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Microsoft Misleads With Anti-Linux Ads, Say UK Authorities

The Advertising Standards Authority in the United Kingdom has busted Microsoft's chops about a series of advertisements it has been running where it implies that the cost of running Linux for file and Web serving is ten times as high as running the same workload on Windows 2003 servers.

While technically true, what the Microsoft ads did not say--and which the ASA took exception to--was the fact that the studies that Microsoft cited in the advertisement compared the cost of running Linux on a single IBM zSeries mainframe engine to the cost of running Windows 20003 on a two-way X86 server using 900 MHz Xeon processors. While not disputing the numbers Microsoft cited, the ASA said that Microsoft was implying that Linux software--not the software running on specific and very expensive hardware--was a factor of ten more expensive than the Windows software setup. As the ASA correctly pointed out, the Microsoft ads, which are part of its "Get The Facts" campaign, could have cited data comparing Windows and Linux on the exact same X86 hardware and chose not to. The organization advised Microsoft to revise the ads, and Microsoft pulled the ads.

OSDL Hires New General Counsel, Promotes Kernel Testing

Open Source Development Labs, the place where Linus Torvalds gets his paycheck these days and which is increasingly the steward for Linux and the open source movement in the business community, announced last week that it has hired Diane Peters as its general counsel. Peters is from the Ater Wynne law firm in nearby Portland, Oregon, and has been acting as outside counsel for OSDL since 2002. She has been a staff attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago and has practiced law with various firms in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Buenos Aires. Peters job at OSDL will be to focus on the legal issues facing Linux, including licensing, copyright, and intellectual property matters.

In a separate announcement, OSDL announced that it has upgraded its Scalable Test Platform to version 3.0. The STP is a set of hardware platforms and testing software that allows software developers to quickly test through an online facility the effect of Linux kernel patches on those hardware platforms as it relates to their software. The STP was created in 2001 through a $15 million investment to create a diverse data center and testing software. OSDL used STP to test the Linux 2.5 development release and the Linux 2.6 production release since 2001 and the launch of Linux 2.6 earlier this year, doing about 1,000 tests a month. The lab says it has performed an additional 10,000 tests on Linux 2.6 since it was launched.

Three Top HP Execs Get the Ax

In the wake of Hewlett-Packard's shortfall in earnings in fiscal Q3, Carly Fiorina, the company's chairman and CEO, said that there would be some heads rolling, and indeed there were.

As expected, Peter Blackmore, the most senior-level executive from the former Compaq since Michael Capellas left to run MCI, got the boot, or rather, the Ferragamo. Blackmore was in charge of Compaq's well-respected services business (which it got by virtue of buying Digital Equipment in 1998) when HP acquired Compaq, in early 2002. Blackmore was soon put in charge of HP's Enterprise Systems unit, with HP's own Ann Livermore getting the top services job. This pretty much sealed Blackmore's fate. A year ago, when the server and storage unit also missed its numbers, Blackmore was in the hot seat. At the turn of the year, HP began merging its services and server units and put them under control of Livermore, giving Blackmore the top sales job within its Customer Solutions Group. Rather than making his job easier, being responsible for sales on all HP fronts only made Blackmore's life harder. Mike Winkler, who has been HP's chief marketing officer, was tapped to replace Blackmore as executive vice president in charge of Customer Solutions Group.

In addition to Blackmore's ouster, two lieutenants in the Americas and EMEA regions were replaced. Jim Milton has replaced Jack Novia as senior vice president of Customer Solutions Group's Americas region, and Bernard Meric will take over from Kasper Rorsted as the top executive in Customer Solutions Group's EMEA operations. With these moves, three more Compaq execs have been replaced. Winkler is also from Compaq, and he ran Compaq's PC, servers, and storage units. While he was probably better suited to running the Enterprise Systems unit at HP than was Blackmore, it is safe to say that he is probably a little jumpy, given the task at hand and Blackmore's tenure at HP.

Sun Holds Financing Rates Steady As Fed Raises Interest Rates

Kris Snow, vice president of the Sun Microsystems Finance unit of server maker Sun Microsystems, runs one of the largest captive leasing companies in the world, and she has decided that, unlike the other leasing arms of her competitors, it is a good strategy to hold leasing and financing rates in the United States steady even as the Federal Reserve has jacked up rates twice in the past couple of weeks. The unit has been financing its systems, storage, and software at a 3.9 percent rate for prime customers, and Snow is going to hold that rate steady to help Sun drum up some business and to give its customers a perk as they re-up their leases.

The deal is available until December 31 to customers that want to finance any of the products in Sun's portfolio, including Linux workstations, Linux servers, and middleware intended for Linux servers. Customers with good credit can get a 3.9 percent rate and deferred payments until January 2005, for financing terms of either 24 or 36 months. Snow says that you have to be a tier-one customer and have a Moody's credit rating of B or higher in order to get this low financing. Snow says that because of the different interest rates and states of national economies around the world, the unit is just making this offer in the States, but adds that she is looking into similar deals in Europe, Asia/Pacific, and Latin America.

HP Offers Financing Deals to Pump Sales

In a move to match a similar deal IBM launched a few weeks ago to bolster sales in the midrange server market, Hewlett-Packard this week announced that it, too, would offer low lease rates and deferred payments until January 2005 as a deal sweetener.

The rate of this low rate financing depends entirely on a company's credit rating, but the deferred payments are available for anyone who can get financing in the first place through HP Financial Services. This specific Jumpstart on Financing an Adaptive Enterprise deal is being offered in North America and allows customers who negotiate a fair market value, $1 acquisition, or 10 percent end of term lease can get deferred payments on that lease between now and January 2005, thereby shifting acquisitions that HP gets to book in the calendar Q3 and Q4 of 2004 into to IT budgets in fiscal 2005 for its customers. Lease terms of 24, 36, 48, and 60 months are available under this offering, and it runs until October 31, 2004, which is the end of HP's fiscal year. Companies have to finance at least $25,000 in PCs, servers, storage, network gear, and systems management software to take part in the deal, and federal, state, and local governments have to spend at least $50,000. This promotion is only available in the United States and Canada.

HP Launches Baby StorageWorks EVA 3000 Disk Array

If you sell IT solutions these days, you have to create a product that can start out reasonably small and yet be upgradeable to a much larger configuration. Hewlett-Packard last week pruned back its StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array 3000 SAN arrays to create a starter unit that is less expensive than the former low-end EVA 3000, which means it has a lower entry price point and is therefore appealing to a larger number of customers. The EVA arrays are distinct from the lower-priced entry Modular Smart Array disk arrays from HP, in that they have sophisticated snap-shotting and other virtualization features.

The EVA 3000 Starter Kit, as this trimmed down machine is called, consists of a 5U chassis that has two controllers and eight 146 GB, 10K RPM Fibre Channel SCSI disk drives. On top of this, HP tosses in its OpenView Storage Operations Manager v1.2 software and licenses to attach to two host servers (which can be Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, Windows, or NetWare machines). This starter array, including 24/7 support, which will be available September 1, will cost $42,000.

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