SCO Pushes Web Service platform

SCO Group turned on a marketing blitz at its SCO Forum
conference in Las Vegas Monday, hoping to spread the word of advancements
with its SCOx Web services initiative. But at the same time, two of SCO’s
heaviest-hitting announced sponsors seemed to distance themselves from the
event.

SCO pushed forward with SCOx Monday with the release of new components for
the SCOx Application Substrate (SAS), which SCO calls “the foundation for
building next-generation business solutions.”

The new components include SCOx WebFace Solution Suite 4.0, Ericom
PowerTerm Host Publisher, SCOsms Web Services (APIs) and SCObiz Web
services (APIs).

The WebFace Solution Suite consists of WebFace Browser Application Platform
and WebFace Studio, and is intended to ease the task of Web
service-enabling applications and SCO operating system services. PowerTerm
Host Publisher, rolled into SAS through a deal with Ericom, works with
WebFace to offer a tool for legacy migration.

“Earlier this year, we announced our intent to create a technology
framework for integrating Web services into our operating systems — as an
overall growth strategy for our company,” SCO CEO and President Darl
McBride said. “The SCOx initiative is now beginning to take shape as we
work with partners and our own team to assemble integrated components for
SAS.”

SCO also offers support components and toolkits specifically designed for
its OpenServer and UnixWare operating systems, including additions and
updates for Apache and Tomcat, XML parsers, and toolkits for SOAP
programming in C/C++, Java, PHP and Perl.

The company said forthcoming SAS components will address security,
orchestration and encapsulation.

The firm also took the opportunity Monday to announce the release of SCO
Authentication 2.1 for Microsoft Active Directory and UnixWare Office Mail
Server 2.0.

SCO said the new version of SCO Authentication for Microsoft Active
Directory provides updated security, platform support and scalability. It
now supports more than 100,000 users per container within Active Directory,
automatic failover to backup domain controllers, multi-domain support and
time synchronization. Additionally, SCO said the product now supports SCO
OpenServer 5.0.6 and 5.0.7 and SCO UnixWare 7.1.1 to 7.1.3, as well as
Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

The new version of Office Mail Server improves the product’s support for
Microsoft Outlook, utilizing a new version of the Office Mail Connector for
Microsoft Outlook, providing compatibility for sharing email, calendars,
discussion groups, address books and tasks.

While SCO sought to talk up new components for SCOx and the other new
products, both Intel and Hewlett-Packard seem to have downplayed their announced marquee roles at the
conference.

In the seventh issue of its SCO Regional Newsletter for 2003, the company
trumpeted, “Keynote speakers will include CEO Darl McBride as well as
executives from major event sponsors such as HP and Intel. SCO expects up
to 1,000 attendees at this year’s conference.”

But Intel’s name has disappeared from the conference’s sponsor list.
According to eWeek, McBride said that SCO began advertising Intel as
the lead sponsor of the event before the deal was completed, but the deal
fell through. While HP did not sever ties — it still sponsored the Sunday
night welcome reception at the MGM Grand, according to eWeek — the
keynote scheduled for an HP executive was taken over by Maggie Alexander,
vice president of Progress Software.