Information Age (London, UK) articles from June 2002

Information Age (London, UK) archives from June 2002

Watchfire declares war on web site flaws.(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
June 10, 2002... Company: Watchfire Main activity: Web site content analysis software Founded: 1996 CEO: Michael Weider HQ: Ottawa, Ontario and Lexington, Massachusetts Status: Privately held. Watchfire has raised $50 million in three...

Teradata strengthens hold on high-end warehousing.(NCR CEO Lars Nyberg's strategy)(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
June 10, 2002... Almost half a decade ago, NCR CEO Lars Nyberg made what some observers regarded as a long-odds bet. He decided the company's long-term future lay not with the company's pedigree in hardware or retail systems or indeed financial systems. NCR's...

Eqos fuels the reactive supply chain.(Collaborator suite)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... Companies - especially those dealing with low-margin consumer packaged goods - face a daunting task accurately forecasting product demand and tuning their supply chain accordingly. "Even with the most advantage planning software, I've seen...

Safety Net.(Review)
June 10, 2002... A book on computer security should be exciting and engaging. Some of the underlying technology may highly complex, but there is no justification for dry material given the scope of computer crime and the audacious attempts to thwart it. ...

Actuate delivers information to the masses.(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... Traditional business intelligence (BI) tools have a scaling problem when it comes to reports. They handle querying and analysis well, but when it comes to delivering customised browser-based reports to thousands - maybe even hundreds of...

Cognos brings unity to BI toolset.(business intelligence suite)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... In its ongoing war for market share with archrival Business Objects, Cognos has come late to the current battlefield. Years after Business Objects first started providing its products as an integrated business intelligence (BI) suite, Cognos...

Informatica delivers beyond the warehouse.(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
June 10, 2002... Company: Informatica Product: PowerCenter, PowerMart Analytics Delivery Platform, Informatica Applications CEO: Gaurav Dhillon HQ: Redwood City, California Company status: Publicly listed on Nasdaq Key financials: Sales...

Brio fights to rekindle its fortunes.(Brio Software)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... The last year has been little short of disastrous for Brio Software. Sales volumes have dwindled to a third of 2001 levels and the company has run dangerously low of cash. Now, say some analysts, the 'for sale' sign has gone up. Brio's...

Business Darwinism.(Business Darwinism: Adaptive Strategies for the Information Age)
June 10, 2002... Business as war. Business as sport. Business as science fiction. Writers are constantly searching for analogies that illustrate the drama of modern commerce. But there are few business text that milk their chosen analogy more tortuously than...

The Information Age Interview.(Iype Abraham)(Interview)
June 10, 2002... Information Age (IA): Radisson Edwardian has built a portal where employees at any level can access corporate information and applications via a browser interface. What was the main driver behind the portal, who uses it and what sort of...

Information Builders re-focus on BI pays off.(WebFocus business intelligence software)(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
June 10, 2002... Information Builders is a maverick. An obsessive focus on making its software fit customer requirements has allowed it to ride multiple technology waves - minicomputer 4GLs, relational databases, client/server, and, most recently, web-centric...

Performix pulls people into call centre equation.(Emvolve Performance Manager from Performix Technologies Ltd.)(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
June 10, 2002... As head of the customer relationship management practice at consultants Cap Gemini, Cathal McGloin found that clients were prepared to invest millions in building communications channels with customers, but little in the people delivering...

Hyperion re-centres on performance management.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... Hyperion Solutions has gone back to basics. The company, an early pioneer of financial analytic applications and online analytical processing (OLAP), has abandoned many of its ambitions to branch out into new application areas of business...

Business Objects finds the suite spot.(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... Standardisation is the new buzzword at Franco-American business intelligence (BI) software company Business Objects. Faced with a slowdown in technology investment, Business Objects' message to organisations is that if they standardise on one...

Microsoft turns up the BI heat.(business intelligence)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... "The vision of Microsoft is to bring business intelligence (BI) to the masses," says Cassandra Nuttall, marketing manager for Server Solutions at Microsoft UK. It is a strategy that has, by stages, transformed Microsoft from a non-player in...

Crystal galvanises position as reporting powerhouse.(Crystal Decisions Inc.)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... Crystal Decisions is coming through its identity crisis. The company - best known for its widely-deployed report generator Crystal Reports - was spun off as an independent entity in November 2000 by US storage product giant Seagate Technology -...

SAS seeks alternative to the 'technology sell'.
June 10, 2002... SAS Institute, indisputably the world's largest business intelligence (BI) software specialist, has been working through a long-overdue transformation. "In the past SAS was a technology company for technologists," says Peter Dorrington,...

Under fire.(distributed denial of service attacks)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... UK organisations are at increased risk from distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) because existing security measures do not provide adequate protection, according to a report from security consultancy Webscreen Technology. A DDoS...

IT drives worldwide economy.(International Data Corp. study on role of information technology industry)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... Despite the downturn in information technology (IT) spending, the industry still plays a vital role in the wider global economy, in terms of generating spending activity, and in terms of providing jobs. A recent study by IDC reveals that IT...

The application server race.(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... The application server market is consolidating fast as larger vendors begin to bundle the software within server operating systems, and smaller vendors aggressively seek to differentiate. Analyst company AMR Research conducted a study into...

Consolidating to cut costs.(executives use server consolidation as cost-cutting move)(Brief Article)(Polling Data)
June 10, 2002... A desire to cut costs has spawned a wave of server consolidation projects in US and UK businesses. After a number of years of organic server growth, organisations are now keen to centralise all their server power onto fewer systems so...

