5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

The Week Ending Oct. 26

Topping this week's roundup of those having a rough week is DXC Technology, which saw the departure of a top executive on the eve of the company's Q2 results.

Also making the list this week are Amazon for a report about what caused website failures during Prime Day, AMD for its steep stock price decline after its Q3 financial results failed to meet expectations, Cathay Pacific airlines for being the latest hacking victim, and Microsoft for wrestling with more problems with the Windows 10 October upgrade.

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.

DXC Americas Chief Out, Stock Price Tumbles 19 Percent

Karan Puri, who just joined DXC Technology as head of Americas in January, has left the IT services giant just weeks before the release of its fiscal 2019 second quarter results, the company confirmed.

Puri, who held the title of executive vice president and general manager, Americas, left the company Oct. 9, according to a memo from CEO Mike Lawrie that came to light this week. The memo gave no reason for Puri's sudden departure.

Wall Street reacted badly to the news: DXC shares lost 19 percent of their value Wednesday morning before recovering a bit later in the day.

The company has seen the departure of a number of senior executives over the last year.

Amazon's Move Off Oracle Database Led To Thousands Of Delayed Deliveries

Retail giant Amazon.com was red-faced this week when a 25-page "correction of error" report detailing the reasons behind system failures on Amazon Prime Day earlier this year was leaked to the press.

The internal report said that Amazon's decision to move from Oracle's database to Amazon's own Aurora PostgreSQL database led to web site outages and thousands of delayed package deliveries.

The e-commerce company experienced significant website issues during the July 16 Prime Day, which the report said was caused by the Aurora database's inability to "handle the pressure, slowing down the overall performance." The database "degradation resulted in lags and complete outages," the report said.

Adding to the embarrassment was the fact that the report came out just one day after Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison, in an Oracle OpenWorld keynote, argued that the public cloud isn't safe enough for enterprises and specifically took jabs at Amazon Web Services as an example. The July system failure did not impact the Amazon Web Services operations.

AMD Stock Price Nosedives On Slower Channel Sales Of Graphics Cards

Chipmaker AMD has been flying high in recent months, both in terms of its competitive technology and its stock price. But this week, AMD's stock took a major hit when the company's third-quarter results didn't meet expectations.

AMD reported that revenue in the quarter was up 4 percent year-over-year to $1.65 billion. But that was $50 million below Wall Street's forecast and AMD's stock price plunged more than 20 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday.

The company said slower sales of graphics cards through the channel was a factor in the results. The firm said average selling prices for GPUs also decreased and that blockchain-related GPU sales in the quarter were negligible.

Cathay Pacific Data Breach Exposes Data On 9.4 Million Customers

It was a rough week for Cathay Pacific, one of Asia's biggest airlines, which acknowledged this week that a security breach of its computer systems exposed the personal data and travel histories of 9.4 million passengers, according to New York Times and CNN Business stories.

The Hong Kong-based airline said the breach occurred at least seven months ago – it discovered suspicious activity on its network in March – and exposed passenger data including names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses and passport numbers.

The exposed data included 860,000 passport numbers and 245,000 Hong Kong identity card numbers.

The airline concluded in May that personal data had been compromised and has since been analyzing the data to identify which passengers were affected, according to CNN. No reason has been given as to why the incident wasn't disclosed sooner.

Microsoft Confirms .ZIP File Bug In Windows 10 Update

It's been a rough October for Microsoft as it wrestles with a series of problems in the October update of Windows 10, otherwise known as 1809.

This week the software giant confirmed an issue in the Windows 10 update's .ZIP function, an internal file compression and decompression capability built into the operating system, according to a Redmond Magazine story.

The problem occurs when trying to move or copy zipped archived files to a new folder without first unzipping the files. The consent prompt for placing unzipped files appears to be missing and the action can fail, resulting in either misplaced content or no placement at all even though the system says the move or copy operation was completed, according to a Microsoft community site.

Microsoft is working on a fix the company said it will issue in early November.

The .ZIP bug is the latest of several problems to crop up with the Windows 10 October release. Earlier this month, Microsoft halted distribution of the software following reports of deleted user files during upgrades, compatibility problems with Intel display audio drivers, and "blue screens of death" with some PCs.