FRAMINGHAM (11/03/2003) - BellSouth Corp. last week announced services designed to migrate small and midsize businesses to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The packaged offering includes network transport, integration and equipment from Cisco Systems Inc. and Nortel Networks Ltd. It can serve customers with 12 user stations to as many as several hundred users at multiple locations, and costs US$12 to $65 per user per month, BellSouth says. This package is an extension to other IP telephony developments BellSouth has underway, including Centrex IP market trials and network-based, softswitch-enabled VoIP services expected to roll out in 2004.
FRAMINGHAM (11/03/2003) - Silicon Valley owes its might to clean-room workers such as James Moore and Alida Hernandez who worked for IBM Corp. in the 1970s and 1980s. They worked in one of Big Blue's clean rooms - manufacturing facilities that used powerful chemicals to keep computer components free of contaminants. This week, a jury trial begins to determine whether the work caused health problems that almost killed them. The trial will set the stage for more discussion about whether clean-room work has sickened thousands of other semiconductor manufacturing employees. Because of automation and increased awareness, current conditions are thought to have improved. But no comprehensive study of the long-term effects of working in a clean room has been undertaken, partly because the industry has been unwilling to supply the necessary data, critics say. The trial will focus on whether IBM withheld data that workers were suffering from higher rates of cancer and birth defects than normal segments of the population. IBM denies any wrongdoing.
FRAMINGHAM (10/30/2003) - Sonic Foundry Inc. this week is scheduled to unveil updates to its Mediasite Live line of self-contained appliances that combine audio/video feeds with output from a PC (slides, documents, Web pages) into a live or on-demand Webcast. New to this release is a Windows-based administration console for centrally managing multiple Mediasite appliances and a category manager to help content creators better organize Webcasts they create. Mediasite Live comes in a rack-mount or portable version with a starting price of US$25,000.
FRAMINGHAM (10/30/2003) - Symantec Corp. last week continued to strengthen its family of security software by buying ON Technology Corp., a maker of remote PC management technology, for US$100 million. ON is a publicly traded company that makes products designed to help network administrators inventory and manage desktop computers, servers and mobile devices on LANs and wide area networks. Symantec will use ON's technology to enhance its enterprise security administration product line, with the goal of giving Symantec customers the ability to spot and patch security holes in their computer network, Symantec says. The purchase will help the company compete against Microsoft and other large companies that have an interest in network device management.
FRAMINGHAM (10/24/2003) - Qwest Communications International Inc. this week sued AT&T Corp., alleging inaccurate billing of toll-free calls routed across the Qwest network. Qwest is seeking to recoup fees from AT&T lost to under-billing based on an inaccurate AT&T database of toll-free calls using Qwest's network. Qwest says that the under-billing amounted to US$15 million to $20 million annually. AT&T denies the allegations in Qwest's lawsuit. "In the normal course of our ongoing business arrangements with Qwest, this is a contract and billing dispute that we have been working to resolve for more than the past 16 months," an AT&T spokesperson said. "We will file a formal reply to the complaint in U.S. District Court at the appropriate time." Qwest says AT&T stopped updating the toll-free number database over three years ago and informed Qwest of this last year. New toll-free numbers routed through the Qwest network since March 2000 were billed incorrectly at a lower access rate, she said.
FRAMINGHAM (10/24/2003) - Any company not among the country's 1,000 largest is out of luck if it's interested in getting a license from The SCO Group Inc. to protect itself from possible litigation. SCO spokesman Blake Stowell says smaller companies should still contact SCO about buying a license in the future to lock in at a discounted price, "but for right now, we're only selling to the Fortune 1000. We would rather spend a few days in the sales cycle selling to one large company in a big license deal than spend several months dealing with every individual company, large and small, to gain the same amount of revenue," he says. SCO rolled out the SCO Intellectual Property License for Linux in August as a way for companies to protect themselves from what SCO says are intellectual property violations in Linux. The license is US$699 per one processor server and will jump to $1,400 on Nov. 1.
