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SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 12:28 PM EDT

SCO announced today that they will be offering white box solutions. What's next? Wal-Mart?

Hmm. I'm not sure I get this. Does this mean they hope folks will buy their stuff if their name isn't on it? No. That can't be it. Maybe it means that they wish to undercut their resellers? No. That'd be as counterproductive as suing your own customers.

Oh. Wait.

Here's one man's translation on the Yahooo SCOX message board that made me laugh. Honestly, I don't know what this means, except maybe that they are desperate. Maybe they'll explain at SCOForum on August 7-9. I know you all join me in wishing them the very best in all their endeavors.

That reminds me. Right after the O'Gara article, SCO's stock went up. Here's the daily chart and here's weekly. (Click on Get Data.) The company may be losing money, but that doesn't mean everyone is. You don't suppose. . .

I shouldn't speculate, so to speak. I've never been good at stock stuff, so I guess it's best if I just don't bother my pretty little head with such complicated things. I'll just leave that to the menfolk. The SEC has some real men, I hear.

Here's the press release:

*****************************

SCO to Offer White Box Solutions Through Leading Distributors
Tuesday May 17, 9:00 am ET

SCO to Partner With Distributors to Offer Resellers Pre-Certified White Box Solutions

LINDON, Utah, May 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX -News), the owner of the UNIX® operating system and a leading provider of UNIX-based solutions, announced today that it is partnering with leading industry distributors DTR Business Systems and Terian to provide SCO resellers with pre-configured white box servers with SCO solutions.

Each server will be pre-loaded and pre-configured with a SCO UNIX operating system precisely designed to meet a customers' needs. By ordering SCO white box solutions, customers are getting a powerful, task specific software system at a low price.

"These white box solutions provide both our resellers and UNIX customers with a robust and reliable software system that is tested and certified to work right out of the box," said Alan Raymond, SCO Vice President of North America Sales. "SCO customers and resellers will benefit from the fact that these machines include all of the necessary drivers and configurations to plug into a customer environment and begin working right away."

The process for creating these customized, white box solutions makes it easy for resellers to quickly fulfill their customer's requirements. Working with DTR and Terian, SCO is providing a Web site to allow resellers to request specific configurations based on their customer's software and hardware needs. The white box can then be built and shipped to customers more quickly and efficiently, saving resellers valuable time in providing such systems to their customers.

These servers and appliances can be completely configured based on the customer's software requirements for SCO OpenServer, UnixWare®, SCOoffice Server, Microlite Backup, and VSI/Fax Server. In addition, customers can obtain network monitoring appliances for real-time Web traffic monitoring, spyware protection, Web filtering, and bandwidth optimization. SCO is also offering a Small Office Server for Windows Clients, as well as a dedicated SCOoffice Server for e-mail collaboration, calendaring, contact management and security.

"We look forward to working with our SCO resellers to provide their customers with these white box solutions," said Rene Beltran, Executive Vice President of DTR Business Solutions, Inc. "Working with SCO and DTR, resellers will have a greater capability to deliver a higher standard of customer service with reliable SCO UNIX systems."

"Resellers trust Terian to provide their customers with leading industry solutions," said Mike Colsante, Chief Operating Officer, Terian Solutions, LLC. "These 'Made for SCO' solutions are an excellent addition to what Terian can provide our resellers. Resellers will appreciate the ease of customizing and ordering these reliable servers and appliances while customers will like the quick delivery and reliability of these solutions that SCO and Terian have created for them."

Additionally, customers can choose from a range of service offerings delivered by SCO's Global Support team to suit their business requirements. Available support options include incident based support such as 5 and 10 call packs, as well as an unlimited number of inquiries when purchased on a per server basis (single servers or up to five servers). These services will greatly enhance a customer's ability to make optimal use of the hardware and software capabilities of their SCO white box solution.

SCO Registered, Authorized and Premier reseller partners interested in offering SCO white box solutions to their customers should visit the SCO Partner Lounge at http://partners.sco.com/partner/login.jsp, and click on the "Buy Pre-Configured Hardware" link. SCO customers who are interested in obtaining more information about these SCO solutions should contact their local reseller.

