By William Fellows
Santa Cruz Operation Inc has put its top thinker Ray Anderson in charge of new business opportunities as senior VP of new ventures. It wants to be able to turn on a dime and exploit new internet technologies and other potential revenue sources more quickly than its current ad hoc approach.
Michael Orr, previously with Amdahl – where he negotiated the Sun relationship – and IBM will run worldwide marketing. It should make things easier for SCO as Orr – another Englishman – is based California, while Anderson is based in Cambridge, UK.
Anderson, also a self-confessed zealot when it comes to getting SCO’s share price up, hopes that being able to quickly hang a hat on new technologies will drive up SCO’s identity in the market. Anderson will specifically be looking at additional cross- platform opportunities. The company already has its SCO UnixWare server being used in Compaq’s NeoWare servers for small- and medium-sized business users. The growing appliance server market is one Anderson is currently thinking about how else to address. SCO had previously thought of the small- and medium-sized business market as flat.
Anderson says SCO’s PerkUp technology for running multiple Java applets in a single JVM has already been ported to UnixWare and IBM AIX and what currently exists of Monterey64. It is at JavaOne scoping out the interest in putting it up on Solaris and is still trying to figure out a business model.
SCO next week launches a new 1.4 version of its cross-platform Tarantella software and will announce new relationships with IBM and Deloitte Consulting.