FRAMINGHAM (10/24/2003) - The Senate last week passed the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) bill, designed to regulate unsolicited commercial e-mail. CAN-SPAM requires commercial e-mail to include valid opt-out mechanisms and allows fines of up to US$100 per piece of spam sent with misleading header information, with maximum penalties of $3 million for some types of spam and prison sentences for certain spamming practices. The bill also requires the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to deliver to Congress a plan to create a national do-not-spam registry within six months and authorize the FTC to launch it within nine months of the bill's passage. CAN-SPAM would have to be approved by the House of Representatives and signed by President Bush. No anti-spam bill has yet been approved by a committee in the U.S. House. Critics of CAN-SPAM say its provisions requiring consumers to opt out of unsolicited e-mail instead of opting in to commercial e-mail make it a pro-spam, not an anti-spam, bill.
FRAMINGHAM (10/23/2003) - IBM Corp. has added a version of its content management software to its Express line of products, offering smaller organizations and departments a tool for managing digital content such as documents and image files. DB2 Content Manager Express is available worldwide for US$9,375 per server and $1,063 per concurrent user. The stand-alone software handles content storage and offers version and permissions controls, search, organization and workflow management features. DB2 Content Manager Express is currently only available for Windows servers, but versions supporting Linux and other operating systems are in the works.
FRAMINGHAM (10/23/2003) - Cable modem and DSL services will be the key drivers for broadband growth in the small to midsize business market in the next five to 10 years, representing US$10 billion to $15 billion in revenue, according to a new report from Pacific Research Institute and the New Millennium Research Council. "Being Served: Broadband Competition in the Small and Medium Sized Business Market" predicts 43 percent of very small, 49 percent of small and 59 percent of midsize businesses will increase their Internet usage in the next year.
FRAMINGHAM (10/23/2003) - In an effort to enable multimedia streaming on home networks, residential gateway maker 2Wire Inc. this week acquired Sugar Media, a start-up developing a digital media software platform for home entertainment applications. Sugar Media's technology will give 2Wire the ability to provide its DSL service provider a platform for offering a triple play of voice, data and entertainment services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
FRAMINGHAM (10/23/2003) - SMC Networks Inc. recently announced a wireless device that can be used as an adapter, access point or repeater. The SMC Wireless Multi-Mode device installs without drivers and supports the Wireless Distribution System protocol, which lets it extend the range of a 2.4-GHz wireless network using a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint configuration. The company says the device will be available in November and will cost US$130.
FRAMINGHAM (10/23/2003) - AT&T Wireless Services Inc. this week began selling Motorola Inc.'s MPx200, the first smart phone based on Microsoft Corp. software to be sold in the U.S. The MPx200 is also the first Microsoft-based phone to be offered by a major handset maker, which analysts have said might help Microsoft establish its long-sought credibility in the mobile phone market.
FRAMINGHAM (10/23/2003) - EarthLink Inc. is expanding the reach of its Small Office DSL service from 16 to 81 markets. The ISP is teaming with Covad Communications Co. to expand its DSL reach in Baltimore; Charlotte, N.C.; Kansas City, Mo.; Minneapolis; New Orleans; Orlando; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; Salt Lake City; San Antonio, Texas; and San Diego. EarthLink's service offers small-office users an asymmetrical DSL service that supports 1.5M bit/sec downstream and 384K bit/sec upstream for US$80 per month.
FRAMINGHAM (10/17/2003) - Former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani's consulting firm, Guiliani Partners, this week joined forces with technology consulting group Ernst & Young LLP to open two data security centers, one in New York and the other in Houston. The companies intend to assist clientele in discovering vulnerabilities in their computer networks and applications by trying to break into them from the outside, a procedure commonly known as "ethical hacking." The high-profile partnership is intended to team up Guiliani's star-power background in law enforcement with Ernst & Young's cybersecurity practice.
FRAMINGHAM (10/17/2003) - The SCO Group Inc. has decided to give Linux users another two weeks before doubling the license fees it is demanding for its Intellectual Property License for Linux, and has backed off on plans to begin sending invoices to commercial Linux users. The extension comes because SCO was late to market with its licensing plan, which was announced in August, according to a SCO spokesman. The company has extended its deadline until Oct. 31. After that, pricing will jump to about US$1,400 per processor. At the same time, SCO has decided to hold off on its plans to begin sending invoices to Linux users. SCO is compiling a list of commercial Linux users, and previously it said that it expected to begin invoicing these companies by mid-October. The invoicing plans have been delayed indefinitely.