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"Opteron is an excellent candidate for blade servers," Microdesign general manager Kevin Krewel confirmed in an interview with the E-Commerce Times. "On the desktop, 64-bit computing will be a novelty, but on the server there could be real practical benefits for integer applications, such as secure sockets layer [for Web servers]." He noted that unlike Transmeta's Crusoe, which has shipped on blades from such companies as RLX Technologies, Opteron offers the prospect of cheap dual-processing blades...

"Every time a major event like this happens, the Internet gets another test, another chance to prove itself," Forrester Research analyst Christopher Kelley told the E-Commerce Times. "People are motivated to try the Web, to try new areas of the Internet they didn't before. A good first impression is essential."

"There is a comfort level with Red Hat, particularly with companies that aren't deeply saturated in technology knowledge," Gartner vice president George Weiss told the E-Commerce Times. However, he added, "It has a wide lead over its nearest competitor but still faces a lot of challenges to get more profitable and keep growing."

"The leading position of Linksys offers a tremendous top-line growth opportunity," Charles Giancarlo, senior vice president and general manager of product development at Cisco, told the E-Commerce Times. The home networking gear market is projected to grow from $3.7 billion in 2002 to $7.5 billion in 2006, according to the Dell'Oro Group...

Dan Tanner, director of storage research at Aberdeen Group, told the E-Commerce Times that the trend toward more and better storage must continue, especially in industries subject to regulations that include information backup. "More data than ever is being stored. You only have to look at the financial and health industries, which have mandated backup storage."

IDC analyst Roger Kay told the E-Commerce Times that Gateway is trying to undo some of its missteps, including plunging into retail, a move that has heightened the contrast between Gateway and Dell, which has maintained its direct sales model and reaped the benefits of that decision.

"Is the small business market a promised land? Yes, that's the ticket,"IDC research manager Marilyn Carr told the E-Commerce Times. "Technology isbecoming more accessible in terms of cost. Medium enterprises can now affordmore and better technology than they've ever had before. Historically, they've been served by homegrown solutions and have not really embraced enterprise software. Now they are starting to."

IDC analyst Alan Promisel told the E-Commerce Times the strong launch makes it likely that first-year sales will hit Microsoft's own target of 500,000 to 1 million units. "I think Microsoft is on track to reach at least the low end of their estimate for full-year 2003," he said...

Yankee Group senior analyst Eric Ogren suggested that if a CIO chooses the first approach, he or she should focus on firewall products and intrusion prevention appliances. "The most basic thing you can do in security is a firewall," he told the E-Commerce Times, "because you're instantly getting both protection for your network and for your servers." ...

IDC's prediction is in line with a recent forecast from Gartner for 6.6 percent overall growth in PC unit sales. Gartner analyst George Shiffler told the E-Commerce Times that war worries already have dampened the economy enough to keep PC sales from recovering anytime soon. ...

AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel told the E-Commerce Times that the campaign had the desired impact of helping remind people of the benefits of mobile communication. "It was a fresh spin on an existing product, and we needed to use a different approach as well," he said, noting ...

It is important for any company considering a services-oriented reworking ofits back end to recruit employees with expertise in this area. "There aren't that many tech people with the right skill set," Yankee Group program manager Andy Efstathiou told the E-Commerce Times. "Outside firms come to it from different perspectives. Firms need to understand the opportunity and how it can apply to their business."

AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein told the E-Commerce Times that the company has no comment on the report, but he added that AOL Time Warner has been cooperating with all ongoing probes and has conducted its own investigation. Calls to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were not immediately returned...

"I don't see a lot of people unplugging leading vendors like Oracle," Burton told the E-Commerce Times. "But I'd say 90 percent of the organizations out there now work with multiple databases anyway. A lot of clients that I work with think it's important to have alternatives to Oracle for negotiation purposes...

