Sandisk CEO says unfazed by recession concerns
539455
SanDisk Corp , a maker of  flash memory and consumer electronics, has driven growth in  sales outside of the United State in recent years, insulating  it somewhat from any potential downturn in the U.S. economy,  its chief executive said on Monday.
722976
PC Magazine - Practical features at extremely competitive prices continues to be SanDisk's formula for success.
352476
Performance has been somewhat disappointing, but that could change if drive makers put in more flash, executives said.
560002
SanDisk Corp.  said on Friday it will cut 10 percent of its work force and trim executive salaries to compensate for a recent collapse in prices for memory chips, sending its shares down 5 percent.
29975
SanDisk Corp , the  world's largest maker of data-storage memory chips, reported  third-quarter results that beat estimates as it boosted sales  outside the United States and sold more chips to mobile-phone  makers.
418508
CEO Kevin Rollins hints that computer maker's usage of Advanced Micro Devices' processors is now more a question of when, not if.
653293
A pair of Forrester Research analysts gave CIOs a passel of advice Thursday on how to deal with the possibility of a U.S. economic recession.&quot;We are not predicting a recession, but we think its important for CIOs to be proactive, to get their businesses ready in case there is a recession,&quot; said analyst Andrew Bartels, who conducted the teleconference with colleague Alex Cullen.Their recommendations boiled down to a number of main themes: The right ways to cut costs, to work closely with CFOs, and to plan not only for the lean times but for the good ones that inevitably follow.&quot;Get close to your CFO. You want to be arm in arm with that CFO,&quot; Bartels stressed.Forrester said there is a 55 percent probability the economy will remain essentially stabilized, due to factors including U.S. exports boosted by a weak dollar. The firm projects a 35 percent chance the country will enter a shallow recession, and a 10 percent chance it will fall into a deep one.The analysts said to watch for two key warning signs: Gas prices rising above $4 a gallon and two or more consecutive months of non-farm payroll employment.If they haven&#39;t already, CIOs should prepare now by reviewing their portfolios and identify which projects could be postponed, cut, or cancelled, he said.&quot;If you&#39;re running things well, adapting to recession is easier,&quot; Cullen noted.The tradeoffs vary depending on the type of cut, he said. For example, delaying hardware purchases could result in increased service outages.CIOs could also try other tactics, such as renegotiating vendor pacts or enacting hiring freezes, according to Forrester. Such measures could antagonize business partners and overburden staff, they said.But those types of risks are mild in comparison to that posed by cutting certain types of &quot;low-hanging fruit,&quot; such as time and support for research and development.&quot;These things look like they don&#39;t have immediate payback, so the question is &#39;Why are we doing them when times are tight?&#39;&quot; Cullen said.Likewise, it would be foolish to pull money and resources away from architectural strategy, he argued: &quot;You&#39;re going to be impeding your ability to take a long-term view of IT investments. When the tap opens up again people are going to be creating silos ... and you&#39;re going to spend your time unwinding these things.&quot;&quot;The worst thing you can do as a CIO is get so focused on cuts that when you come out of a recession, your department can&#39;t take the business where it wants to be,&quot; Bartels added.Outsourcing IT may also look like an appealing option, but the analysts issued a stern warning against it as a quick fix.Large-scale outsourcing deals take a long time to close, for one thing, Cullen argued: &quot;This is not near-term savings. This is not 2008 savings.&quot; But outsourcing of a particular IT function could make sense, he said.The hot trend of the past couple of years -- SaaS (software as a service) -- is not necessarily a fitting remedy during a recession, the analysts argued. While SaaS vendors relentlessly tout the cost savings their offerings can provide, it would cost a lot more to rip and replace legacy assets with SaaS products, the analysts said. However, they added, SaaS might offer lower upfront costs for a new technology.
