Santa Cruz Operation
Tarantella | |
Revenue | $224 million (peak, 1999) |
---|---|
Number of employees | 1,300 (peak, 1991) |
Website | www |
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (usually known as SCO,
SCO was founded in 1979 by Larry Michels and his son Doug Michels and began as a consulting and Unix porting company. An early involvement with Microsoft led to SCO making a product out of Xenix on Intel-based PCs. The fundamental insight that led to SCO's success was that there was a large market for a standard, "open systems" operating system on commodity microprocessor hardware that would give business applications computing power and throughput that previously was only possible with considerably more expensive minicomputers. SCO built a large community of value-added resellers that would eventually become 15,000 strong and many of its sales to small and medium-sized businesses went through those resellers. This community was exemplified by the annual SCO Forum conference, held in a scenic setting that reflected the company's Santa Cruz culture. SCO also had corporate customers in the replicated sites space, where a SCO-based system was deployed in each of a retail or restaurant chain's stores.
Despite seeing rapid growth in terms of revenues, SCO tended to have high research and development costs and was never consistently profitable either before or after going public in 1993. SCO bought two former Xenix outfits, the
Beginning in the late 1990s, SCO faced increasingly severe competitive pressure, on one side from Microsoft's
Early history
Origin
SCO was founded in 1979 in
As part of this,[10] Michels was involved with a telephony business, TRW Vidar. This was a company, based in Mountain View, California, that TRW had acquired and that was a part of TRW Electronics.[11] TRW Vidar was a pioneer in digital telephone switches,[12] and also an early user of Version 6 Unix in its development environment.[13] Michels felt that TRW as a whole did not understand the rapid change that computers were bringing to businesses or what it had with Vidar – "They thought they were buying a telephony business, they thought that telephony was telephony, but they really were computers. Unless you approached them as being computers, you didn't end up with anything."[10] He then left TRW to do management consulting work,[4] thinking, as he later said, that "if TRW was having so much trouble, it was probably an interesting business [helping companies] go about making these transitions."[10] As a result of this connection, some have considered The Santa Cruz Operation to have been an offshoot of TRW Vidar.[14]
Doug Michels, 25 years old at the time,[4] had graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1976 with a degree from their department of computer and information science.[8] He had then started his own consulting operation, focusing on technical work.[4]
The two saw some commonalities in their consulting endeavors and decided to join forces to reduce overhead.[4] They chose to stay in Santa Cruz both because of the relaxed lifestyle there and because the university would provide a ready supply of technically suitable employees.[15][6] By some sources The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. was incorporated in January 1979.[16] The name came from Larry Michels' time as head of the TRW advanced research group, when the remote outpost had been known as 'the Santa Cruz operation'.[8] The Michelses decided to use that for the name of their new firm,[8] and the name was retained in the years that would follow because it told people where they were coming from.[17]
Unix porting company
Offices for the new firm were established at 500 Chestnut Street in the downtown area of Santa Cruz.[18][17] But as Doug Michels conceded in a 2006 interview, in terms of what they would be doing, "We didn't really have an idea."[19] Pure consulting work held little ongoing appeal,[15] and the notion of helping large businesses manage rapid technological change proved difficult in practice.[10]
However, the Michelses soon became intrigued by the
Moreover, people at SCO realized that since Unix was portable and not controlled by any hardware manufacturer, use of it could allow microprocessor-based system manufacturers to avoid having to develop a proprietary operating system of their own, which they had neither the time nor the expertise to do.[19] Accordingly, the company decided to focus on custom jobs of porting the Unix system and applications that ran on it.[3] Eric S. Raymond, in his book The Art of Unix Programming (which places the start of SCO in 1978), calls SCO the "first Unix company",[20] although Interactive Systems Corporation, which put out the first commercial Unix release (as a base for office automation systems) in 1977, perhaps has a stronger case.[21][22]
The first Unix-based operating system that SCO made is for the
In 1983, SCO made a technically difficult port of Xenix to the unmapped
Somewhat in parallel with that, SCO and Microsoft also developed the
A third target of SCO's Xenix porting work was the
By September 1983, SCO had around 60 employees and was already expanding into a second office, at 1700 Mission Street in Santa Cruz.[17][29] While some of SCO's staff had studied computer science, others were coming from backgrounds in linguistics, sociology, psychology, or business.[17]
Middle history
Growth years with Xenix on Intel
In early 1984, Microsoft and SCO issued a joint announcement about SCO's rights to distribute Xenix within the United States.
In October 1985, SCO announced the availability of Xenix System V for the
There had been considerable skepticism in the industry that Unix could ever establish a successful market position on the PC.
