5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

The Week Ending Sept. 15

At the top of this week's roundup of those having a tough week is Brocade, which will shed hundreds of employees as its acquisition by Broadcom approaches.

Also making the list are Tech Data, for its Hurricane Irma-related difficulties; Google, which lost its channel chief; Kaspersky Lab; for its federal government worries; and Equifax, for its ongoing helplessness following one of the worst data breaches in modern IT history.

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 Five Companies That Came To Win roundup.

Hundreds Of Brocade Employees Leaving As Broadcom Acquisition Approaches

Brocade will shed hundreds of employees before it is acquired by Broadcom; the company is offering a voluntary separation plan for employees in the U.S. and India, according to SEC filings.

A total of 230 employees based in the U.S. have accepted the plan, while Brocade plans to lay off 96 more employees based in San Jose in October, according to an employment report.

In an email to CRN, Brocade said the workforce reduction is in response "to the business conditions created by the previously announced delay in the closing of Broadcom's expected acquisition of Brocade."

Tech Data Systems Go Down Following Hurricane Irma

Tech Data's core ERP system and ordering tools were unavailable this week after the company was impacted by power and communication utility outages due to Hurricane Irma.

The company's Clearwater, Fla.-based headquarters and Miami-based Latin American export office were closed Tuesday because of those outages, leading to disruptions in its StreamOne, XML, EDI and shop.techdata.com eBusiness systems.

On Wednesday, the company announced its headquarters and eBusiness tools are back up and running.

Channel Chief Bertrand Yansouni Is Leaving Google

Google on Thursday confirmed that its channel chief, Bertrand Yansouni, is leaving less than a year after he took over the job of leading the company's partner program.

Yansouni was first hired as vice president of global partner sales and alliances in November by his former boss at VMware and current Google Cloud leader Diane Greene.

The executive came to Google from Cloudera, where he led the big data startup's partner program. Yansouni was tasked at Google with leveraging its expanding partner ecosystem to challenge Microsoft and Amazon for cloud dominance.

Kaspersky Lab Partners Put In Tough Position As Public Sector Pressure Mounts

Kaspersky Labs was notified by the Department of Homeland Security that all Kaspersky products must be removed from federal networks in the next 90 days.

The DHS said it banned Kaspersky's products from U.S. government networks because it was "concerned about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies, and requirements under Russian law that allow Russian intelligence agencies to request or compel assistance from Kaspersky and to intercept communications transiting Russian networks."

Partners, for their part, are fielding more questions from customers – and some are even slowing or halting their work with the vendor.

Equifax Data Breach Disaster Fallout Continues, 143 Million Customers Impacted

Equifax revealed a huge data breach last week, affecting 143 million customers of its credit and information services. The credit reporting agency said the breach included information on names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses, and some driver's license numbers, as well as more than 200,000 credit card numbers and nearly 200,000 other documents with personal identifying information.

The fallout from the announcement of the breach has continued into this week, with Equifax facing backlash after the company chose not to notify people who were affected by the breach. Instead, the company set up a website that wasn't ready for days and didn't work properly once launched.