John Lamb's Week: Hail the red-eyed road warriors

Sorting out customer complaints and other business foul-ups can be a time-consuming exercise. The longer it takes, the worse your service looks. On Monday, the software firm Pegasystems is announcing a product that will automate the exercise with a set of rules that the supplier claims can regulate most software systems a company uses.

Details were sketchy at the time of writing, but applications covered include customer relationship management, business intelligence and knowledge management. Initially aimed at companies in the financial sector, Pegasystems says its PegaRules product can reduce a half-day spent shuffling through records to resolve a problem down to five minutes.

Storage, now a critical element in the IT mix, also creates a fair number of headaches for user companies, not least the incompatibilities between storage products from different vendors. Both network area storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SANs) suffer from bad attacks of the 'not invented here' syndrome.

However, there is now belated interest in open standards. BMC, which debuts its Patrol Storage Network Manager software on Monday, is the latest entrant in the open storage management market. BMC has developed software that can interrogate a number of otherwise incompatible systems, obtain performance data from them and launch the appropriate vendor management tools.

US executives are impressive for their ability to tumble off a redeye flight from the US West Coast and straight into a gruelling round of meetings. So, let's salute Dave Farbero, chief technology officer of hosting and streaming company Digital Island, and Keyur Patel, co-founder of mobile infrastructure software outfit Brience.

Also boosting their companies in the UK this week will be Stuart Bagshaw, CEO of Covigo, Tom Gerace, director of marketing of Be Free, an affiliate marketing firm, and Umang Gupta, chairman and CEO of Keynote Systems. Stay awake at those breakfast meetings boys.

St Valentine's Day is turning out to be a yawn and it is still ten days off. We've already had two warnings: one from a maker of reliability software and another from a virus expert. "Increased web delays or inaccurate transaction results will leave online customers with a bad taste rather than the sweet kisses they expect," coos Segue Software while urging online retailers to test their systems in readiness for the big day.

Not to be outdone, MessageLabs has commissioned a survey that raises the spectre of another outbreak of Love Bug-style computer viruses on St Valentine's Day. Leading IT legal eagle Alistair Kelman from the London School of Economics has lent his name to this blatant piece of opportunism. Don't open those electronic billets doux on 14 February. You have been warned.

Could it be that the PBX will shortly be joining the mainframe on the scrap heap? It's inevitable, really, given the move to IP networks for voice and the emergence of outsourcing companies offering unified messaging and other services. Details of a partnership between Equinox and AccessLine are due to be unveiled on Monday that will give a fresh impetus to the trend in the UK.

Leafing through advance notices of conferences for the week it looks as though it is open season on ISPs. There is a triple bill at the Olympia 2 exhibition hall, London, with ISPCON Europe 2001, ASPCON Europe 2001 and m-Commerce World all taking place from Tuesday to Thursday. See http://www.penton.cm/ for further information.

The Hilton Hotel stages the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) Awards on Wednesday evening with trophies for the most successful operators. The organisers are hotly denying rumours that there will be a special award for the most effective unmetered access service.

Finally, if you want to catch up with progress on Tony Blair's project to modernise government, drop in at the Computing Services and Software Association seminar on Thursday in London. A line-up of heavyweight speakers will looking at how to change culture of Government IT Procurement to create a win/win situation for IT suppliers and public sector alike. Details of this miracle available from alex.quinn@cssa.co.uk.