Month in review
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BT strikes a deal with Ofcom, Apple chooses Intel and Salesforce.com's flagship implementation goes awry.
BT agreed a deal with communications regulator Ofcom to provide competitors with greater access to its local networks, raising the possibility of cheaper telephone calls. In exchange, Ofcom has mothballed threats to break up BT. Among the objectives that Ofcom stipulated were: price reductions of business and consumer calls, connections and services; support for faster broadband and voice over IP (VoIP); and the provision of regulatory support for new competitors. Ofcom withdrew its threat to take BT to the Competition Commission, but strengthened its powers to deal with BT should the company fail to live up to this new deal.
Apple announced it would start using Intel's processors in its personal computers, signalling the end of its decade-long use of IBM's Power chips. The decision to switch to Intel chips could enable Apple to further increase its market share by bringing cheaper, faster laptops to market. But Apple faces a difficult transition: many customers may be wary about buying current models that use the IBM processors, knowing that equipment will soon be outdated.
Cisco Systems unveiled plans to enter the application integration market with devices to read, interpret and respond to application-layer messages in real-time. This "application-oriented network" will provide the infrastructure to support a service-oriented software architecture. Cisco will work alongside IBM, SAP, Tibco and others.
Microsoft submitted its proposals to the European Commission detailing how it intends to comply with anti-monopoly rulings, just hours before the deadline. Microsoft outlined how it would comply with the European regulators' judgement that its bundling of Media Player with the Windows operating system breached competition laws. If the proposals are deemed inadequate it could be penalised with daily fines of up to $5 million - roughly equivalent to 5% of its global daily turnover.
The Conservative Party accused the British government of going £2 billion over budget on various IT projects rolling out in the last two years. The opposition decried the "massive waste of public money involved in botched Whitehall IT programmes", including the Government Communications HQ (GCHQ) relocation, which involved moving computers from two old offices to a single new site. Originally priced at £41 million the project has to date cost taxpayers over 10 times that.
More than 40 million credit card customers were at risk of having their accounts violated after hackers were able to gain access to sensitive computer systems at a payment processing company. IT systems at CardSystems' data centre in Atlanta were infiltrated after a hacker used security vulnerabilities to gain access to the company's networks and access credit card details, including those belonging to approximately 13.9 million MasterCard customers.
Hosted CRM provider Salesforce.com was embarrassed by a report from analysts at investment bank JMP Securities which found that a landmark Cisco Systems installment - Salesforce's largest publicly announced implementation - had run into trouble. Analysts found that only 2,000 of the anticipated 10,000 seats had gone live, because the software did not meet users' requirements.
