Client Server News articles from December 2003

Client Server News archives from December 2003

Source Claims SCO Will Sue Google.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... A source claiming to be in the know says that the SCO Group is going to sue Google for not paying its Linux taxes. Last week SCO threatened to make an example of a big-time Linux user that hadn't paid SCO the license fees it's demanding and...

Microsoft Loses Another Patent Suit.(from Imagexpo L.L.C.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Microsoft has lost another patent infringement suit. This time a Virginia federal jury has awarded Imagexpo LLC, a little-known subsidiary of $5 billion-a-year SPX Corporation, an initial $62.3 million in compensatory damages for allowing...

Top Sun Software Exec Defects to Microsoft.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Sun's former VP of worldwide software sales Barbara Gordon, reportedly once Sun CEO Scott McNealy's chief-of-staff, has bolted to Microsoft. She's now running Microsoft's top 50 accounts.

Microsoft Follows Sun with China Deal of its Own.(with Chinese National Computer Software & Technology Service Corporation )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Well it seems that seconds after Sun announced that it was carving its initials into God knows how many Chinese desktops, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who happened to be in Beijing pledging $10 million to computerize Chinese primary and middle...

Windows Trademark Case Delayed.(with Lindows.com Inc.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... The federal court in Seattle has delayed hearing Microsoft's case against Lindows.com until March 1 because of a scheduling conflict with a criminal matter, Lindows said. The jury trial was supposed to start on December 1. The brouhaha...

HP Loses More Execs.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Hewlett-Packard, which is having a stickiness crisis as far as its staff goes, has accepted the resignation of Jeff Clarke, the former Compaq CFO who led the Compaq side of the HP-Compaq integration team when the two companies merged. ...

Intel's Next-Generation 65nm Process Working.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Intel, which is a bit behind its own schedule for moving its chips to a 90nm process, said Monday that it had built fully functioning 4-megabit SRAMs on 65nm technology, the next step after 90nm. The development will make it possible for Intel...

Microsoft Kisses its Services Boss Good-bye.(Mike Sinneck)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Mike Sinneck, the high-profile guy it recruited from IBM Global Services in January 2002 to run worldwide services is leaving Microsoft to return to the East Coast to "pursue new opportunities outside of Microsoft." Microsoft said. Rick...

Oracle Still Lusts after PeopleSoft.
December 1, 2003... Oracle staged a conference call Monday to clear up "misconceptions in the market" and to say that it hadn't been dissuaded from the PeopleSoft acquisition by the length of time the process was taking but that it wasn't going to pay any...

Microsoft Settles with Tennessee.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Microsoft is going to pay Tennessee consumers a nominal $64 million in vouchers to settle the class action claiming it charged too much for Windows. How much it actually pays depends on how many claims are filed. Microsoft also settled cases in...

Former Unify CEO Convicted of Cooking the Books.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Former Unify CEO Reza Mikailli has been convicted of cooking the books, defrauding investors and enriching himself to the tune of $4 million at their expense following a trial in federal court on charges that were brought in the summer of 2000....

Burney Ousted as CEO of Corel.
December 1, 2003... Vector Capital, the VC operation that took over WordPerfect owner Corel Corporation, has kicked Corel's CEO Derek Burney upstairs as chairman and put its own guy in as interim CEO pending an executive search. Burney, who was Corel's...

HP Still Has a Lot To Prove.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Tracing HP's upside Q4 last week to consumer PCs and printers, Bear Stearns remarked that "The bigger issues for Hewlett-Packard are execution and consistency, as HP has not yet demonstrated an ability to deliver consistent revenue and earnings...

Indian Support Didn't Work for Dell.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... The papers say that Dell is repatriating jobs because its Bangalore support outpost flubbed it. Apparently Dell's stopped routing corporate calls for tech support to India. Support for its Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks will...

McDowell Joins Nokia.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Mary McDowell, who ran HP's nee Compaq's Intel server operation until last spring when HP reorganized her out of a job, is going to Nokia as head of its enterprise solutions business starting January 1. After HP clumped servers and storage...

Sleepycat Upgrades Berkeley DB.(Berkely DB 4.2)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Sleepycat Software, which makes Berkeley DB, which claims 200 million deployments, has added a new Java API, based on the existing Java collections standard that should make building Java data storage applications easier. So it's putting...

HP Takes on IBM, EMC & Dell with New Storage Packs.
December 1, 2003... Hewlett-Packard has rolled out a new storage family and packaged up server-storage offerings for small and mid-sized customers that it claims are 50% cheaper than products from IBM and Dell/EMC. Part of HP's new SmartOffice initiative for...

