Month in Review - May 2004.Computer Associates (CA) chairman and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. Sanjay Kumar For the Indian soldier, see . Sanjay Kumar (born Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1962) was the Chairman & CEO of Computer Associates International (now CA, Inc.), until April 2004. He emigrated with his family to the US in 1976 to escape civil unrest in his native Sri Lanka. was demoted to chief software architect against the backdrop of a long-running federal probe into the company's accounting practices. Board member Lewis Ranieri became chairman, but CA waited before recruiting a new CEO. The systems management company also fired a number of people from its legal and finance departments. Meanwhile, an internal audit concluded that CA needed to restate revenue for 2000-2001 by $2.2 billion. Another software boss to be stepping down, although for rather different reasons, was Siebel Systems' founder, chairman and CEO, Tom Siebel. The 51-year-old executive, who still owns 11% of the customer relationship management (CRM (Customer Relationship Management) An integrated information system that is used to plan, schedule and control the presales and postsales activities in an organization. ) software company, will stay on as chairman. He was replaced by IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) sales veteran Michael Lawrie Michael Lawrie (17th of April 1968) is a computer security expert. Lawrie was head of Commercial Security at British Telecom. Along with DEC and the FBI, he took part in the investigations about Kevin Mitnick. . Siebel Systems endured a terrible time during the IT spending downturn. But lately it has shown signs of life, despite competition from Salesforce.com and other CRM application service providers. The offshore outsourcing debate hotted up on both sides of the Atlantic. Embattled oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell said it planned to cut up to 30% of its 9,300 IT jobs by 2006 and move many to Malaysia and India. At the same time, a group of past and present IBM employees staged a protest outside IBM's annual meeting in Rhode Island Rhode Island, island, United States Rhode Island, island, 15 mi (24 km) long and 5 mi (8 km) wide, S R.I., at the entrance to Narragansett Bay. It is the largest island in the state, with steep cliffs and excellent beaches. , shouting slogans like "Offshore the CEO!" and "America's future is not offshore!" PeopleSoft reported quarterly revenue up 40% from a year ago to $643 million, a rise mainly due to the enterprise applications company's acquisition of JD Edwards in 2003. Wall Street had hoped for better. PeopleSoft blamed Oracle's $9.4 billion hostile takeover Hostile Takeover A takeover attempt that is strongly resisted by the target firm. Notes: Hostile takeovers are usually bad news, as the employee moral of the target firm can quickly turn to animosity against the acquiring firm. bid for "distracting" management. There were some disappointing results for Sun Microsystems, too. Revenue at the systems and software giant declined for the twelfth consecutive quarter, and yet another reorganisation was announced. Meanwhile, Sun said it was ceasing development of its UltraSparc V and Gemini dual-core chips as it shifted its focus towards multi-core processors. A spate of major mergers and acquisitions were announced: integration software supplier Tibco is to buy business process management specialist Staffware for $217 million; US analytics specialist Fair Isaac will acquire London Bridge Software for $300 million; software tools vendor Compuware will buy Changepoint, a project portfolio management company, for $100 million; and systems management specialist BMC Software is to purchase 'push' software maker Marimba marimba: see xylophone. marimba Xylophone with resonators under each bar. The original African instrument uses tuned calabash resonators. In Mexico and Central America, where it was brought by African slaves, the wooden bars may be affixed to a for $239 million. IBM agreed to buy the disaster recovery unit of Schlumberger for an undisclosed sum believed to be about $200 million. IBM also bought Indian call centre management company Daksh eServices, one of the country's largest outsourcing businesses, for about $170 million. Microsoft's record on security endured a difficult month. The software giant released four new patches to cover 20 security flaws across all current versions of the Windows operating system. Then a major new worm, called Sasser, disrupted computer systems around the world. The UK's Maritime and Coastguard Agency The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is a UK executive agency working to prevent the loss of lives at sea and it is responsible for implementing maritime safety policy. This involves coordinating search and rescue (SAR) at sea through Her Majesty's Coastguard (HMCG), ensuring that was among its embarrassed victims. Cap Gemini Ernst &Young, Europe's biggest IT services supplier, changed its name to Capgemini in a EU60 million re-branding exercise forced on it by the terms of its 2000 acquisition of accountant Ernst &Young's IT consulting division. Ampersand The ampersand (&) normally means "and" as in Jones & Company. However, in the computer world, it is used in various ways. In Windows, it is used as a code to precede an underlined character. enthusiasts everywhere expressed regret. |
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