Client Server News articles from April 2007

Client Server News archives from April 2007

FSF takes its best shot at the Microsoft-Novell deal.
April 2, 2007... The Free Software Foundation (FSF) finally delivered itself of the third draft of the GPL rewrite known as GPLv3 on Wednesday. This is the draft that got held up for months because of the surprise Microsoft-Novell rapprochement in November...

Dell finds 'evidence of financial misconduct'.
April 2, 2007... Dell won't be getting its 10-K out any time soon. It's gonna blow through April 3, the day the 10-K is due, and April 18, the extension date. It's gonna add the annual report for the year ended February 2 to the pile of paperwork it already...

SAP loses its CEO-in-waiting.
April 2, 2007... SAP's having a nasty run of bad luck, first the Oracle suit, now one of its star executives, CEO-in-waiting and product chief, the acknowledged architect of NetWeaver, Shai Agassi, is leaving reportedly to move into electric vehicles. The...

Vista numbers.
April 2, 2007... Microsoft says consumers bought 20 million copies of Vista in February, the first month it was out. The number includes copies exchanged for the upgrade coupons Microsoft started handing out last year ahead of the software's availability, OEM...

HP sues Acer for patent infringement.
April 2, 2007... Hewlett-Packard has sued Acer for five counts of patent infringement in Texas, where the federal courts are known for stringing up infringers. Supposedly it's really to keep Acer, which is threatening to leapfrog Lenovo by the end of the...

Intel to copy some more of AMD's moves.
April 2, 2007... There are times when it looks like AMD is running Intel's design department. This is definitely one of them. Intel disclosed Wednesday that it'll be following AMD down the path of squeezing its previously separate memory controller onto the...

Sun Microelectronics II--the sequel.
April 2, 2007... Sun is going to reprise its standalone Microelectronics unit--the one that was melded into its server operation when the wolf came knocking on Sun's door--in the expectation of selling some Sparcs outside the company, something it tried once...

Intel confirms Chinese fab plans.
April 2, 2007... Intel confirmed Monday that it is going to build a $2.5 billion politically sensitive plant in China. Plans have been in the works for over 18 months. The only way Intel was able to get the US government to countenance the deal was to ensure it...

Intel name change.
April 2, 2007... Intel will create a new-ish brand for Centrino when it launches Santa Rosa, the next Centrino platform, It'll call it Centrino Pro and bundle its vPro widgetry into the thing. The brand should be announced before Santa Rosa launches likely in...

EC gives Microsoft more time before it's hung.
April 2, 2007... The European Commission, which claims there's no "significant innovation" in Microsoft's server protocols so it shouldn't be asking the royalties it's asking, has given Microsoft an extra 20 days, or until April 23, to defend its royalty...

Dell takes up designing chi-chi data centers to order.
April 2, 2007... Dell, in its search for new revenue sources, has set up a new business unit, a Data Center Solutions Division that, to start, will offer a solution called the Dell Cloud Computing restricted to what it calls "hyper-scale" computing environments...

HP launches its first AMD uniprocessor server.
April 2, 2007... HP Wednesday announced its very first AMD tower server, a low-cost/low-end box that's targeted at SMBs not only in the US but in the developing world in countries like Brazil, China, Russia and India where SMBs are accustomed to using a...

Microsoft spins off mobile browsing operation.
April 2, 2007... ZenZui and its Zooming User Interface, its Microsoft-patented mobile technology, has spun out of Microsoft Research, backed by $12 million in Series A funding from Oak Investment Partners and Hunt Ventures, money Microsoft helped it get. ...

Vonage burnt around the edges like toast.
April 2, 2007... A federal court judge has told Vonage, the VoIP provider, to stop using the widgetry that lets its customers call standard phone lines 'cause it belongs to Verizon. Verizon got the injunction it was after but the judge is going to hear...

SAP finally says something.
April 2, 2007... SAP finally came through with a formal statement late Friday, more than 24 hours after Oracle filed suit charging it with "corporate theft on a grand scale." SAP said it "will not comment other than to make it clear to our customers,...

Microsoft reorgs search.
April 2, 2007... Microsoft has combined its search and AdCenter online advertising operations, units that are supposed to compete against Google, and named the head of its Dynamics CRM line Satya Nadella to run it, reporting to Kevin Johnson. This after...

Oracle licenses OIN patents.(Linux Watch)
April 2, 2007... Oracle, which of course has Linux ambitions--and anti-Red Hat ones at that--has become a licensee of the Open Invention Network (OIN), the non-profit IP house set up by IBM to acquire patents and make sure they're available royalty-free to...