Sun Storage Replaces Marketing Veep; Ex-EMC Exec To Head.(Fidelma Russo)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Quality Sun has made a bunch of changes in its storage unit roping in a former EMC manager to head quality engineering and bringing in a new marketing VP. Sun has named Fidelma Russo to the new post of VP of quality engineering....

Emulex Buys Trebia Assets on the Cheap.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Emulex has acquired the assets of storage network processor start-up Trebia Networks for a song. In its quarterly SEC filing, Emulex, a host bus adapter vendor, said it paid $2 million, $500,000 of it placed in escrow for at least 90 days....

Quantum Restructures; Storage Solutions Chief Out.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Quantum is firing 110 people and the president of its Storage Solutions Group Larry Orecklin is leaving as part of the restructuring. As part of the reorg, Rick Belluzzo, the HP veteran who was president of Microsoft there for a while,...

Linux Exec Reportedly Joins the Evil Empire.(Microsoft)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... A source claims that the former head of Turbolinux in China, ex- Compaq exec Ashok Pandey, has joined Microsoft. What with the Thanksgiving Day holidays almost upon us, Microsoft said it couldn't confirm or deny that it had hired Pandey. It...

SCO's Pariah Status Validates its Claims: Barron's.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... A Barron's piece on the SCO Group pushed its stock up 14% to $15.99 Monday and on Tuesday it was still climbing, setting 52-week records. The stock was a buck a share before it sued IBM for breach of contract. Barron's reasoned that the...

OSDL Circulates FSF Arguments against SCO.(Open Source Development Lab)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... To try to hold SCO's feet to the fire, the Linux-loving Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) is circulating a position paper written by the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Eben Moglen disputing SCO's Linux claims about the...

Stoned Beaver Let Loose; Linux Folks Hope It Bites SCO.(test patch)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Over last weekend the 2.6 Linux kernel took another step closer to actualization when Linus Torvalds released 2.6.0-test10, a patch "tentatively" dubbed Stoned Beaver. Its predecessor, test 9, had been circulating for about a month. ...

You Could Call It Skimmer or Bowler or, Hey, How about.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Cloche Researchers at Cornell University, a Microsoft sympathizer, says they're going to protest Red Hat's intentions to trademark Fedora, the name given to the open source project that's replacing Red Hat's free and retailer...

Lindows Claims Big Win in Canada.(30,000 Lindows-based machines deployed)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Lindows.com claims deployment of 30,000 Lindows-based WebStation machines has started in Canada, Nova Scotia specifically, but then it also says that trials are underway. It says the 30k rollout will take a year. To oversee the push,...

IBM Claims GPFS Vital to Grids.(General Parallel File System )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... IBM's is going around saying the high-performance shared-disk file system it developed called GPFS or General Parallel File System is vital to grids. IBM talks about it as a new paradigm. The widgetry provides data access in a Linux or...

Novell-SuSE Leaves Prudential Unimpressed.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... "We think the noise created by Novell's November 4th announcement of its acquisition of Linux distributor SuSE has been concentrated in the investor market with little impact on customer behavior. While Novell may have the potential to be...

Bill Joy's Meditation Wall.
December 1, 2003... I'm figuring out a meditation wall for my apartment in New York. Eight feet high by 12 feet wide, with an array of overlapping rear projectors, each with a tiny Linux box and connected by gigabit Ethernet. I would love to get 72 dpi but will...

Microsoft To Spend $10b To Make $10b.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Microsoft intends to spend $10 billion give or take developing its small business software business in expectations it can generate $10 billion from the stuff by the end of the decade

Veritas Professes Acquisition Ambitions.
December 1, 2003... CEO Gary Bloom, striking exactly the right metaphor for Paris, told Le Figaro that Veritas "has a very solid appetite for acquisitions."

Intel Watch.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Intel continues to promise its new 90nm Prescott and Dothan chips will ship this quarter despite reports that they were pushed into Q1 because of delays attributed to the process. Of course, no OEM adds SKUs in November and December. We gather...

French Government Tells EC To Take a Hike.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... In exchange for a $60 million investment, France's becalmed computer flagship Group Bull SA may turn control over to the Gores Technology Group, according to Les Echoes. When last seen Gores was turning the old MicronPC, now called MPC...

