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But Wait, There's More
Debian Port to AMD Nearly Done
The development team behind the Debian variant of Linux reports this week that the port of Debian to the Opteron processor and its X86-64 instruction set is nearly finished and about 97% compiled. The AMD port of Debian will soon have its own tree and the team will generate builds for that platform on a daily basis, as it does for X86 and other platforms today. The port is a complete 64-bit redo of the code, by the way. None of the several thousand packages that comprise Debian Linux are in 32-bit mode in the Opteron version, although there is a way to use the chroot environment to set up a 32-bit emulation environment for those who need to run a 32-bit Linux application on an Opteron box.
Interestingly, because the future 64-bit Xeon chips from Intel have reverse-engineered the AMD X86-64 instruction set, it should be a snap for the Debian team to support these future Xeons, which are expected at the end of June with the "Nocona" Xeon DP chips. Intel has not been very clear about this, but if all the Linux distros who have AMD support can claim support for Nocona right out of the chute, this will be a pretty good indication that Intel has put the AMD X86-64 instructions into Xeons.
IBM's iSeries Linux Biz Grows by a Factor of Six
IBM makes a lot of noise about its proprietary iSeries and Unix pSeries servers and their support of Linux within logical partitions on those servers. But does Big Blue make any money on this? Apparently so. In the iSeries line, we hear that IBM booked around $100 million in Linux-related iSeries server sales in 2003, a factor of six larger than Linux sales on the box in 2002. On that iSeries platform, sales of traditional green-screen applications was flat or down.
With the advent of more granular partitioning on the new Power5-based servers and better support from the commercial Linux distributors for IBM's Power platforms, there's no reason to believe that IBM can push at least several hundred million dollars worth of iSeries iron in 2004. About a fifth of the computing power IBM sells in its mainframe line is dedicated to Linux, and there is no reason to believe that the same thing can't happen with the Power platform, which represents about $5 billion in sales a year. Linux could end up being a $1 billion business on Power servers--and a lot faster than many people think.
HP, Sendmail Team Up to Attack Email Market
Sendmail, the company that develops the commercial version of the popular open-source email server, has announced that Hewlett-Packard has become a worldwide reseller of Sendmail's products. The deal allows HP and its vast reseller network to peddle all of Sendmail's products, including the Mailcenter carrier-grade email solution as well as the Mailstream Manager for message flow and security management.
The HP-Sendmail deal might seem strange given that HP has its own messaging platform, OpenMail, which it has sold in droves on Unix and which it has ported to Linux. But HP actually stopped selling OpenMail several years ago, and gave Samsung the rights to the software, which it sells as these days as Samsung Contact.
Under the Sendmail deal, HP will bundle Sendmail's software on its core ProLiant servers (the two-way DL380 and the four-way DL580) and offer Web support for Sendmail as well as CarePaq tech support for the servers. HP will also resell Sendmail's Anti-Spam Engine in five different pricing tiers, ranging from 100 to 10,000 users. (Pricing was not made public.)
Big Blue Pushes Linux in Brazil
The Brazilian economy is under pressure, and Big Blue thinks that the way to cut costs for many IT shops is to move to Linux-based point of sale and desktop machines. To that end, IBM's Global Services unit this week announced the Open Client Desktop Services offering, which will help Brazilian retailers, financial services, and government organizations deploy Linux-based solutions where they are currently using other technologies. The services include assessment of the potential use of Linux at a site, design, migration of applications, piloting of new applications, and tech support. IBM plans to use local partners and commercial Linux distributors Red Hat, Novell , and Conectiva
Red Hat Previews First Quarter Results to Calm Investors as CFO Quits
Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat pre-announced its fiscal 2005 first quarter financial results to try to quell the fears of investors that the company's chief financial officer, Kevin Thompson, was not leaving the company for reasons other than to spend more time with his family.
