By Jacqueline Emigh
Linux Today Correspondent
With this week’s launch of SCO OpenServer 6 at Yankee Stadium,
SCO Group, Inc. President and CEO Darl McBride and his co-workers
migrated their fight against Linux from the court room to a
different playing field–one that’s more along the lines of typical
product competition in the computer industry.
Decked out in Yankee baseball uniforms to address partners,
customers and the press in New York City on Wednesday, SCO
officials made only muted jibes at Linux during the launch event
itself.
For example, Sandy Gupta, SCO’s vice president of engineering,
said that beyond the license-based pricing already available for
OpenServer 6, SCO is also eyeing subscription-based pricing, adding
that the subscription-based pricing model under consideration is
similar to Red Hat’s. “But we think (the subscription-based
pricing) will be more expensive,” he noted.
Yet in meetings with journalists afterward, McBride and other
execs were blunt in naming both Linux and Microsoft Windows as big
competition to SCO OpenServer, a long-time Unix software server
that runs on PCs.
In one meeting, McBride, who once spent more of his time
defending SCO’s legal position, told LinuxToday that working on the
completion of OpenServer 6 has come as a welcome relief.
SCO’s IP battles with IBM continue, and McBride is still
convinced that SCO is in the right. But these days, McBride is
leaving SCO’s legal struggles mainly to others, contenting himself
to read reports prepped by company attorneys.
“It was a real hailstorm out there,” McBride told Linux Today.
“It’s actually been fun to get back to product innovation.”
OpenServer 6 contains security features meant to raise its
competitive standing versus Linux, said Jeff Hunsaker, senior VP
and general manager of SCO’s Unix Division, during another
interview with LinuxToday.
Specifically, Hunsaker pointed to the encrypted file and file
system support in OpenServer 6, and to SSH for remotely logging
into encrypted systems. Other security enhancements in 6 include
IPsec, for VPNs (virtual private networks), and IP firewall filter,
for regulating IP traffic.
But performance is the main improvement in OpenServer 6,
according to McBride. “Performance wasn’t what it should have been
in OpenServer 5,” he admitted.
Partners at the launch said they’re also glad to see SCO turning
more of its attention to product development.
“Absolutely and 100 percent,” said Deepak Thadani, who heads up
SysIntegrators, a SCO reseller in New York City.
“We support a couple of hundred customers, and OpenServer 6 will
give us great opportunities for server migrations and license
sales,” he told LinuxToday.
As the most meaningful enhancements for users, Thadani mentioned
much faster performance, greatly increased large file support (from
2 GB in OpenServer 5 to 1 TB in OpenServer 6); multithreaded
application support; and more reliability.
Thadani said he even sees some chances to recruit new business
from current Linux and Windows users, due to the reliability
factor. “OpenServer 6’s MTBF is 20,000 hours. There’s nobody who
can beat that,” according to the VAR.
Also during the launch, Gupta listed a lot of other new features
in OpenServer 6, including support for up to 32 processors; up to
16 GB of general purpose memory, plus the ability to dedicate
additional memory to special applications; and emulation of Windows
2000 and XP applications, with cut-and-paste across platforms.
So where does OpenServer fit in as a rival against Linux? “We
were originally a ‘Unix company.’ Then Caldera bought SCO, and we
tried to be both a ‘Linux company’ and a ‘Unix company.’. We got
rid of Linux, and now we’re back to being just a ‘Unix company.’
Linux is our competitor,” according to Hunsaker.
SCO is aiming OpenServer 6 mostly at SCO’s existing strongholds
of SMBs in vertical markets such as finance and retail, Hunsaker
said.
Unlike Linux, though, SCO’s OpenServer is destined to run on PC
servers only, according to McBride.
“Linux is kind of trying to be a desktop platform, and it’s also
sort of trying to run on devices as an embedded platform. But we’re
only going to run on Intel and AMD server hardware,” he told
LinuxToday.
Also lately, OpenServer has been sliding into some new
geographic markets in the Asia-Pacific. “We have a huge installed
base in China and India. The People’s Bank of China runs its
business on OpenServer,” Hunsaker maintained.
Ironically, perhaps, SCO is taking part in the open source
community, even as it tries to vie against Linux.
The company has contributed source code for many open source
components, including Perl, according to McBride.
Meanwhile, open source componentry appearing in OpenServer 6
includes the latest versions of MySQL and PostgreSQL; Apache;
Mozilla; Samba; and Tomcat, for example.
“Open source (also) means that we have access to the source
code,” McBride said. “We support these components, but only on our
own platform.”
OpenServer 6 provides a choice of OpenServer desktop or
KDE3-based desktop environments. Also supported are OpenOffice and
the Firefox browser.
Application development tools are available for C, C++ and Java,
Gupta said. Computer Associates’ Ingres r3 database also runs on
OpenServer 6.
Vendors on hand to voice their support at the launch included
Computer Associates; Hewlett-Packard; BakBone Software, and Micro
Focus, for instance.
SCO is gradually merging OpenServer together with UnixWare, its
other Unix PC product, on to the same kernel. But Hunsaker said he
doesn’t expect the release of a combined product until 2007.
In license-based pricing, the Starter Edition of Open Server 6
is $599, and the Enterprise Edition is $1,399. Supporting one
processor and up to 1 GB of system memory, the Starter Edition
comes with a two-user license. Supporting up to four processors and
up to 4 GB of system memory, the Enterprise Edition comes with a
10-user license.
If SCO goes ahead with subscription-based pricing, the
announcement will probably come in August, Gupta said later.