ClieNT Server NEWS - January 18-22, 1999 Issue Number 283

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       | ClieNT Server NEWS |
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               New York and London
     January 18-22, 1999  Issue Number 283
The Independent Observer of Microsoft, Windows NT, and Other Phenomena
                    HEADLINES
CSN 283-01 Java Fragmentation Narrowly Averted; HP Goes Down in
Flames; Sun Singed
CSN 283-02New Windows Generation Rumored
CSN 283-03 SGI: New Kid On The NT Block
CSN 283-04 Sun Jeers at SGI
CSN 283-05 Lucent Buys Ascend for $20b in Stock As Stratus is Reborn
CSN 283-06 Banyan Sells Itself into Microserfdom
CSN 283-07 Tanner, Katmai Get Branded Pentium III
CSN 283-08 R/3 Rolls On SQL 7.0
CSN 283-09 BackOffice 4.5 Finally in Sight
CSN 283-10 Ousted Packard Bell Co-Founder Buys AST
CSN 283-11 NT Ousts Unix at General Motors
CSN 283-12 Intel Busts Through Projections
CSN 283-13 Hayes Defies Death
CSN 283-14 Redmond Ridicules Novell's Benchmarks
CSN 283-15 Motorola Plumps for ICA
CSN 283-16 Redmond Appeals Java Injunction, Says Judge Used the
Wrong Law
CSN 283-17 Keyfile's NT-based Workflow To Handle World's Biggest
Payroll
CSN 283-18 I/O Bus War Erupts Among Industry Heavy-Hitters
CSN 283-19 SCH Builds Exchange Backup For StorageTek
CSN 283-20 Fonix Goes Direct
CSN 283-21 Gateway to OEM 3Dlabs Boards
CSN 283-22 Netcool Gets Data Collectors
CSN 283-23 QuickStart Adds Consulting Unit
CSN 283-24 Microsoft Temps Dispute New Contract
CSN 283-25 EDS Teams On Warehousing with NCR, Open To NT
CSN 283-26 Microsoft Turns the Courtroom Tables, Denies Market
Monopolization
CSN 283-27 Microsoft Takes Mind Share Hit
CSN 283-28 AMD Sets Sales Record But Misses Estimates
CSN 283-29 Quadstone Ports Decisionhouse DSS to NT, Adds SQL Server
Support
CSN 283-30 Manugistics Talks With Suitors, Rumors Abound
CSN 283-31 Billygrams

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CSN 283-01 Java Fragmentation Narrowly Averted; HP Goes Down in
Flames; Sun Singed

Hewlett-Packard's attempt to standardize a rogue Java virtual
machine went down in flames on Thursday defeated in a midnight vote
conducted by its hand-picked standardization vehicle, NCITS, the
National Committee for Information Technology Standardization.

Shot down was its attempt to push through a project to standardize
real-time extensions to Java. Sun told the 19 companies that voted
that the project would infringe on its intellectual property and
change Java's underlying plumbing, hence change Java.

HP's defeat, by a margin of only three votes, narrowly averts Java's
fragmentation into splinter technologies. For the time being its
vaunted "write once, run anywhere" mantra is safe but the fact that
HP pulled almost enough weight to win is read as an industry message
to Sun to get on with Java standardization on terms the industry can
accept.

It is believed the industry has run out of patience with Sun and its
foot-dragging ways. Sun could have proceeded with Java's
standardization before next month, which is the latest possible date
it can move, but chose not to, a decision it may live to regret. The
PAS rules under which it is submitting Java to ISO will be rewritten
by then and the impact of that rewrite may work against Sun. There
is no guarantee of grandfathering. Moreover, Sun still has to
resolve the burning issue of its so-called stewardship over Java to
the industry's satisfaction and it has thus far shown no indication
that it is willing to mitigate the extent of its control over the
thing, at least not in any real sense.

HP and its cohorts had been in the lead going into the ballot, which
was a reconsideration ballot to confirm one held 10 days before.
HP's side originally claimed 10 of the 19 votes with five concerns
abstaining and only Sybase and IBM backing Sun. Sun used the 10 days
between the votes to do some heavy politicking and make its IPR
claims, the kind of thing that often scares off opposition in cases
like this.

In the end, the vote, which was tallied at midnight Thursday, showed
that Sun had been persuasive enough to get some companies to change
their position. HP needed both an absolute majority as well as two-
thirds of the "yes" votes to win. It fell short.

Supporting Sun, which cast one of the votes, were Xerox, Lucent and
Share, the IBM user group. It continued to hold IBM and Sybase,
which given their political leaning was no surprise. Backing HP were
Compaq, AT&T, Perennial, ICCP, a consulting operation, Apple and
Unisys. It had lost Hitachi, who decided to abstain, as well as
Lucent and Share, which went to the other side. Also abstaining were
NIST and DISA, the Defense Information Standards Agency, Sony and
Panasonic, just as they had on the first ballot absent Xerox. Bull
in both case failed to vote at all. Much can be read into the
absentions. Ironically, the vote went unposted at midnight because
of a software bug in the tally machine.

Because of the lateness of the hour it was impossible to reach HP
and it is unclear what course it and the friends it has assembled in
its so-called Real-Time Java Working Group will do now, if anything.
HP still has a contrarian embedded virtual machine called Chai,
Hindi for tea, to defend.

HP may have lost some standing with the community when its side
failed to a man to show up at a summit meeting hosted by DISA on
Tuesday to break the log jam. Only Sybase, IBM, Sun, Panasonic and
NIST attended. NIST and DISA both abstained from voting, a common
practice among government agencies.



CSN 283-02New Windows Generation Rumored

An unconfirmed report coming over the transom from Microsoft
suggests that it's decided to do another generation of Windows.

Expectations have been that the famed desktop operating system would
disappear inside NT once Microsoft got to Windows 2000, the newly
rechristened, highly segmented NT 5.0. Microsoft didn't mention it
specifically when it announced the Windows 2000 brand back in
October, but supposedly a cut of the 2000 stuff, code named Janus
after the Roman god of new beginnings (CSN No 268), was to have
eventually replaced Windows 98. No date has been attached to such a
thing, merely press suspicions that it would take until 2001 or 2002
for Microsoft to get it out.

Janus would have given the desktop the same operating system kernel
as NT, something Microsoft has dearly wanted for years and has
clearly said it was going to do. Now, for reasons that are still
unclear, however, Microsoft has reportedly postponed the "Great
Merge" - at least for the time being. It is said to be reorganizing
its internal development team to produce Windows 2000 Personal
Edition, one of possible names for Janus, but that Personal Edition
will not be a "merged" product. Instead it will be a rehash of
Windows 9x, yet-another 16-bit operating system with a 32-bit
veneer. A "merged" product, which one OEM thought might RTM in
August or September, would have been straight 32-bit.

