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PA e-Comm News APRIL 23

ADVERTISERS OF THE WEEK

Amazon and Google have inked a deal whereby sponsored links from Google are available now on a selection of Amazon pages. Additional links and Google's Web search service is also to be made available in the next few months. Google, which dominates the search arena, has been strengthening its sponsorship deals as it expands its ad network and seeks new revenue. This new deal is a change for Amazon, which has not generally used advertising on its pages. The companies emphasized the search aspects of the deal over the sponsored links.

The rapid outbreak of SARS has underlined how ill equipped Asia-Pacific companies are in supporting a remote workplace, according to Gartner. While governments across the region are struggling to contain the epidemic, companies are trying to mitigate the effects of the disease, often by setting up telecommuting situations. The next step is to organize a virtual private network (VPN). For employees who use desktops, notebooks can be purchased or leased and employees can be equipped with communications tools required for tasks such as remote conferencing. Companies should also add a remote access policy to disaster work-force planning and management procedures, according to Gartner. From a human resources perspective, staff should be permitted to work from home if they are uncomfortable with the risk of travel or the office environment.

Within war-ravaged Afghanistan, information technology studies are wetting the appetites of females who now see an opportunity to shed their chains and become part of the global workplace. Several young students are earning industry-standard certificates in computer networking skills and are becoming members of a growing talent pool of badly needed information technology specialists. A U.N.-supervised program largely funded by computer giant Cisco Systems aims to create a core of specialists to take the country into the digital age. The program is also seen as a means to boost opportunities for women in what remains, despite the demise of the Taliban, a heavily male-dominated society. Of the 17 students who received certificates from the university's Cisco Networking Academy, six were women. The academy aims to train 200 students by the end of the year.

Clothing maker Benetton has clarified its plans regarding radio tags in response to reports that it is preparing to place millions of the devices in its products to help track inventory, reporting that the company purchased only 200 radio frequency identity (RFID) chips and is still studying whether or not it will use this controversial technology to track its products. Benetton has completed technology tests of radio frequency identification to help improve its supply chain management; but it is still testing the economics and whether it is cost-efficient to replace the barcode-scanning technology it now uses. Wal-Mart Stores and U.K.-based supermarket chain Tesco are also working to install specially designed shelves that can read radio frequency waves emitted by microchips embedded in millions of shavers and related products. Despite the obvious merits, the ability to track a product's movement also raises a disquieting concern about privacy since these tags make it technically possible for marketers to obtain invaluable information on a host of consumer preferences, ranging from the clothes they like to the food they prefer. In addition, there are worries that such a technology could be exploited for government surveillance or be misused by hackers and criminals.

Discount brokerage giant Charles Schwab had expected to launch an online bank earlier this year in a bid to expand its offerings and offset persistent weakness in its main stock-trading business. But Charles Schwab Bank, as the unit is called, is still mired in an approval process required by banking regulators. Schwab filed an application for a bank license in May 2002 and received preliminary approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency this February. Other needed approvals from agencies, including the Department of Justice, are still outstanding. Plans for Schwab Bank include offering traditional banking products, such as mortgage loans, certificates of deposit and checking accounts.

The last few years have seen a significant revolution toward networked storage and away from disk drives and tape loaders attached directly to corporate servers. In fact, research firm IDC has estimated that by 2006 more than 70% of storage will be networked via fibre channel or Ethernet, rather than attached locally to a server via SCSI or another conventional type of disk connection. But the vendors making this shift to networked storage possible so far have done little to ensure that stored data will be protected from the threats that often beset networks. In fact, most out-of-the-box storage area network and network-attached storage products currently offer few or no security mechanisms. In the breach, startups have begun to provide encryption and authentication appliances that can be installed at various points within a SAN, rather than being tied to particular servers or disk arrays. These vendors' first steps suggest that data storage security could evolve as its own industry, apart from the storage networking proper. Storage security is less about viruses and worms and more about protecting large amounts of data from unauthorized access as it travels across a network. An important distinction also must be made between primary and secondary storage in a data network. Primary storage holds live production data that is updated throughout the day by employees and customers as transactions occur. Secondary storage, such as tape drives or slow, inexpensive disks, is used for backup and archiving of older data. Storage security will probably continue to evolve as its own specialty as networking worms its way deeper into the data storage world. It also will remain a pressing concern, so enterprises would do well to get up to speed, even if their main storage vendor has not yet done so.

Using a new monitoring tool from Houston-based Scalable Software, an IS Manager found that only half the network’s PC users used Microsoft Word or Excel, and just two dozen created PowerPoint slides. He was then able to reduce his licensing costs by breaking up the Office suite and buying programs piecemeal. By taking stock of how they use software, many tech buyers have found they can do more with less and have cut waste and found cheaper alternatives. This has certainly affected companies like Siebel Systems, Computer Associates and PeopleSoft, all of whom have seen revenue and net income dive. So it appears now to be a buyers market. Here is how some decision makers are squeezing software makers:

• Not buying. Companies are making the most of their software investment by only upgrading every three to four years.
  
• Identifying waste. Avis used tracking software from Scalable to assess which software helped its 150 software programmers create and test business applications and was able to cut 50 software licenses and slash expenses 56%.
  
• Refusing to pay for bells and whistles. Wheaton Franciscan Hospitals balked at upgrading to Office XP for $479 a copy and instead bought Word, at $130 a copy, and Excel, at $150, for half its 3,500 PCs. By distributing free Excel, PowerPoint and Access "viewers" -- programs that let users look at, but not create or modify, spreadsheets, slide shows and databases -- it got away with buying just 30 copies of PowerPoint, at $200 a copy, and a handful of Access databases, for $300 a pop.
  
• Dumping big software packages for online subscription services. Companies are buying more software delivered via the Internet for basic tasks, such as expense report management and health care benefit management.

Computer hacking attacks and other Internet security breaches grew at an alarming rate in the first quarter of this year, in part because of sentiments over the war in Iraq. Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems Inc. reported that the number of hacking attacks increased by 37% from the fourth quarter of last year and, over the past six months, the number of incidents rose by 84%. Hundred of Web sites have been defaced by both antiwar and pro-war hackers, and at least nine viruses or "denial of service" attacks related to the war have cropped up in recent weeks. Only about 1% of the attacks have targeted federal and state government sites and about 35% targeted retail Web sites or servers. 

E-COMMERCE RELATED EVENTS AND INFORMATION

The following are links to upcoming seminars and other events that our readers might have an interest in and/or other information related to e-commerce.

The Pittsburgh Technology Council issued its annual State of the Industry Report today, which revealed that in spite of an extended national recession that began in 2000, the region’s technology industries have held their own, at least through the mid-point of the current economic downturn. The report covers the 13-county southwestern Pennsylvania region and presents industry statistics for 2001, the last year for which complete data is available from government and other sources.

The State of the Industry research is commissioned by the Pittsburgh Technology Council and conducted by Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Economic Development. The report examines the economic role that the technology industry clusters play in southwestern Pennsylvania. These clusters include information technology, advanced materials, biomedical and biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and environmental technology. In addition, the report reveals progress on other key indicators of economic health, such as venture capital investment and research and development.

To view the entire report, please visit http://www.pghtech.org/pittsburgh/report.html

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