ClieNT Server NEWS - January 11-15, 1999 Issue Number 282

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       |ClieNT Server NEWS |
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               New York and London
     January 11-15, 1999  Issue Number 282
                    HEADLINES
CSN 282-01 OpenVMS Veterans Out To Eat HighGround's Lunch; NT
Storage Management Leader Targeted
CSN 282-02 Intel Looks Past Corollary
CSN 282-03 Monet Sighted
CSN 282-04 Timpanogas Reverse Engineers Novell File System
CSN 282-05 Corel/GraphOn Cross-Platform Interoperability Suite To
Ship in Six Months
CSN 282-06 Informix CFO Moved to Operational Role
CSN 282-07 Linux Watch: Free Perl Language Gets $12k Support Plan
CSN 282-08 MSNBC Declares NetWinder an Apple Killer
CSN 282-09 Merrill Lynch Says Linux is No Longer a Cult
CSN 282-10 Sqribe Reports Goes to Linux
CSN 282-11 "Secret" Instructions Spice Up 450MHz Xeon Debut
CSN 282-12 Government Witness Claims Microsoft Practices Predatory
Pricing, AOL Deal Will Impact Nothing
CSN 282-13 Is Bristol Toast?
CSN 282-14 DataFocus Gets License to Microsoft Wizardry
CSN 282-15 Manugistics Revenues Down, "Business Combo" Eyed
CSN 282-16 Circle January 25
CSN 282-17 Redmond Tries To Keep Office 97 Sales Alive
CSN 282-18 Hayes Bites The Dust
CSN 282-19 Microsoft's MapPoint a Mystery To ISVs, Competitor Says
CSN 282-20 Microsoft Prosecutes Domain Name Cyber-Squatters
CSN 282-21 Adaptec Readies First 64-bit PCI Raid Controller
CSN 282-22 Oracle Off Poaching Siebel's Scopus Users
CSN 282-23 Compaq Extends NT Cluster Storage Capabilities
CSN 282-24 Big PC Distributors Feel Direct Sales Pinch
CSN 282-25 Intel Invests in Think3
CSN 282-26 Number Nine Builds SGI Flat Panel Bundle
CSN 282-27 Dallas Integrator Buys Terminal Server Savvy
CSN 282-28 HP Trims PC Prices To Keep Up with the Competition
CSN 282-29 JSB Hooks NT Terminal Server Clients to Unix Apps
CSN 282-30 NCR Utility Supercharges NT SMP Performance
CSN 282-31 Quintus Hires AMC To Write R/3 CTI Hook
CSN 282-32 CA's Enterprise Edition Adds Tech Data
CSN 282-33 Toy Maker Credits NT Apps for Smooth Holidays
CSN 282-34 Redmond Restrained By Blue Mountain
CSN 282-35 GigaNet Readies WinSock-to-cLan Beta
CSN 282-36 BillyGrams

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CSN 282-01 OpenVMS Veterans Out To Eat HighGround's Lunch; NT
Storage Management Leader Targeted

A small 12-man Boston start-up called Astrum Software is about to
reveal its existence and launch an NT storage management,
performance monitoring and trend analysis package that analysts say
may pose the first credible threat to market leader and Microsoft
buddy HighGround Systems.

Astrum will unveil StorCast, its premier product, on January 19.
StorCast, the fruits of two years of labor, is a native Windows
offering that works on anything from a lone Win95/98 or NT
Workstation desktop to an NT Server network of thousands of
computers.

Astrum president and founder Robert Infantino clearly has HighGround
centered in the crosshairs of his gun sight. He's put together a
team of former OpenVMS storage experts that have created a storage
management solution that doesn't even need a server in contrast to
HighGround's Storage Resource Manager, which demands NT Server plus
Internet Information Server and either SQL Server or Access. Astrum
figures that at the low end of the market there are lots of smaller
companies out there that use peer-to-peer networking and they're
ripe for a storage management product that won't force them to
create a corporate intranet. At the high end StorCast, running on NT
Server, can theoretically support an unlimited number of computers
on a network while SRM carries a 150-machine limit. HighGround has
promised future versions of its software that will up that limit,
but isn't expected to get to market with its new offering, being
developed in a project code named Genesis (CSN No 274), until after
Y2K.

Astrum pricing, as to be expected of any newcomer, will also
undercut HighGround by a healthy margin with an entry-level price of
$995 for a single server with no client limit. HighGround's lowest
price is $1,400 for a one-server version that can support up to 50
clients and $2,900 for one that supports up to 150. To that must be
added the cost of the requisite SQL Server or Access database.
StorCast workstation pricing will be $149 per 95/98 desktop and $395
per NT Workstation, declining to $1,980 and $5,300 respectively for
20-license bundles.

Still, Astrum is facing a tough fight. Microsoft licensed
HighGround's storage resource management tools back in 1996 (CSN No
176) and they'll show up as the Changer Media Services (NTMS) module
in Windows 2000. The prestige of providing even a small piece of
Redmond's operating system is an undeniable marketing advantage.
HighGround's also well-heeled, having picked up $9 million in
venture capital in 1997 mainly on the basis of its deal with
Microsoft (CSN 193). It's rumored to have gotten still more in
undisclosed private placements since then. Infantino won't disclose
how much cash his closely held company has at its disposal, but
admits that it's a fraction of the HighGround war chest.

Astrum's marketing plans for StorCast include direct sales, channel
sales through VARs and systems integrators and bundled sales through
large NT Server OEMs. Infantino says several OEMs, who he won't
name, have already tested beta versions of StorCast although he
doesn't have any signed contracts in hand yet.

In addition to simply managing storage resources and doing things
such as setting and enforcing quotas (with hard locking if a user
wishes), StorCast monitors the processor, memory and disk I/O
performance of any server or workstation it's installed on. The
trend-monitoring module tracks processor and memory usage and file
system details. Still to come in an upgrade later this year is a
file migration module that will automatically move files from one
disk to another on a network.

Astrum is Infantino's first venture into the NT world, though he's
known in OpenVMS circles as the co-founder of OpenVMS storage
software specialist Acorn Software and founder of OpenVMS software
and hardware reseller Acersoft. Infantino's been making the
obligatory rounds of industry analysts for the past two weeks with
NDA'd briefings in preparation for the StorCast launch. - Stuart
Zipper


CSN 282-02 Intel Looks Past Corollary

Intel VP John Miner, general manager of the company's Enterprise
Server Group, said Corollary's crossbar architecture, Profusion,
won't be the only thing Intel uses for eight-ways. What and why he
left a mystery, since he wouldn't be drawn any further on the
subject. The occasion for Miner's little insight was a small
roundtable on server strategy Intel pulled together for the benefit
of a few press people last week. As near as we can figure out this
is all news to Corollary.

Among the things that aren't clear is whether the other architecture
or architectures would be used for Merced or IA-32s beyond Xeon.
Whether the chip has anything to do with it at all. And how, if at
all, that OctaScale unit Intel inherited from NCR fits into the
picture. Corollary is believed to have its head down, focused
completely on Profusion although parts of it could be off doing
Profusion derivatives.

Corollary has of course experienced any number of delays getting
Profusion out and missed the Deschutes windows altogether, forcing
it to adapt Profusion to Xeon and its 100MHz bus, an exercise that
proved harder than it looked. Even now when it's in the final
stretch there's been talk of further delays (CSN No 280). It's
already known from sources inside Corollary that Merced was going to
be just as hard because of the different bus and clock rates.

