Week in review

The FBI'S most wanted: a who's who of American fugitives, desperados and outlaws.

Now Oracle has a 'most wanted' list of its own, according to a leaked email. Only this is a list of competitors in the increasingly hard-fought customer relationship management (CRM) market. On the list is little ol' Siebel Systems, Oracle's partner.

Traditional enterprise resource planning heavyweights SAP and PeopleSoft are not on the list, and are viewed as partners even though they are also trying to get into the CRM market.

Ray Lane, Oracle president and chief operating officer, says of Siebel that Oracle must 'make sure we use all resources to compete, not to partner'.

He adds: 'There will be others we will add to this list in the future.'

SAP took up the good fight against niche upstarts by launching its first CRM applications - SAP Internet Pricing and Configurator. The first in a range of modules, it is dependent on SAP's R/3 software, but the company plans to change this situation with future tools.

Novell was aiming big with iChain, a collection of products aimed at directory-based management of extranets. iChain will use Novell's popular Netware Directory Services for single-point network management, combined with authentication software that enables external users to securely browse the directory. iChain is scheduled for launch this summer.

Nostradamus not only wrongly predicted that the world would end on 4 July, he also failed to notice the death of Windows 9x. It emerged that Microsoft is racing to issue the first internal builds for Neptune this month - the code name for the final version of the post-Windows 9x kernel.

Neptune is the consumer version of Windows NT.

It also became clear that Microsoft should stop worrying about the threat posed by Linux to the enterprise incarnation of Windows NT. Jonathan Eunice, president of research company Illuminata, said Linux is not yet ready for enterprise use and will not be for some time. Speaking at the Open Source Forum, Eunice did say, however, that Linux would be a helpful way to get vendors to do what you want. 'When Microsoft, IBM or Hewlett-Packard come to call, it's useful to have a few (Linux) licences around,' he said.

Millennium fear was back in the news. Two London IT contractors launched a web-based staff placement service for IT staff working over the new year period. Contract2K wants skilled staff to register, specifying the dates they can work, minimum hourly pay rates and preferred locations.

They will then be asked to sign contracts guaranteeing their availability under these conditions. David Ellis, Contract2K director, said contractors were likely to demand between £500 and £5,000 a day, depending on their skills.

Compaq's attempted rebirth continued. The vendor revealed its intention to launch extranet sites for European corporate customers so these clients can order products directly.

The company also announced a new senior management team for Europe, Middle East and Africa (Emea), but showed no signs of appointing a new chief executive. All Emea executives will report directly to Werner Koepf, appointed vice president and general manager for Compaq Emea following the resignation of Andreas Barth.

As for that ever-elusive new chief executive, Business Week magazine claims one candidate dropped out because of acting chief executive Ben Rosen's desire to keep a close eye on the way the company is run.

The telecoms industry awaited publication of a report into greater competition in the UK phone network. Regulator Oftel, under director general David Edmonds, will decide whether or not customers need greater competition in the last mile. This is the section between the telco's national network and customers' doorsteps, virtually dominated by BT.

BT's competitors fear that if the telco giant retains control of the loop, it will be unable to adequately fund deployment of a new generation of high-speed network technologies, including asymmetric digital subscriber line.

Things certainly did get dirty in data. A survey by data migration consultancy Avellino listed 10 reasons why migration of data fails. Included on the list is the fact that people expect data migration tools to work upon deployment and without additional work - funny, that.

Finally, that nice company Apple decided to play rough. Lawyers were reported to have filed a federal complaint against clone manufacturer Future Power for allegedly knocking off the popular iMac design.

The E-Power, due to ship in September, bears a striking resemblance to the iMac and, like Apple's machine, will be available in five colours.

The E-Power runs Windows and will sell for $799 (£480). Apple said it will sue for actual and punitive damages for the infringement on its product, which shipped in August 1998.