Transcripts

"Tech Talk" -Business Communications is Booming

SUSIE GHARIB: A battle is brewing for the business telecommunications market and a whole lot of data stored in a very small place. Those stories and more in tonight's "Tech Talk" with Scott Gurvey.

SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Facebook may be one of the hottest properties on the web, but to Wall Street's dismay, an IPO is still years away. That according to the founder and CEO of the social networking site, Mark Zuckenberg. Facebook has 45 million members. It is privately held, but working on investment deals which may include selling a stake to Microsoft.

Microsoft is also eyeing another new market, business communications. This is the turf owned by Cisco, which has built a reputation for developing the reliable and secure communications systems business depends on. Cisco sells a lot of hardware to big corporate users and that's where Microsoft sees an opportunity. Founder Bill Gates this week unveiled Microsoft's unified communications platform. It is an open standards system which the company says will let businesses use the desktop PCs and servers in their computer networks to perform communications functions, eliminating the need to purchase specialized PBX-type equipment. Microsoft business division President Jeff Raikes says lower cost and the ability to pick and choose among venders will be the benefit.

JEFF RAIKES, PRESIDENT, MICROSOFT BUSINESS DIVISION: This is a great example of what Microsoft does best. We're building a software platform that's -- that builds up from the foundation that people already have with Microsoft exchange and outlook. The average person in information work is using those products already today. So this adds value to those products and then, as a software platform, we open it up to all kinds of different partners.

GURVEY: This little guy is a disk drive which plugs into the U.S.B. port on your computer and holds 160 gigabytes of data. It is the Maxstor one-touch four from Seagate and it sells for about $140. Whatever the make or model of your computer, it is very likely to have Seagate storage drives inside. Keeping computer data secure is a major concern for business and Seagate CEO Bill Watkins says his company is providing a solution to that and other problems in its newest models.

BILL WATKINS, CEO, SEAGATE: One of the products (INAUDIBLE) is a backup drive, the Maxstor (ph) and where we're really giving you bare metal backup. We allow synchronization of your content to other devices, things like that, a terabyte of storage. Now along with those we've put encryption and what we have created is a new encryption technique using a chip that encrypts all your data at the interface and so it's absolutely foolproof.

GURVEY: Watkins also made news recently, warning that China is looking to buy data storage technology. He says he didn't mean that they are trying to take over Seagate. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.