Cisco - TABPI

NEWS&ANALYSIS
Acer, MPC set server
sights on enterprise
OFFERINGS TO INCLUDE RACK-MOUNTED SYSTEMS
By Jeffrey Burt
Acer america corp. is
looking to expand beyond
PCs and laptops and reestablish
itself in the more
lucrative server and storage
space with new rack-mounted
systems and storage devices.
The Altos R300, a rackmounted
1U (1.75-inch)
server, is a one-way system
powered by Intel Corp.’s Pentium
4 chip running at speeds
up to 3.06GHz, said officials
Acer’s Altos R300 rack-mounted
server runs on Pentium 4 chips.
at the San Jose, Calif., company.
The unit, due this week,
is priced starting at $1,600 and
is targeted at midsize companies,
although officials said
several servers can be tied
together into a Linux cluster
to deliver high-performance
capabilities.
The company this summer
will add to that line the 2U
(3.5-inch-high), two-way
R700, based on Intel Xeon
chips.
Later this year or early
next year, Acer will ship the
Altos S300 and S700 storage
devices, officials said.
Acer’s parent company
sells the systems in Europe
and Asia, but this will be the
first time the company’s rackmounted
and storage devices
are introduced to North
America.
The moves represent a
growing trend among PC
12 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003
makers, including Gateway
Inc. and MPC Computers
LLC, to branch out beyond the
desktop.
According to some IT
administrators and industry
observers, it is not yet
clear whether the companies
can grow beyond their
installed base of PC customers.
“We’re running all of our
mission-critical stuff on our
[Dell Computer Corp. and
Compaq]
servers,” said
Roy Cashman,
CIO for RUAN
Transportation
Management Systems
Inc., in Des Moines,
Iowa. “We would not take a
chance on a niche player ...
who didn’t have a market
presence.”
But that installed base
could be the place to establish
a presence. The State Journal-
Register, a Springfield, Ill.,
newspaper, has been an MPC
PC customer for almost four
years.
Based on that history, the
paper this year began buying
servers from the Nampa,
Idaho, company and will consider
its storage equipment
when the need arises.
MPC last week rolled out
its first two storage offerings,
the DataFrame 310fc Fibre
Channel product and a SCSI
counterpart, the 310s.
“From this point on, it’s virtually
100 percent MPC in
this building,” said Terry Claypool,
IS operations manager.
“They work very hard
to keep our business, both
with price and service.” ´
Microsoft covers back
with SCO Unix license
By Peter Galli
The crusade by the sco
Group to protect its Unix
intellectual property took
an unexpected turn last week
when Microsoft Corp. said it
was licensing the Unix source
code and patent from the
company.
“SCO approached us a couple
of months ago, and they
had a valid IP claim, and, as
we do quite regularly, we
agreed to a broad IP license
with SCO and as such have
stepped out of the fray,” said
Alex Mercer, a Microsoft
spokeswoman, in Redmond,
Wash.
In the last month, SCO,
of Lindon, Utah, has made a
number of moves, charging
that IBM, Linux and many
of SCO’s own customers are
violating SCO’s Unix IP.
Mercer said it was not
Microsoft’s intent to exploit the
IP license as a way to fund
SCO’s campaign against IBM
and Linux—which SCO is
suing for $1 billion—and
against Linux. “There is
absolutely no correlation
between the IBM suit and our
IP license with SCO,” she said.
Furthermore, Microsoft’s
agreement is not an admission
that the company and its
Services for Unix product violated
SCO’s IP but rather is
a pre-emptive move to avoid
possible complications, said
Mercer. Details about the
financial value and conditions
of the Microsoft-SCO deal are
confidential, and Mercer
declined to say whether
Microsoft is contemplating
other deals with SCO.
As for SCO, its legal moves
are not sitting well with some
customers. “More and more,
it looks like SCO is just
scratching the sides of the
well as they plummet to their
death,” said one SCO user,
who requested anonymity.
A Unix/Linux programmer
in Boston also questioned
whether Microsoft really
needed another Unix license
given that it held one of the
original ATT Unix licenses, the
same one Sun Microsystems
Inc. has. Microsoft’s Mercer
declined to comment.
But Chris Sontag, senior
vice president and general
manager for SCO’s intellectualproperty
division, said the
licensing deal ensured Microsoft’s
intellectual-property compliance
across all Microsoft
solutions and will better enable
Microsoft to ensure compatibility
with Unix and Unix services.
“There are many companies
in the IT industry who
acknowledge and respect the
intellectual property of software,”
said Sontag. “Microsoft
is showing the importance
of maintaining compatibility
with Unix and Microsoft’s
software solutions.”
The Open Source Initiative
last week hit back, updating
its attack against SCO. OSI,
a nonprofit educational association
with offices in Palo Alto,
Calif., is one of the principal
advocacy groups for the opensource
community. In a position
paper, OSI argues that
an SCO victory could do serious
damage to the open-source
community. “SCO’s implication
of wider claims could turn
Linux into an intellectualproperty
minefield, with potential
users and allies perpetually
wary of being mugged by
previously unasserted IP
claims,” it said. ´