New York Times > Chinese Buyer of PC Unit Is Moving to I.B.M.'s Hometown

By DAVID BARBOZA
BEIJING - Inside the shimmeringheadquarters of the Lenovo Group,China's largest computer maker,workers are carting birthday cakes overto three office cubicles.These days, every employee here getsa birthday gift, something amultinational company might beexpected to do in this age of feel-goodcorporate management.The problem is that people in China donot traditionally celebrate birthdays.But that is changing. And so is Lenovo.It is trying to become a global companywith its purchase of I.B.M's personalcomputer business for $1.75 billion,and handing out birthday cakes is justpart of the process of evolving into amultinational corporation.To further globalize the company,however, Lenovo will do somethingeven bolder: it will move itsheadquarters to Armonk, N.Y., whereI.B.M. is based, and essentially handover management of what will becomethe world's third-largest computermaker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard,to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.American multinational companiesoutsource manufacturing to China. Whycan't a Chinese company outsourcemanagement to the United States?Executives at Lenovo - which getsabout 98 percent of its $3 billion inrevenue from China - are, in effect,acknowledging that they do not havethe necessary global experience to runthe new company."The most valuable asset we haveacquired through I.B.M.'s PC businessis its world-class management teamand their extensive internationalexperience," says Liu Chuanzhi,chairman of Lenovo and one of thecompany's founders.Indeed, few executives at Lenovo seemdisappointed by the move. In fact,many seem pleased to be buying into ablue-chip American corporation.After all, Lenovo - formerly known asLegend - may be the biggest computermaker in China, but the company is stillvirtually unknown outside of Asia.And top executives at Lenovo say theyare eager to learn how to run a globalcompany from their new colleagues atthe PC unit of I.B.M., which operates inmore than 150 countries and had $9billion in revenue in 2003.Preparations are already under way inBeijing. For the last few months, allvice presidents have been required tostudy English for at least one hour aday. The chairman says he has readbooks about Bill Gates and AndrewGrove. And the chief executive ofLenovo has agreed to give upday-to-day management of thecompany to assume the role ofchairman.His task will be to fly back and forthfrom Beijing to New York to consultwith Lenovo's newly named chiefexecutive, Stephen M. Ward Jr., thesenior vice president and generalmanager of I.B.M.'s Personal SystemsGroup.Many analysts were surprised byLenovo's decision to outsource itsmanagement to New York."I admire what Lenovo is doing," saidJoe Zhang, a UBS analyst who followsLenovo. "Many Lenovo executives havedecided to do this at the expense oftheir careers. They're putting personalego behind for the greater good of thecompany."People involved in the negotiations withI.B.M. said that Lenovo officials saw noother choice. They recognized thatLenovo could not simply take over amuch bigger I.B.M. PC unit and run itfrom Beijing.That is why a major theme of the talkswas how to keep business as usualafter the deal was completed, thosepeople say.While I.B.M. is full of M.B.A.'s, Lenovo -which is still partly government owned- has only two members of the seniormanagement team with an M.B.A. Andnone of the top executives have everworked for a multinational corporation.But analysts also say that Lenovo is nopushover. The company is consideredone of China's most successfulcorporations. For years, for example,Lenovo's brand has outsold Dell,Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. computersin China.And even though it began as astate-owned enterprise, Lenovo hasalways been entrepreneurial, analystssay. It was one of the first companieshere to list its shares in Hong Kong. Itwas among the first to reward itsemployees with stock options, whichhave turned some of its top executivesinto millionaires.The company's identity was shaped, inpart, by its visionary chairman, Mr. Liu,who in 1984 helped found Lenovo witha group of scientists from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.Early on, it was the hard-charging Mr.Liu who persuaded