News Briefs: June 21, 2004

RED HAT REPORTS 53 PERCENT INCREASE IN SALES FOR 1Q

For the quarter ended May 31, Red Hat reported net income of $10.7 million, or 5 cents per share, up from $1.5 million during the first quarter of 2004. The 10-year-old company reported its first profit in early 2001.

Sales rose to $41.6 million, a nearly 53 percent bump from $27.2 million during the same quarter a year ago. Enterprise subscriptions for the first quarter generated $30 million in sales, while enterprise service revenue accounted for $11.2 million. Revenue jumped 13 percent sequentially from the previous quarter's $30 million.

Red Hat reported its first-quarter earnings several days after CFO, Kevin Thompson, tendered his resignation. During the earnings call, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik applauded Thompson for a job well done and said he would continue as CFO until the company names a successor before the next earnings call in September.

SYMBOL ADDS SECURITY FIRM TO MOBILITY PORTFOLIO
Symbol Technologies last week said it plans to acquire handheld security vendor Trio Security.

Symbol declined to reveal financial terms about the pending deal.

Plans include integrating Trio into the Symbol Mobility Software Division, which develops products that include Mobility Service Platform and Symbol Enterprise Mobility Manager.

Trio's three-factor user authentication and single sign-on software technologies for handheld devices allow users to prove identity in three different ways and then access multiple information resources without having to sign on again.

If the acquisition is approved, Symbol would also acquire Trio's biometrics verification and advanced encryption technologies, including a portable encryption library.

DOCUMENTUM EXPANDS HOSTED OFFERING, ADDS PARTNER PERKS
Documentum's eRoom group this week plans to unveil a new version of its hosted collaboration software better suited for partner involvement. ERoom.net and its channel program aim to let reseller or integrator partners co-brand the offering with Documentum, said Linea Rowe, director of hosted e-Room operations at the company.

The goal is to open up distribution for the collaboration software. To date, eRoom has been sold via a direct-sales force, and there are "some self-service customers who hear about us and come to our Web site and sign up," Rowe said. Now the company wants to recruit VARs, initially in targeted markets, to sell the service in return for an ongoing revenue stream, Rowe said.

Price for 100 users per month is now $2,000 for any number of shared workplaces. Additional users then cost $24 each. Discounts are available for companies buying in volume and for longer periods.

HP SPO EXECS HIT THE ROAD
Hewlett-Packard's Solution Partner Organization (SPO) this week will embark on a 12-city road tour to give solution providers a chance to meet with new SPO executives.

The half-day events are designed for partner company owners and executives to learn more about optimizing HP's PartnerOne program, HP said. SPO executives including Kevin Gilroy, vice president and general manager; Leann Griesinger, vice president, East region; and Mike Parrottino, vice president, West region, will give presentations and answer questions during the events.

The sessions are open to HP partners only. Partners interested in attending should register at partner.americas.hp.com. The first two sessions will be held in Tampa, Fla., on June 23 and Atlanta on June 24. The sessions will run through mid-August.

SEAGATE INTROS HARD DRIVES SPANNING ALL CAPACITIES
Seagate Technology rolled out a wide range of hard drives with capacities suitable for large companies down to SMBs.

Among the offerings, the company introduced the NL35 series for the enterprise, which includes a 500-Gbyte drive with a Fibre Channel interface. It is aimed at the near-line storage market for such applications as disk-to-disk backups, virtual tape backup and recovery, image and document management and lower-tiered storage of regulatory compliance or other business data, company executives said. The new drives are expected to be available in the fourth quarter.

The company also introduced the Cheetah 15K.4 series of hard drives. With capacities of 36 Gbytes, 73 Gbytes and 147 Gbytes, the drives offer 15,000-rpm performance and a mean time between failure (MTBF) rating of 1.4 million hours. Fibre Channel and Ultra320 SCSI versions are expected next quarter, while a SATA drive with a serial-attached SCSI (SAS) interface is expected in the fourth quarter.

Seagate also increased the capacity of its 3.5-inch, 10,000-rpm hard drives with the Cheetah 10K.7 drives. They are expected to come in capacities of 36 Gbytes, 146 Gbytes and 300 Gbytes and have a MTBF rating of 1.4 million hours, company executives said. Shipments are expected to start next quarter.

For desktop PCs, Seagate introduced the Barracuda 7200.8 drives with capacity of up to 400 Gbytes, a cache of up to 16 Mbytes, a 7,200-rpm spin speed, an 8.0-millisecond average seek time and a choice of Ultra ATA or SATA interface.