Client Server News articles from October 2004

Client Server News archives from October 2004

Open Source Champions Shoot Down Microsoft FAT Patent.(Public Patent Foundation)
October 4, 2004... At the behest of the open source-loving Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has rejected all of the claims made in one of the four patents that Microsoft holds on the Windows file system. PUBPAT...

Linux PCs Boost Windows Piracy.
October 4, 2004... Gartner says the anecdotal evidence is right. Users rip Linux out of their cheap new PCs and replaced it with Windows. In emerging markets, it's generally a pirated version of Windows, meaning Linux' desktop penetration, which isn't much...

HP Drops Itanium Workstations.
October 4, 2004... The poor little under-achieving money-eating Itanium chip has been rejected by one of its own parents now. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, HP, the widget's co-developer, is going to drop its line of Itanium...

Lost Sheep Returning to the Fold.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... A story that eWeek ran the other day said that some Linux users have grown impatient enough with the upstart operating system's application incompatibilities, poor performance, escalating support costs and an immature ecosystem that they're...

CA Loses Another Exec.(Computer Associates)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Tommy Bennett, CA's senior vice president of business development, the guy who was responsible for M&A, the very stuff that created the company and made it the fourth biggest software company in the world, has reportedly resigned. The...

Russia & India To Get XP Starter Kit.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Microsoft says it's gonna sell that cheap cut-down version of XP that it came up with to fend off Linux and piracy in developing countries in Russia and India. When it announced the so-called XP Starter Edition in August - the first time...

Microsoft Seeks Stay of EC Order.
October 4, 2004... Microsoft appeared in the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg yesterday seeking a stay of the European Commission's March order until its appeal is heard. The EC told it to share more of its interoperability secrets with server rivals and...

Network-Centric Consortium Kicks Off.(Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium )
October 4, 2004... The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) revealed its existence Tuesday, as anticipated last week. Its charter is to integrate everything through the last mile. It is, according to its 28 breathless founders, "the...

CA Swings Ax, Fells 5% of its People.(Computer Associates )
October 4, 2004... Computer Associates came out swinging the ax Wednesday saying that it's going to fire about 5% of its 15,000 employees in the next month, leaving the door open for further layoffs down the road. It has been widely rumored that the company...

Sanjay Loses Perks.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Computer Associates, which has been indulgent to a fault with its former CEO Sanjay Kumar, has finally taken a few perks away from him now that he's been indicted, had his passport lifted and is out on $5 million personal recognizance bond. ...

Microsoft Debuts New Business Intelligence Tools.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Microsoft has put out new reporting tools for its Exchange Server and CRM 1.2 applications. The new SQL Server Report Packs, which can be downloaded for nothing, are designed to provide customers with templates of commonly used SQL Server...

Smart Tags Innocent of Infringement.(Smart Tags )(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... A Rhode Island jury Wednesday absolved Microsoft of any patent infringement in the case brought by Arendi Holdings claiming the technology Microsoft used in a subset of Office Smart Tags trod on its IP. Microsoft uses Smart Tags in Office...

Rackable Gets New Sales Chief.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Rackable Systems, the server house, has hired Tom Gallivan as VP, worldwide sales. Gallivan is out of Sun where he was director of sales focused on Fortune 1000 users and channels. His background is in storage and he replaces a guy out of EMC.

HP To Expand Puerto Rican Presence.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... HP has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Puerto Rico that may see it expand its R&D presence on the island and possibly set up an HP Labs branch there. HP currently employs about 2,000 in Puerto Rico, where it...

Microsoft Expands RFID Push.(Radio Frequency Identification)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Microsoft said it has expanded its RFID initiative by putting the functionality in a bunch of its upcoming ERP products like Axapta 4.0, Navision 5.0 and the next major release of Great Plains. Microsoft Business Solutions plans to provide...

Virgin Enters Music Fray Armed with its Own Player.
October 4, 2004... Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur who opened his first Virgin record store in the UK more than 30 years ago and whose Virgin Group has since gotten into airlines, soft drinks and cell phones, has made his full-scale entry into digital...

StorageTek Snaps Up Storability.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... StorageTek said Thursday that it had acquired storage software start-up Storability in an asset purchase transaction. Financial terms were not disclosed. StorageTek said it's bought all of Storability's IP, software license agreements,...