Larry Michels tended to focus on the business aspects of the company while Doug Michels focused on technology facets; together they became recognized as pioneers of the Unix-on-PC industry.[5] Larry Michels was president of SCO and Doug Michels was, as Larry put it, "the number-two person", usually with the title of executive vice-president, but both employees and outside investors were encouraged to treat the two as an indivisible team.[32]
In December 1986, SCO acquired the Software Products Group division of Logica.[33] It became a wholly owned subsidiary, the Santa Cruz Operation Limited, and the basis for SCO's UK operation,[34][19] with its office subsequently being relocated first to Soho[35] and then to Watford outside London.[36] By 1993, almost half of SCO's revenues came from outside North America, and of that, almost half came from the United Kingdom.[37]
In 1987, the company brought out the SCO Xenix 386 Toolkit, which allowed developers to start coding applications and device drivers for the new
By early 1987, SCO had relocated its offices to a building at 400 Encinal Street in an industrial park in the Harvey West area of Santa Cruz[39] (the building had been previously occupied by Intel).[40] As of a year later, SCO employed some 500 people, mostly in Santa Cruz, and had plans to build a new office building there.[15] By early 1991, that new building, 425 Encinal Street, was holding an open house event for prospective employees.[41] The company subsequently established offices in several other buildings in the Harvey West area.[40] These included 324 Encinal Street,[42] 150 Dubois Street,[40] and 100 Pioneer Street.[43]
By the late 1980s, fed by strong computer science program that emphasized Unix design and a robust internship program at SCO, some 50 to 60 percent of SCO employees were UC Santa Cruz graduates.[15][8] SCO now employed some 800 people overall, mostly in its Santa Cruz offices but also in the UK office and in one in Washington, D.C.[8] By early 1989, SCO had sold some 350,000 copies of Xenix in total, mostly through its channel.[8] The company was achieving what the Santa Cruz Sentinel termed "explosive growth".[8]
SCO would subsequently reorient its product on a later technology base.[3] However Xenix comprised the largest installed base of any of the early commercial variants of Unix;[44] it remained a good seller among some customers[45] and SCO releases of Xenix continued until Xenix/386 version 2.3.4 was put out in 1991.[3]
Relations with Microsoft
Microsoft's level of commitment to Xenix was always viewed with some suspicion within the industry.[46] It later became clear that by the mid-1980s, Microsoft was losing interest in Xenix from their own business perspective,[20] both due to the cost of licensing it from AT&T and because MS-DOS was rapidly taking off as a product.[47]
In February 1989, it was announced that Microsoft was taking a minority investment in SCO by buying an amount less than 20 percent of that company.[48] The terms of the agreement, which were not publicly disclosed,[8] provided SCO with funds that it acutely needed in order to continue to expand in its rapidly growing market.[49] The deal put a Microsoft executive on SCO's board of directors;[6] that executive, Microsoft's chief financial officer Frank Gaudette, would play an important role in guiding SCO to become a mature enterprise.[50] The deal contained provisions to prevent Microsoft from exercising dominant control over the smaller SCO.[6] By some accounts, the Microsoft board member often had to be asked to leave discussions when the topic became how SCO could best compete with Microsoft.[51] Already on the board since 1987 was another Microsoft veteran, Jim Harris,[50] who had been a leader of Microsoft's OEM sales efforts.[52]
"We had a very long relationship with Microsoft. We were partners, we were competitors, they invested in us, at one point they owned [around 20 percent] of the company, we licensed technology from them, we had lawsuits with them, we had every type of relationship with Microsoft you can imagine."
—Doug Michels, 2012.[53]
Microsoft's motivation for the purchase has been variously explained as a desire to keep a Xenix technology partner,[49] as a hedge against the growth of Unix,[6] and as a hedge against the Open Software Foundation.[47] Yet another explanation was the one given by Larry Michels in 1991, making reference to the SCO Unix product then being sold: "The paradox is if you were Microsoft, Open Desktop isn't something you want to see succeed. But if it doesn't, something else will, and they would rather see Open Desktop than whatever that would be. We pay them royalties."[6]
Later figures stating the amount that Microsoft actually owned included 16 percent,[37][47] 14 percent,[54] and 11 percent.[55] Microsoft did not fully exit its position in SCO until 2000.[47]
In any case, intellectual property rights were not transferred in the 1989 agreement and SCO would continue to pay Microsoft royalties for Xenix and Unix technologies.[6] Not until 1997 was SCO able to reach an agreement with Microsoft that relieved SCO of the obligation to include Microsoft code, and pay royalties on that code regardless of whether it was used or not, in SCO products.[55] And that only came after SCO filed a complaint against Microsoft for violating European Union competition law, a complaint that was ruled valid by the European Commission.[56]
SCO UNIX and Open Desktop
Needing to create a product from a more recent branch from the Unix family tree, Unix System V Release 3, SCO, together with Microsoft and Interactive Systems Corporation, worked during 1987 and 1988 to develop the System V/386 Release 3.2 version, which adds the ability to run existing Xenix binary applications on System V without requiring recompilation.[3][44] This capability makes use of the new Intel Binary Compatibility Standard (iBCS), developed by Intel, AT&T, and SCO.[57] The AT&T release of System V/386 Release 3.2 was announced at SCO Forum in 1988, but further work was needed by SCO to incorporate Xenix device drivers before SCO could release it as a product.[58]