If the story is true, maybe Microsoft has decided on this course for
technical reasons. Windows' 16-bit core is faster than NT and runs
games, for instance, a whole lot better. Maybe it has something to
do with money. After all Windows upgrades are worth a king's ransom.
Maybe it's because 5.0 is so famously delayed. It's possible they've
actually decided they'd like to get it out in our lifetime. Rumor
has it that 5.0's new kingpin Brian Valentine has laid down the law
about 5.0 shipping in June. The development team may be running
scared and jettisoning any distractions.

Or maybe it's for political reasons. It was suggested at the time of
the Windows 2000 announcement that Redmond was considering one more
rev of the Win9x kernel but that the Justice Department's suit had
led it to decide to kill off the operating system instead - perhaps
because it may be forced to divorce Windows 98 and the Internet
Explorer browser and it wanted to move to a code base that wasn't
challenged. Maybe it figures it doesn't face that threat anymore.

Microsoft actually wanted a common kernel from the beginning, but
got Win9x because of poor internal management controls and a
youthful Win9x team that simply did things its own way.



CSN 283-03 SGI: New Kid On The NT Block

With all the usual hoopla accorded such events Silicon Graphics last
week unveiled its long-awaited, somewhat delayed NT-based Visual
Workstations.

Given the noise - 40 launch events all over the country, dozens in
Europe and a chorus line of 36 companies with supporting
announcements - one would almost think SGI invented NT workstations.
In reality, of course, it's a newcomer that's going to have to fight
like blazes to wrest market share from the like of Hewlett-Packard,
Compaq, Dell, IBM and Intergraph, to name just a few. Analysts have
figured SGI will manage to sell $300 million worth of the snazzy-
looking new widgets their first year out, not enough for most folks
on Wall Street to modify their estimates for the company.

It is thought that SGI will make about 20% on the things,
significantly less than the margins it's used to in the Unix
business.

In keeping with the times, SGI will sell the boxes on a build-to-
order basis and won't make the widgets itself. It's contracted that
business out to SCI Systems in Huntsville, Alabama. It's also
contracted out call center and field support to Integrated
Technology Inc. The strategy is meant to minimize the risks inherent
in the Windows desktop market.

Marketing channels will include direct Internet sales, another first
for SGI, as well as the company's direct sales force and resellers.
At first it figures to have about 600 resellers, with the number
swelling to 2,000 over time.

By all accounts the widgets SGI has crafted have jumped into the NT
price/performance lead, at least for the moment, with aggressive
pricing that starts at $3,395 for a model 320 Visual Workstation
that starts shipping next month. The box, or more precisely curvy
case, will house one or two 450MHz Pentium IIs. In the second
quarter the 320 will be joined by the model 540, with up to four
Xeons and an entry price of $5,995. A sexy $2,495 flat panel
monitor, made for it by Mitsubishi, complements the new
workstations.

SGI claims a score of 200 on the Viewperf CDRS-04 benchmark, the
highest ever seen for an NT workstation and a number that rivals the
best the Unix world has to offer. To achieve that performance SGI
used its own proprietary low-latency 3.2GB/second graphics-to-memory
interconnect technology, a 1.6GB/ second I/O interconnect and its
own Cobalt graphics chipset, which integrates various graphics
features that typically required discrete add-in boards. SGI, which
calls the design Integrated Visual Computing (IVC) architecture,
said the result is a bandwidth that's 12 times a standard PCI bus
and six times AGP 2x performance.

Besides NT Workstation, the Visual Workstations will ship with an
extensive suite of interoperability tools so they can work with Unix
and Mac systems. The bundle includes Hummingbird's NFS Maestro Solo
and Telnet Daemon, the Mortice Kern Systems MKS Toolkit Unix file
manipulation commands and Media4 Productions MacDrive98. Other
software included in the price is the Equilibrium DeBabelizer Pro
4.5 LE for automated graphics processing and Intel's LanDesk Client
Manager.

Also on the software front, SGI's Alias Wavefront subsidiary
confirmed that it's ported its industrial design software to NT, as
has been expected since June. Alias said it will have NT versions of
its $25k Studio and $15k DesignStudio ready to ship in March, with
an introductory price for DesignStudio of $9,900 until June 18.


CSN 283-04 Sun Jeers at SGI

Even before SGI could push its Visual Workstations out into the
market last week Sun was jeering. It sidled up to the press corps
razing SGI for going to the dark side by breaking binary
compatibility within its own product line as well as breaking ranks
with the "pure" Unix community - or what's left of it.

In a bit of agitprop entitled "Reality Check" that it e-mailed to
media and posted on its web site just before the SGI product launch,
Sun said SGI "will succumb to the Microsoft/Intel juggernaut" just
as Hewlett-Packard and IBM had. Sun warned users that by buying
SGI's new workstations they risk costly upgrades if they ever want
to move up to higher-performance Unix systems. "With the combination
of Y2K changes and migration to Internet web interfaces with
applications, developers don't need to be distracted by another
costly issue: binary incompatibility," Sun argued. Of course it
extolled the way it's maintained binary compatibility from 32-bit to
64-bit Solaris.

Sun's missive is the sort of thing that can come back to haunt it
years from now. Industry veterans may remember a certain James Clark
who, as SGI's executive vice president back a few years ago, vowed
that hell would freeze over before SGI would adopt NT.



CSN 283-05 Lucent Buys Ascend for $20b in Stock As Stratus is Reborn

Lucent Technologies Inc is buying Ascend Communications Inc in a
massive $20 billion stock deal that will create the world's largest
broadband backbone infrastructure and hardware company, putting new
pressure on Microsoft's buddy Cisco and broadband wannabe 3Com.

The deal, which will close some time during the June quarter with
Ascend shareholders getting 0.825 shares of Lucent, follows months
of rumors that Lucent was also talking with 3Com. The decision to
chase after Ascend apparently devolved from what Lucent chairman and
CEO Rich McGinn said was a strategic decision to concentrate first
on Internet providers rather than on corporate networking, where
3Com's greatest strength lies. "When we looked at those companies
that were well matched with us, Ascend was the obvious choice,"
McGinn said.

Meanwhile, Ascend last week also moved to divest the non-
communications pieces of Stratus, including its NT Radio Cluster
business, in a leveraged management buyout financed by Investcorp.
Stratus management will reportedly hold less than 5% of the equity.
Ascend will get an estimated $100 million-$150 million for what had
been the Stratus Enterprise Computer Division, a 950-man operation
with about $275 million in annual sales which will now become
Stratus Computer Inc.

Ascend picked up Stratus back in October for $822 million in stock
to get its hands on Stratus' SS7 products. It said at the time that
it had no interest in keeping the non-telco parts of the business.

The emergence, or perhaps re-emergence is more accurate, of Stratus
as an independent computer company is of course dwarfed by the size
of the $20 billion Ascend acquisition.

Lucent said that once it takes Ascend over it will become part of a
newly created Broadband Networks Group that also includes Lucent's
current Data Networking Systems, Optical Networking and
Communications Software groups. Lucent COO and group president Dan
Stanzione, who also oversees Bell Labs, will run the new group.
Ascend CEO Mory Ejabat, after a "transition period," will leave. His
future plans, if he has any, weren't disclosed.

