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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 US$1.38 billion, missing per-share estimates by a penny....

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 Internet, stepped up efforts to secure the lion's share of Internet advertising dollars, and tested the waters in the news and e-commerce sectors...

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, Apple was rumored to be close to sealing a US$6 bill...

Nearly six years have passed since Microsoft agreed to invest US$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. Apple has transformed from a moribund entity whose doom was foretold by countless pundits...

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 Within hours of the filing of the bill, known as the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, or CAN SPAM, AOL issued a statem...

It would be nice if headlines about networked storage were picturesque, such as, perhaps, 'A SAN Grows in Brooklyn.' Unfortunately, storage area networks, hailed as one of the most transformative corporate information technologies in years, are not like young saplings that will, with subtle nurturing, grow into mighty oaks. Data storage networking requires a lot of hard work.

IBM wants to help enterprises clean out their patchwork, outdated programs and transform them into shiny new applications that can take advantage of Web services protocols The company has announced a new initiative designed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" er...

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 perhaps some Internet service providers. 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 status quo. At leas...

The number of high-tech layoffs in the first quarter fell 45 percent compared with a year ago as stabilization in the telecommunications industry helped slow the pace of job cuts, according to a new report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CGC). Chicago-based CGC tracked 61,032 layoffs during the first three months of 2003, well...

It is safe to say that every company is expecting an economic recovery. And while predicting the time frame for its arrival is far from an exact science, experts say wise companies have already decided how they will react when the long-awaited turnaround begins Of course, after three years of dealing with slow economies, global uncertainty and layo...

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 workflow. Sun used conferences on both the East and Wes...

Hard-to-visualize functionality, extremely 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 nearly the attention it deserves But Ethernet switching is a multibillion-dollar market that CIOs spend a lot of time scrutinizing. And alth...

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. For example, when Luggage.com opened its virtual doors in 1999, free shipping on all valises and steamer trunks was a perk meant to establish the site as the primo destination in its niche. ...

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 software maker Sybase, which said second-quarter r...

Where is BountyQuest when you need it? The company, founded in 2000 and backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, offered cash rewards to individuals who could prove or disprove a company's claim to a patent. Amazon itself found its patent on one-click ordering called into question on the site. But BountyQuest is apparently no more, its Web site shut down, its phones disconnected...

Google and Amazon.com have tied the knot in a deal designed to expand Google's advertising presence and give Amazon.com users greater access to products not listed on the e-tailer's site The multiyear agreement will make Google's search technology and targeted sponsored links available on Amazon.com within the next several months. In fact, sponsore...

As the E-Commerce Times detailed in a recent story on data storage, the last few years have seen a significant revolution toward networked storage and away from disk drives and tape loaders attached directly to corporate servers. In fact, research firm IDC has estimated that by 2006, more than 70 percent of storage will be networked via fibre channel or Ethernet, rather than attached locally to a server via SCSI or another conventional type of disk connection.

Gateway (NYSE: GTW) has announced it will take advantage of a grace period, gaining an additional two weeks to file its annual report as it continues an internal review of how it accounted for revenue in 2000 and 2001. In a statement, the company cited two reasons for the delay: work being done in conjunction with a Securities and Exchange Commiss...

You hear it all the time: "You can't make money off free software."Actually, companies are making quite a bit of money from free software. IBM and HP, for example, have reaped billions of dollars in revenue from Linux. True, they are doing so by bundling open source software with servers and support, but Linux is the glue that binds the entire package together.

A year after launching its Trustworthy Computing initiative, Microsoft still suffers from a security image problem, with key executives at 75 percent of companies polled by Forrester Research saying they worry about vulnerabilities in the software firm's products Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester said its survey of IT experts at 35 companies...