Personal blog of Yzmir Ramirez

Clear and structured bug, improvement, and new feature request reports are always helpful for validating and fixing issues. In a few cases, we have received these reports with incomplete information which can cause a delay in the verification of issues. The most effective method to avoid this situation is to ensure complete information about the issue when filing a report.

In this post we will discuss:

• The best ways to report an issue for Percona products
• Including a “how to reproduce” test case to verify the issue
• The purpose of bug/improvement/new feature verification

https://jira.percona.com is the central place to report a bug/improvement/new feature request for all Percona products.

Let’s first discuss a few important entries which you should update when reporting an issue.

Project: The product name for which you wish to report an issue.

Issue Type: Provides options for the type of request. Example: Bug/Improvement/New Feature Request.

Summary: Summary of the issue which will serve as the title. It should be a one-line summary.

Affects Version/s: The version number of the Percona software for which you are reporting an issue.

Description: This field is to describe your issue in detail. Issue description should be clear and concise.

Bug report:

• Describe the actual issue.
• Add test case/steps to reproduce the issue if possible.
• If a crash bug, provide my.cnf and error log as additional information along with the details mentioned in this blog_post.
• In some cases, the supporting file for bug reports such as a coredump, sqldump, or error log is prohibitively large. For these cases, we have an SFTP server where these files can be uploaded.

      Documentation bug:

• Provide the documentation link, describe what is wrong, and suggest how the documentation could be improved.

Improvement/New Feature  Request:

• For new features, describe the need and use case. Include answers to such questions as “What problem it will solve?” and “How will it benefit the users?”
• In the case of improvements, mention what is problematic with the current behavior. What is your expectation as an improvement in a particular product feature?

Note: When reporting an issue, be sure to remove/replace sensitive information such as IP addresses, usernames, passwords, etc. from the report description and attached files.

Upstream Bugs:

Percona Server for MySQL and Percona Server for MongoDB are patched versions of their upstream codebases. It is possible that the particular issue originated from the upstream version. For these products, it would be helpful if the reporter also checks upstream for the same issue. If issues exist upstream, use the following URLs to report an issue for these respective products.

MySQL: https://bugs.mysql.com
MongoDB: https://jira.mongodb.org

If you are a Percona customer, please file a support request to let us know how the bug affects you.

Purpose of Bug/Improvement/New Feature Request verification

• Gather the required information from the reporter and identify whether the reported issue is a valid bug/improvement/new feature.
• For bugs, create a reproducible test case. To effectively address, the bug must be repeatable on demand.

Any incorrect assumptions can break other parts of the code while fixing a particular bug; this is why the verification process is important to identify the exact problem. Another benefit of having a reproducible test case is that it can then be used to verify the fix.

While feature requests and improvements are about ideas on how to improve Percona products, they still need to be verified. We need to ensure that behavior reported as a new feature or improvement:

• Is not a bug
• Is not implemented yet
• For new feature verification, we also check whether there is an existing, different way to achieve the same.

Once bugs, improvement, and new features are validated, the issue status will be “Open” and it will move forward for implementation.

WhatsApp has so far relied on past dealings with bad players within its platform to ramp up its efforts to curtail spam and other automated behavior. The Facebook -owned giant has now announced an additional step it plans to take beginning later this year to improve the health of its messaging service: going after those whose mischievous activities can’t be traced within its platform.

The messaging platform, used by more than 1.5 billion users, confirmed on Tuesday that starting December 7 it will start considering signals off its platform to pursue legal actions against those who are abusing its system. The company will also go after individuals who — or firms that — falsely claim to have found ways to cause havoc on the service.

The move comes as WhatsApp grapples with challenges such as spam behavior to push agendas or spread of false information on its messaging service in some markets. “This serves as notice that we will take legal action against companies for which we only have off-platform evidence of abuse if that abuse continues beyond December 7, 2019, or if those companies are linked to on-platform evidence of abuse before that date,” it said in an FAQ post on its site.

A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed the change to TechCrunch, adding, “WhatsApp was designed for private messaging, so we’ve taken action globally to prevent bulk messaging and enforce limits on how WhatsApp accounts that misuse WhatsApp can be used. We’ve also stepped up our ability to identify abuse, which helps us ban 2 million accounts globally per month.”