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
In early 1990, the integrated product
SCO used technology partners for much of this work. The graphical desktop itself is the
Version 3.2.2 of SCO Unix and Open Desktop came out in mid-1990; it contains various fixes and improvements for problems found in the field.[45] However, Open Desktop did not make inroads on the personal computer market, as SCO Unix's system resource requirements were strenuous and there were few commonly used PC applications available for it.[64]
Beginning in the late 1980s, AT&T and
Initially supplemented by some engineers who transferred from SCO's headquarters operation in Santa Cruz,
SCO acquired the Toronto, Canada-based HCR Corporation in 1990.[70] Since their interactions in the early Xenix days, HCR had become Canada's leading commercial Unix platform developer.[71] The HCR acquisition allowed SCO to improve its development tools offerings, especially for Open Desktop.[72] SCO Canada took over work on the Microsoft C compiler that dates back to Xenix days but can produce binaries for either Xenix or Unix. In addition, the SCO Open Desktop Development System also offers the AT&T pcc compiler,[73] here called rcc, but it can only compile for Unix.[74] SCO Canada continued to sell HCR's Cfront-based C++ product, which by 1991 had an estimated 450 licensed sites using it.[75] The Toronto site also took on some porting and integration work.[76]
SCO had a large technical publications operation at this time, with substantial staffing in each of the Santa Cruz, Toronto, and Watford offices, who as a group published on the order of 30,000 pages of documentation on a 18-month release cycle.
Collectively, Xenix and SCO UNIX became the most installed flavor of Unix due to the popularity of the
The primary market segment for SCO Unix was small businesses, such as real estate offices or florists to take two examples, where specialized dealers who were familiar with a particular application domain built or assembled customized software for that domain and then sold that as a turnkey solution to the business.
SCO capitalized on the increasingly prevalent "open systems" movement of the time, which held that a combination of interoperability, portability, and open software standards should result in computer users should not being locked into any one computer company's product.[6][4][80] Moreover, Doug Michels became an effective and convincing advocate for the open systems idea.[6] The premise in SCO's case was that an industry standard operating system for industry standard hardware – capable of handling the kind of multi-tasking, multi-user workload that MS-DOS could not – would give customers a compelling offering that previously was thought only possible with considerably more expensive minicomputers.[6][4] By early 1991, The New York Times was publishing a profile of SCO based around the notion that it might become "the next Microsoft".[6]
Applications and SCO Office Portfolio
While SCO operating systems were often the basis of vertical market software offerings by others,[81] SCO had long desired to create additional horizontal market software applications for its operating system product as part of further popularizing it.[60] Thus SCO had provided some basic applications with Xenix, including database, graphics, a word processor, and a spreadsheet.[15]
In 1988, these applications were bundled together as part of an offering known as SCO Office Portfolio, which serves as an integrated environment for office automation on Xenix, SCO Unix, and SCO Open Desktop.
Linking them together was the SCO Manager, which has a character-based but multi-windowed interface.[87] It provides desktop tools such as mail, calendaring, and chat; an expandable menu system; and a clipboard mechanism for transmitting information between applications.[83][84] The system administration interface for SCO Unix itself also adopted the Portfolio Manager interface.[88]
Early 1990 also saw the release of Microsoft Word version 5.0 for Xenix and SCO Unix, which was also available as part of SCO Office Portfolio.[89] It has functionality equivalent to Word for DOS,[89] and was marketed to government agencies and other organizations running multiuser office systems.[90] This was followed in early 1991 by Word 5.1 for SCO Unix, which has graphical user interface support.[91] As part of adapting Word to Unix, SCO made various enhancements for multiuser support and workgroup-related features.[91]
SCO had visions of selling its applications on platforms other than its own. In late 1988, SCO and Sun Microsystems announced that SCO Office Portfolio would be ported to
One of the offerings in the SCO Office Portfolio was SCO FoxBase+, a version of
In the end, SCO had neither the market share nor the sales ability to compete on applications with the major players in that area such as Microsoft and Lotus.[54] Accordingly, staffing level and expenses for application work were sharply reduced in 1991,[60] and again in 1993–94.[54] The final version of Microsoft Word for SCO Unix, for instance, was 5.1.1; it was eventually withdrawn as a product by SCO in 1996.[96]
ACE and near insolvency
Besides Microsoft, venture capitalists owned about 20 percent of SCO by 1991, meaning that the Michelses owned a majority of the company,
