News and Analysis to 1^st December 2004

PeopleSoft drugs bust delayed

Almost all the obstacles are cleared for Oracle to pounce on PeopleSoft. The final barriers include the latter’s ‘poison pill’ measure, which would flood the market with shares making the takeover prohibitively expensive. Also PeopleSoft’s customer assurance program would make Oracle liable for huge payments in the form of customer refunds. The Delaware County Court has decided to delay the decision on whether to remove the anti-takeover defences until mid December.

Chat room spooks

The CIA are working on a solution to enable them to monitor the dialogue within Internet chat rooms according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained the details under the Freedom of Information Act. The driver is part of counter-terrorism initiatives post 9/11. You are encouraged to have a lawyer present should you enter into dialogue with visitors using the following names: Mulder, Scully or Secret Squirrel.

Linux breaks $1bn barrier

The server market is hot. Windows and Linux are on the ascendancy.  Linux hit the $1bn revenue mark for the third quarter according to IDC, giving it 9.2% of overall server revenue. MS Windows drew level with Unix with the former’s revenues up 13.3% and the latter’s down 2.3%. Perhaps the battle is no longer Windows versus Linux, but Winux versus Unix?

Gartner’s crystal balls

Gartner laid out its conference themes for the next 6 years by predicting what looks set to dominate corporate computing. In summary these are: consumer-driven technology, IT virtualization, wireless, on demand computing/ software as a service. Oh and apparently there will definitely be more ‘next big things’. Quite prescient.

Bill’s big box

Bill Gates chairman of Microsoft is a popular guy. According to CEO Steve Balmer, Mr Gates receives 4 millions emails per day, most of which is spam. A day’s emails would take Outlook 34 days to download. 458 people working 8-hour shifts would be required to manually delete spam daily. Microsoft has a whole department to deal with it. Surely this represents a great opportunity for storage vendors and injury lawyers specialising in RSI.

PC World shrinking

According to Gartner three of the top ten PC manufacturers will exit the market by 2007. A slow down in growth and erosion of profit margins are regarded as the main causes. The growth opportunities lie in emerging markets. However countries such as China have local vendors who are more likely to use the growth curve to launch themselves onto the global market.

SCO’s Thanksgiving message

Visitors to SCO Group’s website over the Thanksgiving weekend will have been surprised by the message “We own all your code, pay us all your money”. The Unix vendor and intellectual property ‘expert’ (whose business model comprises receiving funds and suing practically everyone) claims that this is the work of a hacker who is unhappy about the manner in which SCO Group is tormenting the Linux community. One could be forgiven for thinking that this was the current mission statement.

EDS mixed fortunes

EDS has just secured a $483m BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing) contract with the province of British Columbia in Canada. However it failed to impress the UK’s Department for Works and Pensions, which lost the use of 40,000 PCs after a ‘routine’ system upgrade took place. Both EDS and Microsoft will be the focus of an internal inquiry. Sadly it doesn’t end there. Heads are rolling over EDS’s $843m contract with the Child Support Agency. This problem is circa a decade old, and out of 478,000 parents who applied for support, only 13% have received any money.

Offshoring by numbers

The potential job migration resulting from offshoring could be greater than previously thought. Forrester Research claims that 3.3 million US jobs will emigrate in the next 15 years. Sharon Harmer, outsourcing chief at UK bank Lloyds TSB, suggests that clients should spend between 3 and 8% of total contract value on governance. Professor Willcocks of Warwick Business School suggests this figure is as much as 15% in the US. Over 80% of outsourcing contracts in the US are brokered through a consulting/advisory third-party.

Oh Danon

A boardroom bust-up at former UK incumbent BT Group has led to the departure of Pierre Danon the head of BT Retail, who is moving on to the role of COO at Cap Gemini. Despite the ‘gritted teeth’ best wishes from all concerned, it appears that Mr Danon was unhappy that his part of the organisation had to buy their broadband capability from BT Wholesale. His plans to set up BT Retail’s own ‘local loop’ solution would have been a severe blow to BT Wholesale. BT Group CEO Ben Verwaayan could not contemplate a BT v BT scenario arising.