That is the first thing I thought of when I read SCO's latest press release about their business moves in China.

Here's Tim Negris on their hopes and dreams, "Though SCO has long been established in many of the Asian markets for some time, we have focused much of our attention in recent years on many of these higher growth markets including China, India, and Russia. We look forward to working more closely with our employees and country offices to increase our presence in these countries and provide the technology leadership that will help our customers run their businesses for many years to come."

Well, he has to say something, but "technology leadership" seems like a stretch. Unfortunately, life is often a matter of timing, and just last week, IDG was in the news with a report that they described like this in their press release:

2005 saw a steady growth in the China Linux market, brought about mainly by the huge volume of government procurements and large-scale SCO Unix replacement by major banks and industrial projects such as Telecommunication and Internet cafes.

Along with the growing acceptance of Linux in the China market, IDC also noted that Linux servers were adopted for high-end, mission critical support applications in some industries and Linux desktops were able to withstand the competition of pirated Windows to hold its market share. However, it will take some time before the Linux market in China can grow dramatically due to various factors that hinder market development, such as the shortage of talents, and users' comparatively low acceptance towards Linux.

IDC forecasts China's Linux market will grow at a CAGR of 34.0% from 2006 to 2010, and reach USD51.1 million by 2010.

Those of us with a fine-tuned sense of irony will note that SCO's press release highlights its wonderful Open Source capabilities. See what I mean about having to leave a small town to get hitched? In the US, lips curl involuntarily when we read that.

There is also an odd entry on Pacer which I am investigating:

102 - Filed: 04/10/2006
Entered: 04/11/2006

Order
Docket Text: ORDER that Novell may file, under seal, confidential exhibits to its Motion to Stay. Signed by Judge Dale A. Kimball on 4/10/06. (blk,)

On its face, it seems like Novell has filed a Motion to Stay, which certainly is yet another vote of confidence that IBM will wipe the floor for them. But clerks sometimes goof, just like the rest of us, so I'm working on finding out what this is all about, and I'll let you know when I know.

Here's SCO's China press release, so you can keep up with their latest effort to keep the business afloat.

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Company Begins Shipping SCO OpenServer 6 in China as Company Representatives Meet With Media, Analysts, Customers, and Government Officials to Reinforce SCO's Commitment and Plans for Growth in China

BEIJING, April 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO") (Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of UNIX(R) software technology for distributed, embedded and network-based systems, today announced the availability of SCO OpenServer 6 in China and met with government officials, customers, and members of the media to emphasize the company's commitment and future direction for the Chinese market.

"SCO is an important technology provider for China because the company provides the technology infrastructure for running many of China's largest banks and other institutions," said Tim Negris, executive vice president for worldwide sales and marketing, The SCO Group, Inc. "SCO has been the platform of choice for many of these large corporations that service hundreds of millions of customers because of its reliability and performance. SCO is now helping these customers to continue on the SCO UNIX platform with even greater performance, security, and reliability with the introduction of SCO OpenServer 6 in China."

SCO customers in China include such companies as the People's Bank of China, the Bank of China, the China Post, China Life Insurance Company, the Agricultural Bank of China, Shenzhen Development Bank, China Minsheng Banking Corporation and many others. These large banking institutions and other large corporations require a strong platform on which to serve millions of customers every day.

SCO OpenServer 6

SCO OpenServer 6 has been a multi-year, multi-million dollar development effort that has produced a significant upgrade to SCO's flagship UNIX operating system. SCO OpenServer 6 has been designed to provide customers with increased productivity, greater security, more agility through Open Source technologies and protection of customers' investments by providing backward compatibility with existing applications.

SCO OpenServer 6 gives customers increased performance and capabilities with support for large file sizes up to 1 terabyte, increased processing power for up to 32 processors, and up to 16 GB of general purpose memory, while additional memory can be dedicated for special applications, allowing databases to access up to 64 GB of memory. These capabilities, along with the latest UNIX SVR5 kernel, help customers to gain performance advantages, in some cases up to 10 times faster for certain network functions.

SCO OpenServer 6 builds upon its heritage as one of the most secure and reliable operating systems available with the addition of several security enhancements including SSH for remotely logging onto systems using encryption, IP firewall filter for regulating IP traffic and IPsec for virtual private networking. Encrypted file and file system capabilities are also included.

SCO OpenServer 6 is also known as a strong platform for working with many of the popular open source software components that are included in the SCAMP software stack, which uses SCO OpenServer as the foundation for using the Apache web server, MySQL database platform, and Perl and PHP scripting languages. SCO OpenServer 6 also includes other open source components including web browsers, and support for other open source database platforms.

SCO OpenServer 6 provides all of these capabilities while keeping the customer in mind to allow complete backward compatibility for applications that have run on OpenServer for more than a decade.

China IT Growth

The China IT market is expected to see significant growth in the coming years. According to ATIP, a non-profit group that studies technology advancements in Asia, overall annual IT revenue growth in China is expected to average 17% through 2009 (US$285 billion) with even higher growth expected in the small/medium organization market (21%) sub-sector. Eighty percent (80%) of IT sales will come from the Education (8%), Government (14%) and Corporate (59%) sectors.

"While we already have a significant presence in Beijing, SCO is committed to increasing our presence in China and growing our customer base," said Negris. "Though SCO has long been established in many of the Asian markets for some time, we have focused much of our attention in recent years on many of these higher growth markets including China, India, and Russia. We look forward to working more closely with our employees and country offices to increase our presence in these countries and provide the technology leadership that will help our customers run their businesses for many years to come."

About SCO

The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX) is a leading provider of UNIX software technology for distributed, embedded and network-based systems, offering SCO OpenServer for small to medium business, UnixWare for enterprise applications, and Me Inc. for digital network services. SCO's highly innovative and reliable solutions help millions of customers grow their businesses everyday, from SCO OpenServer on main street to UnixWare on Wall Street, and beyond. SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to Unix-based system software providers.

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 http://www.sco.com.

SCO, SCO OpenServer, 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. MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the USA and other countries. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.