Dell to factory-install Linux.(Linux Watch)
April 2, 2007... After 70% of the people who wrote into its newfangled IdeaStorm suggestion box said they would use a Dell with Linux, Dell said Wednesday that it will start offering Linux pre-installed on select desktops and notebooks. It hasn't said yet...

Penguin picks up round.(Penguin Computing get finance from vSpring Capital, Equity Partners, Weber Capital and Convergence Partners)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... Penguin Computing has closed on $9 million of what it calls "Series 2" financing led by vSpring Capital with existing backers San Francisco Equity Partners, Weber Capital and Convergence Partners. The last funding it saw was $10 million in late...

Linux Foundation names board.(board of directors appointed)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... The new Linux Foundation, the combination of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group, has installed a new board of directors that is supposed to represent all stakeholders: the Linux kernel community, Linux vendors,...

Netezza files to go public.(Linux Watch)
April 2, 2007... Jit Saxena, who started and took Applix public in 1994, is trying again with Netezza, which filed its S-1 papers with the SEC the other day. Netezza, which is still losing money, is looking to pick up about $100 million, less than it's...

Red hat earnings down, revenues short expectations.(Financial report)
April 2, 2007... Red Hat says "one of the largest shifts in IT spending" is going on and that it's benefiting but apparently the shift's contribution to Red Hat's coffers wasn't that big in the company's fiscal fourth quarter that ended in February. It...

Novell catching on: Yankee.(Linux Watch)
April 2, 2007... As much as it may pain Red Hat, Oracle, the Free Software Foundation--and maybe now IBM--it seems that Novell is actually in resurgence. According to a new survey by the Yankee Group due out next week, 14% of the nearly 1,000 IT managers...

Microsoft & EMC cut licensing deal.
April 2, 2007... Microsoft has licensed EMC's Smarts network discovery and health monitoring technology for its System Center Operations Manager. EMC is developing value-added network management and root cause analysis management packs for current and...

Marathon gets B round.(Marathon Technologies get financing from Sierra Ventures, Atlas Venture and Longworth Venture Partners)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... Marathon Technologies has raised $12 million in Series B financing from Sierra Ventures, Atlas Venture and Longworth Venture Partners. Sierra gets a board seat. Marathon says the money's for developing its everRun high-availability product...

Microsoft buys devBiz.
April 2, 2007... It's not everyday that a Turkish company gets acquired by Microsoft but that's what's happened to devBiz Business Solutions, which Microsoft picked up--on undisclosed terms--for its Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), its development platform for...

SOA specs sent to OASIS.
April 2, 2007... The Open SOA Collaboration, a group of 18 vendors, is going to turn its Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO) specification over to OASIS to standardize the widgetry. The SCA spec is supposed to simplify...

Fujitsu Siemens goes where it's never gone before.(Fujitsu Siemens Computers operating profit increased)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... Fujitsu Siemens says it's expecting to pass seven billion euros in revenues for the first time in history when its fiscal year ends in March. Its operating profit is expected to be 140 million euros. The company has taken 55 million euros in...

Microsoft research to set up center at Carnegie Mellon.
April 2, 2007... Microsoft Research is going to set up an interdisciplinary Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon underwritten by a three-year $1.5 million grant from Microsoft. Computational thinking, as defined by Carnegie Mellon's...

iPhone prospects hinted.
April 2, 2007... In a speech AT & T COO Randall Stephenson said Tuesday that the company's Cingular Wireless unit had gotten about a million inquiries about Apple's still unavailable $500-$600 iPhone since Steve Jobs showed off the device in January. Cingular...

Netflix CEO joins Microsoft board.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... Microsoft, in an uncharacteristic and perhaps signal move, has recruited Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings for its board, where he will join the finance committee. Seems Microsoft values Hastings for "delivering innovative and disruptive...

Ex-ClearCube CEO turns up at Rackable.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... Rackable Systems, beaten up lately after offering disappointing sales guidance, has named Carl Boisvert executive VP of worldwide sales and marketing. Boisvert, an ex-CEO of ClearCube who had also once been senior VP of sales at Stratus,...

Panasas get its 10th patent.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... Panasas has gotten a US patent, No. 7,191,357, for its "hybrid quorum/primary backup fault-tolerance model," explaining that it covers advanced technology in object storage systems that increases data availability and reliability by combining...