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, analysts said that, given its revenue SCO should be more profitable than it was.[49] Indeed, SCO had never been able to show profits on a consistent basis;[60] through the end of fiscal 1991 SCO had accumulated a total loss of $31 million over its entire existence.[37] SCO had high staffing levels, with for instance the $106 million revenue for 1990 going along with 1,300 employees, which was twice the level a typical software company of its era would have had.[6] One analyst said that SCO "is run like a university, a family-run university, not a company."[6] Commenting on the company's efforts to write applications for Unix themselves, another analyst said "It's a company that attacks in all directions."[60] In part due to this kind of criticism, the Michelses said in late 1990 that they saw significant downsides to going public and preferred to remain private.[6][4] One former employee recalled that Larry Michels "ran SCO like it was a downhill skier racing out of control. He liked to think the company was literally like that – the fastest guy was always a little bit out of control. SCO was always a little out of control."[5]
The late 1980s saw considerable interest in
In April 1991, the Advanced Computing Environment initiative was announced.[97] There were a number of companies involved, but in term of the major players, it consisted of Compaq, Microsoft, MIPS Computer Systems, DEC and the Santa Cruz Operation.[98] It had the goal of building the next generation commodity computing platform around the MIPS processor.[97] Microsoft's role was to supply a version of OS/2 for the processor[97] (this OS/2 version would become the basis of Windows NT).[98] SCO's job was to supply the Unix operating system for the processor.[97] The work consisted of taking DEC's OSF/1 variant of Unix as one starting point, SCO's Open Desktop as another, and adding in elements of DEC's previous Ultrix flavor, to produce a Unix for the ACE platform.[99] SCO created a top-level business unit within the company to focus on the ACE work and the expected market resulting from it.[100]
But almost from the beginning, the ACE consortium was challenged by the difficulty of large, powerful companies with disparate interests working together; one German executive from a non-member company called ACE an "eier-legende Wollmilchsau" (egg-laying woolen milk pig).[101] By November 1991, SCO's work was reported as six months behind schedule.[102] At the same time, indications were reported in trade media, the business press, and the general press that the ACE project as a whole was in trouble.[102][60][103] In April 1992, a year after the start, the project fell apart; SCO publicly acknowledged that it had abandoned work on the Unix for MIPS and had withdrawn from the consortium, no longer confident that the project would succeed or was even necessary given improvements in CISC processor speed from Intel.[104][80] Compaq withdrew as well, and MIPS Computer Systems was in the middle of being bought out.[104] Only some of the heavy engineering expenditures that SCO had spent on ACE were recoverable; Larry Michels said, "We learned a lot out of ACE. We learned the hard way."[80]
"We knew how to code, we knew how to market and sell, and we knew how to party. We were growing like crazy and didn't know quite when to stop."
—Doug Michels in 2012, reflecting upon SCO's history.[105]
As a whole during this period, SCO's expenses were too high and the company was undercapitalized.[4] And by several accounts, during 1991 the company came close to becoming bankrupt.[4][54] The year saw a large-scale reduction in staffing levels from that peak of 1,300 – with around 12 percent of the workforce being let go across two rounds of layoffs – together with a company-wide reorganization that involved new managers being brought in from other technology companies.[60][80][37] Especially targeted for elimination were the projects to build applications for Unix.[60]
Following these changes, SCO showed a profit during its fiscal 1992 and the first half of its fiscal 1993.[37]
In 1992,
Going public
By the summer of 1992, it was clear that SCO was intending to go public in the near future, and a number of investment bankers, brokers, and analysts attended that year's SCO Forum conference with that possibility in mind.[80] Larry Michels now viewed becoming a public company as crucial, as it would give SCO greater access to investment capital and because it would make SCO a more credible vendor to large corporations.[80] There was also a desire to let employees benefit from the stock options they held.[37] At the same time, Michels had become prominent in the local business scene in Santa Cruz County,[109] arguing that the area had to be more aggressive about fostering economic development.[80][110] At one point he asked SCO employees to attend a public hearing in support of a controversial plan for an outlet mall in which he was an investor.[80][110] He was also a sponsor of several charitable events and philanthropies in the Santa Cruz area.[109]
On December 5, 1992, the
When asked for his reaction by a reporter, Michels denied the allegations in the suit and said, "Did it say I raped anybody? Did it say I pinned anybody down?"[114] In response to the accusations hugging and kissing the women against their will at work, Michels said, "How serious a crime is that?"[114] And asked if he regretted any of his actions, he said "I certainly regret that I hired those three girls."[110] On December 15, a fourth-named former executive secretary joined the lawsuit, saying among other allegations that Michels had taken her to a remote wooded property he owned and tried to force himself on her and that she ran away for fear of being raped.[112] Public attention to sexual harassment had increased following the previous year's Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings,[109] and complaints had been filed with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing against other high-level male executives at SCO as well.[115] On December 16 the board of directors of SCO announced that it had appointment one of its members, Jim Harris, to investigate the situation at SCO and that the board was "extremely distressed by the recent allegations made against the company and its president."[115]
