Erin Joyce

Big Blue pulled off a steady fourth quarter to close out 2005, but faced price pressures across some of its biggest revenue engines and rising pension costs that ate into its overall results during the period. The results had analysts questioning IBM about how aggressively it would push back on its own pricing in order […]

The blogosphere is hyperventilating. Again. This time, it’s about the so-called “annoying e-mail” law that has been generating discussion on some blogs the past few days. Not to mention the e-mail forwards from colleagues carrying comments such as: HUGE implications for business! Horrors! The source of all this concern? A law meant to update anti-harassment […]

The holiday lull continued to cast its influence over Wall Street this week, as investors stayed on the sidelines as the trading year wound to a close. The NASDAQ index closed down 10.78 at 2,218.16. The S&P 500 slipped by 3.75 to end the day at 1,254, pretty much the story with all major indices. […]

A major e-tailing tally is in for the critical Christmas shopping season and it shows a 30 percent jump in holiday spending online. Online holiday shoppers forked over $30.1 billion in the weeks leading up to Christmas, according to the weekly eSpending report produced by Goldman Sachs, Nielsen//NetRatings and Harris Interactive. What drove the hike […]

The chairman of United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) is stepping down in hopes of heading off any more political pressure arising from a regulatory probe of recent stock trades involving company employees. In a letter to the company’s shareholders, Robert Tsao said he is resigning and defended UMC’s actions, “with regard to a recent financial filing […]

Investors jumped out of the gates after the Christmas and Hanukkah weekend holidays to a solid start, but major indexes tumbled by the end of the regular trading day on concerns that the economy may be slowing. The NASDAQ composite ended down 1 percent at 2,226.89 after it shed 22.53 points on the day. The […]

Amid all our video and Web-surfing on handheld devices, and ordering up software over the Internet, there are a few items to add to a wish list for the land of information. Here’s my top five: Getting Real About China Is anyone in IT just a teeny bit concerned about human rights in China? You’d […]

Sprint Nextel moved to put another affiliate lawsuit behind it with its purchase of Enterprise Communications of Georgia for about $98 million. Based in Columbus, Enterprise Communications is an exclusive affiliate partner for Sprint, which, like its onetime rival and now merger partner Nextel, also conducts business in the regions of Georgia and surrounding states […]

NEW YORK — Web services  and service-oriented architecture (SOA) have been the holy grail in computing for at least 20 years. After all, the idea behind Web services, such as reusing code so applications don’t have to repeat basic tasks when they speak to each other, is re-making the Web as a more dynamic global […]

NEW YORK — First VPN remote phone software. Now IP video conferencing. Networking software provider Avaya is pouring it on at the Interop conference in New York this week. Avaya has rolled out new software called VPNremote that embeds virtual private network (VPN) remote capabilities into Avaya’s family of IP telephones. The idea is to […]

NEW YORK — Microsoft is increasingly preaching the gospel of open systems and Web-based software — especially with real -time collaboration. Take its Office Communicator system, the platform for its MSN Instant Messaging (IM) application, as well as its Live Communications Server 2005, which supports its real-time collaboration using the Web. The company today announced […]

Arena Solutions wants to change the way companies use software for product lifecycle management (PLM). As with Salesforce.com, which is shaking up the traditional software delivery model for customer relationship management (CRM) by delivering its Software as a Service over the Web, Arena has similar ambitions for manufacturers. Michael Topolovac, CEO of the Menlo Park, […]