It may be that the Intel's chipset people are working on mainstream
chipsets for boxes beyond four-ways, currently the largest
configurations Intel Classic currently supports. Presumably the
work, which would suggest that Intel sees a real market in eight-way
developing, would be for future chips.

Miner confirmed on Tuesday that the Profusion chipset was "in good
shape" and said Corollary was currently "down to the validation
process." He indicated that after Intel bought Corollary there were
architectural changes to beef Profusion up for high volumes. Miner
was coy about Profusion's announcement date saying only that it
wouldn't be before Tanner arrives in late Q1. It's understood from
other sources that it's penciled in for CeBit in March but reports
suggest that production units won't be available for another
quarter.


CSN 282-03 Monet Sighted

Remember the so-called Monet box, otherwise known as officially the
XP1000? The one that didn't make it out in September because Compaq
had to pull the plug on the launch at the last minute?

Well, here it is five months later and the shy little dickens,
Compaq's first branded Alpha workstation, is quietly wending its way
into the channel apropos of its launch next month just as we
forecast (CSN No 265, 264). It's currently available to
distributors. The widget uses a 500MHz 21264 EV6 chip and the tower
enclosure has 4MB L3 external cache, five expansion slots (two 64-
bit PCI, two 32-bit PCI and one PCI/ISA 32-bit combo). It can handle
a maximum 1GB and runs NT or Digital Unix.

Compaq is now apparently satisfied that it remedied what ailed the
thing and kept it from moving into the market. Very late in the day
- considering they had been demo'ing the thing for six months and
the 21264 was at least a year late - they discovered a "persistent
connector problem" in the link between the processor and the
motherboard.

Compaq's second branded Alpha workstation is supposed to be an el
cheapo VMSstation, due in March or April, using 450MHz silicon.
Long-time Alpha watcher

Terry Shannon, who's now bitten the bullet and changed the name of
his publication to Shannon Knows Compaq [ital[] from Shannon Knows
DEC [ital], is expecting the AlphaServer DS 20, the 500MHz EV6 two-
way also known as Gold Rush (CSN No 270), long about February 1.

Meanwhile, according to Compaq's latest 10-Q filing with the
government, the $1.1 billion in restructuring costs recorded last
June covered the termination of some 19,700 employees, a higher
number than previously heard outside the cocktail party circuit.
They severed included 14,700 DEC employees and 5,000 Compaq
employees.


CSN 282-04 Timpanogas Reverse Engineers Novell File System

Timpanogas Research Group, that little thorn in Novell's side, has
reverse engineered the NetWare file system so that it will run on NT
and Linux. There are reportedly plans afoot to also put it on
Solaris, UnixWare and perhaps BeOS. Timpanogas' new little pal,
Caldera Systems Inc, Caldera's Linux arm, has licensed the code and
plans to bundle it with OpenLinux to buck up the Novell file and
print facilities and full Novell Directory Service (NDS) that it
already has on its operating system.

Caldera of course is owned by Ray Noorda, Novell's former CEO, but
even so Novell can't be any too pleased, particularly about the NT
part. However, there's reportedly little it can do about it thanks
to agreements it signed settling litigation between it and
Timpanogas, a Novell spin-off started by a couple of Novell's top
scientists. Timpanogas claims its move will help Novell's file
system "live on forever" but it also admits it will bring no direct
benefit to Novell, only to the customer.

Timpanogas calls the installable file system Fenris and says it
should be released in the second quarter. The code is written in C.
Timpanogas, which has spent most of its short life in court fighting
Novell's attempts to kill it, has made Fenris SMP, creating the
first symmetric multiprocessing implementation of the Novell file
system. Arguably that should give Fenris a performance edge over the
original Novell file system, particularly with database applications
and newer technology.

Timpanogas says that Fenris will read and write all NetWare files.
It is compatible with the NetWare 386, 4.x and legacy 5.0 file
system formats. It does not support the new NSS File System in
NetWare 5.0 or 4.x data migration features. The ability to read and
write NetWare files on NT should allow the Microsoft operating
system to penetrate Novell's installed base more than it already
has. Timpanogas says that customers, particularly those with a mixed
bag of systems, will be able to host native NetWare file systems on
NT and switch between the platforms easily with a common file system
format. It claimed there was no chance of corrupting the data by
alternatingly mounting NetWare and NT on a server.

Timpanogas says Fenris supports all of the features of Novell's
existing file systems including volumes and partitions, dynamic hot-
fix data redirection, mirroring and partition fault tolerance,
multi-segment volume striping, namespace support, sub-allocation and
file. It also says that Fenris will provide a Fenris namespace for
NetWare, an on-disk B++ tree that allows on-demand rapid mounting of
NetWare volumes within NT.

Timpanogas projects it will do $50 million worth of business with
Fenris over three years. Observers claim there's nowhere like that
kind of business out there. A Timpanogas survey of NetWare resellers
found that less than half their customers were planning to migrate
to NT because of negative attitudes toward Microsoft but Timpanogas
also claimed that the resellers said that a product like Fenris
would change that pattern.

The start-up has additional projects underway including Thor, a
wire-compatible 4.x Directory Service which, together with Fenris,
it says, would allow an NT server to emulate a NetWare 4.x Directory
Service on the wire. It says an NT server would be made to appear as
if it were a native Novell NDS 4.0 server. NT could then participate
in replica hosting, replication and NDS authentication and
seamlessly integrate into an Novell installation without any
downtime or directory conversion. NDS information could be exported
out of the NetWare directory and moved into Microsoft's Active
Directory and NT and NetWare could share common data storage
standards. Support for NDS 5.x is planned, but the overarching
release schedule for Thor is unclear.

Other Timpanogas projects include VNDI, short for Virtual Network
Device Interface, an NT clustering scheme, and MANOS, the huge
Merced/NT-based Metropolitan Area Network Operating System
Timpanogas originally set out to build (CSN No 236).


CSN 282-05 Corel/GraphOn Cross-Platform Interoperability Suite To
Ship in Six Months

The cross-platform interoperability software that evolves out of the
surprise pre-Christmas tie-up between Corel and Citrix wannabe
GraphOn will be packaged as a suite of interrelated products,
GraphOn says. Commercial rollout is expected in the next six months,
although GraphOn and Corel engineers were huddling last week trying
to bring some exactitude to the schedule.

It's possible the suite will be called Go-Anywhere and that the
moniker jBridge, the name of the Corel product GraphOn traded a
fourth of its equity for, will be dropped, another point GraphOn
isn't absolutely positive about yet. It may decide to sell jBridge
and its own homegrown technologies standalone as well as combined in
the suite and in that case might keep the jBridge name even though
the "j," which stands for Java, won't be apt anymore.

GraphOn anticipates beating the timetable Corel foresaw for jBridge
(neé Remagen) by bringing together building blocks already developed
for jBridge and GraphOn's series of three existing "Go" products.
The Go line, consisting of Go-Between, Go-Global and Go-Joe, enable
Unix and Linux apps to run on any desktop using GraphOn's
proprietary thin-wire RapidX protocol.

JBridge, on the other hand, as developed by Corel, delivers 32-bit
Windows apps from an NT server to any client running a Java virtual
machine. GraphOn intends to replace the JVM requirement with RapidX
to give the jBridge technology more universality and will probably
field only jBridge's server segment, substituting its own clients.

Instead of the "two-phase" rollout initially anticipated by Corel
for jBridge - which is now roughly 80% finished - GraphOn will go
straight to commercial launch of the product that will supplant
jBridge. GraphOn says the phase-one jBridge has performance issues.
Otherwise, most of the work still to be finished is a matter of
debugging the stuff.

