eWEEK EDITORS

If youre looking for one product family to cover an entire LAN system from the wiring closet to the backbone, Foundry Networks Inc. may have what youre seeking. The San Jose, Calif., company is releasing three upgraded Layer 3 modular switches to complement its FastIron system. The switches, the FastIron 400, 800 and 1500, built […]

USi Finally Files for Chapter 11 It didnt come as the biggest surprise, but USinternetworking—the once-highflying pioneer of the application service provider field—last week finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At the same time, USi said it had signed an agreement under which Bain Capital Partners, through Bains USi Holdings affiliate, will invest $106 million […]

IBMs decision last week to farm out the manufacturing of its desktops marks the latest bid by a PC maker to rein in expenses amid weak sales and eroding profits. But the growing emphasis on cutting costs may lock away the key to the industrys resurgence—innovation. Overall, PC makers have become averse to gambling on […]

Thanks to stronger-than-expected sales, Compaq Computer Corp. last week said it will post a profit rather than a loss for the fourth quarter of 2001. Direct-order PC maker Gateway Inc., however, last week warned that its fourth-quarter sales fell far short of Wall Streets expectations. Houston-based Compaq said it expects its revenue for the fourth […]

Instead of buying multiple failover devices or manually plugging in and unplugging cables between workstations and host devices, enterprises can now buy a new SCSI switch from Apcon Inc. with automated switching. The 2×1 Electronic SCSI Crosspoint Switch provides a software-controlled way to connect multiple peripheral devices to a failover host device. Three SCSI buses […]

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, […]