The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News) helps millions of customers to grow their businesses everyday. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of thousands of resellers and developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services, visit www.sco.com.

SCO, SCO OpenServer and the associated SCO logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX and UnixWare are registered trademarks of The Open Group. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.


  


SCO Offers White Box Solutions | 359 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Off-topic posts here, please
Authored by: overshoot on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:00 PM EDT
Post links, if any, as <a
href="http://www.example.com/">clickable HTML</a>. As
always, previewing your post is a good idea.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I wonder how long ...
Authored by: RFD on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:06 PM EDT
this business plan will work.

---
Eschew obfuscation.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hope this statement comes back
Authored by: frk3 on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:06 PM EDT

to haunt SCOX:

"...the owner of the UNIX® operating system...."

FTC might be interested in this complete and utter lie.

Just my $0.02 worth.

[ Reply to This | # ]

What are the chances.
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:12 PM EDT
What are chances the SEC will ever investigate this scam stock.

A stock which goes up when a friendly journalist gets fired? What is that about?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Correction Here Please
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:17 PM EDT
The links to the stock chart did not work for correctly for me. The dates seem
messed up. Could be operator error on my part

---
Rsteinmetz

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

One view of SCO's main problem... they're lousy gamblers
Authored by: greyhat on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:24 PM EDT
A friend recently asked me something to the effect of "Why would any
company keep doing this to itself? Where's the motive?" I thought I'd
share my answer here, since it put a smile on my face when I wrote it. Anyone
who's ever played poker, or watched friends play, has seen the situation SCO
fell into: the "bluff gone bad."

It starts with what looks like an opportunity. Darl is running low on chips and
thinks he can take an agressive stab at this pot and everyone will back out.
People usually don't fight for a pot they're not really invested in. It happens
all the time, and it's good strategy now and then, so hey, why not. He makes is
big bet, waits for everyone else to look scared and drop out. One at a time,
people toss in their cards, and Darl's heart starts beating faster. It's
working. The last opponent, Mr. Linux, checks his cards, spends a thoughtful
moment, and raises the bet. Darl's heart sinks as he realizes Mr. Linux is
perfectly happy to stay in this hand.

This is the moment that any good poker player hates. Every experienced player
has been there at some point, and it's a situation that separates professionals
from amateurs. It's where you have to recognize that you've made a bad move,
and cut your losses with dignity. Unfortunately, even good players sometimes
fall into this trap. They either can't admit they were bluffing, or they're
convinced that if they keep pushing, their opponent will suddenly become afraid
and give up. Maybe even that one magic card will come up and turn things
around. This is bad math. The opponent is so committed at this point that he
can't be scared away, and drawing that magic card is less likely than winning
the lottery right now. But Darl's not doing proper math, and that's the trap.
Rather than lose his big bet (and a little face), he convinces himself that if
he keeps looking confident, he'll scare Mr. Linux out of this. They raise back
and forth, and it's not until he has bet his last chip that Darl starts to
realize a painful fact: if he had backed down at any point at all, he would have
been better off than he is right now.

SCO, like a bad poker player, kept betting and betting even when nobody was
fooled. It wasn't until everything was in the pot (including nearly everything
MS "spotted" them to keep the game going), that they started to
realize they shouldn't have been sitting at this table, let alone trying to
bluff a giant. Fortunately for Darl, he wasn't playing with his own money. SCO
practically paid him in advance before their unfortunate end. Now he'll move on
to gambling with some other poor company's future, and getting a fantastic bonus
for doing it.

---
"Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor
will not, make such a claim."
-- Darl McBride to Linux Journal, August 28, 2002

[ Reply to This | # ]

With a partner like this.......
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:28 PM EDT
Just had to check out the site for DTR (dtrbus.com). Imagine my shock/surprise
when I found....
• System and Utility Software
List of 1 items nesting level 3
• SCO UNIX & Linux, Microsoft, Red Hat, Facet Corp, Dynamic Concepts,
Microlite BackupEDGE, Lone-Tar, VSI-FAX by Esker, Olympus TuneUp, Century
Software,
TapeWare by Yosemite
list end nesting level 3
Wonder if they're paying ScoG for the priviledge of selling Linux solutions?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCOX stock trends
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:34 PM EDT
SCOX isn't really doing much. It's just wandering up and down on tiny volume. It's basically been at $4 +- 1, for most of the last year.

