Xandros buys Linux e-mail vendor Scalix
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(InfoWorld) - Linux desktop and server vendor Xandros on Wednesday acquired Scalix, which develops an open-source e-mail, calendar, and groupware platform. Xandros, which develops a Linux desktop, server, and set of management tools called BridgeWays, said the acquisition would help it build toward its goal of developing a complete Linux stack, including desktop, small and midsize business, and advanced enterprise servers, cross-platform management tools, and IT infrastructure applications. "Instead of being a point-solution player we can to be an end-to-end solutions provider with desktop, management, server, and applications," said Andy Typaldos, CEO of Xandros and now president of Scalix. "If you package all the pieces together [users] don't have to have a fragmented set." In March, XandrosÂ announcedÂ that its Xandros Server 2 would come bundled with Scalix 11, which includes improved Web client access, support for mobile users, support for Microsoft Outlook and interoperability with Microsoft Exchange. The bundle was targeted at the SMB market.Typaldos said close engineering and executive level collaboration with Scalix on that deal led to exploring the acquisition. As part of the acquisition, Xandros said its BridgeWays management tools for administration, deployment/management, systems monitoring, and storage management would be adapted to manage Scalix on the platforms it supports. Those management capabilities are expected to be available later this year. The company's overall goal is to offer single-vendor, cross-platform support that spans Linux and Windows platforms. Xandros made news earlier this year when it became the second Linux vendor to signÂ a cross-patent licensing dealÂ with Microsoft. Part of that deal included ensuring interoperability between management tools from both vendors and Windows-based servers, and Typaldos said that part of the agreement would help fill out cross-platform support. Scalix is an open source mail server, based on OpenMail, which runs on Linux servers, and uses e-mail standards such as POP, IMAP, SMTP, and MIME and works with any standard Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory. Xandros says Scalix, whose software runs on the Xandros, Red Hat, and Novell SuSE platforms, will continue to operate independently as a wholly owned subsidiary. Xandros said it will continue to provide "full and equal" support for all the Scalix platforms. The company also said its server would continue to support other messaging platforms, most notably Zimbra and Open Exchange. The company also said that the free Scalix Community Edition would remain available on all current platforms and that Xandros would continue to offer the source code to the Scalix platform via the upcoming ScalixForge Web site. Terms of the deal were not announced. Xandros said it will absorb all of the engineering, support, and most of the sales support staff of Scalix, pushing its employee total to more than 100. Scalix CEO Glenn Winokur and other Scalix managers won't join Xandros, but Winokur will work on the Xandros Advisory Board.
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Autonomy Corp.Â is acquiring Zantaz, a provider of e-discovery and content archiving software, for $375 million in cash, the companies announced Tuesday.
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Spray Network AB - a subsidiary of Lycos Europe - has become the latest outfit to buy one of Tiscali&#39;s unwanted ISPs. Spray has agreed to cough up â¬13m (Â£8.
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(InfoWorld) - Leaders of Microsoft's strategy to make its products more interoperable with competitive technologies said the company still hopes to strike a Linux pact with Red Hat similar to the partnerships it's forged with Linux vendors Novell, Xandros, and Linspire. "We'd love to do the same deal with Red Hat," said Tom Robertson, general manager of corporate interoperability and standards at Microsoft in an interview Friday. "We're always open to talking with them." That sentiment so far has not been the same on Red Hat's end, as the company has said it's not interested in a deal. Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day said Friday that is still the case. "We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency," she said in an e-mail. Still, some wonder -- as Microsoft lines up the other Linux ducks in a neat little row -- if Red Hat might be next, and rumors suggest a pact might be imminent. Microsoft's latest Linux deal came Thursday in an intellectual property-sharing and interoperabilityÂ agreement with LinspireÂ that would shield the company's customers from Microsoft patent-infringement claims. The deal follows oneÂ struck by Microsoft and Linux distributor XandrosÂ last week, as well asÂ a high-profile and financially significantÂ deal with NovellÂ late last year. Microsoft has said it is seeking these partnerships for a couple of reasons. The one Robertson is most interested in is interoperability, as he -- along with Jean Paoli, general manager, interoperability and XML architecture -- is in charge of Microsoft's 18-month company-wide strategy in this area. Robertson said Microsoft customers have demanded the company address interoperability issues with other companies' software, including open source, and that IP (intellectual property) in those products is a concern for them. "If you look across the industry, you see companies working together to address IP on behalf of their customer base," he said. Microsoft has publicly said that Linux and other open source softwareÂ violates 235 of the company's patents. But rather than seek litigation as a way to settle these IP claims, Microsoft is striking these individual deals, Robertson said. However, much has been made of the fact that the company has not publicly disclosed any of the patents it claims open source software