eWeek articles from January 2002

eWeek archives from January 2002

Palm promises turnaround - Company CEO says little innovation, failure to roll out i705 led to poor past year; eyes partnerships.(Eric Benhamou)
January 7, 2002... Palm Inc. is hoping to make 2002 the year of the enterprise, but the success of the handheld device company lies precariously in the hands of corporate customers who have a lot of choices these days. Palm's interim CEO, Eric Benhamou, said...

'Eggdrop' attacks credit card company.
January 7, 2002... A cracker apparently compromised and installed a bot that could be used as a DDoS client on several hundred servers belonging to customers of a large credit card processing company. CCBill LLC late last month said in an e-mail message sent...

PeopleSoft to bolster e-sales - Calico selling technology to give customers complex transaction options.
January 7, 2002... Peoplesoft Inc. plans to add sales configuration technology it is acquiring from bankrupt e-commerce software vendor Calico Commerce Inc. to its CRM application suite by the third quarter. PeopleSoft's customer relationship management...

SNIA group gains new components - Supported Solutions Forum includes tape storage and host bus adapters.
January 7, 2002... Tape storage and host bus adapters are the newest technology components to become part of the Storage Networking Industry Association's Supported Solutions Forum. However, on the horizon is interoperability between NAS (network- attached...

Cutting cost of voice apps.(Product Announcement)
January 7, 2002... Are you looking for an easier, low-cost way to give your company's customers self-service, around-the-clock access to information via the telephone? General Magic Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., last month began shipping a suite of voice...

Ramping up management.(InterSAN's Pathline storage management software)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 7, 2002... Software made available last month from startup InterSAN Inc. aims to tackle storage management where larger vendors have fumbled. The product, Pathline, has such features as automated provisioning, service-level measurement and policy-...

Disconnected but still working.(Iconverse.com's Adaptix mobile application platform)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 7, 2002... Iconverse.com Inc. last month started shipping a mobile application platform that enables users to work wirelessly even when they are intermittently disconnected. The Adaptix software gathers data online and caches and stores it for later...

Configuring Notebooks Your Way.(Brief Article)
January 7, 2002... Compaq targets small and midsize companies N180, N160 platforms For small and midsize businesses, being able to order what you need is important. Compaq Computer Corp. last month began offering configuration capabilities in its Evo Notebook...

ROI: More than a good idea.(Column)
January 7, 2002... During my years with EXXON, I developed an almost reverent awareness of the difference between "capital" and "expense." The only good thing you could say about expense was that you got to deduct it. Capital investment, on the other hand, meant...

What's wrong with pressplay.
January 7, 2002... Napster was founded in may 1999. i reckon that the smart minds in the music business have been trying to figure out since at least then what kind of business they can run on the Internet. n The latest result is not exactly a study in evolution....

Inside e-procurement - Centralized, 'war room' approach saves Unilever $902 million and counting.
January 7, 2002... Inside a converted conference room in Greenwich, Conn., Greg Polcer huddles with his team of procurement experts as they plan their next attack on costly supply redundancies and inefficiencies at consumer packaged goods giant Unilever. The...

Web comes to the aid of human services - System eases collaboration of agencies and tracking, monitoring of cases.
January 7, 2002... Question: what do you get when you mix antiquated legacy systems, state bureaucracy and caseworkers from branches of a state's health and human services agencies? Answer: wasted time, wasted effort and wasted money. That was the case in...

Manugistics forges ahead.
January 7, 2002... License revenues dipped, but CEO Greg Owens sees opportunity for Profit Optimization product Despite a 38 percent decrease in software license revenues in Manugistics Group Inc.'s recently completed fiscal third quarter, Chairman and CEO...

Palm to appeal Graffiti patent ruling.
January 7, 2002... Handheld computing company Palm Inc. is appealing a recent court ruling that says Palm's Graffiti handwriting recognition technology infringes on a U.S. patent owned by Xerox Corp. "We assert that the Graffiti handwriting recognition...

