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Jason Stamper's Blog: November 2005 Archives
Why Did Veritas Sell Out?
November 25, 2005
Gary Bloom, now vice chairman and president of Symantec and previously the CEO of Veritas Software, defended his company's decision to be taken over by Symantec when I caught up with him the other day. But Symantec's latest results leave some unanswered questions.
Why BlackBerries Won't Run On Anything Else
November 24, 2005
RIM's biggest challenge right now is clearly that patent suit from NTP, but I had another question for the company's co-CEO Mike Lazaridis when I met up with him again last week - not least because he said he couldn't talk about the case while it's ongoing.
My question was whether we might one day see a BlackBerry running an operating system other than the current BlackBerry OS that powers the little gizmos. Well, Lazaridis insisted that the company has no plans to develop BlackBerry devices that run either the Microsoft Windows Mobile or Symbian operating systems. Surprise, surprise.
How Do You Wake a Sleeping PC?
November 23, 2005
Remote access vendor 01 Communique Laboratory claims to have solved the problem of having to leave PCs switched on in order to be able to access them remotely - something increasingly popular among those who want access to their data and applications when they are not in the office, but a practice with security and environmental implications.
The company has even filed a patent application for the technology, which may throw a spanner in the works for rival remote access technology vendors that say they are working on similar functionality.
01 Communique said its technology provides remote booting of a turned-off desktop PC - a PC that is shut down at the office can be remotely started.
The issue of leaving computers on in order to be able to access them remotely hit this blog a few weeks back, after research from Fujitsu Siemens Computers found that 127m pounds ($225m) is wasted every year in the UK alone because employees fail to turn their PCs off when they leave work at the end of the day.
According to Andrew Cheung, president and CEO of 01 Communique, "In the past, companies have struggled to find the balance between adhering to corporate policies and allowing its employees to be productive from anywhere. As a result, mobile productivity has often taken a second place to concerns surrounding security on the internet and the rising costs of energy. With this technology we can alleviate companies' concerns and allow users of our technology to "shutdown" their PCs, and at the same time, provide them with remote access when they need it."
01 Communique said it has filed a patent application for the remote PC wake-up technology. But in an interview with me last month, the chairman and CEO of rival remote access software vendor Laplink, Thomas Koll, said that his company was also working on what he described as "proprietary solutions that allow users to connect remotely to a PC in Standby Mode."
"You'll see this functionality in the next release of the product," Koll continued. "We are also working on a solution that will allow users to connect to a PC in full Hibernate Mode, although this will be a solution specific to a group of PCs connected by a LAN." Laplink could not be contacted yesterday before I hit 'publish'.
Meanwhile 01 Communique said it developed the technology to remotely wake up sleeping PCs in conjunction with its partner, Hitachi Business Solutions. It said it developed the technology to address both security and environmental concerns surrounding leaving PCs on every night. The technology has already been incorporated into Hitachi's DoMobile Corporate Server Edition V2, as well as 01 Communique's I'm InTouch Corporate Server Edition V2.
The remote PC access space is somewhat crowded, with competitors including Citrix's GoToMyPC, Laplink, Microsoft, Access Remote PC, Network Streaming, RealVNC, Anyplace Control and 3am Labs' Log Me In.
I use remote access technology myself and find it totally invaluable. But I do also worry about the environmental cost of leaving my PC on when I leave work, so anything the vendors can do to save me doing that is very welcome.
Is Microsoft's Covenant Not to Sue Enough?
While full details are still sketchy, Microsoft's new license for its Office Open XML formats will include a "covenant not to sue" users of the formats. But the question remains: will that be enough for the proposed standards to become compatible with open source software? Will it appease the concerns of open source software developers?
Details of the new license have not yet been published, although a number of Microsoft executives had expressed their hopes that it should steady the jangling nerves of open source software developers, who clearly do not want to support a standard that has any IP questions hanging over it.
But Microsoft's Office program manager, Brian Jones, wrote in his corporate blog that the "irrevocable commitment not to sue… should clear the way for GPL development," while Jason Matusow, manager of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative noted in his blog that "the terms of this submission should be broadly appealing to developers of all stripes."
With the details of the license not yet published, it remains to be seen if that will be the case, but a promise not to sue users of the format would not appear to circumvent the problems with the original license that meant that it was incompatible with some open source software licenses.
The license offered royalty-free access to the XML schema, which will become the default formats used by the Office 12 application suite, but included a requirement to attribute the format to Microsoft, making it incompatible with the GNU General Public License.
