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[newsletter@news.internetwk.com: InternetWeek Newsletter - April 21, 1999]
Guys/Gals,
Check this out. HP is now offering Linux 7x24 support for all major versions
of Linux. Even the big guys now want to ride the wave. The most interesting
part is the price....
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From: Internetwk Newsletter <newsletter@news.internetwk.com>
To: JOSEPH HEIL <heilja@dbsource.com>
Subject: InternetWeek Newsletter - April 21, 1999
Good Morning, JOSEPH,
This is your InternetWeek Newsletter
for today, Wednesday, April 21, 1999.
=============================================
~~~~~~~~ SPONSORED BY: Planet IT ~~~~~~~~
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=============================================
1. Today's News
* ERP Vendors Reach Out
* HP Commits To Support Linux 24x7
* Pfeiffer Faced Internal, External Issues
2. How Wall Street Reacted: On Tuesday, the Dow Jones
industrial average inched up 8.00, to 10448.50. The Nasdaq
recouped some of Monday's losses, advancing 64.03, to 2409.62.
3. Gray Matter: Guard IT Crown Jewels Closely
*************************
Back Office Reaches Out To Customers
ERP developers have at last begun turning their attention to
e-commerce, tempting IT managers with soup-to-nuts
integration of their e-business backbones.
Oracle, Baan and SAP are among the vendors detailing their efforts
this month, with new strategies and technologies for Webifying
their enterprise architectures and adding e-commerce and other
front-office capabilities to the mix.
For enterprise users, the moves present a choice: bank on your
back-office vendor to provide the path to Web-based commerce, or
buy best-of-breed point applications and worry about
integrating them with the back end.
Baan will roll out the beta version of its E-Enterprise platform later
this month. Components include support for Web storefronts,
e-procurement and product configuration and sales. The
applications run on Microsoft's Site Server platform.
Baan's E-Sales and E-Collaboration modules will
launch in June; E-Procurement will launch in the fourth quarter, said
Nathan Pieri, product line manager for E-Enterprise.
On Monday, Oracle previewed the 11i Release of Oracle
Applications, highlighted by the move of the Oracle8i database to
be the engine for the apps. Also new is integrated support for
Oracle's recently announced corporate travel application.
Oracle Applications 11i will ship this fall.
For its part, SAP pushed back to early next month news on the next
steps in its e-commerce strategy, including an enterprise portal
strategy that would provide more users within an enterprise access
to data in SAP systems, analysts said. -- Richard Karpinski
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW19990420S0002
------------------------------------------
HP To Support Linux 24x7
Hewlett Packard Co. today rolled out a new support program to give
IT managers 24x7 support for systems based on the Linux
operating system.
The program, available immediately, offers one-stop
shopping for Linux support, regardless of the hardware it is
installed on, according to company officials. HP is also
offering support for all versions of Linux, including those distributed
by Caldera, Pacific HiTech, Red Hat Software and SuSE Holding
AG.
Though the company is hardly the first to offer Linux support,
officials believe its pricing model will be attractive to organizations
that don't want to purchase enterprise support packages.
HP's service, priced at $130 per server for unlimited telephone and
electronic support, is similar to the software support programs HP
offers for Windows NT and Unix. In addition, HP is now offering
training to IT support technicians.
Under the support program, administrators can send queries
electronically or make unlimited phone calls to HP's Electronic
Support Center and HP Response Centers respectively. -- Jeffrey Schwartz
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW19990420S0003
------------------------------------------
Pfeiffer faced internal, external issues
It took just a few quarters of lackluster sales before
Compaq CEO and president Eckhard Pfeiffer left his post over
the weekend in an apparent forced resignation, but tough
times call for desperate measures.
The hardware industry is grappling with dropping revenue and profits
in the competitive PC market while it tries to prepare for a potential
drop in hardware sales related to year 2000 issues.
"We're moving into a very tough period [for hardware vendors],"
said Jonathan Ross, a financial analyst with ABN Amro, in San
Francisco. "When it comes to Y2K expenditures, there's a strong
suspicion that hardware may be sacrificed in favor of software."