the Chinesegovernment to give the companygreater control over its hiring andsalary decisions, allowing thestate-owned company to raise capitalfrom outside investors and essentiallyoperate like a private company.Later, Mr. Liu won governmentapproval to list the company's stock inHong Kong and for Lenovo to startproducing its own computers, ratherthan simply marketing Western brands.By 1997, with its own brand of low-costChinese-character-friendly computers,Lenovo was suddenly China's biggestcomputer maker.Mr. Liu, a military academy graduatewho suffered through China's brutalCultural Revolution, said he often ranthe company with an iron fist, scoldingworkers who showed up late formeetings and pushing scientists andexecutives to deliver on their promises."All the people were scientists in thosedays," Mr. Liu recalled. "They werevery casual. They'd always be late formeetings and they'd make theirpromises. So we decided that if anyonewas late they'd stand up for oneminute."Along the way, Mr. Liu also groomed acadre of loyal and fierce executives,including Yang Yuanqing, 42, who isnow the company's chief executive, andMary Ma, 52, Lenovo's highly respectedchief financial officer.But just how the new company'smanagement will take shape in Beijingand New York is still unclear.Though he will step down after themerger, Mr. Liu, 60, will continue toserve as a member of the board.Mr. Yang, a serious-minded executivewho helped fire up the company's salesforce, will become chairman. Ms. Ma,who led the talks to acquire I.B.M.'s PCunit, is expected to remain as chieffinancial officer.Lenovo's challenge will be to meldradically different corporate cultures."Neither culture should be the de factoculture," said Martin Gilliland, ananalyst at Gartner Research. "Theyhave to start a new one. Can theydevelop a new Lenovo businessculture? That's one of the keys tosuccess."In recent years, Lenovo officials say thecompany's corporate culture hasevolved from what some companyofficials called the "semimilitary"culture that prevailed in the early days,to a more easy-going and hip high-techculture.These days, Lenovo's new corporateheadquarters in Beijing's "SiliconSuburb" is teaming with young 20- and30-somethings, casually dressed,chattering into mobile phones andlooking confident.The halls are decked with employeerecognition plaques, business schooltheorems and New Age philosophy:"Happiness," reads one workplaceposter. "Work hard and live art," readsanother.Newcomers to Lenovo are even trainedin the same kind of teamworkprograms that can be found atAmerican business schools, right downto the leaps of faith - the backwardfalling employee who is caught by ateam of supportive co-workers.And for those who need a jolt, eachmorning at 8:30 the Lenovo themesong is broadcast on loudspeakersthroughout the headquarters, urgingworkers to guide the corporate shipthrough perilous waters."Lenovo, Lenovo, Lenovo," one linegoes, "we are sailing through thewaves to lands far away. Lenovo,Lenovo, Lenovo. We are building a newsplendor."Lenovo is also seeking the best outsideadvice it can get, hiring a client rosterthat includes Goldman, Sachs;McKinsey & Company, the consultingfirm; Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the NewYork law firm; and Ogilvy, the publicrelations firm.And the new language for the companyis English, company officials say.Lenovo officials say they are studyingAmerican business history, and thechief executive lists The HarvardBusiness Review as part of his regularreading.In fact, like other computer andsoftware giants, Lenovo is even fanningits own myths. In 1984, the companywas formed in a small, concretesecurity guard's booth that became itsfirst laboratory and headquarters.The booth - part of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences - was torn downin 2001 to make way for a newbuilding. But it was soon rebuilt andnow sits like an empty artifactalongside the headquarters of Lenovo'sparent company, Legend Holdings.Critics now worry that Lenovo must finda way to preserve I.B.M.'s traditions ina PC industry of increasing competitionand commodity manufacturing.But Mr. Yang, Lenovo's current chiefexecutive, says not to worry."We are going to stick to the principlesof I.B.M. as a high-premium, high-valueimage, " he said. "We're not going tomake any compromises on