News Briefs, Aug. 23, 2004

NEW HITACHI CHANNEL ORG IN STORE
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The new division is being run by Scott Genereux, a 15-year HDS veteran who was just promoted to senior vice president from his former role as vice president of global marketing. Genereux now reports directly to Dave Roberson, president and COO of the company, and he has a seat on the company's executive committee.

"Partners are asking for the next step, which is how can they do more business with us," Genereux said. "We are really focused on this next step."

Genereux would not specify how much of HDS' business goes through channels, which includes solution providers as well as reseller deals with Sun Microsystems, Gateway, SGI and a number of Asian vendors. However, Roberson has publicly stated a desire to see a 50-50 split between direct and indirect sales.

NETGEAR LOOKS TO FILL ROLE VACATED BY ROBIDOUX
Netgear is narrowing the field of candidates to fill a newly created channel chief position in the wake of president Ray Robidoux's resignation.

Robidoux recently resigned from Netgear to take a top executive position at another company, said Patrick Lo, chairman and CEO of Netgear. On the heels of Robidoux's resignation, David Soares was promoted to senior vice president of worldwide sales and support, Lo said. Soares most recently was vice president of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Soares will be responsible for dealing directly with partners, Lo said. A new channel chief, executive vice president and chief marketing officer will take over as the main architects of Netgear's channel programs.

Lo lauded Robidoux's accomplishments in helping Netgear build its Powershift Partner Program and praised his work with Netgear's product development team. Under Robidoux's leadership, the team worked with partners to develop channel-specific products, such as smart switches, wireless access points and Power over Ethernet switches.

In its most recent quarter, Netgear reported 28 percent revenue growth and second-quarter revenue of $88.4 million, up from $69 million for the same quarter one year ago.

INSTANT GRATIFICATION? JABBER PREPS IM APPLIANCE
Instant messaging vendor Jabber is setting its sights downstream with plans in coming months to launch a new product aimed at SMB customers.

The new offering, likely to debut in the next 60 days, will be an appliance built on Jabber's Extensible Communications Platform (XCP) IM software, targeting customers with fewer than 1,000 employees.

The as-yet-unnamed appliance marks not only Jabber's first attempt at hardware but also its entrance into the SMB market, said Dan Forman, manager of business development at Jabber during an interview at CMP Media's XChange 2004 conference in Chicago last week.

Unlike public IM systems such as those offered by America Online and Microsoft, the appliance will bring secure instant messaging to SMB customers that can be tied in with back-end systems, Forman said.

As Jabber continues to develop the forthcoming product, it is also bolstering its partner ranks and preparing a formal channel program, Forman said. Currently, Jabber's customer base consists primarily of carriers and enterprises such as AT&T, Bell South, FedEx and Lehman Brothers.

TIPPINGPOINT'S NEW DENIAL-OF-SERVICE PROTECTION PLAN
TippingPoint Technologies plans new Denial of Service (DoS) protection for its UnityOne intrusion prevention system.

The new capabilities to be rolled out this week will block a variety of DoS threats, including SYN flood attacks, connection floods, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, packet floods and hard-to-detect attacks originating from spoofed and nonspoofed sources. They are expected to be available to channel partners as an optional feature starting Oct. 1.

Marc Willebeek-LeMair, CEO of TippingPoint, said that with these expanded benefits, the flagship TippingPoint product provides a comprehensive approach to threats of all kinds.

According to Willebeek-LeMair, the new DoS protection will be driven by an adaptive tuning capability that dynamically calibrates thresholds based on an organization's traffic patterns. The system automatically defines values for "normal" traffic based on studies of a network over a period of time. When traffic surges beyond a set percentage of this measure, the anomaly protection capabilities respond to the changes.

IBM UNLEASHES FREE LINUX DEVELOPMENT TOOLKIT
IBM last week released a free development package for Linux based on the Eclipse open-source IDE. The software and tools bundle includes the latest open-source Eclipse software development kit, version 3.0, and the latest IBM Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for Linux.

Using the new software enables developers to quickly and easily build and deploy desktop Linux applications, according to IBM. Research firm IDC projects that Linux will run on 25 million desktops by 2007, creating a growing opportunity for developers to build desktop applications for the open-source platform.

The new Eclipse development package for Linux is available at no charge through developerWorks, IBM's resource for developers, in the Java Zone. A version of the package, including the IBM JRE, is also available for Microsoft Windows.

IN A REVERSAL, NOVELL POSTS $23M IN INCOME FOR ITS 3Q
Novell last week reported revenue of $305 million for its third fiscal quarter ended July 31, up from $283 million for the same period a year ago.

Net income for the quarter came in at $23 million, a significant improvement over the vendor's loss of $12.4 million a year ago.

Jack Messman, chairman and CEO of Novell, was less impressed by his company's sales than he was with the turnaround in net income. "While revenue was not as strong as we would have liked, Novell improved earnings performance for the quarter and nine-month period vs. the same periods last year," Messman said in a statement.

Novell reported revenue of $12 million from its fledgling Suse Linux business. It purchased Suse in November 2003. Of the Linux factor, Messman said, "Novell's transition to growth company status is well under way as we strengthen our products and services in both the Linux and identity management categories. Our Suse Linux business performed well in this quarter and is proving instrumental in positioning Novell as a strategic vendor to large enterprises."

Novell reported that of the sales of subscriptions to Suse Linux Enterprise Server, 12,000 units of the total 19,000 units sold in the quarter went to one customer.