Nobody really cares any more.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:36 PM EDT

Read: SCO Unix doesn't install on half of the hardware you have. It doesn't
have the same level of driver support as Linux.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Next Up: SCO Happy Meals!!
Authored by: Galen on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:42 PM EDT
Coming soon to a fast food joint near you, SCO Happy Meals.
Complete with mountains of code and Darl Qupie Dolls!!
And of course served in a briefcase shapped box!

Of couse the girl at the drive thru will still ask:
"Would you like A Linux .iso with that?"

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: pooky on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:45 PM EDT
I doubt this is any big bombshell. If anything I'll bet they are losing
resellers and this is just an attempt to garner more income by making it easier
to sell newSCO solutions. Most resellers make money by selling expertise and
installing solutions.

Remember that oldSCO had a huge reseller network which is partly why Caldera
wanted them in the first place. newSCO's been losing money by the bucketfull and
their income has dropped mightly. I'd say this is a good indicator that newSCO's
losing resellers, not just end users, since most of their end users probably
came through a reseller channel.

Some of their resellers will undoubtly like this idea, others probably won't
care. The smart ones are already selling services to convert their customer's
newSCO solutions to Linux.

-pooky

---
Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

[ Reply to This | # ]

They must be kidding....
Authored by: tiger99 on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:47 PM EDT
How do they hope to compete in a market that is already over-provided with software solutions, ranging from adequate to excellent, many of which are free, or open source?

I am not sure what size of white box they are talking about, but unless it is a real monster, performance-wise, if not in size, the cost of a licensed proprietary OS will make it completely non-competitive.

And who would gamble their future on the products of a company who will be gone within a year, and tends to sue their own customers?

Either I have completely misunderstood this, or SCO think that there are a lot of gullible idiots out there.

But I would like to know what they can provide that the existing alternatives can not. Because if there is no compelling new feature, no-one will want it.

I think this is merely a pretence that it is business as usual in Lindon, to decieve people while the company collapses, taking investors money with it, and certain people flee the country. It will not be the first, or the last, company to deceive the public with lots of new stuff to cover their failure.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: blacklight on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:49 PM EDT
This white box stuff looks like a marketing rather than a technical innovation
to me, assuming that the word "innovation" is even appropriate.

A proprietary company like Sun could make use of the "white box"
concept, because Solaris's derivers support is far more limited than Linux's. In
other words, "white box" is a marketing euphemism for limited driver
support in restricted hardware configurations. This kind of limitation produces
vendor lock-in, of course.

And speaking of vendor lock-in, I am curious how SCOG interprets its SCOG UNIX
licenses these days.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I wonder what 'White Box' means to SCO
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:56 PM EDT
The term 'White Box' is an interesting choice. 'White Box testing' means the
tester has access to the source code to see if there are any obvious goofs and
to tailor tests that focus on certain parts of the code. In general, a 'Black
Box' is sealed tight, whereas a 'White Box' is open for all to see. -Boots

[ Reply to This | # ]

"SCO Offers White Box Solutions": The Only Proper Reply...
Authored by: KW on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 01:59 PM EDT
Would be: ?????

Kimmow

[ Reply to This | # ]

Stock moves explained
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:03 PM EDT
The public is most often wrong. The stock market is played y professionals. As
it is less than a zero sum game, in order to make money you have to take it from
someone. Smart money (the pro's) take it from dumb money (the public).

As we all know that SCO is going bankrupt at some point in time, logic would
suggest that you would short the stock as much as you can. The pro's know this.
They also know people like to do this when there is bad news about the company,
so they start buying whatever the public is shorting. This drives the price up,
which brings more people wanting to go short in, while at the same time the
public without unlimited funds that was short, start to sweat and needs to
cover, creating more pressure for the stock to go up.

