10 Tech Turkeys For 2009

Every year, companies, people and product lines emerge that leave a lasting impression -- for all the wrong reasons. Just in time for Thanksgiving, Channelweb.com looks at 10 IT industry stories that encapsulate the pejorative meaning of "turkey" with an almost poetic level of appropriateness.

AT&T's Love-Hate iPhone Relationship

AT&T loves being the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone, but it's decidedly less enamored with the associated costs that the iPhone is placing on its network.

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Microsoft's Online Services Division

In the future, Microsoft's Online Services Division will deliver a large chunk of the software giant's revenue. But right now, the OSD is going through some big-time growing pains.

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Nortel Networks' Clearance Sale

Since filing for bankruptcy in January, Nortel has been methodically selling off chunks of its once-thriving business. In June, Nortel sold its CDMA and LTE Access carrier wireless division to Ericsson for $1.13 billion. In September, Avaya bought Nortel's enterprise business for $900 million and change. Just before Thanksgiving, Nortel sold its Optical Networking and Carrier Ethernet businesses to Ciena Corporation for $769 million.

Network Access Control

Network Access Control once had a bright future, but at this point it's clear that the technology is more of a feature than a stand-alone market. The latest evidence came in August when Consentry Networks quietly ceased operations. Consentry was at one time regarded as a top NAC vendor, but when Cisco, Juniper and more established networking vendors started embedding NAC into their hardware, Consentry was forced to change its marketing pitch. But Consentry's value proposition for its so-called intelligent switches never materialized.

Circuit City's Customer-Unfriendly Afterlife

Circuit City was never a favorite of VARs, and so in May when the retailer sold off its assets to Port Washington, N.Y.-based Systemax for $14 million in cash, a palpable wave of schadenfreude swept through the IT channel. But Circuit City, even in death, is still finding ways to annoy customers.

Palm Pre

The Palm Pre isn't a bad mobile device by any means. But weighed against the heavy expectations Palm placed upon it, the Pre can't really be considered a success.

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Inside Traders Get Their Comeuppance

In October, Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam, IBM executive Robert Moffat, Intel employee Rajiv Goel and three others were charged in a hedge-fund-centered insider trading scandal that probably will grow even larger before it's all said and done.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile was recently hit with a one-two punch of outages that left subscribers angry and looking for answers. One of the outages wasn't T-Mobile's fault, but the situation has been a gut-punch for a carrier that's been desperately trying to boost its profile in the U.S. wireless market.

Satyam Computer Services

In January, Ramalinga Raju, founder and chairman of Satyam, India's fourth-largest software services exporter, resigned in disgrace after admitting that his company had reported inflated cash and bank balances by $1 billion over a period of several years. Raju, along with his brother Rama Raju, Chief Financial Officer Srinivas Vadlamani, and two PriceWaterhouse auditors were eventually charged with criminal breach of trust, criminal conspiracy, cheating and falsification of records and forgery.

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'Spam King' Alan Ralsky

In June, "Spam King" Alan Ralsky, 64, pleaded guilty to e-mail fraud pertaining to his role in a fraudulent "pump and dump" stock spamming operation, and is now serving up to seven years in prison. Ralsky's wide-ranging offenses included computer fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and other money-laundering charges, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Altogether, Ralsky and his henchmen netted around $3 million from their spam scams between January 2004 and September 2005.