Client Server News articles from May 2006

Client Server News archives from May 2006

Intel vows to change: semi giant claims it was undone by chipsets, Not AMD.
May 1, 2006... Intel's embattled CEO Paul Otellini told Wall Street analysts Thursday that the company was in for a massive overhaul that leaves "no stone unturned" and affects "every part" of the place. What exactly that means is still unclear--and we...

Well no wonder Intel is whimpering.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... According to Mercury Research, Opteron ac-counted for a devastating 22.1% of the worldwide x86 server chips shipped in Q1, up from 16.4% in Q4, and its revenue share increased at Intel's expense. Chip groupie Nathan Brookwood made some...

Microsoft trades profits for growth.
May 1, 2006... Microsoft's third-quarter profits, handsome though they may be and up 16% to boot, weren't quite what the pundits figured was on tap--and its end-of-year and next year forecasts weren't quite as bright and shiny as Wall Street estimated...

Scott quits.(Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems Inc.)
May 1, 2006... Scott McNealy stepped down, as we said he was likely to, on Monday when Sun posted its fiscal third-quarter results immediately turning the job over to his next-in-line successor, president Jonathan Schwartz--and don't you believe for an...

Ex-CA CEO pleads guilty.(Computer Associates Inc., cheif executive officer)
May 1, 2006... Allocute is a word that most of us only know because we watch "Law and Order" on TV. That's when the guy knows the jig is up, has nowhere else to turn, and having copped a plea admits to the court what he did wrong to get a lighter sentence....

CA pre-announces, comes up way short.(Computer Associates Inc.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... In a week that it should be ecstatic that its former CEO Sanjay Kumar's dirty laundry isn't going to be washed in a court of law, CA had another sorry tale to tell. It's not going meet its own fiscal fourth-quarter forecast. Its stock, as one...

Interop spec in works.(Computer Associates join the working group interoperability specification between configuration management databases and other data repositories)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... CA is the latest company to join a working group set up to create an interoperability specification between configuration management databases and other data repositories so users can federate and access information from complex multi-vendor...

VMware gets in the thin client--alternate desktop--game.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... VMware has created a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance of fellow travelers like IBM, HP and Sun who say they are going to build joint pre-integrated virtual desktop widgetry. It's cloaked as a PC management scheme but IBM is supposed...

Jeeves is working for Microsoft now.(Microsoft Corp. appoints Steve Berkowitz)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Microsoft has hired Steve Berkowitz, the former president of Ask.com, nee AskJeeves, to run MSN and its newfangled Windows Live. He is expected to influence Microsoft's advertising business and its move to web-based software-as-a-service....

Intel creates new vPro brand.
May 1, 2006... Quick on the heels of its devastating first-quarter report last week, Intel previewed its first enterprise PC platform on Monday hoping to influence its second-half results by claiming to have reinvented the business client, even if all the...

Corel IPOs, loses money.(initial public offering )(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Corel's return to the public trough didn't come off quite the way it expected. The Canadian company cut its IPO price and dropped the number of shares it floated. It originally told regulators it would put up eight million shares at between $18...

NetIQ sold for $495m.(AttachmateWRQ acquired NetIQ Corp.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... AttachmateWRQ is buying NetIQ, the Wintel systems management outfit that IPO'd in 1999 and--up against Microsoft--for all intents and purposes hasn't made money since then, for $495 million. At least that's the official price. NetIQ has about...

Linspire borrows from proprietary world to fill Linux' holes.
May 1, 2006... Some of the Linux purists have gotten their knickers in a twist over the fact that Linspire, the Linux desktop commercializer that used to be called Lindows, is proposing to put out a freebie open source Linux distribution that includes...

LSB now embraces the desktop.(Linux Standard Base 3.1)
May 1, 2006... The Linux Standard Base (LSB) has reached its 3.1 cut, the first version of the thing to support portable Linux desktop applications and the biggest of the Linux tribe, even folks who haven't had much use for the LSB, have thrown their support...

SAP invests in Virtual Iron.(Virtual Iron Software)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Virtual Iron Software, the data center virtualization player, has expanded the $8.5 million third round it got in September by another $3 million, a million more than it was expecting back then. The new investor is SAP. Intel Capital led...

HP throws in its lot with MySQL.(Hewlett-Packard Co.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... HP is throwing in its lot with MySQL and is going to provide MySQL consulting, integration and support. HP and its channels are also going to resell MySQL Network subscription services, which includes certified software, upgrades and updates,...

