Colin C. Haley

BOSTON — Two parallel trends are occurring in the search engine industry: Marketers are embracing paid inclusion and placement; and users are posing a record number of increasingly specific queries. Depending on who you talk to, this represents a happy, lucrative confluence of events, or a dangerous scenario that has the potential to alienate users. […]

BOSTON — Companies running paid listing campaigns must employ return-on-investment analysis software if they hope to improve rankings and results, experts at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo said this morning. “Make sure you do it, either on your own, or buying a service, or hiring a specialist,” Lance Loveday, president of Closed Loop […]

As corporations remain skittish about large, long-term contracts, communications service providers are aggressively courting small businesses to make up the difference. The latest example is SBC Communications , which today introduced its Connections offering, a new package allowing customers to mix and match local, long distance, broadband, Web hosting and wireless services. It’s designed for […]

A new study from IT researcher IDC holds some welcome conclusions for long-suffering telecommunications equipment vendors. According to the Framingham, Mass., firm, Internet traffic will nearly double annually over the next five years. Volume generated by end users is expected to jump from 180 petabits per day in 2002, to 5,175 petabits per day by […]

Competing in the cut-throat Internet search sector, and prepping for a possible IPO, Google has good reason to promote itself. Privately, even rivals grudgingly concede it has done a masterful job. In recent weeks, Google beat out Apple, Coca-Cola and Starbucks for BrandChannel.com’s “brand of the year” honor and was featured in a Boston Globe […]

BOSTON — IT managers are enthusiastic about instant messaging in the enterprise, but they still must do their homework before implementing a system, experts say. Matthew Hunt, CTO of Omnipod, a maker of a communications platform that combines IM and file sharing technology, said the technical due dilligence should be similar to that of other […]

BOSTON — Despite their enormous clout, the Big 3 of instant messaging service providers (Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo!) can’t make the technology a success among enterprise customers on their own. Systems integrators, software developers and consultants, need to help convince corporate decision makers that the technology is compelling and workable. “Currently, there is no ecosystem […]

BOSTON — At Instant Messaging Planet Conference and Expo last year, speakers hammered on a common theme: While IM started as a consumer phenomenon, it is destined to be a powerful enterprise tool. Apparently, the corporate world got the message, because this year, sales pitches have given way to detailed discussions of the remaining technical […]

Like its peers, Cisco Systems embarked on an optical networking binge in the late 1990s, leveraging its mushrooming market value to acquire startups in the promising field. When the market faltered in mid-2000, the San Jose, Calif., telecom equipment giant stood pat, carving out a small, but respectable, business among communications service providers. “Over the […]

In the late 1990s, investors funneled billions of dollars (through VC funds and IPOs) into companies developing technology for new optical networking systems to speed data transmission. But when the economy soured, carriers slashed capital budgets and sector players faced a market clogged with advanced, but expensive, gear and no buyers. A slew of highly […]

IT outsourcing giant Computer Sciences Corp. is offering e-mail security software from MessageLabs to prevent viruses, spam and porn from infiltrating corporate networks. The deal shows that “large systems integrators are recognizing the value that it provides to the enterprise market,” a spokesman for London-based MessageLabs said. Recently, MessageLabs inked a similar agreement with IBM […]

In what is becoming a busy week for search engines, Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) said Dell will use its technology to help customers find information and place orders at its busy e-commerce site. “The Internet is an important part of our business, so we constantly strive to deliver to our customers the best Web […]