Sandial Collapses; Peddles IP.
October 4, 2004... Richly funded storage start-up Sandial Systems has given up the ghost leaving only a skeleton staff now scurrying to dispose of the carcass consisting of the company's IP. Its Shadow 14000 SAN switch launched exactly a year ago. The...

CreekPath Snags $22m.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... CreekPath Systems has gotten itself $22 million in a Series C round that takes its total backing to $54 million. The Boulder County, Colorado start-up, which provides storage management software, said new investor Lehman Brothers as well as...

BlueArc Rolls Out Channel Push.(Titan SiliconServer)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Storage start-up BlueArc has rolled out an enterprise channel program in North America and Europe for its Titan SiliconServer storage system, which is designed to scale a single file system to 256TB and provide throughput of up to 20Gbps. ...

Emulex, Brocade Smoke Peace Pipe.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Emulex and Brocade have reached a three-year "litigation standstill agreement." Both companies have dismissed without prejudice the claims and counterclaims arising from a patent infringement suit that Vixel initiated against Brocade a...

Ex-Microsoft Boys Set Out To Create a Billion-Dollar Open.(SourceLabs)
October 4, 2004... Source Company Oh my God, two ex-Microsoft chaps are doing an open source start-up. Where did Bill Gates go wrong? The name of the place is SourceLabs Inc and if two Microsoft veterans backing open source isn't radical enough, the...

French To Try To Create Ultra-Secure Linux.
October 4, 2004... The French Ministry of Defense, such as it is, will be shelling out seven million euros over the next three years to underwrite the development of a multi-level-secure Linux system that meets highfalutin CC-EAL5 certification. The system...

Unisys Mainframes To Support Linux.
October 4, 2004... Unisys is going to start supporting Linux - both Red Hat and SuSE - on its mainframes - both on the Libra line that dates back to Burroughs and the Dorado line that goes back to Univac, the company's two ancestors. The giant ClearPath...

OSDL Hires New Engineering Director.(Open Source Development Labs)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has hired Thomas Hanrahan out of IBM's neighboring Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, Oregon, to be its new director of Linux engineering. OSDL basically says that Hanrahan has inherited half of...

Mainsoft To Help Move .NET Apps to Linux Mainframes.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Mainsoft, the .NET-to-Java tools merchant and Microsoft partner, is pushing into the Linux mainframe world with the new 1.5 rev of Visual Mainwin for J2EE kit that's coming out. It says that the thing can be used to migrate .NET apps to the...

Microsoft Open Sources Wiki Code.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Microsoft has acted against type again and open sourced its third piece of software. This time it's .NET code for a thing called FlexWiki, an authoring environment used to create wikis, sites whose users can make additions or edit any page...

IBM Finally Comes Out of the Closet.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... IBM has been smacked up side the head by the District Court for Eastern Michigan for "gross negligence" in the way it repeatedly swore - under oath - that source code sought as part of court- ordered discovery by Compuware, which is suing IBM...

Red Hat To Buy Back Stock.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... With its stock price half of what it was back in June before it suffered a couple of company-inflicted misadventures - like the way it handled the departure of its CFO - Red Hat has decided to buy back $100 million worth of its shares either on...

Red Hat Winds Up with Netscape IP.
October 4, 2004... Red Hat has signed a definite agreement with AOL to buy Netscape's LDAP Directory Server and Certificate Management System for $23 million. The deal is expected to close by the end of November. The price is a combination of $20.5 million in...

Topspin Bundles Up Utility Computing.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Topspin has come up with a Grid-to-Go program to deliver an open standards-based starter kit that's supposed to - poof - create utility computing that's a tenth the cost of proprietary utility computing. The offer, good till the end of the...

Conspiracy Theories Run Riot at CA.(Computer Associates )(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Late last week Computer Associates was supposedly going to name a permanent CEO in 30 days. Now, right away it was apparent that something was wrong with that picture. Why the heck it would take the board 30 days if all they were going...

HP Headsman Reportedly Sharpens Ax.(Hewlett-Packard Co)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... In August when HP CEO Carly Fiorina began lopping off heads in revenge for the company Q3 earnings miss, one head that curiously remained on its owner's shoulders was Ann Livermore's. She had ultimate oversight for the offending server and...

