With more and more companies wanting to bring employees back to the office, I pointed out last week the ill-kept secret that there’s a widespread aversion to open office floor plans — or activity-based workplaces, as they have often evolved into today — and that it partially explains why many employees want to continue remote and hybrid work. 

This is not rocket science. For many years, it has been the consensus in the research community that open office landscapes are bad for both the work environment and employee performance. (There’s really no need for research at all — just talk to workers. They hate it.)

To be honest, open office environments are not downright bad. But it takes the right business, and the right type of people, for them to work. For example, I work in an industry where the ideal image is a teeming newsroom, where creative angles and news hooks are thrown back and forth, just as you see in a movie.

Even so, you don’t have to go back more than two or three decades to a time when most journalists, even in large newsrooms, had their own offices. That’s how Swedish offices used to look, people had their own rooms — not “cubicles,” but real rooms, with a door, and a small Do Not Disturb lamp. There was desk, pictures of the children (and maybe the dog), a plant and a small radio. It was a place where you could feel at home, even at work.

Then real estate development took over and today only 19% of office workers in Stockholm have their own space. The largest proportion, 42%, have no place of their own at all. And, according to researchers, it is the real estate companies that have been driving the transition to open office landscapes. 

It’s easy to see why: an open floor plan is, of course, much more surface-efficient than one with walls and corridors; it is much easier to scale up or down based on the tenants’ needs; and you can house more and larger companies in attractive locations in the city rather than large office complexes in the suburbs.

It’s not just the real estate industry’s fault. A little over 10 years ago, “activity-based offices” — otherwise known as hot-desking — arrived. Workers have neither their own room or desk. And here, the tech industry has taken the lead. 

When Microsoft rebuilt an office in Akalla in 2012, execs themselves called it one of the first large activity-based offices in Sweden, and it helped spark a trend where even the traditional companies and organizations adopted the “cool” scene from startup environments and Silicon Valley companies. (Puffs! European stools!) The office quickly evolved from cool to corporate.

Researchers actually welcomed the shift, as it at least gave people an opportunity to find a quieter place if they were disturbed or to avoid sitting next to colleagues they didn’t like. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we know what happened next. Many people discovered how nice it is to work in their own room, at their own desk, that picture of the children, with maybe the dog at your feet, a plant nearby and some music. You didn’t need the Do Not Disturb light and there were no chattering colleagues.

As a Stockholm Chamber of Commerce’s survey found: 46% say that permanent workplaces in the office have become more important, and 45% of younger people would come in more if they had better opportunities for undisturbed work. (Whether it’s correlation or causality, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most important selling point for headphones these days is how good their noise canceling is. It makes public transportation bearable, certainly, and with headphones, you create your own room — even at work.)

As a result of these recent trends, property owners and companies alike find themselves in a tricky, but self-inflicted, position. To say the least, property owners have begun to see the disadvantages of the open solutions they pushed: vacancies in downtown office buildings are skyrocketing as tenants have reduced office space after the transition to hybrid work.

Yes, companies see the chance to save money by reducing office space, especially if employees aren’t there all the time anyway. But at the same time, they want their workers to be in the office more. And the employees say, “Okay, but then I would like to have my own place, preferably my own room.”

Of course, that equation doesn’t add up. And this is where the whole “return to office” trend is brought to a head. If company culture, creativity and productivity are so critical that employees need to be forced back into the office, how far are companies willing to go?

How big does the office space need to be, if everyone is to be there basically at the same time — if half also need their own desk to be productive, perhaps even a room of their own? 

Property owners and landlords would rejoice, but how many companies want to take on that cost? Very few, I would think.

Perhaps that tells us just how important a forced return to offices really is.

This column is taken from CS Veckobrev, a personal newsletter with reading tips, link tips and analyzes sent directly from Computerworld Sweden Editor-in-Chief Marcus Jerräng’s desk. Do you also want the newsletter on Fridays?  Sign up for a free subscription here.

An unbootable PC is every remote worker’s nightmare. It usually means they need hands-on support that they’re not likely to find in their home office or neighborhood Starbucks.

