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IDC Says IT Recovery in U.S. Is Starting in the West

IT spending is starting to pick up in the western part of the United States, according to research from IDC. IDC reckons that IT spending in California was $37.9 billion in 2003 and that it will grow by 5 percent this year. The company suggests that growth will be good in other western states, too. However, IDC says that IT spending in the manufacturing areas of the Midwest and the South will not pick up as quickly, particularly in Missouri, Kansas, and South Carolina. IDC says that the Northeast is a volatile region and that financial and banking institutions, which are the economic pillars of this region, will lead IT spending growth. IDC is projecting that the U.S. economy, as measured by gross domestic product, will grow by 4.6 percent in 2004 and that IT spending in the United States will nearly match it, with 4.7 percent growth. During the boom years of the late 1990s, IT spending growth was typically double that of GDP growth.

IBM Buys Candle to Bolster 'On Demand' Plans

Seeking to improve its systems management capabilities as it moves into a self-proclaimed "on-demand" world, IBM this week snapped up privately held systems management software expert Candle. IBM had not yet divulged the exact plans for the deal at press time. Candle has 800 employees, as well as 3,000 customers around the world, who use the company's tools to manage their mainframe, Unix, Windows, Linux, and other kinds of servers. Candle, based in El Segundo, California, will undoubtedly be moved into the Tivoli unit of IBM's Software Group, which is run by Robert LeBlanc.

IBM would not say how much revenue Candle generates, but said that the company is profitable. Hoover's Online, which estimates revenues for private companies, reckoned a few years ago that Candle generated around $320 million in sales. What the acquisition means for long-time IBM partner and Candle rival BMC Software is unclear, but it may be that IBM wanted to buy BMC, which, with $1.3 billion in sales a year, is the market leader in systems management and performance tuning. But BMC is a public company with a market capitalization of $4.3 billion, and IBM could pick up Candle for a lot less money. IBM also does not have the $6 billion or so that buying BMC would cost.

More Details on Sun's UltraSparc-III Upgrade Promotions

A few weeks ago, Sun Microsystems announced that it was selling upgrades to UltraSparc-III uniboards to Sun Fire server customers with a special promotional price if they moved from older UltraSparc-IIIs to the new 1.2 GHz UltraSparc-IIIs. At that time, the company talked very generally about the promotion, saying customers could get a trade-in allowance on their old boards worth up to 35 percent of the cost of a new 1.2 GHz uniboard. Sun has now released more information about the promotion.

Customers who upgrade to the fastest uniboards for Sun Fire 3800, 4800, or 6800 servers can take part in the deal. Customers who buy a 1.2 GHz uniboard with two processors and 4 GB of main memory would normally pay $86,000 for this board, but Sun is selling it under the promotion for $56,290. A uniboard with four processors (which is its full complement of chips) and 8 GB of main memory has a list price of $116,600, but the upgrade price for existing Sun Fire 3800, 4800, and 6800 customers is only $75,790. Adding another 8 GB of main memory to that uniboard kicks the list price up to $128,600, but with the promotion it only costs $83,590. And, finally, increasing the memory to 32 GB (which is the maximum memory the board supports) on a four-processor uniboard using the 1.2 GHz processors would increase the price to $164,600, but Sun will take $106,990 for now.

Tadpole Launches Opteron-Solaris Laptop

Tadpole Computer, which has been making Sparc-based laptops for years, announced this week that it will create a line of laptops that competes with its current Sparcle line of laptops, which are based on various UltraSparc chips from Sun, and uses the 64-bit Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Tadpole will announce the new machines in the second quarter of 2004, and they will be equipped with the Java Desktop System and running either Solaris for X86 or Linux.

Tadpole's current line of Sparcle laptops uses the 440 MHz/256 KB and 500 MHz/256 KB UltraSparc-IIe, the 650 MHz/512 KB UltraSparc-IIi, and the 1 GHz/1 MB UltraSparc IIIi processors. While these are fine processors, they do not support a standard Linux distribution. Moreover, they are not particularly powerful, not compared to the real UltraSparc-III and UltraSparc-IV processors. Tadpole could be thinking of using the new low-voltage Opterons, which would easily have more processing capacity than the current Sparc chips used in the Sparcles. The kinds of people who want Solaris laptops are as interested in great performance as they are in conserving electricity, so giving them more oomph should help Tadpole boost its sales. Sun is obviously thinking the same thing about entry servers, so Tadpole is just following Sun's lead.

