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August 2, 2008: Volume 10, Number 31
July 26, 2008: Volume 10, Number 30
July 19, 2008: Volume 10, Number 29
July 12, 2008: Volume 10, Number 28
July 5, 2008: Volume 10, Number 27
June 28, 2008: Volume 10, Number 26
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Copyright © 1996-2008 Guild Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Guild Companies, Inc., 50 Park Terrace East, Suite 8F, New York, NY 10034
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While the company has the technical chops to compete with the best of the server and operating system makers left in the world, for whatever reason Sun Microsystems does not seem to have the marketing team, sales force, reseller channel, and price/performance advantages to turn that very good engineering work into increased sales and profits. The ending to fiscal 2008 on June 31 was a virtual carbon copy of the prior year's fourth quarter and full year, with some wiggling here and there in terms of sales and profits. But Sun has not pushed ahead financially as many inside and outside the company had expected--and an even larger number of investors had hoped.
There's been a lot of speculation of late concerning future versions of Microsoft Windows, including a so-called "incubation project" that's codenamed "Midori." While Microsoft isn't saying a whole lot about Midori, that hasn't stopped people from contemplating what it might look like, including the possibility that it may be de-coupled from the legacy Windows kernel entirely, providing a fresh start for Microsoft as it seeks to create a new online computing platform.
Microsoft took two steps yesterday to help thwart the "Exploit Wednesday" events following the monthly "Patch Tuesday" releases. At the annual Black Hat USA conference this week in Las Vegas, the company announced a new program to share details of newly patched vulnerabilities with software vendors before sharing them with the public and malware writers. It also unveiled a new "vulnerability index" to provide more detail on the relative danger that each newly discovered flaw poses.
As expected, Yahoo's shareholders overwhelmingly voted to keep the current board of directors in place, thereby approving the board's deal to give three seats to Carl Icahn, who has backed off his initial push for an acquisition by Microsoft. There was little mention of the failed Microsoft deal at the meeting, although Icahn apparently still has hopes that the two companies can work out some sort of deal in the future.
Microsoft announced plans recently to buy DATAllegro, a Southern California company that develops Linux-based data warehousing appliances that can scale into the hundred-terabyte range. The software giant plans to create a version of DATAllegro's appliance that works with SQL Server 2008.
Thirty-something years ago, IBM's big rivals in the computer business were five companies that built glass house systems. Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell were collectively known as the BUNCH. Unisys, which is Burroughs plus Univac, is still in computing and NCR, while it has spun off Teradata, still has ATM and related systems businesses. But these days Unisys and NCR are mainly services outfits, not hardware makers. Moreover, Unisys could be dismantled by a hedge fund that wants some cash. Ironically, Unisys may have just found a measure of salvation: a path to the forefront of virtualized X64 technology via some Sun iron.
Chip maker Intel, seeking to rub salt into the wounds of rival Advanced Micro Devices and its ATI graphics chip subsidiary and to get the X64 architecture chasing some pretty high-end visualization workloads in supercomputers and perhaps in game consoles if IBM is not careful, is this week providing some insight into the forthcoming "Larrabee" family of X64-based graphics engines.
When Wheelabrator Laboratories implemented Quadrant Software's paperless process management (PPM) software, it was hoping to streamline the handling of statements and invoices generated from its JD Edwards ERP system, and to cut down its use of paper. As the implementation got under way, managers with the Waste Management subsidiary found some other ways to take advantage of the software that they had not initially anticipated.
LogRhythm, a developer of cross-platform log management products, is now supporting log data originating from the IBM i operating system (OS) with its log management products, the company announced Monday. Customer demand to include i OS-related data in their log management systems drove LogRhythm to seek out a partnership with PowerTech Group, a specialist in i OS security.
System i and Power Systems shops that use RJS Software Systems' WebDocs to capture, store, and manage documents originating from i OS or other sources will soon have the capability to search those documents using Google's popular search appliances. The new integration is the result of a partnership unveiled last week between Google and the Minnesota software company.
While The Linux Beacon was away on holiday last week, the Debian project announced that it has provided its fourth update to the "Etch" version, which is distributed as Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 and is the basis of the many Debian variants out there in the world. The project also said that the future Debian 5.0, which is being developed under the code-name "Lenny," has been put into code freeze.
Just after IT Jungle went on hiatus for a little rest and relaxation in the hot New York City summer, Sun Microsystems announced a so-called AMP stack--short for Apache, MySQL, and Perl/Python/PHP--for the Solaris and Linux operating systems.
Facing some stiff competition on two fronts with Microsoft and Citrix Systems gunning for the X64 server virtualization budget money, VMware decided just a few days after reporting its financial results for the second quarter and a few weeks after the departure of founder and president Diane Greene that now is the right time to give away the ESV Server 3i embedded hypervisor to blunt the Microsoft and Citrix attacks on a business that VMware still owns.
Back in early 2006, one of the up-and-coming executives at IBM was tapped to become the general manager of the company's fast-growing pSeries Unix server and workstation business line. Two reorganizations and two years later, and that executive, Ross Mauri, a graduate of Marist College--one of the hotbeds of academic mainframia--who aspired once to merely be an MVS systems programmer at Big Blue, found himself in charge of a very big piece of IBM. Perhaps the most important part, too.
I have never understood why IT suppliers do not just come out and report their sales by product categories, but I suspect that we can blame the accountants and chief financial officers at those suppliers and the nervousness of the marketeers, who want to say as little as possible about how well or poorly they are doing in any product category. Anyway, because IT vendors only talk broadly and vaguely about their sales, IT consultants, Wall Street analysts, and wiseguy journalists are left each quarter to take a stab at trying to figure out actual sales for products.
Our intrepid PTF watcher, Doug Bidwell of Power Systems reseller and systems integrator DLB Associates, says that starting with last week's batch of PTF patches for the latest releases of the i operating system, Big Blue has done something that it probably should have done a long time ago. It has created a Security Group PTF set of patches, which roll security patches all together in one place for a specific OS/400, i5/OS, or i release.