Reuters runs on SLES.(Linux Watch)
May 1, 2006... Reuters clients can run Reuters Market Data System (RMDS) on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Reuters has joined Novell's PartnerNet program and certified RMDS on SLES. Deutsche Bank has deployed the combo.

FAA moves from Unix to Red Hat.(Federal Aviation Administration)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Red Hat put out a press release bragging that the Federal Aviation Administration saved $15 million in data center operating expenses and upgrades by migrating from Unix to Red Hat. It says that the project was originally estimated to run...

Xandros adds server, targets Microsoft.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Xandros, the outfit that picked up Corel's Debian-based desktop Linux operating system and provided the original underpinnings for Linspire, has gone into the Linux server business, presumably encouraged by the thought that it might actually...

Sun upgrades the Sun Ray.(Sun Microsystems Inc. )(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Sun's got next-generation Windows supporting Sun Ray thin clients, the $249 Sun Ray 2 and $499 2FS. The latter supports two 1920x1200-resolution monitors acting as a single display--reportedly the highest resolution on a thin client--at...

It's mother must have been spooked by a remote control.(new company Motama GmbH by University of Saarland)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... The University of Saarland in Germany has spun off a company called Motama GmbH to commercialize the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM) developed over the last six year in its Computer Graphics Lab. Motama has taken the widgetry,...

Microsoft to buy massive.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Microsoft, it appears, is planning to buy Massive, a company that operates an in-game advertising network, for somewhere between $200 million and $400 million. It's not worth that much now but the Yankee Group has calculated that the market...

Microsoft spins off Wallop.(Wallop Software Inc.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Microsoft is spinning off its MySpace/ Friendster-like Wallop social networking technology to a start-up in San Jose in Silicon Valley that will be called, logically enough, Wallop Inc that's funded by both Microsoft and Bay Partners. It's the...

Linux viral in more ways than one.(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Did you know that the first virus, a worm, appeared in 1988 and was meant to attack Unix? Neither did I. Anyway Moscow security house Kaspersky Labs says Linux-targeting malware more than doubled last year. It found 863 species of the foul...

Intel plans sub-$400 notebook.(BILLY GRAMS)
May 1, 2006... Intel is figuring on selling a billion dollars worth of Viiv in the next 12 months. It's also planning on introducing a sub-$400 notebook for the education market early next year.

Grumpy, sneezy & doc need not apply.(BILLY GRAMS)
May 1, 2006... HP has hired the head of HR at Disney John Renfro to do the same for its all-important printing unit. Gee, and HP just got rid of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Artix works with WCF.(Windows Communication Foundation)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Iona says that Artix, its extensible Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), has successfully demonstrated reliable and transactional interoperability with the upcoming version of Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) using Web Services. WCF...

First Data gets Microsoft contract.(BILLY GRAMS)
May 1, 2006... First Data Corporation has brought home a multi-year deal to provide Microsoft's online payment processing globally, both for Microsoft's consumer and business accounts. The deal includes risk management services.

Rambus clips Hynix for $307m.(BILLY GRAMS)
May 1, 2006... A US court Monday order Hynix to pay Rambus $307 million in damages for patent infringement. Hynix is promising to continue to try to get the patents declared anti-competitive.

Tit for tat.(Microsoft Corp. plans to buy Chinese-made computers)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Microsoft is going to buy $700 million worth of Chinese-made computers over the next five years, invest $200 million in Chinese software house and throw in a software innovation center with the Chinese government's planning agency. One assumes...

Microsoft wants EC order trashed.(European Union. European Commission)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Microsoft Monday asked the 13 judges sitting en banc at the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg hearing its appeal to throw out the European Commission's two-year-old antitrust verdict as "fundamentally flawed in fact and reasoning."...

Sun sues Azul.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
May 8, 2006... Well, Sun has sued Azul. That's the suit for patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets that Azul knew was coming and raced to court six weeks ago--declaratory motion in hand--so it could get its version of the story out...

Microsoft to bludgeon Google with its checkbook.(new product Microsoft adCenter)
May 8, 2006... Ya know all that money that Microsoft will be spending starting July 1 when its new fiscal year begins--the couple of extra billion and change that sent Wall Street into a swoon last week? Well, Microsoft's chucking $1.1 billion of it into MSN...

Search is mine, mine, mine, Google says.(Google Inc. complains to European Commission)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Google, master of search, has been complaining to the European Commission and the Justice Department about Microsoft's new IE7 browser rev and the search box that Microsoft has put in its upper-right-hand corner that by default delivers search...

