The less bumpy way to ride e-commerce = Rakuten (Seite 158)

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How Open RAN & 5G Impact Sustainability

March 10, 2023

https://epsnews.com/2023/03/10/how-open-ran-5g-impact-sustai…

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Symworld Cloud brings cloud-native to the edge

Sander Almekinders January 25, 2023
Kubernetes is gaining a foothold in more and more places, including the edge. According to Symworld Cloud, as Robin.io has been called since last November, it is crucial that the underlying infrastructure can handle it. We visited this business unit of Japanese technology giant Rakuten to hear exactly what it means by this.
The idea from the beginning was to build a Kubernetes platform that focused on heavier use cases. By heavier use cases, we specifically mean workloads that place heavy demands on network and storage. The compute in these environments must also be as close to the workload as possible. At the edge, in other words.
The three Symworld Cloud products give this business unit within Rakuten a fairly complete story toward the market. The decision to focus primarily on specific (edge) use cases may yet prove beneficial, if the edge really does end up exploding. If the claims are true that Symworld Cloud’s offering is so much better than the “old-fashioned” Red Hat OpenShift, based on 20-year old Ceph technology, and vSAN-based VMware Tanzu, it may cause the company to scale up very fast. Also, the developments with the hyperscalers could give Symworld Cloud a huge boost.

Furthermore, Symworld Cloud doesn’t rest on its laurels. For example, it is coming out with a self-built object store next summer and support for Arm is also on the roadmap. Arm so far is not really interesting for heavy use cases. One reason for this from a telco perspective is that FlexRAN still only runs on Intel chips. The decision when to launch Arm support depends also on what other players in the market develop. Marvell apparently is working on getting FlexRAN to run on Arm, but is not there yet. Once it runs on Arm, the heavy applications within the telco industry on Arm will come naturally as well.
https://www.techzine.eu/blogs/devops/100846/symworld-cloud-b…

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Rakuten is the biggest owner of Cabify

Cooltra and Cabify combine e-moped fleets in Spain

Mar 9, 2023 - 03:11 pm

The mobility brands Cooltra and Cabify have agreed to integrate Cooltra’s moped rental service on Cabify’s app. The service went live in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, where Cabify is making its first appearance.

Elsewhere, the new deal means an increase in available mopeds. Cabify users in Madrid may now book over 3,000 scooters, with Cooltra adding nearly 2,000 LEVs to Cabify’s 1,200 mopeds. In Barcelona, the combined fleet has doubled, with both companies providing about 600 scooters each. Working with Cooltra’s more than 700 mopeds in Valencia, however, means that Cabify will be available for the first time.

As for Cabify, the company scored a massive loan from the European Investment Bank in May last year to deploy 1,400 electric vehicles in Spain over the next few years. The €40-million loan corresponds to around €28,600 to purchase a vehicle and charging facility. So far, we know of Renault Mobilize cars being deployed, as reported. As for the e-mopeds, Cabify told electrive they were using Niu NQi LEVs. Niu is a large manufacturer from China.

Cabify targets all trips on its platform to be made in zero-emission vehicles by 2025 in Spain and by 2030 worldwide. According to its figures, the platform has 42 million registered users and 1.2 million drivers in Europe and South America.

https://www.electrive.com/2023/03/09/cooltra-and-cabify-comb…

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We can leverage that data and expand

Contrast between the asset-light structure and the more-recent heavy investments through roll out its own mobile network

How does he see Rakuten’s future, particularly given the apparent contrast between the group’s hitherto asset-light structure and the more-recent heavy investments generated by its decision to roll out its own mobile network?

Mikitani draws analogies with Amazon as a justification. “Asset-light is attractive, but at the same time it’s dangerous,” he said. “If you think about why Amazon is so strong, it’s because of their Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and their logistics capabilities. In some countries, it’s very difficult to compete with Amazon because they have invested so much. So has Google – their data centers are super capital-intensive.”

He also says that data generated by the Rakuten Ecosystem will play a pivotal role in the group’s success. “It’s not just search data,” he said. “We know people’s transactions. We have to be conscious about privacy, but at the same time we can leverage that data and expand.”

https://www.imd.org/ibyimd/videos/rakutens-ceo-has-repeatedl…

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Digital banking makes inroads in Japan

Written by Kapronasia February 20 2023

As the most cash-loving advanced economy in Asia, Japan has not historically been eager to digitize its financial services sector – with a few exceptions. One of those is Rakuten Bank, which launched in the twilight of Web 1.0 back in the year 2000. At 23 years of age, Rakuten Bank must be one of the oldest digital lenders in Asia, if not the oldest.

Rakuten Bank reached 8 trillion yen (US$5.96 billion) in deposits as of mid-2022, an impressive deposit base for a digital bank. What is even more impressive is how fast it grew: In June 2019, Rakuten only had 3 trillion yen in deposits.

It was only in the past few years that Rakuten enhanced the mobile banking options for its digital bank. Because Rakuten Bank is so old, it was originally designed for use on computers, not handsets. However, now users can check their Rakuten Bank account balance using the Rakuten Pay smartphone app.

