But Wait, There's More

IBM Promises Sub-CPU Software Licensing on i5

IBM's iSeries team has released a statement of direction saying that it will soon offer software prices that reflect the subprocessor logical partitioning capabilities that have been a part of the iSeries line for years. Obviously, if Big Blue is going to offer customers the ability to run logical partitions on a portion of a processor (what some IBM documents refer to as "subcapacity pricing," which is a very strange term, indeed, unless you know that normal per-processor pricing is called "full capacity"), it needs to offer software pricing that matches how customers are really using software.

Hence, IBM is promising that, within the next 12 months, it will expand its subcapacity software pricing from an experimental foray on one version of the WebSphere Application Server to include other WebSphere products as well as its DB2 Enterprise Edition database, and spanning all of the operating system platforms that can be run on the eServer i5, including i5/OS, AIX, and Linux.

IBM Tweaks iSeries, pSeries Migration and Implementation Services

IBM rolled out a tweaked version of its implementation and migration services on July 30 to help customers with vintage AS/400 and relatively modern iSeries machines to migrate from that hardware and prior editions of the OS/400 platform to the new eServer i5 and its i5/OS operating system. On August 31, the company will offer similar implementation and migration services for customers moving from older RS/6000 and pSeries Unix boxes to the just-announced eServer p5 and AIX 5L 5.3. For customers who are not yet ready to move to the latest hardware and operating systems for its Power-based boxes, IBM will also tailor these services to go back a generation or two.

The migration services give customers a migration plan, whether they want to move to new hardware and software or just upgrade the software on their production box. Then, IBM technicians come in and do the operating system and related software upgrades (and upgrade the hardware, if customers acquire it). For customers interested in using the logical partitioning capabilities of the Power platform, IBM is offering a separate partitioning implementation service that helps customers carve up their machine and install operating systems within partitions.

As is usually the case, IBM did not provide list prices for any of these services. There ought to be a law against not supplying list prices for any product sold on this planet.

PeopleSoft Blames Oracle for Slumping Sales

It is hard to say for sure whether the ongoing battle between PeopleSoft and Oracle is really the reason why PeopleSoft missed its lowered financial targets in the second quarter, which ended June 30. But Oracle is a convenient scapegoat, and more important, trial documents detailing the absurd level of discounting that all ERP software makers will go to in an effort to win a deal was revealed as Oracle has defended its right to acquire PeopleSoft. Knowledge is power, and in this case, buying power.

Earlier this year, PeopleSoft said it expected sales to be in the range of $689 million, with earnings (before extraordinary charges related to the Oracle case and the J.D. Edwards merger) of about 21 cents a share during the second quarter. On July 7, PeopleSoft had just ended the quarter and had not finished counting its costs and money, and said that it expected sales would be in the range of $655 million to $665 million, with license revenue in the range of $129 million to $133 million; pro forma profit was expected to be in the range of 13 to 15 cents a share, and net income was to be 3 to 5 cents a share. When the books were finally tallied, PeopleSoft actually brought in only $647 million in sales, with $130 million of it from software licenses. Even with the J.D. Edwards acquisition, PeopleSoft only grew license revenues by 16 percent in the quarter, up from $112 million this time last year. Maintenance revenues were up 47 percent, to $302 million (now you can see why PeopleSoft bought J.D. Edwards, with its 6,500 midrange customers). Professional services sales were up modestly, to $215 million, an increase of 19 percent. Overall sales were up 30 percent. But net income, thanks to pricing pressure and increased costs, fell to $10 million, or 3 cents a share, one quarter of the profits that PeopleSoft alone brought in on 30 percent less revenue from a year ago.

Referring to the Oracle trial, PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway said that it had a big effect. "Clearly it was the elephant in the room for our customers," he said in a statement accompanying the numbers. "Considering the extraordinary circumstances we were operating under, our performance was still solid, with more than 160 new customers and strong cash flow and bottom-line earnings. We believe these signs point to strong performance when a decision is reached in this case and we are on a level playing field again."

MAPICS Revenues, Profits Shrink a Tad in Fiscal Q3, but Q4 Looking Good

Over at midrange ERP software maker MAPICS, revenues shrunk a bit and profits took a bigger hit in the company's first third quarter, but over the nine months of its fiscal year, sales are up a bit, profits are up a lot, and the company has even managed to sock away a few million dollars in cash. And, to top it off, by the end of July, MAPICS had paid off over $14 million in debt and is now debt free.

The ERP software market is not great right now, and MAPICS is making the best of a bad situation. Sales were $41.8 million in the quarter, down 11 percent. Net income was $2.2 million, down 28 percent from this time last year, and earnings per share came in at 8 cents a share, down 25 percent. For the nine-month period ended June 30, MAPICS had $128.8 million in sales, up 11 percent (driven by various acquisitions), and net income was $6.6 million, more than double from this time last year. MAPICS CEO Dick Cook said that the company expects a boost in sales in the fourth quarter, which is traditionally the company's best, and says that feedback from the 1,400 customers who recently attended the company's MPower customer conference in Chicago made him pretty confident that MAPICS will benefit from an uptick in IT spending in the second half of 2004. MAPICS expects to book sales for fiscal 2004 of between $170 million and $175 million and net earnings per share ranging between 46 and 48 cents a share.

Lakeview Technology's High Availability Software Gets 'TotalStorage Proven' Certification

Lakeview Technology announced last week that its MIMIX replicate1, H.A. Clusters, and MIMIX network1 software has passed interoperability tests at IBM to earn Big Blue's TotalStorage Proven certification. Specifically, Lakeview Technology's software has been certified to work in conjunction with IBM's BladeCenter HS20 Xeon-based blade servers, its Fibre Channel directors (which are rebranded gear from McData), its NAS 200 and Shark 800 disk arrays, its 3583 tape library, and its Tivoli Storage Manager V5.2 storage management software.

MySQL, Information Builders Support Power Linux

IBM was gung-ho earlier this year about trying to pump up Linux on its Power architecture as it was readying its "Squadron" eServer i5 and p5 servers. Last week, the company got two small but important partners to agree to support Linux on these Power boxes: open-source database maker MySQL and business-intelligence software maker Information Builders. MySQL has already completed the port of its database to Linux on Power, and has it immediately available for free download from its Web site. The software can run on older Power-based servers, too, and even the BladeCenter JS20 blade server, which is based on the PowerPC 970 (also known as the G5 at Apple). MySQL has also joined IBM's PartnerWorld program to get hooked into the reseller machine. Information Builders announced that its WebFOCUS business intelligence tools have been certified to run on Red Hat and Novell SuSE Linuxes on the Power-based server platforms. The software was already certified on the Intel-based servers and on IBM's zSeries mainframes running Linux.