Lucent's acquisition of Ascend came less than 48 hours after Lucent
disclosed that it's buying privately held Kenan Systems Corporation,
a specialist in third-party billing and customer relations software
for telcos, for 12.88 million Lucent shares worth $1.48 billion.
Kenan, which is headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, makes a
line of software that generally runs on Unix servers with NT
clients.



CSN 283-06 Banyan Sells Itself into Microserfdom

Banyan Systems Inc, in what it admits is its best (and perhaps only)
chance for long-term survival, will transform itself into a
Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory services and support company
in a deal that will eventually give Redmond a 7.5% equity position
in the networking industry pioneer.

Over time as customers migrate from Banyan's flagship products to
NT- and Exchange-based systems - with Banyan earning its bread and
butter by helping them - Banyan's Vines will shrivel, its StreetTalk
will fall silent and BeyondMail will be returned with postage due.

The ultimate indignity may be that Banyan's going to convert its own
internal systems to NT, Exchange and Active Directory. Microsoft,
which could undoubtedly have exacted a technology license to glean
whatever it wanted from Banyan's directory and networking
technology, didn't even bother to do so.

Under terms of a pact with Microsoft Banyan will get $10 million
over the next three years to train at least 500 of its folks on
Microsoft technologies. In return Redmond gets warrants to buy 1.75
million Banyan shares at $10 each, equal to a 7.5% stake in the
company. The price was based on a 30-day trailing average price, but
as details of the deal emerged Banyan shares shot up to almost $20.
If for some reason the Banyan deal, which includes joint marketing
and customer solution centers, sours, Microsoft's under no
obligation to exercise the options.

Banyan chairman and CEO William Ferry said his company, which two
years ago was given long odds on surviving, has been searching for a
long time for some kind of deal to shore up its chances. Despite
success in at least stabilizing the company over the past year, in
the long term "we weren't going to be successful unless we found a
major industry partner," he said.

In particular, Ferry cites more and more business going the way of
Exchange, the kind of talk that warms Redmond's heart but certainly
didn't bode well for Banyan, which still claims a two million-user
installed base for BeyondMail. That's a tasty little installed base
for Microsoft to chew on. Ferry evaded questions about how much
business Banyan figures it's lost to Microsoft's networking,
directory and e-mail schemes but admits that Exchange is now "by far
the most preferred by our customers." Ferry adds that between 75%-
90% of Banyan's customers already use NT-based networks for at least
part of their IT needs.

For now Ferry insists that Banyan won't discontinue any of its
existing products. Rather, he said, an upgraded version of
StreetTalk is in development that will have improved LDAP support
specifically to enhance interoperability with Exchange. Banyan's
also working on the technology to directly synchronize its directory
with Active Directory.

He said Banyan's also working on a set of tools to make
interoperability between BeyondMail and Ex-change Mail easier.

Finally, Banyan's upgrading its existing migration tools set. Last
heard from, we thought the tool set was mainly to move customers
from Unix to Vines and StreetTalk on NT. The new tool set, in
contrast, will be to move them from Banyan's own software on NT to
pure Microsoft technologies.

Those tools will form the basis of at least some business for Banyan
in helping migrate its current installed base. Longer term Banyan,
with help from Microsoft, said it plans to hawk service offerings in
WAN internetworking and directory services, secure remote access,
virtual private networks, single sign-on, personalization and
network security. The Banyan offerings will also include Microsoft
technology-based planning, design, implementation and support of
Internet infrastructure and web applications for the supply chain
management, ERP, customer management and human resource markets.


CSN 283-07 Tanner, Katmai Get Branded Pentium III

Intel last week confirmed all the reports saying that Katmai, and
after it Tanner, will carry a Pentium III moniker. Katmai is
expected to see the light of day on February 28 in 450MHz and 500MHz
flavors. Tanner, aimed at servers and high-end workstations, will
come to market as the Pentium III Xeon.


CSN 283-08 R/3 Rolls On SQL 7.0

SAP last week formally released a version of R/3 running on
Microsoft's new SQL Server 7.0, and said they've signed a pact for
SAP to distribute SQL Server along with its flagship ERP offering.
Microsoft, of course, is playing both sides of the street here what
with its $99-per-seat bundling pact with SAP rival Baan last October
(CSN 271). That R/3 would emerge sooner or later on SQL was a given,
the question was simply when SAP would feel it was the right time to
grab some publicity. SAP's had a team of its own on-site in Redmond
for two years working with the SQL team, and provided Microsoft with
R/3 data files to be sure the new cut of SQL and R/3 would play
together. SAP trotted out a list of five major corporates, including
Microsoft itself, that beta'd R/3 on SQL 7.0, and says it has
another 100 customers just starting to deploy the stuff.


CSN 283-09 BackOffice 4.5 Finally in Sight

Microsoft last week formally took the wraps off BackOffice Server
4.5, now in beta and running a half-year late mainly due to the
delayed released of SQL Server 7.0.

The latest cut of BackOffice of course includes the latest versions
of Redmond's core NT server programs and associated clients. But
BackOffice 4.5 as it's emerged also includes a few things such as
Outlook 2000 and FrontPage 2000 that wouldn't have been there if the
release, originally planned for October 30 (CSN No 241), hadn't been
delayed while waiting for SQL 7.0 to be finished.

Microsoft, as is its wont these days, isn't officially telling folks
that BackOffice Server 4.5 is expected to be ready on May 30.
Instead it's simply saying that anyone who buys the current
BackOffice 4.0 between now and May 30 will get a free upgrade.

BackOffice Server isn't, of course, a server in its own right but
rather a framework for the installation and management of the
servers in the BackOffice suite. New to BackOffice 4.5 are reusable
setup scripts, a deployment wizard and a branch office setup feature
to automatically fix the proper setting for remote locations.
There's also a bevy of new administration consoles in what's called
BackOffice Server Manager. The consoles come in flavors for entry-
level help desk technicians, web administrators, branch
administrators and IT administrators.

The complete software suite in BackOffice 4.5 includes NT Server 4.0
with the NT Option Pack of Internet Information Server 4.0,
Transaction Server 2.0 and Message Queue Server 1.0. Other pieces
are Exchange Server 5.5, Proxy Server 2.0, SNA Server 4.0, the
sparkly new SQL Server 7.0, Site Server 3.0 and Systems Manager
Server 2.0. It will also ship with Outlook 2000 and FrontPage 2000,
themselves both in beta as part of Office 2000. A single-user copy
of Visual InterDev and a five-user license for Seagate's Crystal
Info 6.0 come with the package. The price is not expected to differ
significantly from the current BackOffice 4.0.

Meanwhile, Microsoft last week also went into beta with a companion
upgrade to BackOffice Server's little brother, the MacOffice Small
Business Server 4.5. As promised, the new release ups the permitted
number of clients from 25 to 50. It also comes with a more extensive
suite of setup tools, beefed up to counter widespread criticism that
installing SBS has been too tricky for many of the smaller
businesses it's aimed at.

