But Wait, There's More

Microsoft Releases WTL Code As Open Source

Microsoft put a second piece of code into the open source community last week, when it released its Windows Template Library, under the Common Public License, at SourceForge.

WTL is, according to Microsoft, a C++ library for creating Windows applications and user interface components for those applications. It is an extended version of the Active Template Library (ATL), which used to be called the ActiveX Template Library and is more or less concurrent with the Windows 2000 generation of server operating systems. ATL is one of the core technologies behind the Active Server Pages method of dynamic Web serving that predates .NET Web services and is used by programmers to create Common Object Model (COM) objects that can be embedded into Web pages. You can get the WTL code from SourceForge.net.

As we told you a month ago, Microsoft's first open source code release was for the Windows Installer XML toolkit (known as WiX), which was also put on SourceForge. Two open source project releases is not a sea change, but it is clear that Microsoft is closely monitoring the uptake of these very minor tools to see what effect going open-source might have on its ability to get its software and standards more widely adopted in the market.

SAP, Microsoft Go for Deep mySAP-Windows Integration

Ever since Windows NT 4.0 came to market in 1996, the platform has been a serious contender in the enterprise platform space. SAP, which is the largest application software provider in the world (and has huge lead over PeopleSoft and Oracle), was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic supporter of the Windows platform, and to date more than 40,000 SAP customers run their SAP suites on Windows (that is more than all other platforms combined) and two-thirds of new SAP sites pick Windows as their platform of choice. However, good friends as they may be, SAP and Microsoft have their own ideas about how to architect software.

Last week, the two companies announced that they would try to bridge the gaps in their approaches, with greater integration between Microsoft's .NET tools and protocols and SAP's own NetWeaver middleware stack, which sits behind the mySAP software suite. Specifically, SAP has agreed to open the NetWeaver software so programmers using Visual Studio .NET (and the future Visual Studio 2005) can reach into the SAP applications and integrate them with Microsoft's Office System, as well as create extensions and enhancements to the SAP code. SAP also said that this summer it would begin a beta program to create a new enterprise portal based on .NET technologies and will enhance the .NET Connector for SAP with a 2.0 release, which will include better support for Visual Basic.NET and other features of the Visual Studio.NET tool. SAP also said that the next generation of its NetWeaver software will provide native support for Microsoft's BizTalk Server and other (unspecified) pieces of Microsoft's approach to Web services. In early 2005, SAP and Microsoft will deliver repository managers that will integrate the knowledge management portions of NetWeaver with Microsoft's own Exchange Server messaging and groupware software and its SharePoint Web and instant messaging collaboration software.

Siemens, Microsoft Cross-License Patents

While the details are still vague, German conglomerate Siemens and Microsoft have announced an expended cross-licensing agreement covering each others' massive patent portfolio. Siemens, known best in the computer industry inside its home country and around the world as half of the Fujitsu-Siemens IT partnership with Japanese conglomerate Fujitsu, is an $81 billion behemoth with 417,000 employees and 45,000 patents that cover all kinds of electronics and industrial equipment as well as IT hardware and software. Siemens spends $6.3 billion a year on research and development, and it has big IT aspirations, which is why it is willing to trade patents with Microsoft, which also has big IT plans.

The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and it is hard to guess if any money changed hands. Microsoft used the deal to point out that such licensing, which it deemed available at "commercially reasonable terms," demonstrated its commitment to adhering to the intent as well as to the letter of its antitrust settlement with the U.S government. But what the Siemens-Microsoft deal really seems to show is that big companies with big portfolios are happy to play show and tell with each other, as has always been the case. What is financially reasonable for Siemens may be unattainable for a small company with a good idea that wants to license Windows technology to create a new product.

Forrester Says IT Spending Picking Up

IT spending has inched up at large North American companies so far in 2004, Forrester Research says. The Massachusetts market research firm says a study of 870 chief information officers and IT decision-makers indicates that the total spending increase this year, compared with 2003, will amount to 2.4 percent, which is up 1.7 percent from what Forrester predicted in December. Companies with the most growth in their IT budgets are in the transportation, construction, consulting, and financial services industries, where the increase in total IT spending is expected to top 4 percent this year, the research firm says. Forrester says IT shops are using their 2004 budgets to "get back to basics" and are upgrading core technologies, like those for security, applications, and PCs. Mobile technology spending is also up, and so is ERP-related spending for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Forrester also sees more spending going to portals, content management systems, and business intelligence software, while spending has leveled off for SCM, CRM, and procurement software products.

IBM to Beef Up Tivoli Provisioning Software

IBM will today give a sneak preview of a tweaked release of its Tivoli Provisioning Manager, the heart of the server provisioning software that IBM acquired when it bought Think Dynamics last year. While the original software created by Think Dynamics was predominantly made to control the provisioning of the HP-UX Unix environment, IBM will in June launch Provisioning Manager 2.1, which will run on Linux, Windows, AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris servers and will be able to control the provisioning of bare metal servers and logical partitions on Linux, Windows, Unix, and OS/400 servers.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager is used to set up the operating system and application stacks on servers and to keep them patched as software is updated. The adjunct Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator works with the provisioning software through a policy-based engine that controls how servers, storage, and network capacity are provisioned, based on business rules (such as making sure Web site and database servers have enough processors to yield a decent response time). Sandy Carter, vice president of marketing for the Tivoli unit, says that Provisioning Manager 2.1 will be available in June and IBM could have new pricing at that time. The current release costs $1,100 per server processor and $50 per network node. Carter says that a typical customer spends around $20,000 for a basic setup.

