|
But Wait, There's More
HP Shows Improving Financials in First Quarter
To the relief of the company, its customers, and its shareholders, Hewlett-Packard posted better-than--expected financial results for its fiscal 2005 first quarter ending January 31. Worldwide sales were $21.5 billion, up 10 percent from the same quarter last year, and net earnings were just under $1.2 billion, not counting a $116 million settlement that HP paid to end a long-running lawsuit with former workstation maker Intergraph. With the cost of that settlement, investment losses, and taxes taken out, HP's earnings came to 32 cents per share, up from 30 cents per share a year ago.
The troubled Enterprise Servers and Storage group had sales of just over $4 billion, up 9 percent; it posted an operating profit of $71 million, which was diminished by a $33 million charge related to restructurings. Sales in the Industry Standard Servers unit, which sells X86-based servers, were up 19 percent, to $2.35 billion; unit shipments grew 23 percent in the quarter. HP believes its X86 server market share during the first fiscal quarter is the highest it has posted in any quarter in three years. Sales of Itanium-based Integrity servers doubled compared with last year and made up 18 percent of sales in the Business Critical Server unit, which had sales of $890 million in the quarter overall, a decline of 2 percent compared with last year. That means Itanium server sales were about the same as last quarter, about $160 million. The company said HP-UX servers were up 3 percent, but NonStop servers were down 19 percent and AlphaServers continued to decline. HP did not say by how much.
Rackable Systems to Raise $85 Million in IPO
X86 server maker Rackable Systems has announced it has filed an initial public offering that it hopes will help it raise $85 million. Rackable, which is based in Milpitas, California, boasts Microsoft and Yahoo as its biggest customers. The company has another 98 customers of its rack-based servers, which support both Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. Microsoft and Yahoo accounted for nearly 60 percent of its $86.8 million in sales for the first nine months of 2004. That's a pretty tight concentration for sales, and investors might be equally jumpy about the IPO because Rackable lost $34.9 million during that time. Rackable is banking on its expertise in Linux and Windows, in remote systems management, and in DC power supplies and other power-saving optimizations to give it a leg-up on much bigger players in the server market and some interest on the part of potential investors.
Lehman Brothers is leading off the investors in the IPO, and cautions that the amount of the IPO is just an estimate for calculating banker fees. The IPO apparently is being floated mainly to buy out Parthenon Capital, which has a 60 percent stake in the company, for $21 million, and to distribute some $743,000 to the company's CEO and CFO and another $1.5 million to the company's founders. The remaining dough will be used for working capital and general expenses. The company has 119 employees.
Microsoft Buys Axapta Implementation Tool from En'tegrate Software
Microsoft boosted its Axapta ERP suite this week with the acquisition of an implementation productivity tool called ERP Complete from En'tegrate Software, a Microsoft business partner that is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. ERP Complete is designed to simplify the sometimes arduous process of installing and configuring an ERP system, in this case, Microsoft Business Solutions' Axapta, which is used by companies in the manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services industries.
ERP Complete is composed of three modules designed to automate program management, software configuration, and communication management, plus a fourth module that delivers a library of additional resources. This isn't the first time Microsoft has called on En'tegrate Software for assistance with Axapta, the ERP suite it obtained with its acquisition of Danish ERP software developer Navision. En'tegrate, which has U.S. headquarters in Illinois and claims to have implemented more Axapta seats than any other business partner in the U.S. last year, developed lean manufacturing capabilities for Axapta in 2004. Microsoft says Axapta users will be given free access ERP Complete initially.
Lucid8 Delivers New GUI, Advanced Features with GOexchange 3.1
Lucid8 last week unveiled a new release of its GOexchange software, which helps users avoid e-mail outages by automating the regular cleaning and maintenance of Microsoft Exchange databases (see "Lucid8 Doing Well with Exchange Maintenance Tool" for a company profile on Lucid8, published February 9).