On December 21, 1992, less than three weeks after initial lawsuit was filed, Larry Michels resigned as chief executive of SCO.[116] Harris became interim president of the company.[117] The rapid sequence of events triggered what the Santa Cruz Sentinel termed a period of "internal turmoil and depression" within the organization.[117]
A month later, Lars Turndal took over as president and chief executive officer of SCO.[117] Turndal, originally from Sweden, had overseen the large growth in SCO's European operation over the preceding six years.[54] Harris became chairman of the board, while Doug Michels remained executive vice president and also became chief technical officer.[117] Programs begun by Harris, and continued by Turndal, sought to introduce to the company externally-provided classes in cultural sensitivity and to establish an internal diversity council.[117]
In early April 1993, the sexual harassment suit was settled out of court,
The
The firm's initial stretch as a public company was difficult.[50][54] Two important board members, Harris and Microsoft's Gaudette, died during 1993,[50][54] with Turndal succeeding Harris as chairman.[123] By year's end the stock price was around 61⁄8, or half what it had started at.[50]
The transitions of this period marked the change in SCO from being an entrepreneur-driven company to one driven by the need to behave in a more business-like manner and show steady profits.[117][54][123] Turndal further jettisoned unprofitable applications and focused on SCO's core Unix business as well as middleware additions to strengthen the platform.[54] In December 1994, Turndal was made chair of the board as well as CEO, while Alok Mohan was elevated to president and chief operating officer.[124]
With its first release in mid-1993, Microsoft's server operating system Windows NT became a looming threat to the Unix-on-Intel market.[37][121] SCO had even more commercial competitors in the Unix-on-Intel space, including NCR, IBM, Sequent, SunSoft's Solaris, and Novell's UnixWare, and each of these is based on SVR4.[21] SCO was the only Unix-on-Intel vendor basing their product on SVR3.2.[21] But there were many applications available for OpenServer,[21] in part the result of SCO having forged many partnerships with other computer companies.[44] Over half of all SCO sales were through VARs, who typically used SCO as the basis for an end-user application and then bundled the hardware, operating system, and application as a turnkey solution.[107]
By the mid-1990s, SCO Unix in all its product releases had an installed base of a million systems sold.[44] SCO OpenServer had a foothold in the corporate world as well; the 1997 edition of the book UNIX Unleashed wrote that "It is very popular among corporate internets/intranets and has been for many years."[21] The book added that "Its technical support cannot be matched, which is why many corporations choose this commercial OS as their server OS of choice."[21]
PizzaNet, SCO Global Access, first Internet concert
SCO also recognized the importance of the Internet. In August 1994, SCO and Pizza Hut announced PizzaNet, a pilot program in the Santa Cruz area that allowed consumers to use their own computer to order pizza delivery from a local Pizza Hut restaurant, with connection being made over the Internet to a central Pizza Hut server in Wichita, Kansas.[125][126] The PizzaNet application software was developed by SCO's Professional Services group.[127]
PizzaNet was based on the first commercially licensed and bundled Internet operating system, SCO Global Access.[127] SCO was the first commercial Unix system supplier to license the powerful NCSA Mosaic hypertext browser and NCSA HTTPd, and the first to ship these technologies from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign bundled with an operating system for commercial use.[128]
On August 23, 1994, SCO broadcast a live music concert from the UC Santa Cruz's Cowell Courtyard. This event, part of SCO Forum 1994, is said to be the first time a scheduled live music concert was broadcast over the Internet; it was sent over both the Mbone and the emerging World Wide Web.[129][130][131][132] The band was Deth Specula, a group composed of SCO employees.[133] Their first song parodied Grand Funk Railroad's "We're an American Band". Deth Specula sang "We Are an Internet Band" with lyrics like:
- We're comin' to your town
- To bring your network down
- We are an Internet band.
"Everest"
The next big product release from the company was code-named "Everest".
Another major new feature of Everest is the SCOadmin system administration tool, with both graphical and command-line interfaces,[136] and software upgrades that can be run either locally or remotely.[137] The existence of an administration framework and GUI was considered by InfoWorld writer Jason Pontin to be important in competing with the user-friendly qualities of Windows NT.[137]
Everest was released as SCO OpenServer Release 5.[3] The release was celebrated with a corporate event at the Hudson Theatre in New York City on May 9, 1995.[134] The location was chosen in part to give the product an East Coast corporate veneer rather than a West Coast laid-back one.[135] As part of the release publicity, SCO emphasized they had settled on competing in the server market and had halted any attempt to compete with Windows in the desktop client market.[135]
Industry analysts were generally impressed with OpenServer.[135] Testers of beta releases of the product, including Taco Bell which was deploying OpenServer to each of its 4,000 stores, were impressed by its reliability.[138]
Although parts of the
One project which sought to improve OpenServer's technology base was code-named "MK2".
