ShadowRAM: June 14, 2004

During last week's summit in Georgia of the leaders of the world's eight top economic powers, officials used Groove Networks' software and other technology to help with communications. If Ray Ozzie can help some of these guys communicate better, we'll nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Sources say Microsoft has hired Boston Consulting Group to help it construct a new licensing strategy for outsourcing projects and to simplify its current controversial licensing program. The new plan is expected to be done by the fall, with the hope that the new program will be in place by 2005.

A Boston Consulting spokesman would neither confirm nor deny this report, saying that, as a matter of policy, the management consulting company doesn't offer comment about clients. Interestingly, the firm, which reported $1.12 billion in revenue for 2003, was a top sponsor of the Open Source Business Conference 2004 in March, along with key Linux backers and Microsoft rivals IBM and Novell.

Glenn Reynolds, a Tennessee law professor whose blogging name is "Instapundit," pointed out last week that IBM last year handed out a bunch of new services to employees, including the ability to start a blog on IBM's network. More than 600 IBMers now are blogging on company time, including Lotus exec Ed Brill. Those who read his journal would have found out last month that IBM/ Lotus has extended the end-of-service date on Notes/ Domino R5 to September 2005 from April 2005.

We noted a few weeks back that the Microsoft Exchange development team has a blog. These e-mail product folks are kind of concerned about whether Real Simple Syndication (RSS), used by blogs to communicate, will someday replace e-mail.

The numbers are still under review, but it looks as though solution providers told CRN research last month that near-term sales optimism, once again, is at an all-time high.

Both AMD and Intel are optimistic, and that means one company is going to be disappointed. Execs at each chip maker have said publicly that they expect results will show market-share gains for their company during the first half of the year.

Intel CFO Andy Bryant was the most recent to make this prophecy, during a conference call with analysts. Technically, both companies could be correct if they split what little market share Transmeta owns. But don't count on it.

Question of the week: What, exactly, was ex-Apple CEO-turned-investor John Sculley doing at Adobe's launch event for LiveCycle and its new security server? You decide.