Those new tools include an all-new setup engine, improved Internet
connectivity wizard, server status tool and a jazzed up remote
administration tool that uses Microsoft's NetMeeting to manage SBS
sites remotely.


CSN 283-10 Ousted Packard Bell Co-Founder Buys AST

Beny Alagem, the defrocked CEO of Packard Bell NEC, who was left
last summer after disagreements with the partners (CSN No 257),
proved last week that he's a glutton for punishment. He's bought the
guts of AST Research off of Samsung, which has poured $600 million
down that rat hole and has been praying for the last year for
someone to come along and take it off its hands (CSN No 238).
Samsung has enough problems of its own back in Korea and didn't need
the constant drain of AST's losses and job cuts. It's unlikely to
recoup its investment.

Alagem has purchased the AST brand name and taken an exclusive
license for its IP portfolio. He's going to re-form the thing in Los
Angeles as AST Computers with Samsung retaining a 25% stake in the
new entity (and dibs on another 10%) through the shell that remains
of AST Research, which continues to stand for the time being but
will be sucked dry of other resources over time. Then the two
companies will re-merge. How much Alagem paid was undisclosed. The
press is saying the deal is worth $200 million. Alagem will be
chairman, president and CEO. He's reported to be putting $12.5
million into the new concern.

AST Computers is supposed to be sell over the Internet to small and
mid-sized businesses and the home market, basically the same
restricted charter it's had since it was reorganized at the end of
1997. We gather this brief, sans key corporate accounts, would make
it increasingly difficult for Samsung to use AST to flog Alpha
machines. It's unlikely Dell, whose model Alagem is ripping off, is
any too worried either. AST has failed to show a profit in five
years and has no market share to speak of. It lost $417.7 in 1996
before it went completely private and $263.2 million the year
before. Estimates have placed its losses last year at $60 million-
$70 million on top of $369 million the year before. It was once the
fifth largest PC maker in the world with revenues of $2 billion.
Samsung was quoted as blaming the mismanagement of key employees for
AST's decline.


CSN 283-11 NT Ousts Unix at General Motors

General Motors is going to use the NT version of Unigraphics as its
standard corporate CAD system and will begin replacing its installed
base of Unigraphics-on-Unix later this year. With almost 9,000 CAD
seats GM could eventually wind up with the biggest NT-based CAD shop
in the world.

GM also said that it's going to urge its suppliers - hundreds if not
thousands of companies - to adopt Unigraphics-on-NT too.

The decision to move to the NT version of Unigraphics, and also to
the NT version of the IMAN product data management program, was made
as part of GM's Fast Vehicle Product Development Program. With
Unigraphics functionality virtually identical on NT and Unix, the
key to the move to NT was said to be the far lower cost of NT
workstations.

For CAD industry veteran Unigraphics Solutions Inc, as it's been
known since spinning out of EDS last year, the GM decision won't
mean any change in revenue since it charges the same for both NT and
Unix programs. Unigraphics averages $16k-$17k per seat although GM
understandably pays less because of the size of its orders.
Unigraphics won't reveal the exact contract price.

For workstation OEMs the decision represents a major dislocation,
with the biggest loser being Sun since GM's been buying mainly Sun
and Hewlett-Packard workstations. HP of course can bid for the NT
business. Sun can't. Indeed HP is understood to be in the thick of
the battle for GM's NT order, along with just about every other NT
workstation vendor that's been able to get its hands on GM's NT
hardware RFP. Even the new kid on the block, Silicon Graphics, is in
the fray. Unigraphics last week was reliably reported to be playing
with one of the new SGI boxes.

GM hasn't said how fast it will replace its massive base of Unix
workstations, but Tony Affuso, Unigraphics VP of products and
operations, said GM's been ordering 500-700 seats of Unigraphics per
quarter for the last year or so. At that rate it will take more than
five years for the last of the Unix boxes to disappear, a scenario
Affuso considers reasonable since some of GM's Unix workstations are
almost brand new.

The GM decision to switch to NT also highlights NT's gradual
dominance of Unigraphics. Unigraphics this year expects most of its
sales to be on NT for the first time. Affuso says 1998 started out
with NT accounting for about 30%-35% of all sales, a percentage that
gradually increased to about 50% by year-end, ending Unix' decade-
long run as Unigraphics' strategic platform. For 1999 he's expecting
NT sales to tote up to about 55% of the business.

The coming year will also see the introduction of the first "pure"
version of Unigraphics on NT. The current rev, 15, like earlier NT
versions retains much of the Unix feel typical of many software
ports. Version 16, now in the labs and due out in the fourth
quarter, will be the first to use the standard Windows GUI and
features. It will also be the first version that Unigraphics submits
for certification under Redmond's Windows Logo program.


CSN 283-12 Intel Busts Through Projections

Intel turned in a brilliant fourth quarter, busting through all
projections including an escalating whisper number when it posted
results of $1.19 a share. The Street's official estimates were for
$1.07. A year ago it did 98 cents and in Q3 89 cents. In the
aggregate, the quarter's net income hit a record $2.1 billion, up
18% year-over-year and 32% sequentially. Revenue was up 17% to a
record $7.6 billion year-over-year, 13% better than the third
quarter letting Intel exit the year a whole lot better than it
started, the first half being peckish and unpromising largely
because of Asia.

Intel attributed the results to P6 sales but acknowledged that while
it was selling more Xeons - unit shipments of MPUs were described as
"record-setting" in Q4 - it was selling fewer Celerons, losing
market share to Intel wannabe AMD. It admitted quite frankly that it
had taken its eye off the ball. As the latest issue of the
Microprocessor Report duly noted, Intel's market share in Q4 fell
below 80%, its lowest level since 1995, off from around 90% at the
end of 1997 while AMD's has more than doubled. Results were
positively impacted by Intel's belt-tightening, layoffs, stock
repurchase plan (it bought back 80.9 million shares for $6.7
billion) and the sale of $240 million worth of securities, more than
it usually does.

Revenue for the year totaled $26.3 billion, up 5% and net income was
$6.1 billion, down 13%. Earnings per share were $3.45, off 11%.

After a dismal first half, demand in Asia-Pacific is returning,
Intel said, which is good news from any point of view. Europe and
America were solid. Every category was up: MPUs, chipsets,
motherboards, embedded processors and microcontrollers, flash
memory, fast Ethernet connections. In the current quarter Intel
talked of a seasonal slowdown following holiday buying that would
drag down revenues and margins compared to Q4. The Q1 speed bump may
be somewhat offset by the fact that it has a backlog left over from
Q4. (It underbuilt in the second half.) Expenses would probably be
2%-4% lower than in Q4 when they ran over the revised guidance Intel
had given the Street in November, working out to 16% more than Q3.
Otherwise the company's solid performance is expected to continue in
1999, with margins of 57%. (Margins were 58% in Q4, 54% for the
year.)