The putative Go-Anywhere suite is viewed internally by the companies
as competing against Citrix' WinFrame, and to a lesser extent
against SCO's Tarantella. Its parts will be interoperable. "You can
have one talk to any other," an executive elaborated.

As previously reported in a CSN news flash, GraphOn and Corel are
billing their planned product offering as able to link "any server
platform to any client platform," hence the Go-Anywhere name,
underscoring a facility Citrix doesn't have.

Under the deal between the companies that was unveiled a week before
Christmas, Corel takes a 25% stake in GraphOn. Besides jBridge,
GraphOn gets Corel's facility in New Hampshire plus the 10 jBridge
staffers there. GraphOn also announced intentions to go public by
backing into New York-based Unity First Acquisition Corporation.
Unity First, which is already traded over the counter, is supposed
to acquire GraphOn in exchange for 6.79 million shares, and change
its name to GraphOn Corporation. When all that's done, Unity
stockholders will own 20% of GraphOn, Corel stockholders another 20%
and GraphOn's current stockholders 60%, according to GraphOn
president Walt Keller. Keller described First Unity as a "blank
check company, with $6.5 million in capital and no employees."

GraphOn is also in the process of closing a $5 million private
placement from New York-based Spencer Trask Securities, essentially
a network of angels, it said. Reportedly the placement was
oversubscribed. GraphOn will capture another $20 million by issuing
warrants associated with the Unity First initial IPO giving it a
total of $31 million in capital by the time the new GraphOn is
functioning. "The value of the company will then be determined by
the price of the stock," Keller said.

The idea is to build a company the size of Citrix which hit a market
cap of $4 billion last week. GraphOn claims to be "amazed" at the
caliber of prospect coming forward since it made the jBridge
announcement last month. It's not like the Unix market, GraphOn
sales and marketing VP Robin Ford said, "this stuff has got sex
appeal."

Michael Cowpland, Corel's president and CEO, said the deal should
not be seen as Corel abandoning either Java or "thin client
computing." Instead, according to Corel, the pact "endorses" Java,
and "accelerates" thin client development, while "letting both
companies focus on their expertise."

Corel, which failed to produce a vaunted Java Office suite to run on
NCs the year before last, has of course been abandoning all but its
core technologies, WordPerfect and Corel Draw, as it struggles to
right itself. It's rebounded to $4-$5 from a nadir of a buck a share
in August.

"We [still] have some ongoing Java efforts," Cowpland claimed.
Repeating what he said about Java's limitations when his Java
productivity suite went down the proverbial tubes, he said, Java
"has not emerged on the desktop [in] the way advertised by Sun,"
although "it does have uses" on the server side.

Corel focused its Java activities on jBridge after the so-called
JSuite was shelved with the intention of taking on Citrix (CSN No
215).

Corel is still officially at work on OpenJ - the spoiled project
formerly known as JSuite - and is utilizing "bits and pieces" of it
in other products. But Corel is "not really interested in a Java
version of WordPerfect," it reiterated.

The future 9.0 editions of both WordPerfect and Corel Draw - now in
beta - are focusing fashionably on web technology, reporters were
told during the GraphOn teleconference. In addition, Corel of course
is planning Linux editions of WordPerfect, Corel Draw and - through
its subsidiary - NetWinder NC hardware.

Corel anticipates shipping both WordPerfect and Corel Draw for Linux
later this year. A 15-day trial version of WordPerfect 7.0 for Linux
is now available for free download from the Corel web site.
Meanwhile, Corel is helping with Wine, the decade-long exercise to
build a Windows emulator that would sit on top of any Unix running
on an x86 CPU that has so far failed to get anywhere. Corel's
interest in Wine springs from its Linux ambitions.

Other vendors are supposed to be pleased over the Corel/GraphOn pact
- including anti-Microsoft notables Sun, IBM and Sybase, Keller said
during the teleconference. Sybase is the only company to have
contracted to use jBridge and is integrating it with PowerBuilder to
make PowerBuilder multiuser and web-enabled. Sun and IBM have
already licensed GraphOn's existing software for distribution with
their respective Java NCs and Unix computers. That means that a
layer of Go technology goes out with every copy of AIX and Solaris,
an opportunity GraphOn is starting to exploit.

GraphOn's Go-Joe allows Unix applications to be accessed from Java-
enabled desktops, while Go-Between gives Unix access to the
multiuser Windows NT environment. Go-Global connects Windows clients
to Unix without needing an X server. GraphOn has already ported the
trio to Linux.

The GraphOn contingent aptly refers to Citrix WinFrame as
"Microsoft's own product." The Windows Terminal Server (WTS) was of
course built out of technology licensed by Microsoft from Citrix.
Last year, GraphOn was supposed to be acquired by Prologue Software,
the competitor to Citrix in producing multiuser NT software for
Microsoft - but then, the GraphOn/Prologue deal fell through.
GraphOn last month attributed the Prologue annulment to Microsoft's
decision to acquire the Prologue technology although it took them a
while to figure out that the basis of their relationship was gone.
Ford said they were going to do a "Corel-like thing" together and
that GraphOn was urged to it by Sun.

Because Microsoft's technology is essentially Citrix', vendors such
as Sybase are said to be happy about the new Corel/GraphOn plans
because they "would prefer to have a little less Microsoft influence
in their future."


CSN 282-06 Informix CFO Moved to Operational Role

Informix has moved Jean-Yves Dexmier, the CFO it brought aboard last
year as part of its turnaround efforts, into a newly created
operational post as EVP of field operations.

Sources says it's hoping Dexmier, who gets much of the credit for
saving the company from oblivion so far, can work the same magic
with line operations as he did as head of corporate finance. In his
new post Dexmier gets direct control of sales, global partner
operations, customer services and support, manufacturing, consulting
and worldwide business operations.

Meanwhile, Informix has managed to lure away Symantec's CFO, Howard
Bain, to take over Dexmier's old job. Insiders admit that a year ago
recruiting senior management from other software companies was a
near-hopeless task, and see Bain's willingness to sign up at
Informix as a symbol of the company's newfound chances.

The top management changes came just days after Informix closed on
its acquisition of Red Brick, a deal that was concluded on New
Year's Eve as planned. The acquisition is expected to play a key
role in Informix' hopes of insuring its survival by transforming
itself into a data warehouse company, rather than trying to endure
as a database company caught in the crossfire between Oracle and
Microsoft.

With the Red Brick acquisition finalized, Informix last week said
that it would ship a maintenance release of the Red Brick Warehouse
in 30 days and added that a major new release of Warehouse is now
scheduled for sometime in the second half. Informix also said that
it's set a second-quarter beta for a version of its MetaCube ROLAP
option that works with Red Brick, with release expected in the third
quarter. Informix last week also released a version of MetaCube
ROLAP 4.1 that works with Oracle databases.   


CSN 282-07 Linux Watch: Free Perl Language Gets $12k Support Plan

ActiveState Tool Corporation has put together a $12k-per-year
support program for the Open Source Perl scripting language, a
darling of the Apache set. The Vancouver, Canada-based ActiveState
figures that while Perl itself is free, big corporate users will be
willing to shell out for the type of support commonly available for
commercial software. The business theory is of course the same as
the one behind Red Hat and Caldera. ActiveState says it's already
signed up Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse and First Boston as initial
customers of its program, called PerlDirect. Subscribers to
PerlDirect get validated quality-assured releases of Perl, a weekly
Perl Alert bulletin, a Y2K test suite for Perl applications and
technical support. Customers also get pre-compiled Perl binaries for
Windows and various Unixes plus a set of tools and utilities for NT-
Unix portability.