Earlier this year, WhatsApp said (PDF) it had built a machine learning system to detect and weed out users who engage in inappropriate behavior such as sending bulk messages or creating multiple accounts with intention to harm the service. The platform said it was able to assess the past dealings with problematics behaviors to ban 20% of bad accounts at the time of registration itself.

But the platform is still grappling to contain abusive behavior, a Reuters report claimed last month. The news agency reported about tools that were readily being sold in India for under $15 that claimed to bypass some of the restrictions that WhatsApp introduced in recent months.

TechCrunch understands that with today’s changes, WhatsApp is going after those same set of bad players. It has already started to send cease and desist letters to marketing companies that claim to abuse WhatsApp in recent months, a person familiar with the matter said.

Dropbox is evolving from a file-storage system to an enterprise software portal, where you can coordinate work with your team. Today the company launches a new version of Dropbox that allows you to launch apps with shortcuts for G Suite and more, plus use built-in Slack message-sending and Zoom video calls. It lets you search across all your files on your device and inside your other enterprise tools, and communicate and comment on your team’s work. Dropbox is also becoming a task manager, with the ability to add notes and tag co-workers in to-do lists attached to files.

The new Dropbox launches today for all of its 13 million business users across 400,000 teams plus its consumer tiers. Users can opt-in here for early access and businesses can turn on early access in their admin panel. “The way we work is broken,” CEO Drew Houston said to cue up the company’s mission statement: “to design a more enlightened way of working.”

Dropbox seems to have realized that file storage by itself is a dying business. With storage prices dropping and any app being able to add their own storage system, it needed to move up the enterprise stack and become a portal that opens and organizes your other tools. Becoming the enterprise coordination layer is a smart strategy, and one that it seems Slack was happy to partner into rather than building itself.

As part of the update, Dropbox is launching a new desktop app for all users so it won’t have to live inside your Mac or Windows file system. When you click a file, you can see a preview and presence data about who has viewed it, who is currently and who has access.

The launch includes deep integrations with Slack, so you can comment on files from within Dropbox, and Zoom, so you can video chat without leaving the workspace. Web and enterprise app shortcuts relieve you from keeping all your other tools constantly open in other tabs. Dropbox’s revamped search tool lets you crawl across your computer’s file system and all your cloud storage across other productivity apps.

But what’s most important about today’s changes is that Dropbox is becoming a task-management app. Each file lets you type out descriptions, to-do lists and tag co-workers to assign them tasks. An Activity Feed per file shows comments and actions from co-workers so you don’t have to collaborate in a separate Google Doc or Slack channel.

When asked about how Dropbox decided who to partner with (Slack, Zoom) versus who to copy (Asana), VP of biz dev Billy Blau essentially dodged the question while citing the “shared ethos” of Dropbox’s partners.

Houston kicked off the San Francisco launch event by pointing out that it’s easier to find info from the public than our own company’s knowledge that’s scattered across our computers and the cloud. The “Finder” on our computers hasn’t evolved to embrace a post-download era. He described how people spend 60% of our office time on work about work, like organization and communication, instead of actually working — a marketing angle frequently used by task-management startup Asana that Dropbox is now competing with more directly. “We’re going to help you get a handle on all this ‘work about work,’ ” Dropbox writes. Yet Asana has been using that phrase as a core of its messaging since 2013.

Now Dropbox wants to be your file tree, your finder and your desktop for the cloud. The question is whether files are always the central unit of work that comments and tasks should be pegged to, or whether it should be the task and project at the center of attention with files attached.

It will take some savvy onboarding and persistence to retrain teams to see Dropbox as their workspace instead of their computer’s desktop or their browser. But if it can become the identity and collaboration layer that connects the fragmented enterprise software, it could outlive file storage and stay relevant as new office tools emerge.

It’s been just over a year since Microsoft bought GitHub for $7.5 billion, but the company has grown in that time, and today it announced that it has hired former Bitnami COO and co-founder Erica Brescia to be its COO.

