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SCO Looks for Work in China |
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Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 01:22 PM EDT
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If you have ever lived in a small town, you'll know what I mean when I say that some people can only get married if they move away to someplace where nobody knows them and their odd little ways. That is the first thing I thought of when I read SCO's latest press release about their business moves in China.
Here's Tim Negris on their hopes and dreams, "Though SCO has long been established in many of the Asian markets for some time, we have focused much of our attention in recent years on many of these higher growth markets including China, India, and Russia. We look forward to working more closely with our employees and country offices to increase our presence in these countries and provide the technology leadership that will help our customers run their businesses for many years to come." Well, he has to say something, but "technology leadership" seems like a stretch. Unfortunately, life is often a matter of timing, and just last week, IDG was in the news with a report that they described like this in their press release: 2005 saw a steady growth in the China Linux market, brought about mainly by the huge volume of government procurements and large-scale SCO Unix replacement by major banks and industrial projects such as Telecommunication and Internet cafes.
Along with the growing acceptance of Linux in the China market, IDC also noted that Linux servers were adopted for high-end, mission critical support applications in some industries and Linux desktops were able to withstand the competition of pirated Windows to hold its market share. However, it will take some time before the Linux market in China can grow dramatically due to various factors that hinder market development, such as the shortage of talents, and users' comparatively low acceptance towards Linux.
IDC forecasts China's Linux market will grow at a CAGR of 34.0% from 2006 to 2010, and reach USD51.1 million by 2010. Those of us with a fine-tuned sense of irony will note that SCO's press release highlights its wonderful Open Source capabilities. See what I mean about having to leave a small town to get hitched? In the US, lips curl involuntarily when we read that.
There is also an odd entry on Pacer which I am investigating: 102 -
Filed: 04/10/2006
Entered: 04/11/2006
Order
Docket Text: ORDER that Novell may file, under seal, confidential exhibits to its Motion to Stay. Signed by Judge Dale A. Kimball on 4/10/06. (blk,) On its face, it seems like Novell has filed a Motion to Stay, which certainly is yet another vote of confidence that IBM will wipe the floor for them. But clerks sometimes goof, just like the rest of us, so I'm working on finding out what this is all about, and I'll let you know when I know. Here's SCO's China press release, so you can keep up with their latest effort to keep the business afloat. *****************************
Company Begins Shipping SCO OpenServer 6 in China as Company
Representatives Meet With Media, Analysts, Customers, and Government
Officials to Reinforce SCO's Commitment and Plans for Growth in China
BEIJING, April 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO")
(Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of UNIX(R) software technology for
distributed, embedded and network-based systems, today announced the
availability of SCO OpenServer 6 in China and met with government
officials, customers, and members of the media to emphasize the company's
commitment and future direction for the Chinese market.
"SCO is an important technology provider for China because the company
provides the technology infrastructure for running many of China's largest
banks and other institutions," said Tim Negris, executive vice president
for worldwide sales and marketing, The SCO Group, Inc. "SCO has been the
platform of choice for many of these large corporations that service
hundreds of millions of customers because of its reliability and
performance. SCO is now helping these customers to continue on the SCO UNIX
platform with even greater performance, security, and reliability with the
introduction of SCO OpenServer 6 in China."
SCO customers in China include such companies as the People's Bank of
China, the Bank of China, the China Post, China Life Insurance Company, the
Agricultural Bank of China, Shenzhen Development Bank, China Minsheng
Banking Corporation and many others. These large banking institutions and
other large corporations require a strong platform on which to serve
millions of customers every day.
SCO OpenServer 6
SCO OpenServer 6 has been a multi-year, multi-million dollar
development effort that has produced a significant upgrade to SCO's
flagship UNIX operating system. SCO OpenServer 6 has been designed to
provide customers with increased productivity, greater security, more
agility through Open Source technologies and protection of customers'
investments by providing backward compatibility with existing applications.
SCO OpenServer 6 gives customers increased performance and capabilities
with support for large file sizes up to 1 terabyte, increased processing
power for up to 32 processors, and up to 16 GB of general purpose memory,
while additional memory can be dedicated for special applications, allowing
databases to access up to 64 GB of memory. These capabilities, along with
the latest UNIX SVR5 kernel, help customers to gain performance advantages,
in some cases up to 10 times faster for certain network functions.
SCO OpenServer 6 builds upon its heritage as one of the most secure and
reliable operating systems available with the addition of several security
enhancements including SSH for remotely logging onto systems using
encryption, IP firewall filter for regulating IP traffic and IPsec for
virtual private networking. Encrypted file and file system capabilities are
also included.
SCO OpenServer 6 is also known as a strong platform for working with
many of the popular open source software components that are included in
the SCAMP software stack, which uses SCO OpenServer as the foundation for
using the Apache web server, MySQL database platform, and Perl and PHP
scripting languages. SCO OpenServer 6 also includes other open source
components including web browsers, and support for other open source
database platforms.
