ShadowRAM: March 18, 2002
- HP'S FIORINA WAXES PROPHETIC ABOUT UPCOMING LAYOFFS
- NO ONE CAN SAY TECH DATA ISN'T PINCHING PENNIES
- INTEL AND INTERGRAPH ARE AT IT AGAIN
- What does IBM's Mark Hanny get for $68 million? A trip to Africa. Hanny, vice president of worldwide SMB and channel marketing for IBM's software group, paid that much in rebates and co-op funds to software resellers that participated in the Top Contributor Initiative (TCI) to boost SMB software sales. Now, he's taking the top 100 TCI solution providers on an African safari in May.
- Hanny said he hopes to pay out at least that much to integrators and consultants that influence IBM software sales, a group that was recently included in the TCI program. We hear next year he wants to take the TCI winners to China.
- Most times, Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy is the one taking humorous jabs at Microsoft. Last week, Bill Gates tried to turn the worm. At the Convergence Conference in Florida last week, Microsoft's Gates and Great Plains Software's Doug Burgum enjoyed some repartee at Sun's expense during their keynote.
- "Basically, we're a software company, and our goal is to make hardware very inexpensive so you don't have to buy very expensive Sun servers," Gates said.
- "They're not so expensive today. There are a lot on eBay," Burgum chimed in, to huge laughs from the crowd. "It's not a shot [at Sun. It's true."
- Gates, whose company is battling another Sun lawsuit,this time on antitrust allegations,added: "We're very nice to Sun, compared to how Sun treats us."
- Carly Fiorina may have a new mantra for Hewlett-Packard employees: "Approve it or lose it."
- In an e-mail to HP employees last week, Fiorina issued a rather thinly veiled threat: Approve the merger or face an even greater number of layoffs. Fiorina warned employee shareholders that while there will be layoffs if the HP-Compaq merger is approved, HP employees would face even more staff cuts if the merger fails. Fiorina said HP would likely lay off as many as 15,000 employees if the proposed merger with Compaq is not approved by HP shareholders. Do you think she was including herself in the total?
- Tech Data is still outperforming most of its distribution competitors on Wall Street, but the company is still looking to trim any excess where it can. For example, employees have been asked to save paper by making double-sided copies on the copy machine from now on. The distributor expects to save about $150,000 this year that way, which will save three jobs, said Perry Monych, president of U.S. operations a Tech Data.
- The legal dispute between Intel and Intergraph continues to give the Energizer Bunny a run for its money. An initial patent dispute between the two, which started five years ago, is now winding its way through the U.S. Court of Appeals, while a second dispute, in which Intergraph says Intel violates its patent rights with the Itanium processors, is set for trial in July.
- Intergraph wants a federal judge to order Intel to stop selling Itanium chips. Evidently, the market's lukewarm response to Intel's 64-bit processors isn't enough.
- The fight between the two companies has pushed the envelope of corporate bitterness. Intel was charged with antitrust violations by the Federal Trade Commission a few years back as a result of the first Intergraph lawsuit,a case that was settled out of court,while Intergraph claims Intel ultimately forced it out of the workstation business.