Stories by Craig Stedman

Sun continues effort to boost IT services unit

Sun Microsystems executives Tuesday outlined a series of steps that the company's IT services unit is taking as part of an ongoing effort to make itself more competitive with the services operations at IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP).

Sun exec: Utility computing starting to evolve

As vice president of IT operations at Sun Microsystems, Jay Littlepage is in charge of the company's internal systems and the utility computing services it offers to corporate users. Littlepage spoke with Computerworld about utility computing from both the vendor's and users' viewpoints.

IBM Expands Content Offerings

IBM last week announced upgrades of two content management tools and said it will ship additional features later this year as part of an effort to broaden its support for managing corporate information other than relational data.

Interview: IBM's Perna sees more to data management

Janet Perna has been general manager of IBM Corp.'s data management division since 1996. At a press briefing on the company's content management software, Perna spoke with Computerworld about IBM's database business and its plan to use DB2 as an underlying technology for managing various forms of information stored in other databases or content repositories.

Servers' encroachment still tough to manage

As far back as the mid-1990s, companies began bucking the IT decentralization trend by moving Unix and Windows servers into their data centers. But many data center managers are still struggling to coordinate systems management processes between their mainframes and the newer servers.

PeopleSoft aims new CRM upgrades at competitors

PeopleSoft Inc. plans to ship two upgrades of its customer relationship management (CRM) software during the next four months in an effort to match market leader Siebel Systems Inc. on functionality.

Buy.com slashes workforce as sales plummet

Embattled online retailer Buy.com, which late last week agreed to a buyout offer from its founder, yesterday disclosed plans to lay off 40 percent of its workers and said second-quarter revenue was less than half of what the company reported for the same period a year ago.

Palm buys assets of multimedia OS developer

Handheld computer maker Palm Inc. Thursday said it plans to acquire the intellectual property and technology assets of multimedia operating system developer Be Inc., in a deal meant to boost the new stand-alone software unit that Palm announced last month.

Beleaguered Buy.com selling itself to founder

In yet another sign of the financial depths to which many online retailers have sunk, struggling Buy.com Inc. late Friday announced a deal to sell itself to company founder Scott Blum for just US$23 million.

Intel to speed up shift to Pentium 4

Intel Corp. today reported a 94 percent year-to-year drop in second-quarter net income and said it's planning "a major acceleration" of the ongoing transition from the Pentium III processor to the newer Pentium 4 chip.

Compaq moves to cut more jobs

Compaq Computer Corp. today announced plans to lay off another 4,000 workers because of continued weak demand for its systems, increasing the total number of jobs that are due to be eliminated this year by the computer vendor to 8,500.

Microsoft alters Windows configuration rules

Reacting to last month's antitrust case ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, Microsoft Corp. Wednesday announced immediate changes in its Windows OEM licensing policies that give computer makers -- and, ultimately, corporate users -- more leeway in how they configure desktop versions of the operating system.

NCR hit by data warehouse spending slowdown

NCR Corp. today joined the list of technology vendors issuing warnings about lower-than-expected financial results for the second quarter, disclosing that its profits will likely be almost 40 percent less than earlier projections by analysts because of deferred purchases by some users.

First two new top-level domains become operational

The first two of the seven new top-level domains (TLD) approved for addition to the official Internet domain name system became operational today after the U.S. Department of Commerce gave the go-ahead for them to be activated.

HP warns of widening slowdown in IT spending

Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday warned that it's becoming "more cautious" about the revenue outlook during its current fiscal quarter, saying a slowdown in IT spending appears to be spreading to other parts of the world beyond the U.S. and Europe.