NetFlash: HP takes radical steps after poor earnings

HP didn’t mess around yesterday. Within hours of reporting bad financial results, heads rolled in the departments with the worst money news: servers, storage and sales.

HP didn’t mess around yesterday. Within hours of reporting bad financial results, heads rolled in the departments with the worst money news: servers, storage and sales.

Ousted were three prominent executives: Peter Blackmore, Jim Milton and Kasper Rorsted. All three used to work for Compaq, which HP acquired in 2002. An aside, HP has lost more than a dozen executives since the Compaq deal was announced, including five to rival storage maker EMC alone.

HP’s Enterprise Servers and Storage Group suffered through a painful second quarter, HP CEO Carly Fiorina said in an earnings conference call. A planned migration to a new ordering, processing and supply chain system went very poorly during the quarter, Fiorina said. The European operations were hurt by aggressive discounting and poor channel management, she said.

However you slice it, Fiorina wasn’t going to sit around and wait for improvement. The moves, coupled with the poor financials, kept HP stocks tumbling at the end of the week. 

For more on this story see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0812hpfires.html?net

Hunt for XP SP2 flaws seen in full swing

While users are testing Service Pack 2 for Windows XP to prevent compatibility problems, hackers are picking apart the security-focused software update looking for vulnerabilities, security experts said.

https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0813huntforx.html?net

Network World Fusion Radio: Windows XP Service Pack 2

Windows XP Service Pack 2 is here. The latest upgrade for Microsoft’s flagship desktop operating system comes with a number of security enhancements, to say the least. Joe Wilcox, senior analyst at Jupiter Research and author of the Microsoft Monitor Weblog, joins us to discuss the impact of XP Service Pack 2 on your applications. Listen here:

https://www.nwfusion.com/research/2004/0812radio.html?net

Symbian bugged by Mosquito bite

Users of mobile phones running the Symbian operating system are vulnerable to a Trojan contained in an illegally adapted version of the Mosquitos game, Symbian said this week.

https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0813symbibugge.html?net

IBM ups hiring forecast

IBM Thursday said it is hiring a lot more employees than originally planned. The vendor upped its forecast for the year to 18,800 new hires, the majority of whom are destined for IBM’s services division.

https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0812ibmhire.html?net

Today on Layer 8, where we’re fearful of actual Charleys, not Hurricane Charley:

Battle of the audio formats – iPod vs. cassette; Playboy interview could hurt Google IPO; here comes the thumb; and a physics major’s realization that he should have gone into IT; all this today and more at your home for not-just-networking news.

https://www.nwfusion.com/weblogs/layer8/?net