Stories about: Van Wagoner Capital Management

Startups come and go--like mom-and-pop coffee shops on fading downtown streets or oriental-rug outlets in tacky strip malls. They open with big banners and high hopes. Most don't last. But still they keep coming, with earnest, optimistic proprietors trumpeting their business plans to bargain-hungry investors and speculators. The trick is to know which business models have a good chance at success and which are likely to lead to dead ends.

Six months ago, Dick Boyle, vice president of The Chase Manhattan Bank's global private banking division in New York, decided to consolidate his 54 Notes and NetWare servers down to eight machines. That meant he had to make a few decisions, most notably how to distribute 3 terabytes of data so users could access it quickly and the information technology staff could administer it easily.