Thompson took over as CFO just after Red Hat exploded onto the scene when it went public in the summer of 1999. Linux fever and the dot-com boom were in full swing, pushing the company's market capitalization up to close to $8 billion in a matter of months. In a statement released by Red Hat, Thompson said that the pace of change in the past four years has been hectic, and that he wanted to spend more time with his family and would stay on at the company until an executive search firm found a replacement for him. Red Hat's shares started losing value on the news, so the company pre-announced some of the financial results it expects to report on Thursday to try to prove that revenue and profits were not the issue.
Red Hat said that in the first quarter it had shipped 98,000 subscriptions to Enterprise Linux: 75,000 to corporate customers and 23,000 for HPC and hosting customers. Red Hat's corporate Linux shipments are up a healthy 23 percent (14,000 units) from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2004, but overall shipments, the company said, were only up 13 percent. When you do the math, that means that Red Hat's shipments into the HPC and hosting markets that have been the stronghold of Linux were down 10 percent or so sequentially. (Red Hat didn't say this. You have to do the math. And the company did not provide comparisons with the first quarter of fiscal 2004, which is what really matters.) The company said that it expected net income of more than $10 million in the quarter just ended and that operating income would be $6.3 million, which it said was about 15 percent of revenue. Red Hat didn't say what the revenue number would be for the quarter, but that works out to about $42 million.
Labor Statistics Indicate Offshoring Plays Small Role in Job Losses
The debate over sending technology jobs and other work abroad was stirred last week after the Department of Labor released research indicating that less than 2 percent of the 239,361 workers affected by extended layoffs in the first quarter of this year lost their jobs because of outsourced labor to foreign countries. The loss of IT-related jobs, particularly programming and other technology work, has been a cloud hanging over the industry in recent months. During that time some IT industry leaders have spoken out in favor of outsourcing jobs, saying it is good for the U.S. economy. According to the Department of Labor report, most of the jobs lost in the technology sector were from call centers and tech support. Since the report was released, the statistics are being used to show that the offshoring issue is nowhere near the crisis level that opponents have indicated. Forrester Research recently predicted 3.4 million jobs will leave the United States and will be taken by overseas workers in the next 11 years. The statistics were compiled from companies employing a minimum of 50 workers, where at least 50 people filed for unemployment insurance during a five-week period and the layoff continued beyond 30 days. The report totaled 4,633 workers who had their jobs relocated overseas from January through March.
Oracle Says IBM Wanted to Quash Its Bid for PeopleSoft
IBM's interest in Oracle's bid to purchase PeopleSoft was spotlighted last week during the antitrust trial concerning this potential acquisition. At the center of the storm were confidential and sealed documents that indicate IBM could lose millions of dollars if Oracle acquired PeopleSoft.
The Department of Justice, backed by 10 states, seeks to block Oracle's acquisition based on the idea that there is already limited competition in the market that attends to intricate accounting and personnel software required by the nation's largest organizations, and that Oracle's proposed purchase of PeopleSoft would reduce the competition from three companies to two. SAP, the worldwide market leader, is the third player the DoJ recognizes in this game. Oracle says the definition of this as a three-company market is too narrow.
The documents indicating IBM's potential losses were submitted by Oracle as lawyers to draw attention to IBM's financial stakes in the outcome of this trial and to cast doubt on the credibility of an IBM Business Consulting Services executive called to testify by the Department of Justice.
IBM losses, in the event that Oracle would purchase PeopleSoft, are outlined in this document and are substantial, Oracle's attorney pointed out. The reason is that Oracle's accounting and personnel software won't work with IBM's database software. It was also pointed out that the IBM documents included strategies to help PeopleSoft fend off Oracle. Oracle attorneys have repeatedly spoken out about how the government's antitrust case has been shaped by information from IBM, which wants to avoid a takeover.
If Oracle got PeopleSoft and its new J.D. Edwards unit, Oracle would control one of the biggest drivers of IBM's server, operating system, database, and middleware sales. What would happen to DB2 and WebSphere sales if all of this software were pushed heavily on the Oracle stack? The result is clearly more than simply the millions of dollars that Oracle's lawyers have suggested are at stake for IBM.
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SUSE LINUX
