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Sun Creates World's Smallest SSL Web Server

Sun Microsystems has created what can truly be called a microsystem. The tiny server, nicknamed "Sizzle" (from Slim SSL), is the size and shape of a quarter. It was created by Sun's engineers as a proof-of-concept machine for embedded applications. Sun will be presenting Sizzle at the Pervasive Computing and Communications show in March.

Sizzle is a wireless Web server and is based on an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Crossbow Technology. The server has 8 KB of main memory, which implements a stripped-down operating system plus a Web server and an SSL server. Crossbow has created its own operating system, called TinyOS, for these remote computers, often referred to as motes. The mote that Sun is using in Sizzle is called the MICA2DOT, and it is powered by a 3 volt button battery, like the kind in your motherboard to keep your BIOS settings alive. It is unclear if Sun is using TinyOS or a stripped-down version of Solaris or Linux to create its micro Web server. Sun is adding 128 KB of flash memory to the mote, and it is implementing a version of SSL based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) that Sun says makes public key cryptography suitable on a very tiny machine with extremely limited capabilities. Sizzle can complete an SSL handshake in under 4 seconds, and can do it in under 2 seconds with sessions that are reused; the Web server can transfer about 450 bytes per second. While you may not be able to run Yahoo on it, you can build vast arrays of sensors with ad hoc networking, which is what motes are for.

IBM Outsources Some Power Server Manufacturing to China

IBM announced in December that it was selling off its entire PC business to Lenovo Group, a Chinese maker of PCs, and the next day it announced that it had gone to rival China Great Wall Computer Shenzhen in Shanghai and given that company a sweetheart deal to make IBM's xSeries and OpenPower servers in China for distribution in the Asia/Pacific region.

The Great Wall deal marks the first time that another IT supplier has been given the rights to manufacture IBM's RISC-based Power servers. While Bull has for a decade licensed and rebranded IBM's entire RS/6000, pSeries, and p5 Unix servers, the company has never been allowed to manufacture them. Great Wall is apparently being allowed to manufacture only the Linux-based OpenPower variants of the Power5 "Squadron" servers. The question now is how long will it be before IBM outsources the manufacturing of OS/400-based i5 servers or AIX-based p5 servers to Great Wall or another company? If IBM wants to squeeze more profits out of the Power server line, it will be sorely tempted to leave the manufacturing to someone else, and this deal is probably a toe in the water for such an eventuality, even if IBM restricts Power server manufacturing by a third party to a Chinese manufacturer for distribution in the Asia/Pacific region.

Incidentally, Great Wall already had a partnership with IBM to make xSeries servers, and had a separate partnership with IBM whereby it made IBM-branded PCs for the Asian market. Under a separate transaction, IBM bought Great Wall's stake in the PC operation, which, presumably, will be now handled by Lenovo.

Sun's Schwartz Comments on Symantec-VERITAS Deal, Linux Acquisition Rumors

Many of you who watched PC security software and network appliance maker Symantec snap up file system maker VERITAS probably had the same thought we did after mulling the deal over: that is, why didn't Sun Microsystems, perhaps the biggest seller of VERITAS products, step in and acquire the company? Sun has aspirations in the software business, and maybe VERITAS might have been a good fit for Sun, but at a cost of $13.5 billion, Sun could not really afford to do the deal. That's about twice the amount of cash Sun has in the bank and almost the same market capitalization that Sun has.

The Symantec-VERITAS deal left Sun's president, Jonathan Schwartz, in a funny position, because many people realize that VERITAS is a better fit for Sun than it is for Symantec, and that is probably why he posted a note on Sun's Web site explaining that he was thrilled with the deal. "It's great news for Sun," he said. "It validates what we have been saying for years: that the world is moving to a utility compute world with greater simplicity, fewer vendors, and a more reliable infrastructure." Yeah, right. If anything, it demonstrates once again that software vendors are less interested in innovating than they are in locking in customer sets and maintenance streams, because they think largesse, not someone else's innovation, can save them from being knocked out of business. (To a certain extent, this is correct, but, thankfully, every now and then some real innovation happens, and it really knocks the software industry into a wall.)

While talking about the Symantec-VERITAS deal, Schwartz also took the opportunity to address the suggestion by some that Sun should give up on Solaris and buy a commercial Linux distributor, such as Red Hat or Novell. Sun can, in fact, afford to buy either company--or both--since they are only valued at around $2.3 billion each at current stock valuations. "We never comment on rumor and speculation," explained Schwartz, and then he shifted the topic slightly. "We understand customers are increasingly concerned about the lock-in of Red Hat's proprietary Linux, but rather than acquire the company, we plan on acquiring their customers one by one--with native Linux execution in Solaris 10."

Oracle Closes PeopleSoft Deal; Layoffs Imminent

Having completed its acquisition of PeopleSoft, Oracle says that next week it will announce layoffs and its integration plan for the company. Layoffs of the former PeopleSoft employees are expected to be announced internally at Oracle this Friday, and then made public the following Monday. The scuttlebutt on the street is that Oracle could let go as many as 6,000 employees from the PeopleSoft ranks, which were at over 12,000 employees before the hostile takeover.

This is a stunning number of cuts, and it is hard to believe that this number is correct. But having paid $10.3 billion for PeopleSoft, Oracle needs to get that money back, and is going to do so by cutting costs and getting the maintenance and license revenue streams from the PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards ERP suites. The deeper Oracle cuts, the more quickly it gets a return on its investment--provided it does not cut so deep that it leaves customers disgruntled.