CSN 282-08 MSNBC Declares NetWinder an Apple Killer

Microsoft news subsidiary, MSNBC, got its hands on one of Corel's
Linux-based NetWinder NCs for technical review and pronounced the
box a killer - an Apple killer. In its review MSNBC called NetWinder
"a breakthrough Linux solution for home and office." The reviewer,
who said it took "lots of begging" to get Corel to send MSNBC one of
the widgets (one hardly wonders why), raved that it was a "fast
little powerful Linux computer." He even gushed about Red Hat Linux
and WordPerfect 8 for Linux which would appear to be heresy, pure
heresy for one of Microsoft's partially owned subsidiaries. The only
criticism he made was of Netscape's Mozilla browser, which, he said,
"leaves a bunch to be desired." The final verdict: NetWinder is
"wonderful" and "revolutionary" but "in a world of ever-decreasing
PC prices, the NetWinder should be compared to an iMac" rather than
a Windows PC.


CSN 282-09 Merrill Lynch Says Linux is No Longer a Cult

Linux is no longer a mere "cult" but enterprise-ready, according to
Merrill Lynch. The brokerage cites IDC estimates of Linux' market
share surging 212% in 1998 to about 17.2% of all server shipments,
just a hair shy of beating the 17.4% slice awarded all commercial
Unixes combined. NT Server shipments, up 80% for the year, held the
leading position with 36% of the market. Merrill cites support from
Caldera and Red Hat as crucial to Linux' acceptance by corporate
America and concludes that "Linux could pose a threat to the revenue
streams of all server operating systems, especially the various Unix
flavors and Microsoft NT." It sees Sun's move to support Linux as an
"effort to prevent lost Solaris revenue."


CSN 282-10 Sqribe Reports Goes to Linux

Sqribe Technologies Inc has released a Linux version of its web-
based reporting system, which it heralds as the first software of
its kind available to the Linux community. Sqribe's Enterprise
Reporting Server on Linux works with Oracle, Informix and Sybase
databases.


CSN 282-11 "Secret" Instructions Spice Up 450MHz Xeon Debut

Intel last week ratcheted Xeon up a notch, releasing a 450MHz
version of the widget with 2MB of Level 2 cache that offers a
somewhat modest 10% performance boost compared to 400MHz widgets
with only 1MB of cache.

More tantalizing than the latest speed bump were hints by Intel
Enterprise Server Group VP John Miner that the latest Xeon has
still-undisclosed instructions and enhancements designed to spiff up
performance in database intensive applications. It's believed that
Intel sneaked in a piece of the Katmai New Instruction (KNI) set,
though unless it discloses the instructions Lord knows how anyone
can make use of them. Most likely Intel's put them in as a sort of
secret final beta of some KNI server instructions. Most of KNI is
aimed at workstation functions and will be formally unveiled on
February 28 when the Katmai is released (reportedly as the Pentium
III), sources say. A month later Tanner, 500MHz Xeon, hits market.
Of course that makes the 450MHz Xeon a 90-day wonder as Intel's top-
of-the-line offering.

For the next 90 days the 450MHz Xeons will sell for $3,692 with 2MB
cache in 1,000-piece quantities. With only 1MB of L2 cache the price
drops to $1,980 and with 512KB it's a seemingly modest $824. Tanner
will come to market at identical prices, according to sources, with
the 450MHz parts, of course, pushed down the price scale.

As with every new Intel speed bump the usual cast of characters
showed up, press releases in hand, to introduce new and slightly
speedier versions of their hardware.

Dell had PowerEdge 6300/6350 servers starting at $8,418. Gateway
weighed in at $7,999 with the ALR 9200. HP is charging $11,3000 for
the LXR8000 and $9,650 for the LH4 server. Compaq said its ProLiant
5500, 6000, 6500 and 7000 series servers would all be available with
the 450MHz widget with the top-of-the line 7000 starting at $20,909.
Unisys has a QR2, a new model, for $10,895. Data General said the
450MHz is available in all of its mid-range and high-end Aviions.
IBM said that later this month it would announce 450MHz-powered
versions of the M10 server models 5500 and 7000.


CSN 282-12 Government Witness Claims Microsoft Practices Predatory
Pricing, AOL Deal Will Impact Nothing

A deposition filed by the government's final witness in the historic
antitrust case against Microsoft capped the prosecution's
contentions that Microsoft has used the Windows operating
environment for unfair competition against Netscape. And as the
trial wore on through its tenth week, its rancorous spirit
continued, of course. When the government's last witness, an MIT
professor, took the stand on Tuesday, Microsoft's lawyers tried to
discredit him - just as Intuit CEO William Harris had cast testimony
from Bill Gates into some doubt earlier the same day.

In his 110-page deposition, the MIT prof, Franklin Fisher, echoed
themes that have resounded throughout the testimony of the
government's 11 other witnesses over the past months.

Fisher, an economist, wrote his deposition in October, prior to
Netscape's agreement to be acquired by AOL. Microsoft has since
questioned the relevancy of the government's charges, given the
AOL/Netscape deal, but the government has countered that Microsoft's
behavior demonstrates a pattern that violates antitrust laws. Judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson, who's hearing the case, however, asked
questions in court about comments by AOL's chairman that is
Netscape's deal won't change Microsoft dominance. Jackson is
believed to be concerned about the merger's impact on competition
and the validity of the government's charges against Microsoft.

The crux of Fisher's economic argument is that Microsoft has
practiced predatory pricing - or selling goods below cost - by
giving away the IE browser free of charge.

Courts have been wary of the predatory pricing doctrine over the
past few years on the grounds that it is hard to prove either that a
company is selling goods below cost, or that this practice has had
any negative impact on consumers.

Fisher, however, contends that Microsoft offered IE for free only to
quash attempts by Netscape and Sun to overcome Microsoft's
dominance.

In trying to "destroy" Netscape, for example, Microsoft "undertook
detailed studies of Netscape's sources of revenue and what Netscape
required to survive as an effective competitor," Fisher wrote in his
deposition.

Microsoft's decision to give away the IE browser free of charge was
prompted by the discovery that Netscape obtained one-fifth to one-
half of its revenue from Netscape Navigator, according to the
economist.

In his testimony on Tuesday, Fisher also indicated that the
difficult task of trying to prove that a product is being "sold
below cost" is irrelevant in this case.

Microsoft offers IE at "zero price," even through the company has
invested more than $100 million annually on browser development for
the past four years, Fisher said.

When Fisher came to the stand, Microsoft's attorneys wasted no time
in attempting to discredit him, pointing to several previous court
cases where Fisher had drawn criticism from judges, and also
questioning Fisher about his technical knowledge of Internet
software and computer operating systems.

Microsoft attacked Fisher for his previous testimony on behalf of
IBM in an earlier antitrust case, strongly suggesting that the
economist had sprung a convenient flip-flop.

In a 1983 book concerning the IBM case, Fisher wrote: "Monopoly
profits are earned through high prices and inferior products. The
notion that acts showing a pattern of lower prices and better
products are the behavior of a monopolist is a confusion of the
workings of competition with its opposite - monopoly."

Microsoft officials half-jokingly responded in a statement:
"Professor Fisher's testimony would give readers of his 1983 book
whiplash."