Brescia handled COO duties at Bitnami from its founding in 2011 until it was sold to VMware last month. In a case of good timing, GitHub was looking to fill its COO role and after speaking to CEO Nat Friedman, she believed it was going to be a good fit. The GitHub mission to provide a place for developers to contribute to various projects fits in well with what she was doing at Bitnami, which provided a way to deliver software to developers in the form of packages such as containers or Kubernetes Helm charts.

She sees that experience of building a company, of digging in and taking on whatever roles the situation required, translating well as she takes over as COO at a company that is growing as quickly as GitHub. “I was really shocked to see how quickly GitHub is still growing, and I think bringing that kind of founder mentality, understanding where the challenges are and working with a team to come up with solutions, is something that’s going to translate really well and help the company to successfully scale,” Brescia told TechCrunch.

She admits that it’s going to be a different kind of challenge working with a company she didn’t help build, but she sees a lot of similarities that will help her as she moves into this new position. Right after selling a company, she obviously didn’t have to take a job right away, but this one was particularly compelling to her, too much so to leave on the table.

“I think there were a number of different directions that I could have gone coming out of Bitnami, and GitHub was really exciting to me because of the scale of the opportunity and the fact that it’s so focused on developers and helping developers around the world, both open source and enterprise, collaborate on the software that really powers the world moving forward,” she said.

She says as COO at a growing company, it will fall on her to find more efficient ways to run things as the company continues to scale. “When you have a company that’s growing that quickly, there are inevitably things that probably could be done more efficiently at the scale, and so one of the first things that I plan on spending time in on is just understanding from the team is where the pain points are, and what can we do to help the organization run like a more well-oiled machine.”

Alyce, an AI-powered platform that helps sales people, marketers and event planners give better corporate gifts, has today announced the close of an $11.5 million Series A funding. The round was led by Manifest, with participation from General Catalyst, Boston Seed Capital, Golden Ventures, Morningside and Victress Capital.

According to Alyce, $120 billion is spent each year (just in the United States) on corporate gifts, swag, etc. Unfortunately, the impact of these gifts isn’t usually worth the hassle. No matter how thoughtful or clever a gift is, each recipient is a unique individual with their own preferences and style. It’s nearly impossible for marketers and event planners to find a one-size-fits-all gift for their recipients.

Alyce, however, has a solution. The company asks the admin to upload a list of recipients. The platform then scours the internet for any publicly available information on each individual recipient, combing through their Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, videos and podcasts in which they appear, etc.

Alyce then matches each individual recipient with their own personalized gift, as chosen from one of the company’s merchant partners. The platform sends out an invitation to that recipient to either accept the gift, exchange the gift for something else on the platform, or donate the dollar value to the charity of their choice.

This allows Alyce to ensure marketers and sales people always give the right gift, even when they don’t. For charity donations, the donation is made in the name of the corporate entity who gave the gift, not the recipient, meaning that all donations act as a write-off for the gifting company.

The best marketers and sales people know how impactful a great gift, at the right time, can be. But the work involved in figuring out what a person actually wants to receive can be overwhelming. Hell, I struggle to find the right gifts for my close friends and loved ones.

Alyce takes all the heavy lifting out of the equation.

The company also has integrations with Salesforce, so users can send an Alyce gift from directly within Salesforce.

Alyce charges a subscription to businesses who use the software, and also takes a small cut of gifts accepted on the platform. The company also offers to send physical boxes with cards and information about the gift as another revenue channel.

Alyce founder and CEO Greg Segall says the company is growing 30 percent month-over-month and has clients such as InVision, Lenovo, Marketo and Verizon.

Crane Venture Partners, a newish London-based early-stage VC targeting what it calls “intelligent” enterprise startups, is officially outing today.

Founded by Scott Sage and Krishna Visvanathan, who were both previously at DFJ Esprit, “Crane I” has had a second closing totalling $90 million, money the firm is investing in enterprise companies that are data-driven. Sage and Visvanathan are joined by Crane Partner Andy Leaver.

Specifically, Crane is seeking pre-Series A startups based in Europe, with a willingness to write the first institutional cheque. The firm is particularly bullish about London, noting that 90% of cloud and enterprise software companies that went public in the last 8-10 years opened their first international office in London. Investments already made from the fund include Aire, Avora, Stratio Automotive and Tessian.