Now there’s hope that even that catastrophe can be corrected remotely. At its Imagine event in Palo Alto, California on Tuesday, HP announced what it calls the industry’s first out-of-band diagnostics and remediation capability that will enable remote technicians to connect, diagnose, and fix problems, even if the PC won’t boot.

The service, launching Nov. 1, lets a technician, with permission from the user, connect to a virtual KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) under the BIOS/UEFI to run diagnostics and take remedial action. With the service, a tech could have corrected the CrowdStrike issue by replacing the flawed configuration file from the bad update, for example, and could even reimage the machine if necessary.

Marcos Razon, division president of lifecycle services and customer support at HP, said that the goal is to address 70%-80% of issues without requiring a stable operating system.

However, not all PCs will benefit, as the service relies on the Intel vPro chip more typically found in commercial PCs.

“Within the vPro chipset, you have a lightweight processor, a secondary processor that can access what in the past was called BIOS, but now it’s more UEFI,” Razon explained. “What this secondary processor allows us to do is to go under the BIOS before the booting process happens and take control of the machine.”

A security code must be accepted by the PC’s user before the technician can take control. “We don’t want anybody to access a PC without being able to secure that PC,” Razon said.

Constant virtual KVM

“The beauty of it is that we have a constant virtual KVM below the BIOS/UEFI,” he said.

The catch with existing remote-control programs is they need a PC that has successfully booted a stable operating system: “What happens is that if the PC has not booted completely, and the operating system is not running perfectly, you will not be able to take control of that PC,” he said.

Mahmoud Ramin, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, is impressed.

“Endpoint management tools usually fall short when a user faces serious problems with their hardware, such as boot failures and BIOS errors. Out-of-band technology can revolutionize remote endpoint management through bypassing operating systems and managing endpoints at the hardware level,” he said. “This innovation can help resolver groups seamlessly and immediately provide support to end users, reduce downtime by minimizing onsite visits, and enhance shift-left strategy through increased automation. HP’s out-of-band remediation capabilities can position it as a leader in remote endpoint support.”

The new service will be offered as an add-on to an HP Essential, Premium or Premium+ Support package with the purchase of any new vPro-enabled HP PC, the company said in a release. It will be extended to older HP commercial PCs in the coming months. It will initially be available in North America and the European Union, with rollout to other regions following. Razon said that the cost will be about US$12 per machine, per year, and HP is also working on a version for AMD processors, which it expects to release in the first half of 2025.

If you or your business happen to be nursing any hopes that Apple Intelligence will launch in Europe sooner rather than later, take a rain check on that AI expectation: Apple has failed to agree to a non-binding European Union pact to control artificial intelligence deployment.

Given the company is apparently in meetings with regulators with a view to clarifying how Europe’s DMA (Digital Markets Act) would be applied to its AI service, the fact it hasn’t (yet) signed on the dotted line suggests we’ll be waiting for it to reach Europe.

The EU AI pact has been inked by many other big tech firms; Adobe, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Palantir, and Samsung are among 115 companies who’ve signed the document.

The EU AI Pact is a voluntary pledge to develop safe, trusted AI. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology with numerous beneficial effects. Yet, its advancement brings also potential risks,” the pact explains. 

Neither Apple nor Meta have signed up

Interestingly, Apple isn’t alone — Meta hasn’t signed either. Nor have TikTok, Anthropic, or Mistral. 

Meta did, however, say it has not ruled out joining the pact down the road, according to Politico: “We also shouldn’t lose sight of AI’s huge potential to foster European innovation and enable competition, or else the EU will miss out on this one-in-a-generation opportunity,” Meta said.

The company has been critical of a lack of harmonization concerning AI implementation on a global scale.

What does the pact do?

The goal here is to put checks and balances in place around how AI is introduced in Europe. Signatories have agreed to comply with new European AI rules (the AI Act) which will be introduced in the coming years. 

The pledges include a commitment to:

• Establish AI governance strategies to foster the uptake of AI in the organization and work towards future compliance with the AI Act.
• High-risk AI systems mapping: Identifying AI systems likely to be categorized as high-risk under the AI Act. Those systems might be AI handling infrastructure, safety, or law enforcement, for example.
• Promote AI literacy and awareness among staff, ensuring ethical and responsible AI development.