This becomes a short-squeeze and it can go quiet high as you have seen with
SCO. At some point all the public shorts are out, nobody dares to short anymore,
and now the pro's start to sell en mass making loads of profits.

Furthermore, due to insider trading, the pro's know bad or good news before it
hits the streets. They act before the public knows it, only to reverse the
strategy when the news breaks. That is one reason why most often on good news,
the stock falls and on bad news the stock rises. The news was old and already in
the price.

SCO's stock movements has been completely normal.

A stock trader.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:16 PM EDT
PJ,

You've created a wonderful website that has rallied a community and accomplished some amazing things. PLEASE don't start going down the road of posting innuendo and FUD--that is sinking to their level. I'm referring to the gratuitous, implied reference to a pump and dump scheme behind the O'Gara article, and the general tenor of sarcasm and (dare I say) bitterness.

You're better than that. Your writing skills, your legal insight, your tireless efforts to fight FUD with facts and logic--these are inspirational to the community. But what you wrote above has the same malodorous effluvium as what we read elsewhere.

-Johnathan (who should go create an account)

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: KW on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:22 PM EDT
This reminds me of one of Murphy's Laws:"One can't make anything idiotproof
because idiots are so inventive."
Makes one wonder...

Kimmow

[ Reply to This | # ]

The obvious answer: SCO has lost all their resellers
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:32 PM EDT
Any reseller SCO has had has already moved on to greener pastures and even
though they might still be listed as SCO resellers, it's all just lip service.
What reseller handles only one brand? Nobody. So they're not putting too much
effort into selling SCO stuff because they make better money selling other
things (linux).

So SCO has to sell direct because their reseller channels have basically dried
up. The reason this is feasable is because SCO just doesn't have very much
business.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Gnomic solutions
Authored by: rand on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:34 PM EDT
1. Get cheap generic computer.
2. Add ancient, overpriced OS.
3. Add oodles of free GPL software.
4.
5. Profit!



---
The wise man is not embarrassed or angered by lies, only disappointed. (IANAL
and so forth and so on)

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Profit! - Authored by: johan on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 03:20 PM EDT
Another Thoery
Authored by: sproggit on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:35 PM EDT
Please don't laugh ... but I think this might be a pretty sensible move on Darl's part.

See, one thing I haven't seen discussed in depth on Groklaw, and haven't found in idle trawling of other tech news sites, is a widespread or well-reported indication of SCO resellers and/or agents abandoning the platform.

I'm sure there have been changes. The legal cases are unlikely to have caused new companies to sign on with them as resellers, but I haven't seen a mass exit, either.

There is a possibly good reason for this - something I theorized about a year to 15 months ago. We all know that strategies for technology infrastructure take a long time to evolve in big companies. Say you were a company with 500 applications running on Oracle and you decided to switch to UDB. How long would that take you? Probably a few years at best. The same would be true at an OS level.

My theory is simply that SCO, who surely talk to their resellers and distributors once in a while, are picking up talk on the grapevine that a number of end user customers are about completing their exit migration from SCO's product line. As a result, I would imagine that, about now, there might be a few resellers who realise that it's no longer economically viable to continue to support SCO product. The dinosaurs and evolutionally challenged will wither and die. The rest will switch - many to Linux.

Imagine that you are SCO - and that your resellers or end user clients are telling you this. Right now, you don't need any more bad news. You really don't want the news columns and web sites taken up with a raft of articles about resellers abandoning SCO because there is no longer any market for their product, do you?

So you need to come up with something that will defuse or at least cast a little confusion over any widespread changes in your [lack-of] sales channels. You have a little board room chat and decide that the best thing to do is a pre-emptive strike. By making an announcement like this, you can explain away any reduction in active reseller business and explain an otherwise significant contraction in SCO product stockists with nothing more sinister than an intentional move to reorganise at a distrutor-based model.