The plot 'thinnens', but not a lot.
For an in-depth look at this issue, click here.
Should New Borland CEO Be Afraid?
November 21, 2005
Application lifecycle management vendor Borland Software announced it has appointed Tod Nielsen to the position of president and CEO, replacing interim CEO Scott Arnold.
But what of the company's recent financial difficulties? Speaking to me late last week on the day the news was announced, Nielsen said he is only too aware of Borland's challenges: "Challenges don't scare me," he said, "If it was easy, everybody would be doing it."
Nielsen said that while it is too early to talk in any great detail about his vision for Borland's future, it is, "Unlikely that the company will suddenly make a left or right turn - we will certainly be refining the message and clarifying the vision, but it's not going to change drastically."
"It will still be about Software Delivery Optimisation," Nielsen continued, "and how Borland can help companies get more value from their software development projects."
Nielsen's most recent role was as senior vice president of marketing and global sales support for Oracle. Before that he was chief marketing officer and executive VP of engineering for BEA Systems, after the company bought his private firm Crossgain, where he had been CEO.
Former Borland chief Scott Arnold took the reins on an interim basis after the CEO before him, Dale Fuller, stepped down on the announcement in July of a profit warning and missed expectations.
Though Arnold had not had long to start implementing his own vision for Borland's direction, its latest quarter's results were said to show the company is already on a more stable footing - though on a GAAP basis the net loss widened and revenues were also down, the company at least generated $2.5m in cash from operations.
Asked whether Nielsen believes that he will need to trim expenses further in order to lift profits, he said that it is too early to know what needs to be done financially: "I've only been in the post four hours," he laughed.
Nielsen also said he has not yet taken any decisions on whether or not dissident Borland shareholder Robert Coates may have had a point when he suggested that Borland should sell some of its 'legacy' IDE and middleware products - a plan that Borland's board rejected in September. "I don't have an opinion on that yet," Nielsen said.
Not surprisingly given the circumstances, Scott Arnold - who prior to joining Borland was at McKinsey & Company for over 15 years - will be leaving Borland, "After an appropriate transition period has been worked out." William K. Hooper, chairman of Borland's board, thanked Arnold for his efforts as interim CEO, saying the board appreciated his, "capable leadership during the transition period".
Nielsen, who also spent twelve years with Microsoft in various roles, was the sixth BEA senior manager to leave that company within a month when he resigned back in August 2004 - BEA was in the midst of a management restructuring that also saw the departures of SVP advanced development Adam Bosworth, also from Crossgain, and CTO Scott Dietzen. Yesterday Nielsen said the reason for his departure at that time was a "difference of opinion" over the right direction for BEA.
In a statement last Friday Borland's Hooper said: “The board of directors was impressed with Mr. Nielsen’s deep experience in our target markets, his proven leadership in market leading software companies, and the passion he brings as an individual to the need for better software development. We are confident that Borland, behind Mr. Nielsen’s leadership, will push forward in its pursuit of Software Delivery Optimisation, and continue to drive customer success.”
Borland is still to announce a new chief technology officer - its former CTO Patrick Kerpan left the company to pursue other interests in October. Nielsen said it has been hard to recruit a CTO when it was not clear to potential candidates whether Scott Arnold was to remain CEO or whether a new CEO would be joining - now that that uncertainty is gone he hopes to speed up the hunt for a new CTO.
Red Hat Outlines Management Vision
November 01, 2005
Guest blog by CBR Deputy Editor Matthew Aslett
Linux distributor Red Hat has outlined its development focus for the next two years, including the addition of the Xen virtual machine monitor and stateless Linux functionality to its Enterprise Linux operating system, and has called for a new focus on management to help enable them.
The announcement of the company's development intentions for 2006 and 2007 is somewhat odd given that users are able to get an idea of forthcoming Enterprise Linux developments from its community-led Fedora project, but Red Hat's VP of global marketing, Tim Yeaton, said the company wanted to formally announce its direction to the industry to encourage more high-level understanding.
While the news that Xen and stateless Linux functionality will be released in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 in the second half of 2006 will grab the headlines, this is not really major news. Red Hat has been talking about both technologies for some time (see previous stateless Linux and Xen stories).
The interesting thing is the call from Brian Stevens, Red Hat's recently appointed chief technology officer and vice president of engineering, for the open source community to take a fresh look at systems management.
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