Additional pledges are voluntary, even within the agreement. These include a commitment to human oversight of AI and to ensure AI-generated content is clearly labeled as such. 

Where is Apple Intelligence?

Apple hasn’t said anything about all this, though it seems relevant to note that since it doesn’t yet offer Apple Intelligence in the EU, the company may not feel a need to do so. 

In the US, where Apple Intelligence is available, Apple in July agreed to a US presidential order governing AI technology. Elements of that agreement seem to echo those coming from the EU.

On reflection, it is possible that Apple’s acquiescence to the deal depends only on achieving a successful agreement regarding how the DMA will be applied to Apple Intelligence in the region. Apple CEO Tim Cook in August explained that the company is engaged with EU regulators, saying: “Our objective is to move as fast as we can, obviously, because our objective is always to get features out there for everyone. We have to understand the regulatory requirements before we can commit to doing that and commit a schedule to doing that, but we’re very constructively engaged with both.”

Don’t hold your breath?

While it is fair to note that the EU AI pact is different from the implementation of the EU DMA on Apple Intelligence, it’s hard not to think that Apple’s non-appearance as a signatory suggests more discussion is required before Apple launches its service in the region. If it even does.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last week announced that the company’s more than 350,000 office workers will be required to work in the office five days a week by default. Jassy’s reasoning: ​​the move will result in better work.

But a new survey conducted by Blind, a forum for verified IT workers, asked 2,585 Amazon employees what they think about the change and that fully 91% don’t like the office requirement. And 73% will consider changing jobs because of the edict.

Blind writes that the change can particularly affect Amazon employees who are parents by removing flexibility and independence, as well as workers who were hired to work remotely or received adjustments for more flexible working hours.

The new arrangement is supposed to take effect on Jan. 2, 2025.

The tech industry has changed dramatically since Bill Gates and Microsoft introduced the Windows operating system in 1985.  While other tech giants (at the time) — including Compaq, Lotus, and Netscape — were eventually acquired, Microsoft has continued to adapt and thrive, buying companies along the way as it sought to grow.

Microsoft, of course, is much more than a survivor. Its strategic acquisitions helped it both diversify its revenue streams and strengthen its position in a variety of markets. In fact, since it was founded in 1975, Microsoft has been one of the industry’s most acquisitive companies — with a body count of approaching  300 — dating back to 1982 when it bought Xenix, a Unix-based operating system. The company’s biggest acquisition by far wasn’t an enterprise one, however. In 2022, it purchased digital game development company Activision Blizzard in a cash deal worth $68.7 billion.

Other key acquisitions include the 2016 deal to buy Groove Networks to enhance its enterprise collaboration offerings. That collaboration-focused buying spree also included acquiring Skype in 2010, the popular VoIP and video communication service that was perhaps a precursor to its Teams communications platform; the 2011 acquisition of Yammer, a popular enterprise social networking platform; and the 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion — it’s biggest acquisition to date at the time.

In 2018, in a move to solidify its commitment to developers, Microsoft shelled out $7.5 billion to snag GitHub, the popular code-sharing site and staple of the developer community.

Three years later, in 2021, Microsoft upped its game in conversational AI and speech recognition with Nuance Communications. In 2023, it acquired Fungible, a provider of composable infrastructure that uses low-power data processing units (DPUs).

Not every deal is a clearcut success; take, for example, Microsoff’s quasi-merger with Inflection. While Microsoft didn’t technically acquire the AI startup, it hired the core team and bought additional assets, including access to Inflection IP. And there were false-starts such as its talks to acquire Yahoo and SAP and its ill-fated decision to buy Nokia.

Here’s a sampling of our coverage of Microsoft mergers and acquisitions over the years; watch this page for the latest information on new Microsoft mergers and acquisitions as they arise.

Microsoft’s latest OpenAI investment opens way to new enterprise services

Jan. 23, 2023: OpenAI landed billions of dollars more funding from Microsoft to continue its development of generative AI (genAI) tools such as Dall-E 2 and ChatGPT. It’s a move that’s likely to unlock similar investments from competitors — Google in particular — and open the way for new or improved software tools for enterprises large and small. The deal is likely to shake up the market for AI-based enterprise services, said Rajesh Kandaswamy, distinguished analyst and fellow at Gartner: “It provides additional impetus for Google to relook at its roadmap. It’s the same for other competitors like AWS.”

