This eWEEK: June 16, 2003

To eavesdrop on this weeks eWEEK Corporate Partners roundtable on corporate networking is to get an earful about feverish activity—quite at odds with the perception that IT initiatives have been cryogenically frozen for the foreseeable future. The partners are tasked with building not only high-bandwidth networks but also networks that make bandwidth available 24-by-7—and that provide bulletproof security. Susan Nowicke manages the network for a U.S. District Court in Michigan and is preparing an environment that can handle all court filings electronically. For her, downtime means justice delayed; its not an option.

In his companion piece in the Tech Outlook 2003 package, Tim Dyck (who, alas, is leaving tech journalism to study for the ministry), takes note of a California law that is soon to change life for all of us. Its SB 1386, an amendment to the California Civil Code, which goes into effect July 1. If your company stores information on any California resident—and thats probably all companies that have nationwide presence—youve got to meet new disclosure requirements. Take heed.

Sun had its promotional fires stoked to a high heat with its “Java Everywhere” initiative last week at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. Java has carved out an important niche in programming and has been helped and hindered by Suns stewardship in the past. Sun is, of course, looking to a bigger and better future for Java and has set ambitious goals, but the commitment has to go beyond a pep rally. I still remember a press conference a couple of years ago at which Sun CEO Scott McNealy heaped scorn on the idea of a company selling software—rather than a complete solution. His target was Microsoft, of course, but whats Java if not software?

As Peter Galli reports, this week will be a critical one in SCOs mission to get IBM to bend to its will in observing what it believes to be its intellectual property rights on Unix. There are still plenty of unanswered questions, although you have to believe that IBM can pay lawyers longer than SCO can.

Finally, remember the browser? Its fading as a stand-alone product, as Microsoft incorporates its features into its applications. Ironically, competing browsers have never been technically stronger. Read this weeks Editorial to learn why we think choosing a browser is still important.

Till next eWEEK, send your comments to me at stan_gibson@ziffdavis.com.