Crane’s anchor LPs are MassMutual Ventures, the venture capital arm of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), and the U.K. taxpayer funded British Patient Capital (BPC), along with other institutions, founders and VCs spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia. In addition, Crane has formed a strategic partnership with MassMutual Ventures to give Crane and its portfolio companies “deep access” to new markets and networks as they expand internationally.

Below follows an email Q&A with Crane founders Scott Sage and Krishna Visvanathan, where we discuss the new fund’s remit, why Crane is so bullish on the enterprise, London after Brexit, and why the enterprise isn’t so boring after all!

TC: Why does London and/or the world need a new enterprise focused VC?

SS: Just to correct you Steve, we’re an enterprise only seed fund :) – which does make us somewhat unique. We back founders who have a differentiated product vision but who haven’t demonstrated the commercial metrics that our counterparts typically look for. We see opportunity and not just risk.

TC: It feels like years since I first heard you were both raising a fund together and of course I know that Crane has already made 20+ investments. So why did it take you so long to close and why are you only just officially announcing now?

KV: It was definitely a humbling experience and took us 12 months longer than we would have hoped! We held our first close for Crane I, our institutional fund, in July 2018, two and a half years from when we started raising. We had previously established a pre-cursor fund and started investing in Q1 2016, quietly building up our portfolio and presence. We had to hold off on discussing the fund until we concluded the final close a few weeks ago for regulatory and compliance reasons.

TC: You say that Crane is broadly targeting early-stage “intelligent” enterprise startups — as opposed to unintelligent ones! — but can you be more specific with regards to cheque size and stage and any particular verticals, themes or technologies you plan to invest in?

SS: Data is central to our thesis – the entire enterprise stack will need to be rebuilt to understand and learn from data, which is what we mean by intelligence. The majority of installed enterprise applications today are workflow tools and don’t do anything intelligent for the user or the organisation. We’re also excited about entirely new products for new markets that didn’t previously exist.

Our first cheques range from $750k to $3m, with sizeable follow on reserves to support our companies through Series B. We view our sweet spot as helping companies build their go-to market strategies and are happy to invest pre-revenue (approximately half of our portfolio at the time of investment), although we prefer to invest post-product.

TC: Given that you typically invest pre-Series A, where an enterprise startup may be pre-revenue and not yet have anything like definitive market fit, what are the standout qualities you look for in founding teams or the assumptions they are betting on?

KV: You mean apart from the obvious ones that every VC would say about passion, vision, hunger etc (mea culpa!)? We love highly technical teams who have a visceral understanding of the problem they are solving – usually because they lived through it previously. Many of the founders we’ve backed are reimagining the market segments they are addressing.

TC: Almost every new fund these days is talking about its operational support for portfolio companies. What does Crane do to actively support the very early-stage companies you back?

SS: Our sole focus is on supporting founders with their go-to-market strategy which encompasses everything from product positioning and generating marketing leads to building a high performing sales team, renewing and upselling customers. We have formal modules we run behind the scenes with a new company once we’ve invested and we’re also building out a stable of venture partners who are specialists in these areas. We believe that there is a multiplier effect in creating a community of similar staged businesses with parallels in their business models.

TC: Although Crane is pan-European, I know you are especially bullish on London as a leader in creating and adopting enterprise technology, why is that?

KV: We believe London has a great concentration of customers, data science and software talent, commercial and go-to-market talent. 90% of cloud and enterprise software companies that went public in the last 8-10 years opened their first international office in London. And, we’ve also seen a newfound boldness amongst young first-time founders who are not bound by the limits of their imaginations. Look at Onfido, Tessian and Senseon – all first-time founding teams we have backed who are building category-defining businesses.

TC: Which brings us to Brexit. How does Crane view the U.K. exiting the EU and the challenges this will undoubtedly create for tech and enterprise companies, in particular relating to hiring?

SS: We are believers in a global economy and the UK being a major contributor to it. The reason London is still the startup capital of Europe is because of its diversity and openness. The UK exiting the EU is counter to this which we believe will have a negative impact on our ability to attract talent and remain at the forefront of European tech.

