Archive

Providing a potential shot in the arm to the technology sector as earnings season heats up, IBM has reported a relatively strong first quarter, saying two major acquisitions and cost-cutting initiatives undertaken last year have begun to help boost revenue. The company posted net earnings of $1.38 b...

Search engine Google is virtually revered by the Internet community and is often profiled as a pure technology company that does not take commercial interests to heart. But those days are over. In the past two years, Google has inked revenue-generating deals with almost every major player on the I...

Amid widespread reports that Apple Computer is mulling the purchase of Vivendi Universal's music business, Microsoft may be about to join the fray. Published reports say Vivendi has approached Microsoft as part of its effort to find a suitable buyer for the Universal music label. Late last week, App...

Nearly six years have passed since Microsoft agreed to invest $150 million in Apple Computer and continue developing Mac versions of its Office application suite for at least five years. In the intervening period, both companies have experienced many changes, and after the agreement between the two ...

The latest effort to reduce unwanted commercial clutter in consumers' e-mail inboxes has reached the U.S. Senate, bolstered by strong support from several high-profile online companies. The bill would require commercial e-mail senders to include an opt-out address in every message and would levy a f...

As a CIO or IT manager tasked with implementing a storage area network, you can start out simply -- but to build a reliable SAN and integrate it properly with the workflow of an entire enterprise network, be prepared to do a lot of planning and hard work. What are the highest data storage hurdles --...

IBM has announced a new initiative designed to help customers reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining old software applications dating back to the "green-screen" era. Such applications run 70 percent of the world's major business operations, including most major credit card transactions and st...

This month's release of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 will be welcome news for some enterprise players, such as in-house application developers and ISPs. For others, it will be like walking the plank: They may not want to go forward, but they will be unable to go back -- or even maintain the statu...

The number of high-tech layoffs in the first quarter fell 45 percent compared with a year ago as stabilization in the telecom industry helped slow the pace of job cuts, according to a new report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. But telecom stabilization may be covering up con...

It is safe to say that every company is expecting an economic recovery, though the timing of its arrival is uncertain. But after three years of dealing with slow economies, global uncertainty and layoffs, some firms may worry that their expansion muscles have turned to flab. This is a valid concern,...

Sun Microsystems has unveiled a new line of server and storage technology, marking a first step toward delivering on its promise to bring new products to market each quarter. The company also has cut the ribbon on a partnership program aimed at helping TV networks and other businesses improve workfl...

Hard-to-visualize functionality, complex feature descriptions, an invisible presence in the network, and boring names, taken together, sum up why the enterprise Ethernet switching market does not get the attention it deserves. But Ethernet switching is a multibillion-dollar market that CIOs spend a ...

In the frenetic boom days of the 1990s, a matter as humble as shipping charges was nothing more than a shot over the bow in the e-commerce battles that raged. As the dot-com parade wandered off course, however, it seemed that such stunts were history. But in January 2002, Amazon.com brought free shi...

With the books closed on the first quarter of 2003, two business software markers have warned that their results will come in below expectations. Meanwhile, research firm IDC said continuing uncertainty has prompted it to lower its IT spending forecast for the year. The warnings came from database s...

Amazon.com has filed for a patent involving online advertising, stoking the ire of many industry watchers. The company wants to stake its claim to a method of allocating online ad space via real-time auctions. But many are questioning whether this concept originated with Amazon, noting that the idea...