In the run-up to Intel unveiling its result, Donaldson, Lufkin &
Jenrette predicted its stock price would shortly see 140, a position
it was approaching in after-hours trading on Tuesday. Longer term
DLJ figures it could see 200. There's also speculation it will
split. Lehman figures it's good for 180.

Intel estimates R&D costs this year will run to around $3 billion,
up from $2.7 billion last year. Capital spending should be another
$3 billion, down from $4 billion last year. It is supposed to start
transitioning to a 0.18-micron process starting this half. Intel
completed the conversion to 0.25 last year. Intel, by the way, told
the Street last week not to expect any more engineering on the
Pentium II line.


CSN 283-13 Hayes Defies Death

Recent reports of the death of modem pioneer Hayes Corporation may
have been a bit premature (CSN No 282). The company last week was
begging its main creditor, NationsCredit, to let it keep a skeleton
staff of 40 to 45 folks including some development engineers in
place in hopes that it can land a buyer by the end of next month.
The bank had planned to keep only a 15-man staff around to oversee
the liquidation of assets. Hayes said several unidentified potential
bidders have stepped forward both for the US assets and the
company's more successful European unit.


CSN 283-14 Redmond Ridicules Novell's Benchmarks

Microsoft and Novell are back at it again like two kids in a
schoolyard shouting match. This time Redmond has issued a white
paper taking Novell to task for claiming that NetWare 5.0 outscored
NT Server 4.0 by 34% on benchmarks that Novell hired KeyLabs to do
for it. Microsoft claims that Novell ignored bugs in NetWare that
make it impossible for users to use NetWare in the configuration
tested by KeyLabs.

Citing a list of Novell's own support documents Microsoft claims
that the NetWare tests were performed using a setting called
Opportunistic Locking despite the fact that the feature causes data
corruption. Microsoft cites Novell document number 2907761 to back
up its contention.

Redmond also claims that, with Opportunistic Locking turned on,
Novell's latest NSS storage system won't work, forcing users to opt
for a lower-performance storage system. Finally, Microsoft smugly
adds that Opportunistic Locking does work in NT. It also cites its
own rival benchmarks, done under contract by Mindcraft, that have NT
outscoring NetWare by 25.5%. Somehow we don't think we've heard the
last of this one.


CSN 283-15 Motorola Plumps for ICA

Motorola has licensed ICA from Citrix for its digital wireless
devices beginning with the iDEN packet-based integrated handsets
that combine the capabilities of a digital cell phone with those of
two-way radios and an alphanumeric pagers. Moto has visions of its
widgets accessing enterprise networks and business-critical e-mail,
files and database information. Remote users would need a PC and a
cable hooked to the handset to access Windows apps on a WinFrame or
Meta-Frame server. The handset would then just become a fancy modem.
Moto's talking real-time too via a virtual connection, eliminating
the need to dial into a server. It also said downloaded files could
be stored and modified locally. In the short term, it said, the ICA
client will be loaded on a PC interfaced with the iDEN phones.
Eventually it will be embedded


CSN 283-16 Redmond Appeals Java Injunction, Says Judge Used the
Wrong Law

Microsoft, in an appeal filed Thursday, charged that the federal
judge hearing the Sun Java case had improperly relied on copyright
law instead of contract law when he issued the preliminary
injunction forcing Redmond to conform to Sun's interpretation of
Java.

In its appeal papers, filed at the last possible moment, Microsoft
also repeated its previous claim that its contract with Sun clearly
gives it the right to modify Java. It also argues that the judge
ignored provisions in the contract that Redmond says limit Sun to
monetary damages in any case, specifically precluding any type of
injunction.

Surprisingly, Microsoft didn't ask the appeals court for a stay of
the preliminary injunction while the appeal is in process. Such a
request could easily be made later.

The key issue in using copyright law as opposed to contract law,
according to Microsoft is the standard under which the court can
issue an injunction. Copyright law, Redmond argues, allows an
injunction in a case where there is a "reasonable likelihood of
success." There's also an assumption in copyright law that if a
copyright is violated the plaintiff will be harmed and that any harm
caused to the defendant is irrelevant. In contrast contract law
demands proof of harm before an injunction is issued, and requires
that the possible harm done to the defendant be considered.

Moreover, Microsoft claimed it has the right to use the copyrighted
Java code based on its license with Sun. It would only be liable for
possible copyright violations if Sun rescinded its Java license,
Redmond said. Not only hasn't the license been cancelled, Microsoft
tartly noted that Sun collected its annual $3.75 million license and
support fee, even as the case was progressing.

There was no indication how long the appeals court might take to
hand down a ruling, which at most could lift the preliminary
injunction but wouldn't end the case. There were also no indications
last week on when or if Microsoft might get the permission it
requested for more time to fully implement the provisos of the
preliminary injunction.

The biggest unknown, though, was whether Microsoft and Sun will be
able to reach a negotiated settlement in the talks that the district
court ordered in hopes of settling their dispute over Sun's Java
Native Interface (JNI) and RNI or Raw Native Interface, Microsoft's
opposing method for how Java interacts with its code (CSN No 282).


CSN 283-17 Keyfile's NT-based Workflow To Handle World's Biggest
Payroll

Keyfile Corporation's Keyflow workflow software on NT and Exchange
Server has defeated Novell's GroupWise, Lotus Notes and a Netscape
solution in the battle for a massive Defense Finance and Accounting
Service (DFAS) subcontract.

The Defense Department order for 22,514 clients and 35 servers is
the biggest Keyfile's ever booked and is believed to be the largest
NT-based workflow sale in history. The agency's decision was based
on the recommendations of prime contractor Unisys Federal System
Division as part of a $167 million five-year contract that Unisys
won back in September 1995. How much of that will now go to Keyfile
wasn't disclosed.

Under the DFAS contract Unisys is building a new infrastructure to
handle all payroll and contract payments as well as maintain all
finance and accounting records for the DOD. As might be expected,
the volumes of transactions involved dwarf anything seen in the
commercial sector. DFAS disburses about $22 billion a month
including 9.8 million DOD paychecks, the largest payroll in the
world.

The Keyfile system will handle the workflow involved, linking about
26k DFAS employees scattered among 300 offices around the country.


CSN 283-18 I/O Bus War Erupts Among Industry Heavy-Hitters

In the space of under a week, two factions of IT heavy-hitters have
come forth to duel over how and when to implement a faster I/O
architecture to replace PCI as well as whether to charge royalty
fees.

Compaq, IBM, HP and Adaptec came together as the Future I/O group
just five days after Intel, Sun, Dell, Hitachi, NEC and Siemens
launched the NGIO Industry Forum, an organization formed around the
new Intel-planned Next Generation Input/Output spec first trotted
out last fall.

Both groups are convinced that a new switched fabric I/O
architecture is needed to keep pace with next-generation processors.
NGIO members want the industry to converge behind a single so-called
"open" standard, available on a royalty-free basis. The draft NGIO
spec is posted on Intel's web site, and it will probably migrate
soon to the NGIO site, said Tom Macdonald, general manager of
Intel's NGIO Division.

