Gefen founder Hagai Gefen leaves the company sharing his name in order to "pursue other interests," with leadership duties taken over by Nortek Group president Sean Burke.

Joining Burke is global sales and business development VP Kevin E. Weiss.

"This is a natural evolution that we have all been anticipating for some time now," Burke remarks.  "We have worked very closely with Hagai and his executive team at Gefen to ensure a smooth and effective transition. Best of all, our new team is extremely excited about the opportunities to propel the Gefen business into the next generation of premium AV solutions."

The Broadwell PC processor launch is to be delayed by a quarter-- at the Q3 2013 Intel earnings call CEO Brian Krzanich admits a "defect density issue" has impacted yields of the 14nm chips.

The company was already putting fixes on defective chips, but said fixes did not, well, fix every defect. This demanded a further round of improvements and a "small blip in the schedule."

"We have confidence the problem is fixed because we have data it is fixed," Krzanich says. "This happens sometimes in development phases like this. That's why we moved it a quarter."

Cisco, Google and SAP are in line to bid for a slice of the BlackBerry pie Reuters reports, since reportedly the beleaguered mobile vendor wants an alternative to the $4.7bn privatisation deal with shareholder Fairfax Financial Holdings. 

Other potential bidders include Intel, LG and Samsung. 

None of the companies confirm or deny involvement in such deals, but Reuters says they are “in talks” to buy “all or parts of” the company. Then again anyone would deal cautiously with BlackBerry, whose fiscal Q2 2014 results saw losses of over $900 million following a writedown on unsold Z10 smartphones. 

Also liming attractiveness is a patent portfolio "likely" to halve in value over the next 18 months. Currently analysts suggest the BlackBerry services business (the one powering the well regarded BlackBerry Messenger) is worth £3-4.5bn, while the company's patents are worth $2-3bn. Read more...

"It's full of Quarks and Atoms!" one might remark after looking at the Intel Internet of Things (IoT) roadmap-- one promising to "drive business transformation" by connecting intelligent devices, end-to-end analytics and legacy devices to the cloud. 

"The IoT consists of a wide range of internet-connected devices, from a simple pedometer to a complex CT scanner," the company explains. "The true value in the IoT is realized when these intelligent devices communicate and share data with each other and the cloud, uncovering information and actionable insight that can transform business... Intel is focused on driving intelligence in new devices and gateways to help connect the billions of existing devices."

To reach such lofty goals Intel will make use of a pair of product lines-- the newly announced ultra low-power Quark X1000 SoC series and the 64-bit Atom E3800 family. Read more...

According to Reuters 3 of the top 20 Microsoft investors want founder Bill Gates to step down as chairman because his presence "effectively blocks the adoption of new strategies," thus limiting the powers of a new CEO.

Speaking to anonymous sources, Reuters reports the shareholders believe Gates wields "power out of proportion to his declining shareholding," even if he spends most of his time on philanthropic foundations.

Gates is the largest Microsoft shareholder, with a 4.5% stake in the $277 billion company-- a stake that, thanks to pre-set sales plan created when Microsoft went public in 1986, will drop down to nothing by 2018.

If you have a “well-developed, well-defined and established company” that wants to break through to a new phase of revenue growth, what do you do?

Barix founder Johannes G. Rietschel.has served as CEO of Barix since inception in 2001 but he will now focus on his visionary and technology development skills and relinquish the daily operations and business strategy to a new CEO, Ronni Guggenheim.

“Barix has achieved excellent growth for 12 years, but we have reached a size where we need different entrepreneurial skillsets,” says Rietschel. “I will remain involved in the overall company vision but am getting back to focusing on technology, and ensuring we have the best to offer for our customers. Ronni brings the experience we need to build stronger sales channels and strategic focus worldwide. And I will work with him to guarantee greater acceleration of Barix’s success.” Read more...