Sun brings Green back from Cassatt to run software.(Richard Green, Sun Microsystems Inc.)
May 8, 2006... Some companies buy back stock. Sun has taken to buying back executives. First it reprised CFO Michael Lehman. Now it's brought back Richard Green to run its software operation in the absence of John Loiacono, who went to pitch for Adobe a...

Honey, I shrunk the mainframe.(enhanced product IBM z9 from International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Resisting any impulse to call it a minicomputer, IBM has shrunk its signature z9 mainframe into a "Business Class" package it can sell for prices that start at $100,000, a tenth the price of a classic million-dollar mainframe, presumably...

Java reportedly simplified.(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... The Java Enterprise Edition 5 spec has reportedly gotten the unanimous blessing of the Java Community Process Java EE/SE Executive Committee, which means that an SDK and compatibility test suite will turn up at JavaOne in a few weeks. Java EE 5...

Microsoft settles California complaint.(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Microsoft has come to a $70 million settlement agreement with all the California governments that stuck their collective hand out during that raft of class action suits accusing Microsoft of overcharging for its software. The deal, good for...

Intel arms for goody-two-shoes battle with MIT.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
May 8, 2006... Intel never had much use for the design of that $100 One Laptop Per Child thing that Nicholas Negroponte and MIT's Media Lab came up with. It liked it even less when they said AMD would supply the chips. And the same has been true of Microsoft...

Intel moves to limit mammoth AMD suit.(Advanced Micro Devices Inc.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Intel moved Tuesday to get AMD's foreign claims against it tossed out of the American court where AMD is suing Intel for antitrust. Intel says that even with the foreign claims gone there's still plenty to go around. According to the 31-page...

Odd, he doesn't look like a guardian angel.
May 8, 2006... As Microsoft's week-long appeal of the European Commission's two-year-old antitrust verdict to the Court of First Instance drew to a close last Friday, Judge John Cooke, the Irishman who's going to write the decision, gave the EC something to...

Microsoft & SAP sing their first short duet.
May 8, 2006... Microsoft and SAP said Tuesday that Mendocino, the integration project they started a year ago after attempts at merger failed, would ship June 28 as a product called Duet that lets people use the applications in Office to access some SAP...

SOA vendors form SOA Link.(Service oriented architecture )(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Infravio has rounded up 14 other SOA vendors including JBoss, Iona, Layer 7, NetIQ and webMethods and organized a multi-vendor end-to-end SOA governance interoperability initiative called SOA Link. SOA Link doesn't mandate an API for...

Borland cuts 20%.(Borland International Inc.)
May 8, 2006... Ahead of its Q1 results next week and ahead of further explication of its plans, Borland said Wednesday that it will consign 300 people, roughly 20% of its staff, to the ash can of history by the end of July in the name of greater customer...

It's deja vu all over again for RIM.(Visto Corp. sued Research in Motion Ltd. for patent infringement )
May 8, 2006... Blackberry users are going to start having nightmares again. Visto, which sued Microsoft for patent infringement back in December, has now sued Research in Motion for the same thing, seeking to crush the Blackberry into wine and replace it...

Java open source accommodation in works.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... For all its open source palaver Sun hasn't been able to bring itself to open source Java, but it is talking about relaxing its license enough to make it easier to bundle the Java Runtime Environment with Linux and OpenSolaris so Linux machines...

Microsoft buys AssetMetrix.(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Microsoft has bought Ottawa-based AssetMetrix software on undisclosed terms. As the name implies the stuff keeps track of IT assets, both computers and software and how many copies of a program are scattered around a company. It reportedly...

Microsoft to put second R&D center in Israel.(appointed Moshe Lichtman)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Microsoft is going to put a second R&D center in Israel headed by Moshe Lichtman, who has been VP of Microsoft TV and before that ran Microsoft's international Internet business. The Israeli centers are supposed to play an increasingly...

BCM 1.0 standardized.(Business Centric Methodology)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Oasis has standardized Business Centric Methodology (BCM) 1.0. It's a set of layered methods for acquiring interoperable e-business information within communities of interest. It's supposed to maximize the use of Web Services and interpret...

IBM buys BuildForge.(International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... IBM has bought five-year-old Austin Ventures-backed BuildForge Inc down in Texas on undisclosed terms for its Rational software line. The two were buddies anyway. BuildForge automates software development. IBM described it as closing the gap...

Sun finds another use for Opteron.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
May 8, 2006... Sun Tuesday announced the first NAS device based on an AMD Opteron 252 chip, a widget it calls the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance. The 5320 is supposed to increase the performance of the year-old Xeon-based Sun StorEdge 5000 NAS...