TC: Lastly, enterprise tech is often viewed as “unsexy” and something many journalists (myself included) yawn at, even though it is a huge market and arguably the hidden software that the engine rooms of the world economy run on. Tell me something I might not already know about enterprise tech that I can repeat at a dinner party without sending everyone else to sleep?

KV: Imagine a world where you turn on your laptop and your day is pre-organised for you, your email self protects against catastrophic mistakes, your digital identity is portable, your physical workspace syncs with your calendar and auto reserves meeting rooms, and your creditworthiness is something you control, leaving you to focus on channelling your creativity as a journalist and not deal with pfaff. That’s the intelligent enterprise right there in the guise of Tessian, Onfido, OpenSensors and Aire, a selection of the companies in our portfolio. It may start with the enterprise, but ultimately, the products and businesses that are being built are all for people.

TC: Scott, Krishna, thanks for talking to TechCrunch!

Amazon Personalize, first announced during AWS re:Invent last November, is now available to all Amazon Web Services customers. The API enables developers to add custom machine learning models to their apps, including ones for personalized product recommendations, search results and direct marketing, even if they don’t have machine learning experience.

The API processes data using algorithms originally created for Amazon’s own retail business,  but the company says all data will be “kept completely private, owned entirely by the customer.” The service is now available to AWS users in three U.S. regions, East (Ohio), East (North Virginia) and West (Oregon), two Asia Pacific regions (Tokyo and Singapore) and Ireland in the European Union, with more regions to launch soon.

AWS customers who have already added Amazon Personalize to their apps include Yamaha Corporation of America, Subway, Zola and Segment. In Amazon’s press release, Yamaha Corporation of America Director of Information Technology Ishwar Bharbhari said Amazon Personalize “saves us up to 60% of the time needed to set up and tune the infrastructure and algorithms for our machine learning models when compared to building and configuring the environment on our own.”

Amazon Personalize’s pricing model charges five cents per GB of data uploaded to Amazon Personalize and 24 cents per training hour used to train a custom model with their data. Real-time recommendation requests are priced based on how many are uploaded, with discounts for larger orders.

When people bring their own devices to work or school, they don’t want IT administrators to manage the entire device. But until now, Apple only offered two ways for IT to manage its iOS devices: either device enrollments, which offered device-wide management capabilities to admins or those same device management capabilities combined with an automated setup process. At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference last week, the company announced plans to introduce a third method: user enrollments.

This new MDM (mobile device management) enrollment option is meant to better balance the needs of IT to protect sensitive corporate data and manage the software and settings available to users, while at the same time allowing users’ private personal data to remain separate from IT oversight.

According to Apple, when both users’ and IT’s needs are in balance, users are more likely to accept a corporate “bring your own device” (BYOD) program — something that can ultimately save the business money that doesn’t have to be invested in hardware purchases.

The new user enrollments option for MDM has three components: a managed Apple ID that sits alongside the personal ID; cryptographic separation of personal and work data; and a limited set of device-wide management capabilities for IT.

The managed Apple ID will be the user’s work identity on the device, and is created by the admin in either Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager — depending on whether this is for a school or a business. The user signs into the managed Apple ID during the enrollment process.

From that point forward until the enrollment ends, the company’s managed apps and accounts will use the managed Apple ID’s iCloud account.

Meanwhile, the user’s personal apps and accounts will use the personal Apple ID’s iCloud account, if one is signed into the device.

Third-party apps are then either used in managed or unmanaged modes.

That means users won’t be able to change modes or run the apps in both modes at the same time. However, some of the built-in apps like Notes will be account-based, meaning the app will use the appropriate Apple ID — either the managed one or personal — depending on which account they’re operating on at the time.

To separate work data from personal, iOS will create a managed APFS volume at the time of the enrollment. The volume uses separate cryptographic keys which are destroyed along with the volume itself when the enrollment period ends. (iOS had always removed the managed data when the enrollment ends, but this is a cryptographic backstop just in case anything were to go wrong during unenrollment, the company explained.)

