Peter Sayer

Symantec shareholders will own around 60 per cent of the merged company, which will retain the Symantec name, the companies said in a joint announcement.

Negotiations are almost complete, and the companies could announce a deal this week, according to the report.

British Telecommunications PLC (BT) plans to migrate its U.K. call centres to a new voice over IP (VoIP) system over the next two years, allowing around 9,700 call centre agents on 124 sites to work as one team in a single, virtual, customer contact centre.

Among other things, UNESCO and Microsoft will work together to create a syllabus for integrating IT into teaching; train teachers in the use of IT.

The city of Paris intends to reduce its dependence on software suppliers with "de facto monopolies," but considers an immediate switch of its 17,000 desktops to open source software too costly.

The city of Paris intends to reduce its dependence on software suppliers with "de facto monopolies," but considers an immediate switch of its 17,000 desktops to open source software too costly, it said Wednesday.

China's project to build an open computing platform got a boost Saturday as two European companies added their weight to a January agreement between China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and France's atomic energy authority, the Commissariat

Microsoft Corp. is behind schedule in complying with a court order to document its proprietary communications protocols, according to U.S. authorities monitoring its behavior. It also plans to release the documents in a file format that cannot be annotated, and can only be used with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, they said in a report published Friday.