Monday, December 3, 2001		Latest in IT world

Dataquest study

The economic slowdown will spell the end of the one-stop-shop telecommunications vendors, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner, Inc. "Of the world’s eight leading telecom equipment vendors, all of which until this year were aiming to become suppliers of practically all gear needed by their carrier clients, none will be able to realise this dream," Bhawani Shankar, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest’s Worldwide Telecommunications and Networking group said. "Although the leading players will remain, their product portfolios, their market focus and indeed, the nature of their relationships with their clients is destined to change radically," Shankar said. Gartner Dataquest has released its latest telecommunications research spotlight report "Shake-Up Looms for Eight Leading Telecom Vendors," which examines how the world’s eight leading telecom equipment vendors are positioned today and what they need to do to succeed in the future. The report provides detailed analysis on Alcatel, Cisco Systems,Ericsson, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks and Siemens Information and Communications.

An Internet worm that leaves infected computers vulnerable to future hacking by tracking what is typed on the keyboard, including passwords and credit card details, was spreading rapidly last week, computer security companies warned according to Reuters. The worm, called "Badtrans," spreads through Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express e-mail programs automatically sends itself to unanswered e-mails in inboxes, according to several anti-virus companies. The attachment, which contains the malicious program, can be executed simply by reading or previewing it and doesn’t need to be double clicked or opened separately, experts said. The worm contains a keystroke logger which can be used to record what people type to obtain passwords and credit card numbers, they said. "It does no damage to files but does drop a backdoor Trojan on the machine which would allow a hacker to come back and access personal information," said April Goostree, virus research manager at McAfee.com.

Sony Corp plans to introduce new credit card service for making shopping over the Internet safer and easier. Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp said on Wednesday it plans to introduce a new credit card service aimed at making shopping over the Internet safer and easier.The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that Sony, which now issues credit cards in tie-ups with major credit card companies, would begin issuing its own cards next spring with the aim of providing services better tailored to specific needs, according to news agency. The newspaper said that Sony Finance International Inc, Sony’s wholly owned credit card subsidiary, will begin issuing cards to Sony employees at the start of next year, and will start soliciting customers from the general public in the spring.

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) has commenced the process of sourcing a minimum of 155 MBPS international bandwidth through submarine fibre optic cable, a top official has said. An international tender has been invited for selecting a fibre optic bandwidth provider and once the process is over, STPI will have around 300 MBPS of bandwidth, Mr S.N. Zindal, Director General of STPI, told Business Line. Mr Zindal said STPI is looking for international fibre connectivity from its centres in India to North America.