Microsoft Prepares To Go After Intuit.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Credit Suisse says Microsoft is working on a low-end, likely dual- entry accounting program code named Magellan to compete against Intuit's QuickBooks and Sage's Peachtree. The broker figures Microsoft is "aiming to get companies onto its...

Red Hat Releases Linux 4 Beta.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Red Hat has released the first beta of its next Linux cut, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the first commercial Red Hat to use the 2.6 Linux kernel. The beta covers the company's AS, ES and WS servers and its Desktop client and will run on 32- and...

Moto Fires 1,000.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Motorola, which is now headed by Sun's ex-COO Ed Zander, is going to cut a 1,000 people and take a $50 million charge to cover the severance packages related to its exit from the semiconductor business.

CA Founder on Ptolemy Kick.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Computer Associates founder Charles Wang, quietly under investigation by the government to see if he's implicated in the revenue-recognition scandal that has enveloped the company, was making the rounds of Nassau County, New York politicians...

Washington Post Likely To Get Slate.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Reports say the Washington Post is going to buy Slate, Microsoft's online publication, which is up for sale. It's supposed to be close to a deal. That is if there's anything left. The New York Times, which was also looking at acquiring it, has...

So Then Sun Leaks Oil.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... "That's like saying there's something wrong with a 747 because two of its engines are exactly the same." - Sun CEO Scott McNealy to critics who say Jonathan Schwartz, his new number-two, is too much like himself.

In a move out of the 'godfather,' Ellison bumps off P'soft chief.
October 11, 2004... Last Friday the industry witnessed one of its great occasional psychodramas, the kind of stuff people dine out on for years. The PeopleSoft board up and fired CEO Craig Conway, the architect, as some would say, of its defenses against...

Sun settles Kodak suit; licenses patents.
October 11, 2004... Right before what promised to be a seven-day trial to decide whether it would have to pay Eastman Kodak a possible $3 billion for trespassing on three of its patents, Sun decided to settle out-of-court and pay Kodak $92 million in cash to get...

Peregrine 8 indicted; others implicated.
October 11, 2004... Afederal grand jury in San Diego indicted eight former senior executives of Peregrine Systems Wednesday for cooking the books from 1999 to 2002. Charges were brought against Peregrine's one-time CEO Stephen Gardner, its president and COO...

More Intel servers selling but for less.(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
October 11, 2004... Prudential is modeling a 19.5% year-over-year global increase in server shipments this year, a 24.2% increase next year and a 13.8% increase in 2006. Its numbers are based on continued strength in SMB demand and large corporate spending...

CA buys Netegrity.
October 11, 2004... Computer Associates is buying Netegrity for $430 million cash to fill the web services security hole in its product line. CA claims it's going to do this acquisition different from all the others it's made and not rape the joint or run off...

EC schedules Oracle decision.(European Commission)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Coming late to the party, the European Commission has reportedly reopened its review of Oracle's proposed acquisition of PeopleSoft that it put on a spike back in the spring. The punters are betting it will simply rubberstamp the thing in...

Cheeky start-up gets jump on Longhorn's Avalon Mojo.
October 11, 2004... Xamlon, the cheeky start-up with notions of getting to Avalon, the promised Longhorn user interface, before Microsoft does--well, at least those parts it can construct based on the early data Microsoft has released--has started peddling Xamlon...

Unisys to terminate 4% of its people.(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Unisys is going to fire 1,400 people, primarily G&A folk, and consolidate its facilities to reduce its cost base. The layoffs represent about 4% of its staff. As a result, it'll take an after-tax charge of roughly $63 million, or about 19...

Maybe 13's their lucky number.(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Oracle extended its tender offer for PeopleSoft the 13th time yesterday until October 22.

Via catches 64-bit bug.(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Via Technologies, the low-end x86 chip house, says it's going down the 64-bit trail after AMD and Intel with a next-generation core called Isaiah that will use the same 64-bit extensions as the others. The company, which has a penchant for...

AMD64 picks up steam; gives company Intel-like aura.(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... AMD, which is being measure by the press for the "next Intel" thanks to its first flush of success with the AMD64, said its Q3 sales came in a bit short of guidance, though net income improved somewhat sequentially It pre-announced its...

