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7th February 2003 Archive

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  • Tech Data buys Azlan

    Shares soar

    Tech Data is to buy Azlan, Europe's biggest networking equipment distie, for $335m (approx. £142.4m) cash. This represents a premium of nearly 40 per cent more than the closing price of Azlan shares yesterday. This morning, Azlan shares are skyrocketing, jumping 35p to, yest 125p per share - exactly the same price as Tech Data …

    Channel 7 Feb 2003, 09:57

  • Why Big Biz pays too much for mobile phones

    Breakage

    Most if not all organisations pay too much for their mobile phones, writes Robin Bloor. The way mobile carriers make their revenues is by being a little smarter than the customer. They offer a series of different usage plans and the customer chooses one. But the customer is usually ill informed and careless. They do not always …

    Mobile 7 Feb 2003, 10:24

  • Use our batteries, or else! – Nokia

    Caveat Battery

    Nokia has issued a warning to customers to avoid buying batteries made by other companies. The alert follows a couple of handful of cases of overheating "non-original batteries" in Europe and Asia which have caused damage to both batteries and phone. Nokia says it is unaware of the scale of the problem - the relatively few …

    Mobile 7 Feb 2003, 10:58

  • Orange pulls support for Locust – again

    'Betrayed' say members

    Members of the Locust text message community are on the warpath after learning that Orange is to withdraw its support for the service from the end of March. They claim they've been betrayed by Orange even though the mobile phone company had previously stepped in at the eleventh hour to save the world's oldest text message …

    Mobile 7 Feb 2003, 10:59

  • Tiscali buys Wanadoo Belgium

    Enough already

    Tiscali has shelled out €9.5m in new shares for ISP Wanadoo Belgium. A subsidiary of France Telecom's ISP outfit Wanadoo, Wanadoo Belgium has around 85,000 active users of whom 25.000 are ADSL punters. The company had a turnover of €13m in 2002. Tiscali says the acquisition will confirm its place as Belgium's second-biggest …

    Music and Media 7 Feb 2003, 13:45

  • Student charged with massive ID fraud

    Keystroke logging scam

    A former student has been charged with installing secret keystroke monitoring software on "dozens of computers" on the Boston College campus to harvest personal data on thousands of University computer users. Douglas Boudreau, 21, of Warwick, Rhode Island, was yesterday indicted by a Middlesex County, Massachusetts grand jury …

    Security 7 Feb 2003, 13:48

  • Broadband could cost AOL $1bn in revenue by 2005

    Doh!

    AOL could lose $1bn in revenues by 2005 because of the growth of broadband in the US. So say analysts at technology research and consulting outfit, Strategy Analytics, who reckon that AOL could be clobbered financially for the growth in broadband. In its report Can AOL Bridge the Broadband Gap?Strategy argues that AOL will …

    Telecoms 7 Feb 2003, 13:51

  • Sun lets slip Solaris 9 on Intel

    Change is as good as a rest

    It has been a long time coming, a real long time, but Sun has at last officially released Solaris 9 for Intel. Or to be precise Solaris 9 for x.86 - there appears zero enthusiasm for a port of the Unix OS to Intel's 64-bit Itanium plaftform. In January last year, Sun put Solaris on x.86 development on ice, citing lack of user …

    Servers 7 Feb 2003, 14:35

  • Spyware found on one in three corporate networks

    Back door wide open

    One in three European companies are harbouring spyware apps on their networks, a new study claims. Spyware applications, programs which surreptitiously send information from surfers' PCs to marketing outfits, are becoming a bigger problem, according to the Emerging Internet Threats Survey 2003. Spyware on company systems …

    Security 7 Feb 2003, 14:39

  • Election fever grips UK domain registry

    Four places on Nominet's Policy Advisory Board up for grabs

    UK domain registry Nominet will announce the people standing for the four vacant positions on its Policy Advisory Board (PAB) on Monday. Why is this of interest? Because the PAB is the link between everyday Internet users and Nominet's Council of Management that decides what it going to happen with the Internet in the UK. The …

    Music and Media 7 Feb 2003, 14:45

  • CRM spend carries on falling

    Overcrowded market

    The CRM applications market is overcrowded, especially in major European and North American countries. Enterprise vendors with weak marketing functionality need to partner analytics vendors or face losing market share to traditional analytics vendors from data warehousing backgrounds. In 2002, the worldwide customer …

    Hardware 7 Feb 2003, 15:09

  • We got broadband strategy wrong, says BT chief

    Tell us something we don't know

    In an amazing - if somewhat belated - admission, BT Retail chief exec, Pierre Danon, has admitted that when it comes to broadband, the monster telco hasn't always got things right. Reflecting on BT's broadband strategy, the Guardian quotes Mr Danon as saying: "As you know, we started completely wrong. It was all wrong and we …

    Telecoms 7 Feb 2003, 15:38

  • Focus on citizen is needed: e-gov report

    That'll be the Day

    European countries have made progress in on-line public services, especially for business, but researchers say more buy-in is needed at the highest levels. The third survey of electronic public services in Europe, conducted by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young on behalf of the European Commission, examined the progress made between …