Microsoft to acquire Fungible for augmenting Azure networking, storage

April 4, 2023: Microsoft acquired composable infrastructure services provider Fungible for an undisclosed amount in an effort to augment its Azure networking and storage services. Microsoft’s Fungible acquisition is aimed at accelerating networking and storage performance in data centers with high-efficiency, low-power data processing units (DPUs), Girish Bablani, corporate vice president, Azure Core, wrote in a blog post.  

Did Microsoft make a bad $69B bet on Activision Blizzard?

Dec. 27, 2022: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” the philosopher George Santayana warned 120 years ago. An even better-known philosopher, former Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, put it more succinctly: “It’s déjà vu, all over again.” This refers to the antitrust battle Microsoft is waging with the US government over the company’s $69 billion agreement to buy game-maker Activision Blizzard. More than 30 years ago, Microsoft fought the feds in another antitrust suit over whether the software maker was using Windows’ monopolistic market share to kill competitors.

Microsoft to optimize process automation stack with Minit acquisition

April 4, 2022: Microsoft bought Minit, a developer of process mining software, to help its customers optimize business processes across the enterprise, on and off Microsoft Power Platform. The move came just days after Celonis announced its purchase of Process Analytics Factory to boost its own process mining offering on Microsoft Power Platform — and in the same week that SAP unveiled new functionality for Signavio, the process mining tool it acquired barely a year earlier, pulling together data on process performance and customer experience.

The Microsoft-Nuance Deal: A new push for voice technology?

April 21, 2021: Microsoft’s decision to acquire speech-recognition firm Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion, the company’s biggest purchase since forking out $26 billion for LinkedIn, could provide a real boost for voice technology, analysts said. Microsoft, in a statement touting the deal, pointed to Nuance’s use of “cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence” in the healthcare industry. (Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later stressed that point in a webcast to talk about the purchase.)

Microsoft looks to give Yammer a new lease on life; can it?

Feb. 28, 2020: While Teams might be the focal point of Microsoft’s current collaboration strategy, Yammer — the enterprise social network it acquired in 2012 for $1.2 billion — hasn’t been exactly left for dead. In fact, Microsoft unveiled a complete redesign of the enterprise social network at its 2019 Ignite conference, offering up a new user interface based on Microsoft’s Fluent Design system, smart news feed recommendations, and tighter integration with Outlook, SharePoint and, of course, Teams. 

Microsoft buys GitHub for $7.5 billion

June 4, 2018: After several days of rumors to the effect, Microsoft announced plans to acquire code-sharing site GitHub for $7.5 billion. With the move, Microsoft planned to accelerate enterprise use of the platform, which holds repositories for open source software projects of all kinds, including software sponsored by Microsoft rivals such as Apple and Oracle. Although it has not been profitable, GitHub has generated revenues through private repositories and an on-premises version called GitHub Enterprise.

Microsoft’s Xamarin acquisition opens door to truly universal Windows apps

Feb. 24, 2016: After years of “will they, won’t they” speculation, Microsoft finally announced it would purchase Xamarin, the company that brought native Android and iOS development into Visual Studio. By building on .Net and C#, Xamarin provided Windows developers with an easy route to building applications outside the Windows ecosystem, without alienating users.

Microsoft writes off $7.6B, admits failure of Nokia acquisition

July 9, 2015: Microsoft today wrote off billions of dollars related to its Nokia acquisition, saying it’s taking an “impairment charge” of $7.6 billion, or nearly the full amount it paid for the Finnish firm’s smartphone business and patents in 2014. The announcement slapped the failure sticker on the last major move made by former CEO Steve Ballmer, who pushed for the Nokia deal in his final months in office against objections by, among others, Satya Nadella before he was elevated to the chief executive’s chair.

Microsoft is buying LinkedIn, but what’s the real motive?

June 13, 2016: In a move that resounded in an echo chamber, Microsoft bought the most well-known and useful social network for business, and it was quite an earth-shattering deal. Then company paid $26.2B in cash, or $196 per share. The LinkedIn deal was approved by both boards, but still needs to go through a regulatory approval process.

