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Caldera International Inc. on Monday used its GeoFORUM conference in Las Vegas to announce that it will change its name to The SCO Group. The company also announced the release of new upgrades to its three server operating system products and launched a new partner program offering, SCOx.
CEO Darl McBride said the rename did not mean the company was moving away from Linux but was rather capitalizing on the existing brand recognition around its SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare product lines and using this when selling Linux solutions. “Outside the U.S. Caldera has very, very limited reach,” he said at a press conference today.
He said the company is committed to producing SCO Linux 4.0, which is expected to be available in November and will be powered by UnitedLinux, a joint development effort from SCO, Conectiva, SuSE Linux AG and Turbolinux.
The UnitedLinux companies produced the first closed pre-release beta in early August and expect to have an open beta available in late September. But McBride cautioned that a SCO Linux desktop offering would not be hitting the market anytime soon.
Caldera had previously been spending four marketing dollars to sell one revenue dollar of Caldera desktop. “Thats a business model that doesnt persist for a very long time. We can come out with a desktop product, a workstation product right now, but we are currently focused on server-based computing and infrastructure computing,” he said.
While McBride said he was not ruling out the desktop market, for a company that is turning itself around, SCO has to choose its battles carefully. “But down the road I wouldnt rule that out” he said.
The SCO Group, which services small-to-medium business and corporate branch office customers, would also be introducing its next-version SCO OpenServer 5.0.7 and SCO UnixWare 7.1.3 products over the next six months.
“We are the leading provider of Unix solutions on Intel hardware. These new releases ensure the reliability, scalability, and high availability of our products, will continue for many years to come,” McBride said.
SCO OpenServer 5.0.7, expected to be available the first quarter of 2003, will provide software updates to include the latest hardware drivers and USB support to offer easier connectivity to next generation peripheral devices.
The next-version product will have updated development tools for easier integration with applications and an updated version of Merge 5.3 that allows customers to use Windows 98 and Windows Me client emulation with both SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare.
SCO UnixWare 7.1.3—the successor release to Open UNIX 8.0—should be available by December and will provide updated USB support, improved networking performance as well as upgrades to hardware drivers. The product will also include new and updated network applications and development tools.
“We are also introducing a new update service for both SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare called SCO Update. This annual service allows customers to receive quarterly electronic delivery of software updates, new features, drivers, security virus alerts and other added benefits. SCO Update is expected by December for SCO UnixWare 7.1.3 and during the first quarter of 2003 for SCO OpenServer 5.0.7, McBride said.
The company on Monday also announced its new SCOx partner program offering, which now includes a “buy-out” plan allowing solution providers to sell their SCOx business back to SCO.
The SCO Group has also signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Vista.com under which SCO can market and sell Vista.coms commerce Web site creation and hosting service to all technology channel partners worldwide. This service will be branded SCObiz.