The alarmist cries that there is going to be a critical shortage of Cobol programmers to fix the Year 2000 problem – just another reason for companies to dump mainframes and convert to packaged software under Unix or NT.
Motorola Inc says that the 200MHz version of the PowerPC 603e RISC is now available in volume and is selling at $360 each for 1,000-up.
Former X/Open Co Ltd chief Geoff Morris is putting together a Web and intranet start-up he expects to go live in the fourth quarter. It will also provide a European distribution channel for US-developed technologies for its market.
The Client/Server Labs Inc RPMark bench-marking house owned by Atlanta, Georgia-based Enabling Technologies Group Inc, has an intranet benchmark to test Web server performance. Out next month, it rates a configuration of server, operating system, protocol stack, security, Web server software, relational database connection and database.
Netscape Communications Corp has bought two more of Sequent Computer Systems Inc’s Internet Accelerator boxes for FTP file transfer purposes. They are based on Sequent’s Symmetry 5000 Servers and Netscape has two already and are in addition to Netscape’s Network File System boxes from Network Appliance Corp.
MCI told us that $100m was the sum that British Telecommunications Plc and MCI Communications Corp planned to invest in their industrial strength Internet venture. Before the announcement, the Wall Street Jorunal hazarded a figure of $200m, Reuters persisted with a figure of $300m, which apparently originated with a British Telecom interview, the Wall Street Journal stuck with $200m after the event, the International Herald Tribune had $100m and the Financial Times went with multimillion dollar network before the event and no number after it. So we checked with MCI again, and they said, asserted, insisted, stressed, observed and assured us it was $100m .
Digital Equipment Corp chief executive Robert Palmer forecast yesterday that the price competition in personal computers will continue: Is the pricing madness temporary or is it going to continue? It’s going to continue… because there is a relent less improvement in the capability that personal computers can provide because of semiconductor technology, he told business executives and political leaders at a Northeastern University forum. He also likened computer products to vegetables in the supermarket – this stuff doesn’t age very well – if it begins to wilt, it no longer has value. So why does he stay in the business?
Hewlett-Packard Co has gone to Interphase Corp, Dallas for Asynchronous Transfer Mode networking adapters for use with the HP 9000 line.