Microsoft to launch new POS software.(Point of Systems)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Microsoft plans to put out a version of its embedded Windows operating system called Windows Embedded for Point of Service tailored to retail and hospitality POS systems. The new product will be based on the upcoming Windows XP Embedded...

Intel supports AMD64.(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Intel wishes it weren't doing this, but the other day it came out with a suite of tools that support its AMD64-like Intel EM64T widgetry. In fact the tools will work on AMD's chips. The toolkit, which currently includes compilers,...

WSDL library available.(Web Services Definition Library )(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... The Open Applications Group (OAGi), the open standards group backing OAGIS, reputed to be the richest and most widely implemented XML business language standard, has put a complete library of free Web Services Definition Library (WSDL) files on...

Goldman Sachs says desktop Linux could exploit Microsoft's weaknesses.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund, Microsoft's biggest Wall Street booster, conceded the other day that Linux' advance on the desktop needs to be monitored. Not that he's particularly worried about Linux slowing Microsoft's growth any...

SuSE revs its desktop kit.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Novell said at the LinuxWorld Expo in London the other day that it would rev its desktop system early next month and wheel out SuSE Linux Professional 9.2, good for 32-bit as well as the 64-bit Athlon and Intel Extended Memory 64 platforms. ...

Mountain View adds new support to PowerCockpit.(Linux Watch)(PowerCockpit)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Mountain View Data Inc has revved its PowerCockpit provisioning software to support the major Linux distributions, AMD's 64-bit systems and Linux 2.6 kernel deployment. It says the stuff has been tested on HP, IBM and Rackable server and...

First Turbolinux update in two years.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Turbolinux has revved its server for the first time in two years and will start selling the thing in Japan at the end of the month at three price points that differ in how much support goes with each of them. It'll start selling what it calls...

Red Hat adds to board.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Red Hat has tapped Edward Kozel, who used to be Cisco's CTO back in the early says and as head of business development made 22 of its many acquisitions, for its board. Kozel, also a Boeing vet, is currently a managing director with...

SteelEye releases LifeKeeper for LAMP.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... SteelEye Technology has put out a release of its LifeKeeper high-availability software for the LAMP platform, the acronym for the Linux OS, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP/Perl/Python script engines combo used for building web sites....

Gluecode donates BPM engine to Apache.(Linux Watch)(Business Process Management)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Gluecode Software, an open source application infrastructure house, has pitched Project Agila over the wall to the Apache Software Foundation expecting the embeddable open source business process management (BPM) engine to become part of...

Audience for RealPlayer 10 for Linux enlarged.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... RealNetworks has broadened the potential audience for its RealPlayer 10 media jukebox software by offering the Linux version in nine additional languages and the Mac version in four. RealPlayer 10 for Linux was developed in cooperation with...

NC redux.(Linux Watch)(Network Computer)
October 11, 2004... PMC-Sierra Inc, which makes Mips chips, has picked up the network computer banner that Oracle let slip in the mud years ago after it failed to rouse the industry into making $500 NCs--a price point that Larry Ellison reported got wrong when he...

SCO watch.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... SCO has been back filing more motions in the IBM case. It says it was trying to hurry the court schedule along afraid that Judge Dale Kimball might go ahead and rule on IBM's partial summary judgment motion before the magistrate, Brooke...

Ford, BofA rev up VoIP.(Bank of America)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Bank of America and Ford are hopping on the VoIP bandwagon. Bank of America plans to deploy 180,000 Cisco IP telephones at 5,800 locations in 29 states and the District of Columbia over a three-year period. BofA said the new IP system...

Diligent rakes in $22m.(Drive Bay)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Diligent Technologies has raised another $22 million on top of the $15 million it's already gotten. Accel Ventures and Matrix Partners co-led the company's first institutional round, which included the participation of Gemini Israel Funds....

Snap bolsters replication line.(Drive Bay)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Adaptec unit Snap Appliance is going to try to breath new life into its data replication business by OEMing the Mobilize software from Nortel Networks' Signiant spin-off. Dubbed Enterprise Data Replicator, the new product is a replication...

Permabit COO quits.(Drive Bay)(perambit)(Chief Operating Officer)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Storage software start-up Permabit on Monday disavowed as inaccurate projections made last year by its COO Richard Vito, who, it said, had left the company in the last few weeks "to pursue other opportunities." Vito said Permabit would be...