With GOexchange version 3.1, the company has delivered a new graphical interface, advanced configuration features, broad scheduling capabilities, and centralized scalable management. Among the new advanced configuration features are Offline Diagnostic Report, Full Maintenance, Analysis and Repair, and MTA Check only options, while the new advanced features allow users to run the maintenance tool by server, storage group, or individual store. The new code also has a high availability integration feature. License fees for unlimited use start from $595 for a 10-mailbox system, while single-use licenses start at $145 for a 10-mailbox system.
Speech Server 2004 Adoption Strong In First 6 Months
Microsoft says adoption of its Speech Server 2004 software is going well. In the first six months of availability, Gartner counts more than 4,000 Speech Server implementations, encompassing a range of applications in a number of industries, including call center, customer self-service, password resetting, field service automation, and outbound notification applications across the finance and banking, retail, insurance, travel, government, and transportation industries. Microsoft is relying on ISVs to build their own applications based on Speech Server, and a number of them have already been certified, including bridgeSpeak's Automotive Retail Suite, which car dealers use to offer things like appointment reminders; Datria's self-service voice applications, which function as virtual dispatchers for field service organizations; and Edify's Voice Banking application for financial services organizations. Microsoft also announced that it has certified support for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) connectivity with the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based telephony interface manager from Vail Systems.
Marathon Technologies Targets Low-End Fault-Tolerant Windows Market with FTvirtual Server 6.1
Marathon Technologies last week announced Marathon FTvirtual Server version 6.1, the newest release of its fault tolerant software for Windows systems. FTvirtual Server version 6.1 contains a new feature called SplitSite, which Marathon says enables users to separate their clustered Windows servers by up to 100 miles over a switched IP network. If one server is destroyed by site-wide disaster, the other continues to operate, without interruption or need for failover procedures. Marathon is also looking to attract smaller Windows shops running lower-end equipment by lowering the configuration cost (it starts at $25,000) and ensuring out-of-the-box compatibility with the entry-level servers, blades, and storage devices from EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, among other vendors.
Marathon, which is based in Littleton, Massachusetts, was formed in 1993 by a group of fault tolerant computing experts from the former Digital Equipment who were involved in the development of DEC's VAXft fault tolerant server line. The company implements a form of hardware-level clustering that makes two servers appear as a single server to the network, applications, and operating system. This simplifies administration and disaster recovery, since all transactions are performed on both servers simultaneously, and either one can function as the production server should the other one go offline. Marathon claims its users achieve better than 99.999 percent availability. FTvirtual Server 6.1 is entirely-software based and supports Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.
Gartner's People3 Predicts IT Workforce Shortage
The People3 human capital practice of Gartner is raising the specter of yet another IT skills shortage. In a report entitled "The Incredible Shrinking Workforce: Addressing Tomorrow's Issues Today," People3 analysts say that future job growth in the IT sector will be concentrated in highly skilled and knowledge-based work (presumably meaning application design and system architecting based on deep knowledge of IT and business practices in particular industries). The report estimates that there will be 21 million new IT jobs in 2012 and only 17 million new entrants, which seems to imply that companies will be put in the position of raiding other companies for talent as they themselves get raided. Increased demand meeting shortening supplies always leads to pay increases, which is good news for employees, but not so good for employers who don't want their IT people to return to the kind of sports star status they enjoyed in the late 1990s.
People3, which is pronounced "people cubed," has some sound advice that has a familiar ring to it: conduct a workforce analysis, find out who your key employees are and what their compensation is relative to their opportunities elsewhere, and make sure they don't leave. That workforce plan should also look at how the company should cultivate the kind of IT employees that will be needed for future IT projects, and it should plot out the expected career paths for employees. "Workforce planning helps IT leaders avoid making the same overstaffing mistakes they made during the technology boom era which consequently caused the layoffs and downsizing during the recent economic downturn," said Diane Berry, managing vice president at People3. "It also prevents the pitfalls of understaffing that eventually lead to employee burnout, low morale and low productivity."
|
HEWLETT-PACKARD
