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Long after the bubble burst, leaving office buildings half-empty and six-figure software engineers hunting for work, Silicon Valley remains one of the most important technology centers on Earth. But in an era of bottom-line budget scrutiny, does it still make sense for companies to stay in the North...

Consumers are still having a hard time getting companies to service their needs via e-mail, according to a new survey, and the experience is souring them on buying again from the same companies. Although 88 percent of consumers surveyed said they expect a response to e-mail inquiries within 24 hours...

The complaints are essentially the same, but the venue is different. Microsoft is under attack again for leveraging its monopoly and bundling its products, but this time its lines of defense are concentrated on the European front. In fact, it seems that so far, Europe's antitrust investigation has b...

Overture Services has announced it will pay $140 million to acquire once-venerable search engine AltaVista from dot-com incubator CMGI. The fire-sale price represents a bargain for Overture and a disaster for CMGI, which paid Compaq $2.3 billion for an 83 percent stake in the company in June 1999. O...

Now is the winter of IT's discontent. Last month, the doomsayers at Goldman Sachs projected a 1 percent decline in IT spending in 2003. This week, they released a new report projecting a 10 percent decline. Given this dismal forecast, what should a company that has survived the tech implosion do nex...

Cisco Systems is investing $150 million in a global advertising campaign to increase awareness of what a high-powered corporate network can do for companies' bottom lines, and to position Cisco for growth in new business segments. The push is the first in a while for Cisco, which has been forced to ...

Using centralized database technology, it can take seemingly forever to query multiple databases, and structured and unstructured data cannot be integrated. Labor costs are also substantial. To remedy these problems, companies must find a way to access data stored in disparate locations on the fly. ...

Hitachi and Oracle have announced they will strengthen an existing alliance, creating a partnership focused on improving integration of database management and information storage. Their first product will be a software library that enables administrators to more easily find and extract Oracle data ...

Computer maker Dell has terminated what was to be a long-term, $16 billion parts contract with IBM. The move likely is a result of Big Blue's decision to exit some manufacturing businesses. Dell also said that a separate partnership, initially seen as a $6 billion deal in which Dell would funnel cus...

During the high-tech boom, vision was in. Corporate leaders like AOL's Steve Case, who made bold predictions about the future and then acted on them, became the heroes of the New Economy. Nowadays, on the other hand, CEOs seem to be cherished more for their ability to cut costs and make tough busine...

Microsoft's rivals have opened a new front in the battle over the software giant's alleged monopolistic behavior, saying Windows XP violates existing European antitrust law. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which counts AOL, Sun, Nokia and Yahoo among its members, claims "new ...

Driven to reap ROI from real-time data access and advanced collaboration among employees and partners, more and more IT executives are hunting for the right enterprise portal. This is not a simple search, however. The array of choices is dizzying, with solutions up for grabs from pure-play vendors B...

Cisco Systems has announced it will partner with Yahoo! to target its networking solutions toward small and mid-size businesses that previously may have thought the company's gear was too costly for them or that do not know where to turn for networking help. "Yahoo! offers a comfort level," Yankee G...

Spurred by fears of "hostile environment" employee lawsuits and concerned about lost productivity hours, companies increasingly are turning to anti-spam technologies to eliminate -- or at least reduce the volume of -- unsoliticated e-mail. Several spam-fighting software firms have seen measurable fi...

Collection of online sales tax, once seen by analysts as a potential death knell for some e-tailers and a drag on e-commerce growth in general, has quietly begun. Several major sites, including Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us and Target, already have started levying the extra fees on purchases. The move stems...