    Music and Media 7 Feb 2003, 16:18

  • Router sales fall again in 2003

    But bounce back in 2004

    Corporates and telcos will spend even less money on routers, the backbone of data networks, in 2003 than in 2002. This will be the third year in a row of declining spend worldwide on routers. But the decline curve is flattening, with research firm Dell'Oro projecting a modest fall in revenues this year of 2 per cent to $6.7bn. …

    Data Networking 7 Feb 2003, 16:26

  • IT bosses can't justify IT spend

    Who cares

    Here's a mind-boggling piece of research. Apparently, European companies spend a staggering €535bn a year on IT. But half of IT directors don't feel it's possible to measure successfully the return on their IT investments. Furthermore, more than a third of IT directors complained that the IT industry failed to help them justify …

    Business 7 Feb 2003, 16:28

  • IT investment falls over war fears?

    Patriot games

    A short war with Iraq should do wonders for American technology firms as US.gov, the world's biggest IT spender, as well as the world's biggest defence contractor, gets stocking, and then restocking. But corporates are nervous and Wall Street has the jitters. Dan Niles, a star analyst at Lehmans Brothers, reckons that Dell and …

    Business 7 Feb 2003, 16:28

  • Networking equipment spend gets slumpier

    Europe is 'brutal'

    Weak economic conditions are pilling on fresh misery for networking equipment companies and their channel partners in the US, and more particularly, in Europe. A survey published by channel analysts Global Touch tells a story of a sector struggling to keep its head above water and pessimistic about early recovery. "The …

    Business 7 Feb 2003, 16:31

  • UK IT firms make fewer profit warnings

    Realism, not recovery

    UK Software and computer service companies made far fewer profit warnings in the last three months of 2002, according to a study by accountants Ernst & Young. It said this suggests that companies' forecasting may increasingly be coming into line with "the external reality rather than internal aspirations." Ernst & Young …

    Business 7 Feb 2003, 16:31

  • Europe's SMEs flash the IT cash

    Soaring investment

    The corporate sector may be torched, the retail punters may be keeping their wallets firmly touched, but small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) may just save the day for beleagured IT companies. European SME investment in IT is expected to rise from $76 billion in 2002 to $109 billion in 2006. Expected by whom? Step forward, …

    Small Biz 7 Feb 2003, 16:31

  • IT Tech Barometer points to bigger budgets

    Patchy. Very Patchy

    A survey of IT managers in Europe and US points to signs of "real growth" in budgets in 2003. In the US corporate IT spending is forecast to increase by 5.9% over 2002, while an increase of 6.8% is predicted in Europe. But spending will be patchy, concentrated on a few, key technologies, according to the RoperNOP Technology …

    Business 7 Feb 2003, 16:33

  • IT budgets loosened (just a little) in 2003 -Gartner

    Hey Quite Big Spender!

    Worldwide IT spending by business is forecast to reach $2.1 trillion in 2003, a 4.9 per cent increase over 2002, according to Gartner Dataquest. IT spending is likely to increase this in all 14 vertical business segments (finance, retail etc.) tracked by the analyst firm. Last year, IT spending was reduced in three business …

    Business 7 Feb 2003, 16:33

  • Parliament ceases to exist

    Online e-government grinds to a halt

    The dream of e-government has hit a brick wall because, incredibly, Parliament's Internet domain - www.parliament.uk - doesn't actually exist. The anomaly has come to light after Parliament's Publications and Archive arm attempted to make way for e-purchases. You are able to view recent Parliament reports online for free but if …

    Music and Media 7 Feb 2003, 17:02

  • Security experts duped by Slammer ‘jihad’ rot

    It's a jungle out there

    Tech writer Brian McWilliams, who often covers the security beat, has seen an experiment of his blow up in someone else's face, with a decent shower of egg to boot. Posing as the operator of a radical Islamic Web site called Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), McWilliams, aka Abu Mujahid, persuaded Computerworld security hack Dan …

    Security 7 Feb 2003, 23:01

  • Astérix whups MobiliX

    Reverse in Gaul legal brawl

    MobiliX, the Unix on mobile devices company, has suffered a legal setback in its dispute against the French publisher which owns the trademarks to the cartoon series Astérix the Gaul. Les Editions Albert René claims MobiliX is similar in name to Obelix, a character in Asterix the Gaul, and so infringes on its trademark. In …

    Software 7 Feb 2003, 23:13

  • On the trail of a stolen Tablet PC

    Computrace tracks thief down to Devon

    Tracking information from security software has allowed Devon Police to recover a stolen Tablet PC and make an arrest today. The Acer Tablet was stolen from Newbury, Berkshire-based IT reseller Eurotechnix last December. Fortunately the PC was loaded with security tracking software, called Computrace, which allowed its location …

    Security 7 Feb 2003, 23:16

  • MS and IBM demo secure Web services

    Milestone of sorts

    Web Service interoperability between the Microsoft and IBM environments using tools compliant with the WS-Security specification was successfully demonstrated for the first time earlier this week. SSL and web server-enforced security is generally considered inadequate when deploying mission critical Web Services on the Net. To …

    Hardware 7 Feb 2003, 23:33