In-Depth

Industry News

• 11/01/2000

The official Olympic Games Web site -- designed, developed and hosted by IBM -- set a record for Olympics Web readership during the course of the Sidney, Australia Games. The site handled unprecedented Internet traffic with 11.3 billion hits, a 1,700 percent increase over the Nagano Games’ official site in 1998. More than 13 million lines of software code were written and tested before the Games began. Almost 6,000 people provided technology support for 300 medal events in 37 sports competitions held at 39 venues.

During the course of the Games, Olympics.com was the most popular destination on the Internet. More than 8.7 million unique visitors accounted for 230 million Web page views from September 13 when competition began until the closing ceremony on October 1. Olympics.com was the only site that offered comprehensive results for every sport, every athlete and every country.

The majority of visitors, 62 percent, were from countries outside the United States. Countries generating the most traffic were: United States, 38 percent; Australia, 17 percent; Canada, 7 percent; United Kingdom, 5 percent; Japan, 3 percent; and 2 percent each for Germany, Italy, China and France.

IBM has been involved with the Olympic Games since 1960, when it used computer punch cards to tally results at the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, Calif. IBM’s relationship with the International Olympic Committee ends December 31, 2000.

Other Olympics.com statistics for September 13-October 1:

• Total page views: 230 million

• Total unique visitors: 8.7 million

• Total number of hits: 11.3 billion

• Highest traffic level recorded: 1.2 million hits per minute, September 27 at 3:19 pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time) during the bronze medal Japan vs. Korea baseball game, women’s gold medal tennis match between the United States and Russia, and the cycling road race.

• Highest total number of hits in a single day: 874.5 million on September 26

IBM, Microsoft, Arthur Andersen, Avaya, Hanny Holdings, and others will launch Enfrastructure Inc., a full-service business infrastructure and technology provider. The companies are investing more than $100 million to set up 25 campuses worldwide to provide technology infrastructure, business support and professional services.

Enfrastructure will combine e-commerce software from Microsoft, hardware products from IBM, accounting and financial expertise from Arthur Andersen and telecommunications and voice networking solutions from Avaya. Hanny Holdings is the group’s Asian partner.

Rather than investing upfront to buy and integrate hardware, software and telecommunications solutions, as well as secure and guarantee office space, companies will be able to preserve capital by paying only for products and services they consume. The reduction in initial infrastructure costs should increase the amount of capital available for ongoing operations -- a key competitive advantage.

In turn, the companies will be able to focus on accelerating concept and product development, while reducing time to market and preserving capital for more strategic purposes.

The first campus is expected to open in December in Orange County, Calif. Beginning in the first quarter of 2001, Enfrastructure campuses will open in New York, Northern California, Colorado and other key technology markets across the United States, as well as throughout Asia. The European expansion will begin in the fourth quarter of 2001.

Initial targeted clients include technology, Internet and biotech companies. Enfrastructure will be headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Sun Microsystems Inc. will establish an Accessibility Technologies Lab to work on technology development for people with disabilities. The lab will work to develop an assistive technologies framework for utilities, device drivers and voice interaction capabilities for the upcoming GNOME 2.0 -- a free, open-source, and easy-to-use user environment. In addition, Sun also announced it will be working with the GNOME Foundation, an organization of open community developers and leading high-technology companies, to establish the GNOME Foundation accessibility development fund that will be used to provide grants for projects that provide research, and that develop assistive technology for the GNOME user environment. This fund will be managed by the GNOME Foundation.

Essential Systems Technical Consulting has acquired marketing rights to ReSource, the patented technology for recovering lost COBOL or Assembler source code from MVS executable modules. Source Recovery Inc. recently transferred the patented ReSource product back to the original founders of the technology. Essential Systems Technical Consulting will now offer this recovery service in conjunction with its own Source-In-Load product as well as Edge Information Group’s Portfolio Analyzer.

Aceva Technologies Inc. (formerly InPurchase), a managed e-finance infrastructure provider will augment its e-finance platform with HNC Software’s credit decisioning for business-to-business e-commerce. This partnership enables companies and e-marketplaces to conduct business commerce in realtime over the Internet, and effectively manage business relationships at Internet speed.

Under the terms of the partnership, Aceva extends its trade credit decisioning services by integrating HNC’s Capstone Decision Manager into the Aceva managed eFinance platform.

Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems will join to deliver high-availability solutions based on the latest software and hardware technologies available from both companies. The new solutions address the high-availability requirements of enterprise applications, e-commerce Web sites and collaborative online exchanges.

As a result of the initiative, Oracle and Sun are introducing Oracle Parallel Fail Safe on Sun Enterprise servers (including the recently announced UltraSPARC III processor-based Sun Fire systems) and Sun StorEdge arrays running Sun Cluster software, providing sub-30-second failover time. The Oracle and Sun high-availability development efforts evolved out of the Oracle E-Business Continuity and the SunUPSM programs.

Oracle and Sun also plan to deliver additional high availability for disaster recovery protection based on the recently announced Oracle Data Guard. Availability of these jointly developed and tested solutions is scheduled for Spring 2001.

FullArmor Corp., a provider of enterprise policy management (EPM) technology, has entered into a strategic business partnership with Compaq Computer Corporation. Through the partnership, Compaq Professional Services will provide its customers with FullArmor’s Zero Administration (FAZAM) for Windows NT and FAZAM 2000 EPM solutions. Compaq’s Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000 customers will be able to utilize FAZAM for Windows NT to flexibly enhance the management and control of their distributed, enterprisewide, IT infrastructure, while Compaq’s Windows 2000 customers who choose to deploy FAZAM 2000 will be able to manage Active Directory’s Group Policy to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), and increase manageability.

Computron Software Incorporated, a global provider of e-commerce and business solutions, signed a $1.3-million contract with the Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS) to implement Computron’s four e-Cellerator products, which include AXSDesk, TransAXS Procurement, TransAXS Vendor and AXSPoint Exchange. These solutions will be used to manage MCCS’ business processes for its 18 sites throughout the United States and Japan.

The Marine Corps Exchanges and Business Programs, a part of MCCS, offer a variety of goods and services to active duty and retired Marine Corps personnel and their families. Computron e-Cellerator solutions will enable online product review, requisitioning and procurement, integrated with the MCCS back-office, so that online requisitioners can browse and search catalogues, receive online approval for purchase orders, track order status and create customized profiles.

Before the inception of e-Cellerators, employees had to be trained to use a specific client server system. With TransAXS Procurement, specific training is not needed, as the Web-based user-format is intuitive and customized by the user. In addition to the simplification of the entire requisition process, MCCS will see a simplification in the general ledger reporter through the use of AXSPoint Exchange. AXSDesk will provide MCCS with secure, Web-based access to financial applications. TransAXS Vendor will be the last e-Cellerator product implemented, and will give MCCS vendors self-service access to information in a secure environment.

Hewlett-Packard and SEAGULL announced an agreement to integrate host-based applications with HP solutions, including the delivery of mobile e-services to business customers using SEAGULL’s Wireless-to-Host software technology.

As the first initiative under this agreement, SEAGULL’s Wireless-to-Host solution will be delivered using HP’s hardware and services to allow businesses to quickly make host-based applications accessible via Web-ready wireless devices, such as the HP Jornada running on the Microsoft Pocket PC platform.

SEAGULL also will be a part of the HP Mobile E-Services Bazaar. The HP bazaar combines an online e-services trading community open to HP partners and developers, with locations in Asia-Pacific and Finland (and soon in the United States), for the developing and testing of new value-added applications.