5 trending tech news in August 2017 and the lessons every business should learn from them

Uber finally got its new CEO, and he’s going to be earning a hell lot of money

About a week ago, the news reported that Uber board offered Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi the CEO position. And according to Bloomberg data, they would have had to promise Khosrowshahi an incredible sum of money to convince him to join the company. Khosrowshahi received nearly $95 million from Expedia in pay two years ago, which has already made him one of the most highly paid leaders in corporate America. 

The majority of that sum was not a direct salary but came from a package of stock options that the online travel company gave him in March of 2015 and that was expected to vest over several years. Now the media assume, that total yearly compensation for Khosrowshahi as the CEO of Uber can go up to $200 million. By the way, Khosrowshahi is a descendant of immigrants from Iran, which is not uncommon among the Silicon Valley top managers. 

It seems like science and technology are quite natural for Iranians. Check out the interview of another IT-businessman with Iranian background, our partner and good friend Salim Madjd, which he gave for Belarusian tech portal onliner.by earlier this month.

A lesson to learn:

If your business faces problems or considerable changes, don’t hesitate to invest into a talented top-manager to run the venture. His talent and dedication to work might single-handedly get you out of many troubles. And remember the costs of running an app grow way bigger as it becomes more and more successful.

Bitcoin has passed a $4000 mark

Just at the beginning of August Bitcoin jumped over $3000, and made many news feeds with its new all-time record. A few weeks passed, and everyone’s discussing cryptocurrency’s new milestone: 1 Bitcoin is now worth more than $4000. And there are a couple of reasons for the blockchain wonder in recent times: First, at the end of July Bitcoin went through a hard fork, and came out almost completely undamaged.

Sure, a bitcoin-clone called Bitcoin Cash was created, but it’s gotten a lot less hype than most people expected. A few days later Bitcoin locked in SegWit, a code modification that fixes malleability issues and frees up space in blocks, allowing for more transactions to be stored in each one. 

These two code-related events have increased public confidence in Bitcoin’s future, and, accordingly, boosted its value. Another reason – Wall Street’s new bitcoin fashion. You can’t watch financial TV for ten minutes without seeing experts sharing their points on cryptocurrencies – which is usually something insanely bullish like “it’s going to be the best performing investment of the year”. No matter what effect this has on investor’s incomes, the point is: the trend is growing even outside the tech world. 

So what will happen in the future? It’s still rather unknown. Bitcoin could drop under $1000 in a couple of weeks or keep going up until absolutely stellar heights – and either of the scenarios wouldn’t be a surprise. As many men, so many opinions – some say the bitcoin bubble should have popped long ago – others think that bitcoin is still far from its potential maximum value and is still a viable asset to invest in.

A lesson to learn:

No matter what future awaits Bitcoin and its users, one thing is for sure - it’s an incredibly hot topic. And blockchain is actually a great technology which can be used in many spheres. So, if you want to strike while the iron is hot and would like to find out who makes blockchain projects and how much blockchain development costs, contact us!

Google acquires the creators of FabbyHair - a startup from Belarus

Just like blockchain, computer vision is also a very popular technology at the moment. It both plays a great role in trendy entertainment projects and attracts the attention of large IT companies. 

Just a couple of weeks ago Google proved that point by acquiring AIMatter, a startup founded in Belarus that has built both a neural network-based AI platform and SDK to detect and process images quickly on mobile devices, and a photo and video editing app that has served as a proof-of-concept of the tech called Fabby. Terms of the deal remain secret, but what important to know, is that AIMatter is the first software development company from Belarus acquired by a tech giant without relocation to the Western world. 

And it’s another project overseen by Yuri Gurski, which follows the trail of MSQRD, Maps.me, Prisma and some other really successful projects under his guidance. Way to go, Yuri!

A lesson to learn:

Once again: keep your eye on developers and startups from Belarus: there are many hidden gems in this country. If you’d like to know, how good are Belarusian specialists are or how much does enterprise mobile app development cost, contact us and we'll answer all the questions!

Another big player on the automotive AI market

Several famous names in the tech industry at once have teamed up with Toyota to work on developing big data systems to advance self-driving vehicles and further automotive progress. Denso, Ericsson, Intel, and NTT Docomo joined forces with one of the largest car producers in the world to announce the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium. 

The venture announced its plans to add “relevant global technology leaders” to its membership later this year. The companies have come together to tackle existing and potential issues around data usage in connected cars of the future, a critical component for the perspectives of real-time mapping, assisted driving and other services yet to be implemented. 

Handling the huge volumes of data in a quick, reliable and secure manner is essential for the future of self-driving vehicles. “It is estimated that the data volume between vehicles and the cloud will reach 10 exabytes per month around 2025, approximately 10,000 times larger than the present volume. This expected increase will trigger the need for new architectures of network and computing infrastructure to support distributed resources and topology-aware storage capacity,” the group said in a statement. To give a decent perspective, 10 exabytes is 10 billion gigabytes — a lot of data indeed.

A lesson to learn:

Staying on the cutting edge of technologies is critical for businesses nowadays, so if you feel like you can’t keep up with expensive R&D - collaborate. Make an alliance with fellow businesses or even apparent rivals - together you’re able to create better tech products.

HBO got hacked in the middle of GoT season

In a statement to Entertainment Weekly about a month ago, HBO confirmed that it had been hacked, and the leaks from this hack have been shown around the Web throughout August. In particular, Internet users were able to download several episodes of the fresh “Game of Thrones” season. Fortunately, thanks to efficient PR work and generally loyal HBO audience, the finale of the season still hit its best viewership numbers, and the iOS and Android versions of the HBO NOW mobile app have together generated $19 million in U.S. revenue for the two months containing the airing of “Game of Thrones” Season 7, as of Monday, August 21. Following the major Sony hack back in 2014, entertainment giants remain somewhat nervous about this sort of thing. Still, given the scale of production, level of secrecy and vast room for human error surrounding new film and TV releases, it’s a wonder that anything manages to premiere without first popping up online.

A lesson to learn:

Don’t worry about hackers and pirates. If your project is good, you’ll still have enough customers ready to reward you for your work. But still, better keep your data secure.