ShadowRAM: August 19, 2002
- LOOKS LIKE THERE'S NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN SUN, VERITAS
- IBM HASN'T LEARNED FROM PAST LAYOFF MISTAKES
- McNEALY SLINGS SOME MUD AT LINUXWORLD CONFERENCE
- We hear from our snoops that Sun Microsystems is working on something described as a "Veritas killer" while Veritas Software says it is starting to see Solaris-to-Linux migrations.
- Sun has been somewhat mum on all of this, and the two companies have officially maintained a decent working relationship. As recently as May, Veritas shipped a press release quoting Sun's Anil Gadre, vice president and general manager of Solaris software, touting the Sun-Veritas relationship as helping give "customers the flexibility to choose the data management tools that best meet their business needs for multivendor interoperability."
- Off the record, though, there is less and less love to be found between the two companies, and it looks like it may be coming to a head.
- One would think IBM had learned from its last major bloodletting a decade ago,when reporters interviewed teary, shell-shocked and excised IBMers outside company parking lots,how to release information on layoffs. But the folks in Armonk are letting details of the latest workforce reductions come out in dribs and drabs, with the latest layoff news buried inside a 10-Q filed last week with the SEC.
- According to the statement, IBM plans to slash a total of 14,213 workers from its services rolls and another 1,400 from its chip division. At the same time, the company is adding 30,000 new employees with its PwC acquisition. And we're not even figuring in the folks from Mylex and IBM's HDD division, which IBM reached separate deals to divest this year.
- On the topic of IBM Microelectronics, yes, the company still has a chip business. In fact, the company is slated to release details of its new PowerPC processor for desktops and entry-level servers in October at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif., according to conference agendas. At the same conference, Intel execs will unveil more details of its forthcoming Banias mobile processor and its Odem chipset, due in the first half of next year, according to those agendas.
- From the "friends in high places" department . . . Apple Computer revealed in its latest quarterly report to the SEC that "trade receivables" from MicroWarehouse jumped to $27.1 million through the end of June from $7.6 million at the end of last September. MicroWarehouse CEO Jerry York is on Apple's board. York's investment group bought MicroWarehouse in January 2000.
- Vendor mudslinging was alive and well in keynotes at LinuxWorld last week. During his keynote Tuesday, Sun CEO Scott McNealy took on all of his competitors, targeting perennial favorite Microsoft, as well as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and even Dell Computer.
- He resurrected his infamous Top 10 lists, featuring the topic: "Top 10 Signs You're At An Open-Source Conference." One item on the list: "Carly [Fiorina and Sam [Palmisano are booth babes." And a "bonus" item on the list (after he already read No. 1) claimed that "Microsoft's booth is hard to find and always closed." It was the first time Microsoft had a booth at LinuxWorld.
- Later in his keynote, McNealy told attendees they might as well buy their PCs from Wal-Mart and run Linux rather than buy Microsoft software on Dell because they basically would get the same technical support. He then poked fun at his own churlishness, saying, "No one is safe when I have the microphone."