NEWS&ANALYSIS
the
buzz
LINUX
Wyse to unveil
thin client
THIN-CLIENT VENDOR
Wyse Technology is
expanding its Linux
capabilities.
At the LinuxWorld
Conference & Expo this
week, Wyse is unveiling
its Winterm 5150SE device,
which runs Wyse’s Linux V6 operating system. Linux V6 is based
on the latest Linux kernel, 2.6.
In addition, the 5150SE is
powered by Advanced Micro
Devices’ Geode GX 533 processors for embedded systems.
The 5150SE, which can be
placed on a desk or mounted on
a wall, offers free seating capabilities, letting users log in to different thin clients but keep their
same user configuration. In addition, users replacing one device
will not have to configure the
new thin client, a key time-saving
feature, said company officials.
The thin client also has a readonly file system that can protect
against virus attacks.
Wyse, which previously offered
Linux devices, earlier this year be-
The Winterm 5150SE
runs Wyse’s latest Linux OS.
gan a focused push into the Linux
space, including the creation of a
team dedicated to the opensource operating system.
—Jeffrey Burt
RFID
Symbol acquires Matrics
SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES LAST WEEK
announced plans to buy Matrics,
which designs and makes EPCcompliant RFID systems. The
$238 million acquisition expands
Symbol’s data-capture product
portfolio. It also supports the
company’s plans to provide
more packages focused on
radio-frequency identification.
Not to be outdone, E.piphany
will announce the availability of its
E.6 suite on Linux at the conference. E.piphany’s Java-based
sales, customer service and marketing applications will run on
Linux. In addition, the company is
unveiling a marketing partnership
with Red Hat, which will resell E.6
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
E.piphany aims the Linux offering
at midsize- and large-enterprise
markets. —Dennis Callaghan
Symbol plans to integrate
Matrics’ RFID products into its
data-capture and wireless technologies. Matrics aims at the retail, defense and transportation
vertical markets.
—Renee Boucher Ferguson
CRM
SugarSales app
sweet on Linux
CRM IS MOVING TO LINUX. AT LINUX-
World in San Francisco this
week, a new CRM software company, SugarCRM, will officially be
launched. The company is funded
by venture capital company
Draper Fisher Jurvetson and
headed by former E.piphany
executives. The company’s opensource product, SugarSales,
became available July 4 and has
had more than 4,200 downloads
via the SourceForge opensource community.
SugarSales is offered in
on-premise and hosted versions, with typical sales force
automation applications such as
account, contact, opportunity and
lead management plus tracking
of customer contact. It can support up to 5,000 concurrent users
and runs on Linux, Apache, PHP,
and MySQL (LAMP), as well as
Windows, IIS or Apache, PHP and
MySQL (WAMP) Web development platforms. Customers get
access to the product’s source
code as well.
CHIPS
Egenera building
Itanium blade server
EGENERA, WHICH MAKES BLADE
servers, is developing a two-way
system powered by Intel’s 64-bit
Itanium processor. Company officials unveiled plans last week,
saying Egenera’s customers that
run high-end databases and transaction-based applications will benefit from the chip’s performance
and memory addressability.
Officials said that when the
Itanium-based Egenera Processing Blade is ready, it will be able
to run in the same BladeFrame
system as 32-bit Xeon-based
blades. That will let users consolidate applications requiring different processors and memory configurations onto the same system,
said the company.
No date for release of the
Itanium 2 systems has been set,
the company said. —Jeffrey Burt
BY THE NUMBERS
Asia/Pacific hardware spending
Numbers in $ billions
140
120
100
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
80
60
Blogs are a medium of influence more than
a mass medium.
40
20
0
Christian Crumlish, blogger at the Democratic National
Convention
w w w. e w e e k . c o m
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Source: IDC, May 2004
A U G U S T 2 , 2 0 0 4 n e W E E K 17