Microsoft abandons Yahoo acquisition

May 3, 2008: Microsoft has dropped its nearly three-month-long pursuit of Yahoo, ending a historic acquisition attempt whose failure takes Microsoft back to square one in its quest to boost its online business to better compete against Google. In response, Yahoo issued a statement reiterating its position that Microsoft’s offer was too low. (It also said that many Yahoo shareholders agreed with its position.) “We believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said.

Microsoft, SAP say they considered merging

June 7, 2004: As part of its bid for a foothold in the enterprise applications market, Microsoft initiated merger discussions with enterprise resource planning leader SAP. The talks ended after Microsoft decided the deal, and the post-union integration, would be too risky.

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle recently as some endpoint security service providers complain that macOS Sequoia has broken their products in some way. 

Even if true, what I can’t figure out is why these problems were not identified during the extensive beta testing period, and if they were, why no one fixed them and why customers weren’t warned about the problems by vendors before the new OS shipped.

But the experience is inconsistent

Look at it this way: While products from some security vendors appear to have been affected by changes in how Sequoia handles networking, other systems seem to be compatible — though an update is required.

Reports emerged soon after Sequoia shipped last week claiming that security products from CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft, and others had stopped working properly. The reasons for the problems seem to relate to changes in networking, according to security researcher Patrick Wardle. It seems some network settings must be changed to enable the security software to function.

According to Wardle, Apple was made aware of the problems. “Apple 100% knew about this,” he wrote.

But the issue appears to be different for different vendors. For example, while SentinelOne products were reportedly affected at first, the company says nothing about this, instead warning users last week to upgrade to the latest version of their security agent. 

“Our engineering teams have been working hard over the summer to ensure that SentinelOne was ready to support macOS 15 on the day of release. Our extensive beta testing has resulted in support with macOS Agent version 24.2.2,” they said. “Customers are reminded that, as always, it is vital to update the agent to the supported version prior to upgrading the OS.” 

Some might think that SentineOne’s warning hints that the problems faced by endpoint security tools is repairable with a software patch. After all, ESET is also telling users to upgrade their security to version 7 or later for Sequoia compatibility.

However, Microsoft and CrowdStrike (who I suppose had other things on their mind in recent weeks), are currently warning users not to upgrade to macOS Sequoia pending some kind of fix.

What is the problem?

Researcher Will Dormann pointed to firewall- and DNS-related issues as the culprit. He explains that using Sequoia’s built-in firewall to block incoming connections might also block replies to DNS requests.

All the same, what I find difficult to understand is why security companies failed to adequately flag these issues during the beta testing process, or, if they did, failed to warn users that problems might emerge. It is, after all, unlikely that Apple would make any additional changes to the OS after the release of the final RC (Release Candidate) during beta testing.

With that in mind, surely developers should already have tested their solutions and identified any potential problems. That some have already updated their software to be compatible with Sequoia suggests that’s possible. If that’s true, why did other security developers fail to keep pace? (The Register claims Apple was made aware of the problems, but no fix emerged.)

Apple hasn’t said anything. It probably should.

Problems happen, so fix them fast

In the end, perhaps it doesn’t matter where the problem comes from, as long as it is soon fixed.

After all, any customer relying on third-party endpoint security services to maintain security on the world’s most inherently secure computer platform deserves to know those services do what they say they’ll do.

If you are affected by this problem, check with your vendor and delay updating to Sequoia until they provide a compatibility update. While you’re at it, you might want to ask them just how much of their engineering resources were allocated to beta testing Sequoia prior to its release, and why advanced warning of any identified problems was not given.

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Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon has shown interest in acquiring crisis-stricken competitor Intel, according to report by Reuters.

In recent days, representatives of both parties reportedly met to discuss a possible takeover, but any agreement will take time to iron out. Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times also reported on the talks between Qualcomm and Intel.

Exactly how Qualcomm would be able to afford Intel is unclear; the company is said to be sitting on $13 billion in cash, but Intel’s market capitalization is $188 billion.

As recently as six years ago, Qualcomm, in turn, was on the verge of being acquired by Broadcom. That deal was stopped by the US government.