Also on Tuesday, Intuit's CEO gave testimony that tended to some
extent to discredit Microsoft, telling the court that Intuit had
been forbidden from promoting Netscape's browser upon "instructions
from Mr Gates."

Gates had earlier told government lawyers that he could not recall
key provisions of a 1997 agreement that prevented Intuit from
promoting the Navigator browser.

Harris also testified, though, that after evaluating browsers from
both Microsoft and Netscape, Intuit probably would have decided to
use IE with Quicken, if the decision were based on technical merits
alone.

Intuit, however, was interested in doing business with both
companies, and was only dissuaded when Microsoft offered Intuit
"Platinum" status - meaning special placement on the Windows desktop
- if his company stopped promoting Navigator.

Harris made it clear that he never talked personally with Gates
about the provisions of the Intuit/ Microsoft pact. Instead, Harris
was merely told by staffers that Gates insisted on these terms for
all vendors given Platinum status. Harris urged the judge to divide
Microsoft or limit its reach so it could not use Windows to promote
its other products. Harris, the first witness to volunteer a remedy,
called Windows an "essential service," fighting words in antitrust
circles.

Also on Tuesday, Fisher told the court that Microsoft had
"artificially raised barriers to entry into both the browser and the
operating system markets."

When testimony continued on Wednesday, the government witness
insisted that the recent deal between AOL and Netscape poses no
competitive threat to Microsoft.

Fisher was unwilling to agree with a Microsoft lawyer that AOL will
gain competitive strength either from owning Navigator, or from
combining Navigator with Sun's HotJava.

"Before the [AOL/Netscape] deal, AOL had the choice of 'buy here or
buy there'...That's been changed to a 'buy there or make internally'
decision. It's still worth more to [AOL] to use IE," the professor
said.


CSN 282-13 Is Bristol Toast?

US District Court Judge Janet Hall handed Bristol Technology Inc a
stunning defeat just before New Year's, denying it the injunction
that would have given it NT 4.0/5.0 source code even though it
agrees with Bristol's contention that without the code Bristol will
soon be history. Hall ordered an expedited trial that will start on
June 1, saying speed is needed if Bristol is to have any chance of
surviving if it wins.

Microsoft had asked the judge for a summary judgement dismissing the
case. Hall wasn't willing to go that far. She said Bristol "has
clearly demonstrated antitrust standing and injury" and has "raised
at least serious questions." That was enough for Bristol to put its
own spin on the ruling, excerpting pieces favorable to its case
despite the fact that Hall ruled Bristol has so far failed in its
attempts to prove that Microsoft has monopoly power in either the
workstation or server markets.

Hall said that Bristol "has not made a clear showing that it is
likely to prevail." Without a clear showing Bristol couldn't get the
injunction, despite the fact that Hall agreed that Bristol "has
clearly shown that it will suffer irreparable harm" unless it gets
access to NT 4.0/5.0 source code.

Hall reasoned that giving Bristol NT 4.0/5.0 would do far more than
simply preserve the status quo, which is the purpose of an
injunction. Rather, the injunction would have given Bristol
technology far beyond that provided under its original WISE source
code license with Microsoft, which gave it the Win 3.x/95 and NT 3.5
code it needed to craft its Wind/U Windows-to-Unix porting kit.

Bristol sued Microsoft in August claiming it was a sort of unwritten
understanding from the very beginning that its WISE contract would
be renewed to include source code to future versions of NT to keep
Wind/U current. It says Redmond reneged, offering it only snippets
of code in the future and jacking the price up 400%. The way Bristol
tells it, back in 1994 Microsoft needed a Windows-to-Unix kit to
entice developers to write software for the infant NT. Now that NT's
well established it's to Microsoft's detriment to make it easy for
ISVs to also sell into the Unix market.


CSN 282-14 DataFocus Gets License to Microsoft Wizardry

Microsoft has given DataFocus a license to technology that will let
it create a series of application Wizards that will make it easier
for developers to package Unix C, C++ and Fortran code as COM-based
components that will run on Windows. The wizards, due out by the end
of Q2, will become part of DataFocus's NuTcracker SDK.


CSN 282-15 Manugistics Revenues Down, "Business Combo" Eyed

The supply chain software market seems to be spiraling toward
consolidation. Only a few weeks after Oracle bought Concentra,
Manugistics CEO William Gibson revealed that his company is in talks
with others concerning "a potential business combination."

Gibson issued this announcement in a written statement that also
reported a net loss of $10.4 million for Manugistics for the quarter
ended November 30. Although Manugistics' total revenues increased 2%
year-over-year to $43 million for the quarter, software license
revenues dropped 33% to $15.4 million. The company also took a
$701,000 restructuring charge over the quarter.

"We have experienced problems this year because of our issues with
execution, new competitive forces and some market factors affecting
our clients and prospects," Gibson said in his statement. "While we
believe the company's core business is sound, we are evaluating
aggressive measures to further restructure our operations...We are
continuing preliminary discussions with other companies concerning a
potential business combination." Gibson added that Manugistics
expects to make a decision on a "combination" of this kind this
month.

Gibson's statement was sandwiched in between announcements of a
consulting partnership between Manugistics and Revere Group, and a
co-marketing deal with Real World Technology, a major provider NT-
based manufacturing execution systems (MES).

Unlike Manugistics, which entered the selling chain arena from the
manufacturing side, Concentra hails from the SFA space. Several
months prior to being purchased by Oracle late last year, Concentra
licensed its ICAD product to Knowledge Team International for $18.7
million, unveiling plans to concentrate exclusively on its
SellingPoint sales configurator line-up.


CSN 282-16 Circle January 25

On Monday January 25, Sun is going to officially unveil Jini, its
anti-Microsoft scheme to make all devices on a network sharable,
regardless of the OS without having to find drivers and reboot the
system. Jini is touted as the latest new paradigm in network
computing.


CSN 282-17 Redmond Tries To Keep Office 97 Sales Alive

Microsoft last week outlined the pricing of its forthcoming Office
2000 family of suites together with a series of offers to try to
keep sales of the current Office 97 alive until the new version is
ready sometime mid-year.
Office prices are essentially un-changed and those who buy Office 97
from now on will get free upgrades to the equivalent versions of
Office 2000. That, of course, is a standard industry practice
although Redmond tried to glamorize the offer with the name
"Technology Guarantee."

Perhaps more effective in convincing customers not to sit on their
hands for six months is a deal with memory maven Kingston Technology
offering Office 97 purchasers a 20% discount on memory upgrades. The
offer expires when Office 2000 hits market. A similar deal with
AnaServe Web Hosting offers free setup and two months of free web
hosting or one month of dedicated server web hosting. An existing
$50 rebate offer for Office users who also buy Lernout & Hauspie's
Voice Xpress Advanced voice recognition software has also been
extended until the launch of Office 2000.

Office 2000 pricing will start at $499 for the standard or small
business editions, the same as the current Office 97 price. Upgrades
will be $209 with competitive upgrades at $249. Office 2000
Professional, also unchanged, will be $599, with $309 upgrades and
$349 competitive upgrades.

The new Office 2000 Premium edition will be $799. There was no
Office 97 premium edition, but upgrades from Office 97 Professional
will be $100 and from other Office packages will be $399 and $449
for competitive upgrades. Office 2000 Developer will be $999, up
$200 from the Office 97 Developer pack because, Microsoft says, it
includes the new Premium edition. The Office 97 Developer bundle was
based on Office Professional. Developer version upgrades will be
$609 and $649 for competitive upgrades.


