HP CEO Mark Hurd Was Warned About Spending $13.9 Billion On EDS

As HP writes down $8 billion from its acquisition of EDS in 2008, a certain a Wall Street analyst gets to say, "I told you so!" if he wants to.
HP's $13.9 billion purchase of EDS was then HP-CEO Mark Hurd's signature deal. On the day that he announced it, he faced analysts. (Here's a full transcript on Scribd.)
About halfway through the call, Bank of Montreal analyst Keith Bachman points out that EDS is no great catch. It had been its own "restructuring story over the last couple of years" with flat revenues and a stock that had fallen by 30% over the last 18 months.

"So clearly you are making a bet that you can perform better than how EDS has executed." Bachman said and then asked Hurd what exactly will HP be "bringing to the party"?

Hurd's answer: HP brought its good brand name to the party:

'When you combine our position, our brand, our outsourcing business, their position, their capabilities, listen, we need to go to the market and compete and be able to grow at market rates," Hurd said.

Bachman wasn't having it.

"But Mark, sorry to push back, would you agree, looking at the characteristics, I would think at a minimum this is going to slowdown HP's revenue growth," Bachman replied.

Naturally Hurd disagrees, but then he hedges -- just a little.

"If we can't turn that into an opportunity to go to the market and compete and be able to compete at roughly market rates, then I think that we would have to say we are all not going to be thrilled," he answers.

Funny thing is, now that Hurd is working for HP's competitor, Oracle, he probably is thrilled.

Judge to Oracle, Google: Did you pay off bloggers?

The federal judge on the case wants to know if Google or Oracle (or both) paid commentators and bloggers during the legal battle.

Not to be outshined by Apple v. Samsung, there is still digital paperwork floating around for Oracle v. Google.
Judge William Alsup issued a brief but specific order on Tuesday afternoon from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, demanding both parties to basically fess up if they have kept any journalists and/or commentators on the payroll during the duration of the case.
Here's the order, which much like Alsup's style in the courtroom, cuts right to the point:

The Court is concerned that the parties and/or counsel herein may have retained or paid print or internet authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who have and/or may publish comments on the issues in this case. Although proceedings in this matter are almost over, they are not fully over yet and, in any event, the disclosure required by this order would be of use on appeal or on any remand to make clear whether any treatise, article, commentary or analysis on the issues posed by this case are possibly influenced by financial relationships to the parties or counsel.
Therefore, each side and its counsel shall file a statement herein clear identifying all authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who have reported or commented on any issues in this case and who have received money (other than normal subscription fees) from the party or its counsel during the pendency of this action.

Both parties must respond with a full disclosure by Friday, August 17 at Noon PDT. Oracle v. Google: Order for Financial Disclosure

Windows 7 poised to topple XP as leading OS

The current flavor of Windows came close to surpassing XP in July but will have to wait another month for the title, according to Net Applications.

(Credit: Net Applications)

Windows 7 and XP are virtually neck and neck in their battle to be the dominant OS, according to Web analytics firm Net Applications.
For the month of July, Windows 7 grabbed 42.21 percent of all network traffic recorded by Net Applications. Windows XP eked out a slightly higher share, capturing 42.86 percent. As Windows 7 has been catching up to its 11-year-old counterpart, it will certainly reach the top spot sometime this month.
The latest results show a huge difference over July 2011 when Windows 7 held just 29.6 percent of Net Applications' mobile traffic, while Windows XP had more than 52 percent.
For an operating system launched in 2001, XP has enjoyed a good run. Many businesses and consumers perfectly satisifed with the OS and turned off by Vista had stuck with XP far longer than anticipated. But more people and organizations are migrating to Windows 7, likely for a number of reasons.
Microsoft is cutting off extended support for Windows XP in less than two years, specifically April 2014. That means large companies must upgrade their installations to Windows 7. Otherwise, they face potential security risks when patches, updates, and bug fixes are no longer available for XP.
Microsoft's latest applications have also been giving the cold shoulder to XP and even Vista. Internet Explorer 9 doesn't support XP, while IE10 won't support XP or Vista. Office 2013 won't run under XP or Vista. Of course, these slights are all part of the company's strategy to force people to bump up to Windows 7.
Still, XP will be around for the foreseeable future. I notice a lot of computers running XP at doctor's offices, hospitals, and similar facilities. Such organizations rely on legacy applications and equipment that may not function under Windows 7. And even though Windows 7 offers an XP mode for compatibility, coaxing these companies to totally migrate from XP will continue to be a challenge.
Overall, Windows accounted for 92 percent of all the traffic on Net Applications' network in July. Mac OS X won a 7 percent share, up from less than 6 percent a year ago.

Microsoft warns of critical Oracle code bugs in Exchange

Microsoft last week warned IT administrators that critical vulnerabilities in code licensed from Oracle could give attackers access to Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 systems.
Oracle patched the vulnerabilities in its "Oracle Outside In" code libraries as part of a massive update on July 17 that fixed nearly 90 flaws in its database software.
Exchange, as well as Microsoft's FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, use the Oracle Outside In libraries to display file attachments in a browser rather than to open them in a locally-stored application, like Microsoft Word. The vulnerabilities are within the code that parses those attachments.
"An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could run arbitrary code under the process that is performing the parsing of the specially crafted files," said Microsoft in the security advisory it issued a week ago.
A successful exploit of an Exchange server would let hackers "install programs; view, change, or delete data; or take any other action that the server process has access to do."
Microsoft downplayed the threat, saying elsewhere that it was unaware of any active, in-the-wild exploits.
In the absence of an immediate patch -- Microsoft said it is working on an update, but gave no release timetable -- the company's Security Research & Defense blog and the advisory recommended that IT administrators temporarily disable those Exchange Server and FAST Search Server features that relied on the Oracle Outside In libraries.
"You need to evaluate the risk and determine if it's necessary to implement the mitigations," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, in an interview last week. "Meanwhile, the security guys sit and watch attack telemetry and hope Microsoft releases a fix soon."
Microsoft rarely issues an emergency update -- dubbed "out-of-band" or "out-of-cycle" -- that departs from its normal once-a-month schedule. Among the criteria it uses: Whether there are attacks circulating that exploit a vulnerability, and if so, whether the volume of those attacks reaches a threshold that Microsoft doesn't disclose.
The last time Microsoft released an out-of-band update was at the end of 2011, when it rushed a fix for a flaw that could have been used by hackers to cripple Web servers.
The company's next regularly-scheduled security updates will ship Tuesday, Aug. 14.