Looking ahead, competition in digital banking is set to increase in Japan – and there is plenty of of low-hanging fruit. In a November 2022 report, Nikkei Asia noted that digital banks in Japan hold less than 3% of the overall deposits in the country, but that is up from 1.6% in 2017.

https://www.kapronasia.com/asia-banking-research-category/di…

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Rakuten Receives “AA” ESG Rating from MSCI

March 13, 2023

Rakuten Group, Inc. (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it received an upgraded rating from MSCI, from "A" to "AA". This places the Company among "Leaders" – organizations with strong ESG performance.

The Company's efforts and proactive disclosure of information regarding its environmental, social, and governance practices, including policies against bribery and corruption and auditing of ethics standards, strong labor management and data security practices were some of the key indicators that MSCI positively evaluated. The Company has also been listed* as a component of major MSCI ESG indices, including the MSCI ESG Leaders Index and the MSCI Japan Empowering Women Index (WIN).

With the mission of “empowering people and society through innovation and entrepreneurship”, the Company has been working towards the realization of a sustainable society and will continue to take actions related to ESG issues, while communicating with stakeholders by disclosing related information promptly, transparently, and appropriately.

https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2023/0313_01.html…

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Rakuten Symphony to Help Reduce 5G Costs

Rakuten Mobile is also going to lean on its Symphony platform as it looks to reduce capex and expand its footprint. The carrier is in the final phase of expanding its carrier-owned footprint in Japan, a move that will allow it to reduce roaming costs it’s currently paying to rivals.

Rakuten CEO and Chairman Hiroshi Mikitani said the carrier would be spending around $2.2 billion on capex this year, which is similar to what it has been spending over the past several years to fuel its network build. However, that amount is expected to be cut in half in 2024, and then a further 20% beginning in 2025.

Amin added that Rakuten Mobile will be able to accomplish this due to its cloud-native architecture that results in “80% less spend than others.”

The carrier is also banking on new spectrum to help lower the cost of its network expansion. Rakuten executives repeatedly touted the carrier’s plan to begin using Japan’s so-called “platinum band” spectrum in the 900 MHz band to help it expand coverage. The spectrum was still being cleared with Rakuten Mobile expecting to begin deploying those assets beginning in early 2024.

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/rakuten-symphony-to…

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ShopStyle Collective Rebrands as Collective Voice

By DIANA PEARL

07 March 2023

The influencer marketing and monetisation platform on Tuesday unveiled a rebrand, including a new name, Collective Voice. Along with the new moniker, Collective Voice is also introducing a host of new offerings for creators, including TapTo.Shop, a tool that allows creators to make a space to share multiple affiliate links and monetised content, all through one link that they can share via platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Another, Amplify, is a community-building and education programme for influencers that will give participants an opportunity to learn more about ways to generate and increase their income. The platform is also the data and insights it makes available to creators.

The platform’s fresh name puts some distance from Collective Voice’s sister platform, shopping search and content platform ShopStyle, a database where consumers can look for items across various retailers, get cash back on their purchases through Rakuten Rewards (Rakuten is ShopStyle and Collective Voice’s parent company) alongside fashion-focussed content.

https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/marketing-pr/shopstyl…

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Rakuten Symphony ended 2022 with a sales pipeline in excess of $4 billion in revenues

Rakuten Symphony generated $476 million in revenues last year, bolstered by 14 global contracts, including deals with AT&T, Cisco, Nokia, and Qualcomm. That number is the same as it reported during its previous financial quarter, though Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony CEO Tareq Amin explained during the company’s latest earnings call that the vendor was sitting on eight additional contracts that were in “final stages of closure.”

Amin also stated Rakuten Symphony ended 2022 with a sales pipeline in excess of $4 billion in revenues, which was significantly more than the $3.1 billion it had at the end of its third-fiscal quarter of 2022.

www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/rak

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Rakuten SixthSense enters North American B2B SaaS market at South by Southwest (SXSW)

Mar 10, 2023, 10:00 ET

AUSTIN, Texas, March 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Rakuten SixthSense, the B2B technology products arm of Japan-based conglomerate Rakuten Group and the world's third-largest e-commerce platform, is expanding into the North American observability and SaaS markets. The company will launch its brand at the renowned South by Southwest (SXSW) Event in Austin, Texas. As a full-stack observability provider, Rakuten SixthSense leverages best-in-class AI&ML to empower companies with real-time, end-to-end visibility of application behaviour across cloud landscapes and microservice architectures. Its Test Acceleration Platform (TAP) delivers state-of-the-art testing automation, empowering companies to shift-left with accurate anomaly detection and rapid troubleshooting.

About Rakuten India Enterprise
Rakuten India — the development center and key technology hub of the Rakuten Group, Inc. — enables businesses with the depth of knowledge in multiple streams of technology such as mobile and web development, web analytics, platform development, backend engineering, data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and much more. With 2000+ employees and dedicated centers of excellence for mobile application development, data analytics, engineering, DevOps, and information security; the company ensures the success of multiple units of Rakuten Group, Inc.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rakuten-sixthsense-…