10 outstanding events of the IT industry in 2006

A series of events, a series of huge merger contracts, a series of forecasts, early dawn of the multimedia future era, the launch of Vista, "historic handshake" between open source and Trade source code . has made 2006 "a season of transition", a series of giants in the world IT sector have been trying to build their own image in the "post-era" era. PC ".

IDG News Service voted and filtered out the list of the 10 most prominent IT industry events in the past year. This is considered to be the event that has attracted the attention of the public as well as the most influential to the IT industry in the past year. VnMedia would like to introduce you to these events.

1. The case of extending the name of HP

In September, the internal scandal of Hewlett-Packard (HP) was broken. The consequences of this scandal are the departure of President Patricia Dunn.

At that time, the internal leadership of HP decided to investigate to the end to find out which members of the board of directors had disclosed information to the press. Also included in the investigation is former HP CEO Carly Fiorina.

In order to gain access to confidential information, HP investigators receive orders to pretend to be investigated. Since then a series of scandal information has been discovered like HP eavesdropping reporters . One type of investigation was named "pretexting" by HP.

The end was chairman Dunn, head of the attorney union Kevin Hunsake and many other investigators who were prosecuted for criminal liability.

This scandal is considered to be very influential. Perhaps the US Congress will have to consider putting "pretexting" on the list of federal criminal offenses. Besides, there are alarm bells for government management for big corporations.

2. Microsoft - Novell historical agreement

In November, Microsoft and Novell signed a historic agreement. Accordingly, Microsoft will support and cooperate with Novell to enhance compatibility between Windows and Linux. Besides, Microsoft and Novell are committed to not suing each other for copyright infringement.

This agreement has caused a big concern in the open source community because they think that agreement means that Microsoft wants to protect users who have bought full copyrights.

In October, the open source community was also "startled" once after Oracle announced full support for Red Hat Linux. This makes industry experts concerned about Red Hat Linux's business to be greatly affected.

But anyway, the historic agreement between Microsoft and Linux shows a clear indication that no one can ignore open source. This proves that open source is growing stronger.

3. Alcatel-Lucent merges

The merger contract between Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies announced last April "sparked" global merger trends over the past year. It is estimated that in 2006 there were a total of 3,945 signed M&A contracts. This is a record high for many years.

The trend of globalization and changing demand is the "fuse" for the consolidation trend in areas such as networks, Internet, chip industry and enterprise software. One of the examples is the merger between the chip manufacturer AMD and the graphics chip maker ATI, Google-YouTube .

4. Google-YouTube: "Convergence 2.0"

The $ 1.65 billion spent on acquiring online video-sharing sites YouTube further demonstrates Google's strong potential and its leading position on the Internet. This contract also means to emphasize the importance of video in the Web 2.0 world: the world of user-generated content and multimedia applications.

This contract has caused Google rivals to not eat well and sleep. A series of Google rivals soon began to follow the trend of paying attention to Google's online video.

But online video now faces legal and copyright issues because users are willing to post anything they have on the Internet without paying any attention to copyright.

Anyway, there's still a certainty that "the convergence of video and Internet will be an inevitable trend."

5. AOL to reveal personal search data

In July, AOL suddenly revealed personal search data of more than 650,000 service users. The incident sparked a fierce debate over the privacy rights on the Internet. At the same time vibrating the alarm bell about data security from the service providers themselves.

The consequences of this incident are a series of civil lawsuits that have hit AOL. Most of these lawsuits require a court to prohibit AOL from storing user data. But perhaps this requirement is difficult to accept when US government agencies themselves require search providers such as AOL or Google to provide such data. AOL once again fell into the misery of accepting the request.

So far the technology problem related to storing personal data of users is still a controversy that has not yet ended.

6. The battery is flaming laptop battery

This is the biggest recall of products in the history of the IT and consumer electronics industry. Originating from the causes of lithium-ion batteries manufactured by Sony are faulty and can catch fire at any time, a series of major computer manufacturers in the world Dell, Apple, Toshiba, IBM Lenovo . have to collect About 9.6 million products made mistakes.

The damage Sony suffered was not small at a cost of more than $ 400 million. Not only did the company have to adjust its revenue plan for the whole fiscal year 2006, making this year a dark year for Sony and the PC industry as well. But the hope for sales in the end of the year is shattered by the disappointing results.

7. PMac OS X on Intel PC

In January, Apple launched the Mac PC product using the first Intel microprocessor chip in history. Decades, Apple has remained "alone" with its own strengths and weaknesses. But we have to say Apple has won a lot of success with its Mac PC line or iPod personal music player. Intel chips have brought life to the Mac product line. Mac PC revenue increased by more than 30% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006 to $ 546 million.

Reaching an agreement with Apple, Intel suffered a "painful blow" when Dell announced its decision to use AMD chips in its products.

8. "BlackBerry copyright war"

In January, the US Supreme Court refused to appeal the appeal of intellectual property rights between Research In Motion and rival NTP Inc. Immediately experts in the industry have voiced warning about the "death" of BlackBerry. But the deal worth $ 612 million signed in March is the most eloquent answer " BlackBerry never dies ".

It can be said that this lawsuit is a typical case of disputes over intellectual property rights that have led many products to stop issuing. Even if the court has not made a decision, not many companies have stopped providing allegedly infringing products to the market.

Later on, the war on copyright issues became more and more popular. Chief among them could be Microsoft with "Microsoft suing syndrome".

9. "Cow turtle" Vista

After 5 years and a series of delayed announcements, Windows Vista finally officially launched. Although Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claims Vista is the largest product in its history, users don't seem to feel that way. Users still have to wait until early next year to see Vista. However, many industry experts assess that Vista will be Microsoft's "last operating system" product, especially given the robust development of software delivery as a direct service. online.

10. Bill Gates is about to retire

In June, Microsoft Chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates announced he would start retiring in July 2008. From now until that time Gates will gradually shift the responsibility to his successors and move on to philanthropy. Over the past 25 years, Gates has led Microsoft from zero to success today. It can be said that Bill Gates is also a person with great influence on the world IT industry today. 95% of the world's PCs use Microsoft's Windows operating system. The world is waiting to see if the Bill Gates charity will be as successful as he was with the IT industry.

Hoang Dung