“I talked by phone to Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera Systems, on
November 2, 1999. He told me he had called because Caldera was
making some major changes, and he wanted everyone to know about
them. His excitement about their plans was quite evident–the words
flowed non-stop–and it was contagious. Before we were finished
talking, I was ready to stand up and do the “Ransom Dance”.
Here’s our conversation.”
“Ransom: We want to give you an update on the company, the
products we will be announcing, some of the channel programs and
the overall new strategy. Actually, I wouldn’t even call it a new
strategy, it is a more focused strategy of what we’ve been doing
and planning for sometime. We are now ready to roll it into public
view.”
“First of all, as you know, we have positioned ourselves as
Linux for Business. We want to focus it even more to where we
think, Linux is going to play the most important role and where we
as a company can add the most value. Thus, we are fine-tuning
that focus to Linux for E-Business. We believe Linux is going to
play the predominate role in extending the Internet or e-business
infrastructure for corporations who are deploying Internet,
intranet and networks, for ISPs who are realizing they actually
have to sell services and additional applications, and for the
traditional VARs. We have statistics, from our OpenLinux Tour with
IBM and Oracle, that shows 82% of all VARs are looking to deploy
Linux in these capacities. Linux is going to be the Internet
platform that extends it, and we want to be the company providing
Linux for E-Business.”