Information Age (London, UK) articles from August 2002

Information Age (London, UK) archives from August 2002

Impossible choice.(effect telecommunication company failures on business)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... In June 2002, network managers and IT chiefs from across Europe gathered in a Stockholm hotel to discuss the imminent fall of KPNQwest, the latest telecommunications carrier to be buried under an avalanche of debt. As users debated the...

The return of the fat client?(client-server model)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... Over the past five years, the client-server model has been in steady decline. As business applications have been rewritten to deliver functionality from servers to browser interfaces, the amount of application logic executed on the PC has been...

Cash acquisitions back in favour.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... With share prices stuck in the doldrums, cash acquisitions are firmly back in favour - at least for those that have the cash. No more so than at security software specialist Symantec. The Cupertino, California-based company put its bulging...

Expert advice.(reverse auctions and supplier relationships)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... Information Age will put your strategic IT questions to a team of leading independent industry experts. Email your questions to: edit@infoconomy.com#> Question: How can my organisation take advantage of reverse auctions without...

The narrowing of choice.(Brief Article)(Editorial)
August 10, 2002... Many of the articles in this month's Information Age have a common - but uncomfortable - theme. The breadth and wealth of the IT industry is truly staggering, with the top 200 companies alone generating half a trillion dollars between them...

Good migrations?(HP markets several different operating systems)(Company Business and Marketing)
August 10, 2002... David Atherton, founder and CEO of computer hardware reseller Dabs.com, is taking a phlegmatic attitude towards Hewlett-Packard's (HP) platform consolidation plans following its acquisition of Compaq. On the one hand, Dabs.com is heavily...

<em>Information Age</em> Executive Roundtable Lunches.(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... Information Age Executive Roundtable Lunches are an excellent opportunity for IT decision-makers to network and share their expertise and experiences with their peers. The invitation-only lunches are held every few months at a top London...

Chalk another one up to the hackers.("war chalk" code helps hackers break into wireless systems)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... Hot on the heels of 'war driving' (see Dangerous driving , May 2001) comes 'war chalking', the digital equivalent of the bush telegraph for hackers looking for unprotected wireless Internet access. Wireless networks are almost too easy...

Nabarro Nathanson Technology Industry Awards 2002.
August 10, 2002... Has your systems supplier, your software supplier or your services provider helped you build a particularly innovative application, or one that provided an impressive return on investment? If so, encourage them to enter the Nabarro Nathanson...

B2B boom imminent - depending on your location.(business-to-business online trade, Europe)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... It has been a long, long wait, but the business-to-business (B2B) online trade boom is about to materialise in Europe. That is the confident message from David Metcalfe, an analyst with IT market research company Forrester Research. ...

Is Sun saying 'maybe' to Intel?(Sun Microsystems rumoured to be using Intel processors for new server)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... Chief executives, like politicians, never like to say "never". But when it comes to Sun Microsystems using either Intel processors or the Microsoft Windows operating system, CEO Scott McNealy has always been pretty clear: never means never. ...

CGEY faces cleaning bill from irate London borough.(Cap Gemini Ernst & Young engages in illegal posing of flyers, London, England)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... European systems integrator Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGEY) is facing a financial slapped wrist for a recent foray into less-than-conventional advertising methods, according to a recent story in satirical magazine Private Eye. It seems...

Readers' letters.
August 10, 2002... Back to basics Following on from your recent article, Help is at hand (Information Age, July 2002) , I believe that the fact that many senior IT staff are unhappy with the quality of service they receive from outsourcing contracts is...

Microsoft looks to customers to assure rosy finances.(new licensing scheme pays off for Microsoft)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... It has been another wildly successful year for Microsoft. Despite universal budget cutbacks at corporate IT customers, a moribund PC sector and intensified competition in the server software market, the company managed to push sales up by a...

Battling the spam avalanche.(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... Increased administrative costs, wasted employee time, compromised storage and bandwidth resources: Junk emails, or 'spam', are becoming a major problem for UK organisations, according to a recent survey conducted by managed service provider...

Global visibility.(management information systems)(Industry Trend or Event)
August 10, 2002... For years, Iceland dominated its particular sector of the British food retailing market. But when management decided on an audacious shift in strategy, the frailties of the company"s reporting systems were quickly exposed. Iceland decided...

Softricity eases application delivery pain.(Softricity Inc.)(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
August 10, 2002... Museums are not typically associated with breakthroughs in software technology - but the Computer Museum in Boston, Massachusetts is probably a more likely institution than most to play host to such a development. There, employee David...

