Briefs: April 4, 2005

TRANSMETA TAPS NEW CEO, STARTS PROCESSOR PHASEOUTS

Transmeta said it has tapped Arthur Swift as its new president and CEO, replacing Matthew Perry, who recruited Swift to the company two years ago.

Transmeta disclosed little about Perry's plans, saying only that he is leaving the company.

Swift is a 25-year industry veteran and since March 2003 has been Transmeta's senior vice president of marketing.

In addition to replacing its CEO, the company said its two main products—the Crusoe and Efficeon processors—now will only be offered on "an end-of-life" basis. Some "critical customers" could still receive the chips on modified terms and conditions, the company said.

Transmeta said it now will focus its efforts on developing and licensing its proprietary LongRun2 processor technology.

VERIZON/QWEST BIDDING SAGA FOR MCI CONTINUES
For the second time, MCI early last week said it had agreed to be acquired by Verizon Communications. But determined MCI suitor Qwest Communications International was not yet ready to throw in the towel, and Qwest again upped its offer, this time to about $8.9 billion.

Verizon added about $900 million, plus additional shareholder protections, to its initial offer of $6.75 billion, which MCI accepted in mid-February. Qwest began the acquisition contest for MCI in early February with a bid of roughly $8 billion. In mid-March, Qwest sweetened its bid to almost $8.5 billion.

Late Monday, one day before MCI said it would again agree to be acquired by Verizon, Qwest gave MCI an April 5 deadline to respond to its latest bid or have the offer withdrawn.

CANON USA REPLACES ITS CEO
Canon USA is replacing its CEO, saying that he had been called back to Canon's Tokyo headquarters to work in a new capacity as an adviser.

Canon USA said Yoroku Adachi would step in to the role of president and CEO effective last Friday. He will replace Kinya Uchida, who has been Canon's top boss in the United States since 1999. In a statement, Canon said its USA unit—which is responsible for sales in North America, South America and the Caribbean—had seen its sales and profit grow by 16 percent during Uchida's tenure.

Adachi, a 25-year veteran of Canon, has also served as president of Canon Canada, CEO of Canon China and Canon Hong Kong, and chairman of Canon Singapore.

Canon USA is locked in a battle with several vendors in the growing and highly contested color document imaging space in North America. The vendor has also been expanding its software and application development operations over the past few years.

SYNNEX AUTHORIZED TO RESELL AVAYA VOIP LINE
Synnex has been authorized to sell Avaya VoIP products, said John Paget, president of North America at Synnex.

"We've been working on this one for a while," Paget said. "This is the same category [of importance] as when we picked up [Hewlett-Packard] enterprise storage authorization. This is going to be significant business for us."

Synnex becomes the fourth Avaya distributor in the United States, joining Catalyst Telecom, Voda One and Jenne Distributors. The distributor will carry Avaya's IP Office, Merlin Magix and Avaya Partner product lines, Paget said.

VoIP is an area of significant interest to Synnex, which also carries Nortel Networks, 3Com and Altigen products in the space.

Synnex plans to leverage other product lines, such as HP servers, to help solution providers design more complete VoIP solutions, according to Paget.

WEAK FINANCIAL CONTROLS FORCE VERITAS TO DELAY FILING
Veritas Software said problems with monitoring and documenting its internal financial controls will prevent the company from filing its 2004 10K on time. The company's 10K deadline was March 31.

Veritas said its auditors need more time to review the financial reporting related to its order-entry processes and software licensing transactions. Under the first deadline of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, all U.S. public companies with a market cap of more than $75 million must monitor, document and report on the effectiveness of their internal controls.

In a statement, Veritas said the financial process weaknesses causing the delay should not affect its upcoming acquisition by Symantec.

PEREGRINE SYSTEMS FLIES NEW CHANNEL PROGRAM
Peregrine Systems launched a new PartnerEdge channel program that aims to marshal much of the professional services side of its software business to VARs that attain the proper certification.

Peregrine's three-tiered PartnerEdge program aims every tier at Peregrine's enterprise customers. It provides joint marketing opportunities, lead generation and sales and technical training for Peregrine's Asset Management 4.4 software. Under the guidelines, partners whose limited professional services ability only qualify them for the lower tiers are tapped to subcontract parts of jobs best suited to their expertise.