eWEEK EDITORS

Loudcloud Inc. made official here in April its plans to evolve into the enterprise data center space, a move met with optimism from the new target market but with hesitancy from customers. With Version 2i of its proprietary Opsware service, said CEO and President Ben Horowitz, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company will be able to plug […]

For the regional Bells, last week was payback time. After years of heavy financial support for Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., the powerful new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee pushed through a bill he has championed unsuccessfully for two years, one that would give the Bells relief from significant portions of the 1996 […]

Combating Web Cheats Thirteen countries- from the United States and Mexico to Hungary, New Zealand and South Korea-are banding together to fight Internet fraud. The countries last week set up a Web site-www.econsumer.gov-where consumers can file fraud complaints against companies outside their countries. The complaints are then passed on to the appropriate regulatory agencies in […]

Wireless gear vendor Ericsson is hoping the joint mobile phone venture it formed with Sony last week will provide a much-needed reprieve from its market free fall. The deal came just days after Swedish giant Ericsson posted a first-quarter loss of $485 million and a 51 percent drop in wireless handset sales. The new company, […]

The battle for supreme command of database platforms has begun. Executives at IBMs database team have identified the enemy, and its led by a tall, bearded gentleman with a penchant for yacht racing and making colorful public remarks. By purchasing the database operation of Informix for $1 billion, IBM is looking to build its own […]

Some people still dont understand the lessons of Napster. In sum, this is what Napsters rise and fall has taught us: First, everyone loves free, unlimited music. Second, people who create music and other content have the right to control what happens to it. But some smart people believe that Napster was wrongly persecuted, or […]

Integrating customer relationship management software is difficult at best. So why bother? Silicon Valley start-up Octopus Software will launch a system this week that allows I-managers to put the power of a corporations disparate applications and the Internet in the hands of each user. Octopus creates what it calls Meta Applications, software loaded onto a […]

The engineers have written the last line of application code. The database is ready to go. The designers have put the finishing touches on the front end. The marketing people are out there hyping your new Web site like theres no tomorrow. All thats left to do is flip the switch and watch the traffic […]

Headquarters Chicago CEO Judy Sprieser Principal owners Owned by 56 large consumer product manufacturers, including General Mills, Heinz, Kraft Foods, Nabisco, The Pillsbury Co., Procter & Gamble and Unilever Business Automating consumer packaged goods supply chain Employees 220 plus about 50 executives borrowed from participating companies

Its taken more than a century and many trillions of dollars for the telecom industry to recreate Betty, the helpful local phone operator. Betty version 2001, less flippantly referred to as intelligent call processing, is one of the hottest new telecom technologies. Industry heavyweights ranging from Cisco Systems to Nortel Networks have developed some version […]

Intelligent call processing software can alert you when youre online and a call comes in on your cell phone. It can coordinate your electronic calendar with your landline, and can then determine whether to send a clients call to your cell phone or to your Palm device. And it can make sure that persistent telemarketer […]

Sun Down Sun Microsystems plans to shut down its operations during the first week in July in an effort to cut costs, although it was not clear how much money the move will actually save Sun. Most of the companys 43,000 employees worldwide will be forced to either use paid vacation days or take the […]