Data & Analytics

With their deployment of advance communication systems, small businesses are scoring big with their customers.

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s recent decision to acquire back-up tape vendor StorageTek Corp. for US$4.1 billion has left at least one analyst scratching his head, wondering exactly why the deal occurred. "Buying a company that is primarily tape (technology) today doesn't look like an exciting play for a forward-thinking company like Sun," said Frank Gillett, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc.

MSN Canada hopes to help Canadian ISPs and e-mail service providers stop their network from being used to deliver spam e-mails with the launch of the MSN Postmaster Web site. MSN Postmaster, available in both French and English, will provide information and tools that address a variety of issues around spam, as well as information on ways to fight junk e-mail and reporting and tracking spam.

In dealing with spam, that flood of unwanted and unsolicited e-mail that can sometimes clog in-boxes, there are only three basic ways of tackling the problem, even though one is unrealistic. The unrealistic one is not having e-mail at all; no e-mail address, no spam. Since that is not an option, the two other options are to tackle the problem in-house or to find an outsourced anti-spam solution. Both are excellent means of controlling spam but the decision to go with one or the other will be based on considerations that have little to do with the spam e-mails themselves.

When even U.S. space agency NASA is bringing business intelligence (BI) onboard to improve its IT processes, the average enterprise should stand up and take notice. Ronald Phelps, program manager for National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Birmingham City Council has launched one of the U.K.'s most ambitious open-source trials to date, shifting 1,500 client computers and associated server infrastructure to Linux and other open-source software. The year-long trial is designed to generate objective information on open source's benefits, according to the U.K. city's council. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) via the e-Innovations program is funding the trial, which is part of a wider project called Open Source Academy.

Veritas Software Corp.

Extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) technology may not be the sexiest of topics, but that apparently doesn