ShadowRAM: August 20, 2007
Sanjay's Assignment: Sanjay's Sad Ending: Federal Prison
•e-mail CRN
We're not sure what e-mail address Sanjay is using these days, but his physical address is now the Fairton, N.J., Federal Correction Institute.
Last week, he checked into prison to start serving a 12-year sentence for a variety of crimes connected to the past scandals of Islandia, N.Y.-based CA. (Those scandals included a "35-day month" that fostered illegal accounting.)
In a post-Bernie Ebbers world, Kumar could have gotten a life sentence but U.S. District Court Judge Ira Glasser took into account Kumar's cooperation with investigators and with CA's board of directors, whose members are trying to piece together just what went wrong. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Kumar's scheduled release date is Jan. 25, 2018.
Once he was known as one of the technology industry's elite. He co-owned the New York Islanders. Now, he's known as Register Number 71321-053 with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and he's broke.
On Dell And Guard Dogs
• In one of the last financial reports Dell filed with the SEC before an accounting investigation caused it to go dark, the Round Rock, Texas, company listed a few dozen of its legal subsidiaries: Dell Funding, Dell Singapore, Dell Products Corp. The list looked somewhat mundane, until this item: "DCC Executive Security."
A check with the Texas Department of Public Safety Private Security Board reveals who works at the company, and what they do. Included on the list of DCC Executive Security are several private investigators. With a company as large as Dell, it's not hard to understand why.
But it also gives us a moment to note that last week marked an inauspicious anniversary for Dell: the one-year mark since the company announced it was under investigation by the SEC for "accounting issues." A year later, Dell finally announced its findings, saying that top executives fudged the books between 2002 and 2006 to meet Wall Street expectations. Dell says it will make a small earnings restatement.
A final note about DCC Executive Security: Texas says the Dell subsidiary is paid up on its armed guard insurance, but not on its guard dog insurance. Given that the company has been under siege for much of the past year, it might want to rethink the guard dog thing.
SEEN AND HEARD
• Last week, Dell tapped Greg Davis, who had been president of Dell Canada, to become its new channel chief for the Americas.
Earlier this year, Best Buy named David Hemler, former president of Microsoft Canada, to the new post of president of Best Buy for Business.
Maybe the cooler air is making for better executive development?
• Cisco's fascination with rock gods continues. The vendor last week brought in Aerosmith as the entertainment for its annual global sales conference in Las Vegas, treating its cadre of channel account managers and sales engineers to a show from Steven Tyler and the boys. This follows the Networkers at Cisco Live customer conference in Anaheim, Calif., last month, where Kiss served as the main attraction at the event's closing festivities. Who's next? May we respectfully nominate The Who?
(For what it's worth, Tyler is big with tech companies. A couple of years ago, he met Intel's Craig Barrett on stage at CES for a duet of "Walk This Way." We kid you not.)