61123727
submission
FrankPoole writes:
According to a CRN investigative report, Cisco has been spending millions of dollars over several years to secretly purchase Juniper Networks' products, including new QFabric and MX series routers, for use in its "competitive analysis lab," where the products are tested and reverse engineered. According to the report, some of the Juniper products purchased by Cisco were still in beta and not yet commercially released. In addition, CRN discovered that a main source for Cisco to obtain these Juniper products was, ironically, a company called Torrey Point Group, a fast-growing VAR that was awarded Juniper's Part of the Year in 2011.
46109977
submission
FrankPoole writes:
The Iomega brand name will soon be officially laid to rest. Lenovo and EMC, which jointly own the storage company, will replace the Iomega name on all NAS products with "LenovoEMC." Lenovo and EMC entered into a joint venture last year, with Lenovo buying partial ownership of Iomega. But because the company name is associated with cheap, consumer storage and ZIP drives, Lenovo is giving Iomega the boot.
45614725
submission
FrankPoole writes:
According to CRN, IBM is in serious negotiations to sell its low-end x86 server business to Lenovo, which is looking to grow its server revenue. If the deal goes though, it will be the second time in 8 years that Big Blue has exited a major hardware business and sold the operation to Lenovo. IBM sold its PC business to Chinese computer maker in 2005.
28518035
submission
FrankPoole writes:
Indie iPhone game developer Nimblebit is accusing social games giant Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title Tiny Tower. Nimblebit's Ian Marsh got word out about the similarities between Dream Heights and Tiny Tower with an image that's still making the Twitter rounds. The image is made up of screenshots showing how Dream Heights' interface and gameplay mechanics appear strikingly similar to Tiny Tower's.
11466728
submission
FrankPoole writes:
HP's Moscow offices were raided Wednesday as part of a bribery investigation by Russian and German authorities. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which wrote that HP is suspected of allegedly paying out nearly $11 million in bribes to secure a major Russian government contract several years ago via a German subsidiary. Ironically, the contract was with the Prosecutor General's office of the Russian Federation, which will now play a role in investigating HP. While HP knew of the investigation as far back as December, the company did not disclose the information in any SEC filings. Instead, in its most recent quarterly report, HP states that in foreign nations "it is common to engage in business practices that are prohibited by laws and regulations."
9497860
submission
FrankPoole writes:
CRN takes a look at the past five years of Microsoft's acquisition history, which totals $13 billion and more than 7,000 new employees, and highlights 10 deals and how they've affected the software giant. While some larger acquisitions stand out for better or worse, such as Danger and aQuantive, there are some smaller, blink-and-you'll-miss-it deals that have proved pivotal for Microsoft's push into new areas such as virtualization. And Microsoft's recent acquisition track record may lend credence to the heavy criticism levied against the company by former employees like Dick Brass.