OK, this is wild conjecture. I'll also gladly concede that SCO have not said exactly this, or that they are intentionally cutting loose their resellers. However, this announcement does give them a good [at-face-value] explanation to offer for any moderate upheaval in the reseller marketplace.

See, the reason that this is important right now is cashflow. Darl is in a real tight spot. He can't afford for resellers to abandon SCO wholesale. At the same time, he also can't give his few remaining customers the impression that SCO really are on their last legs. Any customer who genuinely believes that SCO have a matter of weeks or months to survive would accelerate their plans to abandon the platform. Hence this strategy of positive talk and intentional changes, even though to our perhaps more cynical and jaded eyes it looks a bit like they're re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: KW on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:36 PM EDT
I suppose they will put their software into some whiteware and they wish some of
the tarnish may wash off...

Kimmow

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 02:59 PM EDT
.. to what problem?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Good old Terian...
Authored by: eggplant37 on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 03:33 PM EDT
Heh... If I had a nickle for every Terian box that I've seen running SCO on
it...

I used to work for a CSV who took on a lot of hardware maintenance service
contracts for a company selling medical and dental software to doctors/dentists
in the Detroit area. Many of those boxes were Terians. Nothing special, pretty
much an average PC with maybe a raid array and tape backup system, standard
commodity hardware. Definitely not Compaq or HP or even IBM goodness but does
the job. Some of those boxes were old, old, old, to the point where the major
cause of failure was dust clogged systems that the end users had neglected to
call in to schedule the preventative maintenance service visits, and I'd take
the calls to replace a fan or power supply. Yee hah!!

[ Reply to This | # ]

What's the fuss? This is nothing at all new.
Authored by: AJG on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 03:35 PM EDT
This is exactly the same as Compaq and several distributors have been doing for
years in conjunction with SCO and then Caldera. The only difference is there
will be no brand name on the box.

The typical SCO reseller is supporting an accounting software or a vertical
market software. Most know little about hardware or the operating system and
don't want to. They have long taken advantage of this sort of deal.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Two things...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 03:48 PM EDT

First, it looks to me like SCOG may be trying to shift to a more services oriented business.

Secondly and more amusing:

Terian Solutions, LLC. "These 'Made for SCO' solutions..."
The quote from the Terian Solutions individual has the "Made for SCO" in quotes. If that term originated at SCOG, they fail the customer services test. Their products should be "Made for the customer".

RS

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: 1N8 M4L1C3 on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 04:04 PM EDT
What this means is that SCOX is changing their business model to the Dell
direct-to-consummer model. Their resellers will still manage their existing
customer base, but now things are going to be more oriented towards
"service". SCO goes from being a product-based company to a
services-based company... ...kinda, sorta sounds like what IBM did a number of
years back me thinks.

What this means is that SCOX is now selling a "turn-key solution" to
their customers. The more customized the solution, the more the customer becomes
"locked in" to SCOX's proprietary solution.

What this means is that SCOX is finally waking up to the fact that HP and IBM
have been eatting away their market share for years. Too little, too late...
...thanks for coming out boys.

Prognosis for SCOX [as an entity]: Eat Healthy, Exercise Regularly... ...Die
Anyways....


---
On the 7th day, Linus saw that which he created and it was good... ...on the
8th day SCO litigated.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Partner Lounge
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 04:06 PM EDT
Appropriate that it's called SCO Partner Lounge, since they're trying to make
sure their resellers don't have much opportunity to any actual work.

-- John Stracke

[ Reply to This | # ]

I just wonder..
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 04:10 PM EDT
...if it's a Blade box?

Tufty

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT Dvorak
Authored by: inode_buddha on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 04:24 PM EDT
Unfortunately, I think Dvorak knows his intended audience very well; therein
lies the problem, IMHO.

---
-inode_buddha
Copyright info in bio

"When we speak of free software,
we are referring to freedom, not price"
-- Richard M. Stallman

[ Reply to This | # ]

Spot on Adverts!!
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 04:25 PM EDT
I had to laugh. When I went to the site to look at the share prices the add that
came up said: "Sick of lawsuits? You should be!" and then went on to
advertise something about the US justice system. It was just so apt I felt like
I was living in a world of targeted ads, google in 10 years time no doubt,
telepathically digging through your mind and delivering ads you really really
want! :-)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Dang. Darl can't even get this right
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 04:41 PM EDT
It's white roll solutions.

