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In recent months, a few large e-tailers, including Target.com and Walmart.com (NYSE: WMT), started charging sales tax on purchases made through their sites. Although this event took place largely without fanfare, it marked a watershed moment in the history of online commerce. ...

Once a company has centralized access to all of its storage, Marrone said, it is time to take a hard look at its data and begin cleaning house. She said most storage is filled with nonessential data, duplicate files and customer records that have not been accessed for years. Although this is a daunting task, Marrone said there are now tools available to help IT staff assess, reclaim, clean up and redistribute storage resources. "You really should use networking in conjunction with tools that let you drill down and see how effectively you're using your storage space," she noted...

Apple's new iTunes Music Store might be justifiably called Napster's legitimate heir. Unlike competing music services like PressPlay or Rhapsody, the iTunes Store does not entail complicated subscriptions, mandatory fees or inconsistent pricing schemes. Instead, users may choose from a catalog of more than 200,000 songs encompassing selections from all of the "Big 5" record labels -- and once a song is purchased for a flat 99-cent fee, it can be burned to a CD or copied to another computer or iPod device with few restrictions...

It all started so well. After a high-flying IPO on October 29, 1999, when its stock closed at $145 per share, Akamai quickly established stellar buzz as a myriad companies signed up for its services and became "Akamaized." With more than 13,000 computers in 63 countries by the end of 2000, the company took on a vital role in the way large customers, such as CNN, hosted popular Web sites. Glitzy events like Webcasting the Victoria's Secret show made it the toast of the dot-com kingdom, and a brainy staff from MIT did not hurt its image, either...

As Microsoft ramps up its Windows Server 2003 launch, enterprises large and small are trying to decide whether to upgrade to the new platform. Analysts interviewed for part 1 of this article agreed that, on the whole, Microsoft's latest server OS is solid, stable and offers useful new features. ...

After much waiting and ample fanfare, Microsoft finally is launching its Windows Server 2003 platform. Although the company declined to comment, its Web site bills the new operating system as "a highly productive infrastructure that helps make your network a strategic asset for your organization." ...

When it comes to choosing a database, size matters -- not so much the size of the database, but the size of the company. Whereas mid-size to large companies generally select a complex database and then task administrators and developers with building applications around it, small businesses usually take a different tack, focusing on simplicity and ease of use, because they often do not have an administrator on staff...

And consolidation is not about being cheap above all else. It's about avoiding management complexity, and thereby saving on labor costs, by putting more and more relatively inexpensive microprocessor-based computers into a single device that's easy to maintain. Estimates are that labor -- including maintenance, scheduling backups and troubleshooting -- can make up 70 percent of the cost of running an IT shop. Consolidation can cut staff requirements, theoretically, and what makes consolidation possible is not cheap chips or free software, but technology. That's where Apple can shine.

Nearly six years have passed since Microsoft agreed to invest US$150 million in Apple Computer and continue developing Mac versions of its Office application suite for at least five years ...

Indeed, Gartner research director Rich Mogull told the E-Commerce Times that antivirus software should be an important consideration for IT managers. He also said that having a dedicated security engineer on staff is at least as basic as firewall protection. "You've got to ha...

Overall, to ensure a smooth transition, IT staff should start by drafting or mapping a process for the switch and making sure all parties impacted are aware of the plan well in advance. This may be more complex than it sounds, since coordinating a changeover could require working around projects currently running on the database to be replaced.

Pummeled by general economic woes and skidding demand for its handheldcomputers, Palm has announced a projected earnings shortfall, on the heels of the dismissal of nearly 20 percent of its staff. Adding insult to injury, as about 250 pink slips were being delivered Friday, financial house J.P. Morgan lowered Palm's rating from "neutral" to "underweight."

In these circumstances, what should a company that has survived the tech implosion do next -- and how can it make the most of a bare-bones IT budget? The answer is twofold. First, despite increased pressure on IT managers, some newer technologies may make their jobs easier by enabling them to get more work done with fewer staff. Second, as productivity becomes a mantra, the hope is that top management may stop shouting for things to get done, and instead get involved in planning projects from the get-go...

To achieve its goal, IBM recently announced it will hire about 500 software sales and support staff this year to target mid-market organizations. "We have to have services that are more product-like, and we're investing millions of dollars to get at that," Oliver said. "None of the very big players has really cracked the mid-market."

