Briefs, Jan. 31, 2005

CA RESHUFFLES EXECUTIVE DECK

Russ Artzt, formerly CA's executive vice president of eTrust solutions, was named executive vice president for products. Mark Barrenechea, formerly CA's executive vice president of product development, was named executive vice president of technology strategy and chief technology architect.

The changes were outlined in a letter to CA employees from President and CEO-elect John Swainson. In that letter, Swainson explained that by moving Artzt from brand-oriented duties to an overarching role that manages all CA products, the company takes a step closer to moving from a brand unit management structure to a business unit structure. The vendor also reported earnings results for its third fiscal 2005 quarter, which ended Dec. 31. For the quarter, the vendor earned $36 million, or 6 cents a share, on revenue of $911 million. Revenue for the third fiscal quarter 2005 was up 9 percent from the same time a year ago, according to CA.

BUY.COM BACK IN IPO RING
Buy.com wants to go public again.

The e-tailer first went public during the dot-com boom but was taken private when the bubble burst. It now hopes to raise $86 million through an IPO, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In its heyday, Buy.com drew notoriety from solution providers for its low prices and relationship with Ingram Micro. Solution providers believed Ingram Micro used Buy.com as a means to sell directly to end users at cheap prices. The distributor claimed it had no stake in Buy.com, nor in its pricing, but both companies said Buy.com used Ingram Micro as its primary logistics and delivery engine. Ingram Micro still handles about 66 percent of its orders, according to the SEC filing.

Buy.com was founded in 1997 and first went public in February 2000 at $13 a share. Its shares closed at $25.13 the first day and the company raised almost $195 million. It was taken private in November 2001 at a price of $24 million, or 17 cents a share, by founder Scott Blum.

VENDORS, DISTRIBUTORS SEE EARNINGS INCREASE
In what could be a sign that an economic rebound is well under way, a number of technology vendors and distributors saw a significant increase in earnings in the past quarter.

Microsoft doubled its profit and grew its revenue by 6.5 percent in its second fiscal quarter, posting a profit of $3.5 billion, or 32 cents per share, compared with 14 cents per share, and $1.55 billion in the same quarter last year.

Citrix Systems reported earnings of $52.3 million, or 30 cents per share, a 43 percent increase from $36.3 million, or 21 cents per share, the same quarter a year ago. Revenue for the quarter grew more than 36 percent to $214 million, from $157 million the same quarter a year ago.

Distributor Insight reported a 29 percent increase in its fourth-quarter earnings, reporting $15.5 million, or 31 cents per diluted share, compared with profits of $12 million, or 25 cents per diluted share for the year-earlier period.

ScanSource, meanwhile, reported $9.1 million in net income for its second quarter, compared with $6.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

Avnet met analysts' expectations for its second fiscal quarter, posting nearly a fivefold increase in net income. The distributor reported net income of $43.5 million, or 36 cents per share, up from $8.9 million, or 7 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

And telecommunications vendor Avaya reported earnings of $31 million, up from $10 million for the year-ago quarter. Revenue climbed to $1.14 billion, up from $971 million a year ago.

IBM READIES LINE OF LOW-COST LINUX SERVERS
IBM last week previewed a new entry-level Linux server, the eServer OpenPower 710. When it begins shipping on Feb. 18, the rackable 710 will be available as either a one- or two-way server driven by IBM's 64-bit, 1.65GHz Power5 chips, according to IBM.

The 710 is designed to run either Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3, and IBM is looking to sway customers and resellers that may be considering the purchase of an entry-level Linux server from IBM rivals Hewlett-Packard or Sun Microsystems.

Starting price for a base-model one-way 710 is $3,449. The price does not include the cost of the Linux operating system, but does include the processor, 1 Gbyte of memory, a 73-Gbyte 10,000-rpm disk drive and DVD-ROM. Optional micro-partitioning functionality will also be available when the server ships, IBM said.

JUNIPER, CISCO WARES OPEN TO DoS ATTACKS
Products from Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems have fatal flaws that could let hackers craft denial-of-service attacks that could disrupt enterprise networks, government and private security organizations said.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team last week warned that all Juniper routers running JUNOS software created prior to Jan. 7 are susceptible to remotely triggered DoS attacks.

"A remote, unauthenticated attacker may cause severe operational disruption to affected Juniper routers," the advisory stated. "Affected routers will suffer an effective denial of routing service when this vulnerability is exploited."

Cisco, meanwhile, announced that its Internetwork Operating System has a vulnerability in processing Internet Protocol version 6 packets. An attacker sending specially crafted IPv6 packets to an affected Cisco device could force it to reboot, resulting in a DoS.

INFOBLOX BOLSTERS RADIUSONE, PARTNERS WITH ARUBA
Infoblox this week plans to ship an update of one of its network-identity appliance lines, and disclose a relationship with Aruba Wireless Networks.

RadiusOne appliance version 1.2 offers various authentication, authorization and accounting services along with full support for 802.1x authentication. The upgrade integrates with Microsoft Active Directory, Novell eDirectory and RSA Secure ID, among others. The appliance, which is priced at $12,000, also provides a central management point for multiple types of devices and supports high-availability deployments.

"With RadiusOne, what they've done is taken something that a lot of people are utilizing and really hardening this service," said Ziad Samad, regional sales manager for the Southeast, Caribbean and Latin America at solution provider and Infoblox partner Solunet, Palm Bay, Fla. "Their best fit is high-end, multisite, multinational enterprise customers."

Infoblox also developed a turnkey solution with Aruba that integrates the RadiusOne appliance with Aruba's wireless LAN switches. "This makes it ripe for off-the-shelf, easy deployment that cuts the process from days to a couple of hours," said Rick Kagan, vice president of marketing for Infoblox.

Later this year, the company plans the release of a global framework that will allow solution providers to better integrate its various network-identity infrastructure offerings.