Infrastructure

Worldwide PC shipments will fall on a year-over-year basis for the first time in nearly a decade, but all signs still point to a late-year tech sector recovery, according to research firm iSuppli. Shipments will fall 4 percent from 2008 sales, to 287.3 million units, the firm predicted. This is the ...

IBM had added a new service-and-hardware offering to its cloud computing repertoire. The bundle targets users seeking a single jumping-off point for deployment of a cloud environment focused on a discrete task, such as a test bed for application development. IBM CloudBurst is a set of preintegrated ...

Sun Microsystems has reported a $201 million loss for Q3 2009, a significant increase over the loss of $34 million that it registered in the same quarter a year ago. At $2.6 billion, third-quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street's forecast of $2.86 million and was a steep drop from the $3.3 billio...

You do not need another diatribe on how tough the economy is and how the next tsunami is hitting IT departments. You have seen the signs and have to take necessary actions: budget cuts, pay cuts. You know the drill. However, bad times need not be all doom and gloom -- they can be times of opportunit...

From the perspective of IT users, developer communities and global industry as a whole, IBM may be the worst place for beleaguered Sun Microsystems to land. Sure a merger as is rumored is good -- but not urgently or obviously so -- for IBM. Big Blue gains modest improvement in share of some servers,...

Networking giant Cisco Systems continues its aggressive push into the consumer sector with the acquisition of Flip Video camera maker Pure Digital Technologies for a whopping $590 million in stock. "The acquisition of Pure Digital is key to Cisco's strategy to expand our momentum in the media-enable...

Computing giant IBM could be close to buying struggling server maker Sun Microsystems for $7 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Though Sun is best known for making high-end servers, the crown jewel of the company's technology portfolio is its software, especially the widespread Inte...

Sony CEO Howard Stringer has taken over the stumbling company's main consumer electronics business after removing Ryoji Chubachi from the helm. Stringer, who has been with Sony since 1997 after a long career in television, will replace Chubachi as president. Chubachi has been reassigned; the 32-year...

Rivals Sun Microsystems and HP have inked a new multiyear agreement that enables HP to sell and support Sun's Solaris operating system on HP ProLiant server and blade system computers. The new deal's intent is to increase demand for Solaris on both HP ProLiant servers and server blades in new market...

Global sales of semiconductors dropped by 2.8 percent in 2008, according to a sales report released Monday by the Semiconductor Industry Association. It is the first decline in worldwide sales since 2001, the organization said. Total sales for 2008 were $248.6 billion, down from $255.6 billion in 20...

Chip giant Intel announced Wednesday that it will shutter four of its semiconductor factories and lay off as many as 6,000 employees by the end of 2009. The news follows on the heels of media speculation that Intel could suffer its first quarterly loss since Q4 of 1986. Intel said last week that it ...

A competitor of computing giant IBM has accused Big Blue of violating antitrust laws in the European Union. In a complaint to the European Commission, mainframe computer maker T3 Technologies has accused IBM of using its dominance of the mainframe market to shut out competitors. T3 claims that IBM k...

Chip giant Intel has slashed the price of some of its microprocessors in what company spokesperson George Alfs has called "a regularly scheduled price move." Among Intel's myriad chips, the Celeron 570 saw the steepest cut, going from $134 to $70, a 48 percent decrease. Other notable price cuts for ...

Chinese PC maker Lenovo will cut 2,500 jobs, or about 11 percent of its workforce, during the first quarter, the company said Wednesday. The cuts will include management and executive positions. In addition, Lenovo will cut executive compensation by 30 percent to 50 percent, and trim bonuses. Lenovo...

Chip giant Intel has once again preannounced dire financial results -- yet another sign of the year-long U.S. recession's heavy toll on the technology industry. Intel said Wednesday that fourth-quarter revenue will come in at $8.2 billion, down 20 percent from the third quarter and down 23 percent y...