Week in review

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) just can't get it right. The alliance's latest campaign against software piracy has run into trouble - with small businesses.

The BSA targeted dinky organisations with information packs and questionnaires, adopting what it called 'a firm and stark approach' to software piracy.

But John Harris, IT chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, told recipients to put the correspondence 'where it belonged - in the bin'.

He is concerned that the message is intrusive, erroneous and designed to induce fear.

Regulation was on the agenda for application service providers (ASPs). This mushrooming class of IT service providers needs an international organisation responsible for standards, say industry heavyweights.

The recently-created ASP Industry Consortium, which includes Microsoft, Lucent and Sun Microsystems, wants a scheme to guarantee quality of service.

Online shopping had a boost last week. The world's largest Internet cafe, easyEverything, opened its doors in London and founder Stelious Haji-Ioannou told traditional retailers to watch their backs.

Haji-Ioannou, founder and owner of budget airline easyJet, will charge users £1 an hour for access and expects to capitalise by putting the public in direct contact with vendors online, cutting out high street retailers.

Siemens and Fujitsu said they will merge their European computer operations.

The new company, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, will combine their PC, server and mainframe businesses, with a £5 billion revenue target for the fiscal year 2000.

Financial figures were a sore point for Compaq, again. Following lower-than-expected first quarter results, things look unsure for the second quarter too. Chairman and chief executive Ben Rosen blamed ongoing 'operational issues'.

Rosen also announced a restructuring which divides Compaq into enterprise solutions and services, personal computer and consumer groups.

Andreas Barth, Compaq's European chief, joined the senior-level exodus from the supplier last week.

One date-related software coding issue was dubbed a myth. NatWest Bank and Sainsbury's claimed to have experienced no problems in testing systems for the date 9/9/99.

Meanwhile, the UK government was concerned about its own year 2000 work.

Despite an upbeat appraisal saying 80% of mission-critical systems are compliant, Margaret Beckett, leader of the House, said some departments would be closely monitored to ensure compliance.

Bull joined the Linux fray. The company will set up consulting, applications support and technology integration units, and a Linux hotline. Bull will also certify some of its servers installed with Red Hat Software's Linux Version 6.

Sun's chairman, president and chief executive Scott McNealy, speaking at JavaOne, compared Microsoft software to another thing that crashes - cars. 'If this was the car business, the government would force Microsoft to recall every one of those things. Write safely, write in Java,' he said.

Did Bill care? Probably not, as his personal worth was valued at a nice $90 billion (£56bn), according to Forbes magazine's top 10 'working rich' list.