eWEEK EDITORS

Managed service providers with software-hungry enterprises in their sites face a tough decision: partner with the big software vendors or compete against them. Some say the future is in entering the software business and taking on the big vendors such as BMC Software, Concord Communications, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. But other MSPs are positioning themselves as […]

The Federal Communications Commission has single-handedly turned government spectrum auctions into a soupy quagmire. It all started with the entrepreneurs spectrum auction in 1996 that was designed to give smaller players a chance to buy into the land rush for wireless services. They went hog wild with their bidding, then promptly went bust. The FCC […]

The growing number of vendors rolling out storage products are trying to fill niches not being addressed by larger vendors such as EMC Corp. But many are still testing the waters to see what users are looking for. The result is a flood of products for IT managers to choose from. The latest offerings include […]

With the various makers of DAT technology exiting the market, users of digital audiotape drives will soon have to find storage alternatives. Two Boulder, Colo., companies late last month merged to develop just such technologies. The deal between Exabyte Corp. and Ecrix Corp., a startup in the small-to-midsize tape space, should be complete by the […]

Its no surprise that the crisis slowly engulfing managed service providers is barely evident. MSPs lack the cachet of dot-coms and the sex appeal of massive telecom construction projects. But the hundred or so companies that crowd the space today are expected to merge, go bankrupt or be snapped up by wealthier players interested in […]

Perhaps youll want to razz SBC Communications CEO Edward Whitacre from a distance, or maybe anonymously from the crowd: He has a penchant for ham-fisted retribution. After members of the Illinois Commerce Commission fined and verbally battered SBC for poor service from its merger partner Ameritech, Whitacre got huffy and halted the Illinois expansion of […]

Born out of the Canadian infrastructure consultancy Networkshop, Coradiant is one of the few freestanding managed service providers that seem to have weathered the dot-com fallout. The company makes the MSP business model work in part by steering away from unreasonable New Economy business risks like fast expansion and large lines of credit to customers. […]

On the same day that Compaq Computer said Linux still has a long way to go, rival IBM said: On our servers, its good enough for Wall Street. It was a sign of how far the open source operating system has come since last years LinuxWorld trade show, where speakers wondered whether Linux could be […]

You click. You wait. And still, maddeningly, the Victorias Secret fashion show refuses to play. Soon, though, using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to distribute content, we may all be able to watch the scantily clad underwear models traipse the runway without worrying that access will be denied due to bandwidth constraints. And at the same time, […]

The greater responsibility that managed service providers take on – and charge top dollar for – backfires tenfold on those customers that have to live through an MSP default. The highest-profile collapse has been Xuma, named by its flamboyant CEO Joe Cha for an ancient Chinese war cry that means “charging horse.” The company launched […]

A big pfftht! And a special raspberry alarm clock award to Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen, presidents of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, respectively. While they may be the friends of artists, labels, songwriters, actors, directors and producers, the MPAA and RIAA spent the last year making […]

Loudcloud is betting that the future of outsourcing lies in separating the business of running data centers from the business of supplying services. So far, that stance has led to increased competition with its data center partners, such as Exodus Communications, and to unexpected support from active competitors, such as WorldComs Digex. As MSPs and […]