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Both Gartner and IDC, in recent reports, have said that a majority of software vendors will shift from upfront license revenue to long-term subscription revenue models by 2008. Currently, subscription revenue is estimated to account for less than 10 percent of the industry's revenues. Microsoft, the world's largest product company, has, however, refused to play ball.

Several pieces of SCO v. IBM news. First, IBM has dropped it's patent counterclaims. According to IBM: While IBM continues to believe that SCO infringed IBM's valid patents, IBM agreed to withdraw its patent counterclaims to simplify and focus the issues in this case and to expedite their resolution. The little discovery that SCO has produced regarding IBM's patent claims makes clear that there is insufficient economic reason to pursue these claims. Since SCO's sales have been, and are, limited, a finding of infringement would yield only the most modest royalty or award of damages and would not justify the...

As you know, SCO has filed a motion with the court, asking for permission to take 25 more depositions. IBM has now filed its Memorandum in Opposition to SCO's Motion for Leave to Take Additional Depositions [PDF], and it's a breathtakingly bold chess move. SCO argued in particular that IBM's complex patent counterclaims made it essential that it have more depositions. I thought they kind of had a point. IBM maybe does too, and apparently it smells more attempted delay on SCO's part, and that has got to be a nauseating prospect. Anyway, if SCO's game is delay, delay, delay,...

When will Microsoft stake some of its resources on open-source software? When the product in question helps Windows sales and takes market share from IBM. That was the impetus behind a technical deal struck last week in which Microsoft will fly engineers from software company JBoss Inc. to Redmond, Wash., to make sure JBoss' open-source, Java-based middleware runs well on Windows, SQL Server, and other Microsoft products. JBoss sells its products under an open-source GNU Public License that Microsoft has criticized as a threat to intellectual-property ownership, and its technology is based on the Java 2 Enterprise standard that competes...

The activist group, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), released a statement yesterday strongly criticizing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for its recent decision to switch all government computer systems to open-source format. The new policy would require all state agencies to acquire open standard software, like Open Document Format (ODF), by January 2007. "It is bad procurement policy for any state to unilaterally lock itself into one set of technologies," CAGW President Tom Schatz said.

IBM (NYSE: IBM - news) and Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT - news) have announced a joint initiative aimed at accelerating the development and adoption of Linux-based products in emerging markets like China, India, Russia and Korea. The two companies will provide software developers with implementation services, expertise and technical resources to help them certify new applications for IBM and Red Hat software. According to IBM, the program will give developers greater ability to build standards-based products that will not lock customers into proprietary operating environments. Penguin March In unveiling the initiative, IBM noted that a shift is occurring in emerging...

A new way to stop digital decay Sep 15th 2005 From The Economist print edition Computing: Could a “virtual computer”, built from software, help to save today's digital documents for historians of the future? WHEN future historians turn their attention to the early 21st century, electronic documents will be vital to their understanding of our times. Old web pages may not turn yellow and brittle like paper, but the digital documents of today's culture face a more serious threat: the disappearance of computers able to read them. Even a relatively simple electronic item, such as a picture, requires software...

Concerned over the critical shortage of math and science faculty in the United States, global IT major IBM has announced a programme that encourages employees to take up the teaching profession. The world's largest Information Technology company said on Friday that it would reimburse participants in its new transition to teaching programme up to $15,000 for tuition and stipends. Participants will also be able to remain at IBM while they conduct course work and training, the company said. "Many of our experienced employees have math and science backgrounds and have made it clear that when they are ready to leave...

Backsourcing Pain JPMorgan Chase's decision to first outsource IT and then bring it back in-house stands as a cautionary tale for any CIO considering an outsourcing megadeal. BY STEPHANIE OVERBY When David Rosario got the official notice at the end of 2002 that his job would be outsourced to IBM, he was not surprised. Rumors had been circulating for months at JPMorgan Chase, where he had worked as a network engineer since 2001, that the company would be signing away much of IT to an external services company. The $5 billion IBM-JPMorgan contract was heralded at the time as the...

...The straightforward generosity of the corporate sector has been well reported. [D]onations had exceeded $200 million. Besides cash, companies have handed out free drugs, suspended finance payments on cars and mortgages and helped emergency personnel with equipment. As interesting, though, has been the application of corporate best practices-- from supply-chain management to logistics-- to a natural disaster. The private-sector planning began before Katrina hit. Home Depot's "war room" had transferred high-demand items -- generators, flashlights, batteries and lumber -- to distribution areas surrounding the strike area. Phone companies readied mobile cell towers and sent in generators and fuel. Insurers flew...