Reiser enters not guilty plea.(Linux file system creator Hans Reiser's case for wife's murder)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... Linux file system creator Hans Reiser last Friday pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered his estranged wife. His trial is supposed to start on May 7. He asked for a speedy trial. He's still in jail. He hasn't asked for bail, probably...

Circuit City to terminate 3,500 pricy workers.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... Circuit City is going to can 3,500 people it figures are making too much money, replace them with cheaper labor, turn its IT operations over to IBM and maybe sell off its Canadian stores.

Leopard rumors pooh-poohed.(Mac OS X 10.5 operating system delay)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... Reports Friday that Apple would delay Leopard, its next-generation Mac OS X, until October as DigiTimes contended--thereby impacting its revenue stream--were dismissed out of hand Monday. If nothing else DigiTimes has a poor track record of...

Microsoft reported interested in Double-Click.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... DoubleClick, the privately held online media buyer, may be up for sale and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft may buy it to compete better with Google, which is said to be building its own ad-serving mechanism. The asking price is...

Google and the search for ubiquity.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... Google has bought Adscape Media Inc whose technology will let it start putting ads in videogames via the Internet. It also bought the Trendalyser software off of Sweden's Gapminder Foundation that generates interactive graphics from data.

Xbox goes Elite.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... Microsoft is moving the Xbox in a direction everyone surely expected. At the end of April, a high-end $480 black Xbox 360 Elite will debut fitted with a hi-def video connection, a 120GB hard drive, and a wireless controller, the stuff of...

More standards.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... OASIS has standardized WS-SecureConversation 1.3 and WS-Trust 1.3, which define policies and extensions to WS-Security that enable the trusted exchange of multiple SOAP messages.

HP ups buy-back kitty.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... HP has gotten board approval to buy back another $8 billion worth of stock. On January 31 it still had $3.3 billion in the kitty from the last authorization, which had earmarked a total of $6 billion for the purpose.

Carly headhunter charged with drug-related homicide.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 2, 2007... Jeff Christian, the guy who started Christian & Timbers and the headhunter who got Carly Fiorina the CEO job at HP, is going to be tried for reckless homicide and involuntary manslaughter in the drug overdose death of another executive...

SCO's Hunt for PJ enters new waters: case may push courts to address Internet anonymity.
April 9, 2007... Pamela Jones, a k a PJ, the open source thought leader and author of Groklaw, the SCO-bashing web site, has so far managed to avoid the conventional subpoena-bearing process servers that SCO has thrown at her in an effort to depose her and...

Wall Street smells a fight over webMethods purchase.
April 9, 2007... Software AG said Thursday that it's going to buy webMethods for $546 million cash, a 25% premium, in a deal that will double the German's footprint in US accounts. WebMethods, which makes software that links a company to its supply chain...

Has the EC finally bitten off more than it can chew?
April 9, 2007... The European Commission wants Microsoft to license its server protocols to rivals for nothing according to the Financial Times, which says it saw a "confidential document" saying so. According to the paper Microsoft wants a maximum of 5.95%...

Sun's Advanced Product Line on tap.
April 9, 2007... A lot of water has run under the bridge in the three years since Sun and Fujitsu vowed to replace their respective Sparc/Solaris-based Sun Fire and PrimePower machines with a "co-developed" Advanced Product Line (APL)--using a 90nm 2.4GHz...

Lenovo to chase consumers.(Lenovo Group Ltd. target marketing for both consumer and commercial sector)(Brief article)
April 9, 2007... Lenovo, which like Dell has been focusing on commercial accounts while HP walked off with the PC market thanks to its retail sales, is going to set up a consumer unit to expand sales outside of China and regain lost market share. The new unit...

Users hazy on virtualization ROI, CA claims.
April 9, 2007... CA had an independent survey done on server virtualization by the Strategic Council and the results suggest that virtualization may not be all it's cracked up to be despite the charge to virtualize. The Strategic Council says the study...

Informatica wins $25m patent decision.
April 9, 2007... A San Francisco jury has awarded Informatica a $25 million verdict in a patent infringement suit against a Business Objects subsidiary and the company's Data Integrator tool used in building data marts and data warehouses. Since the...

And that makes 11.(Intel launched quad-core embedded chip Xeon 5300)(Brief article)
April 9, 2007... Intel Wednesday introduced its first quad-core embedded chip, the Xeon 5300 DP, good for 80W 2GHZ or 2.33GHz with prices starting at $690. Being embedded parts, Intel is promising availability for the next five to seven years. It's Intel's...

