After the recent departure of four of the company’s top executives, CA Inc. has engaged in its second round of reshuffling, appointing Al Nugent as the software vendor’s new chief technology officer. Earlier this month, during an overhaul of its sales operations, CA announced the departure of Greg Corgan, its executive vice president of worldwide sales, following the revelation that a new sales-commission plan had played havoc with its financial results.

IBM Chairman & CEO Samuel J. Palmisano opened IBM’s first development lab in Russia as the company continues to increase its investment in high-growth countries. IBM will invest $40 million over the next three years in the Russian Systems & Technology Laboratory, which will employ up to 200 people by the end of 2008. The lab will focus on mainframe technology development and continues IBM’s emphasis on utilizing skills and expertise around the globe, especially in high-growth countries such as Russia, Brazil, China and India. The lab is the fourth major development operation announced by IBM in recent months.

Cisco Systems on June 20 extended its wireless reach into new mobility services and for the first time integrated its WLAN technology into a stackable form factor. The switch provides 24 POE (power-over-Ethernet) ports and two Gigabit Ethernet uplinks and can be stacked using Cisco’s StackWise technology to increase port density in the wiring closet.

Equifax said a laptop computer containing employee names and Social Security numbers was stolen from a worker traveling on a British commuter train. The May 29 theft affects nearly all of the Atlanta-based company’s nearly 2,500 U.S. employees, aside from those hired in roughly the last two months, spokesman David Rubinger said.

Soccer purists can breathe a sigh of relief. There is no Naked World Cup. IT professionals, on the other hand, may want to be a little more vigilant, as a new email worm is on the loose that preys on the intense worldwide interest in the international sporting event. Called Sixem-A, the worm began circulating earlier this week, and has just recently been blocked by antivirus vendors. So far, the worm has been detected at only a handful of companies, but it is the first World Cup 2006 malware to target an English-speaking audience, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with Sophos.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs told eWEEK June 19 that the agency has hired Internet Security Systems, of Atlanta, to help determine exactly what information was lost in a massive data theft in May. The move to hire ISS had been announced earlier when Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson told the U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform Committee that the VA was already in discussions with ISS to help it figure out what was missing. The theft of the VA laptop was discovered in early May when the employee who had taken the computer and an external hard drive to his home told his supervisor and local police that his home had been broken into and the equipment taken.

Enterprise and mobile software maker Sybase, needing to round out its data integration software product set, announced June 14 that it has acquired Hamburg, Germany-based Solonde, a privately held provider of leading-edge products for data integration and interface management needs. A Sybase spokeswoman said it was an all-cash transaction for an undisclosed amount that closed on June 12. Solonde’s ETL (extract, transform and load) capabilities augment Sybase’s overall enterprise strategy by providing a more complete range of data integration solutions to its global customers.

IBM and Georgia Tech have coaxed a chip to run at 500GHz, a record for a silicon-based device, by dropping the temperature to minus 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The experiment is part of a project to explore the ultimate speed limits of silicon-germanium (SiGe) chips. SiGe chips are similar to standard silicon chips, but they also contain germanium for better performance and lower power consumption.

CertFX announced a 30% discount on all IBM Lotus Collaboration Exams. IBM has announced the retirement of it’s collaborative solutions exams. The following exams are scheduled to be retired August 1, 2006: 190-531 Administering Lotus QuickPlace 3, 190-533 Domino.Doc System Administration 3.0, 190-534 Implementing Lotus Discovery Server 1.0, 190-542 Administering Lotus Sametime 3, 190-561 Developing Instant Collaborative Applications with Lotus QuickPlace 3, 190-563 Domino.Doc 3.0 Customization, 190-565 Developing Applications Using Lotus Workflow 3, and 190-572 Developing Web Applications in Sametime 3.

CertFX announced the gold release of their IBM Lotus Notes Domino 7 LotusScript practice test 190-737. This practice test contains 75 questions with more being added frequently. Each question includes supplemental teach information which not only gives you the correct answer, but tells you why it’s the correct answer. All purchased practice tests are available for immediate download.