MySQL creates forge site.(MySQL Forge )(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... MySQL has created a web site called MySQL Forge to encourage MySQL-related open source development that will act as a central repository for the work. It is also backing the Debian-based Ubuntu species of Linux and says that on June 1 MySQL...

Amazon substitutes Microsoft for Google.(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Microsoft has nosed Google out of Amazon, which is now using Microsoft technology to run its A9 search engine. A9 finds things on the Amazon web site as well being a generic search mechanism. Amazon's contract with Google expired over the...

Lost in translation.(Skype Technologies S.A.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Skype is claiming to have 100 million registered users, up from 54 million last September when eBay bought it. The bloggers say that statement really means 100 million usernames and that it's rare to find more than six million people actually...

Gartner doubts Vista schedule.(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Gartner has its doubts about Microsoft getting Vista out next January. Based on Microsoft's track record, Garner is saying it doesn't expect Vista to be broadly available until "at least 2Q07," by which it apparently means summertime....

Microsoft + Yahoo! = Microsoft!?(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Doing battle with Google has caused Microsoft--or at least a faction in Microsoft--to cast about for allies--other than AOL, which it failed to get--Google having appropriated the idea itself--and to consider taking a stake in Yahoo to buck up...

The evil empire meets the grey lady.(Vista operating system is promising to make reading a newspaper online )(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... It appears that the Vista operating system is promising to make reading a newspaper online more of a natural activity. (It won't but let's humor them.) The New York Times is making like a test bed and working with Microsoft on a prototype...

Stack fever takes Unisys.(JBoss Group L.L.C., contract)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Unisys says it's going to sell open source stacks based on Linux, JBoss and a database, which means an expanded relationship with JBoss, which in turn is key to developing an open SOA, it says, and selling some services. The deal covers...

Starter Edition to hit Africa.(Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Microsoft says that it's going to start selling its special entry-level Windows XP Starter Edition--the localized stuff it's been pushing in the third world--in Africa this summer. Microsoft usually has vendors pre-install the kit on cheap...

Geez, it's not like they don't have the money.(Microsoft Corp. plans for investment)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Microsofts decision to spend an estimated $2.5 billion more than Wall Street expected it to on salesmen and R&D sheared $32 billion off its market cap last Friday after the news broke--the most action the stock has seen in a dog's age. So...

It's what you make of it, Bill.(BILLY GRAMS)
May 8, 2006... "There's nothing good that comes out of that."--Bill Gates to Donny Deutsch on being the world's richest man.

Pot calls kettle black.(market share of Hewlett-Packard Co. and International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... HP is enjoying IBM's latest stumble. Itanium may be nothing to write home about but at least HP can say that its Itanium-based Integrity server gained market share in 2005 while IBM's Power-based pSeries and iSeries were down 6% and 19%,...

Oops!!(Advanced Micro Devices Inc. recalls its microprocessor)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... AMD has recalled 3,000 single-core x52/x54 Opterons made late last year, early this year that could produce "inconsistent results" when running heavy-duty floating point computations at high ambient temperatures and high processor speeds. It's...

Microsoft betas VT support.(Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Release 2 Service Pack 1)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Microsoft has started beta testing Virtual Server 2005 Release 2 Service Pack 1, the stuff that's compatible with Intel's Virtualization Technology. It will take until the second beta, scheduled for Q4, for them to add AMD's like-minded...

McNealy on breaking the habit.(Scott McNealy resigned from Sun Microsystems Inc.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... "I am going through the porpoise thing of every four hours I go from absolute euphoria to total depression and 'What the heck have I done?' back to euphoria again."--Scott McNealy on his withdrawal symptoms after stepping down as CEO of Sun in...

The browser wars were primitive, welcome to the checkbook wars.
May 15, 2006... In a passing glance at what it called "greater transparency," Google admitted discovering that its engineers had been spending less than 70% of their time on core search development, which may explains why the company's stock sunk $22 to $387...

Sun moves to hush 'Open Source Java' chant.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Sun can't bring itself to open source Java so it'll be doing the next best thing at JavaOne in a few days. Its lawyers have reportedly come up with a new so-called Distro License for Java (DLJ) so Linux distributors can ship the Java SE 5.0 JDK...

Azul busts out of Java box--and into .NET.(Azul Systems)
May 15, 2006... Azul Systems--who's getting sued by Sun for allegedly ripping off its technology and customers and suing Sun in return seeking to have Sun's patents declared invalid--cut a deal so Mainsoft would use its witchcraft to make .NET applications...