Global revenue for standalone storage systems grew 8.6 percent year over year to reach $3.8 billion in the second quarter, according to market researcher IDC. This growth, an improvement over the first quarter, was mainly due to double-digit growth in network attached storage, or NAS, systems, IDC said Friday. This segment grew 16.1 percent to $2.5 billion. EMC, with $807 million in revenue, retained its position as the top standalone storage systems company. EMC also grew its market share to 21.2 percent from 21 percent a year ago. But the credit for the strongest growth in the quarter went to...

Avnet Partner Solutions has created a new channel program that offers certification, sales and technical training to solution providers and ISVs selling Linux. The Enablement, Partnership, Incentives and Co-Marketing (EPIC) program is jointly funded with Novell to help solution providers craft Suse Linux-based solutions on IBM’s eServer platform. The initiative also includes marketing development and planning services and margin-based sales incentives for Novell products, according to Avnet executives. “The Linux market is big. We participate with Novell in a big way in an effort to drive more business into the Intel space with the Suse OS,” said Fred Cuen, president...

NEW YORK - International Business Machines Corp. has created an advisory panel of venture capitalists to help identify startup companies that may become suppliers, customers or acquisition targets. Investors from seven firms, including Accel Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and U.S. Venture Partners, will meet with IBM executives four times a year to suggest products and companies that may be of interest, IBM said yesterday. IBM's venture unit has identified more than 850 startups around the world with the help of venture capitalists and provides the companies with sales prospects and advice, said Mark L. Hanny, an IBM vice president....

IBM Woos the World's Geeks - Big Blue will let software developers in Brazil, Russia, India, and China use company products for free. IBM announced an initiative Monday to encourage developers in emerging economies to work on the computing giant’s open standards technology, a computing framework for which hardware and software specifications are publicly available. As part of the initiative, the Armonk, New York-based company said that for the first time, developers in Brazil, Russia, India, China—popularly known as BRIC countries—will get instant access to IBM’s hardware and software portfolio from their desktop at no charge.

IBM will donate 50,000 lines of code to the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Web browser to make it friendly for people with visual and motor disabilities, Big Blue said Monday. The contribution would allow the addition of dynamic hypertext markup language accessibility technology to version 1.5 of Firefox, the company said. With this technology, Web pages can be magnified, automatically narrated or navigated from a keyboard instead of from a mouse, IBM said. For instance, the amount of tabbing required to navigate a spreadsheet can be minimized for people with mobility disabilities. In addition, developers can work on "rich Internet applications"...

SAN FRANCISCO--IBM has updated its Workplace desktop software product with support for the Firefox Web browser, the company said on Tuesday. IBM's Workplace software provides functions such as word processing, document storage and calendars. The processing actually takes place on a central server that people access with a Web browser. Previously, IBM supported only Mozilla and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Firefox is the default Web browser in Red Hat and Suse Linux, though it's also widely used on Windows, and has been gaining market share. special coverage LinuxWorld SF Open-source hopefuls join Linux stalwarts to talk shop and hawk wares at...

   http://www.news.com/ Novell hits back at SCO in Unix dispute By Stephen Shankland http://news.com.com/Novell+hits+back+at+SCO+in+Unix+dispute/2100-1014_3-5811081.html Story last modified Fri Jul 29 17:00:00 PDT 2005 In the latest step in a legal battle over Unix copyrights, Novell has filed a countersuit against the SCO Group, charging it with twice breaking a contract. The software company also accused SCO with slander of title for claiming ownership of the Unix copyrights in the countersuit, filed Friday in U.S. district court in Utah. That's the same charge SCO leveled against Novell in its own 2004 suit. Novell, which sells a version of the Linux...

I know you are waiting with eager anticipation, because today is the day Novell was to file its answer to SCO's slander of title complaint. I have verified that they have done so. Here is what I know so far, with the document to follow as soon as possible. UPDATE: Here it is [PDF], Novell's Answer and Counterclaims. Here's the big news. Novell tells the court that SCO contacted Novell after Darl McBride took the helm, and they asked Novell to go in with them in a "Linux licensing program". Novell refused to participate, calling it a "scheme". It was...

System Administrator Appreciation Day - A special day, once a year, to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the person occupying the role, especially as it is often this person who really keeps the wheels of your company turning.

Excerpt - SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Computer moved up a notch to become the No.4 seller of personal computers in the United States in the second quarter as Macintosh sales soared by one-third, according to two reports. Lenovo, the Chinese company that owns the IBM personal computer brand, lost share. Apple won 4.5 percent of the market to trail Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway, the market research company IDC said Monday in a report. IDC's rival Gartner put Apple's share at 4.3 percent. [snip]