News Feature

Top 10 IT News Stories of the Week: Ericsson buys Redback

December 22, 2006 — CIO —

1. "Ericsson to Pay $2.1B for Redback Networks,"
CIO.com, 12/20.
In the IT acquisition of the week, Ericsson says it is buying carrier edge router maker Redback Networks for $2.1 billion to take a whack at rivals Cisco, Juniper and the recently merged Alcatel-Lucent when it comes to edge routers. Redback’s routers carry IP voice, video and data at the edge of carrier networks. The company boasts robust sales, up 42 percent since 2003, even though it hasn’t reported a profit in three years.

2. "HP Will Tighten Security in HP-UX,"
Computerworld, 12/18.
HP released a free upgrade to its HP-UX 11i v2 operating system that automatically encrypts data as it is stored, and announced other security feature enhancements to HP-UX for its Integrity server line. Network security breaches of late have led customers to express concerns, which HP evidently took to heart.

3. "IBM to End Stock-Option Grants for Non-IBM Directors,"
CIO.com, 12/21.
IBM took a step away from the stock-option era, announcing that as of Jan. 1 it won’t give stock-option grants to the 12 of 13 members of its board of directors who aren’t IBM executives. Chairman and CEO Samuel Palmisano is the only one who will still receive stock options. His compensation package is negotiated separately from the other directors. But don’t feel too badly for the loss of stock-option grants to the other 12—instead of issuing them 4,000 IBM stock-option grants, IBM will double their annual retainers from $100,000 to $200,000 each.

4. "Intel Plans to Launch Core 2 Quad in January,"
Computerworld, 12/19.
Sources say that Intel will launch the third model of its four-core processor during the CES trade show in Las Vegas. The Core 2 Quad chip for high-end desktop PCs will debut during the week of Jan. 8 when all eyes in IT will be on Vegas, if not in Vegas.

5. "Siemens Sets Record for Network Speed,"
CIO.com, 12/21.
The ever-present demand for faster broadband pipes got a boost this week, according to Siemens, which says that it hit a transmission speed of 107Gbps over a single optical fiber. That speed could send the data on two DVDs in a second. Siemens says that’s a record for the electrical processing of data through a fiber-optic cable and that it occurred over a 100-mile fiber-optic route in the United States.

6. "Apple to Join ‘Month of Security Bugs’ Club,"
CIO.com, 12/20.
To prove a point, two security researchers will start the new year by publishing daily details of security vulnerabilities in Apple products. The blitz of vulnerabilities will last through January, according to independent security researcher Kevin Finesterre and "LMH," a hacker who otherwise declines to be identified. Some of the bugs they plan to reveal could be "a significant risk" to users of Apple products and will include bugs in the Mac OS X kernel and Safari, iTunes, iPhoto and QuickTime software. So much for the notion that Macs are inherently more secure than Windows PCs—the researchers claim that fewer attacks on Macs owes more to the Mac OS X’s more secure Unix kernel and the fact that Macs aren’t as widely used as Windows PCs than to anything Apple does to make its products more secure.