But Wait, There's More

SpikeSource Bags Sun Founder Joy for Board

Open source software integrator and service provider SpikeSource said last week that Bill Joy, one of the creators of the open source BSD variant of Unix and one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, has joined its board of directors. Joy has been bopping around since leaving Sun in 2003, and eventually ended up at venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers. This is also where Ray Lane, the former number two at Oracle ended up, and after backing SpikeSource for development, he was named its chairman. SpikeSource is trying to jump-start a supported implementation of the Apache-MySQL-PHP software stack that is popular on Linux platforms but also available on Windows and Unix, too.

SpikeSource also announced that Joaquin Ruiz has been hired as vice president of product marketing; Ruiz previously headed up marketing for Liquid Systems, a stealth-mode startup located in Silicon Valley that was founded in 2003 and that is working on some sort of enterprise messaging solution. (I think alcohol is probably better than software for enterprise messaging, and it is a liquid as well . . . ) Prior to that, Ruiz was in charge of marketing for Sistina Software, a maker of open source global file systems that was acquired by Red Hat in December 2003. SpikeSource has also hired Anders Tjernlund to head up its support operations, a job he once had at middleware maker BEA Systems.

Novell Gets Linux Deal with Hoster Rackspace

Hosting company Rackspace said last week it has decided to use Novell's ZENworks Linux Management systems administration tools to administer its Linux servers. Rackspace has long since offered Linux application hosting on Dell Xeon-based PowerEdge servers and white box servers using alternative Athlon and Opteron processors from AMD. (The company also supports Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 on the same iron.) Rackspace has pushed Red Hat Linux, but the company has partnered with Novell to take its Linux hosting up another notch for what it is calling its "Red Label" hosting.

The Red Label hosting service, which will run initially on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 but given Rackspace's tight ties with Red Hat (and the name), it is hard to imagine that Red Hat won't also soon be an option for the Red Label hosting service. Ditto for Microsoft's Windows, too. With Red Label hosting, Rackspace monitors performance of applications as they run, does proactive patching (with rollback in case something gets screwed up), and more intensive customer support for not just Linux, but the popular programs often used in enterprise Linux installations such as the Apache Web server, JBoss application servers, and Oracle and MySQL databases. Rackspace went with ZENworks because it can manage both Red Hat and Novell Linuxes, but also probably because Novell gave it a sweet deal on the combined package and an early lead on the Red Label service..

Dell Shoots for $80 Billion in Sales by 2009 or So

You have to have goals in life, and no one would ever accuse PC and server maker Dell of lacking in ambition. At the company's shareholder meeting a few weeks ago, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said Dell believed it could get into the same revenue class as rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Specifically, Rollins pointed to the upper deck and said that Dell's management believed that the company could reach $80 billion in sales within the next three to four years.

That would be a stunning feat. Dell had sales of $31.9 billion in its fiscal year ended February 2001, and sales actually dipped a tiny bit in fiscal 2002. That dip occurred during most of calendar 2001, which was also when the IT industry was hammered pretty hard by what could only be called an economic depression. Dell's sales recovered a bit in fiscal 2003, growing to $35.4 billion, and continued to grow in fiscal 2004 to $41.4 billion and to $49.2 billion in fiscal 2005. At current growth rates, Dell should be able to easily hit $80 billion in sales in fiscal 2009, which ends in January of that year. Dell is hedging a little by saying $480 billion in three to four years, just in case the IT market doesn't grow as fast as it would like.

While Dell's server market is growing nicely, Dell is going to have to sell a lot more servers to add more than $30 billion to its revenue. Rollins said that Dell would focus on products and services where it believed people were spending too much on technology, and singled out servers and storage, notebooks and other wireless devices, printers, and televisions and monitors as key growth areas. He also said that Dell would be expanding into other areas of the world with its direct marketing model. However, European and Asian IT vendors have been pretty agile themselves, and have kept Dell at bay.