VIA Debuts Tiny C3-Based Nano-ITX System Boards

After months of rumors among the Mini-ITX subculture, Taiwanese X86 chip, chipset, and motherboard maker VIA Technologies has announced yet a smaller form factor system board called the Nano-ITX, which includes all of the major system components needed for a media PC or embedded server--all crammed into a square board that is only 12 centimeters (4.7 inches) on a side.

The Mini-ITX form factor, which is based on a square system board that measures 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) on a side, has caught on among tinkerers in the PC market because it is based on the low-power line of C3 and Eden processors that VIA Technologies obtained through its acquisition of chipmaker Cyrix from National Semiconductor in September 1999. National Semiconductor bought Cyrix to try to foster the entry PC market (specifically, sub-$1,000 PCs with dreams of the sub-$500 PC), but it gave up on the business after owning Cyrix for only two years. Here it is, five years later, and reasonably powerful Mini-ITX boards are so inexpensive that people are building their own baby servers and putting PCs inside cigar boxes, lunch boxes, and other weird places. The speed of C3 processors ranges from 600 MHz to 1 GHz, but they consume very little power and generate very little heat, which means they can run fanless or with very small fans that are nearly silent. The Mini-ITX and Nano-ITX boards have built-in serial, parallel, LAN, and other ports that a modern PC and server has. Some variants that VIA Technologies makes have dual LAN ports; others have video outputs, CardBus, and flash slots. And while the boards have only one 33-MHz PCI slot, which limits their expandability, they include an on-board floppy controller and a dual-port IDE controller. When equipped with one or two disk drives designed for laptops and a low profile floppy, CD, and SDRAM, the resulting machine is ludicrously small: about the size of a hardcover book. And you can build a complete machine for under $500. We know this because we just put a Mini-ITX server running FreeBSD Unix in production as one of our Web servers here at Guild Companies.

The Nano-ITX board uses the new Eden-N fanless processor, which runs from 533 MHz to 1 GHz. This processor is just 225 square millimeters in size (think pinky nail) and only consumes 2.5 watts running at 533 MHz. The chip is based on a clone X86 instruction set that is roughly analogous to a Pentium 4. The Nano-ITX board's CN400 chipset supports Serial ATA, Parallel ATA, USB 2.0, and includes a RAID 0 mirroring and RAID 1 striping algorithm. The board also supports up to 8 GB of DDR400 main memory, up from the 2 GB maximum main memory of the Mini-ITX board. And because the ITX boards are aimed at the entry PC market, the CN400 chipset includes pretty decent on-board graphics controllers. The frontside bus on the Eden-N processor used in the Nano-ITX board is 50 percent faster than on the Eden processors used in the Mini-ITX boards, and the links between the I/O and processor is four times as fast. The new board also has sophisticated TV, HDTV, and audio capabilities, and the Eden-N processor has a built-in encryption engine that can crunch the AES algorithm and transmit at 12.5 gigabits per second running at 1 GHz.

VIA Technologies did not provide pricing on the Eden-N chips or the Nano-ITX system boards, but it did say that the both would be available in the second quarter, through its distribution channel. All you need to make a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX machine is a power supply, a case, a hard drive, a CD-ROM, and a memory stick. Everything else is integrated into the system board.

EU Slaps Microsoft with Fine, Sanctions

To read about the EU fine and sanctions and get our initial thoughts on this case, see our new Windows platform newsletter. As for most Unix shops, Windows is a part of their lives, both on the desktop and in the data center. But this lawsuit, like many others, is more about curbing Microsoft's behavior and Microsoft usurping its rights than it is about technology. This case will drag on for years, and while it is interesting, because of the issues it raises, the day-to-day IT operations at most IT shops are not going to change dramatically for many years, if at all.