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"We see it as an extension of what we're already doing," Dell spokesperson Venancio Figueroa told the E-Commerce Times. "The mall program has turned out to be a good way for people to see our products in person, and that's proven worthwhile for some customers. This gives a different customer segment that same exposure."

However, that decline may be due not to a slackening of demand, but to a shift toward low-end, lower-cost SAN and NAS solutions that can help enterprises better utilize existing storage capacity, rather than purchasing expensive new hardware for high-end solutions. In fact, Gerald Longoria, product manager of Dell's storage systems division, told the E-Commerce Times that demand for storage solutions will actually increase in 2003...

In "It's a Wonderful Life," Jimmy Stewart's character ends up on the bridge, weighing whether to end his life over lost money. Eight thousand dollars, to be exact. ...

Part of the plan involves an initial public offering of the Time Warner Cable division, planned for sometime this year, AOL Time Warner spokesperson Mia Carbonell told the E-Commerce Times. The company also has discussed selling its book division, and it recently sold nearly $800 million worth of its shares in Hughes Electronics...

Second, Microsoft itself is hardly content with its mixed reputation, and is doing its part to address security concerns while continuing to develop its feature set. The company's "Trustworthy Computing" initiative involves extensive security reviews of its enterprise (and consumer) software, and results have been substantial. As Mark Levitt, vice president for collaborative computing at IDC, told the E-Commerce Times, it is "disproportionate targeting" of Microsoft that makes such tightening necessary in the first place. "Outlook doesn't deserve the bad reputation it has," he said...

"EBay could get more into less specialized areas of B2B, and they already have people on there selling things like truckloads of wholesale merchandise, which presumably only a retailer would want to buy," Kathman told the E-Commerce Times. ...

"The role of e-commerce in companies has obviously gone through a wave ofoverexcitement and hype, and has come back to a more realistic assessment ofwhat that role can be," Andrew Bartels, vice president and research leaderat Giga Information Group, told the E-Commerce Times ...

"I think the fact that the downward trend has leveled off is encouraging," Jeanne Metzger, vice president of the NVCA, told the E-Commerce Times. "The levels we're seeing now seem to be in line with the overall investment and economic climate. This seems to be the pace that venture investors are most likely to be comfortable with right now."

"If the labels are going to give anyone permission to do this, it's going to be to these guys," Goodman told the E-Commerce Times. "They are somebody within the existing value chain trying to do something, rather than an outsider coming in and saying, 'This is how you need to do your business.'"...

More transparent backup, since traditional data backup can stress the resourcesof an integrated LAN and slow communication traffic. Desire and Need Enterprise equipment purchasers might waffle on the question of whethersegregation of storage is necessary or is merely an expensive wish-list item onthe balance sheet. But among analysts, who admittedly do not have to justifyexpenditures, the answer is clear-cut. David Hill, vice president of storage research at Aberdeen Group, takesa firm stand in the former camp. Citing smoother moving and processing ofdata, he told the E-Commerce Times that "storage must become a separate entity." Giga Information Group senior analyst Anders Lofgren could hardly state the case emphatically enough, especially for large enterprises. "We recommend, if they have not implemented network storage, they should definitely do so. Obviously, early on, there will perhaps be additional costs: You have to buy a bunch of switches, and there's a learning curve." But Lofgren noted that once an enterprise consolidates storage in a network architecture, it will benefit from economies of scale as the information archive grows. Meanwhile, Brad Nisbet, senior research analyst at IDC, observed that reducedadministration costs can be another benefit of SAN deployment. "With a SAN, youcan theoretically grow your storage capacity without growing your staff. Itcomes down to looking at the broader picture," he told the E-Commerce Times. Virtual or Real? For those companies that are reluctant to shell out capital for an entirely new network setup, software virtualization can be a cheaper alternative to building a physicalstorage network. By creating a virtual network that pools storage resources across multiple servers, administrators can optimize and better navigate their storage topography without making a heavy investment in hardware. But Giga's Lofgren told the E-Commerce Times that virtualization is not an important part of the future. Although smaller vendors are playing in the virtualization market, larger vendors have not stepped in yet. Furthermore, according to Lofgren,distorted use of the term to define a variety of products has stripped the word of meaning and undermined its marketing legitimacy. "Vendors are backing away from it," he said. On the other hand, Laura Koetzle, an infrastructure analyst with Forrester Research, maintains a more sanguine attitude toward virtualization of traditional storage, asserting that a virtual view of storage within a larger network can be just as useful as a discrete physical network dedicated to storage when it comes to allocating unused disk space. Bottom Line Indeed, while it is all well and good to say that corporations should buy networked storage solutions, the harsh reality in today's IT climate is that companies' choices may depend as much on cost as on technical specifications. Therefore, it is likely that many enterprises will choose their storage solutions based on short-term necessity, rather than long-term structural planning. Koetzle suggested that IT buyers ask themselves, "Is the application that I'm building really one that requires a discrete storage network?" If a majority of buyers answer "no" to that question, network vendors will get hungrier, and further consolidation can be expected in the storage market. If they answer "yes," the market will grow more quickly. Either way, SAN technology is not going away. As IT spending recovers, it will become a must-have for more and more enterprises. The only question is, which companies will be ahead of the curve? ...

GartnerG2 research director Geri Spieler told the E-Commerce Times that the earnings reinforce the idea that Amazon has pursued the perfect online sales model by controlling the sales process, rather than merely acting as a portal that refers customers to merchant partners "Th...

"If you ask corporations, you'll find everyone intends to tackle Web services, but most of them are still on the sidelines or have only done an experiment here or there," Gartner research director Raymond Wagner told the E-Commerce Times. ...

Haas sat down with the E-Commerce Times to discuss how his group plans and implements online advertising campaigns and to offer advice to would-be online advertisers E-Commerce Times: What steps or series of steps do you take when planning an online advertising campaign?...

Carol McKay, spokesperson for the National Consumers League, told the E-Commerce Times that the FTC figures indicate identity theft is an increasingly easy crime to commit. However, she added, consumers' awareness also has increased "ID theft is becoming more of a household te...

"Expenditures being made today are expected to provide immediate return on investment," Yankee Group chief research officer Brad Hecht told the E-Commerce Times. "That's kept security spending in general from climbing up the priority ladder." ...

"I think file-swappers operated under two assumptions, one being that they couldn't be identified, the other that no one would ever pursue them for what they were doing," University of Pennsylvania marketing professor Peter S. Fader told the E-Commerce Times. "At least one of those illusions has been wiped out, and potentially both of them."

How can an enterprise IT manager decide which one to buy? The strongest contenders take a holistic approach, according to Yankee Group senior analyst Jon Derome. In this piece, the E-Commerce Times takes a closer look at three companies of different sizes and might that have chosen to follow that path: IBM, Siebel and BroadVision...

The HP-Microsoft incursion may seem to have come at a bad time for the NAS marketplace, as sales dropped during most of 2002. But IDC vice president of storage research John McArthur told the E-Commerce Times there is little doubt that customers will continue to demand networked storage options.

IDC analyst Jonathan Gaw told the E-Commerce Times that the question does not revolve around old versus new economy, but rather around an entrepreneurial attitude versus a mature company approach "Entrepreneurs are great at startups, and they're really crappy at bigcompanies,"...

"Not as many consumers shopped online in 2001 Q4 as expected because of the economy last year," Johnson told the E-Commerce Times. "They started to rebound in Q1. Online sales won those people back." ...