Corporate & legal

Chinese communications equipment maker Huawei has nailed an important deal and is close to striking a second one with American service providers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The company, which has tried for several years to crack the U.S. market, has scored a deal with cable operator Cox Communications and is a finalist in bids to help Clearwire build its nationwide 4G wireless network using a technology called WiMax.

Clearwire expects its network to be available to 120 million people by 2010. And it is currently selecting equipment suppliers to help it build the network. The new Clearwire … Read more

IBM issued 1,674 layoff notices to U.S. employees in its applications services business on Thursday, as part of a larger round of anticipated cuts to its Global Business Services unit, according to a national representative of Alliance@IBM, an affiliate of the Communication Workers of America, which is seeking to unionize IBM.

The applications services business is one of several areas in IBM's Global Business Services unit, a massive consulting arm that last year generated $19.6 billion in revenue for Big Blue. The Global Business Services unit also posted a 9 percent increase in its revenue. … Read more

Alltel announced on Thursday an upgrade to its My Circle feature that will let customers add up to five additional members for unlimited calling. The upgrade, which will be free, will be available only in the Alltel markets that are not part of the merger with Verizon Wireless.

Starting Friday, the My Circle 10 plan will expand to My Circle 15 and the My Circle 20 plan will expand to My Circle 25. Other plan features, including the monthly price, will not change. The upgrade will not apply to My Circle 1 or My Circle 5 plans.

To gain federal … Read more

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Wall Street analysts, still upbeat about the Pre's prospects, are beginning to fall in love with Palm.

These folks are betting that demand for the Pre--and the WebOS that rides shotgun--will be strong enough to make Palm a strong market player again. However, if you follow the money, it's clear that Palm doubters abound.

Simply put, Palm garners Wall Street kudos even as much stronger companies, such as Research In Motion, fall out of favor. According to Thomson Reuters data, there are eight analysts rating Palm shares … Read more

Lenovo announced an internal overhaul Wednesday, reorganizing both its regional and product groups.

Think products, like the iconic ThinkPad and the desktop ThinkStation, will be separated from the Idea group, which makes the IdeaPad and IdeaCentre PCs. The Think group will focus on commercial customers as well as high-end small and medium businesses (SMB). The Idea group will target consumer and SMB transactional customers.

The reorganization also spawned two new business units: one that targets mature markets, and another that targets emerging markets. They will replace the current business units that focus on specific regions. Lenovo considers the U.S., … Read more

Microsoft is facing another patent infringement suit, this time over the technology it uses to automatically update Windows, Office, and other programs.

In a lawsuit filed March 20, BackWeb Technologies charges that Microsoft's Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), as well as Windows Update and other products, infringe four of BackWeb's patents. BackWeb, which is based in Israel and has U.S. offices in San Jose, Calif., filed the complaint in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

BackWeb seeks, among other things, an injunction against Microsoft, a declaration that BackWeb's patents are valid, and monetary damages.

A … Read more

Wall Street executives feeling harassed by taxpayers outraged at their pay might take note of how Google's ruling triumvirate fared in 2008: $1 in salary each, no bonus, no stock grants, and no stock options.

Google has offered co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt "market-competitive" salaries every year since 2005, but once again in 2008, the three turned it down, according to a company regulatory filing Tuesday. "Due to their own preferences not to receive salary compensation, Eric, Larry, and Sergey each rejected these offers and continue to receive base salaries … Read more

With the recession continuing its hold on the economy, IBM is reportedly preparing for another round of layoffs, according to a report Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.

The cuts are expected to affect a large swath of U.S. employees in IBM's global business services unit, with a number of the jobs reassigned to workers in India, the Journal reported.

Talk of pending layoffs in IBM's services unit is making the rounds on Alliance@IBM, a Communications Workers of America affiliate attempting to organize IBM workers into a union.

On the Alliance@IBM site, two posts Wednesday … Read more

In a recent blog I discussed a bit of rather alarming ESG Research data. When asked to define the most important processes related to confidential data security, 47 percent of North American and Western European security professionals point to, "communicating and training employees on confidential data security policies." Unfortunately, it turns out that many large organizations aren't very good confidential data security policy communicators or trainers--28 percent of security professionals rate their organization as "fair" or "poor" in this area.

So what's the problem? Some organizations minimize this task and provide only … Read more