ShadowRAM: May 10, 2004

That's right, Costco Connection, a magazine for small businesses, features a four-page spread with slick cover shots of Carly and a QandA that focuses on the Compaq merger,and even includes a question about what Carly will be doing in five, 10 years. A life in

politics perhaps?

Not-so-coincidentally, Costco is hosting HP Week in all its stores and online this week. Those reading the HP channel tea leaves might wonder what the whole thing means for VARs.

The article ends with a note: "Next month: A personal side of Fiorina." I'm not kidding here, folks.

Mike Sinneck made waves when he left IBM Global Services for Microsoft Consulting. He did so again when he left Microsoft last fall after less than two years. The reason given by the company at the time was that Sinneck was an East Coast guy going back home. Well, Sinneck just landed as senior veep of Veritas Consulting. Based in that oh-so-East-Coast domain of Mountain View, Calif. Hmmmm.

Could Novell be on the verge of another buyout binge? Sources recently have spotted execs from Netraverse and Codeweavers in and around Novell Vice Chairman Chris Stone's office. Both Netraverse and Codeweavers offer technology to run Windows apps on Linux. As we all know, Novell, with SUSE Linux and Ximian already bought and paid for, is now a major Linux player.

Who says software guys don't know how to have fun? Cape Clear Software founder Annrai O'Toole was en route to a football (soccer to us Yanks) match between Chelsea and Monaco in London, when he took some time to chat with CRN about his company's enterprise service bus strategy. For the record, O'Toole, who described the crowd at a recent Giants-Dodgers game as "tame" compared to a typical British football mob, rooted for Chelsea.

Analysts have been calling one solution provider's large Enterasys Networks customers to ask how they would feel if the vendor was purchased by a large software company. Perhaps Enterasys is looking for a little help. After all, it just announced plans to lay off 200 employees and posted a 17 percent revenue drop,and wider loss,for its first quarter ended April 3.

Things are taking a nasty turn in the storage wars. EMC, finding its channel efforts hampered by its partnership with Dell, is now targeting the solution provider sales reps carrying HP products. Rather than wooing the management of these solution providers, EMC is offering partner salespeople attractive packages to jump ship, hoping to use them to convert HP customers to EMC wares.