Charmin doesn't come in a box.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Means loss of big hardware vendor relays
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 04:45 PM EDT
This announce basically means SCO has lost most of the reseller channel Caldera
bought.

Given most of their current resellers probably make more money on IBM and HP
kit, IBM now loathes SCO and HP finaly got the Proliant+(+Opteron)+Linux
equations this is not surprising.

I'm glad SCO is proving you have to understand something about tech to run a
tech company.

[ Reply to This | # ]

"Translation" from Yahoo
Authored by: ansak on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 05:21 PM EDT
TOO FUNNY! I just laughed myself silly. Too much, just too much.

For those who missed the article, here it is. Higgins from Dublin, thanks! You made me chuckle t'day.

cheers...ank

[ Reply to This | # ]

So why didn't SCO confidently do this so long ago?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 05:48 PM EDT
Was big bad putty-tat Microsoft going to kick your arse if you decided to come
out swinging with a PC solution. Bone heads!

Linux is the resurrection of Unix! Learn something! Some of you big Unix vendors
were dying and now you want to steal the glory of Linux. Lazy good-for-nothing
yahoos. Such a shame to American industry! Linux is now what Unix could have
been years ago!

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: ikocher on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 06:00 PM EDT
I thinik SCO is _trying_ to get to the "security" market out there. Just think on an IT manager, the kind that know pretty nothing but is manager, tipical, hears about a security solution, as this SCO's one:

These servers and appliances can be completely configured based on the customer's software requirements for SCO OpenServer, UnixWare®, SCOoffice Server, Microlite Backup, and VSI/Fax Server. In addition, customers can obtain network monitoring appliances for real-time Web traffic monitoring, spyware protection, Web filtering, and bandwidth optimization. SCO is also offering a Small Office Server for Windows Clients, as well as a dedicated SCOoffice Server for e-mail collaboration, calendaring, contact management and security.


Just think, _a_ solution!!! great!!! It is extremely probable that this manager's company there is someone that can do just this "SCO solution" using something else, but this guy will have to take his time to make it. Many managers are not really aware of all the products that exists. Companies buy stuff because some salesman offered them it.


Ivan

[ Reply to This | # ]

The REAL problem is, there's no real capitalism today.
Authored by: skidrash on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 06:07 PM EDT
Like I wrote in response to the Darl as gambler post, the problem is that Darl
is not playing with his own money.

Darl's a manager, not a businessman. Not a manufacturer or a salesman or
horse-trader.

http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_03/bonner010703pv.html

"Even the very rich CEO's that galled Krugman were only hired guns -not
genuine capitalists. Their extravagant pay levels was testimony not to the
victory of raw capitalism, but to its defeat. Real capitalists would never allow
managers to take so much of THEIR money."


Amazingly, in this view Bonner (a self-avowed Capitalist) has a lot in common
with the author of Voltaire's Bastards, a man commonly mis-labeled as a
communist, John Ralston Saul, who argues that our society is not controlled by
corporate clerical workers & accountants.

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Funny yahoo! ???
Authored by: ikocher on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 06:13 PM EDT
This is not the first company I know of that kicks their partners away and goes
to direct sales.

I think that when a comany acts like that, they just clearly show they don't
know the market, neither their products, either their final customers!

I think that salesmen are sometimes bad, but most of the time are good elements
to have around. They visit customers, keep the link between company and
customer _alive_, monitor what the competition is doing/offering, etc.

Salesmen offer incredible talkback to the company, _they_ know the customer,
read: eat together, party together, etc.

The company just can't afford that, partners can, and do it pretty well.

When companies decide they can do it... well, customers just go away. Not
because they don't like this "strategy", but because competition is
left alone in there.

