7 Days - Week in Review

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, the ancients intoned. Recent events suggest that we should remember those wise words.

Tiny, the UK's largest computer vendor, has jumped on the industry's latest trend - giving away PCs. The only catch is customers must subscribe to TinyTelecom, a service set up by Tiny, Cable & Wireless Communications and Swedish telecoms carrier Telia.

Tiny joins software giant Microsoft, which said that US customers signing up for three years to its MSN Internet service will receive a 'free' PC.

The motive?

Vendors want to tie customers into specific Internet services, which will be good news for organisations launching ecommerce initiatives and those wanting guaranteed customers.

IBM has been busy. Its Corepoint business, launched last autumn to build customer service applications, was re-absorbed into Big Blue's software division. Three Corepoint executives refused to re-join IBM, opting for smaller start-ups. A spokesman said users want customer relationship management in a 'single ebusiness package'.

Big Blue also opened its fifth annual Solutions 99 developers conference.

Bob Timpson, IBM general manager of solution developer marketing, said delegates were interested in scalable and highly available systems which enable them to push beyond simple publishing on the web, and into ecommerce and online services.

IBM Global Services launched a privacy consulting service to help companies setting up online build practices which protect customer's personal information.

'Companies have to tell their customers they can be trusted with that information,' said an IBM Global Services spokesman.

Another IT giant, Unisys, was upbeat. Second-quarter results saw revenues up nine per cent to $1.89 billion (£1.18m) from last year, and revenues grow by 12% from the last quarter. Chief executive Lawrence Weinbach said Unisys is benefiting from growth in services and ecommerce.

'Our business is clearly benefiting from the trends that are reshaping business and government across the globe. We are seeing this increased demand in our order levels for services.'

Novell wasn't so chipper. The next release of its Netware operating system, codenamed Cobra, has missed its original beta release date of June. Cobra is slated to feature third-party tools such as IBM's WebSphere web application development tool, a five-user version of the Oracle 8i database, and the Netscape Enterprise Server web server.

The beta release date has slipped for several weeks because of the task of incorporating the third-party technologies, combined with shifting priorities at Novell, revealed a Novell insider who wished to remain anonymous.

Analyst IDC predicted a bleak future for Linux. Unless Microsoft ports its ever-popular applications to the open-source operating system, Linux will have 40,000 users in Western Europe in 2003, instead of more than four million, said IDC. However, according to a Microsoft internal email, leaked during its anti-trust trial with the US Department of Justice, the company considers Linux a threat. This means that the chances of Microsoft facilitating its rival's success with such a port are remote.

Elsewhere, ex-rivals were getting chummy. Jim Barksdale, former Netscape chief executive, and Brad Silverberg, who led Microsoft's Internet strategy, are financing a Silicon Valley start-up called Tellme Networks. The pair will invest $6 million in total in the company.

Tellme executives are vague about what the company hopes to achieve, simply saying that it will offer a service that changes the way the telephone is used.

The move underlines Silverberg's increasing status as an independent mover in Silicon Valley since his departure from Microsoft. Earlier this year, he was reported to have resisted attempts by Microsoft chairman and chief executive Bill Gates to lure him back with a fresh post, during the latest reorganisation of the software giant.

Finally, another former enemy of Silverberg, Sun Microsystems, announced its latest open standards initiative, called Jiro. Following in the footsteps of Java and Jini, Jiro is designed to let any storage management tool, application or applet interface with any other management tool.