Software-Related Issues

Should you re-negotiate your software license agreements now or later?
According to research company Gartner, evolving trends and changes in IT hardware could cause software licensing agreement costs to go up by more than 51 percent over 2005, unless companies renegotiate their existing contracts sooner rather than later. Gartner claims the move to multicore-chip architectures, virtualized hardware and utility computing threatens existing capacity-based, or CPU-based, licensing agreements offered by the major software vendors. Andy Butler, a research director at Gartner, said the software industry is failing to reflect the hardware changes in its licensing policies. "There is some movement on the part of vendors such as BEA and Microsoft to address multicore architectures, but generally there is no word from the software vendors on how to restructure their software licensing," he said. Butler said that conversations with the likes of IBM and Oracle about licensing for virtual machines--where an individual server is partitioned into "virtual" machines--are met with "intransigence and inflexibility." This means software prices could rise by at least 51 percent by 2006. An example of a user upgrading to dual-core chip hardware shows they would pay double the CPU fee, despite only gaining a 50 percent improvement in performance, according to Gartner. Large corporations are likely to have more bargaining power with the software industry than small companies, according to Butler.

Microsoft to launch high-performance Windows
High-performance computing once required massive, expensive, exotic machines from companies such as Cray, but the field is being remade by the arrival of clusters of low-end machines. While the trend could be considered an opportunity for Microsoft, which has long been the leading operating-system company, Linux has actually become the favored software used on these clusters. Now Microsoft has begun its response, forming its High Performance Computing team and planning a new OS version called Windows Server HPC Edition. However, this is interpreted by some as an attack on a Linux stronghold. Kyril Faenov is director of the effort, and Microsoft is hiring new managers, programmers, testers and others. The Redmond, Wash.-based software colossus has its work cut out in the market--and knows it.

MySQL database fixes problem in the open-source community
MySQL, an open-source database company, has taken a step to mend a rift in the open-source world by updating a controversial licensing provision that had broken a close tie between the MySQL database and another software package. The rift divided MySQL and PHP, software that lets computers construct customized Web pages on the fly. The two packages are found side by side.

Amazon first to hire a Chief Algorithms Officer
Amazon has always been a company to watch closely, due to its pioneering success in the tough field of ecommerce, and the way it is progressing in Web services and application development. But now, the company is transforming itself from an online store to a high-tech firm, and is making big waves in the high-technology community. At its nine massive distribution centers from Fernley, Nev., to Bar Hersfeld, Germany, workers scurry around the clock to fill up to 1.7 million orders a day -- picking and packing merchandise, routing it onto conveyors, and shipping the boxes to every corner of the world. Like any retail warehouse running manpower and machinery at full holiday throttle, it's an impressive display. But utterly misleading. The kind of work that will truly determine Amazon's fate is happening in places like the tiny, darkened meeting room at its Seattle headquarters where, one recent afternoon, five intent faces gazed at a projection screen.

Software antitrust case won by Oracle
A federal judge handed Oracle a victory on Thursday, ruling that the company's acquisition of rival PeopleSoft would pose no threat to competition in the corporate software market. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker sided with Oracle against the U.S. Justice Department, which opposes the proposed merger. The agency took Oracle to court in June, charging that a PeopleSoft buyout would empower Oracle to illegally raise prices and would impair innovation in the industry. Oracle argued that it couldn't raise prices with Germany's SAP and a raft of other rivals competing against it. In his 164-page ruling, Walker said, "Plaintiffs have not proved that a post-merger Oracle would have sufficient market share in the product and geographic markets" to be anticompetitive. Walker added, "Plaintiffs have not proved that the product market they allege, high-function (business software) exists as a separate and distinct line of commerce."