In addition to the new release, IBM is offering a bundled configuration on its xSeries 335 servers that has "one-button provisioning." The provisioning software has been preconfigured to implement a Windows or Linux operating system on the machine, and a WebSphere stack and a Tivoli monitoring agent. It also preconfigures the network resources and can do the whole shebang automatically within an hour. IBM is offering another software bundle on iSeries or pSeries server iron that allows for the automatic provisioning of application servers for the SAP ERP suite running in conjunction with its DB2 database. IBM will also debut workflows that hook into the Provisioning Manager engine that can provision HP-UX servers and machines running Microsoft's Exchange, SQL Server, and Active Directory, as well as IBM's own DB2 database and WebSphere middleware and VMware virtual partitions on X86 iron and application stacks from Siebel Systems, SAP, and Citrix.

Intel Server Chip General Manager Moves to CEO Post At Cadence

Designing sophisticated electronic components and getting them to market successfully is a tricky business, and very few people in the world probably know this as well as Mike Fister, former general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group. Fister knows the challenges that chip makers, both large and small, face as they try to innovate with new technologies, which is why Cadence Design Systems, one of the big players in the electronic design automation (EDA) software area, has tapped Fister to become its new CEO and president.

As a senior vice president and general manager at Intel, Fister had a fair amount of control over the server, workstation, chipsets, and related technologies that drive a fair portion of Intel's $30 billion in annual sales (exactly how much, Intel will not say) and arguably a very large portion of its billions in profits. Fister, who is 50, spent 17 years at Intel and was responsible for bringing the later generations of Intel's 80486 processors (the ones without the bugs) to market, as well as bringing the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Celeron, Pentium II Xeon and Pentium III Xeon chips to market. He has also been one of the champions of the 10-year, 64-bit Itanium line of chips codesigned by Intel and server maker Hewlett-Packard and, of late, has been the person who has explained why Itanium is better than Opteron and then reversed that position to launch the Xeon with 64-bit extensions, in February. As a self-proclaimed gear head, the Intel job was a lot of fun, but Itanium has been something of a bummer until recently, when performance finally got on par with RISC/Unix processors. Because of his close association with the Xeon and Itanium roadmaps, which have been radically changed a number of times in the past year, there will be plenty of talk about whether Fister left or was asked to leave. Officially, Intel says that Fister is resigning.

The jump to Cadence is an unexpected but logical one. The company has 4,800 employees and is a $1.1 billion provider of software and services to many of the largest and smallest chip makers in the world and one of the big players in a $4 billion industry. With Paul Otellini tapped to be president and chief operating officer at Intel last year and presumably the next CEO at the company, when Craig Barrett retires next spring, Fister's upward mobility was probably limited. By moving to Cadence, he becomes CEO and president in charge of one of the companies that Intel will tap to try to give it the tools to create all of the new sophisticated processors it needs to make to stay in the market. Fister, as one of the guys most frustrated by the limitations of current EDA tools to speed up design, ferret out flaws and bugs, and improve yields, is the best person to sell Cadence tools into Intel.

This is an obvious reason why Cadence wants to hire way one of the top guns at what could turn out to be its largest customers. But, according Ray Bingham, current CEO at Cadence, who is ascending to the chairman role, the company wanted Fister as its top executive because he is the one who forged all of the partnerships with workstation and server markers that drove Intel's share of those markets ridiculously high during the past decade.

The role of CEO is not necessarily going to be easy at Cadence, however. The big chip makers play the EDA software makers against one another to drive down the cost of the software, and a key metric for the semiconductor business--ASIC design starts--is decreasing. However, Cadence has some advantages and plans to attack new markets and new geographies to build its business. The company touted its open framework and database software, which makes it easier for companies to deploy, use, and integrate with other tools. Fister, who is on his first day on the job, called the shot just as he would have at Intel. "You just have to be confident that you can set a standard and then go ahead and execute," he said in a call with Wall Street analysts and reporters yesterday. "People will pay--and pay differentially--if they can offset some of the human cost and potential waste as they drive efficiencies, because this affects their profitability."

Bingham and Fister explained that Cadence planned to "identify adjacencies" to their core EDA software that directly affect yields and then try to gain new business; they also suggested that the company might work from the chip out to higher and higher abstraction levels to encompass complete systems. Finally, as chip making moves ever into new markets where environmental laws are arguably less stringent than in the United States and Europe and labor is cheaper, Cadence will pursue business with chip upstarts. Many of these companies will inevitably compete with Intel, as well as with other Cadence partners, such as IBM, Fujitsu, HP, and Agilent.

Over at Intel, Abhijit Talwalkar, who was vice president of the company's Enterprise Platforms Group and general manager of its Platform Products Group, which means he reported to Fister and was responsible for the development of chips, chipsets, and other features of workstations and servers, is taking over Fister's job as general manager of the whole enterprise enchilada. Talwalkar joined Intel in 1993 and has worked at the former Sequent Computer Systems (now part of IBM) and Lattice Semiconductor. Intel also announced that it has broken its Software Solutions Group away from the Enterprise Platforms Group and that co-managers Richard Wirt and Will Swope now report directly to Otellini.

1.6 GHz Itaniums Start Shipping

Intel said this week that it has started shipping the new 1.6 GHz, 3MB cache Itanium DP processor, which it announced a month ago for two-way machines. This chip, like the 1.4 GHz, 3 MB cache part, announced at the same time, is made using a 130 nanometer process. The 1.6 GHz chip dissipates 112 watts of heat as it runs, a little bit less than the 130 watts that the 1.5 GHz, 6 MB Itanium MP processor dissipates. The 1.6 GHz Itanium DP chip costs $2,408, considerably less than the $4,227 that Intel is charging for the 1.5 GHz Itanium MP part. All of the Itanium processors support the 64-bit implementations of the HP-UX and FreeBSD variants of Unix, as well as various Linux implementations and Windows.