A News.com report on computing behemoth Big Blue.

Sprint Nextel 'insourcing' from IBM

Sprint Nextel appears to be bringing IT workers back in-house from IBM as part of a re-evaluation of the company's outsourcing strategy by its new CIO.

Information Week reported Thursday that Sprint Nextel is giving its IT and customer-service outsourcing deals with IBM a fresh look. Part of that overhaul involves bringing back some workers who had been essentially sold to IBM in one of those "rebadging" deals.

An IBM spokesman declined to comment on the report, but financial analyst Thomas Weisel Partners put out a research note on the deal Friday. "Rescoping of outsourcing contracts is a typical outcome with larger mergers, particularly when the surviving CIO did not negotiate the original deal," analyst David Grossman wrote in the report. Sprint Nextel CIO Richard LeFave is a Nextel veteran brought into the fold upon the completion of Sprint's purchase of Nextel last year.

A Sprint Nextel representative could not be reached for comment.

IBM's AIX turns 20

AIX, IBM's version of Unix, celebrated its 20th birthday this month.

The operating system was first introduced in January 1986, a time when there were numerous variations of the operating system initially developed by AT&T but widely licensed to others. In the two decades since, Unix has penetrated mainstream businesses, and the major Unix options have consolidated to AIX, Sun Microssytems' Solaris and Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX.

IBM's Unix version is under fire, however, because of the SCO Group's lawsuit against Big Blue. SCO, which inherited the AT&T Unix contract with IBM, argues IBM moved code into open-source Linux from AIX and Dynix--another Unix version IBM acquired in 1999. As a result, SCO tried to revoke IBM's Unix licenses in 2003.

IBM says SCO's claims are bogus and that its Unix rights are perpetual. In the years since SCO's suit began, IBM has increased its Unix server market share and, by IDC's measurement, reached No. 1 in revenue in the second quarter of 2005.

Big Blue also is a major backer of Linux, and Sun delights in accusing Big Blue of being conflicted in its priorities. Indeed, one top IBM server executive called Linux the "logical successor" to Unix. However, IBM persists in developing AIX. In December, for example, it announced the opening of its AIX Collaboration Center in Austin, Texas, and said it would spend $200 million there to test software on AIX and encourage innovation atop the operating system.

IBM to bring Mac Notes up-to-date

IBM is expected to get its Notes client software up to speed on the latest Mac OS next week at its annual Lotusphere conference.

The company released Notes version 7 in September on Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.3. A company spokesman on Friday said that the company typically brings Mac versions fully up-to-date about three months after the initial release of a major update.

"We have a very enthusiastic base of customers who run Notes on the Mac and we'll continue to support them as long as there are customers," the spokesman said. The most current version is Mac OS X 10.4.4, which runs on the company's new Intel-based machines.

Also at Lotusphere, Lotus general manager Michael Rhodin is expected to discuss the IBM's plans to fill out is its "real-time collaboration" tools beyond text instant messaging.

Specifically, he'll outline IBM's products and partnerships to enable real-time video and audio communications, the IBM spokesman said. The company is also expected to provide an update on its Workplace family of Web portal products.

SCO seeks to shut down Novell Linux

The SCO Group's long-running legal fight against Linux took a new turn at the very end of 2005. In a Dec. 30 filing, the company sought to expand its lawsuit against Novell, a prior owner of Unix intellectual property and a current seller of the Linux operating system, which SCO argues is tainted with its own Unix intellectual property.

In the filing, SCO proposes amending its claims against Novell. The new claims, if the court permits them to be added, directly target Novell for distributing Linux.

"Through its Linux business, Novell...continues to infringe SCO's copyrights in Unix, by copying, reproducing, modifying, sublicensing and/or distributing Unix intellectual property without authority to do so," SCO said in the proposed amended claims.

In a new breach of contract claim, SCO argues that "Novell has materially breached section 1.6 of the asset purchase agreement...by distributing the licensed technology as part of a product (Linux) that is directly competitive with SCO's core server operating systems." (The asset purchase agreement is the document under which Novell sold some Unix assets to SCO's predecessor, the Santa Cruz Operation.)

SCO also accuses Novell of copyright infringement and unfair competition in the proposed claims.

IBM's Kohnstamm moves on

Abby Kohnstamm, the IBM marketing executive who helped popularize the term ebusiness, has resigned from IBM and will be replaced by Bruce Harreld.

In an internal memo to employees, IBM's CEO and chairman Samuel Palmisano announced on Monday that Kohnstamm, the company's senior vice president in charge of marketing, was leaving "to spend a considerable amount of her time giving back in the non-profit sector.?

Kohnstamm came to IBM in 1987 from American Express where she worked with former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner. Palmisano said that she would continue to work with the company on a consulting basis.

Bruce Harreld, senior vice president of marketing and strategy, will take over Kohnstamm's marketing responsibilities.

Chemical leak hits IBM plant

About 4,500 workers at an IBM plant near Boulder, Colo. were forced to stay inside on Thursday morning after a chemical accident at a nearby Lexmark International printer factory.

The accident, which released a plume of chemical smoke into the air, forced Lexmark to evacuate 150 workers and sent 10 people to the hospital with burning eyes and breathing trouble, according to a report in the Denver Post. About 100 Lexmark employees had to shower in decontamination tents.