Call Amazon at 800-201-7575.
December 1, 2003... Amazon treats customer service number like it was unlisted but BusinessWeek went on a search and destroy mission and found it in an October 24 SEC filing. It's 1-800-201-7575.

Stratus Raises $170m.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... After 22 years in operation, privately held Stratus Technologies has gone to the public trough for the first time and placed $170 worth of corporate bonds. The bonds are five-year senior unsecured notes yielding 10.375% and due in 2008. Stratus...

Kleiner Dead.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
December 1, 2003... Silicon Valley pioneer Eugene Kleiner, the Kleiner in Kleiner in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers - yes, Virginia there really was one - died Thursday, November 20 of heart failure according to a statement issued by his family Monday. He was...

IBM Software To Play Scrooge, Fire Cratchits Wholesale, Source Says.
December 8, 2003... IBM is reportedly supposed to play Scrooge and fire 13,000 people from its software unit. At least that's what the scuttlebutt inside says. The first indications of whether this news is true or not could reportedly start becoming apparent...

Microsoft Says It's Willing To License All its IP.
December 8, 2003... Microsoft's chief counsel Brad Smith got on the blower Wednesday morning and basically threw all of Microsoft's IP, "100%," he said, of its patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights, on the table to be picked over and licensed by the...

Hong Kong Signs Up for Microsoft Source Code.(part of Microsoft's Government Security Program)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... The Hong Kong government, or at least its IT bureau, has signed up for controlled access to Microsoft source code during the next three years as part of Microsoft's year-old Government Security Program, which, like a religious medal, is...

HP Ventures Off the Beaten Track with Startup-Aping Blade PCs.(HP's Consolidated Client Infrastructure)
December 8, 2003... Hewlett-Packard, whose "Invent" slogan is observed more in the breach than in practice, lifted a "revolutionary" PC-as-blade concept from a start-up called ClearCube, the first company to rethink the Personal Computer since PCs came out in...

EC May Force Bull into Bankruptcy.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... The European Commission says it won't approve Bull's latest bailout plan before the regulators take the uppity French government to court and challenge the legality of the scheme. The EC's suit won't be heard by the European Court of...

Stinky Wireless Business Weighs Intel Down.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Intel tightened up its Q4 guidance Thursday for its mid-quarter review. It said it's sure to clear $8.5 billion in revenues, pulling up its socks from a previous low projection of $8.1 billion but it still doesn't think it can do better than...

John Who?(John Chen, CEO of Sybase, on Disney board)
December 8, 2003... Hong Kong-born Sybase CEO John Chen, of all people, has been named to the Disney board effective January 1 replacing - take your pick - either vice-chairman Roy Disney, Walt's 73-year-old nephew, or Roy's go-fer Stanley Gold both of whom quit...

Candles Are Lighting Up.(corporate spending on increase)(Industry Overview)
December 8, 2003... Dell COO Kevin Rollins told a Credit Suisse gathering the other day that corporate IT demand was "improving" rather than stagnating or merely staying "stable" like it was a quarter ago. However, the change is apparently not all that...

Sun as the Anti-Dell.(releases new blade servers)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... As a distraction from its financial plight, Sun this week unleashed another raft of so-called Network Computer widgetry, the stuff it's talking every quarter now, including new x86 blade servers that run either Solaris x86 or Linux and...

IBM Still Top Dog in Servers; Sun Takes a Hit.(Industry Overview)
December 8, 2003... IBM retained its revenues-from-servers lead worldwide in Q3 when revenues grew 2% overall to $10.8 billion, according to the latest IDC numbers, the second consecutive quarter of revenue growth after nine crummy quarters. Revenues were up...

J2EE 1.4 Blessed.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... The long-in-the-making Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.4, which Sun figures is the most complete approximation of the interoperability spec WS-I Basic Profile around, has gotten the collective and unanimous blessing of the Java Community Process...

Oracle Joins CERN Grid Project.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Oracle has joined the CERN Openlab for Datagrid applications. IBM, Intel and HP are already involved, but Oracle is apparently the only database. They're supposed to build and test prototype apps of increasing power and functionality. CERN...

Happy Birthday.(Eclipse consortia)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... How time flies. The Java-based Eclipse open source IDE consortium that IBM dreamed up has turned two. On hitting the milestone, Sun decided that it wouldn't join or merge its own NetBeans open source tools project with Eclipse, leaving two...

HP To Join the Music Crowd.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... For its next trick HP is reportedly going to ape Apple and the other music buffs and join the music download fray with a service of its own next month. HP's is supposedly going with a partner. The Wall Street Journal cites sources who say...

