News and Analysis to 9th March 2004
Granger kicks ass
Richard Granger, Head of IT at the UK’s National Health
Service has decided to pull the plug on a £90m email and directory services
project. The relationship between the NHS and contractor EDS has soured, not
least because 6 months after going live the system only extended to 2% of the
user community. The executives at the Texas based supplier are no doubt
punching holes through their 10-gallon hats and are preparing to sue the UK
government for £10m. Mr Granger has in one fell swoop loosened EDS’s grip on UK
public sector IT and sent a warning shot across the bows to other IT suppliers
who don’t deliver.
Sun becomes space debris
Sun Microsystems, the beleaguered Unix box shifter and Java
owner (but for how long as IBM is currently pushing Sun to relinquish control
of Java?) has had its credit rating downgraded to junk status by credit ratings
agency Standard and Poor. Sun’s Scott McNealy is one of the few industry
leaders who wears both the chairman and CEO hats. Recently Larry Ellison of
Oracle and Michael Dell of Dell have handed over the CEO reins. If Mr McNealy
doesn’t do so soon he may find that he may have to give up both hats.
Psion disorganised?
Erstwhile handheld device player and more recently mobile
computing specialist Psion, has decided to sell its stake in Symbian, a
consortium made up of the great and the good in mobile computing. Psion has a
31% stake and is responsible for the technology that underpins the Symbian
mobile platform. Their plans to sell their stake to Nokia for £136m have caused
a storm amongst their shareholders, who feel that more money would be made if
they hung on for an IPO. Observers
would be forgiven for thinking that this UK company appears to be getting out
of what could well be the most profitable venture in the Telecoms sector.
Possibly Psion feels that it is best to leave the table with some money before
the other Symbian players, with deeper pockets, start raising the stakes.
Rumour mill: IBM to acquire EDS
Press reports
have suggested that the number one outsourcing company in the world will do a
Pacman on the number two. The news caused both their share prices to drop. It
would certainly draw the attention of the antitrust authorities, which are ‘old
friends’ of IBM.
Rumour mill: Sony to acquire Apple
Shares in funky ‘iPod to iMac’ Apple soared on the rumour
that funky Sony had its eye on it. Apple looks very appetising, with cash
reserves of more than half its market value, making it look more like a bank
that’s into music and IT. Both are
farsighted with their ‘technology as a fashion statement’ marketing. But they
both have similar failings. Apple’s failure to license it operating system left
the door open to Microsoft. Sony’s refusal to license its Betamax video
technology, paved the way for VHS.
Conspiracy corner: SCO – Microsoft
Join the dots. What two companies seem to be unhappy of
Linux’s success? Why Microsoft and SCO Group of course. The former has never been a great fan of
losing market share to anyone or anything. The latter believes that Linux
infringes their intellectual property. But there’s more. An email leaked from
the SCO Group has shown a link between SCO and Microsoft via BayStar Capital.
The email suggests that Microsoft is using Baystar as a vehicle for injecting
funds into SCO. I don’t know why Microsoft doesn’t just hire out its lawyers to
SCO directly.
RFID – Nein danke
German retailer Metro Store has decided to back down on
using Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID, essentially next generation
barcoding) tags across its stores. Anti-RFID activists have targeted the
world’s fifth largest retailer on account of what it calls privacy invasion.
Metro planned to use the technology on its customer loyalty cards. This would
enable it to not just track customer purchase habits, but also customer
movements. Perhaps the eventual plan was to offer all cardholders free RFID
chips, and for Platinum cardholders only, discounted surgery to help with
implant costs.