The NGIO group looked at a lot of different architectural models in
drafting the spec, including Serial Express, S-connect and Desknet,
according to Charles Andres, Sun's group manager of I/O. Compaq,
IBM, HP and Adaptec were all invited to participate. The first
products based on the standard are scheduled to hit market in the
year 2000.

The four members of Future I/O, though, don't believe it's in their
own best interests - or those of the industry - to be "pushed" to a
new I/O spec in a timeframe they consider premature. Instead Compaq,
IBM, HP and Adaptec are planning a two-phased approach, calling for
them to move first to PCI-X, an emerging spec based on the existing
PCI-66, before ultimately adopting Future I/O.

"Standards have a history of doing a lot better when they're based
on customer pull, as opposed to technology push," said Ken Jansen,
director of server architecture and design at Compaq. "I don't want
to sound like a stick-in-the-mud, but sometimes it's better to be
prudent."

Jansen predicted that the first slate of PCI-X products will ship
early in the year 2000, to be followed by Future I/O products in
2002.

The Future I/O architectural model will include elements of Tandem's
ServerNet, as well as components of existing IBM S/390 and Hewlett-
Packard architectures. Future I/O will also be backward compatible
with PCI-X and PCI. "It won't be like somebody's 'throwing a
switch.' The products will peacefully co-exist," asserted Tony
Parkinson, Compaq's manager of ECG technology advancement.

Intel, of course, would like to see the industry step directly from
PCI to the NGIO spec. But PCI-X does offer improvements over PCI-66,
such as more slots and easier implementation, according to
Macdonald.

Sun's Andres, though, doubts that PCI-X will offer benefits
substantial enough to offset the difficulties associated with
migration. "Switching to a new I/O architecture isn't easy - it's
not a step we take lightly. The PCI-X that Future I/O is proposing
will only be an interim standard, and we don't think it will
necessarily be an improvement over PCI-66," Andres said.

Andres is also frustrated that NGIO members haven't been able to
review the Future I/O spec. "Sun has a long history of supporting
open, cross-industry standards - and it isn't clear that Future I/O
will be an unencumbered standard," he said.

But Compaq and its Future/IO partners have no intention of
establishing an ad hoc standard, according to Jansen. Technical
contributions will be welcome, with access to the spec to be
determined by "level of [technical] contribution."

Future I/O plans to release more details about their spec at a forum
to be held February 12 in Monterey, California.


CSN 283-19 SCH Builds Exchange Backup For StorageTek

SCH Technologies has released a Microsoft Ex-change database backup
utility called dbBRZ/Exchange for Storage Technology Corporation,
which will resell it as part of its Reel suite of storage management
software. SCH's dbBRZ/Ex-change backs up both the Exchange directory
and information store by passing the information to StorageTek's
ReelBackup NT, also developed by SCH, which manages the backup-and-
restore process. The utility can do concurrent backup of multiple
Exchange databases.


CSN 283-20 Fonix Goes Direct

Fonix Corporation, a specialist in NT-based speech recognition
applications, has taken over the 19-man direct sales and service
team that had been selling its PowerScribe suite of medical
dictation software as employees of the MRC Group. The Salt Lake
City-based Fonix said it did about $4.1 million worth of PowerScribe
business last year. MRC, with 2,800 employees in 21 states, is
primarily a medical transcription company rather than a software
distributor and said it figures to do better concentrating on its
core business.


CSN 283-21 Gateway to OEM 3Dlabs Boards

Gateway, which has pretensions of grabbing at least a little piece
of the NT workstation market, is going to use 3-Dlabs' Oxygen GMX
graphics accelerators as the high-end options on its E-5200 and E-
5250 NT workstations.


CSN 283-22 Netcool Gets Data Collectors

Micromuse Inc has added a suite of data collectors to monitor
distributed NT-based resources and applications to its Netcool
product line. The collectors, called Netcool/NT Service Monitors,
monitor CPU, memory and disk usage, interrogate system logs for
applications status and security information and track file changes.


CSN 283-23 QuickStart Adds Consulting Unit

QuickStart Technologies, a specialist in BackOffice-based retail
applications, has opened up a retail consulting services practice.
The Irvine, California concern said it's going to offer retailers
help with the selection or development of applications based on
Microsoft's Active-Store retail architecture. It's also going to
offer business requirement consulting, replicated site planning and
rollout support, site management and administration services and
education and training.


CSN 283-24 Microsoft Temps Dispute New Contract

A group of temporary Microsoft workers who sued Redmond back in 1992
claiming they're due the same benefits as permanent workers are
asking the Seattle district court to invalidate a new Microsoft
contract that asks workers to affirm they are temporary and not due
permanent employee benefits. Attorneys for the workers claim
Redmond's trying to intimidate them and doesn't have the right to
waive benefits that might some day be awarded them by a court or
that they might get as the result of a negotiated settlement.
Microsoft claims it was simply trying to clarify employment terms
with the new contract.


CSN 283-25 EDS Teams On Warehousing with NCR, Open To NT

EDS, the granddaddy of systems integrators, will be reselling data
warehousing offerings for NT - particularly, but not necessarily
limited to, NCR's Teradata - depending on customer demand. And the
resulting integrated solutions could conceivably end up being
bundled together as shrinkwrapped products for smaller companies.

A data warehousing deal unveiled this week by EDS, NCR and AT
Kearney will first target EDS's traditional base of big enterprise
customers before the results trickle down in productized form to
second-tier firms like supply chain partners, said EDS EVP Hartmut
Burger.

Although NCR is EDS' "preferred partner," EDS will also support any
data warehouses that customers like, said Bill Dodds, service
offering manager at EDS. And since it is "multivendor-competent,"
the SI will also work on data warehousing for any OS platform
including NT, an environment that is not as entrenched on enterprise
databases as, say, Unix or mainframes.

The new EDS/NCR/Kearney data warehousing consortium expects to
combine technical expertise with strengths in both management
consulting and solutions consulting. Industry analysts have
criticized existing players in data warehousing for being weak in at
least one of these three areas, according to Doug Aldrich, VP of
Kearney's Strategic Information Technology Practice.

The selling point in EDS' three-pronged approach is to bring
together islands of information that are still scattered about in
corporate departments and other places within "extended
enterprises." CEOs and boards of directors supposedly remain
frustrated that, despite their investments in new technology, the
long-promised 'nirvana of information" has yet to be realized.

As part of the program, EDS is extending its "shared risk" pricing
option to data warehousing implementations. Under this option, EDS
will agree to forego its fee if specified customer expectations
aren't met. EDS plans to work out project pricing - including shared
risk, where applicable - on an individualized basis with customers.

Right now, EDS has only signed a letter of intent to collaborate
with NCR and Kearney. "There is no 100% guarantee," Dodd
acknowledged. But the trio anticipates announcing its first
customers soon.