Dell makes Rackable's ink turn red.
April 9, 2007... Rackable System, which tanked last quarter and started making ominous predictions of the coming year, said Wednesday that it expects to lose money this quarter because of wispy margins and lower-than-expected operating income. It still...

Microsoft sued for ripping off Agere's VoIP trade secrets.
April 9, 2007... Another day, another lawsuit. This time Microsoft is being sued for misappropriating trade secrets by Agere Systems Inc, which used to be part of AT & T's Bell Labs, then became a subsidiary of Lucent that was spun off as an independent company...

Sun's new chip franchise gets first customer.
April 9, 2007... Sun's days-old Microelectronics units, the one cut out of servers last week and made standalone again to sell chips and such to third parties, has got a deal with Marvell to build and sell high-performance networking products based on Sun's...

OOXML passes to next ISO standardization hurdle.
April 9, 2007... Office Open XML (OOXML), Microsoft's answer to the upstart open source Open Document Format (ODF), has passed to the next hurdle on its way to fast-track ISO standardization just like ODF: a five-month-long ballot by the national members of ISO...

IBM opens tech Center in Bangalore.
April 9, 2007... IBM has opened an Autonomic Computing Technology Center in Bangalore to serve mostly local resellers and users. It is staffed with 35 developers and engineers responsible for creating new autonomic software, testing and supporting services. IBM...

GPLv3 will evidently need a sales job.(Linux Watch)
April 9, 2007... In the wake of the Free Software Foundation releasing the third draft of the proposed GPLv3 license--the one that takes steps to prevent any more deals like the Microsoft-Novell alliance--and will remove the teeth of any patent lawsuit threat...

OpenOffice hits rev 2.2.(business application suite)(Brief article)
April 9, 2007... OpenOffice, the Sun-sponsored open source project, has hit rev 2.2, claiming it's "a real alternative to Microsoft's recently released Office 2007." Apparently they've enhanced the word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and database...

Vyatta gets B round.(Linux Watch)
April 9, 2007... Vyatta, which has a line of enterprise-style open source network infrastructure products like routers and firewalls, has picked up $11 million in B Series financing from Comcast Interactive Capital as well as ArrowPath Venture Capital,...

Sun to sell SUSE-based workstations.(Linux Watch)
April 9, 2007... Sun has certified and is going to support Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on its Opteron-based Ultra workstations 20, 20 M2, 40 and 40 M2. Sun suggests they could go into EDA, CAD/CAM and oil and gas deployments. The boxes come with...

Linux Foundation recruits three more.(Linux Watch)
April 9, 2007... The Linux Foundation, the entity created in the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group, says it's picked up three new members: Marvell, Nokia and VirtualLogix. All three are interested in mobile and embedded...

Microsoft sued over 'Vista capable' sticker.
April 9, 2007... Microsoft has managed to get sued for unfair and deceptive practices over those little "Vista capable" flags that flew on boxes in shops for months in the run-up to the Vista launch in January. A woman bought one only to discover it will...

Transmeta gives new meaning to the word 'shrink'.
April 9, 2007... Transmeta, the spoiled software-based chip novelty with the spectacular IPO that had Linus Torvalds on its payroll and tried to compete against Intel, is inches away from turning into a file in some lawyer's draw. It's now down to 65...

Interest in DoubleClick reportedly picks up.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... Google, which is reportedly building its own DoubleClick-like ad-serving mechanism, is now supposed to be trying to buy DoubleClick since Microsoft was reported to be in talks with the online media buyer. The competition is supposed to make any...

Dell earnings down 26%.(Brief article)
April 9, 2007... Dell can't manage a 10-K but it told the SEC Wednesday that it expects its 2006 earnings to be around $2.6 million, or $1.16 a share, down roughly 26% from the $3.5 billion it earned in 2005. It said revenues would be around $57 billion, up...

Vista goes to Boot Camp.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... Apple's Boot Camp now supports Vista. Boot Camp is Apple's beta widgetry for running Windows on its Intel machines. Leopard, the upcoming rev of Mac OS, is where Boot Camp graduates to a final version and gets integrated in the operating...

Sun loses China chief.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... Sun is losing the head of its China operation Daniel Yu, who is leaving the company after 22 years. Sun owns 9.3% of China's server market behind IBM with 40%, HP and Dell. Lionel Lim, president of Sun Asia South and COO of Sun Asia Pacific...

Google carries coal to Newcastle.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... There is now a free beta Google Desktop available for the Mac that basically does what Apple's Spotlight already does and that's to index the user's drive and make it searchable. One thing it does that Spotlight doesn't is search your Gmail...

