eWEEK EDITORS

Fortune 500 businesses just might be ready to own their own fiber pairs by 2004, when Aerie Networks completes its 194-city route and starts selling pieces of its 432-fiber network. Aerie executives are counting on it. In three years, they say, optical equipment will be cheaper, bandwidth will be in greater demand and the conundrum […]

Choosing the right bandwidth to connect to the backbone is a piece of cake—once you know which ingredients youre looking for. First, youll need to know whether your customers traffic is bursty, whether you have a high proportion of end users or youre a portal (which determines how much traffic will stay in your network), […]

Want to work with Cisco Systems? Then answer this three-word question: Whats your specialty? Rather than working with generalists, Ciscos new partner program emphasizes specialization like wireless, security and switching. The challenge for Cisco partners is to choose where to invest their relatively limited training and marketing dollars to maximize their own profits. Most of […]

U.S. wireless spectrum policy clearly isnt working and until its changed, cell phone users will pay higher prices and competitive providers will be prevented from entering the market. The most recent PCS reauction is a case in point: License winners spent nearly $17 billion on the spectrum. One analyst, who asked not to be named, […]

Chief Technology Officer, Nordstrom.comAge: 39Degrees: Bachelors in mathematics and physics from St. Olaf College; Masters in computer science, University of WisconsinCar: Porsche BoxsterStress reliever: Doing crossword puzzles In January 2000, Paul Onnen was handed the task of leading brick-and-mortar retailer Nordstrom into the world of online commerce. Nordstrom began selling goods over the Internet in […]

All the tech investors railing at the downward slide of the stock market, or the dot-com execs shaking their fists at the venture-capital community, have nothing on a guy I recently encountered at the beach. The poor guy laid his blanket a bit too close to the waters edge, and soon a giant wave crashed […]

Ford Motor is beginning to realize the benefits of a long and quiet campaign to integrate its customer relations and information systems. It has been linking its customer channels — its dealer and manufacturer Web sites, its call center, its onboard information service — to create a long-sought single view of the retail consumer. And […]

After years in the customer support business, Michael Doyle has dealt with just about every kind of help desk emergency you can think of. Earlier this year, however, Doyle faced a situation that finally pushed him to the edge: His company, Logitech Inc., was about to launch a new product—a $49 camera for sending images […]

If youre of a certain age, you probably remember the artificial intelligence craze in the 1980s. AI, the pundits predicted, would bring about major changes in most enterprises, revamping the way expertise was stored and used. If you remember that, you probably also remember that AI, for the most part, failed to deliver on those […]

Flameout MarchFirst has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The ailing Internet consultancy has been in a slide, along with many other Web services firms. The companys assets are now listed at $789 million. Shaheen Quits George Shaheen decided last week to call it quits as chief executive officer of Webvan, the prominent online grocery […]

AOL Time Warner, which pioneered instant messaging and counts it as a crucial feature, stands to lose the most potentially lucrative part of the market: business users. America Online has shunned efforts to make its IM service more useful for businesses, while competitors, including Microsoft, have jumped in, seeing potential profits from messaging and piggyback […]

Times are tough, but Sun Microsystems partners are confident that demand for the Solaris operating system will help keep them afloat. A little over a year ago, Sun introduced its latest version of the OS, Solaris 8, contending that it was the first server operating system “to satisfy the convergent requirements of enterprises adapting to […]