ShadowRAM: July 8, 2002
- HP'S MICHAEL CAPELLAS HAS A ONE-TRACK MIND AT CONFAB
- PARTNERS URGE HP/COMPAQ TO FINISH INTEGRATION
- FORMER WORLDCOM CFO SHEDS LIGHT ON SEC INVESTIGATIONS
- Has multitasking gone out of vogue? Prior to giving a speech at the recent eGov conference, Hewlett-Packard President Michael Capellas refused to answer a reporter's question about how HP will work with its channel partners. "I'm here to talk about IT security," he said.
- Capellas, while refusing to talk channel, went on to discuss the near-inevitability of a cyber terror attack in the next six months. His voice joined the growing chorus of doomsayers in the IT industry, including Tom Siebel, who has come under fire for using images of Mohammed Atta and the rest of the Sept. 11 hijackers in ads for his company's software.
- HP software execs were clearly pleased with the attendance at last month's HP Software Forum user conference in Seattle.
- During a keynote address, Senior Vice President Nora Denzel, a former IBMer, repeatedly mentioned that the confab's 1,700 attendees tripled the number that attended Big Blue's Planet Tivoli conference a few weeks earlier. However, solution providers at the show were less focused on Tivoli's travails than they were on the fallout from HP's merger with Compaq Computer. The message to HP from its partners? Get through the integration of the two companies as quickly as possible. And move forward.
- Add rivals HP and Sun Microsystems to the list of companies that shut down last week to cut costs. Do you think they consulted each other first?
- A refreshing revelation for a hot summer day. It doesn't look like high-tech financier John Doerr,whose losses during last year's dot-bomb implosion included more than $200 million on Amazon.com,will have to watch his venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, suffer the same fate in another high-profile investment.
- According to papers filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Kleiner Perkins owned more than 1.5 million shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia stock earlier this year; a more recent filing, however, shows Kleiner Perkins now owns almost no shares of the company.
- Doerr stepped down as a director of the homemaking diva's company last year. Given the state of the securities investigation surrounding Martha, this looks like a good move.
- Interestingly, Newsweek's recent scoop on Microsoft's Palladium security technology actually first appeared on the MSNBC network, according to one Microsoft rival. "Where's the wall between church and state?" he asked.
- Which brings us to our final point: We're wondering just exactly who has been consulting certain major companies lately in investor and public relations.
- To wit, Scott Sullivan, former CFO of WorldCom, who was fired late last month when news of the telco's accounting troubles broke, made the following comments during a May conference call with press and analysts: "There has been a lot of misguided speculation in the marketplace about the state of WorldCom's financial viability. . . . We want to make sure there are no gray areas in your perception of our solid financial foundation.
- "We are fully cooperating with the SEC, and we continue to believe our accounting practices are appropriate and consistently applied. . . . We are one of many companies under review, with some 49 companies also under review. This is up from 18 this time last year."
- Is that supposed to make us feel better?