If the company offers mass market item, like a TV, direct sales is perfect, meas
lowest prices; but when the offering is complex and specialized, direct sales
just confuse the customers, as they don't understand how to get a working
system, pretty explained, understandable, something they are sure about.



Ivan

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Dangerous! SCO Offers White Box Solutions
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 17 2005 @ 08:50 PM EDT
If I buy one of these, will I get sued by SCO? Afterall, isn't this what SCO is
doing with Autozone, etc? They sue their own customers.

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SCO is a slow learner...
Authored by: Night Flyer on Wednesday, May 18 2005 @ 01:05 AM EDT
Since the Linux OS is available at no (or little) cost, one strategy for a
company to stay in the server/OS business is to sell a service and/or hardware
related to the OS.

My reading is that this 'white box' will be sold as a package at a relatively
low price with minimal support from SCO and its resellers. This seems kind of
the opposite strategy. In addition, much of the sales pitch seems to be
directed towards SCO's resellers rather than the end-users:

("...resellers to request specific configurations based on their customer's
software and hardware needs. The white box can then be built and shipped to
customers more quickly and efficiently, saving resellers valuable time in
providing such systems to their customers.")

Putting these two factors together, it seems that SCO didn't learn from its
earlier failures in the Linux marketplace and has failed to learn much of
anything from watching IBM's marketing strategy of linking hardware and support
with Linux.

Quite probably SCO is getting a rather cool reception from its resellers who, in
turn, are being questioned rather knowledgably and sharply by their end-user
UNIX customers (who probably read GROKLAW).

---
--------------
Veritas Vincit - Truth Conquers

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Not a bad program
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 18 2005 @ 02:24 AM EDT
It's actually quite a good strategy for Caldera in 2000. For SCOX in 2005, well,
I'd call it just about useless. It'd probably work better if they were offering
Linux instead of Openserver.

bkd

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How does this affect Novell's payments?
Authored by: BlueSmurf on Wednesday, May 18 2005 @ 03:25 AM EDT
I'm curious if this is might be an endrun around making payments to Novell. According to this Groklaw post Novell Agreement whiteboxes are included in the agreement. But the whiteboxes have a higher royalty payment point, and lower royalty payouts.

Now that SCO will be keeping track (no third party reseller for Novell to cross check with - and the new distributers may be "in" on the plan - as I can't see any sane company wanting to do business with SCO, just for the sheer glee of dealing with a company known to sue its customers), could SCO pull something like put both its own SCO branded software and Unixware on the same box (assuming the user wanted royalty inducing Unixware), and report it (to Novell) as a non-royalty paying SCO sale? (Note: I may not fully understand on which products SCO has to pay royalties vs. not having to pay royalties, so I expect to be corrected.)

We know we don't trust SCO, and I am wondering if maybe this isn't some plan hatched to increase revenue, by decreasing royalty payments.

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Microsoft [et al] Try Patent Breaking...
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 18 2005 @ 07:47 AM EDT
Slashdot is carrying an amazing story about 6 big US companies: Microsoft, HP, Intel, Dell, Apple and Netgear - who are trying to have a patent overturned.

The patent relates to wireless networking, allowed for a 5-fold speed increase, and is charged back to users at $4 a go.

The story is covered by slashdot here.

Isn't it amazing how quickly the story changes. I recall those wonderful public statements that Microsoft made when they purchased licences from SCO to cover "Windows Services for Unix". Something along the lines of "Microsoft strongly supports the use and licensing of patents and intellectual property"

Isn't it interesting how they will strongly support something until it runs contrary to their wishes, at which point they will then turn all their energy to overturning/destroying/buying out whatever stands in their way...

Interesting...

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Not SCOX's choice!
Authored by: Sunny Penguin on Wednesday, May 18 2005 @ 07:54 AM EDT
Everyone is saying "Oh, SCOX is cutting out middlemen"

Remember SCO-speak 101:
This is from resellers leaving SCOX, not SCOX cutting out resellers.
SCOX HAS to sell direct now, all the resellers have already left!


---
Just Say No to Caldera/SCO/USL/?

[ Reply to This | # ]
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