Redwood City, California-based Oracle, which will report quarterly earnings next week, slipped because it has always thrived on large-scale enterprise deployments, which saw the biggest slowdown in 2002, Olofson told the E-Commerce Times. "Vendors who depend on large systems ...

Air travel, consumer electronics and apparel are three of the hottest categories of consumer products sold online, IDC research manager Jonathan Gaw told the E-Commerce Times. The question on the minds of many small e-tailers may be, why are these the standouts -- and can they enter the fray and achieve success by targeting these areas?...

Publisher 2003: A new design application for creating marketingcommunications FrontPage and InfoPath combine what Microsoft describes as "the world'sfirst" graphical XSLT (extensible stylesheet language transformations)editor. XSLT acts a bridge between an XML database on the back end anduser-input features on the front end. Hitting the Right Note Much of the analyst buzz surrounding Microsoft Office System is focused onOneNote. Though it might seem like a small add-on, rather like Notepad isattached to Windows, this program points to a new paradigm of front-endcomputing. "OneNote has been developed to address tablet computing," Rob Enderle,research fellow at Giga Information Group, told the E-Commerce Times. "It fits thetablet metaphor and enables users to categorize, search for and find theirthoughts better than with pen and paper." Unchanging Market Share Meanwhile, although Sun's announcement coincided with Microsoft's, Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio said Microsoft's key competitor is not StarOffice. "StarOffice will have appeal for the SOHO [small office and home office] market, but the overall market share won't change appreciably," she told the E-Commerce Times. Microsoft's marketshare of the office productivity field is at least 90 percent. "Microsoft's biggest competitor is itself," DiDio added. "With the economicdownturn and the quality of Microsoft's earlier products, the challenge willbe to get customers, even those who would absolutely love to migrate, up andrunning. Customers simply might not have the cash." DiDio predicted a 15 to 20 percent adoption rate during the first year, andshe emphasized that the fate of Windows Server 2003 will play a part in Office System's penetration curve. Enterprises still using Windows NT 4 on the back endmight see Server 2003 as a compelling upgrade opportunity, and they could scoopup Office System at the same time to realize the full potential of a more unified system. New Paradigms While the commercial fate of Office System remains to be determined, thereis universal agreement that Microsoft is aiming high with this product. "This is a pretty important and substantial release," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times, "because it really changes the file structure and the ability of files to be shared. Given the wide adoption of XML in this product, Microsoft has given its software developers the opportunity to use Office applications as front ends in a way they didn't have access to before." Giga's Enderle noted that Office System is the first version of Office thathas gone through the advanced security testing adopted by Microsoft nearlytwo years ago. "Substantial work has been done on Outlook," he said. "It is more reliable and less susceptible to network problems." Backward Compatibility However, though network integration and streamlined information flow are positive developments, a question of compatibility exists. Microsoft is including server elements in its Office System beta 2 distribution -- but those elements will not be included in the final product, and enterprises will have to purchase them separately if they want a full upgrade of the front and back ends. Microsoft Office System is backwardcompatible with previous servers, however. "The server upgrades are required to achieve the system's full potential,but [Office System] is, by itself, a vastly improved product," Enderle noted.

Not every product is appropriate for online sales, and those that aremay already have reached saturation level in the e-commerce landscape. Yankee Group analyst Adi Kishore recommends evaluating a new e-commerce venture before launching it. "Take a long, hard look at your business model," Kishore told the E-Commerce Times. "Is anyone else doing it? Develop specialty products."

"A loss of share, even in a small corner of the business -- that's not something anyone wants to see," Edelstone told the E-Commerce Times. "Intel may be forced to reconsider the pricing decision, but I'm sure they're going to see demand pick up and make that unnecessary." ...

"It's doing very well, actually, as opposed to other IT," Schelley Olhava, program manager for interactive consumer services and consumer devices at IDC, told the E-Commerce Times What is the gaming industry doing right -- and can IT executives in other industries emulate this...