10 Years Ago In IT: The Winds Of September 2000

10 Years Ago: September 2000

September 2000 was a tumultuous time for IT companies. The stock market was volatile and many Web services firms were on the rocks. Mainstays such as Microsoft and 3Com made headlines, too. The rah-rah days of business plans on cocktail napkins, however, were coming to an end.

Visual Studio.Net: Write Once, Run Everywhere?

At Gartner's Application Development 2000 Summit, Microsoft claimed it would do with .Net what Sun refused to do with Java: push it as an open standard. However, that level of openness on Microsoft's part was more of a long-term possibility than a near-term reality, said industry experts. Microsoft's Dave Lazar, Microsoft group product manager for Visual Studio.Net, conceded: "It'll take some time to get there."

Bye, Bye Benhamou

Eric Benhamou said he would step down as CEO of 3Com at the end of the year, ending his 10-year reign as the head of the networking giant.

He is now CEO of Benhamou Venture Group, where he assists other entrepreneurs in building or running a new generation of high-technology companies.

Storage-Over-IP Venture Raises $43 Million

Executives from 3ware said the company secured $43 million in its Series D equity funding round. Contributing storage vendors included Quantum Technology Ventures and Veritas Software.

3ware, founded in 1997, raised a total of $54 million, including that round, said Bo Vrolyk, president and CEO of the company.

IBM To Offer E-Business Services Hosted By AT&T

AT&T and IBM Global Services entered into a $450 million agreement through which IBM planned to offer e-business hosting services at AT&T data centers.

Compaq's Windows 2000 Datacenter Server Plans

Compaq Computer became the first server and storage vendor to outline a strategy related to Microsoft's Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

The strategy was based on scalable systems, including 32-way ProLiant servers, four-node clusters of its servers, and its StorageWorks storage hardware and SANworks storage software products.

US Interactive Warns Of Q3 Shortfall

In what was the beginning of the end for the highly publicized solution provider, US Interactive's woes continued as it followed in the footsteps of Web integrators such as iXL, Xpedior and Viant by issuing a third-quarter earnings warning. It also said it would cut 15 percent of its staff.

Giga's Hacker Expert, IBM's Olympic Woes

Notorious computer hacker Kevin Mitnick gave a speech at Giga Information Group's Infrastructure for E-Business conference in Los Angeles. Though the audience was appreciative, the FBI was not. Giga analyst Steve Hunt said an FBI agent gave him "a lot of grief" for having Mitnick speak.

In other news, CRN's Shadowram reported that Dell execs were out and about bragging that the vendor is powering the server and storage technology behind USA Today's Olympics Web site -- a boast that had to hit IBM President Sam Palmisano where it hurt. (Palmisano took the top slot formally in September 2000.)

Wall Street Wilts

The market continued its downward spiral with tech stocks hitting new 52-week lows.

Scient And Buy.com Reinvent Themselves

As times got tougher, the tough started to re-evaluate their market strengths. Scient continued to work to shed its reputation as a predominantly front-end Web solution provider. Before a disastrous next 12 months, the Web integrator saw its stock peak in the fall of 2000, to $133 a share.

Meanwhile, Buy.com was thinking smaller; it moved to compete with SMB-focused Internet services firms such as CenterBeam and Onvia.com, both of which provided subscription-based online services to smaller firms.

SAN Usage Emerges

As businesses scrambled to keep up with storage demands that grew along with Internet usage, one in four information-technology buyers nationwide were incorporating storage-area networks into their purchasing strategies, according to a first-quarter Reality Research & Consulting study that gathered 5,880 responses.