Through several changes of corporate ownership, SCO OpenServer 5 would remain a supported product into the 2020s.[150]
On July 1, 1995, Lars Turndal retired and Alok Mohan became the company's CEO.[151] Mohan's background was in corporate finance and strategic planning with AT&T Global Information Solutions.[151] The equities market immediately reflected changes in SCO financial statements: When customers spent more time evaluating OpenServer 5 rather than buying it during the first quarter it was available, SCO missed its forecasted earnings and SCO stock lost a quarter of its value.[152]
Client Integration Division
In February 1993, SCO acquired IXI Limited, a software company in Cambridge, UK, best known for its X.desktop product, which formed the graphical basis of Open Desktop.[153] In December 1994, SCO bought Visionware, of Leeds, UK, developers of XVision.[154] The roles of the two companies were different but complementary, as one former SCO UK employee has succinctly summarised: "IXI specialised in software that ran on Unix and made Unix easier to use. ... Visionware specialised in software that ran on Windows that made Unix easier to use."[155]
In 1995, SCO combined the two development teams to form the
These acquisitions were part of SCO acknowledging that it did not want to compete with Microsoft on the desktop, but rather wanted to put forward a Windows-friendly product strategy.[50][54] It also fit SCO's idea of the client–server model of computing, where SCO would offer connectivity and middleware components to support Windows clients talking to SCO servers.[157]
In May 1997, the Client Integration Division released the Vision97 family of products: XVision Eclipse (a PC
The Client Integration Division was relatively independent of the rest of SCO, for reasons both technical and organizational. It ported its code to all major Unix platforms, including those of SCO's competitors.[159][155] It operated its own web site for some time.[42] The SCO Unix channel-based sales model did not work well for the Vision products,[160] and the client division had its own sales force.[155] This was illustrated by SCO having two different subsidiaries in Japan: Nihon SCO, which dealt with the operating system products and services, and SCO K.K., a joint venture which handled the Vision product line.[161]
Later history
The Novell–SCO–HP deal of 1995
Novell's 1993 acquisition of Unix System Laboratories had never really worked out,[162] and by late summer 1995 Novell was looking for a way out of the Unix business.[163] On September 20, 1995, Novell announced the sale of that business to SCO, coincident with a licensing arrangement with Hewlett-Packard.[164] As part of the deal, SCO said that it would merge the SVR4.2-based UnixWare with the SVR3.2-based OpenServer, creating a new merged product code-named "Gemini".[164][165] Gemini would then be sold through SCO's channel and reseller operation.[164] SCO and HP also said that they would co-develop a next-generation, 64-bit version of Unix for use with "Merced", the code name for HP and Intel's upcoming 64-bit architecture.[166] Some 400 Novell software engineers had been working on UnixWare, mostly in an office in Florham Park, New Jersey; almost all of these engineers joined either SCO or HP[164][166] (about a year later, the SCO part relocated to offices in Murray Hill, New Jersey). The part of the deal between Novell and SCO closed on December 6, 1995.[1]
As Doug Michels later reflected in 2006, SCO seized on the idea of buying the Unix business from Novell for three reasons: "for one, we got all the talent from Bell Labs that had created Unix; two, we got the moral authority around Unix; and three, we got rid of all the crazy historical licensing problems" dating from Unix's origins within AT&T.[19] In order to reduce the price to SCO, part of the deal was that SCO agreed to pay a royalty stream back to Novell of UnixWare sales.[19]
By December 1995, there were already some indications that the three-way arrangement was not working out as had been initially advertised.[165] The computer industry was not sure that SCO could handle being the primary Unix shepherd.[163] The HP project, code-named "White Box", focused on making a hybrid environment out of the SRV4.2-based Gemini and the SVR3.2-based HP-UX, but that effort faced major technical hurdles.[165]
"White Box" became the 3DA effort, the purpose of which was to unify OpenServer, UnixWare, and HP-UX in some way to produce a resulting product would then become the de facto Unix standard for both existing IA-32 systems and the upcoming IA-64.[167] The effort was motivated in part by threat of Windows NT threat taking advantage of splits among Unix providers when 64-bit systems arrived in common use.[168] By August 1996, HP and SCO were delivering application programming interface (API) specifications to various OEMs and ISVs, as well as doing a best-of-breed technology analysis to determine whether Gemini or HP-UX would be the going-forward source base for a given component.[169] Both companies were also doing porting work to Merced using the early-version compilers available.[169]
The effort was still in theory going in early 1997, when HP and SCO were to publish the "Lodi" set of common programming interfaces for a 64-bit Unix incorporating elements of OpenServer, UnixWare, and HP-UX.[168] But little progress had been made on actual implementation, with sources for only a few components having been exchanged by the two companies.[170] The collaboration failed for both business reasons – HP and SCO had differing perceptions of the marketplace – and technical ones – an inability to produce a common binary Unix-for-Intel product that could run existing applications from both companies' user bases.[170] Primary among the technical obstacles were endianness considerations.[171]
