Amazon has announced the introduction of a ‘smart’ office essentials re-ordering device called Dash Smart Shelf which uses a weight-sensing, Wi-Fi-enabled smart scale to re-order products when they’re running low.

Why?

According to Amazon, monitoring and reordering everyday business essentials (e.g. printer paper) can be unnecessarily time-consuming for the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that make up 99% of business in the U.S. (99.9% of the business population / 5.9 million businesses in the UK – FSB figures).  Having a smart inventory-tracking service could, therefore, mean that time and money in manual stock checking can be saved, plus the disruption of running out of a particular item when it’s needed can be avoided.

How Dash Smart Shelf Works

Amazon’s Dash Smart Shelf is a weight-sensing, Wi-Fi-enabled smart scale that looks like a closed laptop. The device is around 1-inch-tall and will be offered in three different sizes – small (7” x 7”), medium (12” x 10”), and large (18” x 13”). Amazon says that the Dash Smart Shelf can work on a range of surfaces e.g. from counter-tops to wire shelving.

The idea being that the Dash Smart Shelf is placed on the shelf where stationery is stored and the stationery e.g. packets of printer paper, sticky tape or pens are stacked (one Smart Shelf per item type) on top of it.  When supplies run low, the Dash Smart Shelf automatically orders more.

Incentive

The Dash Smart Self is for Amazon Business Customers and Amazon is offering them “business-only prices” on certain products, and savings of up to 15 per cent on orders for selected products placed using the new Dash Smart Shelf.

Easy

Amazon says that the Dash Smart Self is easy to set up and only requires a wall plug (included) or four AAA batteries, a connection to your business Wi-Fi and that you are logged in to your Amazon Business account via the web or Amazon Shopping app.

Timescale and Price

Amazon says that the Dash Smart Shelf will be made available first to Amazon Business customers with a registered U.S. business license “starting sometime in 2020”, and no prices have yet been made available.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Amazon makes the point that if you’re in a location far from an office supplies shop, or if you miss a big order (e.g. because  you don’t have a certain sized cable), you will instantly see the value of a product that makes sure that you never run out of essential supplies. This product does appear to have the potential to save time, money and hassle by no longer having to manually monitor stock levels.  However, since this product is aimed SMEs, and one unit will need to be purchased for each office product type and the price per unit Dash Smart Shelf (as yet unknown) is going to be an important consideration. Businesses may wonder how much flexibility they will have in choosing which supplier (via the amazon platform) they can have with the device.

Amazon has made in-roads into our homes and found out much more about us and our listening, viewing and other consumption patterns with smart speakers (Echo), Fire TV, the Ring Doorbell and more, and the Dash Smart Shelf marks a move into our business lives by Amazon. As the company becomes the close, sole supplier of some of our valued home and business services, this should enable Amazon to use the data about us to tailor more services and offers, thereby helping it to increase our loyalty and commitment to Amazon, and further fuelling the growth, power and diversification of this online giant.

With Microsoft’s announcement that it’s Teams product has 20 million daily active users (and growing), sending Slack’s share price downwards (Slack has 12 million users), the battle is well underway in the $3.5 billion chat-based collaborative working software market.

What Is Slack?

Slack, launched in 2013, is a cloud-based set of proprietary team collaboration tools and services. It provides mobile apps for iOS and Android, and is available for the Apple Watch, enabling users to send direct messages, see mentions, and send replies.

Slack teams enable users (communities, groups, or teams) to join through a URL or invitation sent by a team admin or owner. Slack was intended to be an organisational communication tool, but it has gradually morphed into a community platform i.e. it is a business technology that has crossed over into personal use. Slack recently introduced an “email bridge” into its platform that will allow those who only have email to communicate with Slack users.  Back in May last year, ‘Slack’ introduced a new ‘Actions’ feature that made it easier for users to create and finish tasks without leaving by having access to more 3rd party tools.

In October this Year Slack announced that it has 12 million daily active users, which is 2 million increase since January.

What Is Teams?

Teams, announced in November 2016 and launched by Microsoft in 2017, is a platform designed to help collaborative working and combines features such as workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments. Described by Microsoft as a “complete chat and online meetings solution”, it normally integrates with the company’s Office 365 subscription office productivity suite. In July 2018, Microsoft introduced a free, basic features version of Teams which did not require an Office 365 account, in order to increase user numbers and tempt users away from Slack.

