John Mulqueen

Telecommunications networks are faster and smarter than ever, but many carriers still seriously overcharge their customers through incorrect billing. “Conventional wisdom is that 85 percent of bills are incorrect, but our findings are significantly higher,” said Ayal Schanzer, vice president at UtiliSave, a New Rochelle, N.Y., company that audits telecommunications and other utility bills. “Id […]

Trying to wrest itself from under heavy debt and high business expenses, Comdisco last week said it will slash about 250 jobs, around 10 percent of its work force, and will record a one-time charge of $6 million to $8 million in the third quarter. The nearly dry bones of once powerful Comdisco stand as […]

It is not yet time to bury the telecommunications industry. Despite AT&Ts latest financial woes, despite the DSL carriers bankruptcies and regardless of shrinking capital expenditures, some carriers are still growing revenue, expanding networks and even raising money, if necessary. There are more than a few companies that promise to survive this seasons drought. Allegiance […]

Its getting very nasty in the middleware market. As competition in the crowded space intensifies, vendors are stepping up their marketing efforts while slinging especially nasty barbs. Executives at the companies describe pricing competition as heavy and are clamping down on expenses or cutting staff so they can get to profitability faster. CrossWorlds Software is […]

The economy is going to hell, dot-coms are dying, pink slips are flying, teen-age millionaires are again penniless, and Cisco Systems no longer looks invincible. But amid the chaos, a number of companies are finding innovative ways to use the Internet and increase profits. At the risk of being inundated with other examples of profitable […]

Ennis, Ireland — John OConnor hates computers almost as much as he hates television. The two inundate children with violence and produce horrible adults, he believes. A visceral dislike of technology is not surprising in a man who settled in Ennis, a town in County Clare, in the west of Ireland, to run a shop […]

The Securities and Exchange Commissions campaign to clamp down on how companies recognize revenue in the free-wheeling Internet world is beginning to cause pain. FreeMarkets announced last week that SEC staff asked it to reclassify revenue from its largest customer, Visteon, because Visteon received warrants to buy 1.75 million shares of FreeMarkets stock. The SEC […]

Peets Coffee & Tea may not be among the technology elite, but it has managed to do something most optical component wizards, consultants and wireless network hotshots have not — complete an IPO in 2001. What Peets Coffee & Tea can also do is demonstrate how to use the Internet to complement the other channels […]

The stock market evokes the image of a child who has eaten too much chocolate and is running around blowing bubbles, and then smashing them. There were the Amazon.com bubble, the competitive local exchange carrier bubble, the dot-com bubble, the electronic commerce software bubble, the Lucent Technologies bubble, the optical equipment bubble, the Oracle bubble, […]

Many of technologys most celebrated seers never saw the downturn coming. Now that it has crushed the dot-com world, drained venture capitalists bank accounts and made Cisco Systems look like a tired Old Economy company, the prognosticators are the ones paying the price. Gartner Group became the third major firm to announce layoffs last week, […]

AOL Time Warner and IBM are proof that elephants can dance. The technology behemoths turned in surprisingly nimble-footed financial performances last week, while younger growth companies Akamai Technologies, EMC and Siebel Systems struggled to meet expectations and warned of slowdowns ahead. IBM said its services business helped drive a 9 percent revenue increase and a […]

A lot of once-high-flying middleware software suppliers are now wounded ducks in a marketplace rife with acquisitions and mergers. Companies such as Mercator Software, SilverStream Software, Tibco Software and even webMethods are all potential takeover targets, as their stock prices have tumbled along with their revenue growth, said industry experts. Even vendors such as CrossWorlds […]