is violating. Robertson would not address why Microsoft will not show its patents and stopped short of claiming the deals with Novell, Linspire, and Xandros prove those companies are indeed violating Microsoft IP. None of the Linux companies will say so, either, and Novell in fact has vehemently denied infringement. This discrepancy is one reason some feel Red Hat will never sign up for an indemnification deal with Microsoft. The size and business viability of the companies that have signed on is another. Novell was flagging when its deal was struck -- and the company has continued to wane even since -- and some familiar with how it happened said it was a bailout to save the vendor from being split up and sold piecemeal. Indeed, Novell's U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing about the deal revealed that Novell got $348 million up front from Microsoft for patent cooperation and Linux coupons, while having to shell out only $40 million to Microsoft in return. Though Microsoft will not comment on the financial terms of deals with Xandros and Linspire, those familiar with the agreements said those companies also received financial compensation from Microsoft. This begs the question that if interoperability and protecting customers are Microsoft's ultimate goals for the deals, as Robertson said, why is the company so interested in Linux companies that ultimately don't affect that many customers? Many -- particularly those in the Linux camp -- suspect Microsoft is trying to make it appear that open source distributors are violating Microsoft IP to vilify them in an effort to dissuade customers from using Linux and other open source technologies. Bruce Perens, a longtime Linux and open source advocate, said Microsoft is giving Linux companies that are on the edge of going out of business money to create the illusion that Linux vendors are stealing its IP. Perens is a vice president at SourceLabs, a company that provides testing, management, and certification of open source software to users. "Here is Microsoft out collecting the losers in the Linux business and paying them money so they can ... paint open source as music pirates out there using Microsoft technology without a license," he said. "I think they're out to scare people." Even if this is the case, it take two to tango, and it's important to note that companies such as Novell, Linspire, and Xandros benefit in various ways from their deals with Microsoft. Aside from any financial compensation, the companies also gain access to Microsoft technology that would make their own Linux products more viable in the marketplace, analysts said. "These companies want the deals with Microsoft because it will make the products more attractive and more compatible with the Windows world," said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner. "It's pretty clear that there is definitely value for these companies."
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LionOre Mining International, the nickel producer, said that the takeover offer of $6.8 billion Canadian dollars ($6.3 billion) from Norilsk Nickel of Russia was superior to a rival offer by Xstrata of Switzerland. Xstrataâs most recent bid was for $6.2 billion Canadian dollars. Both companies have now made two offers for LionOre. Under the terms of an agreement signed with LionOre, Xstrata has until June 1 to match Norilskâs offer.
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Plain kit, sweet file system Rackable Systems this week made an unusual acquisition for a no nonsense server vendor. It bought flashy storage software maker Terrascale for $38m in cash.â¦
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Veritas Software Corp. (VRTS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , the largest independent US storage software provider, said on Tuesday it will buy e-mail backup company KVault Software Ltd.
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(InfoWorld) - VMware co-founder Mendel Rosenblum has poured tepid water on the recent acquisition of open-source virtualization vendor XenSource by remote desktop company Citrix as well as outlining his demands to the chip vendors. He made his remarks during an exclusive interview with Techworld at virtualization industry event VMworld, during which he also outlined what additional support for virtualization he wants the chip vendors to provide. Commenting from a technology perspective on the Citrix buy-out, which was announced last month, Rosenblum said: "If I were in Citrix's shoes, would I have gone in that direction? There is a layer to control -- I can see it from that point of view as they've long suffered from being on top of Microsoft.... I can see why they might do it, but there are a lot of challenges." Rosenblum also laid out a blueprint for some of the issues he'd like to see the AMD and Intel tackle. He said that VMware didn't always get what it wanted from the processor makers and that VMware needed more visibility into how virtual machines use the processor cache in order to provide better quality of service. In particular, he referred to the problem of a VM demanding huge amounts of processor resource that affected other processor cores. He said: "We've made great steps, but if you have a 10-gig NIC with tiny packets coming, it can consume a whole CPU just looking at each of them, so it's really difficult trying to match line rate." Rosenblum also claimed that his comments about virtualization being a threat to Windows were taken out of context. He said: "Journalists like to put things in headlines that I actually didn't say.... The point was that once you have the virtualization layer driving the hardware, that's taken away some of the functionality of the OS, which gives the OS a chance to focus on its other major goal, which is still very much needed in the application environment. So where modern OSes have gone is to control hardware and the application and are running into a dead end."