Microsoft Teams is also the replacement for Skype for Business Online, the support for which will end on 31 July 2021, and all new Microsoft 365 customers have been getting Microsoft Teams by default from 1 September 2019.

Share Tumble For Slack

Slack’s share value fell earlier this year after it announced that its projected sales growth would be lower for the second half of the year. Slack became a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in June, and investors have been saying that it will need to maintain an impressive growth rate to compete against competitors like Microsoft (with Teams), Alphabet (Google) and Facebook.

The recent announcement by Microsoft that Teams has 20 million daily active users compared to Slack’s 12 million and has increased daily active users by more than 50% from June caused another downward push on Slack’s share value.

Slack’s Challenge – To Get More Large Paying Customers

Slack, which enjoys popularity in the U.S corporate workplace has been trying to emphasise that it is not just a chat/messaging app, but that it can connect to companies’ other applications in a way that can streamline workflows and aid real value addition and savings.  Slack is, however, facing a challenge in convincing big businesses that it is worthy, paid-for alternative to its more well-known competitors, and according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Andrew Eisenson, less than 1% of Slack’s customer base are large customers that spend more than $100,000 a year. One of the problems that Slack has is that although large companies in the US use it and like it, they currently have a free version, so Slack will have to convince them to upgrade to the paid-for version.

Despite having lower user numbers than Teams, some tech commentators have noted that Slack has stickiness and strong user engagement which help to attract businesses that want to get into using workstream collaboration software.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Microsoft has the advantage of a very well-known and trusted brand with huge reach, Teams already integrates with Office 365’s subscription office productivity suite, and there’s now a free version that doesn’t even require an Office 365 account.  Also, Teams is set to replace Skype for Business Online next year, and Microsoft has made sure that Skype for Business Online customers know that Microsoft’s investment and interoperability will make the migration to Teams a fairly painless one.

All this means that Teams appears to be in a very good position to continue what has been a rapid growth this year, and despite Slack’s positive features, Slack will have to fight hard to get big businesses interested in order to compete.

For users, there are now several good collaborative working services to choose from, but at the present time, the facts that investors don’t know when Slack is going to be profitable, coupled with a fall in revenue have led some commentators to think that Teams is looking as though it could come out on top.

A website (and its supporting infrastructure) which sold a variety of hacking tools to other would-be cybercriminals has been closed down after an investigation by agencies from multiple countries including the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

IM-RAT

The main tool that the agencies were particularly interested in eradicating was the Imminent Monitor Remote Access Trojan (IM-RAT) which is a hacking tool, of Australian origin, which has been on sale for 6 years and was available for sale via the Imminent Monitor website.

According to Europol, once installed on a victim’s computer the IM-RAT malware, which could be purchased for as little as $25, allowed cybercriminals to secretly “disable anti-virus and anti-malware software, carry out commands such as recording keystrokes, steal data and passwords and watch the victims via their webcams”.

Big International Operation

The investigation and the operation to shut down the sale of IM-RAT was led by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and involved judicial and law enforcement agencies in Europe, Colombia and Australia, and was coordinated by Europol and Eurojust.

Coordinated law enforcement activity has now ended the availability of IM-RAT, which was used across 124 countries and sold to more than 14 500 buyers. IM-RAT can no longer be used by those who bought it.

In a week of actions (in November), the international agencies dismantled the infrastructure of IM-RAT, arrested 14 of its most prolific users and seized over 430 devices for forensic analysis.

Back in June, search warrants were executed in Australia and Belgium against the developer and one employee of IM-RAT and most recently, actions to fully shut down the distribution of IM-RAT have also been taken in Australia, Colombia,  Czechia, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

In the UK, it has been reported that the NCA searched properties in Hull, Leeds, London, Manchester, Merseyside, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Somerset and Surrey in relation to the investigation.

The shutting down of the whole IM-RAT infrastructure, and the detailed analysis of the malware and the website used to sell it mean that IM-RAT can no longer be used.

Tens of Thousands of Victims

With the IM-RAT malware/hacking tool being so widely used, Europol believes that there are probably tens of thousands of victims around the world, and so far, investigators have been able to find evidence of stolen personal details, passwords, private photographs, video footage and data.