632052
(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems Inc. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President Jonathan Schwartz made it clear Wednesday what kind of customers his company hopes to lure now that long-troubled Sun finally appears to be in the middle of an upswing. "There are two customers we see [in the market]," Schwartz said, speaking at a Sun product launch event in New York. "Customers that look at information technology as a competitive weapon, and those that look at information technology as a cost center. We're obsessed with and focused on the former." Calling New York the "epicenter for those kind of customers" because of the technology-savvy financial services firms and media companies that have headquarters there, Schwartz outlined some of the positives for his company since he assumed the CEO position a little over 100 days ago. While his first 100 days "honeymoon is over," according to Schwartz, Sun is just beginning to see the fruits of a comeback strategy it's been crafting since it took the dot.com bust on the chin in 2001. The company seems to be finally climbing -- albeit slowly -- out of its unprofitable rut, and has shown promising revenue growth over the last couple of quarters as it cut costs by shedding employees. Schwartz said the company even expects to achieve sustainable profitability by its fiscal fourth quarter, which ends June 30, 2007. Schwartz had little new to report about the company's overall strategy, although Sun Wednesday launched some storage and server products -- and one, called "Thumper," that is a hybrid of the two. In a message he's been trumpeting for years, the new CEO continued to stress Sun's commitment to offering a mix of hardware systems, software, storage and services, and helping customers combine those products in heterogeneous IT environments so Sun's products run seamlessly alongside competitive offerings. Schwartz pointed to the success of Sun's open-source version of its Solaris OS as proof that Sun is happy to play well with others if it means winning customers. He said since the company open sourced Solaris last year, nearly 70 percent of its implementations have been on competing hardware from IBM Corp., Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., not Sun's own servers. Sun to date has distributed nearly 6 million licenses for OpenSolaris, Schwartz added. One analyst who attended Wednesday's event said it was not meant to be a new product-driven launch. Instead, said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst with Illuminata, the event was to show that Sun's investment in open source and new products over the past several years, including its early adoption of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Opteron chips for its Galaxy server line, is finally beginning to pay off. Sun Wednesday sent a message that it's on the right path now and has something compelling to offer customers who shied away from it since it hit hard times, he said. "This is a drumbeat event," Eunice said. "This was not about the product pipeline, but about customer connections. [This is Sun saying], 'We continue to do the work, continue to get back with quality customers.'" Sun's announcement Wednesday that it has renewed its relationship with systems integrator Accenture Ltd., which is setting up an identity management practice on Sun's technology, is particularly important to reaching new customers or some it has lost since its downturn, Eunice said. "It's a very critical way for Sun to get new business and revenue," he said of the Accenture deal.
736704
John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems Inc  said on Monday the network equipment maker would not change its business plans even if the U.S. economy is hit by a recession, as it is focused on long-term strategy.
527600
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn&#39;t think Apple will lead the way to tomorrow&#39;s digital home - and describes iPod users as music thieves.
464916
SEPTEMBER 01, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Addressing a gathering of software industry leaders in Boston today, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer touted his company&#39;s vision for a bright future and cast doubt
762996
UPDATED During comments to analysts during a Morgan Stanley analystsÃ¢â¬â¢ meeting in San Francisco this morning, Pacific Time, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz was uncharacteristically, selectively vague about the status of his company, calling his company's fiscal first quarter a "blip," and blaming his company's slow transition to meet new demand from OEMs.
249987
Start-up says pen won't be broadly available to consumers until the first quarter as the company fine-tunes its software and development tools.
215234
The chipmaker's warning raises concerns about the flash memory business, one financial analyst says in a report.
101437
Under pressure from Microsoft Corp.   investors to return a portion of the company&#039;s &#36;35  billion cash reserve and revive a flagging share price, Chief  Executive Steve Ballmer on Wednesday defended the company&#039;s  &quot;first-class problem&quot; of having too much cash.
669049
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp. will debut today an online video service and a USB flash drive that can carry television programs and videos from a computer for playback on televisions.
158039
Nielsen Media Research's vice president of technology discusses key issues storage managers are facing: the lack of robust storage resource management tools, and the lack of in-depth interoperability created by SMI-S.