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Financially, 2002 was not a gangbuster year for IBM -- revenue from continuing operations declined 3 percent. But the company still earned $5.3 billion in the year, even as most firms struggled to stay out of the red zone. Its WebSphere software dominates the e-business arena, and its consulting div...

IBM and French software firm Dassault have inked a services contract to supply Ford Motor Company with IBM Product Lifecycle Management software for use in the automaker's design and manufacturing processes worldwide. IBM's announcement could mark a setback for rival Electronic Data Systems, which, ...

Despite all the bluster and hype spewed by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the late 1990s, they could not create what they so desperately desired -- a New Economy that would replace the business cycle of expansions and contractions with constant growth. Instead, many e-tailers fell by the w...

Network equipment maker Cisco Systems has squeaked past analyst expectations, reporting net income of $991 million for its second fiscal quarter, well above Q2 2002 levels of $660 million. However, the company's largest quarterly profit ever stemmed more from cost-cutting measures than from top-line...

In the late 1990s, CIOs began to hear a new story from vendors: It had become undesirable to store valuable corporate data on a disk inside a computer. What if a fire broke out and your data disintegrated along with your servers? The race was on to separate disks from servers via network connections...

A judge has given Microsoft a reprieve from an order that required it to begin including Sun Microsystems' Java software with its Windows operating system by the end of April. But even though the stay buys Microsoft some time and virtually guarantees that its epic legal battle with Sun will continu...

Nearly 20 years ago, two guys set up mail-order businesses, one from his dorm room, the other from a barn in South Dakota. Dell had a paper route and rooted for the Texas Longhorns; Waitt had a pony tail. Fast forward to today. Michael Dell's eponymous company has annual sales of more than $30 billi...

Idealab and CMGI were among the most widely praised models of the New Economy. But they were both hit, and hit hard, by the implosion of the dot-com sector. Now, they are in the fight of their lives to survive. The questions facing these companies are big ones. Can Idealab generate enough brainstor...

Though it is widely praised for its cost-efficient online and phone sales model, Dell now plans to try its hand at selling computers in retail stores, installing sales kiosks at Texas Sears locations. However, Dell noted, the moves do not indicate a change in its overall direct sales focus. In fact,...

The tale is familiar: Enterprises are generating massive amounts of data, and IT managers are scrambling to identify and purchase the most cost-effective, easy-to-manage storage solutions available. But vendors are in a quandary. Even as they try to pump up revenue, their customers, faced with tight...

After reporting that it ended its fiscal year an unprecedented $99 billion in the red, AOL Time Warner said Ted Turner also will step down from his post as vice chairman in May. The company's fourth-quarter earnings statement revealed a $45.5 billion charge as a result of depreciation in its America...

When it comes to enterprise e-mail, Microsoft Exchange on the back end and Microsoft Outlook on the front end are among the most frequent vectors for viruses and worms. The cost of downtime as a result of this malware plague is measured in dollars, lost productivity, disrupted communications, and ma...

In a foray into the small and mid-size business arena, eBay has formally launched a new section called eBay Business. The section currently features about 500,000 product listings, focusing heavily on office technology products and wholesale lots of consumer goods and services. The site also feature...

The U.S. economy was not kind to offline retailers during the 2002 holiday season: They saw the smallest revenue gains in more than 30 years. But e-commerce, which tended to overpromise and underperform during the Internet bubble as many Web-only outfits stumbled over fulfillment and customer servic...

Venture investing plunged nearly 50 percent in 2002, dipping to levels last seen in 1998, according to the latest MoneyTree Survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). During the year, venture financiers invested just $21.2 billion, comp...