SAP Starts the Week, Olympics End it
SAP's executive changes reverberated across the IT news sphere and opened the week's big IT news. Google's Buzz garnered Tuesday's big headlines, while Microsoft's Windows patch woes took over as the week progressed. As we head into the weekend, our sights turn to the Olympic Games in Vancouver, which will be not only a show of athletic prowess but also an IT spectacle.
Fri, February 12, 2010
IDG News Service — SAP's executive changes reverberated across the IT news sphere and opened the week's big IT news. Google's (GOOG) Buzz garnered Tuesday's big headlines, while Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows patch woes took over as the week progressed. As we head into the weekend, our sights turn to the Olympic Games in Vancouver, which will be not only a show of athletic prowess but also an IT spectacle.
1. SAP hits reset button with CEO change and More executive changes at SAP: SAP replaced CEO Léo Apotheker with co-CEOs Bill McDermott, who was the head of the field organization, and Jim Hagemann Snabe, who was in charge of product development. A few days later, it announced the resignation of executive board member John Schwarz, who was head of the BusinessObjects division and had been seen by some observers to be a possible future CEO.
2. Google Buzz: A visual tour, Review: The full buzz on Google Buzz, Google Buzz criticized for disclosing Gmail contacts and Google Buzz attracting spammers already: The hype-o-meter got close to tilt as Google announced its Buzz social-networking technology, which earned praise as a good idea, but thumbs down in some quarters for poor implementation, privacy concerns (which the company moved to address), and it also got the attention of spammers.
3. Microsoft stops serving Windows patch blamed for blue screens and Microsoft says malware causing blue screen crashes: After users flooded Microsoft's support forum seeking help and lodging complaints, the company stopped distributing a Windows XP patch that was causing the dreaded blue screen of death on some computers. At week's end the company said that it looked like the problem might be caused by malware, although Microsoft continued to investigate.
4. IBM launches eight-core Power7 processor, servers: IBM (IBM) unveiled its latest Power7 mega multithread processor along with some new servers. They will do battle with systems based on Intel's (INTC) latest Itanium chip, which it launched the same day after years of delay.
5. Macworld Expo news: Our friends at Macworld were -- as we'd expect -- all over the Macworld Expo this week, checking out the news and offering their views.
6. Powerful smartphones bound for Mobile World Congress: And other of our colleagues were headed for Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, where we expect they will file a steady stream of stories next week, especially given that they were already hard at work filing plenty of stories in advance of the big show.