SCO OpenServer 6 provides all of these capabilities while keeping the
customer in mind to allow complete backward compatibility for applications
that have run on OpenServer for more than a decade.
China IT Growth
The China IT market is expected to see significant growth in the coming
years. According to ATIP, a non-profit group that studies technology
advancements in Asia, overall annual IT revenue growth in China is expected
to average 17% through 2009 (US$285 billion) with even higher growth
expected in the small/medium organization market (21%) sub-sector. Eighty
percent (80%) of IT sales will come from the Education (8%), Government
(14%) and Corporate (59%) sectors.
"While we already have a significant presence in Beijing, SCO is
committed to increasing our presence in China and growing our customer
base," said Negris. "Though SCO has long been established in many of the
Asian markets for some time, we have focused much of our attention in
recent years on many of these higher growth markets including China, India,
and Russia. We look forward to working more closely with our employees and
country offices to increase our presence in these countries and provide the
technology leadership that will help our customers run their businesses for
many years to come."
About SCO
The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX) is a leading provider of UNIX software
technology for distributed, embedded and network-based systems, offering
SCO OpenServer for small to medium business, UnixWare for enterprise
applications, and Me Inc. for digital network services. SCO's highly
innovative and reliable solutions help millions of customers grow their
businesses everyday, from SCO OpenServer on main street to UnixWare on Wall
Street, and beyond. SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally
developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to Unix-based
system software providers.
Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of thousands
of resellers and developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable
localized support and services to partners and customers. For more
information on SCO products and services, visit http://www.sco.com.
SCO, SCO OpenServer, the associated SCO logo, are trademarks or
registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other
countries. UNIX and UnixWare are registered trademarks of The Open Group.
MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the USA and other countries.
All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used
to identify products or services of, their respective owners.
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Authored by: capt.Hij on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 01:43 PM EDT |
Please put corrections here. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: capt.Hij on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 01:45 PM EDT |
Please put off topic posts here and don't forget to make links
<a
href="http://www.example.com">clicky</a> and use HTML formatting.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: bcomber on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 01:47 PM EDT |
Guess they will try anything. It's not going to help. The ship is sinking, and I
doubt that this will help.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: MadScientist on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 01:54 PM EDT |
Quick tech note.
34% CAGR = 34% compound annual growth rate.
Some here will know the rule of 72.
If you have an growth rate G and want to know how long under compound interest
this will take to double the original sum the answer is
Number of years = 72/G
So the report is suggesting that Linux will reoughly double its market size
twice in the next 4 years to US$51 million. In English this means that the
current (2005) Linux (paid for) market is US$10-15 million per year.
The size of the Windows market is difficult to be sure of with the amount of
piracy. It is likely that the 'real' Linux market is similarly underestimated.
Clearly Linux and probably Windows also in China is a growth market but the
market looks like being a small and periferal market for the OS business
compared with the US, the EU, Japan and others for quite some time yet.
There are similar rules for tripling (I think the magic number is ~145-150
there) but the rule of 72 is by far the best known. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 01:54 PM EDT |
China and Russia? Now there's two bulwarks of respect to intellectual property
and to those who champion it.
Not only that, but I know for a fact that Russian IT scene is very hip to all
the latest technologies AND news in the field. The probability of small name
recognition in case of SCO is slim at best, if that's what they are counting
on.
Also, the total number of seats purchased (legally) in Russia should equal about
1 (one) for any given piece of software. When my old company's product was still
retailing in the US for thousands per seat, it was available in street kiosks in
Moscow for not much more than the cost of a blank.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 02:10 PM EDT |
"On its face, it seems like Novell has filed a Motion to Stay,
which certainly is yet another vote of confidence that IBM will wipe the floor
for them."
Oh boy, I can't wait to hear the flip side of
this argument from SCOG: <sarcasm> "Novell has
evidently found out that they have soiled our good name and now want to delay
this trial even more." </sarcasm> [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Jude on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 02:19 PM EDT |
It'll be years before China can graduate enough lawyers to make a decent legal
team for SCO.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Tufty on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 02:33 PM EDT |
Just curious.
---
There has to be a rabbit down this rabbit hole somewhere!
Now I want its hide.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 03:27 PM EDT |
I can't help but wonder if SCO's little press release is in fact an attempt
specifically to *counter* the news that SCO's market in China is rapidly
diminishing... Anyway.
Aside from this.. I keep thinking about the stays by Redhat and Novell. I can't
decide whether they're good or bad. I'm sure the stays makes perfect sense from
Redhat and Novell's perspective, because once SCO's case is demolished in IBM's
litigation then both Redhat and Novell will have a far more straightforward time
of proceeding with their own cases.