WebSphere gets J2EE nod - IBM's application server and DB2 database platforms gain compliancy.
January 7, 2002... The latest version of J2EE appears to be gaining momentum among application server and tools vendors looking to take advantage of new features designed to promote Web services. Late last month, IBM announced that its WebSphere application...

Compaq revs Itanium server production.
January 7, 2002... Compaq Computer Corp. has started production on its first Itanium-based server after a five-month delay it blamed on problems with Intel Corp.'s 64-bit chip. While the system may bolster Intel's efforts to promote the slow- selling...

Legacy systems graduate to Web services - Students can go online to register, check schedules or pay parking tickets.
January 7, 2002... When students at Texas A&M University signed up for classes for the coming semester, they had a new option-they could register online. As college students rely more and more on the Web, universities are faced with keeping up with the...

Girding for grids - Scheme promises big boost in computing power.
January 7, 2002... Computers, which mimic human behavior a little more with each step in their evolution, are now connecting for brainstorming sessions. The resulting pooling of processing power could lift enterprise computing to new levels of performance in a...

Open source is the loom for fabrics.
January 7, 2002... In the fall of 1998, Erick and Linda Von Schweber, founders of the Infomaniacs think tank, published an article in eWeek predicting the evolution of "a new wave in computing-one that we believe promises within the next five years to deliver...

The paradox of grid computing.
January 7, 2002... Experienced aviators warn novice pilots, "the problem with a multiengine airplane is that sometimes you need them all." During takeoff, for example, failure of even a single engine is a high-risk situation-but with more engines, there is a...

Fixes for cracks in windows - Configuresoft tool eases patching process-for relatively low cost.(Configuresoft Inc.'s Security Update Manager)(Evaluation)
January 7, 2002... It goes without saying that organizations with many Windows systems have been installing a lot of security patches lately. eWeek Labs' tests show that harried managers can get some relief from this chore by using Configuresoft Inc.'s Security...

Top Layer appliance powers up IDSes.(Top Layer Networks Inc.'s Balancer 3500 network switch)(Evaluation)
January 7, 2002... Top Layer Networks Inc.'s ids Balancer 3500 switch-and-software combo improves the performance of installed intrusion detection system sensors by mirroring network data flows to load balanced IDS groups, allowing sites to monitor all the...

The top nonenterprise products of 2001.(Buyers Guide)
January 7, 2002... Surprisingly, writing this column never gets old. i tirelessly examine interesting enterprise architectures; match them to the vendors' hyperbolic claims; compare them with what I believe readers actually need; and, once in a while, take...

Microsoft still suffers insecurity complex.
January 7, 2002... Microsoft just endured one of its worst years ever when it comes to security problems, which is really saying something. And to top things off, it ended the year with a near flood of trouble-from new viruses attacking Outlook to holes in IE 6.0...

Pings&Packets - Searching the industry for technical connections and returning analysis in byte-size packages.(Product Announcement)
January 7, 2002... Keeping an eye on paper trails Although face recognition systems have received most of the attention since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Boston's Logan International Airport is trying out a different type of verification system to detect...

Convergence or collision? Blurring line between NAS, SAN will make choices powerful but difficult.
January 7, 2002... The capability gap between SAN and NAS gets smaller as each technology continues to evolve. At first glance, this convergence might look as if it will leave IT managers with difficult long-term decisions about where they should store their...

Hewlett outlines opposition to deal.(Walter Hewlett opposes HP-Compaq merger)(Brief Article)
January 7, 2002... Walter Hewlett, the most vocal critic of the controversial proposed merger of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, was against the $25 billion deal when he first heard about it in May, according to a proxy statement filed with the U.S. Securities and...

McVaney retires as J.D. Edwards CEO.(will be replaced by Robert Dutkowsky)(Brief Article)
January 7, 2002... C. edward mcvaney, founder of software maker J.D. Edwards, is retiring as CEO and will be replaced by Robert Dutkowsky, a 25-year veteran of the high-tech industry. Dutkowsky had been president of Teradyne's Assembly Test Division. He had...

