John Blau

Times are tough for IT managers in Germany where an ailing economy has prompted numerous enterprises to slash costs for computer equipment and services. That was the unavoidable message at the two-day IT Meets Business conference, which opened Monday in Munich.

Deutsche Telekom AG (DT) Chairman Kai-Uwe Ricke has denied rumors that the group's Internet unit is in talks to acquire Time Warner Inc.'s American Online (AOL) division, although analysts expect the German telecom giant to make one or two key acquisitions in the months ahead and build its international online presence.

Consumers and businesses in Germany, the largest computer market in Europe, are buying more computers after holding back on IT spending for the past two years.

German consumers and small businesses seeking cheap telephone service in addition to high-speed Internet access can plug into a new Net offering next month.

Even though interest in open source software is high in Germany's public sector, Microsoft Corp. continues to grab contracts with local authorities.

Leave it to the talkative Italians to introduce a new mobile phone service that allows up to nearly a dozen users to join a wireless conference call and pay only for their portion of the call.

Momentum to migrate from Microsoft Corp. products to open source software is rapidly gaining in Germany, where numerous enterprises are reacting to the U.S. software giant's licensing policy.

In a move that could help enterprises more easily expand their use of open source software beyond the Linux operating system, SuSE Linux AG is proposing a new service program for middleware products based on open code.