The managed volume will host the local data stored by any managed third-party apps along with the managed data from the Notes app. It also will house a managed keychain that stores secure items like passwords and certificates; the authentication credentials for managed accounts; and mail attachments and full email bodies.

The system volume does host a central database for mail, including some metadata and five line previews, but this is removed as well when the enrollment ends.

Users’ personal apps and their data can’t be managed by the IT admin, so they’re never at risk of having their data read or erased.

And unlike device enrollments, user enrollments don’t provide a UDID or any other persistent identifier to the admin. Instead, it creates a new identifier called the “enrollment ID.” This identifier is used in communication with the MDM server for all communications and is destroyed when enrollment ends.

Apple also noted that one of the big reasons users fear corporate BYOD programs is because they think the IT admin will erase their entire device when the enrollment ends — including their personal apps and data.

To address this concern, the MDM queries can only return the managed results.

In practice, that means IT can’t even find out what personal apps are installed on the device — something that can feel like an invasion of privacy to end users. (This feature will be offered for device enrollments, too.) And because IT doesn’t know which personal apps are installed, it also can’t restrict certain apps’ use.

User enrollments will also not support the “erase device” command — and they don’t have to, because IT will know the sensitive data and emails are gone. There’s no need for a full device wipe.

Similarly, the Exchange Server can’t send its remote wipe command — just the account-only remote wipe to remove the managed data.

Another new feature related to user enrollments is how traffic for managed accounts is guided through the corporate VPN. Using the per-app VPN feature, traffic from the Mail, Contacts and Calendars built-in apps will only go through the VPN if the domains match that of the business. For example, mail.acme.com can pass through the VPN, but not mail.aol.com. In other words, the user’s personal mail remains private.

This addresses what has been an ongoing concern about how some MDM solutions operate — routing traffic through a corporate proxy meant the business could see the employees’ personal emails, social networking accounts and other private information.

User enrollments also only enforces a six-digit non-simple passcode, as the MDM server can’t help users by clearing the past code if the user forgets it.

Some today advise users to not accept BYOD MDM policies because of the impact to personal privacy. While a business has every right to manage and wipe its own apps and data, IT has overstepped with some of its remote management capabilities — including its ability to erase entire devices, access personal data, track a phone’s location, restrict personal use of apps and more.

Apple’s MDM policies haven’t included GPS tracking, however, nor does this new option.

Apple’s new policy is a step toward a better balance of concerns, but will require that users understand the nuances of these more technical details — which they may not.

That user education will come down to the businesses that insist on these MDM policies to begin with — they will need to establish their own documentation, explainers, and establish new privacy policies with their employees that detail what sort of data they can and cannot access, as well as what sort of control they have over corporate devices.

When you’re talking about 16 billion smackeroos, it’s easy to get lost in the big number. When Salesforce acquired Tableau this morning for $15.7 billion, while it was among the biggest enterprise deals ever, it certainly wasn’t the largest.

There was widespread speculation that when the new tax laws went into effect in 2017, and large tech companies could repatriate large sums of their money stored offshore, we would start to see a wave of M&A activity, and sure enough that’s happened.

As Box CEO Aaron Levie pointed out on Twitter, it also shows that if you can develop a best-of-breed tool that knocks off the existing dominant tool set, you can build a multibillion-dollar company. We have seen this over and over, maybe not $15 billion companies, but substantial companies with multibillion-dollar price tags.

Last year alone we saw 10 deals that equaled $87 billion, with the biggest prize going to IBM when it bought Red Hat for a cool $34 billion, but even that wasn’t the biggest enterprise deal we could track down. In fact, we decided to compile a list of the biggest enterprise deals ever, so you could get a sense of where today’s deal fits.

Salesforce buys MuleSoft for $6.5 billion in 2018

At the time, this was the biggest deal Salesforce had ever done — until today. While the company has been highly acquisitive over the years, it had tended to keep the deals fairly compact for the most part, but it wanted MuleSoft to give it access to enterprise data wherever, it lived and it was willing to pay for it.

Microsoft buys GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018

Not to be outdone by its rival, Microsoft opened its wallet almost exactly a year ago and bought GitHub for a hefty $7.5 billion. There was some hand-wringing in the developer community at the time, but so far, Microsoft has allowed the company to operate as an independent subsidiary.

