Good morning. The three year effort to integrate the IT systems of American Airlines and the former US Airways reaches another milestone this weekend as American shifts the planes and pilots to a single operating system. They will use American’s massive flight operating system, which runs 500 applications. WSJ’s Susan Carey has the story.
American CIO Maya Leibman says the effort is even larger than the integration of reservation and frequent-flyer programs, both of which went smoothly. Flight attendants will be transitioned onto FOS later. Once that occurs, “we’ll be 75% done on merger integration,” she said. Next up: merging separate IT systems used by mechanics. If that isn’t enough work, Ms. Liebman also manages a massive shift to the cloud, as CIO Journal reported earlier this month.
The goal, of course, isn’t IT integration but business integration. Going forward, pilots from both pre-merger companies can fly in the same cockpit. How are your IT integrations going? Let us know.
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
Yahoo breach raises questions about password resets. Deploying an automatic password reset in the wake of a cyberattack, a move Yahoo Inc. has so far avoided after data on 500 million customer accounts was breached, may wind up locking users out of their email accounts, online security experts say. “But forcing users to reset passwords for their main email accounts isn’t so easy,” writes CIO Journal’s Angus Loten. Online services that depend on email for password resets are also at risk. “It’s not just Yahoo email data at risk here,” said Billy Rios, a former Microsoft Corp. security program manager and founder of security startup Laconicly.
Social media data could hold clues about coming cyberattacks. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA, has launched a multi-year research and development project to create technologies that could provide an early-warning system for detecting precursors to cyberattacks, writes CIO Journal’s Steve Rosenbush. Researchers see promise in analyzing social media data and other “unconventional sensors” to search for subtleties in human behavior that could indicate security threats.
Lufthansa sweeps up customer data to improve service. Sensors, smartwatches and other wearables send a valuable stream of data from flyers to the airline, says Roland Schütz, CIO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Lufthansa recently deployed beacons at the Munich airport that guide passengers around the terminal through an interactive map in the airline’s mobile app.“We need to focus on the entire customer journey – the travel experience from reservation to arrival,” Mr. Schütz said in a conversation with Angus Loten in CIO Journal.
Wal-Mart eyes Indian startup Flipkart for investment. The world’s biggest retailer wants a stronger foothold in Asia by investing in e-commerce company Flipkart Ltd.,according to The Journal. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., seeking to compete with Amazon.com Inc., recently closed a $3.3 billion deal to buy online retailer Jet.com. Wal-Mart’s e-commerce sales last year reached nearly $14 billion, or 3% of its total revenue of $482 billion, but quarterly e-commerce growth has slowed in recent years.
Yahoo hackers may have been criminals, not state-sponsored. According to one security researcher, InfoArmor Inc., hackers known as Group E appear to have sold the entire Yahoo database of 500 million records three times, including once to a state-sponsored organization, writes Robert McMillan in The Journal. The hack, says InfoArmor, was not performed by a group acting on behalf of a government, as Yahoo contends. The security firm believes the hackers are from Eastern Europe.
How we soured on the BlackBerry. The once-essential BlackBerry communications tool, and one of the world’s leading brands, was outpaced by its competitors in a few short years. After hitting a peak of 52.3 million handset sales in 2011, it is barely on the radar with 3.2 million in handset sales in the most recent fiscal year, reports The Journal’s Jacquie McNish, tracing the life and now near-lifelessness of the device. BlackBerry Ltd.gave up producing its namesake product on Wednesday, outsourcing that work instead. Click through the slides of BlackBerrys through the ages.
Citigroup teams with rival banks to fight Venmo. Peer-to-peer payments and other digital systems for moving money between individuals are worrying big banks. Citigroup Inc. joined clearXchange, a real-time money movement network building Zelle, a mobile payments app expected out next year, writes Telis Demos in The Wall Street Journal.Other clearXchange members include Wells Fargo & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. andBank of America Corp.
Samsung is now dealing with potentially injurious washing machines. In the midst of recalling 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, Samsung Electronics Co. is in “active discussions” with U.S. officials about complaints that its washing machines can cause injuries or property damage, reports The Journal’s Trisha Thadani. Some top-loading machines made between March 2011 and April 2016 pose safety issues “in rare cases,” the company said, from “abnormal vibrations.” The models are the WA400 and WA500 lines, according to a lawsuit.
Apple and Deloitte to lobby CIOs. Apple Inc. and Deloitte & Touche LLP plan to advise businesses about how best to use Apple’s mobile devices through a service called Enterprise Next, writes WSJ’s Robert McMillan. The deal follows others Apple has struck in the past two years with International Business Machines Corp., SAP SE and others. Apple wants to make its phones and tablets more central to enterprise computing as sales of its devices have stumbled recently.
EVERYTHING ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday that there is “no fixed timetable” for raising interest rates. (WSJ)
Three Senators ask SEC to investigate Wells Fargo & Co. for possibly misleading investors or violating whistleblower protections. (WSJ)
Prospective OPEC deal lifts stocks with investors hoping for an agreement to cut production levels.
The U.S. government will stay open through early December as Congress passes a short-term spending bill.
[SOURCE:-The wall Street Journal]