Late News (16 July)
- Jeff Merkey, former chief scientist at Novell, has filed charges of sexual harassment against the VP for internet products. Merkey, now CEO at spin-off Timpanogas Research Group, is suing Denice Gibson ?because of retaliation suffered after he turned down Gibson?s advances?.
- Novell?s longtime CFO Jim Tolonen, who has been employed at the firm since 1989, is about to leave the networking developer. Vic Langford, senior VP for internet strategies, has also left the company.
- Seagate Technology has received notice that it owes up to $44 million in taxes and penalties to the IRS. The disk drive vendor said, based on current foreign exchange rates, it may also face a charge of up to $25 million in the 1998 fiscal year as a result of the devaluation of the Thai Baht. The firm also suffered lower than expected results to 30 June, excluding the charge of $153 million related to the Amstrad litigation.
- Novell has signed its long-awaited licensing deal with IBM for Novell Directory Services to establish the technology as a standard. By September, NDS will be available on AIX, and on MVS mainframes by next year.
- BT is expected to demand the resignation of two senior managers following the profit warning issued by US telecom giant MCI, throwing plans for the $20 million merger between the two firms into disarray.
- Mike Harrison, former head of Oracle UK, has been appointed MD of commercial and financial management software vendor Cedardata.
- US networking firm Microdyne is to pull out of the network interface card (NIC) business, because of pressure from rivals Intel and 3Com. Microdyne now plans to sell off its NIC division.