IBM Positions Linux in Better Light

Has the confidence level of IT decision-makers been reached? Of course, IBM is going to say yes. In an article published on the IBM Web site titled "IT Tectonics: What's Driving the Shift From Unix to Linux", IBM first cites an IT manager survey by the Robert Francis Group that provides evidence the current Linux 2.6 kernel is ready for enterprise workloads. The article's major points in favor of Linux are that it can't be developed into proprietary products; that IT directors are now making decisions based on corporate business strategy, operating system technical capabilities, future directional options, and long-range support issues; and that software vendors have an advantage when porting to Linux because they don't have to maintaining multiple code bases as they enhance their products.

Before wrapping up its pro-Linux annotations, IBM brings in Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, the director of marketing for Novell's SUSE Linux line, to provide his viewpoint on Sun Microsystems Solaris and the open source community. Sun's decision to open source Solaris adds some intrigue to the Linux/Unix battle, and Mancusi-Ungaro has opinions about this just like many others.

Interex Cancels HP World User Group Event Next Month

If you were planning on attending the HP World event hosted by the Interex user group of Hewlett-Packard customers, you might want to see if you can get your airfare back or be thankful that you lived close enough to drive to the event in San Francisco. This week, Interex pulled the plug on HP World, which was set for next month. The group posted the following notice on the HP World site:

"It is with great sadness, that after 31 years, we have found it financially necessary to close the doors at Interex. Unfortunately our publications, newsletters, services, and conference (HP World 2005) will be terminated immediately. We are grateful to the 100,000 members and volunteers of Interex for their contributions, advocacy and support. We dearly wish that we could have continued supporting your needs but it was unavoidable."

HP has been putting on its own user group events, and Interex is apparently filing for bankruptcy, but we were unable to confirm this as we went to press. In the meantime, HP will offer paid attendees to HP World a pass to its own HP Technology Forum, which is scheduled for September 12 to 15 in New Orleans, and offer discounted exhibition space to vendors that do not compete with HP who want to show their wares at HP Technology Forum.

Gartner Says Microsoft, IBM the Leaders in Web Services

Never one to squander a good PR opportunity, Microsoft is making the most of a recent Web services report from industry analyst Gartner that looks favorably upon the software giant's Web services strategy. Last week, the analyst group published a report called the 2005 Magic Quadrant for Web Services Platforms, and in it, Microsoft was included in the "leader quadrant," which is where those vendors with the highest "completeness of vision" and the most "ability to execute" come together. Microsoft director of Web Services Strategy, Ari Bixhorn, says the software giant has a "comprehensive solution for organizations to integrate heterogeneous IT investments more securely and reliably," and that's probably accurate, as far as Gartner's analysis goes. But Microsoft wasn't the only company in the leader quadrant, and has to share that space with rivals IBM, Oracle, SAP (who is more of a partner these days), and Tibco Software. All in all, Gartner rated Microsoft highest in completeness of vision, and rated IBM highest in ability to execute.

Ingenica Unveils Host Printing Utility

Bell Canada subsidiary Ingenica recently launched new software to make printing easier for Linux, Unix, OS/400 and mainframe. The product, called UniPrint Host Module, enables users of these servers to submit PCL5 print jobs to any network-attached printers over Citrix ICA and Microsoft RDP sessions. Along the way, the UniPrint Host Module also converts the PCL5 print job to the PDF format, which the Toronto company mistakenly called Printable Document Format. (The last time we checked, PDF still stood for Portable Document Format, but perhaps it is time for a change, Adobe.) Connecting Unix, mainframe, and OS/400 servers with network-attached printers increases the potential pool of printers that work with these servers and eliminates the requirement to use specialized servers. "Host Module addresses the needs of mainframe users by making it simple to print from a mainframe application to any desktop or network printer," says Polly Galita, Ingenica's director of sales and marketing. Host Module works with the version 5 releases of the UniPrint Server and Gateway Module products that Ingenica launched in December.