Chris Preimesberger

The global technology sector, which most analysts and industry observers believed would be be relatively resistant to recessionary forces, has officially joined the glut of industries in starting mass layoffs after disclosing sinking sales and profits.Tens of thousands of lost jobs were hitting people and companies where it hurts this week. Microsoft announced it would […]

San Francisco-based social networking Web site Digg.com, which has about 75 employees, announced Jan. 22 that it, too, is feeling the current economic pressures and will trim its workforce by about 10 percent. CEO Jay Adelson explained in his blog that the company will start focusing on advertising sales and will be hiring a new […]

Just in from Sean Brooks: “Autonomy just announced its intent to acquire Interwoven, a global leading provider of content management solutions for $775 Million. The combination brings together Interwoven’s products which improve human interactions with information with Autonomy’s technology that will allow people to know what those human interactions mean. The combination of these two […]

Legal search services provider Autonomy said Jan. 22 that it will acquire Web content management vendor Interwoven for $775 million.The transaction will be funded by an underwritten placing of ordinary shares, a new revolving credit facility, and a portion of Interwoven’s and Autonomy’s cash reserves, Autonomy said. The final price worked out to $16.20 a […]

Sun Microsystems, which revealed on Nov. 14, 2008, that it planned to reduce its global work force by 5,000 to 6,000 employees-15 to 18 percent-began carrying out that dreadful duty Jan. 22.Sun confirmed that layoff notifications were sent to about 1,300 employees as part of that action. Reductions were made across all levels, including vice […]

Seagate Technology apparently changed its mind Jan. 21 on a firmware fix for its Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive that The Station announced here last Friday. The embattled disk drive maker, which announced 800 layoffs plus the resignation of CEO Bill Watkins on Jan. 12, rescinded the patch after it reportedly caused 500GB versions of the […]

UPDATED: Once again, we’re reminded that data center automation is a key trend for 2009. Los Angeles-based Network Automation, a small but significant maker of software that streamlines and integrates business processes, said Jan. 21 that it is now taking preorders for AutoMate 7, a popular utility that automates hundreds of IT processes with drag-and-drop […]

ProStor Systems named a new president/CEO Jan. 21. He’s Frank Harbist, who joins the Boulder, Colo., company after 21 years at Hewlett-Packard. Harbist’s mission will be to continue to grow ProStor’s RDX removable disk product line. An RDX system is a low-end, tape-replacement data storage package designed to provide small and midsize businesses with easy-to-use […]

WAN provider Riverbed Technology Jan. 20 said it has acquired Mazu Networks, a 7-year-old, privately held company that helps enterprises optimize the performance of global applications by providing detailed network monitoring and reporting services.Mazu will immediately become a business unit of Riverbed. In addition to the acquisition of all of Mazu’s outstanding securities, Riverbed will […]

News organizations, content delivery networks and ISPs reported record streaming video viewership Jan. 20 following the television broadcast and subsequent Webcasting of the inauguration of Sen. Barack Obama as the new president of the United States.CNN.com shattered its old record of 5.3 million live video streams-set on election night, Nov. 4, 2008-before the actual swearing-in […]

Here’s a last-minute news flash Mike Hall at Seagate Technology sent me Jan. 16: “Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in certain products, including some Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related drive families based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible […]

Storage 2009: Success Will Depend on Efficiency Looking ahead to the new year and economic recession, all indications are that virtualization will help the next 12 months become IT’s year of pursuing efficiency. In data storage, this means finding and utilizing as much disk capacity as possible to make best use of existing hardware and […]