To be sure, there are issues unique to Compaq that led to Pfeiffer's
ousting, said analysts. For one, chairman Benjamin Rosen is known for
having a low tolerance for perceived management blunders. Evidence
of this was his rapid firing of former CEO and president Rod
Canion nearly 10 years ago after a poor financial quarter, at which
time Pfeiffer was appointed the new CEO.
Also, there are some indications that Compaq's integration of its
Digital Equipment and Tandem acquisitions has not gone
smoothly. For example, Compaq sold fewer Alpha servers last year
than were sold in 1997, when Digital was a stand-alone
company, according to analyst reports. And Houston-based
Compaq was late to the game with a strategy for helping customers
build Internet-based IT infrastructures, which Pfeiffer
described at Compaq's biennial user conference last week.
Compaq, which ships more PCs worldwide than any other
company, could also be losing PC market share to competitors. Ed
Ellett, vice president of PC products in North America, said
last week both revenue and shipments were down for the
company's commercial PC business in the first quarter.
It's unclear whether a majority of vendors are experiencing lower unit
sales in addition to revenue drops, and San Jose, Calif.-based
researcher Dataquest won't know what's happening with PC unit sales
until it completes its study of the first quarter next month, said
analyst Kimball Brown. -- Mary Hayes, InformationWeek
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW19990420S0004
*************************
How Wall Street Reacted
Oracle (ORCL) 23 1/4 -1/8
Baan (BAANF) 8 -1/4
SAP (SAP) 24 5/8 -11/16
Compaq (CPQ) 24 +1 1/4
Hewlett-Packard (HWP) 71 3/8 UNCH
*************************
Opinion: Guard IT Crown Jewels Closely
With top talent at a premium as never before, your ability to build,
motivate and retain a top-notch IT organization may be the single most
critical factor in your success.
Recent data gathered by InternetWeek and several sister publications
drives home what you've been dealing with day in and day out for some
time: Salaries are rising faster in IT than in the overall economy;
talented IT people are hard to come by, largely because the economy is
so healthy; and virtually every company is working hard to attract top
IT professionals--including those you employ.
Several findings from the online survey, which elicited more than 20,000
responses, can be treated as a blueprint for how to keep your most
strategic IT assets.
Managers and staffers must be assigned challenging projects central to
the strategic objectives of the company. Nothing appeals to them like
the opportunity to work in the technological forefront. You must give
top priority to putting your very best people on security, database/data
warehousing and Year 2000 projects, especially those tied to the
company's Internet strategy.
As a manager, are you creating aggressive strategies for aligning
individual professional development with corporate objectives? Are the
Internet projects your top people work on simultaneously advancing their
skills and the financial health of the company? Are they getting
training in skills and technologies that they, in turn, can use to
expand the company's national and international presence? If you answer
no to questions of this sort, your company needs to rethink its
personnel development strategy.
Staffers place a premium on educational and other opportunities that
refine or add to their skills; they're a group that's far more focused
on such practical matters than on "softer" benefits such as an on-site
gym or corporate culture.
There's no indication that the salary trend--double-digit annual
increases for the skills most in demand--is going to reverse. Soaring
salaries are driven by the growing recognition of how vital IT is to
business strategy in the Internet Age. Rather than resisting the trend,
leverage IT's growing clout and the new revenue it's bringing in to get
CEOs, CFOs and CIOs to finance key projects and to ensure they're on
board for the salary increases you must award to remain competitive.
Failure to treat your IT professionals as a strategic asset will be your
loss and competitors' gain.
========================================================
========================================================
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2) National IT Career Opportunities
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3) For additional IT career opportunities visit our Career
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5) BE YOUR OWN ONLINE PC STORE--TX. Hand Technologies
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========================================================
========================================================
=============================================
~~~~~~~~ SPONSORED BY: Planet IT ~~~~~~~~
Want access to a network of your peers to aid in your
decision-making? Join Planet IT - a members-only, online
community for IT pros. Our peer network lets you search out
other members by technology interests and job level, save
them to a contact list and invite them to join discussions!
For a free membership, visit http://www.PlanetIT.com
=============================================
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc. a service of InternetWeek.
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Joseph A. Heil, Jr. DBA - Oracle, DB2, Posgresql, Msql
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