JETBLUE IS MAKING WAVES in the airline industry for its cheeky marketing and no-frills operations. The young carrier saves money by cutting back on amenities, like first-class seats and hot meals. Even JetBlue's passenger tickets are nonstandard: Instead of the jacketed, official-looking tickets issued by most airlines, JetBlue's look more like a sales receipt you'd get after buying a pair of jeans at the Gap.

One reason: Because it started flying less than three years ago, the fast-growing airline isn't burdened with old-fashioned "legacy" computer systems that don't talk to each other and are not Internet-enabled. JetBlue was born smack in the middle of the Internet age, and bought most of its back-office computer systems from software giant Microsoft Corp. Microsoft has designed many of those systems to work together over the Internet. Microsoft competitors such as Sun Microsystems Inc., International Business Machines Corp. and BEA Systems Inc. are just a few of the other large technology companies trying to get into the Web-services game with new products.