“Unencumbered data flows are crucial to sustaining the multi-trillion dollar transatlantic economic partnership,” said Computer & Communications Industry Association President Matt Schruers Tuesday about the Senate Commerce Committee’s Wednesday hearing on Privacy Shield (see 2012020065). “Lack of legal clarity over internet data transfers could disrupt a significant segment of the economy, especially to small and medium-sized enterprises.”

Demand for 25 Gbps Ethernet controllers and adapters drove the market to record shipments in Q3, reported the Dell'Oro Group Monday. Nvidia gained share on a “one-time sale” to Huawei before the mid-September sourcing ban from U.S. vendors, it said. More than 3.3 million 25 Gbps Ethernet controllers and adapters ports were shipped, surpassing the previous record set in Q2, it said. Shipments of 50 Gbps Ethernet controller and adapter ports declined from Q2, as some tier 1 cloud service providers entered a “digestion cycle” and reduced their server deployments, it said.

Escalating cyber risks and the shortage of qualified personnel will spike demand for managed and professional security service providers, reported Frost & Sullivan Monday. It forecast the U.S. MSS/PSS market will rise to $18.8 billion by 2024, from $12 billion this year.

Comments are due Feb. 1 on two FTC rulemaking processes (see 2009210054) for “updating the rules and interpretations that implement the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act,” the agency said Monday.

Digital payments company ACI Worldwide reported a 21% year-on-year increase in global e-commerce transactions in November, driven by household items and services, including remote education and training, and insurance for consumer electronics. Data from hundreds of millions of e-commerce transactions from global merchants showed a 30% boost in the retail sector Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday, with the biggest year-on-year spike -- 47% -- that Saturday. Average ticket prices during the five-day span fell 3% to $132. “This year’s holiday season is looking very different from previous years with many merchants starting sales much earlier, as well as continuing promotions beyond the traditional peak days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” said Executive Vice President Debbie Guerra, citing a substantial rise in e-commerce volume before Black Friday. Fraud attempt rates increased slightly to 1.7% by volume and 3.4% by value, similar to prior holiday seasons, said ACI. Nonfraud chargebacks increased by 15% in October vs. April and May due to more people being back at work and call centers better staffed to deal with consumer calls, it said. Consumers should avoid leaving packages on their doorsteps for long periods of time to avoid porch piracy, Guerra said, and they should be vigilant about store pickup scams: “As the buy-online-pick-up-in-store channel continues to experience fast growth driven by the pandemic, it is providing greater opportunity for fraudsters,” she said.

Data analytics provider Splunk endured “continued pressure” in fiscal Q3, ended Oct. 31, from COVID-19 “macro conditions” that resulted in some customers “hesitating to commit to long-term contracts,” said CEO Doug Merritt on a Wednesday investor call. Though cloud revenue of $145 million was 80% higher than in the year-earlier quarter, total revenue declined 11% to $559 million. As Splunk reached the end of October, “we saw a much lower than normal close rate among our largest deals, which caused us to fall short of our bookings target,” said Merritt. “Our third quarter did not meet our expectations.” Despite Q3 results, “I continue to believe that our opportunity is massive and our fundamentals remain strong,” he said. The stock plummeted 23.3% Thursday, closing at $158.03. Since exiting the quarter, Splunk “scrutinized the transaction pipeline and factors impacting our close rates,” said Chief Financial Officer Jason Child. “All indicators point to continued strong demand overall, and we are confident in the eventual closing of delayed transactions in the pipeline, but when they will actually close remains uncertain. As a result, we remain cautious on near-term market dynamics, but confident in our long-term growth trajectory.” Fiscal Q3 featured “the most unusual selling environment we’ve ever seen,” he said. “We believe this is a temporary market condition and the underlying demand remains strong, particularly for cloud.” Bookings that the Splunk sales team thought were in the bag “got stopped” by the customers' CEO, CFO or the board “in the final hours or days of routing for approval,” said Merritt. Looking back quarter over quarter, of “the top 10 deals that we went into a quarter with, we tend to close seven, eight or nine,” he said. “This quarter, we wound up closing three.” Customer personnel who previously had the authority to approve deals “had that authority pulled at the very end” of the quarter, he said. “There were some material, large-term transactions that got pushed.”

Consumers’ “omnichannel buying behavior” will drive 60% of direct-to-consumer brands to move toward “functional, rather than channel-based” organizations by 2025, reported Gartner Thursday. The COVID-19 pandemic “accelerated the blending of physical and digital commerce,” it said. Leading DTC brands in this environment “have proven the efficacy of blending digital and physical channels to support customers’ new preferred methods of shopping and fulfillment, rather than treating web and physical channels as separate entities,” it said. But the omnichannel blend “is not often reflected in marketing organizational structures,” with only 30% of DTC brands reporting they have functional organizational alignment, it said. “Brands hinging their future plans on e-commerce -- and structuring teams accordingly -- should think twice. Brands should take advantage of this time to reorient teams and objectives around a customer-first, channel-agnostic strategy.”

DOJ filed a lawsuit Thursday against Facebook, alleging the platform illegally favored temporary visa holders over U.S. workers. Facebook “engaged in intentional and widespread violations of the law, by setting aside positions for temporary visa holders instead of considering interested and qualified U.S. workers,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. The company’s alleged discrimination concerned some 2,600 positions with an average salary of about $156,000. DOJ investigated for two years and secured a “reasonable cause” determination. “You cannot illegally prefer to recruit, consider, or hire temporary visa holders over U.S. workers,” he said. “Facebook has been cooperating with the DOJ in its review of this issue and while we dispute the allegations in the complaint, we cannot comment further on pending litigation," emailed a spokesperson.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday providing principles for design and development of government’s use of artificial intelligence. The principles were created “to foster public trust and confidence in the use of AI, and ensure that the use of AI protects privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said. The EO's nine principles emphasize that AI must be “lawful; purposeful and performance-driven; accurate, reliable, and effective; safe, secure, and resilient; understandable; responsible and traceable; regularly monitored; transparent; and accountable,” OSTP said.

Though there was much “pull-forward” tech product demand due to the pandemic, Black Friday/Cyber Monday “is still a massive event in consumer spending,” GoPro CEO Nick Woodman told a virtual Wells Fargo investor conference Tuesday. Those days are “still like a ring of the bell for a large percentage of consumers to say, OK, let’s get out our wallets and start shopping,” he said. As for concerns that consumers “weren’t going to show up” for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, “that myth has been dispelled,” he said. GoPro “got comfortable” with its shift to “being more direct-to-consumer because we had good data,” said Woodman. “We’ve been growing our direct business year over year for quite some time. There have been periods of time where certain regions were low on inventory at retail and we saw enormous spikes in our dot-com business.”