As an )
"Gemini" and the UDK
Meanwhile, SCO focused on "Gemini", the task of combining the OpenServer and UnixWare product lines on 32-bit systems. The fundamental idea behind the Gemini was that SCO could merge OpenServer 5 and UnixWare 2 in a way that would satisfy the requirements of both small businesses and large enterprises and thus keep the existing customer base that SCO had with OpenServer while entering the enterprise space with UnixWare.[173]
One consequence of the UnixWare acquisition was that the New Jersey office of Novell had a languages and development tools group with more advanced technology than what SCO Canada had been working with, including a C++ compiler based upon the Edison Design Group front-end,[174][175] and that made the SCO Canada engineering staff largely redundant once the Novell deal was closed. As a result, the Toronto office was shut down in early 1996.[176]
What the New Jersey group produced was the Universal Development Kit (UDK),[174] which was a key element in the question of how to help OpenServer users to make the move to Gemini.[177] With the UDK, a single build of a single version of an application's source code could produce binaries that would run unaltered on all three of SCO's platforms: UnixWare 2, OpenServer 5, and the upcoming Gemini.[178] [175] The UDK featured more modern C and C++ compilers and other tools compared to what OpenServer had, and included platform-specific optimizations for things such as C++ exception handling.[174] The hope was that existing OpenServer developers would switch to using the UDK and thereby get an easy path towards migrating to Gemini.[177]
Support for the new
Initially, SCO had made a strong push for Gemini among the SCO user base; the August 1996 instance of the annual SCO Forum conference dedicated an extra two days to a series of "Gemini Fast-Track" sessions.[182] But by a year later, SCO had decided it would not push the migration that quickly, although it still expected that within two or three years all users would migrate.[177] One SCO executive said, "We mustn't disenfranchise the OpenServer path ... those guys [SCO resellers] are our lifeblood" and recalled that a few years earlier, SCO resellers had continued to sell Xenix-based systems even after SCO had stopped development work on Xenix.[177]
When released as a product, Gemini was called UnixWare 7;[173] the "7" was picked to reflect the summed merge of OpenServer 5 and UnixWare 2.[183] SCO referred to UnixWare 7 as being based on an SVR5 kernel,[184] indicating a significant jump over the existing SVR4.2, although the SVR5 designation was not picked up by the Unix world at large.[44] UnixWare 7 was announced in March 1998 at an event in New York.[185]
SCO committed itself to still maintaining and improving the OpenServer product for a couple of years, but made clear that it would never be expanded to
"Big E" and DCAP
SCO management was intent on selling UnixWare through OEM deals with hardware manufacturers aiming at the enterprise market, and towards this end in 1996 they announced the "Big E" initiative that would standardize UnixWare as the operating system on these systems and that would attract independent software vendors to make their products available on such systems.
In February 1998, SCO announced the creation of the Data Center Acceleration Program (DCAP), which sought to add features related to reliability, availability, and scalability to UnixWare 7 in order to make it fully suitable for high-end, Intel-based systems deployed in
A year later, at the CeBIT show in March 1999, SCO announced the release of UnixWare 7, Data Center Edition, as the product of the DCAP effort.[190] In addition to the sponsoring companies, IBM and Sequent both said they would offer the data center edition on their servers.[190] In terms of high availability figures, the data center edition promised 99.99% availability ("four nines") at the time of release, with 99.995% ("four and a half nines") to arrive by 2000.[192] Another avenue towards capturing space in the enterprise was work that SCO did in conjunction with Compaq and Tandem towards the 1998 release of UnixWare NonStop Clusters.[193]
The data center release came out at the same time as UnixWare 7.1 release, which offers six different edition bundles in all.[184] A review in InfoWorld said that "UnixWare 7 is the sturdiest and most feature-rich Unix ever ported to Intel processors" and added that, especially with the addition of the webtop interface, the 7.1 release was equal in polish to Windows NT.[184] UnixWare 7.1 started seeing some strong sales.[187]
Through several changes of corporate ownership, UnixWare 7 would remain a supported product into the 2020s.[194]
Another multi-company initiative that SCO led was the Uniform Driver Interface project (UDI), which sought to establish an OS-neutral and platform-neutral portable interface for writing device drivers.[195] The UDI project had the backing of Intel, HP, IBM, Compaq, Sun, and others, as well as the involvement of independent hardware vendors such as Adaptec.[196] UDI details were heavily discussed at the 1999 edition of SCO Forum;[197] and UDI materialized in SCO operating systems with later UnixWare 7 and OpenServer 5 releases.[198]
Tarantella product
October 1997 saw the first release of a new product from the Client Integration Division.
Later version 1.x releases support more application types, such as
A rebranding to Tarantella Enterprise II took place in late 1999.