However, I'm beginning to worry that both Redhat and Novell are not seriously
expecting their cases to ever proceed. I worry that both Redhat and Novell are
expecting the IBM case to literally destroy SCO, and they no longer hope or plan
to win their cases; instead, they're just hanging around until SCO declares
bankruptcy, at which point Redhat/Novell can just arrange sweetheart
go-away-cash settlements with whomever is appointed overseer of the SCO during
the bankruptcy proceedings.
If this worry comes to pass, this will probably be what is best for
Redhat/Novell's corporate perspective. However from my personal perspective as a
customer of these and similar companies, it is very much in my interest for
Redhat/Novell to see these cases to their end, both because of the loose ties
they clear up (can you slander Linux in the press for a year without any
consequences? who the heck owns UNIX?) and because of the chances these cases
hold of striking through SCO to the persons "really responsible", the
board members who have been exploiting SCO to manipulate stocks and other
persons who have been bankrolling SCO to harm competitors. I worry that the
stays indicate that Redhat/Novell do not particularly care whether this ever
happens, and are satisfied so long as SCO "goes away".
I'm also considering the Novell stay (if that is indeed what it is) quite odd,
because one of the fundamental facts of the Novell case is crucial to the
outcome of the IBM case-- specifically, the question of, what parts of UNIX, if
any, does SCO own, and where did it get them from?
Can the IBM case resolve the question of whether SCO or Novell owns UNIX,
without Novell's involvement, while Novell sits on the sidelines in stay mode?
Is it possible Novell is asking for this stay because by doing so they can make
IBM do the "hard part" of their case-- proving that SCO does not own
UNIX-- for them, for free?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 04:32 PM EDT |
business in China?
As I understand it, China is dumping scox for linux all over the place.
Maybe Dan Lyons will write about Darl being fluent in Chinese, and Darl will
make a trip to China.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 06:30 PM EDT |
It is good if SCO sells more stuff. It means there is more money left for the
victims when SCO has to pay damages when IBM beats them in court.
--
SCO is like the black night in Monty Python and the Holy Grail[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 08:29 PM EDT |
I just got back from Shanghai a few weeks ago. I stayed at a friend's apartment
that has a DSL connection, so I got the local Internet experience, which is
different than the internet connection at big international hotels.
I'm pretty sure that Groklaw is filtered by the chinese government. I had to
suffer along with the Yahoo SCOX board, but I'm pretty sure that I was never
able to access Groklaw or a semi-random collection of other subversive sites.
There might be an information gap about SCO in China.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: blacklight on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 08:41 PM EDT |
SCOG must be playing the PRC Chinese for a bunch of dummies.
When it comes to financial matters and matters related to financial matters,
Singapore leads the way - and I don't expect that the race horse Singapore is
riding is either Windows, Solaris or SCOG Open Server. I expect that ASEAN,
Japan, Korea, the PRC and Taiwan will all be standardizing on the Linux
platform, and anyone who wants to offer IT services in the region had best be
thoroughly conversant with Linux. Add Brazil, India and Russia to the mix and
the only substantive comment that I can make about SCOG today is "SCOG?
Who knows, and who cares?"
---
Know your enemies well, because that's the only way you are going to defeat
them. And know your friends even better, just in case they become your enemies.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 11 2006 @ 08:54 PM EDT |
Umm... Isn't this a little presumptuous?
I thought ownership of Unix was still a matter to be decided.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 12:07 AM EDT |
SCO is doing the smart thing here. With a foothold in China, they will be
perfectly poised to take advantage of the HUGE potential in the soon-to-be
emerging markets in places like North Korea, Myanmar, Cambodia, and
Uzbekistan.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: mobrien_12 on Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 01:12 AM EDT |
Ok, this is a technical question, admittedly phrased in a very long winded
manner.
Why would anyone in China choose SCOGs stuff over Linux or BSD? What's the
point??
When Caldera bought SCOs Unix business, I was hanging out on the Caldera Linux
newsgroup (I used to use their Linux). Many of us couldn't figure out why they
would do this, as even years before, SCO Unix was regarded by many as inferior
to Linux.
The only logical answer was that Caldera wanted to buy into the existing Unix
market. There was a pretty big existing POS SCO Unix base out there.
Well, there ain't one of those in China.
Despite Darl's ramblings, it's been my belief that SCO Unix has been inferior to
Linux and FreeBSD for at least seven years now, although admittedly I have no
first hand experience with SCO Unix.
Who can confirm or deny this? Who can tell me if there is any point to Darl's
adventures in China?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: studog on Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 08:40 AM EDT |
SCO OpenServer 6 is also known as a strong platform for working with many of
the popular open source software components that are included in the SCAMP
software stack, which uses SCO OpenServer as the foundation for using the Apache
web server, MySQL database platform, and Perl and PHP scripting
languages.
"SCAMP"? It seems to me like they just made that up, by
copying and corrupting LAMP.
...Stu [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 12:49 PM EDT |
China will have three words for SCO:
Red... Flag... Linux.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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