PSINet Inc. has acquired three more Hong Kong Internet companies and also announced today that it has signed a deal to buy dark fiber-optic strands in California. The Internet service provider (ISP) has bought SpiderNet, HugeNet and AsiaNet in Hong Kong, making it one of the largest ISPs in the Asia/Pacific region, following a flurry of other acquisitions in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. PSINet did not disclose financial terms of the deals.
Digital cameras aimed at the mass market will soon have more of the functions that exist in regular 35mm cameras, as the industry moves into what an observer at Comdex/Fall '98 called "the dawn of an exciting era". The advances in digital technology make megapixel cameras a fast-arriving "must-have" commodity in the consumer market, whether consumers know exactly what they're buying or not, panellists said at a digital camera and video session.
COMDEX: the era of the "smart" home
Homes with multiple PCs and multiple adults wanting to get on the Internet at the same time have sparked the frenzied home-networking market, which a panel here yesterday at Comdex/Fall '98 predicted will explode in the coming months. "I believe home networking and applications support to be the next major segment of the (IT) market to take off, very soon," said Hyeon Lee, general manager of residential networks for Lucent Technologies, who also said attempts to predict where things will stand a year or more from now are pointless.
The list of PC peripheral devices that will be displayed at this week's Comdex trade show reads like a gadget lover's dream. It includes digital cameras, the first prototypes for digital camcorders, handhelds of every stripe, scanners, printers, flat-panel monitors, joysticks for gamers and options like Universal Serial Bus (USB) for connecting all of those "extras".
A spending surge will boost PC sales next year, as companies replace old equipment that could fail due to the year 2000 problem. But after that the market will slow and then stall, halting 17 years of industry growth and leading to lower PC prices, according to Forrester Research.
IBM is undertaking a major project with Intel, Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) and Sequent Computer Systems that includes developing a version of the Unix operating system for Intel's upcoming 64-bit processor architecture. The initiative, dubbed "Project Monterey", will lead to three new versions of Unix, executives from the companies said this week. One version -- a flavour of SCO's UnixWare 7 for 32-bit processors from IBM and Intel -- incorporates IBM middleware and is available now. Future releases of this version will add IBM's AIX operating system technology.
Hewlett-Packard this week revealed it is merging two groups into one, aimed at helping large corporate customers. The vendor's Enterprise Systems Group and its Software and Services Group have become the new Enterprise Computing Solutions Organisation, led by Ann Livermore, HP vice president and general manager.
Cisco Systems has joined the roster of information technology powerhouse companies under US federal investigation. In a statement last week, Cisco confirmed that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating discussions the company had with rivals Lucent Technologies and Northern Telecom.
Lotus Development, its parent IBM, CFT Consulting and National Computer have teamed to offer retailers a bundled management system including hardware, software and services. The system operates on IBM Netfinity servers and is designed to cut paperwork and time needed for everything from looking something up in a retail company's manual to training to ordering supplies, according to Lotus and CFT officials.
IBM has expanded its ServicePac technical support package for small and growing businesses. Customers can now activate the service online through IBM's World Wide Web site. ServicePac also can be purchased when customers worldwide buy a Netfinity server.
New models in Compaq's line of Presario notebooks and Internet PCs were introduced on Tuesday this week, and the company also announced a multimedia Presario desktop for schools.
Compaq Computer and Microsoft last week outlined a broad agreement aimed at making their competing operating system platforms more interoperable, and adding some high-end features to Windows NT.
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) this week launched a Web site providing free access to businesses, government agencies and individuals seeking information on year 2000 product compliance. The site, Vendor 2000, (http://www.eds.com/vendor2000/) currently includes information on more than 129,000 products from just over 3400 vendors and is growing daily, according to EDS officials.
IBM is indeed looking to sell its Global Network and underlying infrastructure, which offers connectivity services to clients worldwide, the company announced earlier this week. Sources familiar with the vendor's plans say the global network is viewed both internally and externally as extraneous to IBM's core business.