this."www.nytimes.comChinese Buyer of PC Unit Is Movingto I.B.M.'s HometownBy DAVID BARBOZABEIJING - Inside the shimmeringheadquarters of the Lenovo Group,China's largest computer maker,workers are carting birthday cakes overto three office cubicles.These days, every employee here getsa birthday gift, something amultinational company might beexpected to do in this age of feel-goodcorporate management.The problem is that people in China donot traditionally celebrate birthdays.But that is changing. And so is Lenovo.It is trying to become a global companywith its purchase of I.B.M's personalcomputer business for $1.75 billion,and handing out birthday cakes is justpart of the process of evolving into amultinational corporation.To further globalize the company,however, Lenovo will do somethingeven bolder: it will move itsheadquarters to Armonk, N.Y., whereI.B.M. is based, and essentially handover management of what will becomethe world's third-largest computermaker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard,to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.American multinational companiesoutsource manufacturing to China. Whycan't a Chinese company outsourcemanagement to the United States?Executives at Lenovo - which getsabout 98 percent of its $3 billion inrevenue from China - are, in effect,acknowledging that they do not havethe necessary global experience to runthe new company."The most valuable asset we haveacquired through I.B.M.'s PC businessis its world-class management teamand their extensive internationalexperience," says Liu Chuanzhi,chairman of Lenovo and one of thecompany's founders.Indeed, few executives at Lenovo seemdisappointed by the move. In fact,many seem pleased to be buying into ablue-chip American corporation.After all, Lenovo - formerly known asLegend - may be the biggest computermaker in China, but the company is stillvirtually unknown outside of Asia.And top executives at Lenovo say theyare eager to learn how to run a globalcompany from their new colleagues atthe PC unit of I.B.M., which operates inmore than 150 countries and had $9billion in revenue in 2003.Preparations are already under way inBeijing. For the last few months, allvice presidents have been required tostudy English for at least one hour aday. The chairman says he has readbooks about Bill Gates and AndrewGrove. And the chief executive ofLenovo has agreed to give upday-to-day management of thecompany to assume the role ofchairman.His task will be to fly back and forthfrom Beijing to New York to consultwith Lenovo's newly named chiefexecutive, Stephen M. Ward Jr., thesenior vice president and generalmanager of I.B.M.'s Personal SystemsGroup.Many analysts were surprised byLenovo's decision to outsource itsmanagement to New York."I admire what Lenovo is doing," saidJoe Zhang, a UBS analyst who followsLenovo. "Many Lenovo executives havedecided to do this at the expense oftheir careers. They're putting personalego behind for the greater good of thecompany."People involved in the negotiations withI.B.M. said that Lenovo officials saw noother choice. They recognized thatLenovo could not simply take over amuch bigger I.B.M. PC unit and run itfrom Beijing.That is why a major theme of the talkswas how to keep business as usualafter the deal was completed, thosepeople say.While I.B.M. is full of M.B.A.'s, Lenovo -which is still partly government owned- has only two members of the seniormanagement team with an M.B.A. Andnone of the top executives have everworked for a multinational corporation.But analysts also say that Lenovo is nopushover. The company is consideredone of China's most successfulcorporations. For years, for example,Lenovo's brand has outsold Dell,Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. computersin China.And even though it began as astate-owned enterprise, Lenovo hasalways been entrepreneurial, analystssay. It was one of the first companieshere to list its shares in Hong Kong. Itwas among the first to reward itsemployees with stock options, whichhave turned some of its top executivesinto millionaires.The company's identity was shaped, inpart, by its visionary chairman, Mr. Liu,who in 1984 helped found Lenovo witha group of scientists from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.Early on, it was the hard-charging Mr.Liu who persuaded the