November 23, 2007

Dell announced last week that it would sell and support servers with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris operating system. This type of alliance between Dell and Sun will expand hardware choices for Solaris and the buyer.

August 7, 2005

As Apple Computer and the big media companies move into podcasting, many of the independent podcasters are getting worried. On the one hand, Apple brings distribution and the big media companies validate the medium to advertisers, but on the other hand many small podcasters may get squeezed out. BusinessWeek and Knowledge@Wharton take a look at these issues in these two articles.

June 18, 2005

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is preparing to launch an electronic payment service in the next six months that would rival PayPal. If true, this would be a major blow to eBay, the parent of PayPal.

June 10, 2005

According to a number of credible blog postings, Yahoo! is currently in acquisition talks with Skype, the VOIP provider. If this deal happens, expect both Google and Microsoft to move fairly quickly into the VOIP market with acquisitions of their own.

June 8, 2005

Yahoo! Inc. has announced that it will stop charging fees for auctions on its U.S. site to encourage more people to use auction service. Previously, Yahoo! Auctions charged 5 to 75 cents for listing an item and varying additional fees when an item was sold. However, the company will continue to charge fees on its other auction sites like those in Japan, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Yahoo! plans to make money on U.S. auctions by generating revenue through paid search listing advertisements. The move is seen by many as the start of a possible price war with eBay's and Amazon's auction services.

June 4, 2005

According to several analysts, Sun's purchase of StorageTek is like "two garbage trucks colliding" and a "marriage of losers". The claim is that Sun is overpaying for a business with zero revenue growth. Others are complaining that the deal has a huge gap, namely the lack of a tape encryption solution, a critical issue in today's corporate world.

May 19, 2005

In what looks like the start of a major operating system war, IBM and Red Hat have joined forces to battle Sun and its Solaris OS. IBM and Red Hat are offering free evaluation services for migrating Solaris applications to Red Hat. Meanwhile, Sun is calling the move "an act of desperation".

May 16, 2005

According to information on various blogs, Microsoft has had recent meetings with Red Hat. The speculation is that Microsoft might be in talks to purchase the Linux distribution provider. The move would allow Microsoft to "embrace and extend" Linux, causing massive confusion in the Linux marketplace, and allowing Windows to gain even more market share.

May 13, 2005

The BBC has published a two-part article on the business challenges facing Microsoft and what the company needs to do to survive and prosper during the next few years. Microsoft is taking a beating from open source projects like Linux, Apache, OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird. Apple is attacking with the iPod and Mac OS X Tiger. Google is attacking with a fantastic search engine and a dozen innovative projects like GMail and Google Maps. Skype is taking the Internet VOIP market by storm. With Microsoft's hands tied battling security problems in Windows and working on getting Longhorn out the door, it is hard to imagine the company being able to fight back in any significant way. Xbox 360 and Windows Mobile 5.0 are a step in the right direction but certainly not enough to deal with the fierce competitive onslaught.

May 12, 2005

According to a recent survey by Computer Economics, business users migrate towards open source primarily to reduce dependence on software vendors, and not because of cost savings. As strange as it sounds, the hatred of commercial software vendors by businesses is so intense that many would be willing to pay more for open source just to free themselves from the vendors. What this means is that commercial software vendors really have a much bigger problem on their hands; open source didn't create this problem, but instead brings it to light.

May 10, 2005

Venture capitalists have been raising new funds and moving back into tech start-ups. Among the hot areas for investing are energy, open source, RSS, blogging, and podcasting. Although hiring at start-ups is on the increase, many are also taking advantage of lower cost talent offshore.

May 4, 2005

IBM today announced that it will cut between 10,000 and 13,000 jobs and attempt to reorganize its management. According to an article two weeks ago in Forbes magazine, in recent quarters IBM was booted out of big contracts at J.P. Morgan Chase, Cable & Wireless, Invensys, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Piper Jaffray, and other clients.

April 29, 2005

According to new data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), internet advertising rose by 33% in 2004 to a record $9.6 billion. These numbers surpass levels seen during the dot-com boom. According to the IAB, internet advertising will grow at a similar rate in 2005. Some other statistics from the IAB report: paid search listing revenue increased 40% to $3.9 billion, banner advertising climbed 19% to $1.8 billion, rich media ads grew 10% percent $1 billion, and online classified ads grew 18% to $1.7 billion.

April 28, 2005

Bill Gates spoke at the Library of Congress and said that he wanted to see H1-B quotas, which currently stand at 65,000 per year, be eliminated. He said that H1-B quotas pose a great threat America's competitiveness against countries like India and China.

April 24, 2005

According to an article at Silicon.com, organized criminals are now using phishing attacks in an attempt to penetrate corporate networks, steal passwords, gain sensitive information, and perform fund transfers. Some phishing e-mails pretend to be from a company's network administrator asking users to verify their passwords. Users clicking on links in these e-mails end up revealing passwords to critical business systems. These criminals are targeting businesses rather than consumers because the rewards are greater.

April 23, 2005

BusinessWeek has published an article looking at how blogs are being used as competitive weapons in business. According to the article, blogs are shaking up the business world, and most businesses cannot afford to ignore the power of blogs. They advise that businesses should not postpone using blogs and related technologies like RSS and Podcasting to gain a competitive advantage.

April 22, 2005

Google has reported their first-quarter earnings and Wall Street is amazed. The company reported a net income of $369.2 million, or $1.29 a share, on revenue of $1.26 billion in the three months ended March 31. The results for the comparable period a year ago was a net income of $64 million, or 24 cents a share, on revenue of $651.6 million. You can listen to the Google earnings conference call for more details.

April 21, 2005

Visa, MasterCard, and American Express are going after e-commerce sites to make sure that customer data is secure. After June 30th, companies selling online will have to apply for certification under new security guidelines. Online stores processing more than 20,000 transactions per year will be forced to get their networks scanned each quarter and submit proof of annual compliance audits in order to be able to accept credit card payments from the three providers. This means that companies with as few as 55 transactions per day will be forced to spend many thousands of dollars per year to remain compliant. This is bad news for small online stores with low margins, and very good news for companies providing vulnerability scanning services.

April 21, 2005

Many are starting to think that eBay is starting to collapse. One thing is for sure, eBay shareholders aren't very happy as they watch eBay's market cap deflate and its traffic diminish. According to comScore Networks, traffic to the eBay site dropped by 14% in February and another 5% in March, completing nine consecutive months of declining traffic. Sellers are upset at eBay over poor treatment and fee hikes and are now starting to view the entire Web as their marketplace, setting up Yahoo Stores and buying keywords on search engines. The only wildcard is eBay's PayPal service, which has huge potential for finally bringing micropayments to the Internet. The question now is whether eBay will continue to stumble or catch its second wind. See the article at the AlwaysOn network for more about eBay and its problems.

April 20, 2005

Online investment brokerage Ameritrade has started informing more than 200,000 clients that their information may have fallen into the wrong hands due to the loss of a backup tape. As a precaution against possible identity theft, the company is offering free credit reports and one free year of credit protection and monitoring services to affected customers.