Spotlight Features

Intel could make a long-term splash in the server market with its Itanium 2 processor, but first it must make its case to enterprise technology buyers. According to Intel, the latest version of Itanium increases performance over the original by between 50 and 100 percent, but those who control corpo...

It may be an overused phrase, but it is still a fact that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and this rule certainly has held true in e-commerce. But there is still abundant opportunity for less-established e-commerce sites to trumpet their existence to the world -- or at least the part of the worl...

Once upon a time, the performance of bellwethers like Cisco told the economic fortunes of the technology sector as a whole. But Cisco's dismal financial showings over the last two years have left some industry observers wondering whether the company still wields much influence, even though it is sti...

Few companies would be likely to admit it, and even fewer would be willing to talk about it publicly, but layoffs can have business benefits that go well beyond short-term cost savings. When done right, they can even help improve morale by reassuring employees that their employer can make tough deci...

When Apple and Microsoft signed a pact five years ago formalizing their relationship, the two companies laid out a detailed road map for the future. Fast forward to the summer of 2002. The agreement expired, no extended proposal has been put in place, and published reports have questioned the state ...

Just three years ago, those interested in an e-commerce career simply had to stand around and jobs would drop into their hands like fruit falling from an overburdened apple tree. But the economy's long decline has forced many companies out of business, and many of the remaining players have slashed ...

There are now an estimated 220 million active Internet users worldwide, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, but the value of that audience seems to be falling even as it grows in size and scope. Even so, the Internet audience is still a highly valuable commodity -- if it can be harnessed in the right ...

In a sea of drowning tech companies, Logitech's is an unlikely story -- one of profit, promise and seemingly unlimited potential. The peripherals maker has homed in on a market where the sky is the limit at a price point that defies recessionary pressures. How has the company been so successful in a...

The classic law of supply and demand has caught up to technology workers. Not only are fewer jobs available, but there has been a noticeable erosion of salary gains made during the technology boom. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 75 percent of top-earning workers rep...

The dollars spent by tech sector heavyweights on research and development number in the billions. Determining a company's return on its R&D investment is not a clear-cut exercise -- and until ROI is achieved, companies and their shareholders pay for their investment in lost profit. Even so, IDC ...

Purveyors of interactive online games have hit upon an audience-pleasing business model, featuring methods like subscription plans that give users unlimited access for a monthly fee. But firms in other areas of e-commerce likely will be hard-pressed to emulate gaming companies' success using the sam...

The 64-bit microprocessors coming down the pike from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices may one day help PC servers rival the power of Unix boxes and may transform the PC desktop. But experts do not expect users to adopt these new processors right away, and in the short term, businesses may not want t...

A recent Goldman Sachs report pushed back a meaningful rebound in corporate IT spending until mid-2003 at the earliest, predicting flat numbers until then. But amid the gloom inherent in this and other dour forecasts, tech bright spots remain in both the enterprise and consumer markets. For example,...

When Amazon.com announced its second-quarter 2002 results, its outlook seemed promising: Sales of books, CDs and DVDs were up 20 percent compared with the year-ago period. The company's first-quarter report also was positive, showing a 15 percent increase from the first quarter of 2001. However, not...

Server technology improvements are poised to turbocharge the way companies run their e-commerce operations, ranging from the way they process transactions to the methods they use to snag new sales. For example, IBM has been developing "self-learning" software that not only ties servers together, but...