IN BRIEF

Ariba, Commerce One still reeling from dot com hangover
Ariba and Commerce One, two pioneers in the B2B software sector, both turned in their quarterly earnings results, and although both companies broadly fell in line with Wall Street estimates, the results are a far cry from last year’s stellar performances, when B2B was still booming and customers couldn’t install e-commerce software fast enough.

Ariba posted an operating loss of 3 cents a share, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of five cents. But its revenues tumbled to $55.3 million from $170.2 million the year before and Ariba said it saw no pickup in revenues going forward, until the economy turns around and normal spending resumes.

Commerce One posted a pro-forma operating loss of 23 cents a share, below the analyst consensus for a loss of 16 cents but not far out of the range of expected losses of 12 cents to 20 cents. Revenues fell to $56 million from $191.4 million a year ago.

Lucent posts loss, plans job cuts
Telecommunications equipment giant Lucent Technologies posted a fiscal first-quarter loss amid a severe telecom spending slump and said it will cut at least another 7,000 jobs, but added it was past the bottom with anticipated second-quarter growth. The Murray Hill, New Jersey-based company reported an operating loss before an income-tax benefit and other items of $1.28 billion, but it also said the quarter was the low point for its revenues and demand has stabilised.

The company also announced that it intends to cut its work force through June by at least another 7,000 jobs, or 11 percent, to below 55,000 2,000 below the previous lowest estimate. The cuts would be made through two previously announced divestitures and outsourcing of some manufacturing operations in Massachusetts.

VeriSign, IBM in security deal
IBM and network security provider VeriSign have formed a broad technology and marketing partnership aimed at improving authentication and access-control services for businesses. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In addition to developing new security services together, Armonk, New York-based IBM and Mountain View-based VeriSign said they would help market each other’s existing offerings. IBM already supplies VeriSign with some servers and other hardware, and the deal calls for more such purchases. But VeriSign also will continue to equip itself with gear from Sun Microsystems Inc., executives said.

Sprint suffers long distance outage
A malfunction at a Sprint facility caused major interruptions to long distance calls both to and from Florida, a company spokesman said. Estimates on how many callers were affected were not available, but the incident is being reported to the Federal Communications Commission as a major event affecting at least 90,000 calls. The outage affected only long-distance calls, including those made from homes, offices and cellular telephones.

Intel unveils new mobile chips
Intel has released seven new notebook processors, while across-the-freeway rival Advanced Micro Devices pumped up its budget desktop line-up with a new 1.3GHz Duron. The seven new mobile chips span the price and performance spectrum.

Santa Clara, California-based Intel also launched a 750MHz ultra-low voltage Pentium III-M for mini-notebooks, which weighs three pounds or less. The ultra-low voltage chips run on a half of a watt of energy or lower, far less than standard notebook chips, which means manufacturers can eliminate components normally needed to dissipate excess heat produced at higher energy levels.