Hard times for systems management suppliers.(Computer Associates International, Vertias Software Corp.)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... It was a gloomy financial quarter for most systems management software suppliers, although a few bucked the overall downward trend. Computer Associates (CA) was one of the exceptions that managed to record growth. For its first quarter of...

CRM vendors continue to stumble.(customer relationship management software vendors)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... It is not a good time to be in the customer relationship management (CRM) software sector. Aside from the impact of tighter IT budgets, vendors are fighting a rearguard action against the perception that CRM often fails to deliver on many of...

Portal payback.(companies find portals are cost effective)(Industry Trend or Event)
August 10, 2002... The claims made for portal technology by some of its most high-profile proponents are compelling: computing giant Hewlett-Packard claims that its portal implementation generated $50 million in savings in just six months; car manufacturer Ford...

ProClarity promises strongly targeted analytics.(Product Information)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... "If you roll out a generic piece of analytics software, people tend to abandon it," says ProClarity CEO Bob Lokken. This is because pre-packaged, or 'canned', applications often fail to meet all of a company's requirements or are simply too...

Recession presents new IT recruitment challenges.(information technology)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... What is the greatest recruitment challenge facing IT managers? Two or three years ago, the answer was simple: offering enough money to attract and retain the skilled personnel needed to deliver development projects. All too often, technology...

G-Log: going the distance?(Global Logistics Technologies)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... Company: G-Log Main activity: Transportation &logistics software Founded: May 1999 CEO: Mitchell Weseley HQ: Shelton, Connecticut Status: Privately held. G-Log has raised total of $64 million (EU63.15 m) in five rounds,...

Egenera pioneers blade running.('blade servers')(Product Information)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... "Over the years, I witnessed the pain points most CIOs suffer," says Vern Brownell, the former chief technology officer of investment bank Goldman Sachs. The particular pain point he recalls most frequently: setting up new server applications...

Stringent measures needed to prevent software piracy.(Industry Legal Issue)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... UK organisations are having to take more stringent measures in a bid to prevent employees from downloading illegal software at work and abusing corporate software licensing agreements. This threat has grown dramatically due to the fact that...

Slowdown in CRM market, says Forrester.(customer relationship management software)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... The days of booming customer relationship management sales are over, according to market analyst Forrester Research. It says that in 2002, the CRM market will be worth $42.8 billion, a 5% drop on the previous year. Fees paid to outsourcers and...

Execs more 'open' about corporate information.(in UK firms)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)(Polling Data)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... Senior executives at UK organisations feel under increasing pressure to change their information sharing practices as a result of the economic downturn. Nearly four-fifths of business executives surveyed by Swedish business applications vendor...

Rise in hacking on open source-based web software.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... The number of hacking attacks on open source-based web software is soaring. In the first six months of 2002, hackers launched 7,630 attacks on systems running on the Linux open source operating system, compared to 5,765 attacks during the whole...

Continued growth for SCM market.(supply chain management market increased 12% in 2001)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... Despite the challenging IT spending climate, the supply chain management (SCM) market is continuing to grow. In 2001, SCM revenues grew to $5.6 billion, up 12% on the previous year, according to analyst Wendy Davis at AMR Research. For 2002,...

Securing E-Business Systems.
August 10, 2002... Forget the economic downturn. In the short-term, most organisations face a more serious threat from 'rabbits and worms, dumpster diving and shoulder snooping'. Arcane as they sound, these are just some of the weapons in the hacker arsenal...

Retek benefits from some retail therapy.(profits good)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... While the broad, enterprise applications vendors such as SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft report shrinking revenues, a handful of companies competing with them in specific vertical markets are going in the opposite direction. No more so...

Application foundations.(application server technology)
August 10, 2002... Steve Brain, vice president of analytical trading technology at electronic securities broker Instinet, has a simple piece of advice for organisations evaluating application server technology: "Go in deep". IT market analysts, he says, can...

WebGain crashes in spectacular style.(Company Financial Information)(Brief Article)
August 10, 2002... Don't always trust your parents. It's a lesson learnt the hard way by WebGain, the Java application development tools vendor, after its creator, BEA Systems, lost faith in its technology strategy, abandoned the company to its own fate, and...

Domain Names.(Domain Names: A Practical Guide)
August 10, 2002... Since the birth of the web, thousands of Internet domains - from rock star fan club sites to the web presence of bluechip companies - have fallen victim to 'cybersquatting'. A large consumer goods company may have several hundred names...

