Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s won a lucrative and much-needed follow-on deal with Lucent Technologies Inc for its UnixWare operating system which will net it $6m to $10m over the next three years. Lucent – which has been using UnixWare products for some year – is to use the system software in voice response and messaging products for retail and banking industries from next year. Lucent is home of Unix creator, Bell Labs. Wall Street obviously liked recent SCO’s cost-cutting, which hit its third quarter numbers yesterday, marking the stock up over a dollar to close at $5.25, its highest for sometime. SCO, billing itself as the world’s 45th largest software company, is hanging its hat on two product streams; its Gemini blend of UnixWare and OpenServer Unixes and the Tarantella Java client technology which will go to beta sites in November and ship in products next February.