IBM nudges ahead in databases.(International Business Machines Corp.; Oracle Corp.)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... IBM nudged Oracle out of its slot as the leading database management systems (DBMS) vendor in 2001. IBM's acquisition of database rival Informix in December 2000, along with solid growth of the DB2 database, pushed the companies' combined...

Oracle awaits BI packaging payoff.
June 10, 2002... In mid-2001, Oracle painted a rosy outlook for itself in the business intelligence (BI) market. With its new Oracle 9i database server package about to ship, the company was expecting to start mopping up market share from the 'pure-play' BI...

RIP Act set to create turmoil at UK organisations.(Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) will create conflict between employees and the companies they work for, warns Dai Davis, a technology lawyer at law firm Nabarro Nathanson. According to Davis, UK businesses are still...

Microsoft and Unisys show users the way out or perhaps not.(www.wehavethewayout.com)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... There were red faces in the marketing departments of industry giants Microsoft and Unisys in early April, following embarrassing revelations about www.wehavethewayout.com - a web site co-developed by the two companies as part of a $25 million...

Sun's WS-I conspiracy theory.(Web Services Interoperability Organisation)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... For a short time in 2001, it seemed as though web services might emerge into the market without the usual in-fighting and politics that has marred the development of almost every other standards-based technology. But now there is no chance of...

UK web site performance still poor, says Parallel study.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... The web sites of leading British companies are plagued with performance issues, according to recent research conducted by UK-based network and systems management consultancy, Parallel. Using its Nexus Watch service - which dynamically connects...

EMC cut in half.(EMC Corp. revenues halved)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... High-end storage systems market leader EMC was one of the companies worst hit by the slowdown in IT spending in its latest financial quarter - but the company was also hammered by fierce competition from Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and IBM. The...

Prudent spending.
June 10, 2002... IT hardware spending budgets in 2002 are marginally ahead of those a year ago, but department heads remain prudent in their choice of projects. Many of the European IT managers questioned by IDC for a recent survey say that they are opting for...

IT left to pick up the pieces from messy M&As.
June 10, 2002... IT departments are being left to pick up the pieces after mergers and acquisitions (M&As), reports a study from Accenture, as too often organisations plan M&As without taking technical compatibility into consideration. In the majority of...

Hack attacks traced to Pacific Rim.(study from Predictive Systems)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... After the US, the vast majority of hack attacks are perpetrated through Pacific Rim countries, finds a study by US security consulting company Predictive Systems. South Korea is the country singly responsible for the most attacks,...

IT managers turn away long-term projects.(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... Faced with budget freezes or budget cuts, IT managers in Europe are now looking to embark on short-term projects with a quicker return on investment, according to a survey by Forrester Research. More than half the IT managers Forrester...

European IT recruitment in full flow.(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... External recruitment in European IT and telecommunications has grown more quickly than in any other vertical sector, according to research commissioned by executive search company TMP Worldwide. TMP reports that the growth in external...

Rapid consolidation in disaster recovery sector.(acquisitions by divine Inc. and SunGuard Computer services)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... SunGard, already the world's largest disaster recovery services provider, has been taking full advantage of volatile market conditions post-11 September to snap up competitors in the business continuity sector, many of whom were counting on a...

Continued demand for content management.(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... Despite budgetary pressures, IT departments are still striving to ensure that multiple content sources within their organisations are both tightly managed and accessible. Reflecting this, a number of companies in the content management software...

Server vendors struggle with hard times.
June 10, 2002... It was bad news across the board for the major server vendors in their most recent financial quarters. Without exception, all the major suppliers suffered double-digit declines in revenue as organisations reined in spending on hardware and...

McAfee goes after spam killer.(McAfee.com Corp. acquires anti-spamming software)(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... The plague of unsolicited email clogging office systems has prompted major security software companies to flesh out their product line-ups with anti-spamming software. Online security services provider McAfee joined the fray in April with its...

Piloting Palm.
June 10, 2002... The 'corporate history as thriller' genre has become firmly established in business publishing, with bodice-ripping accounts of how Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, et al rose to prominence. Piloting Palm, a potted history of handheld computer...

Electronic Commerce: B2C Strategies and Models.(Review)
June 10, 2002... Aside from high-profile US Internet businesses, most of the melodrama of early web retailing has been played out in local geographies. The UK's Easyjet, Australia's Chaos Music, Ebabyasia in Hong Kong, Denmark's Rejsefeber are barely known -...

The IT Manager's Survival Guide.
June 10, 2002... The IT Manager's Survival Guide does not get off to a promising start. "The siege of Leningrad in the Second World War lasted for 900 days from September 1941 to January 1944," the author reminds us. Cue a ham-fisted analogy between one of the...

E-marketplace watch.(Electronic data interchange )(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... Electronic data interchange Electronic data interchange (EDI), the 30 year-old electronic transaction standard, is still very much in use - despite earlier predictions that it would quickly be usurped by cheaper, non-proprietary and more...

FreeMarkets: not so safe for the long term.(Brief Article)
June 10, 2002... In late February 2002, Glen Meakam, founder and CEO of FreeMarkets, the online auctions company, aggressively defended his company against criticisms from e-marketplace software rivals Commerce One and Ariba. FreeMarkets, whose business...

Microsoft banks $1bn a month.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... Microsoft was able to sustain much of its traditional momentum in its third financial quarter ending 31 March, recording an increase in revenues of 13% to $7.2 billion as profits rose 12%. That means the company now takes almost $1 billion to...

Infoconomy Index: Flatliners.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 10, 2002... The predicted return to health of the technology industry will be slow, judging by the state of the Infoconomy Index, which measures the revenue growth of the world's top 200 IT companies. In April 2002, the Index remained almost static at...