EMC beefs up replication tools.(Drive Bay)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... EMC is rolling out a bunch of enterprise replication and data mobility apps for its Symmetrix DMX storage systems including: * Open Replicator for Symmetrix--which lets users replicate and recover data between Symmetrix and IBM, Hitachi...

HP debuts new NAS device.(Drive Bay)(Network Attached Storage)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Hewlett-Packard has launched a new NAS device for small and mid-size businesses called the StorageWorks NAS 500s that's supposed to provide centralized storage for file sharing, print services, application storage services and Exchange hosting....

IBM expands on-demand centers.(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... IBM said it's expanding its on-demand service centers in North America, Europe and Asia to meet growing demand. Sites include Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, Australia, Japan and Singapore. It's also rolling out new utility services. They...

Boy is he right.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
October 11, 2004... You wrote (in Linux PCs Boost Windows Piracy last week) "So prudent buyers have started buying cheap Linux PCs and load pirated Windows on them." You know, I looked and looked, and I can't find the dictionary entry for "prudent" that means...

CA's watch stops.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Two weeks ago Computer Associates said it would name a permanent CEO in 30 days. Last week it said it would name a permanent CEO in 30-45 days. This past Tuesday interim CEO Ken Cron, who wants the job permanently and is fighting off the...

Fox News meets Dan Rather, computer-style.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... SCO is getting ready to unveil its counter-Groklaw site, sort of the computer industry's version of Fox News meets Dan Rather. The curtain is supposed to lift on November 1 and SCO's putting a kind of self-imposed filter on the thing. To get...

Forrester claims to see budget swell.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Forrester Research says it surveyed 1,377 IT executives in North America and Europe as they entered the 2005 budgeting season and found that 37% of them--led by big American businesses and financial institutions--figure they'll spend more next...

HP losing shelf space.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Merrill Lynch, which keeps its eye on retail stores, says HP PCs have lost shelf space this year. So has AMD. EMachines/Gateway represent half the unsold inventory and Best Buy is selling more white boxes than it used to.

Microsoft's working on Anti-Spyware.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Bill Gates turned up at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley last week to answer questions from Stanford University president John Hennessey, an event even Frank Quattrone turned up for before he shuffles off to jail. Gates said that...

2006, as in December 31, 2006.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a speech in The Hague the other day and said something about that 2006 target date Microsoft has set for Longhorn meaning sometime "around December 31, 2006." A reporter who was there wasn't sure whether he was...

Ah, the simple solution.(Billy Grams)(Syska Hennessy Group)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Syska Hennessy Group, a $100-million-a-year engineering-cum-construction company out of New York, claims the way high-density data centers and server farms are physically laid out is contributing to the heat dissipation problems--not to mention...

AT&T scares Microsoft.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Thanks to the spike in viruses, AT&T is evaluating both Linux and the Mac OS X as to reliability, security, productivity and TCO. The company said it had no immediate plans to swap out its 70,000 Windows desktops. The testing, being done by...

80.(Billy Grams)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... The number of times the PeopleSoft board reportedly met in the last 16 months to discuss the Oracle tender offer. That's more than once a week, probably more work than they bargained for.

Intel drops 4GHz Pentium chip.
October 18, 2004... Intel has dropped the 4GHz Pentium chip from its roadmap. There will never be a 4GHz single-core Prescott. And since Intel basically uses the same widgetry for both the desktop and the server, that means there will never be a 4GHz...

China's xenophobia puts sun at risk.
October 18, 2004... The Chinese government has reportedly decided to clean up its act and has ordered the country's cities and provinces to stop using pirated software. They are reportedly supposed to buy and deploy legal software by the end of next year. The...

iTunes hits 150m milestone.(Brief Article)
October 18, 2004... Apple says that over 150 million songs have been bought and downloaded from its iTunes Music Store. People can play them on a PC or Mac, burn 'em on a CD or listen to them on an iPod. Apple sold two million iPods in the September quarter, a...

Gates leads new charge for control of the living room.
October 18, 2004... Microsoft is mounting a new offensive for control of living room entertainment with a third rev of its Windows XP Media Center Edition software, which has so far failed to establish much of a toehold in the market since it debuted two years...