Re:Viewing 2001: Overview

Plenty of commentators have talked about the past 12 to 18 months as the period when the high-tech world (the biggest catch-all phrase we can justify using) came back down to earth. They are wrong, of course. In a year as difficult as 2001 we'd prefer to think about the industry growing up. Here, Tony Hallett explains why...

2001 - it brought with it all sorts of baggage. We have Arthur C Clarke and his cinematic collaborators to thank for that. And things did start optimistically. The dot-com bubble had already burst but rumours of a new invention mysteriously known only as 'Ginger' or 'IT' got us thinking.

Hundreds of readers reminded us they think technology - and not only information technology - still has the ability to revolutionise and excite. How sad, then, that what followed was a year of more lows than highs, even if by year's end Ginger did turn out to be a clever, if hardly revolutionary, development. (http://www.silicon.com/a49658)

Our year-end columns by reporters covering certain tech and ebusiness areas show us what an important, make-or-break 12 months it's been, on so many fronts.

Over-shadowing everything this festive period is the knowledge that 2001 was the year of terrorist atrocities in the US. As news of that day's events broke, this publication received emails from readers anxious to know what was happening. At work, unable to get to a TV and struggling with mainstream news sites weighed down by unprecedented traffic, they asked us to share what we could see on our office TVs.

As if we hadn't realised it straight away, none of us would be untouched by that day's events, and running parallel to fears over national security were heightened concerns about systems security. Accordingly, silicon.com security correspondent Joey Gardiner looks back at the various viruses and worms that even before 11 September hogged the headlines in 2001 as well as our Fighting Fraud campaign and the travails of Microsoft's Passport authentication technology (http://www.silicon.com/a50078 ).

And what a year's it's been for the world's largest software maker. Indeed, our chief Microsoft watcher Suzi Kerridge asks whether it's been the most important year in the company's history. We've seen the end of the DoJ antitrust case, the end game in other lawsuits, the launch of Windows XP, and the whole .NET web services drive.

Microsoft has also been caught in the aforementioned headlights of security several times and arguments over licensing changes and public sector contracts have continued to rage (http://www.silicon.com/a50101 ).

Open source and the Linux operating system in particular may well have benefited from Microsoft's woes but it's been a difficult year on this front too. We caught up with a confident Linus Torvalds in the spring (http://www.silicon.com/linusweek ) but distributors such as Red Hat and Caldera haven't suddenly come to the fore.

As one of our open source correspondents Kate Hanaghan points out, it's often been individual evangelists who have championed Linux in organisations. She should know, after catching up with schools in the UK turning to the OS (http://www.silicon.com/a50066 ).

Other sectors to have struggled through the year - and whose problems are far too lengthy to document here - include the B2B and the mobile and broadband worlds.

B2B vendors such as Ariba, Commerce One, i2 and marketplace enablers used to be such hot property. Sonya Rabbitte's yearly appraisal doesn't make for easy reading (http://www.silicon.com/a50097 ), for all the success of individual projects or an exchange such Covisint.

The mobile world was one of the success of the 90s but now the move to the mobile internet has sent some players running crying to the hills. Handset makers, software providers and network operators have universally all seemed to have over-promised and under-delivered.

At least they all now know that talking to third-party content producers is a prerequisite to 3G and even GPRS success, as Ben King hammers home (http://www.silicon.com/a50069 ). Let's hope it's not too late for some of the 3G licence payers.

And our same correspondent laments the state of the broadband market in the UK. This is an area which certainly isn't over-promising anymore, though it must get there in the end, surely? (http://www.silicon.com/a50099 )

Its sluggish progress has to a large degree affected the state of the comms equipment market. While areas like B2B, security and dot-com are coming of age, infrastructure stalwarts such as Alcatel, Ericsson, Cisco, Lucent, Nortel and Motorola have had a dog of a year. It's that simple.

Telecoms reporter Heather McLean looks at two of the giants, Cisco and 'record loss' Nortel (http://www.silicon.com/a50070 ) while Pia Heikkila takes a similar approach to the storage market. She focuses her end of year thoughts on the giant EMC as we ask how the market soured so quickly (http://www.silicon.com/a50072 ).

For part two of this article, click here: http://www.silicon.com/a50096