Lexmark, which makes laser and inkjet printer, said the accident was caused by workers preparing an epoxy floor coating and had nothing to do with its manufacturing operations. All traffic around the IBM campus, where the Lexmark facility is located, was detoured for two hours and access in and out was temporarily shut. IBM relocated 600 workers away from the contaminated area.

No, no, no, the other Network Solutions

IBM announced on Tuesday it plans to acquire Network Solutions. No, not the Network Solutions, but rather the Network Solutions Pvt. Ltd. out of India, according to a report in the Hindustan Times

Network Solutions, also known as "Netsol", is a managed services and software company that specializes in system integration for networks. Big Blue plans to use Network Solutions to beef up its networking and managed services operation in India, an IBM spokesman confirmed.

The deal is expected to close within a month, and the company will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary.

SCO describes alleged IBM Unix misuse to court

It took more than two and a half years, but the SCO Group finally has disclosed a list of areas in which it believes IBM violated its Unix contract, allegedly by moving proprietary Unix technology into open-source Linux.

In a five-page document filed Friday, SCO attorneys say they have identified 217 areas in which the company believes IBM or Sequent, a Unix server company IBM acquired, violated contracts under which SCO and its predecessors licensed the Unix operating system. However, the curious won't be able to see for themselves the details of SCO's claims: The full list of alleged abuses were filed in a separate document under court seal.

The Lindon, Utah-based company did provide some information about what it believes IBM moved improperly to Linux.

"Some of these wrongful disclosures include areas such as an entire file management system; others are communications by IBM personnel working on Linux that resulted in enhancing Linux functionality by disclosing a method or concept from Unix technology," SCO said. "The numerosity and substantiality of the disclosures reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code, from Unix-derived technologies in order to enhance the ability of Linux to be used as a scalable and reliable operating system for business and as an alternative to proprietary Unix systems such as those licensed by SCO and others."

District Judge Dale Kimball, overseeing the case in U.S. District Court in Utah, has expressed skepticism for SCO's claims. He said in a February ruling, "Viewed against the backdrop of SCO's plethora of public statements concerning IBM's and others' infringement of SCO's purported copyrights to the Unix software, it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities."

SCO, whose Unix business continues to struggle, said it will file a final report on the alleged abuses on Dec. 22.

IBM bemoans Joomla-Mambo split

It's unfortunate for the Mambo open-source publishing software project and for its customers that its developers had to decamp with their source code to start the Joomla project, according to a high-ranking IBM software executive.

"It does look like the company that was shepherding this along got a little bit off track on their interests vs. the open-source community's interests," said Rod Smith, vice president of emerging Internet technology for IBM's Software Group, in an interview Tuesday. "That's a bad thing," because Mambo had a lot of traction, and the "fork" undermines that, he said.

Corporate customers dislike such conflicts, Smith said. "They're not scared of open-source software. But what they are scared of is what just happened to Mambo," he said. "If it blows up on them, they might have to do a lot of rework."

Joomla appears to have inherited the momentum, though, said David Boloker, chief technology officer of the IBM group. "The community shifted--I won't say overnight, but much faster than I thought," he said.

Smith also praised AJAX, technology that brings a richer user interface to Web browsers through browsers' JavaScript abilities.

"We like AJAX," Smith said. "I think Google Maps put it on everybody's' radar scope, and a company called Zimbra has a nice toolkit. We think over time there's going to be some momentum growing around that."

Yahoo's new Web-based e-mail software, based on technology the company got when it acquired Oddpost, uses AJAX, added David Boloker, chief technology officer of the Emerging Internet Technology Group. The new mail software is under development.

AJAX's Achilles heel today is that it's technically difficult to program in, Smith said, despite the fact that there are more than 30 different programming toolkits available. "It is not for people who are not JavaScript-experienced. It is difficult. There are some things we think need to be done around tooling to make it easier for developers."

AJAX will help reclaim ground that was lost when browsers became common, Smith said. "When browser came out, we took three steps backward in the user interface," but what the industry lost in user interface it gained in the spread of technology. I think ajax can go quite a ways. It'll take some fancy footwork and good tooling, and I don't think it's going to be a quantum step forward, but it'll be a good step forward," Smith said.

IBM exec urges OpenDocument adoption

Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open source, is urging computer users to pressure software suppliers, company executives and governments to support the OpenDocument format, a standardized file format for word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. Widespread use of OpenDocument could undermine one way Microsoft keeps people coming back to its dominant Office product, whose file formats are proprietary.

In his blog last week, Sutor urged people to take several actions:

• "Insist today that the provider of your office applications is committed to support the OASIS OpenDocument...by January 1, 2007.

• "Insist today that the office applications you deploy allow users to easily set the OASIS OpenDocument standard as the default 'save' format.

• "Ask your CIO (chief information officer) when you will be able to use office applications that support the OASIS OpenDocument standard.

• "Ask your local and federal governments when they will be supporting the OASIS OpenDocument standard."

The open-source OpenOffice.org effort begun by Sun Microsystems was the launching point for OpenDocument. The project's fifth anniversary was last week, and the new OpenOffice.org version 2.0 is imminent. Sun and Google pledged to help boost OpenOffice distribution earlier this month.

February 2006 archive

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