eWEEK EDITORS

Imagine discarding that pocketful of plastic: credit, debit and frequent-flyer cards; grocery store affinity program cards; and passes that get you into offices. Imagine replacing them with one smart card, a piece of plastic the size of a credit card, with memory and a processor that securely store financial, loyalty, even medical and job-related information. […]

The shock delivered last year to the economy in general and to IT budgets in particular has made everyone loath to predict trends for this year. But anticipating uncertainty is one kind of prediction, and we think that expecting and planning for an uncertain year is probably what most people are doing. So what is […]

The chemical industry seemed to be the perfect e-marketplace. Millions of products could easily be found, bought and sold on the Web. All this added up to a major paradigm shift in the way business was done in the chemical industry. But except for one or two per industry, exchanges fared poorly. Widely heralded Chemdex […]

Software customization, training, maintenance and license fees arent the only things that raise the cost of CRM deployments. Integration, experts say, can also be a major, costly challenge. Thats because, in most large enterprises, customer information is captured and stored in multiple systems. Bringing it all together for analysis in a customer resource management system […]

While big names such as Visa U.S.A., American Express Co. and Target Corp.s Target stores have taken center stage as early innovators of smart cards, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is quietly yet aggressively carving out a niche of its own. Greg Garback, executive officer, department of finance and program development for the WMATA, […]

Not satisfied with just taking on rivals like EMC Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. in high-end data storage, Compaq Computer Corp. is targeting the low end as well. The Houston companys server group on Monday announced new entry-level clustered storage hardware, at half the price of the compatible beginner product from its sister, Compaqs enterprise storage […]

Novell Inc. announced earlier this week that it has named professional services veteran Bob Couture as vice president of Global Consulting. Couture, with 20 years under his belt between IBM, Xerox and more recently as COO of Berkeley Enterprise Partners, is charged with developing and executing Novells growth strategy for its combined Cambridge Technology Partners […]

Compaq Computer Corp. is purchasing service provider technology from startup Storability Inc., progressing in its long-term goal of building a global on-demand IP storage network, Storability will announce on Monday. The deal, made by Compaqs Global Services division, gives the Houston-based company a copy of Storabilitys turnkey Assured Storage Management System. Consequently, Compaq will begin […]

PC maker Gateway Inc. disclosed Monday that it expects to post a fourth-quarter profit, before taxes and one-time charges, as it had previously predicted, but warned that its sales will fall far short of Wall Streets expectations. The direct-order computer maker, which hasnt posted a profit in more than a year, said unit sales for […]

IBM, seeking to reduce operating costs, has signed a $5 billion agreement to turn over the U.S. and European production of its NetVista desktop PCs to Sanmina-SCI Corp. As part of the deal, about 900 IBM employees in North Carolina and 80 in Scotland will be transferred to Sanmina-SCI, which will take over operations at […]

An executives departure and the staggering economy conspired to keep EarthLink Inc. from realizing its ASP plans last year. But the ISP (Internet service provider), looking to expand business, said it expects to begin this spring trials of selling hosted applications to its small-business broadband customers. The Atlanta-based ISP, which first outlined its application service […]

Spending to Remain Flat CRM vendors arent going to have the financial industry to help them out of these tough economic times, according to a study released last week. According to Meridien Research, spending on customer relationship management software in the financial industry should remain flat for the next two years. The study, “CRM Spending […]