Unix vendor Santa Cruz Operation's (SCO) brand name is expected to cease to exist in a little over a month, its Server Software and Professional Services divisions having been purchased by Linux vendor Caldera. The Tarantella business will continue under the company name Tarantella.
SCO Africa Country Manager Mark Knight says he is "delighted" with the deal.
According to Knight, SCO has been moving towards the big data centre market, and he believes the combination of Caldera's Linux and SCO's UnixWare will offer the end-user the front end potential of Linux coupled with the back-end scalability of SCO's operating system.
"We have also provided Caldera with a roadmap, which, due to the nature of open source development, no other Linux vendor has."
Knight notes that although SCO does hold shares in Caldera, the fact that a Linux vendor is purchasing a Unix vendor indicates that Unix is "here to stay".
SCO currently has 20 000 servers installed in South Africa. The company says it has already started training its staff for the support of the combined Caldera/SCO product range.
The first two product offerings as a result of the deal will be the Linux Kernel Personality for UnixWare 7 and the Enterprise Support Services, which both fall under the Open Internet Platform (OIP) umbrella. According to the two companies, OIP will provide commercial customers and developers with a single platform that can scale from a thin client through to large data centre clustering. The OIP will be available through more that 15 000 partners worldwide.
Caldera Systems Inc will set up a holding company, Caldera Inc, to acquire assets from the SCO Server Software Division and the SCO Professional Services Division, and will be committed to servicing and supporting the SCO OpenServer customer base.
Ransom Love, current president and CEO of Caldera Systems Inc will become CEO of Caldera Inc. Doug Michels, president and CEO of SCO, will join Caldera's board of directors and will also hold the position as CEO of Tarantella.
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