IBM Out To Poach EMC Customers.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... IBM has rolled out a new program aimed at rustling EMC users. Launched on Wednesday, the migration program is designed to get customers to replace EMC storage with IBM gear. IBM said it's put together a team of 100 consultants and...

McData's Sales Chief Bolts.(Alain Andreoli)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... McData's executive VP of worldwide sales and services Alain Andreoli has left the company reportedly to land at storage start-up XIOtech as its new CEO. McData CEO John Kelley has stepped in the interim.

Exavio Gets New CEO; Debuts New Storage System.(Thomas Jackson and ExaVault FC Media Storage System)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Storage and streaming start-up Exavio has brought in Thomas Jackson as its new CEO. He replaces Exavio co-founder Ji Zhang, now CTO and chairman. Jackson was most recently CEO of TeleSuite, an Englewood, Ohio start-up involved in high-end...

EMC Claims Momentum Driving Centera.
December 8, 2003... EMC claims its Centera content addressed storage system is seeing momentum in the marketplace. EMC executives say that 300 resellers have signed up for the Centera partner program and that it's shipped 10 Centera petabytes since the system...

NetApp Expands Product Portfolio.(including Network Appliance FAS980 and FAS980c and SnapMover software)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Network Appliance rolled out a bunch of new products and enhancements to coincide with its analyst day on Wednesday. Highlights include the new FAS980/FAS980C and NearStore R200 storage systems, SnapMover software and enhanced versions of...

FIA Debuts Small Biz NAS Servers.(First Intelligent Array's POPnetserver 1000)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... First Intelligent Array has introduced a family of NAS servers aimed at small business, remote offices and home offices. Dubbed POPnetserver 1000, the NAS servers come in three models and are designed to provide high-level protection with...

Hitachi IP SAN Debuts.(HP TrueNorth iSCSI SAN Solution )(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Hitachi Data Systems has rolled out its first IP SAN offering by combining its Thunder 9570V storage system with McData's Eclipse 1620 SAN internetworking switch. The TrueNorth iSCSI SAN Solution is the first product to embody HDS' iSCSI...

Red Hat's Sales Boss To Leave.(Tim Buckely)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Red Hat says its sales chief, COO Tim Buckley, is going to retire so it has expanded the brief of Alex Pinchev, the Russian the company brought in nine months ago to advance its offshore fortunes as president of international operations. ...

Wind River Joins OSDL & Eclipse.(Open Source Development Lab)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Wind River Systems, the embedded operating system house that bought Berkeley Software Design Inc (BSDi), the 10-year attempt to commercialize Berkeley Unix, an adventure that doesn't seem to have netted the company much, has joined the Open...

Novell Adds to Board.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Novell has named two women, Claudine Malone and Kathy Brittain White, to its board of directors. Malone, 67, is the president and CEO of Financial Management and Consulting Inc and has taught business administration at Harvard, Georgetown...

'I Ain't So Tough': Linux;.(security breaches of Debian)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Debian Breached A series of security breeches that occurred on November 19 and just became public information the day after Thanksgiving compromised at least four of the Debian project's Intel servers, project administrator James Troup...

DoCoMo Preps Linux Phone.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... NTT DoCoMo, Japan's number one mobile carrier, is rumored to be readying a 3G handset based on Linux that it would release in the second half of next year. The company, which expects its 3G phones to hit 25 million units by 2006, is...

Lindows Trots Out OS for Laptops.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Lindows.com, which is fast becoming a past master at segmenting, has dreamed up a Laptop Edition of its operating system that's supposed to have improved power management, a high degree of compatibility with Wi-Fi cards and the ability to take...

Red Hat Won't Pander to ISVs.(independent software vendors)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik made a presentation this week to a standing room only crowd at Credit Suisse and worried out loud that Red Hat won't pander to ISVs and make the kernel-invasive changes they want, but that SuSE would. He also foresaw...

Red Hat Willing To Cut Academe Godfather-like Deal.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Red Hat is running after the education market with a $25-a-year desktop system and a $50-a-year server platform that would be good for network infrastructure, web hosting and HPC server farms. It's also making schools an offer it figures they...

HP Goes To Radisys for Carrier-Grade Gear.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... HP is going to resell Intel-based cPCI-style blade servers and rack- mounts from RadiSys into the telecom and ISP market that are fitted out with carrier-grade Linux.