Chinesegovernment to give the companygreater control over its hiring andsalary decisions, allowing thestate-owned company to raise capitalfrom outside investors and essentiallyoperate like a private company.Later, Mr. Liu won governmentapproval to list the company's stock inHong Kong and for Lenovo to startproducing its own computers, ratherthan simply marketing Western brands.By 1997, with its own brand of low-costChinese-character-friendly computers,Lenovo was suddenly China's biggestcomputer maker.Mr. Liu, a military academy graduatewho suffered through China's brutalCultural Revolution, said he often ranthe company with an iron fist, scoldingworkers who showed up late formeetings and pushing scientists andexecutives to deliver on their promises."All the people were scientists in thosedays," Mr. Liu recalled. "They werevery casual. They'd always be late formeetings and they'd make theirpromises. So we decided that if anyonewas late they'd stand up for oneminute."Along the way, Mr. Liu also groomed acadre of loyal and fierce executives,including Yang Yuanqing, 42, who isnow the company's chief executive, andMary Ma, 52, Lenovo's highly respectedchief financial officer.But just how the new company'smanagement will take shape in Beijingand New York is still unclear.Though he will step down after themerger, Mr. Liu, 60, will continue toserve as a member of the board.Mr. Yang, a serious-minded executivewho helped fire up the company's salesforce, will become chairman. Ms. Ma,who led the talks to acquire I.B.M.'s PCunit, is expected to remain as chieffinancial officer.Lenovo's challenge will be to meldradically different corporate cultures."Neither culture should be the de factoculture," said Martin Gilliland, ananalyst at Gartner Research. "Theyhave to start a new one. Can theydevelop a new Lenovo businessculture? That's one of the keys tosuccess."In recent years, Lenovo officials say thecompany's corporate culture hasevolved from what some companyofficials called the "semimilitary"culture that prevailed in the early days,to a more easy-going and hip high-techculture.These days, Lenovo's new corporateheadquarters in Beijing's "SiliconSuburb" is teaming with young 20- and30-somethings, casually dressed,chattering into mobile phones andlooking confident.The halls are decked with employeerecognition plaques, business schooltheorems and New Age philosophy:"Happiness," reads one workplaceposter. "Work hard and live art," readsanother.Newcomers to Lenovo are even trainedin the same kind of teamworkprograms that can be found atAmerican business schools, right downto the leaps of faith - the backwardfalling employee who is caught by ateam of supportive co-workers.And for those who need a jolt, eachmorning at 8:30 the Lenovo themesong is broadcast on loudspeakersthroughout the headquarters, urgingworkers to guide the corporate shipthrough perilous waters."Lenovo, Lenovo, Lenovo," one linegoes, "we are sailing through thewaves to lands far away. Lenovo,Lenovo, Lenovo. We are building a newsplendor."Lenovo is also seeking the best outsideadvice it can get, hiring a client rosterthat includes Goldman, Sachs;McKinsey & Company, the consultingfirm; Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the NewYork law firm; and Ogilvy, the publicrelations firm.And the new language for the companyis English, company officials say.Lenovo officials say they are studyingAmerican business history, and thechief executive lists The HarvardBusiness Review as part of his regularreading.In fact, like other computer andsoftware giants, Lenovo is even fanningits own myths. In 1984, the companywas formed in a small, concretesecurity guard's booth that became itsfirst laboratory and headquarters.The booth - part of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences - was torn downin 2001 to make way for a newbuilding. But it was soon rebuilt andnow sits like an empty artifactalongside the headquarters of Lenovo'sparent company, Legend Holdings.Critics now worry that Lenovo must finda way to preserve I.B.M.'s traditions ina PC industry of increasing competitionand commodity manufacturing.But Mr. Yang, Lenovo's current chiefexecutive, says not to worry."We are going to stick to the principlesof I.B.M. as a high-premium, high-valueimage, " he said. "We're not going tomake any compromises on this."

