Stephen Lawson

Java pioneer Sun Microsystems Inc. and cell-phone chip maker Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) are joining to make it easier for phone makers and mobile operators to get Java-based applications out to end users, the companies announced Wednesday.

An e-mail-borne virus that apparently originated in Germany is in the wild but has not yet spread widely or affected many users, an antivirus researcher said Monday.

If Sun Microsystems Inc.'s meetings this week with potential customers at ITU Telecom World 2003 in Geneva go as planned, the initiatives and products the company introduces Tuesday should have an impact across cellular carriers, enterprises and mobile application developers.

IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. want to make it easier to diagnose and solve problems in an enterprise's IT infrastructure, even to the point where it can do that by itself.

Several makers of components that go into networking equipment have agreed on a specification for high-speed communication among their chips, which could lead to smaller, less power-hungry and less expensive network gear.

Hewlett-Packard Co. again signaled its intention to play major league ball in networking with the introduction Monday of new management software and high-speed Ethernet equipment.

Intel Corp. on Thursday backed up its line of programmable networking chips with new development platforms, an updated software development kit, professional services and a tool for estimating product performance.

Organizations are snapping up software to handle their stored data, according to an IDC report released this week that shows more than US$1.5 billion was spent on storage software worldwide in the second quarter, up 7.3 per cent from the previous quarter.