Articles by Keith Regan

Oracle said increased license revenues from existing customers and a steadily improving economy helped drive a 15 percent increase in profit in the company's fourth quarter Oracle rang up a profit of US$990 million for the quarter, up from $858 million in the same quarter last year, narrowly beating Wall Street expectations and marking its sixth st...

Consumer prices surged higher in May, driven mainly by rising fuel and food costs, the government said in a report that is seen as the final piece of evidence needed to justify interest rate hikes The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6 percent last month, the largest one-month jump in retail prices since January of 2001. Forecasters had called for...

The vast majority of jobs lost to outsourcing stay within the U.S., with a small percentage actually ending up filled by overseas workers, according to a Department of Labor study. The agency's Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a report that just 4,633 of the 239,361 jobs lost in large-scale layoffs it tracked in the first quarter of 2004 were ac...

The Bush administration said Wednesday it will not pursue an appeal of a court ruling that frees regional telecommunications giants from having to sell wholesale access to their networks to nationwide carriers at discount prices. The decision by U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson not to seek Supreme Court review of a March appeals court ruling ...

Count Jonathan Bingham among those who weren't all that surprised by the reputed breach of security that may have resulted in Cisco's guarded Internet Operating System source code being pilfered and posted on the Web. It's not that Bingham, a former Forrester Research analyst who is now president of Intrusic, thinks Cisco has weak network security...

Sales of mobile phones jumped sharply to record-setting levels during the first quarter, but longtime leader Nokia saw its share of the market fall to the lowest level in five years, according to a report from Gartner. Nokia's share of the cell phone market fell from 34.6 percent a year ago to 28.9 percent in the first quarter, even though the Fin...

Attorneys for Oracle opened their challenge of the U.S. government's attempt to block the company's purchase of PeopleSoft by pointing to the recently revealed Microsoft and SAP merger talks as proof that the enterprise application business is much larger than regulators contend Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers, meanwhile, billed the news that M...

General Motors will invest US$3 billion to expand operations in China in the next three years, a massive outlay of capital that will enable it to double its output in the country that is home to one of the world's fastest-growing economies. GM, the world's leading automaker, and its partners will introduce some 20 new vehicles, including American-...

Microsoft has won a patent related to the timing of button-clicks on handheld computers and similar devices, sparking concerns among some companies and industry observers that the software giant will attempt to reap licensing fees for what many view as a common practice. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Patent No. 6,727,830 to Microsof...

Seagate Technology, a maker of hard-disk drives, plans to cut nearly 3,000 jobs in a bid to save US$150 million as it deals with what it described as fiercer-than-expected pressure to lower prices. The company said it will eliminate 2,940 jobs through attrition or layoffs, shedding about 7 percent of its worldwide workforce of about 42,000. Making...

A group of technology and consulting companies led by Accenture has landed a U.S. federal contract that could be worth as much as US$10 billion. The contract calls for them to implement a border access system that will rely heavily on biometrics and other technologies to track foreign visitors to the United States. The Department of Homeland Secur...

Online sales grew more than 50 percent in 2003, soaring past the US$100 billion level and turning increasingly profitable, according to a new report from Shop.org and Forrester Research. The "State of Retailing Online 7.0" says sales reached $114 billion in 2003, a 51 percent year-over-year increase, and are poised to post double-digit growth rate...

Police in Taiwan have arrested Wang An-ping, a 30-year-old man who reportedly admitted to authoring Trojan code later used to steal and destroy information on government-owned computers Wang reportedly told police that he developed the software as a commercial venture but eventually posted the code for free on the Web, including to some Chinese-lan...

Database sales posted strong gains in 2003, with IBM and Microsoft winning market share but Oracle benefiting the most from the rise of Linux, according to a new report from Gartner Dataquest. Gartner said the worldwide market for relational database management systems grew 5.1 percent last year to nearly US$7.1 billion, a dramatic improvement ove...

Seeking to move beyond a US$2 billion accounting scandal, Computer Associates has offered to make a $10 million payment to put the probe to rest and has rolled out an information security product and services push designed to capitalize on what is already a strong growth area. Against the backdrop of its annual customer confab in Las Vegas, Nevada...

Toysrus.com has sued Amazon.com, the company that has run its online store since early 2000, claiming the e-tail giant violated an exclusivity agreement and seeking US$200 million in damages. The online wing of Toys 'R' Us claims Amazon is in breach of the original agreement between the two companies because it now offers products in the games cat...

Lucent Technologies said Monday that it will pay about US$295 million to acquire Telica, a provider of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gear, in the latest deal to underscore the emergence of the Internet as a tool for traditional telecommunications. Lucent will dish out 92.7 million stock shares and options to acquire the privately held firm, ...

Corporations will replace 100 million personal computers this year and even more in 2005, helping to drive a year-over-year increase in PC sales of about 14 percent in 2004, according to a report from research firm Gartner. Gartner said the improving economy will lead to widespread replacement of desktop machines now in service, many of which date...

Symantec has announced it will buy spam-filtering company Brightmail in a deal worth US$370 million, adding spam-stopping capabilities to its antivirus and security gateway. The all-cash deal is expected to close in July, and Symantec said it is "too early to estimate" the impact of the acquisition on its revenue and earnings.

Hewlett-Packard posted its best sales figures in company history during the second quarter, exceeding analysts' revenue expectations and matching profit forecasts as demand for printers, servers and outsourcing services remained strong. Offering more evidence that its 2002 merger with Compaq was a good idea, HP posted record sales of US$20.1 billi...