Briefs: July 26, 2004

TROY TAKES ON SAP SMB ROLE

"The channel effort had been run as an initiative across the company, and now it will run as part of normal operations on a global level," Troy said.

In the past two years, SAP has launched channel efforts around SAP BusinessOne, for customers needing less-sophisticated functions, and mySAP All-in-One. In that time, the company has amassed a global network of 430 All-in-One partners and 650 BusinessOne partners. It is Troy's responsibility now to progress SAP's channel efforts to the next level of maturity.

Before working at Network Associates, where she was responsible for global channel strategy, development and execution, Troy was CEO and president of Partnerware, a channel management software provider. Before that, she was vice president of worldwide channels and alliances at Tivoli Systems. She spent 20 years at IBM, where her positions included vice president of Global Solution Developer Alliances.

STORAGE EARNINGS RIDE THE ROLLER COASTER
Storage vendor earnings were mixed last week. EMC bucked the recent trend toward softening software sales by reporting a 33 percent growth in revenue to $2 billion and 130 percent growth in earnings to $193 million for its second quarter of 2004 compared with the same period in 2003. This growth included results from recent acquisitions of Documentum, Legato Software and VMware. But even without the acquisitions, the company's overall revenue grew 20 percent.

Thanks to the acquisitions, EMC's multiplatform software revenue hit $262 million, or $1 million short of its platform-based software sales.

As expected, StorageTek finished its second quarter with a slight drop in revenue to $516.6 million and a strong rise in earnings to $35.6 million. Seagate Technology took a hit as revenue fell to $1.3 billion in its fourth quarter, down from $1.6 billion a year ago. The company also turned last year's profit into a $33 million loss.

Maxtor also reported a tough second quarter, with revenue falling to $818 million. The company also reported a loss for the quarter as opposed to a profit last year.

Sun Microsystems' storage business barely eked out a 1 percent rise in revenue to $427 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, compared with the same period last year. Overall, the company saw strong growth in revenue to $3.1 billion and earnings to $795 million, due mainly to its $1.6 billion settlement with Microsoft earlier this year.

NFR SECURITY DEBUTS IP TOOL
Intrusion-defense and management vendor NFR Security launched a new intrusion-prevention system (IPS) appliance designed to give customers wide control over protecting their networks against the latest threats.

The device, dubbed Sentivist, boasts a confidence indexing mechanism that qualitatively ranks each threat, then enables customers to set thresholds targeting threats that exceed minimum levels of importance.

Administrators merely need to plug in the device, set it up and let it run, eliminating the need for time-consuming maintenance, said Andre Yee, CEO of NFR Security.

Sentivist's indexing strategy is based on heuristics. The system assigns a qualitative score to each detected event, which denotes the system's confidence in the veracity of the event. Security administrators can set prevention levels so that only malicious traffic with a high percentage of certainty will be dropped.

CLOSING ARGUMENTS HEARD IN ORACLE QUEST FOR PEOPLESOFT
The Oracle antitrust trial in San Francisco wound down last week, as both Peoplesoft and Oracle presented their final arguments before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker. Both sides also received equally heated questions and comments from Walker, who must decide whether to allow Oracle to continue its quest for PeopleSoft.

During the three-and-a-half-hour summation, for example, Department of Justice attorney Claude Scott attempted to summarize the government's case blocking Oracle. Walker challenged him on the government market definition of "high-function software," calling it "unwieldy" and "cumbersome."

Oracle lead attorney Dan Wall received equal treatment, with Walker questioning him about witnesses who testified they'd have fewer choices without PeopleSoft.

Walker is expected to issue his ruling in late August or early September.

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES WARNS OF 2Q, 2005 EARNINGS DECREASE
Computer Associates International's fiscal first-quarter earnings rose to $53 million from $8 million a year ago. First-quarter revenue rose to $860 million from $786 million last year.

However, CA said it expects second-quarter earnings to fall below Wall Street's forecast. And it lowered its fiscal 2005 guidance to between 70 cents and 75 cents a share, which is below a First Call projection of 77 cents a share.