Mobility and Wireless: Interviews

Barbara Dalibard, executive vice president at Paris-based France Telecom, is president and CEO of service provider Equant, which France Telecom purchased in August. After a recent technology demonstration in Cambridge, she talked with Computerworld about the need for innovations to stay ahead in the telecommunications field and how the company plans to use its global reach to set itself apart from competitors.

Smart USB (Universal Serial Bus) drives based on U3's computing platform hit the market this week and will enable applications to run directly off the portable drives without relying on a host computer. SanDisk and Verbatim announced USB smart drives based on U3's platform, while software companies America Online and Mozilla ported applications to run on U3-compliant smart drives.

Cisco Systems's acquisition of Linksys Group in 2003 brought the maker of utilitarian business and carrier gear into home networking for the first time. Now Cisco, along with a growing number of rivals, is running headlong into the very heart of home electronics: the TVs, stereos and video devices that traditionally have had nothing to do with routers or switches. That the company saw the importance of the acquisition is clear from its choice of a leader. At the helm of Linksys is Charles Giancarlo, a longtime Cisco executive who developed the company's merger and acquisition strategy in the 1990s and now holds the titles of Cisco senior vice president and chief technology officer in addition to president of Cisco-Linksys.