5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

For the week ending May 31, CRN looks at IT companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions.

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The Week Ending May 31

Topping this week's roundup of those having a rough week are employees at Lenovo – some 500 of which are receiving layoff notices.

Also making the list this week is hyper-converged infrastructure vendor Nutanix, whose quarterly sales and earnings took an unexpected downturn. Big data software developer MapR Technologies disclosed that it might have to lay off staff and close its Silicon Valley headquarters without additional investment or an acquisition. And chip maker Nvidia scrambled to fix two serious vulnerabilities in its software while Checkers Drive-In Restaurants disclosed a security breach at more than 100 of its locations.

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Not everyone in the IT industry was having a rough go of it this week. For a rundown of companies that made smart decisions, executed savvy strategic moves – or just had good luck – check out this week's Five Companies That Came To Win roundup.

Lenovo Employees Face Layoffs

Lenovo began notifying some 500 employees this week that they are being laid off, a move the PC and data center systems manufacturer said is part of its strategy for "intelligent transformation."

The layoffs will impact Lenovo's Data Center Group, the company confirmed, but multiple business units, functions and geographies are affected – including Lenovo's U.S. headquarters in Morrisville, N.C.

Yang Yuanqing, CEO and chairman of Lenovo, invoked the phrase "Intelligent Transformation" in a recent statement to describe the company's strategy. That came after the company posted record annual revenue of $51 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, a 12.5 percent increase from the previous year.

Nutanix Misses Revenue And Earnings Forecasts, Stock Sinks

It's been a difficult week for hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer Nutanix, which reported a sales decline in its third fiscal quarter and a net loss that was more than twice that of the same quarter one year earlier – missing financial analysts' forecasts in both cases.

Nutanix blamed the disappointing financial results on the company's transition to a subscription model. But that didn't stop shareholders from dumping the company's stock late Thursday, causing the price of the company's shares to plunge more than 20 percent by Friday morning.

Nutanix was also hit with the departure of a key employee, Sunil Potti, the chief product and development officer who has been instrumental in driving Nutanix's innovation for four years. Potti is leaving to pursue another opportunity, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Struggling MapR Technologies Readies Possible Layoffs, Closing Of Its Silicon Valley HQ

It's also been a tough week for big data software developer MapR Technologies, which is "actively pursuing a strategic transaction" – possibly an acquisition – to avoid layoffs and closing its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters amid the company's financial struggles.

Multiple reports this week say the company is cutting 122 workers after the company filed a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice with the state of California. That would be in addition to the deep cuts the company made in its sales and marketing staffs earlier this year.

A MapR spokesperson said in an email that the WARN notice of 122 layoffs and the headquarters closing was a "precautionary notice of what might happen" and not a certainty.

"MapR concluded that the most prudent course of action was to provide Santa Clara employees with the notice required under applicable law (WARN) while it continues to pursue a transaction that, if successful, may permit it to keep the Santa Clara site open and retain many of the employees that might have otherwise been affected," the company said in a statement.

SiliconAngle reported that MapR recorded poor financial results in its recently completed fiscal quarter and that resulted in an unnamed party pulling out of talks to provide the company with additional funding.

Nvidia Scrambles To Fix High-Severity Bugs In GeForce Gaming Software

Developers at Nvidia hustled this week to issue fixes for two high-severity flaws in the company's GeForce Experience software that could lead to information disclosure, escalation of privileges, denial of service or code execution by an attacker.

GeForce Experience runs on systems that use Nvidia's GTX graphics cards. In a bulletin issued Thursday Nvidia said one vulnerability is in the Web Helper component in the Display Control Panel of GeForce Experience while the other is in the GeForce Experience installer software.

Nvidia urged users to immediately download and install the patched software.

More Than 100 Checkers, Rally's Drive-In Restaurants Hit With POS Malware

Tampa-based Checkers Drive-In Restaurants disclosed this week that an investigation turned up data gathering malware on point-of-sale systems at more than 100 of its Checkers and Rally's drive-in restaurants – about 15 percent of the company's locations.

The malware was found on the restaurants' payment processing systems and is believed to have collected data from payment card magnetic strips – including cardholder names, card numbers, verification codes and expiration dates, according to published reports on Threatpost, Nation's Restaurant News and other sites.

The malware may have been on the point-of-sale systems as far back as 2015 with some active up to April of this year.

Checkers posted a notice of the security breach on its Website on Wednesday.