Dell Signs with Red Flag.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Dell is the latest of the US biggies to cut a deal to put Red Flag on servers it sells in China. HP also has a deal with Red Flag and it says that since Red Flag controls 90% of the Linux desktops in China it can't possibly imagine what kind of...

SCO CEO Pens Another Open Letter.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Editor's Note: Feeling misunderstood and misrepresented, SCO CEO Darl McBride, the man they love to hate, delivered himself of a open letter Thursday, a format that promises to become a series over the next year or year-and-a-half before his...

SCO CEO Invited to Harvard.
December 8, 2003... This bit of news is gonna irk SCO critics no end, but Harvard Law School has invited SCO Group CEO Darl McBride to come and speak about his case. They're trying to work out a date now. It'll probably be sometime in January or February.

Microsoft Japan, Nihon Unisys Team on Banking.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Microsoft Japan and Nihon Unisys are teaming up to develop Windows- based banking systems, according to a Japanese press report that describes the systems as "the first of their kind in the global banking industry," proprietary and Unix systems...

Acer CEO To Turn VC.(Stan Shih)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Acer chairman, CEO and co-founder Stan Shih is going move to an anticipated VC spin-off called Dragon Soft Capital when he retires at the end of next year and his jobs on to Acer president JT Wang. The Dragon venture is supposed to have a $60...

Eclipse To Reconsider IP Policy.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Apparently the open source Eclipse consortium will be reconsidering the royalty-free access to API memorialized in its Common Public License (CPL). Smaller companies want to be paid for their IP.

That Pretty Much Says It All.
December 8, 2003... "We'd like to have one of our operating systems in every car on earth." - Dick Brass, VP of Microsoft's automotive business unit.

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight Rides Again.(Microsoft Longhorn being sold in Malaysia)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Malay pirates have shanghaied a very early copy of Microsoft's Longhorn operating system, not due out for another three years, unless of course it's delayed, and are selling the thing for around a buck 60, which is apparently what it's worth...

McNealy Pirouettes Away from the Hard Questions.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Sun CEO Scott McNealy did a Fred Astaire-style tap dance at the SunNetwork user show in Berlin this week to avoid answering questions about when Sun will be profitable again. According to McNealy it's a perception and agitprop problem and the...

Oh For Pity's Sake.
December 8, 2003... Some obviously liberal-minded bureaucrat in Los Angeles County named Joe Sandoval who's obsessed with political correctness, has advised high-tech suppliers that they'd best abandon the technical designations "master" and "slave" on equipment...

HP Buying Indian Subsidiary.(India Digital)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Apparently HP plans to buy out its Indian subsidiary India Digital. Dell meantime denies it's pulling support back to the US from India.

LinuxWorld Dates.
December 8, 2003... LinuxWorld is set for January 20-23 (the expo runs the 21st to the 23rd) at the Javits Center in New York.

AOL Peddles $299 PC Bundle.(Systemax PC and Lexmark color printer)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... To deflect the hefty number of defections its Internet access business has been experiencing and pick up the sign-up pace, AOL is offering to sell folks willing to take a year's subscription to its basic $23.90-a-month dial-up service an...

SCO Numbers Stalled.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... The SCO Group was supposed to post its latest quarter on Monday but the tom-toms claim the auditors need more time and that the great unveiling will be pushed back a week or so. The move suggests SCO's lawyers will also have more time to file...

Merrill Lynch a Microsoft Fan.(building Research Analyst Workbench usig Microsoft products)(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Merrill Lynch is going to build its next-generation Research Analyst Workbench out of Microsoft technologies like Office 2003, SharePoint Portal Server 2.0, Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition, IE 6.0 and SQL 2000. The application is...

A Jack-of-all-Trades, Platt Moves from Iron to Wine to.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Planes HP's old CEO Lew Platt was named Boeing's non-executive chairman when Philip Condit stepped down as chairman and CEO the other day after a series of controversies rocked the aircraft maker. Platt, who was on the Boeing board, left...

Early Retirement, Anyone?(Gartner prediction on software industry)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
December 8, 2003... "There are currently more than 2,300 publicly traded software companies in the world - that's about 50% to 60% too many - there are too many vendors selling the same thing," according to Gartner, which is predicting that half the IT suppliers...

IBM Software Reportedly To Lose its Sales Force.
December 15, 2003... In a flip-flop uncharacteristic of it, IBM Monday reversed itself and abruptly cancelled what was described last week by an IBM source as a layoff aimed at 13,000 souls in its Software Group, an admittedly big number. The news hit Monday...