Antitrust Delay Bid - Judge might grant Microsoft a delay, but not as long as company wants.
January 7, 2002... A federal judge is expected this week to reject Microsoft Corp.'s bid for a lengthy delay in its ongoing antitrust case, according to some legal experts, many of whom panned the request as a transparent tactic without legal merit. In a...

CDMA2000's chicken-egg problem.
January 7, 2002... Qualcomm Inc. is shipping its next-generation CDMA2000 1X chip sets, but carriers that plan to sell handsets based on the wireless technology said most products are not ready for it. This technology gap, which has network providers waiting...

New help for e-mail admins - DYS Analytics, GFI Software and Gordano solutions to manage traffic, security, remote access.(GL WebMail 2.1 from Gordano Ltd, Email Control 4.0 from DYS Analytics Inc, Email Security Testing Zone service from GFI Software)(Product Announcement)
January 7, 2002... New software and services are in the pipeline that promise to help e- mail administrators get a better handle on their systems' traffic management, security and remote access. DYS Analytics Inc. will release Version 4.0 of its Email Control...

EarthLink will try ASP plans again.
January 7, 2002... An executive's departure and the staggering economy conspired to keep EarthLink Inc. from realizing its ASP plans last year. But the ISP (Internet service provider), looking to expand business, said it expects to begin this spring trials of...

Mere cost cutting may not be answer - CIOs must keep assets in sync with prevailing direction of companies.(Meta Group report)
January 7, 2002... The CIO who breaks out the budget hatchet in a tough economy may be hurting-not helping-the company's business. And, if there was ever a time when draconian technology budget cuts became the norm, it was last year. "2001 was the first time...

XML: Plugging into 'standard' hybrids - Some standards reach acceptance, but the struggle against fragmentation continues.
January 7, 2002... It was supposed to be so simple. XML would enable companies to move beyond paper-, e-mail- and electronic data interchange-based commerce to the world of Internet transactions. Having such an open platform was supposed to provide a lower-cost...

Seeking ebXML interoperability.
January 7, 2002... Two retail industry trade groups are looking for evidence that the ebXML electronic messaging framework will provide interoperability with global partners and suppliers outside the retail industry. The Uniform Council Code Inc. and Global...

Microsoft leaks another glum valentine.
January 7, 2002... El Gato was amused to see that microsoft may be having as much trouble stopping internal memos from leaking to the press as it is providing a secure operating system. The latest memo that found its way to the Kitty's litter box is a...

Enron: 2001-02's big tech story.(Column)
January 7, 2002... In last week's issue, eWEEK labs analysts and managers each took a crack at 2001's defining moments (Page 18 and on eWeek.com). Now I'll do the same, hopefully with the same originality, insight and aplomb as our esteemed Labs personnel. Here...

Novell merges security wares.(Novell's eDirectory)
January 7, 2002... Novell Inc. next week will unveil a centralized authentication and authorization solution that, despite being the vendor's biggest security effort to date, likely will be hamstrung by ties to Novell's eDirectory. The new solution is based...

JCP gets Java services-ready - Connector architecture being updated.
January 7, 2002... Java developers, along with Sun Microsystems Inc., are shoring up Java's integration capabilities as Sun ramps up its Sun Open Net Environment Web services initiative to compete with Microsoft Corp.'s .Net. The Sun-sponsored Java Community...

Precise guarantees ROI for software - Promises 100 percent return within 12 months.(Precise Software Solutions Inc)
January 7, 2002... In this economic climate, plenty of software salespeople talk about offerings that pay for themselves. One application performance management provider is going one better with a 100 percent return-on- investment guarantee. Precise Software...

Strategic sourcing options on rise - With the acquisition of Atlas, Verticalnet software now competes with established developers'.
January 7, 2002... Verticalnet Inc. is making good on a promise to provide collaborative sourcing software for private e-marketplaces through its acquisition last week of Atlas Commerce Inc. But even as it readies software that will enable companies to find...

