Buy now for less
Analyst firm Butler Group says that organisations should invest in IT now, while prices are low. Skills are around 40% cheaper than in 2001, with web-related expertise particularly discounted, and enterprise application integration software, used to get programs to work together, is 70% cheaper. Tim Jennings, research director at Butler Group, says that those buying now will have an edge, as few other organisations will have the latest software. He adds that content management software for running web-sites - 60% cheaper than in 2001 - is a popular choice, and business intelligence software (down 55%), used for analysing business data, can help provide a competitive edge.

Real open source
RealNetworks last week announced an open source media player, which will allow Linux, Unix and Solaris users the access to media files currently available only to Windows and Mac users, through Real's free - although not open source - RealOne player. The software, the first release of which is planned for the last three months of this year, will be developed by members of the Helix development community, set up by Real. The move represents a multiformat approach to media files, unlike that taken by Real's major competitor, Microsoft. Real also said it will give $75,000 (£46,000) in grants to assist developments in digital media.

Grid iron
Oracle is planning to enter the grid computing arena next year with a new release of its Oracle 10G database, which will be unveiled at next month's OracleWorld conference in San Francisco. For some time, the database has been available across clustered servers to offer resilience and allow aggregation of processing power. Grid capabilities will spread the cluster across a corporate network, uniting server groups and storage arrays into a single, virtual resource. Oracle 10G will allow several databases to be held within the same grid so that processing power can be reallocated to handle spikes in demand, such as the preparation of financial reports at the end of each month.

Stalking Java
Microsoft has released its Indigo development software for simpler web service creation to select beta testers. The Indigo project, announced two years ago, is designed to be a "Java killer" by burying commonly used web services components into the next generation .Net Framework. Programmers will still have to write service-specific elements of the code, but the bulk of the application will call ready-made routines contained within the framework. Microsoft is expected to reveal more details about Indigo at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in October.

Small venture
Chartered Semiconductor, IBM and Infineon Technologies are jointly to develop 65 nanometre (nm) chips. The move is designed to make up ground on Intel, which plans to make its own 65nm technology available in 2005. Chips in development have internal circuit paths separated by 90nm, 1,000 times thinner than human hair, and the next generation will reduce the chip surface by a third. The power requirements will also be lower, but the production process will require expensive new tools and techniques. Chartered has been developing a manufacturing process designed to scale from 90nm down to 45nm. Development will take place at IBM's New York labs.
www.ibm.com/chips/news/2003/0806_foundry.html

Survival skills
Employers in the south-east are expecting more than 24,000 IT job losses over the next year, according to a report from E-skills UK, the sector skills council for IT, telecoms and contact centres. In the rest of the country, low growth of up to 4% is expected. The E-skills Regional Gap-UK report says most employers (57%) feel their staff require more skills, especially in programming and operating system management. Remedial action to keep the skills in line with needs will require stronger links between employers and educators to ensure that course content turns out graduates who are more "workplace ready", the report concludes.

Mail stress
More than a third of IT staff think that losing access to email for a week would be "more traumatic than events such as a car accident or getting a divorce", according to The Global E-Mail Burden, an international survey by Dynamic Markets, sponsored by Veritas, a storage software provider. The survey also found that email is now so important to businesses that 68% of companies say users get irate after as little as 30 minutes without access. If the system is down for 24 hours, almost a fifth of IT managers reckon their jobs would be on the line. The survey covered 850 IT managers in companies that employ more than 500 staff, including 100 each in the UK and the US.