CSN 283-26 Microsoft Turns the Courtroom Tables, Denies Market
Monopolization

Microsoft took its turn on the witness stand this week in its
historic antitrust trial, arguing in testimony from Richard
Schmalansee, an MIT dean, that its mammoth market share does not
make it a monopoly in "dynamically competitive markets," especially
those, like the software industry, that "involve intellectual
capital."

Schmalansee, an economist who was once a student of Franklin Fisher,
the government's final witness, also flatly contradicted Fisher's
pricing arguments.

Before Schmalansee came to the stand, though, Fisher got in his
final licks before Judge Jackson on Monday, using internal Microsoft
pricing data in an attempt to show that Microsoft offers much better
pricing for Windows to some OEMs - such as Compaq and Dell - than
others.

The judge closed the courtroom for much of the day on the basis that
the pricing information would cause injury to PC makers if
disclosed. He agreed to release a partial transcript.

Pointing to pricing favoritism as a sign of monopoly power, Fisher
contended that some PC makers are being given unfair advantage in
exchange for going along with "a system that reinforces
Microsoft's...revenues and barriers to entrance."

Fisher had previously argued in court that Microsoft engaged in
another monopolistic practice - predatory pricing, or selling goods
below cost - by giving away the IE browser for free in a concerted
effort to "crush" Netscape.

Microsoft fought back in a written statement issued Monday, claiming
that differences in royalty fees are related to shipment volumes
"and other normal business factors" as opposed to favoritism. If
Microsoft was actually a monopolist, the company would "set a high
price and insist that everyone pay it," it said.

Schmalansee's testimony, which started on Tuesday, continued along
the same line of reasoning. In his written deposition, the economist
claimed that Microsoft can't increase prices in the manner of a
monopolist because of the strong competition inherent in the
software industry.

New products from Microsoft face competition in the external sense -
from other OSes such as Linux and MacOS - as well as internal
competition from the installed Windows base.

Schmalansee also testified that Microsoft's high profitability alone
does not pose sufficient evidence that it is a monopolist.

But, taking a page out of Microsoft's book, the opposing side tried
to embarrass a testifying witness with contradictions between his
present testimony and his own earlier statements. A government
lawyer confronted Schmalansee with an essay in the Harvard Law
Review - dating back to 1982 - in which he asserted that "persistent
excess profits provide a good indication of long-run power." In
response, Schmalansee said, "My immediate reaction is, what could I
have been thinking? But I'm happy to discuss it. It does not provide
a good indication of my present views."

As previously reported, when Fisher came to the witness stand
Microsoft attacked him for his testimony on behalf of IBM in another
antitrust case, strongly suggesting that the economist had
conveniently flip-flopped.

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 said it would give a person "whiplash."


CSN 283-27 Microsoft Takes Mind Share Hit

Merrill Lynch, in one of its periodic surveys of corporate CIOs,
said a recent poll of 50 CIOs showed two-thirds think the government
should win the antitrust case against Microsoft, results that
reverse the findings of earlier polls. However, the CIOs also told
Merrill the case will have no effect on their buying plans.
Meanwhile, the survey found that most of the CIOs are now buying
their PCs direct, with 34% only buying direct and 18% both direct
and through channels. Dell came out on top by a wide margin both as
the primary PC supplier, followed by Compaq and IBM, but Dell is the
company gaining market share most quickly.


CSN 283-28 AMD Sets Sales Record But Misses Estimates

AMD reported record sales of $788.8 million, entirely driven by
increasing K6-2 sales, in its fourth quarter ended December 27 but
fell short by four cents a share in the profit column. Net profits
of $22.3 million amounted to 15 cents per share. First call
estimates had called for 19 cents on slightly higher sales of $800
million. The profits in the final quarter were hardly enough to make
a dent in AMD's losses earlier in 1998, and it ended the year with
record sales of $2.5 billion but a loss of $104 million.

The difference between Wall Street estimates and the actual results
was in part due to AMD's inability to churn out enough of its
fastest K6-2 CPUs during the quarter, admitted AMD CEO Jerry
Sanders. The company was also hurt by flat sequential sales of
virtually all of its other product lines.

Sanders said that of the 13.5 million CPUs that AMD shipped in the
year some 8.5 million were K6-2s. He bragged of a 16% total Windows
market share, number one position in the sub-$1k market at 38%, a
37% share of the $1k-$1.5k market and a 21% share of the North
American retail market for laptops.


CSN 283-29 Quadstone Ports Decisionhouse DSS to NT, Adds SQL Server
Support

Quadstone has ported Decisionhouse, a product previously available
only on Unix, to NT, a move that effectively gives mid-sized
companies concerned with affordability an entrÈe into data mining,
according to company CTO Nick Radcliffe.

Although just announced, Decisionhouse for NT has been shipping
since January 1, Radcliffe said. Users of the NT product include
C&A, a major European retail chain that has installed the DSS
software at its headquarters, and US-based Price-Waterhouse Coopers,
which is partnering with Quadstone on a Decisionhouse-based demo
application targeting the healthcare industry. C&A's deployment is a
commercial implementation.

Quadstone first released the Unix edition of the stuff back in July
of 1996, said Fiona Neil, marketing manager. Along with the NT port,
the vendor is now adding first-time support for Microsoft SQL
Server. Other supported databases include Oracle and NCR's Teradata.

Why the two-and-a-half-year wait for the move to NT? "We've always
concentrated on the high end, but the scalability of NT and SQL
Server has really improved quite a lot over the past few years,"
Radcliffe said.
Radcliffe estimated equivalent performance times, at present, for
Decisionhouse running on single-processor servers under NT and
Solaris. "When you get to [four-way SMP], Solaris still has the
edge," he admitted. "But we expect that situation to level out with
2000."

Although it's still "a bit early" for large organizations to be
deploying DSS on NT organization-wide, Decisionhouse for NT is
already suited to applications at mid-sized companies, according to
the CTO.

As part of its Windows 2000 rollout, Microsoft is now prepping
Datacenter Server 2000, a product touted as raising scalability to
16-way SMP for large data warehousing, mining and OLTP apps though
when it will hit market remains a question.

Quadstone's suite of behavioral analysis and modeling tools combines
data visualization, query, reporting, statistics, data management
and operational output capabilities.


CSN 283-30 Manugistics Talks With Suitors, Rumors Abound

Manugistics is still on the block. But if an acquisition actually
happens, the buyer is unlikely to be SAP according to informed
sources. Other rumored suitors range all over the map from fellow
supply chain software purveyors like Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD
Edwards to IBM, maybe in the role of service provider.
PeopleSoft and SAP were some of the first names to be bandied about
as merger prospects for the troubled Manugistics. In mid-December,
its shares were up 23% amid rumors of a purchase by PeopleSoft. At
the same time Credit Suisse First Boston analyst George Gilbert
wrote that he believed SAP was falling behind schedule in new
product development, fueling speculation that SAP would buy
Manugistics to speed its own time-to-market.