CSN 282-18 Hayes Bites The Dust

Hayes Corporation, the folks who wrote the book on modems and once
upon a time owned the market, last week shuttered its US doors
although some of its European operations remain open while
negotiations continue with potential buyers. Hayes UK operations are
said to still be particularly strong. Poor Hayes, whose founder
Dennis Hayes invented the universally used AT command set, is the
victim of a market in which the analog modem has become an
increasingly cheap commodity and the competition has been ruthless,
especially US Robotics. Analysts estimate that Hayes' US market
share dropped last year from about 10% to less than 3% while average
selling prices fell by more than 10%. Hayes was also late to market
with new high-speed devices such as cable and DSL modems. In
October, when Hayes ran for cover by filing for Chapter 11
protection, the company had outlined plans to finally concentrate on
the higher speed devices. But it was too late. In November the
company reported sales of only $24.5 million in the quarter ended
September 30, compared to $51 million a year earlier.


CSN 282-19 Microsoft's MapPoint a Mystery To ISVs, Competitor Says

For third-party vendors who might be impacted by Microsoft's
MapPoint, a business mapping product set for release in the Office
2000 timeframe, competing against Microsoft's upcoming offering is
like "defending ourselves against a phantom, or against paper," says
one ISV.

Bill McNeil, product manager for ESRI, characterizes Microsoft's
practice of preannouncing software as harkening back "to the old
days, when IBM was king."

When the "old IBM" used to preannounce hardware products, all its
rivals came to a virtual standstill for about six months, till
everyone could see what the actual product launch would bring,
according to McNeil.

McNeil - who previously founded MapLinks, and then Chrona Software,
before selling both - conjectures that Microsoft may be diverting
some of the technology from its consumer-oriented travel planning
software into MapPoint, now that new competition from the web has
caused that industry segment to head south.

But the mapping software industry veteran also acknowledges that his
own knowledge of MapPoint is restricted to a press release issued by
Microsoft last fall, a preliminary demo at Fall Comdex and "the
specs on Microsoft's web site."

At last glance, the info about MapPoint (at http://www.microsoft.
com.mappoint) actually seemed rather extensive. The press release
section was blank, except for the words, "This is a placeholder page
that will be replaced with the regular article when we get it ready
to go."

In another section, visitors are told that product and pricing info
is "forthcoming."

But the MapPoint area also details a number of tools for identifying
business trends, finding and illustrating business points, and
integrating maps with Microsoft Office applications, along with
"sample scenarios" for "better understanding your customers,
penetrating new markets, and capturing new customers."

In the "identifying business trends" arena, alone, Microsoft spells
out tools that include data mapping and data import wizards, a
filter/selection tool, 50 different demographic variables and
"automation using ActiveX technology," for instance.

But in an interview, McNeil said he still has lots of questions. He
wonders, for example, how "customizable" MapPoint's maps will be in
comparison to ESRI's; whether, like ESRI, Microsoft's software will
include 11 million business listings; and whether - also like ESRI's
- MapPoint will be launchable from contact managers such as Act,
Goldmine, Maximizer and Organizer.

According to information posted on ESRI's own web site, ESRI is
pegged by industry analysts as the current market leader in GIS
software.


CSN 282-20 Microsoft Prosecutes Domain Name Cyber-Squatters

Redmond has taken out after a Texas outfit that's had the temerity
to register a pile of domains actually using "microsoft" in their
name. Microsoft, in a suit filed in the federal courts, is demanding
the outfit known both as TexasRGV.com and Trademarkdomains.com be
stripped of 10 names including microsoft windows.com,
microsoftoffice.com and microsoftpress.com. Redmond, claiming
trademark infringement, says TexasRGV is trying to extract payment
for the names, a common practice by so-called "cyber-squatters" who
make a business of grabbing Internet names they figure might some
day be worth a small fortune. While there have been sporadic cases
of sites with words such as "windows" in their names, Microsoft has
been generally benign in its treatment of site owners as long as
they're not trying to masquerade as Microsoft sites or dip into
Redmond's pocketbook. The Texas case is the first known in which
someone went so far as to use the company name. According to
InterNIC registration records, the domains are owned by a Kurtis
Karr of La Feria, Texas, a small town just north of the Mexican
border.


CSN 282-21 Adaptec Readies First 64-bit PCI Raid Controller

This month Adaptec will ship the industry's first 64-bit PCI Raid
controller board together with the software to use the widget in NT
and NetWare servers. The widget, designated the AAC-364, goes first
to Dell which has already committed to using it as the heart of its
PowerEdge Expandable Raid Controller 2 (PERC 2). Adaptec said that
for now its marketing plans are aimed solely at signing up
additional OEMs, with sales through other channels following
sometime later this year. The AAC-364 is a PCI-to-Ultra2 low-voltage
differential Raid controller with four Ultra2 LVD SCSI channels and
the ability to support up to 15 drives per channel, for total
capacities of better than a terabyte. Besides NT 4.0 and NetWare
4.11/5.0 drivers, the AAC-364 comes with its own Flexible Array
Storage Tool, which provides a GUI and wizards to manage arrays and
a command-line interface capability to create automated management
scripts.


CSN 282-22 Oracle Off Poaching Siebel's Scopus Users

Oracle is trying to poach old Scopus customers from Siebel Systems
Inc with an offer of half-price upgrades. Oracle is trying to
capitalize on what it says is Siebel's failure, after buying Scopus
in May, to offer Scopus users any upgrade deals. The Oracle offer,
good until February 28, cuts 50% off the regular price of Oracle
Front Office 3.0 customer relations apps for any Scopus versions
3.6-5.0 customers. Applications in the Front Office suite covered by
the deal include Field Sales Online, Sales, Service, Web Customers
and Telephony Manager. Oracle's also set up a Scopus/Siebel Fast
Path consulting program to help users migrate.


CSN 282-23 Compaq Extends NT Cluster Storage Capabilities

Compaq has released a $995 software bundle to jazz up the storage
capabilities of NT Cluster Server with storage virtualization and
instant data replication. The package, called Storage and Cluster
Software Extensions, adds virtual disk management, a snapshot
facility to quickly create replicas of virtual disks and support for
network disks. Although Extensions is a cluster-aware application
for use with Cluster Server Compaq says it also adds the same
capabilities to NT servers in non-clustered environments.


CSN 282-24 Big PC Distributors Feel Direct Sales Pinch

Distributors Ingram Micro and Inacom ended the year by pre-
announcing that their final quarter results will be lower-than-
expected because of poor corporate PC sales, despite indications
that virtually all major PC vendors will report healthy results.
Analysts saw the announcements, which led to an almost immediate 25%
plunge in their share price, as indicative that the direct sales
model is starting to take a serious toll on traditional channels.
Ingram said its PC sales will be $400 million-$600 million less than
expected. Future quarters could be worse since it's a major Compaq
distributor and will start to face competition from Compaq's new
DirectPlus program for small and medium-sized businesses. Ingram
said it hasn't felt any impact from DirectPlus yet.


CSN 282-25 Intel Invests in Think3

Intel has made a minority investment in Think3, a Santa Clara-based
ISV previously known as Cad.Lab. Think3 - which describes itself as
an "upstart" as opposed to a "start-up" - specializes in 3D design
software meant to offer as much ease of use as 2D products like
Autodesk's AutoCAD. Sources say that Intel has been working with
Think3 to optimize the software for high-performance Intel
workstations for M-CAD, traditionally a Unix bastion. The upstart's
customers currently include Mercedes, Alessi, Candy/Hoover and
Harley-Davidson division Buell Motorcyles. Think3 CEO Joe Costello
is also chairman of both NextNet, a company focused on IP-based
wireless computing, and Zamba, a customer care consulting firm.
Intel's investment in Think3 follows hot on the heels of $17.7
million in second-round funding for the software company, led by
Robertson Stephens' Omega Ventures.