Get the most bang for your budget this year.
January 7, 2002... The IT budget process last year quickly turned from an optimistic "We'd better buy it, or we'll get beat" to the pessimistic "Just say no" method of handling budget requests. Now, with the new year starting and corporate wallets opening up a...

Spending to remain flat.(Brief Article)
January 7, 2002... Crm vendors aren't going to have the financial industry to help them out of these tough economic times, according to a study released last week. According to Meridien Research, spending on customer relationship management software in the...

Limits eased on exports.(Brief Article)
January 7, 2002... It was just what U.S. tech companies needed: an expanded market. Last week, President Bush eased 23-year-old restrictions on U.S. companies selling high-speed computers to Cold War opponents such as Russia, China and North Korea. The...

Microsoft sues Lindows.com.(Lindows OS, infringes on the Microsoft Windows name, claims Microsoft)(Brief Article)
January 7, 2002... Microsoft is heading to court again, only this time it's the one doing the suing. Microsoft has filed suit against small startup Lindows.com, alleging the company's upcoming product, Lindows OS, infringes on the Microsoft Windows name and...

Negotiating the maze.(Thales Navigation and Rand McNally partner with Palm Inc.)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... Palm m500s get Magellan GPS Companion In position Thales Navigation and Rand McNally Inc. have partnered with Palm Inc. to launch a Global Positioning System offering for Palm m500 handheld devices. On the map The Magellan GPS...

One LAN, one product family.(Foundry Networks Inc. FastIron 400, 800, 1500)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... If you're looking for one product family to cover an entire LAN system from the wiring closet to the backbone, Foundry Networks Inc. may have what you're seeking. The San Jose, Calif., company is releasing three upgraded Layer 3 modular...

Easier path to mobility.(M-Commerce Toolkit from Clickmarks Inc.)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... For e-commerce sites, gearing up to take orders from wireless devices can be costly, complex and time-consuming. Clickmarks Inc. has a product designed to make all of that easier. M-Commerce ToolKit, which is available now via a software...

Showing you the money.(Softrax Contrax 2.0)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... Business is becoming more complex, and enterprises are under a lot of pressure to more accurately and consistently manage their money. Softrax Corp. said it has the answer. The Canton, Mass., company has launched its Revenue Management...

Automating the failover switch.(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... Instead of buying mul- tiple failover devices or manually plugging in and unplugging cables between workstations and host devices, enterprises can now buy a new SCSI switch from Apcon Inc. with automated switching. The 2x1 Electronic SCSI...

Selling The Rope To Hang Us.
January 14, 2002... I can't carry a penknife on a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but I can sell a supercomputer to Pakistan or the Ukraine. Welcome to 2002.In March 1999, lobbyists for industry trade groups were hoping to lift what was then the ceiling...

Microsoft spins server stories.
January 14, 2002... By now, you may have seen the latest leaked memo from Microsoft Vice President Brian Valentine. The memo outlines the company's anti-Linux strategy (Rumor Central, Jan. 7, Page 56). Though the memo addresses the problem of confidential...

Cutting the fat from CRM implementation - Enterprises find ways to keep deployment costs from gobbling up their budgets.
January 14, 2002... When Marshall Andrew eyeballed multi million-dollar price tags for CRM implementation two years ago, one thing occurred to the vice president of IT at Station Casinos Inc.: You'd need a lot of slot machines to pay for that. So Andrew...

Standards may fix CRM integration.
January 14, 2002... Software customization, training, maintenance and license fees aren't the only things that raise the cost of CRM deployments. Integration, experts say, can also be a major, costly challenge. That's because, in most large enterprises,...

Putting a lid on CRM implementation costs.
January 14, 2002... Until recently, implementing CRM software meant either engaging an implementation company that has been trained and/or certified by the vendor or using internal IT resources.Neither choice is optimal. By using an external implementer, you are...

Get smart.(smart cards)
January 14, 2002... Imagine discarding that pocketful of plastic: credit, debit and frequent-flyer cards; grocery store affinity program cards; and passes that get you into offices. Imagine replacing them with one smart card, a piece of plastic the size of a...