Opinion from PC Magazine: Panic Over Spyware

Opinion from PC Magazine: Panic Over Spyware: "Panic Over Spyware
ARTICLE DATE: 12.20.04
By John C. Dvorak
Panic Over Spyware
ARTICLE DATE: 12.20.04
By John C. Dvorak

I'm chatting with the CEO of a spyware company and he tells me that he knows for a fact that Dell support lines have been getting 70,000 calls a week regarding machine performance and anomalies. Dell has been referring the callers to Web sites discussing spyware. It's spyware causing the problems. I'm thinking to myself that if Dell is getting 70,000 calls, then Microsoft must be getting 700,000 calls, since the smart money would always assume that it's a software problem. Whatever the call volume, this situation with spyware is now officially out of control.
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This subject is near and dear to me, since my laptop was infected via a hotel network connection recently. The culprit is the webrebates.exe Trojan horse. Like many of these pests, once it gets on your machine it starts installing loaders all over the place. These are essentially spyware spies. They all look to make sure that the spyware stays in place. If you manage to erase it one of the little drones will reinstall it. You cannot erase the drones and the spyware fast enough to prevent this simple process from continuing unless you use special software to ferret out all the drones first. Many of these pests also contaminate the Registry, and many of the drones are in subdirectories that cannot be seen using any normal process.

As an aside I should mention that I've always wondered why Microsoft Windows has weird deeply rooted directories that cannot be seen in Internet Explorer, DOS, or any tool. They are scattered all over the place. The nasty spyware drones often end up buried so deep that finding them requires lengthy deep searches by antispyware tools.

Now, if you think that the free antispyware programs are going to help with the nastiest of infections, you are kidding yourself. I've chatted with four spyware vendors over the past couple of weeks and they all agree that it's gotten so bad that the public is only partially aware of the problem. Few users know that their machines are infected.

There is now a firm belief that organized crime, including the Russian mafia, is behind much of this activity. The scene is no longer dominated by kids out for fun.

So what is the spyware used for? There appear to be four primary uses.

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Market research. Yes, it's true. A lot of spyware is used just to track browsing and other online behavior for market-research companies. This was one of the two initial uses.

Employee and spousal monitoring. This is the second initial use for this stuff. Key loggers and other systems that are usually installed directly onto machines by the person or institution doing the spying. The FBI has been known to capture passwords using such software.

Spambots. The more recent use of spyware has been to create legions of spambots for spammers to rack up big numbers without taxing their own servers. There are probably millions of drone machines, sometimes called zombie PCs. At night they are brought to life to serve spam all over the world. Yet another reason why the 24/7 always-on Internet is a complete disaster.

Identity and credit-card theft. This is the latest twist and the fastest-growing trend. Last week, a new combination scam somehow got through my spam-filtering mechanism and tried to install a Trojan horse loader onto my system through the preview window of Microsoft Outlook Express. (Wasn't this supposed to be fixed?) My Kaspersky antivirus software saw the loader and stopped it cold. But what I found interesting was that this was one of those "Your account is temporarily closed" scams designed to collect personal information.

The notable thing about spyware is that because it isn't virulent like a virus and seldom spreads from your machine to another, it manages to stay out of the spotlight. The national media pay little attention to the problem, and many mainstream media tech writers are Mac users, so they don't get it. Who knows what will happen when the Mac community gets hit? They feel immune, and are for now. But when they get hit, there will be few resources to help them, since the antispyware community is busy with all the PC-related problems.

Since spyware has not spread quickly and tends to be installed via browsers one computer at a time, we are seeing slow—but relentless—growth. We can expect it to continue. I'm looking at all the spyware packages and I'll have a few to recommend in the months ahead. For now you'll probably need multiple systems to get rid of this stuff. This will be the number-one topic in the year 2005, guaranteed.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 review - Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Intro - Security & Utility Services - CNET Reviews

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is the dream Internet browser you've been looking for. Featuring a host of small technical improvements, including tabbed browsing, built-in and customizable search bars, and a built-in RSS reader, Mozilla's Firefox browser is the one that should finally put a dent in Microsoft Internet Explorer's unrivaled market dominance. While its lack of ActiveX support might prevent some sites from working properly, after more than three weeks of use in our tests, Firefox 1.0 remained fast and stable and displayed an impressive range of cutting-edge browsing options. We were able to view every Web site just fine, thank you. If you're fed up with the latest Internet Explorer security patch issued from Microsoft or with the latest virus to capitalize on some flaw in IE, you should switch to Firefox--now.
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