For many of us this week’s been abbreviated, with plans to spend time with family for Thanksgiving.  But even as the holiday season kicks into gear, the business world takes little time to rest, though there’s plenty of time to reflect.  Perhaps one of the most resonating developments this week was uncovered during Hewlett-Packard’s earnings call on Monday, where we learned of an $8.8 billion write-down the company posted after its $6.9 billion acquisition of Autonomy turned sour.

The media was quick to spurn the scandal, looking for the larger implications of HP’s struggling reformation.  Our founding editor John Furrier was among the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of the HP-Autonomy deal, wary of Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch’s explanation of the matter.   The question of whether or not Lynch committed fraud in his dealings with HP will determine not only his future, but HP’s as well.  The Autonomy acquisition was supposed to jump-start HP’s big data enterprise offerings, but now questions have been raised as to the validity of this deal and the value of its underlying product.

HP’s not the only company spending big money trying to stay ahead of the curve.  New demands for data have influenced software and hardware alike, and firms like Cisco are changing the face of networking in an effort to address these emerging needs.  While Cisco and VMware have irreversibly changed their relationship after the EMC subsidiary bought a networking firm of its own, Cisco’s boosting its product line up with the acquisition of Meraki.  The deal came just days after Cisco bought Cloupia. The business world isn’t the only sector dealing with drama this week.

As attacks grew more violent in the Gaza strip over the weekend, hacktivist group Anonymous made a distinct effort to tap government websites in Israel.  “A Pastebin post from a cell of the collective listed over 50 websites taken offline in the initial wave of protest from the collective. The post was released with little fanfare, no manifesto, and included the hashtags #OpIsrael and #GazaUnderAttack,” writes Kyt Dotson, DevOps editor at SiliconAngle.  Contributing editor John Cassaretto provides more analysis on the matter here.

From big data to hacktivists, the very architecture of the datacenter is undergoing quite a revolution with new demands on storage, access and security.  Flash technology is going to be remembered as a defining catalyst.  Wikibon analyst David Floyer reveals his latest findings on Flash in a groundbreaking report, touting Flash as a far better option than DRAM.  We’re also seeing more analytics tools being layered into servers, as data makes its mark on every level of the stack.  Senior Editor Kristen Nicole explores this phenomenon in detail during her weekly Q&A, interviewing William Bain, the CEO at ScaleOut Software.

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