News and Analysis to 26^th August 2004

CSC takes medicine

IT services provider CSC has acquired a chunk of biopharmaceutical player Dynport Vaccine. So what are we to expect? Chain-smoking chimpanzees wired up to various network-management packages as they work 24 hour shifts monitoring the health of their clients’ mainframes?

Nortel executives – mounted police

Beleaguered Canadian telecom equipment maker Nortel, which has its hands full handling an accounting scandal, a criminal investigation and several lawsuits, now plans to axe 10% of what CEO Bill Owens recently called “our most valuable asset”. Nortel has just announced that it will be receiving a visit from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The thought of august law enforcers exiting the lifts and navigating the open plan office on their trusted steeds, with intermittent and perilous saddle acrobatics as they lean downwards to rummage through filing cabinets is surely a scene worthy of a Mel Brookes film.

Battle of the architects

The title fight to dominate the IT architecture space is a fierce one. The winner will get to control the software development industry, so there is a lot to play for. The main combatants are Microsoft with Dotnet and Sun Microsystems with J2EE. And now for the first time Dotnet (56%) is ahead of J2EE (44%) in terms of which technology is the one most likely to be used for software development, according to research firm Forrester, which conducted a survey of US corporate IT departments. So is the writing on the wall for Java (a ‘has bean’??)? Too early to say, given that Dotnet is still a work-in-progress and at least 3 years from completion. Hopefully the final decision will be based on technical merit. It would be disconcerting to think that many IT directors are basing their strategies around well-marketed vapourware.

Microsoft edits video division

Microsoft will lay off 76 workers from its Xbox videogame business, as part of the ‘right sizing’ of its games portfolio. A deal it recently struck up with Electronic Arts suggests that Microsoft could be repositioning the Xbox as an Internet access device rather than just a games console. So is the Xbox Microsoft’s next generation PC?

When the chips aren’t down

Do increasing inventories in the chip marketplace suggest a downturn? Not according to research firm Gartner, which suggests that this is in keeping with a rising market. Gartner emphasises the point by stating that chip revenues are expected to increase by 27% in 2004.This is good news for those of us that dwell further along the supply chain. That is until you realise that the chip vendors are already bracing themselves for the next downturn.

Phone phishing?

German enterprise application vendor SAP has warned customers to be on their guard against telephone callers masquerading as Sap employees. The thrust of the call is to establish the finer details of their Sap implementations. Perhaps CCRM is the new CRM: Competitor’s Customer Relationship Management.