Yahoo's must-keep stars: Star No 3

David Filo:
Co-founder

Yahoo employees say Filo is both well-liked and respected within the company. Filo acted as interim CTO last year before Aristotle Balogh was hired for the job. His value to Microsoft is his longstanding relationship with Yahoo's engineers -- which Microsoft needs. "I think Filo is really not given enough credit for how much the engineers love him," says Eric Jackson, a Yahoo activist shareholder. That said, keeping a billionaire founder around won't be easy for Microsoft.

Tata Motors may ink Land Rover, Jaguar deal next week

India's Tata Motors was expected to acquire Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motors as soon as next week, but the US automaker would continue to supply engines and other key components for the marquee brands, The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported.
Ford is expected to apprise investors on the progress of the negotiations with Tata Motors when it files its annual 10-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the US this week.
Workers' union leaders who had job-security concerns as negotiations progressed have reportedly had constructive meetings with Tata officials last week in Britain.
"Nobody foresees any major problems now; everything is pretty much done," said Roger Maddison, a national officer for the British union Unite, which represents about 16,000 workers at Jaguar and Land Rover.
He said a memorandum of understanding between Tata and Ford could be signed as soon as March 5 or 6, according to the newspaper.ians

Yahoo's must-keep stars: Star No 1

Jeff Weiner:
Executive vice president, network division

Yahoo lags when it comes to search ads, but it's still ahead of Google on one count: Traffic. According to the most recent comScore data, Yahoo sites are the most popular, with 138 million visitors a month (Google has about 135 million).
As head of Yahoo's consumer products - Yahoo Mail and Messenger, and the company's finance and news sites - Weiner oversees Yahoo's "front door," a valuable asset to Microsoft. Under Weiner, Yahoo recently reopened its main site to third-party developers in hopes of expanding its reach even further. The rising star, hired on by former CEO Terry Semel, also led Yahoo's efforts to revamp its online ad system, called Panama, before taking on his current post.

Huge writedown slams Sprint

Sprint (S) is admitting defeat in its 2005 merger with Nextel. The struggling telco posted a fourth-quarter loss of $29.5 billion, or $10.36 a share, reversing the year-ago profit of $261 million, or 9 cents a share. The latest quarter was hit by a $29.7 billion writedown of merger-related goodwill, reflecting the difference between the price Sprint paid and the actual value of the assests purchased. Excluding that gargantuan charge, Sprint made 21 cents a share on an adjusted basis, beating the 18-cent analyst consensus estimate. Revenue fell 6% from a year ago to $9.8 billion, missing the $9.95 billion Wall Street target.
"The fourth quarter financial results reflect the challenges facing our wireless business," said CEO Dan Hesse, who took over late last year for Gary Forsee. Adjusted operating income at the wireless business plunged to $168 million from $652 million a year earlier, as Sprint continued to lose customers, pressuring service revenue. Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram and Scott Moritz reported Wednesday that Sprint is having more and more trouble holding onto lucrative wireless postpaid users. In the fourth quarter, the company said, total post-paid subscribers declined by 683,000.
In response, Hesse said Sprint is taking steps to bolster its financial flexibility, by saying it won't declare any dividends in the forseeable future and letting its $6 billion stock buyback plan expire.

Suncorp-Metway Profit Drops as Storms Increase Claims

uncorp-Metway Ltd., Australia's second-largest car and home insurer, said first-half profit tumbled 28 percent on declining financial markets and increased payouts for storms. The shares fell the most in a month.
Net income dropped to A$382 million ($360 million) in the six months ended Dec. 31, from A$527 million a year earlier, the Brisbane-based company said in statement today.
Chief Executive Officer John Mulcahy forecast higher funding costs will shave A$10 million to A$15 million from full- year pretax profit. Mulcahy also said Suncorp had A$510 million in loans linked to MFS Ltd. and Allco Finance Group Ltd., two companies struggling to repay debt.©bloomberg

AMD and Microsoft Collaborate on Windows Server 2008 to Deliver Industry Leading Solution to Customers

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced it has worked closely with Microsoft throughout the Windows Server® 2008 development process, to deliver the ultimate server solution. Through their strong partnership, both companies have optimized their respective hardware and software technologies to work together to address the demands of today’s global digital economy and meet the computing requirements of businesses of all sizes.
AMD Opteron™ processors were designed with 64-bit computing in mind and in combination with Windows Server 2008 they deliver a powerful platform for running business solutions that can maximize productivity and profitability. Customers using AMD Opteron processors, including Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, and Windows Server 2008 can experience unparalleled performance, energy efficiency and investment protection, further pushing virtualization, web serving, and business intelligence capabilities into the mainstream.

