John Lamb's Week: Compaq under Alpha spotlight

A week, so Harold Wilson once said, is a long time in politics. Three years in technology is no time at all. It seems only yesterday that Compaq's CEO promised to a sceptical audience in New York to retain the Alpha chip technology acquired with Digital Equipment as a result of a 1998 take-over.

Last month Compaq announced plans to phase out Alpha production by 2004 in favour of the Itanium 64bit chip from Intel. On Monday the friends of Alpha will get a chance to question representatives from Compaq and its partner CSF about the Alpha migration at a company briefing.

Although many procurement specialists are sceptical about how big a contribution online technology can make to their craft, there is no stopping the big hitters. Oracle is concerned that less than 20 per cent of purchasing professionals intend to move their purchasing processes on to the internet, according to a recent study by research firm Jupiter.

The reason, according to Oracle, is the inflated claims for savings from e-procurement. The software company, together with the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply and management consultancy KPMG, has commissioned Bristol Business School to find out from purchasing professionals what the real savings are. The results of the survey will be published on Monday together with details of a purchasing tool called i-save.

Lord Sainsbury, minister for science and innovation, is taking Wilson's dictum seriously. He will be speaking for just 15 minutes at a free breakfast seminar on Tuesday, organised by FirstStage Capital and RSM Robson Rhodes. The minister will be addressing the thorny question of how best to spin out technology from UK universities.

A panel of venture capitalists and academics will debate what is holding back the commercialisation of university technology and examining the attitudes of investors. The seminar will take place at the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London.

The BMC User Forum at ExCel in London's Docklands promises "2,880 minutes of sheer, unadulterated, technology-loving pleasure" on Tuesday and Wednesday. The organisers boast that this is a fully fledged learning experience, unashamedly technical in nature.

TomorrowFirst will deliver a less unadulterated pleasurable message on Wednesday. The company will be unveiling a survey grandly titled The Corporate Squanderer: Maverick Spending in the e-Procurement Age.

Apparently some £22m is wasted each year by people who won't toe the company line and insist on buying supplies from firms not on their company's approved list. Travel and IT are the worst culprits. These renegades can be rounded up with the help of e-procurement systems, TomorrowFirst directors argue.

More pleasure is on the menu at a roundtable discussion and a three course lunch paid for by Motive Communications, Compaq, Peregrine and Aberdeen Online. The topic for discussion, among a group of a dozen company people and correspondents in the minimalist surroundings of the One Aldwych hotel this Wednesday, is customer care. How appropriate.

Content optimisation technology is not just a mouthful, it is also coming to Europe thanks to NewsTakes. The Silicon Valley company sells software that adjusts web content to suit the medium on which it is being received. So, for example, a video on a desktop might be translated into text and graphics for mobile phone reception.

On Thursday and Friday NewsTakes will hold briefings on its plans to expand in Europe, announce a new product for adjusting video content to available bandwidth and talk about a partnership with a UK broadcaster.

Finally, Corning, the inventor of fibre optics and pyrex ovenware, is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2001. Last year the optical networking company bought BT's Photonics Research Centre at Martlesham Heath. On Friday the rebranded and expanded laboratory officially reopens as the Corning Research Centre with a brief to find ways of speeding up optical communications. A picosecond is a long time in photonics.