IM-RAT

Although IM-RAT allows cybercriminals to secretly take control of a computer, there are some common signs which indicate that a computer may have been infected with IM-RAT.  These signs include an unusually slow internet connection, unknown processes running in a system (which are visible in the Task Manager, Processes tab), files being modified or deleted without your permission, and unknown programs being installed on your device (visible in the Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs).

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For businesses, this kind of malware caused considerable problems, not least in terms of data protection, disruption, industrial espionage and extortion, and left their devices wide open to hackers. This internationally co-ordinated move by multiple agencies is an important step in the battle against so-called ‘crime as a service’ and bulletproof hosting where organised gangs have sought to profit from crimes that they can carry out from a distance via the Internet.

If you believe that your device may have been infected by IM-RAT, the Europol advice is to disconnect your device from the network in order to prevent any additional malicious activity, install trustworthy security software, and run a scan of your device using security software. When you’re satisfied that you’ve removed the infection, change the passwords for your online accounts and check your banking activity.

Some general steps you can take to guard against falling victim to malware include keeping your anti-virus software and patching up to date, installing a firewall, only using strong passwords (that aren’t shared across different accounts), covering up your webcam when its not in use, regularly backing up your data, and making sure that you don’t open any suspicious-looking emails and attachments even if they do come from people on your contact list.

Tesla’s Elon Musk proudly launched the new ‘Cybertruck’ in front of the world’s media last week, only to find that the distinctly breakable difficult-to-break windows were the main focus of media reports.

Cybertruck

The new Tesla all-electric Cybertruck is a futuristic pickup truck / armoured vehicle which will not be manufactured until late 2021 and will retail for between $39,000 and $76,900.  The Tesla website claims that the Cybertruck features “a nearly impenetrable exoskeleton” and that all of the components are “designed for superior strength and endurance”.  For example, the truck features an “Ultra-Hard” 30X Cold-Rolled stainless-steel structural skin and armour glass (toughened glass).  The smooth steel shell is intended to resist dents, damage and long-term corrosion as well as providing added safety to the truck’s occupants.

Features

Tesla says that the new Cybertruck can accelerate from 0-60 mph in only 2.9 seconds, has up to 500 miles of range (thanks to improved Tesla batteries),  a 3,500 pounds of payload capacity, offers 100 cu ft of “vault-like” storage, has adaptive suspension, and can seat six comfortably.

In addition to the futuristic exterior, the ‘cyber’ aspect of the truck appears to be focused around the 17” touchscreen with a new customized user interface.

That Glass Incident

The embarrassing aspect of the launch that international media outlets chose to focus on was when Tesla’s head of design, Franz von Holzhausen attempted to demonstrate how strong the window glass on the Cybertruck was by throwing a heavy metal ball at two different windows, only to find that both broke (although the ball didn’t end up inside the vehicle in either case).

Orders

Elon Musk tweeted on the Sunday after the Cybertruck’s (Thursday) launch that there had already been 200,000+ orders of the vehicle (with no advertising), but this figure appears to relate to pre-orders of the not-yet manufactured vehicle involving a commitment from potential customers of only $100 deposit (fully refundable).  As any car salesperson could tell you, the small deposit coupled with the long wait for manufacture may be unlikely to produce anywhere near the same number of actual sales as pre-orders.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

There is no doubt that the major car manufacturers are committed to producing electric cars, and Tesla has achieved a great deal in establishing itself as a major player in this market, particularly with its Model 3. Much of the media attention for Tesla, however, has focused on the claims and behaviour of its charismatic leading light and often double-edged sword Elon Musk, who appears to be no stranger to controversy e.g. when he was sued by (and settled with) The US Securities and Exchange Commission for a “false and misleading” tweet about his plans for Tesla that was thought to have upset the market and investors.

Unfortunately, unpredictable and embarrassing events at the launch appear to have slightly overshadowed many of the positive aspects of the Cybertruck. Sir James Dyson also found that his ambition in the electric car market didn’t live up to reality as Dyson recently had to scrap its £2.5 billion ‘N526’ electric car project with Sir James Dyson announcing that it was “not commercially viable”.  It remains to be seen if Tesla’s Cybertruck can achieve the same levels of popularity and approval as its Tesla 3 model.