SAP buys Qualtrics for $8 billion in 2018

SAP swooped in right before Qualtrics was about to IPO and gave it an offer it couldn’t refuse. Qualtrics gave SAP a tool for measuring customer satisfaction, something it had been lacking and was willing to pay big bucks for.

Oracle acquires NetSuite for $9.3 billion in 2016

It wasn’t really a surprise when Oracle acquired NetSuite. It had been an investor and Oracle needed a good SaaS tool at the time, as it was transitioning to the cloud. NetSuite gave it a ready-to-go packaged cloud service with a built-in set of customers it desperately needed.

Salesforce buys Tableau for $15.7 billion in 2019

That brings us to today’s deal. Salesforce swooped in again and paid an enormous sum of money for the Seattle software company, giving it a data visualization tool that would enable customers to create views of data wherever it lives, whether it’s part of Salesforce or not. What’s more, it was a great complement to last year’s MuleSoft acquisition.

Broadcom acquires CA Technologies for $18.9 billion in 2018

A huge deal in dollars from a year of big deals. Broadcom surprised a few people when a chip vendor paid this kind of money for a legacy enterprise software vendor and IT services company. The $18.9 billion represented a 20% premium for shareholders.

Microsoft snags LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016

This was a company that Salesforce reportedly wanted badly at the time, but Microsoft was able to flex its financial muscles and come away the winner. The big prize was all of that data, and Microsoft has been working to turn that into products ever since.

IBM snares Red Hat for $34 billion in 2018

Near the end of last year, IBM made a huge move, acquiring Red Hat for $34 billion. IBM has been preaching a hybrid cloud approach for a number of years, and buying Red Hat gives it a much more compelling hybrid story.

Dell acquires EMC for $67 billion in 2016

This was the biggest of all, by far surpassing today’s deal. A deal this large was in the news for months as it passed various hurdles on the way to closing. Among the jewels that were included in this deal were VMware and Pivotal, the latter of which has since gone public. After this deal, Dell itself went public again last year.

Note: A reader on Twitter pointed out one we missed: Symantec bought Veritas for $13.5 billion in 2004.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Salesforce is buying data visualization company Tableau for $15.7B in all-stock deal

This is a huge deal for Salesforce as the company continues to diversify beyond CRM software and into deeper layers of analytics.

Salesforce reportedly worked hard to buy LinkedIn (which Microsoft ultimately picked up instead). And while there isn’t a whole lot in common between LinkedIn and Tableau, this deal should help the company extend its engagement with existing customers.

2. Maker Faire halts operations and lays off all staff

Financial troubles have forced Maker Media, the company behind crafting publication MAKE: magazine as well as the science and art festival Maker Faire, to lay off its entire staff of 22 and pause all operations.

3. Google Assistant comes to Waze navigation app

Google Assistant in Waze will provide access to your usual Assistant features, like playback of music and podcasts, but it’ll also offer access to many Waze-specific abilities, including letting you ask it to report traffic conditions, or specifying that you want to avoid tolls when routing to your destination.

4. Microsoft acquires Psychonauts-maker Double Fine Productions

In addition to making Psychonauts, Double Fine notably raised around $3 million in a Kickstarter campaign to create the adventure game it eventually titled Broken Age. As is the case with past Microsoft studio acquisitions, it sounds like Double Fine will continue to operate externally, underneath the Xbox Game Studios umbrella.

5. Former Unity Technology VP files lawsuit alleging CEO sexually harassed her

In a statement to TechCrunch, a Unity spokesperson said the allegations are not true and that it intends to “vigorously defend against the false allegations.”

6. Economic development organizations: good or bad for entrepreneurial activity?

In developing VC markets such as the Midwest, some may think that funding from the government or economic development organizations are a godsend — but entrepreneurs need to ensure that this money isn’t a double-edged sword. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The Equity team has some thoughts on SoftBank’s Vision Fund, and what its difficulties raising more money mean for the late-stage investment landscape. Meanwhile, Original Content reviews Netflix’s “Always Be My Maybe,” and we also have a bonus interview with the director of “I Am Mother.”