HP takes lead in European PC market.(personal computer)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
August 10, 2002... Hewlett-Packard (HP) has overtaken Dell to become the leading supplier of PCs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), according to market researcher IDC. In the second quarter of 2002, says IDC, HP's share of the market was up to 20.8%...

The narrowing of choice.(Web hosting services)(Editorial)
August 19, 2002... Many of the articles in this month's Information Age have a common - but uncomfortable - theme. The breadth and wealth of the IT industry is truly staggering, with the top 200 companies alone generating half a trillion dollars between them...

Cash acquisitions back in favour.
August 19, 2002... With share prices stuck in the doldrums, cash acquisitions are firmly back in favour - at least for those that have the cash. No more so than at security software specialist Symantec. The Cupertino, California-based company put its bulging...

The return of the fat client?
August 19, 2002... Over the past five years, the client-server model has been in steady decline. As business applications have been rewritten to deliver functionality from servers to browser interfaces, the amount of application logic executed on the PC has been...

Impossible choice.
August 19, 2002... In June 2002, network managers and IT chiefs from across Europe gathered in a Stockholm hotel to discuss the imminent fall of KPNQwest, the latest telecommunications carrier to be buried under an avalanche of debt. As users debated the...

Expert advice.
August 19, 2002... Information Age will put your strategic IT questions to a team of leading independent industry experts. Email your questions to: edit@infoconomy.com#> Question: How can my organisation take advantage of reverse auctions without...

Nabarro Nathanson Technology Industry Awards 2002.
August 19, 2002... Has your systems supplier, your software supplier or your services provider helped you build a particularly innovative application, or one that provided an impressive return on investment? If so, encourage them to enter the Nabarro Nathanson...

Chalk another one up to the hackers.
August 19, 2002... Hot on the heels of 'war driving' (see Dangerous driving , May 2001) comes 'war chalking', the digital equivalent of the bush telegraph for hackers looking for unprotected wireless Internet access. Wireless networks are almost too easy...

Microsoft looks to customers to assure rosy finances.
August 19, 2002... It has been another wildly successful year for Microsoft. Despite universal budget cutbacks at corporate IT customers, a moribund PC sector and intensified competition in the server software market, the company managed to push sales up by a...

Good migrations?(Hewlett Packard)
August 19, 2002... David Atherton, founder and CEO of computer hardware reseller Dabs.com, is taking a phlegmatic attitude towards Hewlett-Packard's (HP) platform consolidation plans following its acquisition of Compaq. On the one hand, Dabs.com is heavily...

B2B boom imminent - depending on your location.(Forrester Research forecast)(Statistical Data Included)
August 19, 2002... It has been a long, long wait, but the business-to-business (B2B) online trade boom is about to materialise in Europe. That is the confident message from David Metcalfe, an analyst with IT market research company Forrester Research. ...

<em>Information Age</em> Executive Roundtable Lunches.
August 19, 2002... Information Age Executive Roundtable Lunches are an excellent opportunity for IT decision-makers to network and share their expertise and experiences with their peers. The invitation-only lunches are held every few months at a top London...

Is Sun saying 'maybe' to Intel?(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Chief executives, like politicians, never like to say "never". But when it comes to Sun Microsystems using either Intel processors or the Microsoft Windows operating system, CEO Scott McNealy has always been pretty clear: never means never. ...

Battling the spam avalanche.(MessageLabs' research on workplace emails)
August 19, 2002... Increased administrative costs, wasted employee time, compromised storage and bandwidth resources: Junk emails, or 'spam', are becoming a major problem for UK organisations, according to a recent survey conducted by managed service provider...

Readers' letters.(Letter to the Editor)
August 19, 2002... Back to basics Following on from your recent article, Help is at hand (Information Age, July 2002) , I believe that the fact that many senior IT staff are unhappy with the quality of service they receive from outsourcing contracts is...

CGEY faces cleaning bill from irate London borough.(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... European systems integrator Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGEY) is facing a financial slapped wrist for a recent foray into less-than-conventional advertising methods, according to a recent story in satirical magazine Private Eye. It seems...

Softricity eases application delivery pain.
August 19, 2002... Museums are not typically associated with breakthroughs in software technology - but the Computer Museum in Boston, Massachusetts is probably a more likely institution than most to play host to such a development. There, employee David...

Global visibility.(Iceland Foods PLC)
August 19, 2002... For years, Iceland dominated its particular sector of the British food retailing market. But when management decided on an audacious shift in strategy, the frailties of the company's reporting systems were quickly exposed. Iceland decided...