“We congratulate Microsoft on the release of the next generation Windows Server operating system,” said Randy Allen, corporate vice president, Server and Workstation Division, AMD. “At AMD, we believe the ultimate server solution begins with the ultimate collaboration. Windows Server 2008 with Microsoft’s hypervisor-based server virtualization technology (Hyper-V) will leverage the industry-leading performance of the AMD Opteron processor to deliver the level of support needed to fuel tomorrow’s business innovation. Additionally, Microsoft and AMD’s robust product architectures allow customers to scale with ease, while providing unmatched performance, a reduced overall cost of ownership and a flexible infrastructure that can evolve as their organization grows.”
In 2002, AMD and Microsoft began a collaboration to bring the benefits of 64-bit computing to the x86 computing market. Today, this strong technology partnership continues and is driving innovations that are helping customers run more efficient and cost-effective businesses. Since AMD is a trusted technology partner to Microsoft, AMD technology-based platforms are used as development and test systems throughout Microsoft’s product development cycle. The AMD64 technology-based servers and clients are also used as development and test systems throughout Microsoft’s development product development cycle. By leveraging the power of an AMD-Microsoft optimized solution such as Windows Server 2008, customers can take advantage of balanced, scalable solutions that are easy to manage and operate in today's demanding business environment.
“Our customers are excited about the vibrant ecosystem that has developed around Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp. “The combined power of Windows Server 2008 and AMD Opteron processors will help customers achieve flexible, reliable and powerful technology solutions.”
AMD and Microsoft customer Nivio is an example of a growing, innovative start-up business that is leveraging the two companies’ technologies to deliver the desktop experience as a service to almost anyone with an Internet-enabled device, anywhere in the world.
“AMD and Microsoft technologies are very complementary and perfect for our environment,” said Nivio Founder and CEO Sachin Duggal. “The AMD Opteron processor offers innovations like HyperTransport™ technology which allow us to support an exceptional amount of users with optimal levels of performance and availability—all while keeping costs low for us. And we can deliver one of the world’s leading operating systems virtually to countless users worldwide, knowing that for our environment, the current and future versions of Microsoft Windows Server are ideal for their stability and ease of use.”

The benefits of Windows Server 2008 running on AMD Opteron processors include:

Cost-Effective Virtualization and Energy Efficiency

Customers are harnessing the power of virtualization as delivered by AMD Opteron processors and Windows Server 2008. The combined power of AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™) technology and Windows Server Hyper-V technologies form a strong solution to create an operationally efficient computing platform designed to maximize client and server resources, thereby helping customers realize better investment protection. Specifically on the hardware level, AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology improves efficiency by allowing customers to host more transactions and users per server with greater control and less overhead.

AMD and Microsoft are committed to leading the world to energy-efficient processing. Windows Server 2008 fully supports the Enhanced AMD PowerNow!™ technology of Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, which along with innovations such as AMD CoolCore™ Technology and Dual Dynamic Power Management™, offer the ability to help reduce power and cooling requirements. Additionally, Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors can provide increased performance-per-watt efficiencies while maintaining the same power and thermal infrastructure as previous generations of AMD Opteron processors.

Versatile Web and Application Sharing and Capacity-Rich Business Intelligence

Scalability is often the hurdle to turning mountains of data into more insightful and valuable intelligence. The scalability and control of AMD Opteron processors and Windows Server 2008 help meet the challenging demands of running an “always on” online business. Customers can find a resource-smart infrastructure with AMD and Microsoft that will easily help scale to meet the ever-growing number of users and transactions in a business with a high level of availability. The superior manageability of the technologies helps businesses reduce total costs by maximizing staff resources and budget.

Additionally, an AMD Opteron processor-based server running Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server™ 2008 includes unique optimizations designed to increase throughput to deliver high speed and performance for memory- and data-intensive Business Intelligence applications. The joint solution offers large memory footprints and outstanding processing bandwidth, bringing Business Intelligence more mainstream, to enterprise and SMB customers alike.

F-Secure improves performance with new version of F-Secure Anti-Virus(tm) for Windows Servers

F-Secure, a global leader in providing IT security solutions to small and medium-sized companies, today announced the launch of the latest version of its F-Secure® Anti-Virus(tm) for Windows Servers solution, version 8. F-Secure Anti-Virus for Windows Servers version 8 features several significant performance improvements. Version 8 features F-Secure's new scanning technology, which is capable of meeting the rapidly evolving and more targeted malware threat scenarios better than ever. Extensive testing of the beta version of the software also shows that the memory consumption of version 8 is, on average, up to 50 percent less than in the previous version.
Significant performance improvements in the solution enable companies to safeguard their Windows servers with a better level of protection and lower resource use compared to earlier versions. F-Secure Anti-Virus for Windows Servers version 8 provides real-time protection against viruses, spyware and riskware, and prevents infections from spreading across a company's network.

F-Secure Anti-Virus for Windows Servers version 8 supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008, which is set to be one of the major software releases from Microsoft this year. F-Secure believe that Microsoft Windows Server 2008 will soon become an important part of the corporate IT infrastructure Worldwide. F-Secure is committed to providing first class security solutions with clear added value for Microsoft server platforms.
With F-Secure, antivirus protection is fast, efficient and easy. Installations and management can be performed remotely from a single central location, saving cost and time for IT departments.
More than 1300 new virus detections are found each day at the F-Secure Labs, and some of these have the potential of spreading globally within hours. If a virus enters a corporate network, fighting it can prove to be both difficult and time consuming. Virus infections often result in significant financial losses due to network disruptions, decreased productivity, corrupted data and the leaking of confidential data. Even a company's reputation can be in danger if it unwittingly spreads viruses to its business associates.
F-Secure Anti-Virus for Windows Servers version 8 is an excellent security solution for companies that seek to protect their Microsoft server platforms with a centrally managed, efficient solution providing the highest level of security, but requiring less system resources. Deliveries of the solution will start in late April 2008.