Even a simple implementation of networked data storage is better than nothing. Giga Information Group senior analyst Jon Erikson told the E-Commerce Times that the ability to replace many server platforms with one or more NAS boxes cuts down on staff requirements. Despite an initial learning curve, "daily maintenance and support would be reduced by 60 percent" compared with the jumble of disks and servers used previously.

However, Dell noted, the moves do not indicate a change in its overall direct sales focus. Although the kiosks will be staffed by Dell representatives, customers will place orders through them either online or by phone. The information-booth-size kiosks will display desktop and portable computers, as well as software and accessories...

Most large industries already have well-established online exchanges, many featuring auction-style pricing formats, he said. Those exchanges are often staffed with industry experts. Meanwhile, several companies that bet heavily on the B2B marketplace, such as software maker Commerce One, have fallen on hard times.

More transparent backup, since traditional data backup can stress the resourcesof an integrated LAN and slow communication traffic. Desire and Need Enterprise equipment purchasers might waffle on the question of whethersegregation of storage is necessary or is merely an expensive wish-list item onthe balance sheet. But among analysts, who admittedly do not have to justifyexpenditures, the answer is clear-cut. David Hill, vice president of storage research at Aberdeen Group, takesa firm stand in the former camp. Citing smoother moving and processing ofdata, he told the E-Commerce Times that "storage must become a separate entity." Giga Information Group senior analyst Anders Lofgren could hardly state the case emphatically enough, especially for large enterprises. "We recommend, if they have not implemented network storage, they should definitely do so. Obviously, early on, there will perhaps be additional costs: You have to buy a bunch of switches, and there's a learning curve." But Lofgren noted that once an enterprise consolidates storage in a network architecture, it will benefit from economies of scale as the information archive grows. Meanwhile, Brad Nisbet, senior research analyst at IDC, observed that reducedadministration costs can be another benefit of SAN deployment. "With a SAN, youcan theoretically grow your storage capacity without growing your staff. Itcomes down to looking at the broader picture," he told the E-Commerce Times. Virtual or Real? For those companies that are reluctant to shell out capital for an entirely new network setup, software virtualization can be a cheaper alternative to building a physicalstorage network. By creating a virtual network that pools storage resources across multiple servers, administrators can optimize and better navigate their storage topography without making a heavy investment in hardware. But Giga's Lofgren told the E-Commerce Times that virtualization is not an important part of the future. Although smaller vendors are playing in the virtualization market, larger vendors have not stepped in yet. Furthermore, according to Lofgren,distorted use of the term to define a variety of products has stripped the word of meaning and undermined its marketing legitimacy. "Vendors are backing away from it," he said. On the other hand, Laura Koetzle, an infrastructure analyst with Forrester Research, maintains a more sanguine attitude toward virtualization of traditional storage, asserting that a virtual view of storage within a larger network can be just as useful as a discrete physical network dedicated to storage when it comes to allocating unused disk space. Bottom Line Indeed, while it is all well and good to say that corporations should buy networked storage solutions, the harsh reality in today's IT climate is that companies' choices may depend as much on cost as on technical specifications. Therefore, it is likely that many enterprises will choose their storage solutions based on short-term necessity, rather than long-term structural planning. Koetzle suggested that IT buyers ask themselves, "Is the application that I'm building really one that requires a discrete storage network?" If a majority of buyers answer "no" to that question, network vendors will get hungrier, and further consolidation can be expected in the storage market. If they answer "yes," the market will grow more quickly. Either way, SAN technology is not going away. As IT spending recovers, it will become a must-have for more and more enterprises. The only question is, which companies will be ahead of the curve? ...

Marius Haas, vice president of worldwide e-business mindshare at Hewlett-Packard, worked for Compaq for seven years before that company merged with HP. He also led efforts to integrate both companies' e-business groups during the nine months preceding the official merger. According to Haas, that integration has gone well ...

For example, Microsoft said recently that USAToday.com has used a .NET model to make it easier and faster for staff members to update its site, and The New York Times has utilized similar technology on its Web site. In addition, according to the software giant, food maker Kraft, Continental Air Lines and the central bank of Costa Rica have deployed .NET to varying degrees.