Transit agency rides smart-card train.
January 14, 2002... While big names such as visa U.S.A., American Express Co. and Target Corp.'s Target stores have taken center stage as early innovators of smart cards, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is quietly yet aggressively carving out a...

Protecting privacy of smart-card data.
January 14, 2002... In a recent column, I brought down a hailstorm of protest by asserting that a voluntary national ID was all but inevitable in a shrinking world full of growing perils (Dec. 17/24, Page 48). n Predictably, the theme of the responses was a deep...

Ringing up the holidays - Web traffic rose for dot-coms, click-and- mortars.
January 14, 2002... While many called it the worst holiday shopping season for retailers in a decade, online retailers made steady, if not better-than-expected, gains. Brick-and-mortar retailers continued to assert themselves on the Web even as they often...

Compaq to report profit for Q4.
January 14, 2002... Thanks to stronger-than-expected sales, compaq Computer Corp. last week said it will post a profit rather than a loss for the fourth quarter of 2001. Direct-order PC maker Gateway Inc., however, last week warned that its fourth-quarter sales...

Taming unwieldy networks - Granite and MetaSolv target enterprise market with respective OSS apps.
January 14, 2002... Network upgrades and expansions are typically implemented to eke greater efficiencies out of a com munications system, but such improvements can create their own management inefficiencies. As enterprise networks grow larger and more complex,...

Everdream patents service methods - Proprietary architecture aims to improve remote desktop management.
January 14, 2002... PC subscription service provider Everdream Corp. last week announced it has received two patents on technology it created to facilitate its services. In addition, the Fremont, Calif., service provider has 10 patents pending and is working...

Raising the services stakes - Banking on increased demand for Web services, IBM unveils tool kit, hosting technology, gateway.(IBM Web Services Toolkit 3.0)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... IBM is rolling out new tools designed to help developers and service providers create, host and manage Web services. The tools include IBM's Web Services Toolkit 3.0, Web Services Hosting Technology and Web Services Gateway, all of which are...

BSA extends anti-piracy campaign - January effort targeting software compliance encompasses 10 areas.
January 14, 2002... The business software alliance is taking its aggressive and somewhat controversial campaign against pirated software to 10 more areas this month. Under its Grace Period campaign, the BSA is using letters and radio ads to offer businesses...

Data: To protect and serve - Knowledge of organizational information is key to effective strategy.
January 14, 2002... In the end, the fate of businesses rests on data. More important than the processing of new data or its movement through the network is the task of keeping data available and uncorrupted. There are vast differences in cost and technology...

Java coding done right - Oracle9i JDeveloper 5.0, a free Java IDE, provides sterling development platform.(Evaluation)
January 14, 2002... If there's one thing that a Java development platform should be able to produce and host, it's a first-rate integrated Java development environment. Many candidates for that title have come through eWeek Labs, but Oracle Corp.'s Oracle9i...

SilkPerformer V boasts new accuracy.(from Segue Software Inc.)(Evaluation)
January 14, 2002... Segue Software Inc. has significantly improved its SilkPerformer V Web application testing and load simulation tool by streamlining test setup procedures and incorporating several innovative analysis utilities. IT managers should consider...

The big hype for the new year: ebXML.
January 14, 2002... A new year and already the hype has started over some arbitrary technology that's supposed to change the world. It's got to stop. Hype is a bad, bad thing, and yet I get a strange sense of belonging when I write about whatever's being hyped. n...

Getting the process picture - System Architect yields strong models, but simulation tools still in works.(System Architect 8.5)(Evaluation)
January 14, 2002... As the business motivation for new IT projects rises higher on the radar of enterprise developers, System Architect, from Popkin Software and Systems Inc., can help managers ask and answer questions of "Why?" as well as "How?" More than...

Microdrive raises PDAs' corporate cachet.(IBM iGB Microdrive)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... Ibm's 1GB microdrive is poised to fatten the skinny storage resources of portable devices, opening the door to new multimedia applications and allowing PDAs to handle scads more personal data.This is good news for more than just the MP3 crowd:...

