5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

The Week Ending Dec. 8

Topping this week's roundup of those having a rough week are Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lenovo, which lost market share in IDC's latest measure of the global server market.

Also making the list this week are Kaspersky Lab for closing its Washington, D.C.-area office following the ban of its products in the U.S. government space; Mecklenburg County, N.C., for suffering a ransomware attack; Hitachi for experiencing a drop in its storage sales; and Apple for mistakenly promoting Amazon Prime Video for Apple TV ahead of its release.

Not everyone in the IT industry was having a rough go of it this week. For a rundown of companies that made smart decisions, executed savvy strategic moves – or just had good luck – check out this week's 5 Companies That Came To Win roundup.

HPE, Lenovo Lose Server Market Share In Q3

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and its new H3C Group, and Lenovo were the losers in IDC's recent standings in the global server market.

While HPE remained the server market leader with $3.32 billion in sales, that was down 1.1 percent from $3.36 billion in the third quarter of last year. And while its 19.5 percent market share was good enough for No. 1, that marked a decline from its 23.7 percent market share one year ago.

Lenovo, which has watched its server sales decline this year, remained mired in the No. 5 position with $861.2 million in sales, down 12.6 percent from $985.0 million one year ago. That caused the company's server market share to drop to 5.1 percent from 7.0 percent one year earlier.

Dell, the No. 2 vendor in the server market, was the big winner in the quarter as its market share grew to 18.1 percent from 15.7 percent one year ago, thanks to 26.5 percent growth in server sales to $3.07 billion.

Kaspersky Lab To Close Washington, D.C.-Area Office Following U.S. Government Sales Ban

Kaspersky Lab will close its Arlington, Va.-based office following the ban of its products for use in the U.S. government's federal information systems.

The Moscow-based endpoint security vendor will continue working with non-federal customers in the U.S. through its remaining offices in the country, Vice President Anton Shingarev said, according to a report by Bloomberg. in an interview. Kaspersky plans to open new offices in Chicago, Los Angeles and Toronto next year.

Losing state clients may cause a "single-digit" percentage decline in the company's U.S. revenue, with Kaspersky receiving questions from clients about its software's security after the government ban, Bloomberg reported Shingarev saying.

Kaspersky was removed in July from the GSA Schedule, or approved list of technology vendors for government departments. The removal came after months of pushback against the company over alleged ties to the Russian government, which Kaspersky has vehemently denied.

North Carolina County Suffers Ransomware Attack

Mecklenburg County, N.C., decided not to pay a $23,000 ransom to hackers, who ’paralyzed’ county government with a cyberattack earlier this week. A county employee Monday had inadvertently opened an attachment from a phishing email, allowing spyware to penetrate the county's computer system, according to The Charlotte Observer.

Third-party security experts believe the county was attacked by a new strain of ransomware called LockCrypt originating from Iran or Ukraine. Forty-eight of the county's roughly 500 servers were affected.

The email appeared to have been routed from another county employee's email address, making it appear as though it was a regular employee-to-employee communication, according to a county spokesperson.

The county said it had backed up almost all of its data, and will rebuild its applications.

Hitachi, Others See Storage Sales Drop in Q3

Hitachi Vantara saw its storage sales contract in the third quarter, resulting in the company ceding the No. 4 spot in market share to IBM.

IDC reported that Hitachi's total third-quarter enterprise storage sales systems reached $475.9 million, down 5.9 percent. External enterprise storage sales, meanwhile, fell 5.4 percent to $466.9 million.

Market-share leaders HPE and Dell EMC also saw portions of their storage business contract in the quarter. HPE's enterprise storage sales fell 0.2 percent to $2.4 billion, while Dell's external storage system sales dropped by 4 percent from the prior year.

Apple Mistakenly Promotes Amazon Prime Video For Apple TV Ahead of Release

Apple mistakenly published a story in the App Store touting support for the Apple TV in the Amazon Prime Video application, according to 9to5Mac.

A Reddit user separately reported that setting the iPhone's date and time forward to Dec. 6 briefly caused the Amazon Prime Video story to appear in the App Store, although Apple appeared to have closed that loophole, 9to5Mac said.

Apple originally promised support for Amazon Prime Video back at June's Worldwide Developers Conference 2017, with the app expected to be made available by the end of the year.