Dell issues an Uh-Oh.(market share and profits)
May 15, 2006... Remember when Dell was golden and invariably delivered 30% growth? Well, the Texas outfit has managed to make gold tarnish. The company said late Monday afternoon that its fiscal first quarter revenues would come in at the low end of its...

Sun brings back another lost sheep.(Sun Microsystems Inc., David Douglas, Michael Lehman, Richard Green)(appointments)
May 15, 2006... Sun, which is on a kick to return lost sheep to the fold, has brought back David Douglas, plucked from his job as chief architect of BEA's flagship WebLogic, a guy who used to be VP of engineering for Solaris, and named him to the newfangled...

Sage buys part of intuit.(Sage Software Inc.)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Intuit is going to sell the assets of its roughly $20 million-a-year Master Builder construction management software business to Sage Software Inc, part of The Sage Group plc, on undisclosed terms. Sage wants the stuff for its Timberline Office...

SGI goes Chapter 11; secured creditors to own the company.(Silicon Graphics Inc.)
May 15, 2006... Well, it's finally happened. One-time industry icon Silicon Graphics, in its day a movie star by grace of all the special effects it created for Hollywood, has been forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as part of a highly...

Intel brands Conroe & Merom.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Intel said Monday that the 65nm desktop chip Conroe and the notebook chip Merom that it's hoping will save its lunch will be branded Core2 Duo when they get here in Q3. They use Intel's new Core microarchitecture--the "2" in their name is...

Microsoft previews Windows CE 6.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Microsoft has a beta release of its remade Windows CE 6, the stuff of customized operating systems for Smartphones, set-tops, GPS devices, industrial robots, medical devices and thin clients. With this take, Microsoft has redesigned the...

Sun collaborates with SAP.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... This must be one of those alternate weeks when Sun isn't feeling any too chummy with Oracle because it's tied up with Oracle's worst enemy, SAP, and says there is now a thing called N1 Advanced Architecture for SAP Solutions that will do...

IBM BladeCenter lays bait for SMBs.(small and medium sized companies)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... IBM is trying to push its BladeCenter into SMBs and so it's salting the bird's tail by offering what it figures is the lowest-priced entry-level networking switch--for accounts with limited networking skills and $999 to spend on it--a way to...

W3C standardizes Web Services Addressing 1.0.(World Wide Web Consortium)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... W3C has standardized Web Services Addressing 1.0, including the core specification and the SOAP binding, and adding the editorial observation that the industry now has a reliable, proven, interoperable standard for addressing Web Services...

SAP puts bounty on market cap.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... SAP, which racked in $10.8 billion in revenues last year in part on 18% license growth, says it will pay $381 million in bonuses to several hundred managers and key employees if they can double the company's market cap to $114 billion by the...

2.6 Kernel buggy: Morton.(Andrew Morton )(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Lead Linux production and pre-production maintainer Andrew Morton told a LinuxTag audience in Germany that the 2.6 Linux kernel is getting buggier. "It seems we're adding bugs at a higher rate than we're fixing them," he said. If it turns out...

Claiming new business model, OpenLogic pays open source developers for support.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... OpenLogic has created an OpenLogic Expert Community that taps into 50 leading open source projects like the Apache HTTP Server, ANT, Hibernate, MyFaces, Spring, Struts and Tomcat and is proposing to pay developers for Tier 3 and Tier 4...

Oracle watch.(Oracle could announce its own Linux operating system)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... The scuttlebutt on Wall Street says that Oracle could announce its own Linux operating system like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison says he wants at its analyst meeting in July, a kind of odd venue but there you have it. Wall Street's lead...

Massachusetts seeks Microsoft plug-in & ODF backer answers.(Linux Watch)
May 15, 2006... It seems that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' IT Division quietly issued a Request for Information asking about an OpenDocument plug-in for Microsoft Office last week and that Groklaw almost immediately reported--quoting Gary Edwards, a...

Novell packages up this and that as open workgroup suite.(Novell Open Enterprise Server)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Microsoft is unlikely to bat an eye when it hears that Novell has packaged up its NetWare-Linux Open Enterprise Server in what it calls an Open Workgroup Suite and is positioning it as an open, low-cost alternative to Microsoft. Novell says...

Open Management Consortium created.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... There is now such a thing as the Open Management Consortium (OMC), formed by Qlusters, Emu Software, Ayamon LLC, Symbiot Inc and Zenoss Inc, to push the benefits of open source technologies and act as a forum for collaborative server product...