Archive

2003 was supposed to be the year of the PC upgrade. More than halfway through the year, however, a jump in PC sales is nowhere in sight. Fortunately, IT departments are likely to buck the overall enterprise trend, because new PC purchases can more easily be justified for the people who manage and ma...

As the LinuxWorld conference kicks off, Novell has announced the purchase of Ximian, a privately held company known as a trailblazer in the open-source space, for an undisclosed all-cash amount. "Novell sees the handwriting on the wall," Aberdeen research director Bill Claybrook told the E-Commerce ...

Qwest Communications and Sprint have jointly announced that Sprint will wholesale its PCS Vision voice and data services to Qwest customers under an exclusive agreement. The deal offers Sprint a new sales channel, especially for PCS Vision's data services, and Qwest now will be able to offer its wir...

In an effort to trim costs, U.S. companies increasingly have been shipping work overseas, especially to India, China, Eastern Europe and South America. While this practice boosts the bottom line in the accounting office, it also raises the anxiety level of U.S.-based employees. However, not all IT j...

Buzz about WiFi has swelled to a dull roar this year. Ads for laptops highlight Intel's Centrino technology, which gives users wireless networking capabilities without requiring them to buy a separate PCI card. Across the United States, Starbucks enables customers to check e-mail wirelessly, and McD...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued an updated advisory entitled "Potential for Significant Impact on Internet Operations Due to Vulnerability in Microsoft Operating Systems." The warning listed all the major iterations of Windows server platforms as well as client-side Windows XP. The a...

"Inside jobs" have become all too commonplace in today's corporations -- but clamping down too fiercely on employee data access can wreak havoc with morale and put extra strain on already overworked IT staff. Overzealous security efforts also can reduce efficiency and increase the number of help des...

Sprint PCS and Samsung have announced a new gaming accessory that will convert certain Samsung mobile phones into gaming devices. Called the PCS Game Pad, the add-on works only with Samsung's new A600 mobile phone, which was released in conjunction with the announcement. The phone retails for about ...

Microsoft has revealed portions of its Windows source code to a dozen foreign governments as part of its Government Security Program Initiative, Microsoft spokesperson Alex Mercer told the E-Commerce Times. The initiative allows controlled access to the code so that foreign governments and organizat...

Gorging on enterprise infrastructure was de rigueur in the go-go 1990s, but a drop in capital spending has heralded the arrival of new methods of building out networks in small increments. In the storage networking arena, budget-conscious CIOs are focusing on such cost-cutting measures as utility co...

Newsflash: Apple is the market leader in digital music downloading, with more than 6 million song tracks sold in less than four months through its iTunes Music Store. Some competitors, including the always-feisty Buy.com, also have charged out of the gate, targeting PC users in an effort to beat App...

Part 1 of this article discussed the relative advantages and disadvantages of IBM's DB2 and Oracle's 9i software. However, IBM and Oracle are not the only vendors in the database race. Microsoft has seen tremendous growth in the last few years for its Windows-only SQL Server. "Microsoft leads all ve...

A group of companies in the mobile device industry has established a new organization dedicated to defining and endorsing open standards for mobile devices, such as cell phones and PDAs. The four founding members of the MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) Alliance are STMicroelectronics, Texa...

IBM has become the latest computer services giant to score a billion-dollar outsourcing deal, signing a 10-year, $1.1 billion agreement to handle the computer infrastructure needs of Switzerland-based power-services company ABB. In the race to ink high-profile services deals, this is just the latest...

Although databases have been a fundamental component of the enterprise IT stable for decades, they now seem to be multiplying faster than ever before, both in number and in importance. Many enterprises now rely on hundreds or thousands of databases, and administering them has become a major challeng...