ShadowRAM: November 17, 2003

I returned from Disney World last week to find the inbox stuffed with 3,000 unopened e-mails. Only half were Nigerian business proposals. The rest were Comdex meeting requests.

The boss wouldn't let me auction off Comdex meeting time on eBay, but I did find these Comdex-related items up for sale on the auction site at press time:

%95 Lodging, Nov. 14--21: $500 bid;
%95 Exhibit pass: $9.99;
%95 Comdex Computer Guys Baseball Cap: $1.99; and
%95 Celine Dion tickets, for Nov. 14: $350 each.

So if your plan was to sell your exhibit pass to pay for Celine tickets, think again.

During a panel at last week's IBM Leadership Forum, Tom Siebel talked about the transforming nature of the Internet, services-oriented architectures and component applications. When asked if his company planned to rewrite its software, Siebel let info slip to CRN about his company's next-generation "Nexus" project. Oops! See page 6 for more details.

Speaking of letting things slip, Sybase Vice President of Corporate Development Marty Beard told investors at a Gartner conference last week that the company would ship a realtime database later this year. Other Sybase execs zipped their lips, however, when we asked about their Comdex-related announcements.

From what we've pieced together, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM may want to keep their heads up. Look for a Sybase blockbuster alliance with a major vendor that will give Sybase's database a much bigger footprint. The deal was being hammered out at press time with a big splash set for this week.

Who says you can't beat Microsoft? Richard Rabins, co-chairman of Burlington, Mass.-based Alpha Software, has been doing it for more than 20 years with his own database company, which he took public,and then private. These days, about 1,000 VARs a month download Alpha's database.

Rabins said being the head of a public company left him little time to mix with VARs and developers, literally making him sick. "Never public again," said Rabins, who has vigorously applauded the Massachusetts Attorney General's decision to put Microsoft's feet to the fire on the federal antitrust settlement. Rabins maintains that due to good old-fashioned Washington politics Microsoft got off scott-free despite breaking the law. File that under Rabins vs. Microsoft.

Blogs are officially un-cool. Evidence: Gartner analysts are writing them. Sample topics: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act; Symposium ITxpo 2003 and "Connecting with the CFO." The latter is for Gartner's EXP and EXP Premier clubs, making it one of the first "members-only" corporate blogs we've run across.