CSN 282-26 Number Nine Builds SGI Flat Panel Bundle

Number Nine Visual Technology has put together a bundle of Silicon
Graphics' snazzy 1600SW Digital Flat Panel Monitor, its own
Revolution IV-FP graphics board and NT/95/98 drivers to come up with
a $2,795 package aimed at graphics professionals and folks like
stockbrokers who cram their screens with data. Besides standard NT
drivers, Number Nine says that it's got a dual-display NT 4.0 driver
currently undergoing certification. The company says it's booked its
first volume order for the bundle from Bernard Madoff Investments
which is replacing its standard 17-inch CRTs with the snazzy
1600x1024 pixel widgetry.


CSN 282-27 Dallas Integrator Buys Terminal Server Savvy

Stonebridge Technologies Inc, a regional systems integrator and
consultant out of Dallas, is buying Houston-based NT/Unix
interoperability specialist Systems Technology Inc. Stonebridge says
it needed SST's expertise in implementing NT Terminal Server and
Citrix' MetaFrame. Terms weren't disclosed. Meanwhile, Stonebridge
is starting the year with a new CEO, former Hewlett-Packard
worldwide consulting VP and general manager James Sherriff.
Stonebridge had been looking for a CEO for months before landing
Sherriff, a 19-year HP veteran who's never worked anywhere else.


CSN 282-28 HP Trims PC Prices To Keep Up with the Competition

Hewlett-Packard ended 1998 with yet-another desktop PC price cut,
this time slashing up to 20% off its Kayak workstations, Vectra and
Brio PCs and OmniBook notebooks. The price cuts, designed to keep
HP's desktops priced beneath competitors, were biggest for low-end
models such as a Celeron 333MHz-based Vectra VE corporate PC, cut
20% to $774. At the high end a Kayak XA-s powered by a 450MHz
Pentium II was trimmed only 7% to $3,100 and an entry-level Kayak XA
with 350MHz Pentium II was cut only 4% to $1,740.


CSN 282-29 JSB Hooks NT Terminal Server Clients to Unix Apps

JSB has released a 32-bit terminal emulator that lets clients on NT
4.0 Terminal Server and Citrix' MetaFrame software access Unix
applications. The Scotts Valley, California company's emulator,
MultiView 2000 Terminal Server Edition 4.0, reportedly takes
character-based Unix applications and transforms them into GUI-based
creations. The face-lifting process gives the apps a Windows look-
and-feel and features such as pop-up menus, Windows message boxes,
hyperlinks and multimedia support. JSB also boasts of being one of
the first ISVs to get its software certified as Terminal Server-
compatible by VeriTest, the folks who handle such certification for
Microsoft. MultiView 2000 prices start at $2,295 for a 10
concurrent-user license.


CSN 282-30 NCR Utility Supercharges NT SMP Performance

NCR has released a utility called PerforMUNT that optimizes CPU
performance on SMP servers running NT Terminal Server. NCR says that
in lab tests PerforMUNT improved CPU utilization by almost 29%. The
test were run on Pentium II-based WorldMark 4400s using heavy user
workloads. In two-way systems NCR said it achieved 98% CPU
utilization and 90% with quads. PerforMUNT, which becomes part of
NCR's Multi-User NT Pro Pack suite of tools, can also be used for
capacity planning via a wizard that analyzes system hardware and the
Terminal Server environment.


CSN 282-31 Quintus Hires AMC To Write R/3 CTI Hook

Call center specialist Quintus Corporation has hired AMC Development
LLC to build a computer-telephony interface to hook Quntus'
Nabnasset and the SAP R/3 Customer Interaction Center (CIC).
Nabnasset, which runs on NT and a variety of Unix servers, hooks
computers to PBXes and automatic calls distributors such as the
Lucent Definity, Aspect Call Center, Nortel Meridian M1 and DMS 100
and Rockwell Galaxy. AMC, a specialist in R/3 software and services
which wrote the underlying computer-telephony integration (CTI)
software used in SAP's CIC, figures to have the Quintus assignment
finished by the end of the quarter.


CSN 282-32 CA's Enterprise Edition Adds Tech Data

Computer Associates' Enterprise Edition line-up has added Tech Data
to a distributor roster that already included Merisel and Ingram
Micro. Tech Data is actually no stranger to Computer Associates -
but until now, the distributor carried only CA's Workgroup Edition
products, which are geared to small to medium-sized businesses. CA's
Enterprise Edition encompasses the Jasmine object database; the
Ingres II relational database; Opal for web-enabling legacy
applications; and the following members of the vendor's IT slate for
enterprise management: AimIT; ARCserveIT; ControlIT; DirectIT:
GuardIT; InoculateIT; MasterIT for web management; NetworkIT Pro;
the Paradigm help desk application; and ShipIT.


CSN 282-33 Toy Maker Credits NT Apps for Smooth Holidays

Ty Inc., makers of the famed Beanie Babies, is crediting NT-based
applications from OTG for helping it fill nearly 15,000 orders a day
this past holiday season. The toy maker started to deploy OTG's
ApplicationXtender and DiskXtender about a year ago to replace a
paper-based system of indexing and storing account information,
invoices and packing slips. Ty ordinarily issues about 8,000 to
10,000 packing slips a day in response to phoned and faxed orders
from suppliers. And during the December holidays, that number nearly
doubles. The company's sales revenues from Beanie Babies amounted to
about $400 million in 1997 alone.


CSN 282-34 Redmond Restrained By Blue Mountain

Just after our last regular issue went to press Microsoft nemesis
Gary Reback convinced the state court in Santa Clara, California to
hand down a temporary restraining order forcing Microsoft to give
Colorado greeting card company Hartford House Ltd the code necessary
to let its e-mail greeting cards evade the spam filter in the
Internet Explorer/Outlook Express 5.0 beta.

The court stopped short of Reback's real goal, an injunction forcing
Microsoft to withdraw the IE 5.0 beta from circulation entirely. The
judge did, however, order Microsoft to post a warning note on the IE
5.0 download site telling folks the spam filter might send
legitimate e-mail to the junk mail folder. Redmond's also got to
give Hartford House 15 days notice before releasing any new code
that might affect the delivery of its greeting cards.

Hartford House, which does business as Blue Mountain Arts, claims
Microsoft designed the spam filter to trash its cards after Redmond
started a competing e-mail greeting card service of its own (CSN
280).

In riposte, Microsoft said it hired outside consultants who
discovered that even its own e-mail greeting cards are trapped by
the same filter as the Blue Mountain cards. It also argues that the
cards aren't really trashed, as Reback alleges in his suit, but
rather put in a junk mail folder that users can still access.
Redmond sniffed that it offered Hartford the same code ordered by
the court, and got turned down flat.

Reback and Microsoft attorneys will be back in court on January 21
to argue a motion to turn the restraining order into an injunction
that would last until there's a final decision in the case.