Pings&Packets - Searching the industry for technical connections and returning analysis in byte-size packages.
January 14, 2002... Google bolsters Usenet postings Last year, i wrote a column about the loss of the Internet's collective memory, especially when it came to older Usenet postings. At the time that Google.com purchased Deja.com's Usenet archive, it was...

IBM takes open model to services front.
January 14, 2002... In 1981, IBM launched its personal computer (www- 1.ibm.com/ibm/history), which, despite the many models from other companies, really did launch the PC industry. The emergence of the personal computer from a company with a monolithic, mainframe...

The Buzz.
January 14, 2002... USi finally files for Chapter 11 It didn't come as the biggest surprise, but USinternetworking-the once- highflying pioneer of the application service provider field-last week finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At the same time,...

Tapping an array of it skills - Small outsourcing company pays off for Compaq.(Array Inc.)
January 14, 2002... When Bryan Jones looked to outsource the maintenance of Compaq Computer Corp.'s TCP/IP software for OpenVMS, his first two choices turned out to be "false starts." But the third-the selection of little-known Array Inc.-was a charm. Jones,...

Serving up virtual servers - SWsoft's Virtuozzo offers e-mail, firewall, domain name and other services.(Virtuozzo 2.0)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... More and more software makers are developing technology that gives customers mainframelike functionality across a variety of platforms. The latest offering comes from SWsoft Inc., of San Francisco, which last week released Virtuozzo 2.0, an...

Northern Light to end free Web searches - Dot-com responds to advertising sales decline by focusing on enterprises.
January 14, 2002... Seeking a tighter focus on enterprise customers while trimming expenses and unprofitable business, Northern Light Technology LLC this week will eliminate its free Web search service. The Cambridge, Mass., company follows in the steps of...

Tool speeds online - 3D PartStream.net upgrade boosts content control.(CAD software)(Product Announcement)
January 14, 2002... An upgrade to Solidworks Corp.'s three-dimensional catalog software gives component manufacturers a template-based tool for publishing online catalogs in days, rather than months, according to company officials. SolidWorks 3D...

Veritas expands server recovery line.(acquires Kernel Group and their Bare Metal Restore disaster recovery software)
January 14, 2002... The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks crystallized for many enterprises the need to be able to get operating systems up and running quickly following disasters or technical failures. Veritas Software Corp. last week expanded its reach in that area...

Katt pal needs passport for cup of joe.
January 14, 2002... In his Dec. 10 column, El Gato cited a Gartner study that stated that about 25 million users are enrolled in Microsoft's Passport system. The part that amused His Hirsuteness most was the study's claim that only about 7 million of those users...

Doing what you know best.
January 14, 2002... The chemical industry seemed to be the perfect e-marketplace. Millions of products could easily be found, bought and sold on the Web. All this added up to a major paradigm shift in the way business was done in the chemical industry. But...

Commerce One's integration play.(partnership with SeeBeyond Technology)(Brief Article)
January 14, 2002... Commerce One last week announced a partnership with EAI software vendor SeeBeyond Technol ogy that eventually will add enterprise application integration functionality to Commerce One's portfolio of business-to- business e-commerce...

HP's board counterpunches.
January 14, 2002... Hewlett-Packard's board of directors last week rejected Walter Hewlett's recent claim that he was pressured to vote in favor of HP's proposed $25 billion buyout of Compaq and denounced the HP heir's portrayal of events leading up to the merger...

Siebel eyes services - Next version of namesake CRM suite to support SOAP, UDDI Web services.
January 14, 2002... Siebel Systems Inc. plans to add Web services and JCA support to its CRM software suite, an initiative that will help customer relationship management extend beyond the enterprise and link more directly with channel partners. The next...

Software liability gaining attention.
January 14, 2002... Hacker attacks that exploit flaws in commercial software have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage in the past year. The Code Red worm alone is estimated to have cost enterprise users more than $2 billion. Software companies have...