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Storage company EMC has agreed to buy Document Sciences, a developer of software for personalizing mailshots and other communications. The acquisition will allow EMC to extend its offering in the field of transactional content management, which it sees as the fastest-growing part of the enterprise content management market. It plans to incorporate Document Sciences into its content management and archiving division.Using xPression, Document Sciences&#39; flagship application, companies can automate the creation and delivery of personalized communications such as brochures and contracts. The data can be drawn from CRM (customer relationship management), ECM (enterprise content management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, it said.Automating the processes can save companies money or speed deals along, Document Sciences said. It has more than 500 customers using its software, it said.Document Sciences and EMC have been partners since 2004, when Document Sciences signed an agreement to integrate its xPression software with EMC&#39;s Documentum platform.Acquiring Document Sciences will allow EMC to further its goal of delivering systems for handling business problems end to end, it said.The xPression software could be useful for companies building transaction-intensive consumer financial applications such as new account enrollment, wealth management, brokerage and claims processing.The acquisition, for $85 million in cash, already has the approval of the companies&#39; boards of directors. Subject to customary closing conditions, including the approval of regulators and Document Sciences&#39; shareholders, the companies expect to close the deal by the end of March.EMC went on a buying spree in 2003, buying Legato and&#160;Documentum&#160;and has added around 20 companies since then, including security and encryption company&#160;RSA Security, virtualization specialist&#160;Rainfinity, and other companies such as Acartus,&#160;Captiva,&#160;and&#160;Internosis.
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Three open-source software firms announced investments today: $27 million for Greenplum, $11 million for Zenoss, and $9 million for Alfresco.
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Sun Microsystems' purchase of MySQL for $1 billion is not only the largest open-source deal yet, it's almost bigger than all previous open-source deals combined, including RedHat's $326 million buy of JBoss, Citrix's $500 million purchase of XenSource and Yahoo's $350 million acquisition of Zimbra.
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Linux Journal recently caught up with Mandriva CEO, FranÃ§ois Bancilhon, to find out more about a recently announced partnership between Mandriva of France and Turbolinux of Japan. read more
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South Africa's Naspers Ltd. will acquire online auctioneer Tradus PLC in a deal valued at $1.91 billion, Tradus said Tuesday.
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Blog: Open-Xchange is releasing an easy to use, SMB-focused version of its email/collaboration software. What's particularly interesting is that it's built on Ubuntu, not SUSE, despite the founders' history with SUSE.
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p2pnet.net News:- A European consortium, including Linux-distributor Mandrakesoft, has won an $8.6 million contract to boost Linux&#39; security, says a TechWeb story, going on that the French Ministry of Defense is, &quot;expected to make the operating system
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(InfoWorld) - A tiny provider of open-source e-mail exchange software is using a disruptive pricing model to compete against MicrosoftÂ and other large providers of proprietary e-mail service technology. As part of a deal announced Monday, Open-XchangeÂ will provide its open-source technology to 1&1 Internet, an international Web-hosting company that plans to offer a hosted e-mail service for â¬4.99 ($6.00) per user per month or â¬2.99 per user with the purchase of 100 accounts or more, said Open-Xchange Chairman Rafael Laguna. The service will launch this month in Germany and Austria, with France, the U.K., and the U.S. to follow in May. Under a flat-rate pricing plan, 1&1 Internet will be able to offer a basic version of the Open-Xchange software to all its 2.7 million customers without having to pay any additional fees, according to Laguna. In addition to open-source code and application programming interfaces, "disruptive pricing models like ours are another reason why companies choose open-source software," he said. A premium version, which links with Microsoft's Outlook application and provides other features, will be available for a fee. The 1&1 Internet e-mail offering, called MailXchange, will include calendar, contacts, and task management functions that are similar to those of Microsoft Outlook. In addition to Open-Xchange, 1&1 Internet will continue to offer Microsoft Exchange and its own e-mail service software. Open-Xchange, which is based in Tarrytown, New York, employs 54 people. It has product development and operational facilities in Nuremberg and Olpe, Germany.
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And this comes straight from the horseâs mouth! Software giant Microsoft has finally acknowledged Linux as its strongest competitor, much to the delight of Australiaâs open source industry association (OSIA).