It is now on the record that Paul Brandling moved into Ian Penman's well-worn shoes at the helm of Compaq on Black Friday - no omens there. Elsewhere Michael Burnie made a surprise comeback, the drift of directors from Sausage and Solution 6 continued, and one or two other surprises kept the week buzzing
CSC and Optus spent black Friday ruing the deal that might have been after Westpac announced that its multi-billion dollar outsourcing requirements will be handled by IBM Global Services Australia and Telstra. While that news put all else in the shade, Australian companies continued during the week to show they can hold their own on the world stage
Siemens scores Australian Defence Force deal, New server combines e-mail, phone and fax, Cognos posts record second-quarter earnings, Maxtor releases new storage device
Exodus acquires GlobalCenter, CWO shows off B2B, Vignette targets ASPs
HP ScanJet 4300c, Umax Astra, CanoScan D660U, Epsom Perfection 640U
Yet again the channel has excelled itself. The word is that last week's mystery man was in fact Path Communication's Brad Merrick. He was spotted by the ever-vigilant LAN Systems Cisco representative extraordinaire Rennee Owens who will duly receive ARNnet paraphanalia to adorn her desk (see we are learning something from vendors after all).
Intel's new chipset, Toshiba guides users, Kingston Technology remembers partners, New Oxygen accelerator
Domain names go Chinese, Security Enshrined, XML in Sydney
Now that the Olympics are over and we are no longer the centre of the universe (although we've always been pretty bloody close to it) it's time to get back to normal so:
Cisco has designed its Cisco 677 Small Office Home Office (SOHO)/Telecommuter asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) router to provide cost-effective high-speed services to small home offices and users working at home.
Push to legalise MP3 services, US starts digital certificate smart card rollout, Musical bodies issue global Net licences
MS seeks plenty of time in appeal, Red Hat Linux 7 shipped, Palm, Motorola to develop smart phones, Oracle hooks up a wireless workforce
Australian outsourcing company KAZ has been awarded an offshore outsourcing contract covering IT services throughout the Asia/Pacific region for fragrance and flavour manufacturer Givaudan. Elsewhere, Australian companies picked up business at home and abroad in such fine fashion that some pundits began to wonder whether the recent fuss about our perceived IT failings can be justified
Davnet, the Australian company that specialises in the infrastructure of smart buildings, has formed an alliance with Harmony Telecommunications to market broadband products and services in Singapore. Other alliances sealed during the week will also give Australian companies greater exposure on the World stage.
Maybe the Olympics created such a feel-good atmosphere that everyone decided to give the boss another go, or perhaps with their heads glued to their TV sets the malcontents couldn't be bothered resigning. Whatever the reason, fewer local job changes came to The Rust Report's attention this week than is normal, although there were plenty of noteworthy moves abroad