Even before it closed the acquisition last week, Oracle was rearranging its own and PeopleSoft's executives in anticipation of the takeover. Just before the Christmas holidays, Dave Duffield, PeopleSoft's founder, resigned as chairman and CEO. Duffield, an electrical engineer by training, started PeopleSoft in 1987 and served as its chairman for the entire history of the company and was also its CEO until 1999, when he brought in Craig Conway, a top executive at Oracle, to take the CEO post. Duffield quit on December 21. On December 28, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Oracle fired four of PeopleSoft's executives, including co-presidents Phillip Wilmington and Kevin Parker, general counsel James Shaughnessy, and chief marketing officer Nanci Caldwell. Parker was also doing double duty as PeopleSoft's chief financial officer. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Oracle said that Safra Catz and Charles Phillips, who are co-presidents at Oracle, would hold those same posts at PeopleSoft, and that Harry You, Oracle's CFO, and Daniel Cooperman, the company's chief marketing officer, would hold those positions at the newly acquired PeopleSoft as well. According to the Journal, Oracle is already asking two of its own executives--Ronald Wohl, who heads development of the Oracle Applications unit, and Michael Rocha, who heads Oracle's support operations--to step down. John Wookey, who reported to Wohl, is expected to be named as the new head of the application software unit and will also be put in charge of integrating PeopleSoft's products with the Oracle products. Wohl is said to be staying on at Oracle, and will be given a new position. Juergen Rottler, who just jumped from Hewlett-Packard a few months ago, will take over as head of Oracle's support business unit. Rocha is said to be leaving Oracle.

IBM Beefs Up Server Loaner Program for ISVs with Grids

Just as the year was ending, IBM's PartnerWorld organization announced enhancements for its Virtual Innovation Center to help OS/400 partners sell their solutions on its eServer platforms. IBM launched the virtual center in 2003, and it provided partners with access to the latest IBM hardware and software technologies on a virtualized, remote basis so that they could test their applications on actual gear.

IBM has now added virtual partitions and grid technology to the center, which allows a collection of IBM servers to support a mix of Unix, Linux, Windows, and OS/400 partitions for partners to access as they test their applications. Many software developers have to work on many different IBM platforms, so such virtual resources are a great aid to their development efforts. IBM offers the resources of this grid to partners through a "virtual loaner" program, which was established six months ago and has hosted more than 200 development projects in that time. In addition to setting up the virtualized server grid, IBM has put together 18 new development and marketing guides that help partners plan, port, tune, and test their applications against IBM middleware and on various IBM platforms.

Finally, IBM has also announced a new Web-based server-sizing tool that allows companies to pick the type and size of system they need to support their applications. The system-sizer can model xSeries X86-based servers and i5, p5, and OpenPower Power-based servers.

BZ Research Says JBoss Is Most Popular Java Server, and Eclipse Most Popular Java Tool

The team of people behind the open-source JBoss Web application server are ebullient after a report from BZ Research that indicates a big surge in the use of JBoss over other Java application servers.

For the past several years, BZ Research, a sister company of Software Development Times magazine, has polled SDT readers about the application servers they use. In the November 2004 poll, 33.9 percent of the 759 respondents to the survey said they were using JBoss, compared with 26.9 percent in a November 2003 poll and 13.9 percent in November 2002. The JBoss server has just squeaked by IBM's WebSphere, which accounted for 32.9 percent of respondents (down from 40 percent in the 2004 poll). JBoss is also taking a bite out of BEA Systems, which saw its WebLogic application server in use by 35 percent of those polled in late 2003, but only 27.9 percent in 2004. Oracle's application server accounted for the bulk of the remaining middleware in use by those polled.

On the software development front, the open-source Eclipse development platform is gaining market share by leaps and bounds, jumping from 35 percent in the November 2003 poll to a stunning 55.3 percent in the November 2004 poll. Borland's JBuilder toolset was knocked from the number-one position by Eclipse and accounted for only about 23.4 percent of development platforms in use in late 2004. Sun Microsystems' open-source NetBeans alternative to Eclipse also had market share gains, rising from 13 percent to nearly 18 percent in the past year. IBM's WebSphere Studio saw its share drop by a few points to 21 percent share in the BZ Research poll.

IBM Rolls Out Low-Rate Financing to Boost Sales, Again

IBM's Global Financing unit is rolling out its "Low-Rate Financing" deal once again in the Americas region, and the interest rates the company is charging for financing its computers, software, and services are 0.2 percent lower than what it was charging last summer. While that may not sound like a lot of money, it adds up to over millions of dollars in equipment and several years of interest payments.

As the Federal Reserve Bank was raising interest rates last July, IBM increased its financing rates by 1 percent on the Low-Rate Financing deal. The on-again, off-again deal allows companies buying from $25,000 to $1 million in gear to get financing for low rates (at least by IBM's standards); customers buying pSeries products can get the low rates on deals as large as $2 million. IBM's best rate last summer was 4 percent for iSeries, pSeries, zSeries, and xSeries servers and their associated storage, up from 3 percent in May 2004. That rate is now 3.85 percent. This time last year, IBM was charging 3.25 percent, and even pSeries deals had a $1 million cap. If you read the fine print, you'll find these rates are only offered for qualified customers (meaning those with decent credit and solid financials), and they are only available on capital leases with a 24-to-36-month term with a $1 end-of-lease payout.

The interest rates IBM charges for PCs is 4.3 percent, and the company is charging 4.1 percent for any software sold under a one-time-charge licensing option and for various services from its Business Consulting Services unit. Financing for IBM's Integrated Technology Services products (this is systems integration, as opposed to business process engineering work) has been given a financing rate of 4.5 percent.