18th November 1999 Archive

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Ideal recruits to bolster storage sales

Cherry-picks product managers from other disties

Ideal Hardware has raided rival distributors to add four new recruits to its existing stable of product managers. The distributor has appointed Catherine Hughes as product manager for SCSI. She has left the same job at Datrontech's storage arm, Summit Peripherals. Camissa Akehurst has joined Ideal as product manager for Computer …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:18
Why Intel Coppermines are like hen's teeth

Column There's not mushroom for doubt about yields

The mushroom technique is a tried and tested formula in the wonderful world of executive suits. Essentially, it can be expressed in these few words: "Keep'em in the dark and feed them dung". This is what makes many of us mushrooms when faced with the full force of the Intel spin paramedics. A spate of articles on the Web …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:20
Two more CHS divisions hit the MBO trail

Ireland & Scandinavia go it alone

More management buy outs are taking place at CHS Electronics – this time in its Irish and Scandinavian subsidiaries. In a deal approved on Monday, a consortium from Romak Computers in Ireland, Santech Micro Group in Sweden, and CHS Electronics divisions in Denmark and Norway agreed to buy out the two divisions. The businesses …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:34
Can Egg crack its security worries?

More allegations that credit card information was unprotected

Egg could be incubating a serious security problem and undermining confidence in the service. Yesterday, the online bank admitted there had been a security lapse when dealing with a customer's credit card details. A spokeswoman for Egg originally said the incident was isolated and apologised for what she described as human …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:35
BT to boost IP network

POPs to grow from 14 to 103 in next four months

BT is to expand its Internet Protocol (IP) backbone network to cope with the anticipated demand for Internet services in Britain. By next March it claims that it will increase its points of presence (POPs) from 14 to 103. Not only will the network be 60 times faster than it is today, it will also be able to grow to 300 times the …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:36
Computacenter founder becomes working class hero

Donates £25m to fund scholarships to top schools

Computacenter tycoon Peter Ogden is to donate £25 million to get working class kids into private schools. The co-founder of reseller Computacenter will provide scholarships in the country's top schools for children from families that earn less than £30,000 per year. The father of three has enlisted the help of The Sun to get its …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:37
Novell dips its toe in freeware market

Still peerless but without its confidence in directory market

Novell has announced it will hand out free 100-user copies of its NDS directory for anyone who buys Windows 2000 server within 90 days of release or Solaris 7 before the end of January. Novell has billed the move as an aggressive attack on the still-to-be-seen Active Directory from Microsoft. However, it more clearly …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:38
Azlan recovers its roar

Once ailing distie pulls off a profitable quarter

Azlan Group today announced it had recorded a profit in its interim results and said it was looking at training and services acquisitions. The networking distributor saw pre-tax profit of £2.4 million for the six months ended 30 September 1999, up on a loss of £400,000 million for the same period last year. Sales rose by 26 per …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:47
Big Q launches big Alpha super computer

Is Intel's Tower of Babel starting to topple?

Compaq yesterday launched a supercomputer based on its Alpha technology, and in passing, decided to kick rival Silicon Graphics in the chops. The announcement, made rather quietly, is another prelude to the release of its Wildfire technology next February. As it announced its AlphaServer SC Series, Compaq also introduced its …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 08:52
Queen's bank Coutts to fire Bristol, IOM staff

Voluntary redundancies requested, or else...

