News and analysis to 24th October 2002
New marketing concept – Inflatable adverts
Time Warner’s most high profile (financial) anchor AOL has made the news
again. This time for inflating its advertising revenues by nearly $200m. This
was just prior to its merger with Time Warner. The SEC, Department of Justice,
Ted Turner, and probably even Jane Fonda, will be keen to explore this further.
Sun rises on job cuts
The
moment Sun Microsystems decided to shed 4,400 of its staff, its share price
rose by 10%. Working on its breakeven
point, the Unix box shifter/Java owner expects to trim this by $110m. There is
a sense that Sun will struggle to fully recover if it does not change its
strategic direction, which currently appears to be focused on boxes,
development tools and infrastructure.
Internet in denial
Nine of the thirteen servers that manage the world’s Internet traffic
were non-functioning for around 1 hour recently after a highly sophisticated
denial of service attack (DoS). The perpetrators, who remain at large,
commandeered the servers of unsuspecting organisations to send out a continuous
stream of messages to the Internet servers. The volume of these messages was
such that it caused seven servers to fail and two to operate in a degraded
state. The FBI is on the case.
Coming soon – Blue screen phones
Be aware that Microsoft in its quest to populate every device, as a
hedge bet against the demise of the PC, has launched its Smartphone software
for mobile phones. Orange, Cingular, Verizon, AT&T and Vodafone are already
signed up to deliver services via this platform. The biggest hurdle for
Microsoft is winning over handset makers. Whilst it has bagged Samsung (No. 3
in the world), it has not succeeded with Nokia (No. 1). Hackers looking for a
new challenge hope that this is a temporary problem.
Buzzword alert: M2M
Parking meters that can debit your bank account or alarm clocks that
trigger showers and toasters into action are just a few scenarios that will be
delivered to us through machine-to-machine (M2M) technology. HP and Nokia have
got together to provide technology to facilitate the deployment of wireless
machine-to-machine communications. A particularly useful application for this
technology will be in mobile phone payments, both at the vending machines and
point of sale device.
Marconi getting geed up
Despite the fact that its last quarter saw a 6% drop in sales and
quarter on quarter drop of 40%, ‘intensive care inpatient’ and telecoms
equipment maker Marconi has pulled off its largest deal since its August
restructuring. The contract is to supply 3G-infrastructure kit to MMO2’s German
subsidiary. Whilst this is good news, it is of some concern that Marconi’s
route to recovery will be via the volatile 3G marketplace.
Microsoft manages relationship with Siebel
“Be my best friend or die” is probably the edited highlights of
Microsoft’s negotiations with Siebel to cooperate in the lucrative but
generally disappointing CRM arena. Why Siebel would want to get involved with
an organisation that is clearly out to ‘eat its lunch’ can only be explained by
the rumours that Microsoft had previously been hovering with a view to a
kill/acquisition.
IBM to stitch up customers
More
specifically IBM has formed a new business unit to promote its self-healing
technology. In essence this technology looks to increase the level of
self-automation built into computers. This will be well received by the market
as it is a straight ‘cost-of ownership reduction’ sell.
EDS prepares to unsource staff
EDS
helmsman Richard Brown warned staff that further job cuts, over and above the
2000 announced in the summer, are needed to get the business back on an even
keel. He also warned that EDS’s next two quarters would not meet expectations.
Digital certificates – Dead certs?
Security is a major obstacle to the uptake of e-business. Digital
certificates have been bandied around for some time as a mechanism for
authenticating the party you are potentially going to do e-business with.
However they do not seem to have taken off, particularly on the B2C side.
However a UK company, Quizid Technologies, has stepped in with an application
service provision model for authentication. Using a credit card device that
dynamically generates an authentication id. (a password), users can log on to a
system / website knowing that all parties involved are trusted. It is too early
to say if Qwizid’s approach will be successful, but if people/organisations are
happy to trust a third party commercial authentication service provider, then
we might just see e-business get the adrenalin shot it needs.