Sun quarter believed weak.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... Sun's recent flirtation with profitability may be short-lived. Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi downgraded the company Monday saying, "Our channel checks suggest that Sun's third quarter--especially in the US--was weaker than prior...

AMD chip in iPhone rival.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... AMD says its ATI-derived Imageon media processor is inside the Apple iPhone-like LG touch screen Prada phone that will be sold everywhere, it seems, but the US starting this quarter.

Best Buy to expand Apple sales.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... Best Buy will be selling Apple computers in 200 stores this fall after piloting the gear at 57 shops, a pretty little increase in Apple distribution points. They'll be shops-within-shops.

Pshew, Google finally finds Kaiser.(Brief article)
April 9, 2007... For a while there it looked like there was something Google couldn't find, namely its own three-foot pet python Kaiser, which it managed lose somewhere in its 300,000-square-foot New York City offices. The maintenance staff finally found the...

Apple to boost music revenue with DRM-free tunes while EU investigation revvs up.(BILLY GRAMS)
April 9, 2007... Apple's first big music deal since Steve Jobs posted his Anti-DRM manifesto will have Apple distributing the bulk of EMI's music portfolio (sans the Beatles) DRM-free. Reportedly the deal was EMI's idea and is not exclusive. Apple will...

Salesforce pushes the enterprise to meet web 2.0.
April 16, 2007... Salesforce.com, the software-as-a-service CRM hot shot, jumped its database boundaries the other day and sashayed into managing companies' unstructured data on the back of an acquisition it made last month of a little San Mateo, California...

Apple OS sacrificed to iPhone.
April 16, 2007... So the rumors were right. Apple has delayed the launch of Leopard, its next-generation Mac OS X, a competitor of Microsoft Windows, until October, four months past its June 11 due date. In a statement issued late Thursday after the market...

AMD bleeding badly from war with Intel.
April 16, 2007... AMD pre-announced its March quarter Monday morning, complaining that revenues had suffered a sharp quarter-over-quarter decline to roughly $1.225 billion, down 8% year-over-year. It blamed lower overall ASPs and "significantly" lower unit...

$900 firm in need of attention.
April 16, 2007... Xyratex Ltd, the UK company created in a management buy-out from IBM that then bought nStor two years ago, is tired of being a $900 million facilitator. It wants a shot at being the belle of the ball. It makes storage gear for other...

WS-I BSP 1.0 hits public access.
April 16, 2007... WS-I, the Web Services Interoperability Organization, has published the WS-I Basic Security Profile (BSP) 1.0 for public access, calling it an "essential guide for ensuring secure interoperable Web Services." IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle...

HP figures the low-hanging fruit's in SMBs.
April 16, 2007... HP has brought out a 2U-sized all-in-one storage system, the HP Storage-Works 1200, designed for IT generalists in the SMB market who have no storage expertise. It holds 12 drives, both SATA and SCSI simultaneously, for up to 9TB capacity and...

Quad Extreme.
April 16, 2007... Intel started its enthusiast quad line Monday by pushing out the 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800, its twelfth quad-core processor and the fastest yet. The new chip is reportedly 65% faster than a Core 2 Extreme dual-core X6800 on video encoding....

IBM substitutes Flash for hard drives on blades.
April 16, 2007... Armed with the latest low-voltage chips from Intel and AMD, Flash-based storage and an acoustic door for racks, IBM is telling customers that its latest blade and System x servers will reduce energy use, associated carbon dioxide emissions and...

Dell makes contribution to energy efficiency.
April 16, 2007... Dell has introduced two low-end Opteron-based servers that it says will draw less power and perform better than the Intel Xeon boxes it's been selling. Dell, which has never been a comer in the blade market, is also touting its rack...

VoIP pioneer in big trouble.
April 16, 2007... The US Court of Appeals granted Vonage an emergency temporary stay after a district court told it last Friday that it couldn't sign up any new customers because it's treading on three basic Verizon VoIP patents. The stay is good until the...

White house gets ticked with Chinese piracy.
April 16, 2007... The Bush administration Tuesday filed twin complaints with the World Trade Organization, one protesting China's tolerance of piracy and counterfeiting and the other the Chinese trade barriers that prevent the sale of US-produced movies, music...

Yahoo wants to be cool like Apple.
April 16, 2007... Apple said Monday that it's sold 100 million iPods since 2001. Amazingly there are now some 4,000 accessories made for the little gismo. That said, Yahoo is now going to try to get into the iPod business on the back of a $250 device from...