The Queen's bank, Coutts, is definitely outsourcing its IT, causing concerns about staff that will be lost and posing questions about the future of the bank, which deals with many accounts of both the very rich and very famous. Last Sunday, The Observer suggested such a move might be underway. Today, a source very close to …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 10:05
Compaq and C&W hop on ASP bandwagon

$500m deal targets SMEs and major corporates

Compaq today embarked on a $500 million agreement with Cable & Wireless to sell Internet services packages to SMEs. As revealed here earlier today, the two will roll out an application service provider (ASP) project similar to that previously announced by Hewlett Packard and Qwest. Compaq will pump $200 million into the venture …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 10:30
Calluna teeters on the brink

Urgent search for buyer or partner

Desparate times at Calluna, the alway's jam tomorrow company, which issued a shock profit warning today. Unless it finds a buyer -- and quick -- the mini-hard disk drive manufacturer looks like it's going to go bust. Calluna's statement was prompted by a recent rise in its share price. The company is "urgently considering a …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 10:35
Safe Internet Foundation launches

Less than it seems

The Safe Internet Foundation (SIF) was launched yesterday at Keukenhof, the tulip capital of the Netherlands, as an initiative of the Dutch Internet Society. The original idea came from Jan Baan, founder of the Baan Company, but now running the Vanenburg Group (which has 2,000 employees, he said). Baan is the chairman of SIF …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 11:02
Online banking hits the right note

Ten million online bankers by next year

Up to 10 million people in the UK could be banking over the Internet by next year - a figure far higher than any previous predictions. In an NOP survey of 1,000 adults, a surprising 41 per cent said they would use Internet banking within the next year, with 56 per cent saying they would in the next five years. A second survey …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 12:39
Acer goes NatSemi Geode mad…

...as predicted

We noticed a strange confluence between top Taiwanese PC firm Acer and National Semiconductor which were both on the same platform at last June's Computex. Both Stan Shih, Acer's CEO, and Brian Halla, NatSemi's CEO, seemed to be congratulating themselves on the shared platform which might make sense given the plunging price of …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 12:39
AMD finally trademarks Athlon and own name

...and Magic Packet and AMD Athlon Processor

Chip company AMD has finally managed to trademark its most important intellectual property, its own name. At the same time, it has taken steps to trademark the name Athlon. Earlier this year, we revealed that AMD had somehow forgotten to take this step, and so it has moved fast to protect its rights. The trademark AMD, according …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 12:53
CompuServe Germany boss sees porn conviction overturned

Battle of Somm ends with successful appeal

Former-head of CompuServe in Germany, Felix Somm, has had his two-year suspended sentence for failing to block child porn sites overturned on appeal. The news has been met with relief by ISPs, providing a precedent for what would otherwise be a legal minefield for Web site hosters. Somm was convicted and fined £33,000 in May …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 13:31
Give us two weeks and we'll review anything you want

IT Network promises content on demand

The IT Network, the British-based product comparison database, is turning over its features and reviews-commissioning to the readers. If you want "in-depth analysis of today's IT issues, or a review of cutting-edge hardware or software", all you have to do is email editor Craig Hinton, and the IT Network team will "endeavour to …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 13:44
Spammer scammer gets thrown in slammer

Brit defrauds Spanish Net users, forgets to cover his tracks

A British man has been arrested by Spanish police investigating a stunning scam carried out over the Internet. As with all the best scams, the man used the intricacies of human behaviour to stockpile a still-unknown amount of money. Thousands of emails were sent to Spanish Internet users "thanking" them for buying £350 worth of …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 14:26
Is Intel RIMMing i820 mobos?

It's your daily dose of Monty Python's Flying Rambus

Over the weekend we heard from divers sources that Intel was supplying Rambus RIMMs with the i820 and i840 motherboards it is selling its PC customers. Yesterday we reported, and it was confirmed by Intel itself, that there is no difference between the chipset on Intel i820 mobos in their Caminogate™ III rev and Caminogate II …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 16:40
Electronics giants, fashion houses bar online discounting

Rip-off Britain or rip-off World?

A new Web discount retailer yesterday slammed Panasonic and Sanyo for refusing to let it sell their goods online. Intersaver.co.uk offers brown and white goods at up to 35 per cent off list price. But not Panasonic and Sanyo. In interviews with the FT, the electronics giants variously cited the "the value-added services the …

Business 18 Nov 1999, 17:07