Practical Technology

for practical people.

August 30, 2008
by sjvn01
4 Comments

Novell’s Linux Business is Booming

On a superficial level, Novell‘s third quarter, which ended July 31, 2008, didn’t look that good. A closer look reveals though that Novell did quite well in general and extremely well with its Linux business.

According to the company press release, “For the quarter, Novell reported net revenue of $245 million.” This was up from Novell’s net revenue of $237 million for the third fiscal quarter 2007. “Income from operations for the third fiscal quarter 2008 was $1 million, compared to a loss from operations of $10 million for the third fiscal quarter 2007. Loss from continuing operations in the third fiscal quarter 2008 was $15 million, or $0.04 loss per share, due to a $15 million impairment charge related to our auction-rate securities.”

Auction-rate securities, to those of you who know more the Linux kernel than exotic financial issues, are long-term bonds. What makes them odd is that their interest rates are set by weekly or monthly auctions. Companies have been using them in the last few years as a way to raise money. Unfortunately, investors have tended to give up on buying these securities because they don’t think that they can move them. In other words, they no longer have any faith in the securities’ liquidity. What that means for Novell, and many other companies, is that their debt has gotten much more expensive than they had expected it to be.

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August 28, 2008
by sjvn01
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R.I.P. Exchange?

Over the years, many of Microsoft monopolies have been successfully attacked by open source: Linux on the server; Apache for Web servers; Firefox for Web browsers; and so on. The one exception, and it’s a big one, is business e-mail. Exchange, with 65% of the market owns business groupware and e-mail. Things are about to change.

Cisco is buying PostPath, and that is going to kick Exchange in the head. You see, is an open-source based server program that doesn’t just do e-mail and groupware, it actually has reverse-engineered Microsoft Exchange’s protocols. Result: To someone sitting at a desk looking at your copy of Outlook, you won’t be able to tell the difference.

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August 28, 2008
by sjvn01
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Cisco buys PostPath, targets Microsoft Exchange

No one saw this coming. Cisco, the networking giant, announced today it was buying PostPath, maker of the Linux-based Exchange server replacement PostPath Server.

PostPath is best known as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange. Unlike other would-be Exchange competitors Scalix and Lotus Domino/Notes, which use a Outlook-compatible Mail Application Programming Interface (MAPI) on the client PC, PostPath actually reverse-engineered Microsoft’s MAPI and Active Directory (AD) protocols. This means that, from the network and Windows PC’s viewpoint, PostPath actually appears to be an Exchange server.

While PostPath is the only Exchange challenger that has used reverse-engineering to challenge Microsoft, its approach may be adopted by other open source companies. When the European Commission forced Microsoft to open up the Common Internet File System (CIFS) and AD protocols, it also forced the company to open up the MAPI protocols.

An open source project called OpenChange is now working with Samba using this information to build open source implementations of Microsoft Exchange Server and Exchange protocols. No commercial open source business is currently following up on OpenChange’s efforts, though, according to Sarah Radicati, CEO of The Radicati Group.

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August 27, 2008
by sjvn01
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New Low-Cost Ubuntu Linux equipped Dell PCs and Laptops Arriving

While we’re still waiting for Dell to roll-out its Inspiron 910 mini-notebook, Dell had just announced, on August 27th, that it is now selling two more desktops and two more laptops that will come pre-installed with Ubuntu 8.04.

These low-priced systems consist of the two pre-configured laptops—the Vostro A840 and A860—and two pre-configured desktops—the Vostro A100 and A180. Unfortunately, for North American buyers, only the Vostro A860 notebook with its 15.6″ display will be available to North American desktop Linux customers. The Vostro A860 will also be Dell’s first globally available Ubuntu-powered PC. Earlier Dell computers with Ubuntu, like the XPS M1530n and Inspiron E1505n were only available in the U.S. or in other limited regions.

Both of the new Dell lines are meant for small business users. And, in particular, they’re meant for what John Hull, Dell’s manager of Linux engineering, calls “greenfields.” Greenfields are countries that, until recently, haven’t had many PCs. Dell, along with other PC vendors like HP and Lenovo, believes that greenfield nations, which haven’t been locked into Microsoft’s Windows monopoly, are an ideal Linux desktop audience.

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August 26, 2008
by sjvn01
4 Comments

MEPIS is coming back

I’m pleased to report that one of my favorite desktop Linux distributions, MEPIS, is returning. The beta of the next version, MEPIS 8, is now available.

Warren Woodford, MEPIS‘ designer, has been unable to devote much time to his Linux distribution since late last year because, as Woodford put it at the time, “MEPIS was slowed down, because I finally had to reenter the workforce as a consultant in order to pay the bills. I can net more in two weeks of consulting, then in a year with MEPIS.”

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August 26, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Can Open Source replace Microsoft Exchange?

Once upon a time at a NASA space flight center a long way away, I was an e-mail administrator. At the time, the 1980s, e-mail was still chaotic. The RFC 822 standard was only beginning to bring rhyme and reason to e-mail. One of RFC 822’s competitors, the Common Messaging Calls (CMC) X.400 standard, wasn’t making much progress, but then Microsoft adopted it in 1992, added the concepts of folders to it, and re-named the result Mail Application Programming Interface (MAPI). And, ever since, the e-mail world can broadly be divided into two camps: the RFC 822 Internet compliant e-mail group and the MAPI-compliant Microsoft Outlook/Exchange pack.

Many of us assume that all e-mail works by using such RFC-822isms as e-mail addresses that look like “name@SomePlaceOrTheOther.com.” Not so. MAPI takes a quite different approach. In addition to simply handling e-mail, extended MAPI and Collaboration Data Objects (CDO), which became Microsoft’s default protocol set in Exchange 2003, added the power to manage calendars and addresses. So it is that Exchange and Outlook, while primarily used for e-mail, is also a groupware package.

And, I might add, a very popular one. A recent survey by Ferris Research revealed that Exchange has about 65% market share across all organizations. Lotus Notes/Domino is a distant number two with 10% of the market. POP/IMAP, (Post Office Protocol/Internet Message Access Protocol), the usual way incoming RFC-822 mail is handled? All the dozens of RFC-822 mail servers, including Sendmail, Qmail, and Postfix combined, have only 15% of the business/organization e-mail market.

As for the open-source groupware servers that try to directly compete with Exchange, such as Scalix, Open-Xchange, and Zimbra, Richi Jennings, a Ferris Research analyst, dismissed them as being mere ‘noise’ in the business e-mail market.

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