CSN 282-35 GigaNet Readies WinSock-to-cLan Beta

NT cluster house GigaNet Inc says it's getting ready to beta
software to hook its cLan clustering interconnect to Windows 2000
using the standard WinSock API. GigaNet says the hook, which
Microsoft has been helping it build as part of Redmond's Windows
Socket Direct Path program, should significantly improve WinSock-
compliant applications performance. Concord, Massachusetts-based
GigaNet says the beta should be ready by the end of Q1, with final
release whenever WinY2K hits market.


CSN 282-36 BillyGrams

As we went to press, Microsoft was still struggling to come up with
a viable release candidate, heck, how about just the next release
candidate for the NT 5.0 beta 3. At press time, the Redmond Build
Lab had hit build 1955, nine builds past 1946 which was what went
out as RC Zero the week before Christmas. Sources said that at 1955
Microsoft was still in showstopper mode. Meanwhile, Brian Valentine,
Moshe Dunie's replacement and NT's new master (CSN No 279), has
reportedly instituted a review of all pending contracts worth over
$10,000. Observers speculate that could mean hundreds, if not
thousands, of deals. The exercise could slow NT down further but, on
the other hand, Valentine gets to decide what to keep and what not
to keep while finding out what's going on. Microsoft, by the way, is
said to be notorious among vendors for how long it takes to get
contracts signed. There are apparently any number of instances of
the work getting done before the contract is finalized.

-

Long about January 19, Novell is supposed to stand up and say that
it's snared IBM as a customer for its directory. Armonk will
reportedly use the stuff, Novell's claim to superiority over
Microsoft, with its mainframes. The IBM halo should be good for NDS'
image. ISVs have yet to jump on the NDS bandwagon and make their
applications NDS-aware. Novell needs IBM kind of wins to entice them
and is hoping they'll start coming on board towards the end of the
year.

-

Sun doesn't seem to have too many locked-in plans yet about what
it's going to do once it gets its hands on Netscape's technology.
However, we've been given to understand by Sun people who ought to
know that the ultimate overseer of things Netscape is John
McFarlane, head of Sun's Solaris operation. McFarlane has been heard
to voice opinions suggesting he'd be motivated to produce solid NT
products. The industry of course is watching to see how Sun handles
the Microsoft side of Netscape, seeking in it clues to changes in
Sun's stance on NT in general.

-

Insiders say that Sun's acquisition of Net Dynamics and its web
application server technology was entirely predicated on it being a
delivery vehicle for Java on NT.

-

It looks like Oracle's super-hyped 8i Internet database won't hit
market until the end of the month, about 30 days later than
promised. Oracle says that it's still "fine tuning" 8i, which of
course means a final round of bug fixes.

-

On Wednesday EMC and HP said they had agreed to extend their
reseller arrangement another three years, replacing their existing
year-to-year contract. We gather they wrote the press release just
for us considering that we had said that HP was dallying with
Hitachi Data Systems and would move its business there, a tale
roundly denied though that's what HDS people were told after being
put under NDA (CSN No 279, 278). Ahh, yes, well StorageTek thought
at one point that it had a deal with HP and that proved not to be
true either. It certainly would have been fun to have been a fly on
the wall during the EMC-HP negotiations and it would also be fun to
know whether HP has gotten itself better margins. HP moved $1.3
billion worth of EMC product from late '95 through the first nine
months of last year, contributing significantly to making EMC the
darling that it is. HP's business is now supposed to double to $1
billion in the next year. Even without our two cents worth, the HP-
EMC relationship has been the subject of considerable speculation in
Wall Street circles lately so the re-signing works to eliminate the
chief concern about EMC's stock.

-

While most folks were out celebrating the New Year, the Open Source
crowd working on the Wine emulator - the free stuff that's supposed
to run Windows apps on Unixes including Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris -
was readying yet-another beta of the thing. They just won't give up,
despite the fact there were 23 Wine builds released last year and
after five years of work Wine still won't run most Windows apps. So
far only 87 of the 889 applications tested run without any problem,
210 won't even load and the rest are all partially functional at
best. The latest build, 350k lines of code representing the combined
donations of 140 part-time programmers, appeared on Sunday January
3. The new build is supposed to have "lots of bug fixes," improved
console support, "tons" of new stubs and various other improvements.

-

Ziff-Davis, in a Christmas Eve filing with the SEC, said it hopes to
bring in $115 million by IPOing its ZDNet web-based news subsidiary.
Ziff has set the thing up so it'll keep control by offering
"tracking shares" without voting rights. All the cash from the
expected IPO (CSN No 270) will go to help pay down Ziff's massive
$1.54 billion in debt. More significantly, it will force ZDNet to
stand on its own two feet as a business, making it impossible for
Ziff to quietly subsidize the web unit out of profits from its print
operations. The IPO news briefly sent Ziff share soaring to as high
as 20 13/16 from 13 1/4 before Morgan Stanley Dean Witter pulled the
plug by downgrading Ziff shares from outperform to neutral because
of the inflated price.

-

American Banker, the banking journal, pored over the 10Q filings of
the country's 100 largest banks to figure out how much the
millennium bug will cost US financial institutions. It came up with
the breathtaking total of $5.026 billion to $5.227 billion, not
including a handful of banks that haven't come up with estimates
yet. Citigroup, the largest bank with $701 billion in assets as of
September 30, figures its costs will run between $850 million-$925
million.

-

Sun and Microsoft have been ordered to hold settlement talks over
the issue of JNI, Sun's Java Native Interface, versus RNI,
Microsoft's rival Raw Native Interface, by the judge presiding over
the now-famous "Java Trial." The judge proposed that the companies
try to agree on a "standardized method for invoking functions built
into the platform being used" by broadening J-Direct, Microsoft's
set of Java extensions that make calls directly to the Win32
subsystem and allow Java developers direct access to Windows native
functions. Any resolution of how Java interacts with native code
won't settle the case and Microsoft is still appealing the
injunction forcing it toe Sun's Java line.
----------------------
NOW AVAILABLE from G2 Computer Intelligence
The most complete list of Microsoft's investments and acquisitions,
outside of the top-secret tally in Redmond, Washington, is now
available
- tracked down and compiled by ClieNT Server NEWS' crack editorial
team.

           The Microsoft Empire: Roots and All

"One of the favorite plaints of Microsoft's detractors is that it
bought huge amounts of the technology that's made it so successful
rather than build it, starting with DOS. While acquisitions, joint
ventures and minority investments were hardly invented in Redmond,
Washington, Microsoft's use of its fabled bankroll is starting to
get it in the IBM class. Intel, currently regarded as the biggest VC
in the Valley with dough in over 200 firms - the old finger-in-
every-pie approach - has a ways to go to catch up with Microsoft.
Intel has something like a billion and a half out. Microsoft's tab
looks to be over $4 billion from what we can see and it's really
less investment-minded than it is purely acquisitive. Here's what
they spent the money on." -Stuart Zipper, Senior Editor, ClieNT
Server News (zipper@g2news.com)

Here's what an executive at one of the industry's largest software
companies had to say about this comprehensive report:  "I wanted to
thank you for the 'Microsoft Empire' report on acquisitions, joint
ventures, etc. This was very valuable information that would have
taken us days, if not weeks to compile."

The report includes:
* Date the transaction was disclosed
* The company and its founding date
* Technology notes and comments
* Financial terms.

For a preview of The Microsoft Empire : Roots and All visit us on
the Web at: www.g2news.com
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------------------------
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ClieNT Server NEWS - Intelligence for Decision Makers.
Editor: Maureen O'Gara ogara@g2news.com
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-------------------------------------------------
ClieNT Server NEWS - Intelligence for Decision Makers