Then in a written statement on December 22 Manugistics acknowledged
that it was in preliminary discussions with other companies - adding
the caveat that "there can be no assurance that a combination will
occur or when it will occur." It also reported a net loss of $10.4
million for the quarter ending November 30, blaming "issues with
execution, new competitive forces and some market factors affecting
our clients and prospects." CEO William Gibson promised some sort of
announcement in January.

Immediately after Gibson's announcement, Manugistics' stock fell
from $15-$16 to $12 1/8 for an 80% drop from its peak of $66 3/8
last April. Manugistics' troubles started on May 20, when its stock
plunged from $59 to $29 over three days, after it said Q1 earnings
wouldn't live up to expectations.

SAP seemed to have dropped out of the race early this month. At that
point, Gilbert wrote that the German-based ERP vendor had reduced
its US sales force over the holidays. Gilbert is now postulating
that negotiations between SAP and Manugistics fell through.

But rumors of a Manugistics acquisition have continued fueled by
Manugistics itself. Chris Elliot, its marketing director for
northern Europe, was reported in Computergram as saying that
Manugistics has been talking with two prospective buyers though he
didn't know who they were.

On the web, the banter by financial investors has pointed in a lot
of directions. "Oracle isn't going to be the only suitor in the game
for Manu," wrote one contributor to the Manugistics message board on
Yahoo! earlier this week. "Remember this is a company with a lot
going for it and problems that can be fixed." Oracle, of course,
also recently bought Concentra, also a denizen of the supply chain
space.

Word on the Street - and on the web - has it that, for Manugistics,
another alternative to acquisition is to attempt to solve its
problems through internal reorganization. Investors have been
predicting everything from no merger at all to an acquisition
announcement as we went to press, or early this week.

Publicly, though, Manugistics and its potential partners have been
mainly mum since Christmas. "We're reviewing our options, and when
we've made a decision, we will issue a press release," it said.


CSN 283-31 Billygrams

Compaq's got a secret little hardware program code named Fusion
under way in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the old DEC Storageworks
plant. Details are skimpy, but Fusion looks to be a storage area
network (SAN) effort aimed at heterogeneous NT-Unix-OpenVMS
networks.

-

Long about now Novell should be shipping an early beta of SCADS or
Scalable Directory Services, its next-generation directory software.
Novell says it's working privately with a select group of customers
to test and refine the thing. It doesn't plan a public beta. SCADS
is supposed to provide a ten-fold capacity increase over what's
available now. A commercial version of the stuff is due later this
year.

-

Intel has dibs on the web site names pentium4.com, pentium5.com and
pentium6.com. Just in case, mind you. For now the sites simply point
to Intel's regular pages, as does a newly born site named
pentiumiii.com.

-

Proginet, the troubled little Garden City, New York outfit where
Microsoft picked up almost 10% equity in trade for Redmond's
TransAccess NT-to-AS/400 and mainframe technology, has named board
member John Daily as its new chairman. He replaces Joseph Mohen, the
company's largest shareholder with a 25% stake, who agreed to vote
no more than 5% of his shares and give up his board seat following
years of losses and declining sales.

-

IDC reckons that Linux' market share snowballed 212% last year to
about 17.2% of all server shipments with 748k copies shipped. All
the other Unixes together hold 17.4% of the market, a meager lead.
NT, which is growing at around 80%, claims 36% of the market.

-

Since Sun started giving Solaris away free to education and non-
commercial developers last August, it's had 70,000 requests for the
stuff and says that 57% of them came from folks new to Solaris. It
also says that 49% of them were from Linux people. (It was thought
at the time that the offer was made to ward off Linux.) The lion's
share of the requests are for Solaris-on-Intel, as you might expect.
The overall breakdown is 30% education, 70% developers.

-

Sequent has lost Michel Gambier, who liaised with Microsoft for it,
to Microsoft itself, always a hazard for vendors. Gambier has joined
Ed Muth's enterprise marketing team handling relationships with OEMs
and key technologies like Giganet. Back in the old days Gambier and
Muth were at DEC together in Maynard's NT marketing unit. Muth, now
group marketing manager, enterprise marketing, is said to be the
most influential person in Microsoft's enterprise strategizing.

-

Wednesday June 23 is being touted as the date of AMD's K7 launch.
Doubts have been raised as to whether the widget will be directed
solely at the high end, as previously supposed, or whether it will
be pushed at a broader base.

-

Sam Albert, that widely quoted touchstone concerning things IBM,
says IBM has 3,000 NT programmers. At least that's the number he's
heard bandied about inside. IBM is supposed to have 5,000 Java
programmers now, he adds.

-

A story by a usually well-connected USA Today reporter claimed that
Microsoft had talked to AT&T back in the fall about selling it the
Microsoft Network (MSN). The paper said AT&T sources told it there
was no deal. Microsoft was still supposed to be interested though
the reporter clearly said the deal was dead. In response to the
story Microsoft flatly denied any plans to sell MSN, which has yet
to turn a profit. Obviously MSN's two million Internet subscribers
would have made a neat addition to AT&T WorldNet. Reportedly Redmond
demanded that AT&T become an NT advocate as part of the deal, which
would have been equally neat considering AT&T created Unix.

-

Caldera says that despite the license it's taken to the Novell File
System that Timpanogas is reverse engineering (CSN No 282), it
hasn't decided to actually use the thing. It's waiting to see how
the project turns out.

-

Oracle has set up a $100 million VC fund to bolster ISVs writing
Internet software that works with Oracle8i. It's looking at both
start-ups and established companies either writing new software for
8i or re-architecting existing code.

-

Microsoft last week started taking registrations for this year's
Tech-Ed, May 21-28 in Dallas, expecting once again to host a sell-
out crowd at an event that's mushroomed from a modest little
developer's do into a major trade show. This year's attendance has
been capped at 13k, up from about 10k last year, and the shindig has
been expanded from five to eight days with the addition of a three-
day IT operations management track. Redmond figures better than 250
companies will show up with exhibits at the Dallas Convention
Center, not counting 40 booths of its own, and the hall will be open
for five days. Prices range from $895 for the three-day operations
management track to $1,395 or $1,595 for five- or six-day developer
programs and $2,095 for the whole shebang.


-

The extra scrutiny being given AOL's acquisition of Netscape because
of the Microsoft antitrust trial will probably delay its close until
the end of March or April, Netscape COO Barry Ariko said at a press
conference in Germany. AOL hoped it would happen by the end of
February.

-

Compaq, we gather, is going to rename Digital Unix Tru64, a decision
that's been long on the wing.

-

Sun was all atwitter last week with the news that it had gotten
Solaris 7 up on the Merced emulator earlier than it expected and
attributing it all to the fact that it had IP - the famous Red and
Yellow Books from Intel - something it never had before to do
Solaris x86. Which of course makes one wonder about Solaris x86, but
that's another story, or is it? Anyway, Sun was preening about how
it only took nine months to which rival HP replied, "What the heck
took so long. It could have been done in six weeks by an intern.
It's only a recompile. There's no real work here." Digital Unix has
been booted, HP-UX has been riding on it for a long time as has SCO
and even NT.

--------------------------------
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