Recession presents new IT recruitment challenges.(survey by Hay Group)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... What is the greatest recruitment challenge facing IT managers? Two or three years ago, the answer was simple: offering enough money to attract and retain the skilled personnel needed to deliver development projects. All too often, technology...

ProClarity promises strongly targeted analytics.
August 19, 2002... "If you roll out a generic piece of analytics software, people tend to abandon it," says ProClarity CEO Bob Lokken. This is because pre-packaged, or 'canned', applications often fail to meet all of a company's requirements or are simply too...

CRM vendors continue to stumble.
August 19, 2002... It is not a good time to be in the customer relationship management (CRM) software sector. Aside from the impact of tighter IT budgets, vendors are fighting a rearguard action against the perception that CRM often fails to deliver on many of...

Portal payback.
August 19, 2002... The claims made for portal technology by some of its most high-profile proponents are compelling: computing giant Hewlett-Packard claims that its portal implementation generated $50 million in savings in just six months; car manufacturer Ford...

Hard times for systems management suppliers.(Computer Associates' strategy)
August 19, 2002... It was a gloomy financial quarter for most systems management software suppliers, although a few bucked the overall downward trend. Computer Associates (CA) was one of the exceptions that managed to record growth. For its first quarter of...

G-Log: going the distance?
August 19, 2002... Company: G-Log Main activity: Transportation &logistics software Founded: May 1999 CEO: Mitchell Weseley HQ: Shelton, Connecticut Status: Privately held. G-Log has raised total of $64 million (EU63.15 m) in five rounds,...

HP takes lead in European PC market.(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Hewlett-Packard (HP) has overtaken Dell to become the leading supplier of PCs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), according to market researcher IDC. In the second quarter of 2002, says IDC, HP's share of the market was up to 20.8%...

WebGain crashes in spectacular style.
August 19, 2002... Don't always trust your parents. It's a lesson learnt the hard way by WebGain, the Java application development tools vendor, after its creator, BEA Systems, lost faith in its technology strategy, abandoned the company to its own fate, and...

Retek benefits from some retail therapy.
August 19, 2002... While the broad, enterprise applications vendors such as SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft report shrinking revenues, a handful of companies competing with them in specific vertical markets are going in the opposite direction. No more so...

Domain Names.(Review)
August 19, 2002... Since the birth of the web, thousands of Internet domains - from rock star fan club sites to the web presence of bluechip companies - have fallen victim to 'cybersquatting'. A large consumer goods company may have several hundred names...

Securing E-Business Systems.(Review)
August 19, 2002... Forget the economic downturn. In the short-term, most organisations face a more serious threat from 'rabbits and worms, dumpster diving and shoulder snooping'. Arcane as they sound, these are just some of the weapons in the hacker arsenal...

Continued growth for SCM market.(AMR Research)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Despite the challenging IT spending climate, the supply chain management (SCM) market is continuing to grow. In 2001, SCM revenues grew to $5.6 billion, up 12% on the previous year, according to analyst Wendy Davis at AMR Research. For 2002,...

Execs more 'open' about corporate information.
August 19, 2002... Senior executives at UK organisations feel under increasing pressure to change their information sharing practices as a result of the economic downturn. Nearly four-fifths of business executives surveyed by Swedish business applications vendor...

Rise in hacking on open source-based web software.
August 19, 2002... The number of hacking attacks on open source-based web software is soaring. In the first six months of 2002, hackers launched 7,630 attacks on systems running on the Linux open source operating system, compared to 5,765 attacks during the whole...

Slowdown in CRM market, says Forrester.
August 19, 2002... The days of booming customer relationship management sales are over, according to market analyst Forrester Research. It says that in 2002, the CRM market will be worth $42.8 billion, a 5% drop on the previous year. Fees paid to outsourcers and...

Egenera pioneers blade running.
August 19, 2002... "Over the years, I witnessed the pain points most CIOs suffer," says Vern Brownell, the former chief technology officer of investment bank Goldman Sachs. The particular pain point he recalls most frequently: setting up new server applications...

Stringent measures needed to prevent software piracy.
August 19, 2002... UK organisations are having to take more stringent measures in a bid to prevent employees from downloading illegal software at work and abusing corporate software licensing agreements. This threat has grown dramatically due to the fact that...

Application foundations.
August 19, 2002... Steve Brain, vice president of analytical trading technology at electronic securities broker Instinet, has a simple piece of advice for organisations evaluating application server technology: "Go in deep". IT market analysts, he says, can...