Weekly Digest
Weekly Digest Issue No. 534
23-09-2010
by Deirdre McArdle
HP and Oracle resolve Hurd legal spat | RIM poised to launch BlackPad?
Calyx bought out, Trintech in takeover talks
A couple of buyouts and a potential takeover were on the cards for two Irish firms this week. Irish ICT company Calyx, which went into receivership earlier this month, has become the subject of two buyouts. British private equity firm Better Capital, which bought the Calyx Group's debt from Anglo Irish Bank, has purchased Calyx's software unit. Meanwhile, the firm's management team, led by David Hargaden, former chief financial officer of Calyx, and Declan Hughes, the general manager of Calyx Ireland, snapped up its voice, data and security operations. The voice and data unit will now trade under a new name, Unity Technology Solutions. Hargaden said Unity Technology Solutions will continue to serve current Calyx customers from its Dublin and Cork offices.
Calyx employs 500 people in the UK and Ireland. The buyouts mean that 150 Irish jobs have been saved. The business has been trading under the Calyx brand since 2002, following a management buyout of the voice, data and training businesses of Alphyra.
Meanwhile, another Irish firm, Trintech, has confirmed it has received approaches from a "number of parties" that may lead to a takeover bid for the company. The directors said "discussions are at a very preliminary stage and that there can be no certainty that they will lead to any definitive agreement regarding any transaction". In a statement, the software firm said further announcements would be made as appropriate. Trintech has operations in Ireland, but its headquarters is based in Dallas, Texas.
HP and Oracle resolve Hurd legal spat
Hewlett-Packard and Oracle buried the hatchet this week, resolving their legal dispute over the latter's hiring of Mark Hurd. HP had sued Hurd after its former chief executive joined Oracle as co-president earlier this month. HP had alleged that Hurd was breaching his severance agreement; in early August HP forced Hurd out over breaches of its conduct of business rules.
The companies said that while the terms of the settlement remain confidential, Hurd has agreed to adhere to his obligations to protect HP's confidential information, while fulfilling his responsibilities at Oracle. In a regulatory filing, HP also said Hurd had agreed to give back about 345,000 restricted HP shares that he had been given as part of his exit package.
Now that the legal spat has been settled, HP and Oracle also reaffirmed their long-term strategic partnership. The pair have 140,000 shared customers, according to HP executive Anne Livermore, who took to the stage with colleague Dave Donatelli this week at Oracle's OpenWorld event in San Francisco, where they waxed lyrical on the HP and Oracle partnership. (Read our updates on the OpenWorld event here.)
Meanwhile, HP has also been busy in its search for Hurd's replacement. According to the Wall Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter, the company's board is moving closer to naming a new CEO, and the candidate is likely to come from within HP, though the board hasn't yet ruled out bringing in someone from the outside.
Among HP's internal candidates are Donatelli, a relatively recent hire who helped lead HP's successful bidding war for 3PAR, and Livermore, who oversees the server and services business. Also potentially in the running is Todd Bradley, who runs the personal computer business. HP hasn't commented on the search for a CEO.
Aussie teen sparks Twitter chaos
Micro-blogging site Twitter suffered a security attack this week when a software bug on the Twitter.com site was exploited. Australian teen Pearce Delphin said he tweeted a piece of "mouseover" JavaScript code which brings up a pop-up window when the user hovers their cursor over the message. For his part Delphin said he did it just to "see if it could be done"; however, the idea was soon taken up by hackers who tweaked the code to redirect users to pornographic sites and create worm tweets that replicated every time they were read. Thousands of Twitter users were affected, including Sarah Brown, the wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who inadvertently tweeted the bug to her 1.1 million followers.
Twitter was quick to tackle the problem. It said in a blog posting that the matter was brought to its attention at 2.54am PDT and that it had resolved the "primary issue" by 7am PDT. The micro-blogging site said it had previously discovered and patched the bug last month; however, a recent site update (unrelated to the recent Twitter revamp) "unknowingly resurfaced it". It sought to reassure users that the majority of the exploits were harmless, redirecting people to porn sites and the like, and that it was not aware of any issues related to it that would cause harm to computers or to user accounts. It said there was no need for anyone to change passwords as user account information was not compromised.
In more positive news for Twitter, the site said it is currently testing targeting technology that it hopes to use to make more money from its paid advertisements. The tech will allow advertisers to show promoted tweets to users based on the people and brands they follow (20 percent of Twitter's 160 million registered members follow brands or product-related users). Twitter plans to use this information to allow advertisers to display what it hopes will be more relevant messages.
RIM poised to launch BlackPad?
The budding tablet market got a bit hotter this week with the speculation that BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is readying a new tablet device. Rumours suggest RIM could be planning to unveil the device at its annual developers conference, which kicks off on Monday in San Francisco.
The Canadian company has reportedly trademarked the names "BlackPad" and "SurfBook", with BlackPad the current favourite among media watchers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the device will feature a 7-inch touchscreen and one or two in-built cameras. The BlackPad will differ from the slew of tablet devices currently on the market in that it will have Bluetooth and broadband connections but will only be able to connect to mobile networks through a BlackBerry smartphone. This corroborates reports from a few months ago which said that any BlackBerry tablet would be developed as a 'companion' to a smartphone.
Another interesting titbit revealed by the Wall Street Journal suggests that instead of the newly-launched BlackBerry 6 OS, the BlackPad would most likely run on a new operating system developed by QNX, a company RIM purchased earlier this year. The paper quotes sources familiar with the plans as saying that RIM eventually plans to move all of its BlackBerry smartphones to this OS in the future.
The BlackPad rumours come at an exciting time for the tablet market. Just a few weeks ago Samsung and Toshiba revealed their tablet offerings, the Tab and Folio 100, respectively.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 