Articles by Keith Regan

Signaling its intention to remain a player amid the giants in the search engine battle, Ask Jeeves said it will acquire the parent company of the Excite Network of search engines for about US$343 million in cash and stock Ask Jeeves said the acquisition of privately held Interactive Search Holdings will provide an immediate boost to its earnings an...

In a reminder that the rising tide of technology recovery is not lifting all boats, Gateway said it will slash another 1,000 jobs over the next few months as it tries to bring its costs back in line with revenues. Gateway CFO Rod Sherwood said in a financial update that the company could have a total of just 5,500 employees within the next "few mo...

In a move apparently designed to quell fears about widespread outsourcing of U.S.-based tech jobs to other countries, IBM has established a US$25 million worker retraining fund The fund, dubbed the Human Capital Alliance, will be made available to IBM workers whose current positions or skill-sets are being outsourced to such places as India, Pakist...

Microsoft and eBay have forged an alliance to work together, making it easier for third-party software developers to build tools that can improve the auction experience for power sellers and buyers. The tools will use basic Web services to more closely tie Microsoft Office 2003 applications, such as Excel and FrontPage, to the eBay platform. For i...

Microsoft has revealed it is considering rolling out an enhanced version of Windows XP, a move seen as a way to bridge what could be a longer-than-expected wait for its next-generation Longhorn platform. Executives at the Redmond, Washington-based software company said the project, known as "Windows XP Reloaded," would be more than a service pack ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has delivered a body blow to Oracle's languishing hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft, suing to block the US$9.4 billion takeover because it reportedly would result in higher prices, less innovation and fewer choices. "We believe this transaction is anticompetitive -- pure and simple," Assistant Attorney Genera...

Sun Microsystems has announced it will expand its HP Away programin a bid to lure Hewlett-Packard's Unix customers. The company will dangle its own Unix operatingsystem, Solaris, as an alternative to HP-UX Sun initially launched the HP Away strategy almost two years agowhen HP began to phase out its Alpha/Tru64 platform in favor ofItanium-based ser...

Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday it will introduce a line of servers preloaded with Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips, making it the latest major computer vendor to back Intel's top rival HP's move comes on the heels of decisions by IBM and Sun Microsystems to begin shipping machines with Opteron processors....

Microsoft and RSA Security have said they will work together to develop authentication technology, making it easier to secure Windows and keep sensitive corporate information safe. The announcement came at RSA's annual security conference in San Francisco Specifically, Microsoft said it will use RSA's SecurID technology to offer an alternative to t...

With a rash of major virus outbreaks still fresh in their minds, network administrators and others will flock in record numbers to the annual RSA Conference this week, where they will be met with a flood of new product and service announcements aimed at quelling security and privacy fears RSA's event this year will feature a keynote address from Mi...

Seeking to add clout to its fast-growing services business, Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to buy a Germany-based consulting firm for about US$420 million. The deal calls for HP to take over all three divisions of ThyssenKrupp Group's information technology consulting business: Triaton GmhB, which operates subsidiaries in Singapore, China and...

Hewlett-Packard said profits rose as sales improved in many of its business segments during its first fiscal quarter of 2004. Revenue totaled US$19.5 billion, up 9 percent from the same time frame in 2003. HP again turned a profit in all of its business units, marking just the second time it has done so since its merger with Compaq CEO Carly Fiorin...

Hoping to entice enterprises to plunge back into the information technology spending pool, Intel has unveiled a series of initiatives that it claims will make corporate computing inherently more secure and flexible The company, using the spotlight at the Intel Developers Forum to detail its vision of the future of enterprise computing, said several...

Yahoo has given the boot to longtime partner Google, saying its own family ofsearch tools, based on its own technology, will now return results to its users.The move puts an end to what had become an increasingly awkward relationship The severing of ties, which Yahoo hintedat earlier this year, also sets the stage for a far more aggressive head-to-...

Adding another feature to its on-demand computing initiative, IBM has released a set of tools that it says will help developers build computer applications and systems that can identify and fix their own problems before they cause havoc IBM's so-called autonomic computing tools are based on the Eclipse open-source framework and are designed to work...

Intel has won an appeal of a 2002 patent infringement award based on the technology that powers its Itanium chip line, overturning the earlier decision and possibly saving the company more than US$100 million The U.S. Court of Appeals set aside the October 10, 2002, ruling that found Intel had violated patents held by Intergraph. Intel already has ...

In what could be the beginning of the end of the Oracle-PeopleSoft takeover saga, staff attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) have recommended blocking the deal because it raises antitrust concerns The DoJ informed both companies late Tuesday of the recommendation, which will be used by the assistant attorney general in making a final d...

PeopleSoft's board of directors has rejected Oracle's latest takeover bid, saying the sweetened US$9.4 billion deal still undervalues the software firm The directors said they arrived at the decision that the offer is "inadequate from a financial point of view" after consulting with financial advisers including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. They als...

Juniper Networks has announced it will buy NetScreen Technologies in an all-stock deal worth an estimated US$4 billion. The pact gives number two network gear maker Juniper instant access to a well-regarded provider of network security solutions, including firewalls and virtual private networks "In the simplest terms, it's time to lead, and there's...

Microsoft has reached a deal with The Walt Disney Co. to help Disney deliver content over the Internet and to mobile devices using Microsoft's digital rights management (DRM) technology to prevent piracy The deal boosts Microsoft's bid to establish its DRM technology as the standard for delivering and protecting digital media....