel, no one in tech, at least publicly, appeared closer to Trump than Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and CEO Safra Catz. So far, neither Ellison or Catz seem to have said anything about Wednesday's events.

• After asking Oracle's press team several times if the company had a statement on the events that transpired at the Capitol and whether Ellison continued to back Trump, I've yet to receive a response.
• Apparently, Oracle hasn't yet said anything to employees either. So we're left guessing about where Ellison now stands on Trump.

A MESSAGE FROM MICRON​

For Raj Hazra, who is senior vice president of corporate strategy and communications at Micron, there has never been a more thrilling time than this golden age of data. In this interview, Hazra describes how "we are now at the doorstep of taking things that we thought were science fiction and making them real, and it's only going to be exponentially faster going forward". Read more from Micron's Raj Hazra.

From Protocol

The birthplace of CIOs: While GE's struggles have been well-documented, the company's ability to produce leaders is tough to argue against, particularly when it comes to IT chiefs. Former GE-ers are running the tech operations at the largest U.S. companies such as Airbnb, Morgan Stanley, AIG, Nationwide and dozens more. A key reason for the vast alumni network at the top ranks is the focus early-on to expose technologists to the business.

Observability, the new monitoring: For years, monitoring has helped flag problems to software developers, only to burden them with painstaking analysis to identify the cause. Now, Tom writes, the emerging field of observability promises to show developers exactly which part of their code is causing a problem, and why.

Mobbed but not hacked: Despite rioters at the Capitol having access to member offices and, subsequently, their IT hardware, experts say there's little threat to congressional networks. That's a saving grace for the federal government, which is still dealing with the fallout of the massive SolarWinds hack.

Coming Up This Week

Not a lot on the calendar this week. But maybe that's a good thing after the last few days.

• Jan. 11: Nutanix CFO Duston Williams and VP Greg Smith present at the Needham Growth Conference.
• Jan. 12:Workday co-CEO Aneel Bhusri, DocuSign CFO Cynthia Gaylor and others present at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.
• Jan. 14: Salesforce's Bill Patterson, the executive vice president & general manager of CRM applications, presents at an event hosted by Jefferies. And Okta CFO Bill Losch presents at the Needham Growth Conference

In other news

• Oracle overhauled its leadership team in its Europe, Middle East and Africa business, with regional heads Alain Blanc and Frank Obermeier departing.
• IBM's Redhat acquired container security startup StackRox for an undisclosed sum, the latest sign of consolidation in the kubernetes industry.
• F5 is purchasing startup Volterrafor $500 million.
• WarnerMedia broke an impasse with Amazon to put HBO Max on Amazon's Fire TV devices by elongating an existing partnership with AWS.
• SolarWinds just tapped a new startup from former U.S. cybersecurity official Chris Krebs and former Facebook security officer Alex Stamos to help clean up its mess.
• IBM is overhauling its sales team, simplifying the organization into two customer groups (down from 50) as Arvind Krishna moves forward on his turnaround plans for "Big Blue."
• The struggling tech giant also named Martin Schroeter as the CEO of its new managed infrastructure business, NewCo.
• SalesLoft raised $245 million, bringing the AI-backed sales engagement platform startup's total valuation to $1.1 billion. Owl Rock Capital led the round, alongside Insight Partners, HarbourVest and Emergence.
• Starburst Data raised $100 million at a $1.2 billion valuation. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, along with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Coatue and Index Ventures.

A MESSAGE FROM MICRON​

For Raj Hazra, who is senior vice president of corporate strategy and communications at Micron, there has never been a more thrilling time than this golden age of data. In this interview, Hazra describes how "we are now at the doorstep of taking things that we thought were science fiction and making them real, and it's only going to be exponentially faster going forward". Read more from Micron's Raj Hazra.