Information Age: News, analysis & insight for IT & business leaders
 

Month in review

10 February 2006  

A round-up of the month's key IT industry news, as Oracle and Microsoft challenge the regulators, Sun open-sources Solaris and the UK's air-traffic control system fails.

  • As Oracle began its court appeal against the US government's judgement that its $7.7 billion hostile bid for applications rival PeopleSoft was anticompetitive, it emerged in pre-trial discovery that Microsoft had tried to buy SAP, the enterprise applications software leader, earlier this year. Microsoft said talks were abandoned because of the complexity of the proposed deal and integration challenges. Oracle said the evidence supports its claim that the enterprise applications market remains highly competitive.

  • A product roadmap from Microsoft revealed its next-generation operating system, Longhorn, would not be released until 2007. But its online portal, MSN, will be releasing a new search function - expected to be a key element of Longhorn - in the next 12 months. Microsoft also gave in to pressure to extend support for its key products to a total of 10 years.

  • Like Microsoft before it, networking giant Cisco Systems suffered the embarrassment of a source code leak. The 800 megabytes of code, systems software for its networking hardware, was stolen by a hacker infiltrating Cisco's corporate network, according to Securitylabs.ru, a Russian web site that helpfully published all 800MBs. As the FBI launched an inquiry, Cisco insisted that clients's network security was not endangered by the leak.

  • Linux creator Linus Torvalds is backing a new initiative to remove legal doubts about the open source operating system's origins. Programmers must now personally sign off on their contributions to the Linux code base, providing an audit trail that Torvalds and the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), an industry alliance, hope will prevent claims that the software contains plagiarised code.

  • Sun Microsystems sought to counter the challenge from Linux with a new subscription-based sales model and a suggestion that it will eventually open up at least some of the code of its Unix-based server operating system, Solaris.

  • The UK got its first 'IT czar' as Ian Watmore was named head of e-government. Watmore, UK MD of consulting firm Accenture will become one of the UK's highest-paid public sector IT employees.

  • Telecoms equipment giant Nortel and wireless LAN supplier Symbol both admitted they were facing federal investigations into their accounting practices. Nortel, accused of improper reporting of reserves and sales recognition, fired its CEO and placed several finance executives on paid leave, while one federal prosecutor described Symbol's accounting scandal as "breathtaking in scope". As eight former Symbol executives faced criminal charges, ex-CEO Tomo Razmilovic (who was president of ICL Internationl in the early 1990s) fled the UK - apparently for his native Croatia.

  • The Securities and Exchange Commission continued its probe into Computer Associates, which used its CA World user conference in Las Vegas to try to draw a line under its financial scandal. Shortly after, former CEO Sanjay Kumar, who had been demoted 'chief software architect' quit the company.


    • Comments 

    There are currently no comments on this article

    People who read this also read...

    Platform Computing - Category winner

    Since 1992, Platform has established a reputation as an industry leader in High Performance Computing (HPC) management software, bringing the most powerful commercial HPC solutions to leading global enterprises.

    Nortel UK

     

    Related articles

    Microsoft prepares new assaults

    Targets new markets, old competitors.

    Attack on Linux kernel foiled

    Open source developers have foiled an attempt by an unknown attacker to inject a Trojan horse feature into the kernel of Linux.

    Red Hat offers warranty to enterprise Linux users

    Red Hat has augmented its offer of legal protection to customers with a promise to replace any Linux code found to infringe copyright.

    Defection in Munich

    Even a 90% discount and direct lobbying by the Microsoft CEO was not enough to dissuade the City of Munich from ditching Windows for Linux.

    Advertisement

    White Papers

    Read article

    Developing ios Solutions for Business

    Whitepapers

    Quickly develop and deploy custom iPad and iPhone solutions. With FileMaker Pro, iPad and iPhone solutions can be prototyped and completed in hours or days versus weeks or months. No iOS application programming or design experience is required.

    Read article

    IDC Spotlight: Access Control and Certification

    Whitepapers

    Read this brief for best practices on managing user access compliance.

    Read article

    GPS World

    Whitepapers

    Is the PREMIER global media brand serving the exploding world of positioning and navigation for OEM, commercial and consumer applications.

    More
    div class="banner">