Significant revenue from Tarantella did not happen during the 1990s, as it had a
SCO were pioneers in the notion of a web desktop, or webtop. This was also central to the idea of how Tarantella presents applications to a user. This was integrated with Tarantella to provide a UnixWare 7 webtop in 1999 which organizes access to UnixWare and its applications via any Java-enabled web browser.[204] To some industry reviewers, the OS webtop was a compelling feature.[184]
Customers and financial state
Between 1996 and 1997, SCO's share of the Unix systems sold rose from 36 percent to 40 percent.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
The company did not have good financial results during this time.[210] By 1997, there were few independent operating system vendors left in the industry other than SCO.[55] Being a software-only company whose revenue was only around the $200 million mark left SCO with marginal resources to compete with Unixes from the big RISC vendors like Digital, HP, and Sun.[191] Engineering costs were high,[160] as UnixWare 7 and Tarantella each resulted from two years of research and development activity.[210] During 1997 there were some reductions in staff and closing of regional offices.[210]
In April 1998, Doug Michels was named as president and CEO of the company, with Alok Mohan becoming chairman of the board.[211] Michels said that he never aimed to become CEO, preferring to remain more technology-focused, but that he had always had a lot of visibility into the CEO role and was "obviously very emotionally and intellectually attached to the company" and its stakeholders.[211]
One of Michels' first actions was to oversee a switch to electronic software licensing for SCO's products.[212] The third quarter of fiscal 1997 had included a $23 million charge for reduction in channel inventory,[210] and Michels said he was determined to eliminate issues related to the size of physical inventory.[212] He stated that, "SCO believes electronic licensing and distribution of products will be a standard for the industry."[212] The channel inventory was emptied by July 1998 and the new electronic licensing was in effect the following month for a new point release of OpenServer 5, the product that was still accounting for some 80 percent of SCO's Unix revenues.[213]
"Monterey"
During the mid- to late 1990s, many in the computer industry believed that Intel's under-development 64-bit architecture, known as
The core idea of
Along the way, there would be stages of earlier deliverables.[218] IBM pledged as part of the deal to make UnixWare 7 its Unix of choice for high volume IA-32 systems and to devote considerable efforts towards selling UnixWare 7 through its sales and marketing mechanisms.[217] This would be aided by IBM including its middleware and some AIX technology into 32-bit UnixWare, and conversely some UnixWare technology would be incorporated into future versions of AIX.[219][218] IBM would gain access to SCO's experience with Unix on Intel as well as access to SCO's reseller channel.[205]
Part of the motivation for Monterey was another attempt by Unix vendors to show a clear advantage for Unix in the high-end enterprise space against Microsoft's latest NT offering, now being branded as Windows 2000 and scheduled to be available for Merced as well.[205][218] Towards that end, Intel said they would create a multi-million dollar fund for ISVs to develop for the 64-bit Monterey.[218][220] InfoWorld stated that IBM had "stunned the industry" with the move,[219] in part because IBM was playing catch-up in the Merced space.[220]
The project was announced by the involved companies on October 26, 1998, in New York.[217] An IBM executive said, "IBM is totally committed to making this effort a success."[220] One SCO executive said that Monterey was "probably the biggest deal SCO has done."[201]
But not every industry observer was enthusiastic; the story about the deal in
However, as 2000 began, things were changing at IBM, as there was a corporate-wide strategic initiative to get behind the open-source Linux operating system.[214] A few months later IBM released a major upgrade to AIX, but instead of it being associated with Monterey, it was called AIX 5L with the 'L' indicating an affinity for Linux.[214] It was clear to industry observers that IBM considered Monterey to be over with.[222] IBM's decision to shelve Monterey left the SCO product line without a 64-bit Unix solution.[207] Itanium was further delayed, and when it did come out, it failed to succeed in the marketplace; so Project Monterey was a failure from multiple perspectives.[214]
Y2K surge and recede
The
During 1998 and 1999, much of the computer industry, including SCO, was focused on dealing with the
In October 1999, the company announced record earnings for a quarter and a year and its highest yearly revenue mark at $224 million.[224] The results broke a four-year streak of SCO losing money.[187] The company also had the best cash position in its history, with some $62 million in that form or in short-term investments.[201] As a result, its stock price rose to a new high of 1415⁄16.[224] Michels expressed optimism, saying the year was "a turning point" and "the beginning of very strong ongoing business."[187]
"The growth spurt was fake, and the reality of it was we were stealing from our future. After Y2K, sales dropped like a rock. Customers were done upgrading. We had to cut staff. The stock dropped."
—Doug Michels in 2012, reflecting upon part of what led to the end for the Santa Cruz Operation.[105]
The stock's biggest surge happened in mid-December 1999, when Steve Harmon, an influential analyst covering technology companies, went on CNBC and included SCO on his list of ten stock picks for 2000.[201] The stock promptly jumped by 7 points,[201] and in late December 1999 the stock reached an all-time high of 357⁄8.[227]
SCO's value was seen in having a solid core business with earnings and revenue; in having some kind of Linux play; and in having a new-technology, Internet-capitalizing product in Tarantella.
But the Y2K-based splurge would not last.
Fundamentally, SCO was doing battle on one hand in a commercial software world increasingly dominated by Microsoft and on the other hand in a world where open source Linux was undermining commercial software itself.[228] These two factors made constantly pleasing Wall Street investors with double-digit growth figures an imposing task.[229] In particular, Linux posed an existential threat to SCO OpenServer's low-end marketshare;[230] as one analyst said, "Linux can give you the same value proposition [as SCO] – a Unix on cheap hardware – for less money."[231] And despite all the efforts, UnixWare had not been fully successful in competing in the high-end market,[231] and now Linux was threatening UnixWare's share of that as well.[230] As a result, by mid-2000, SCO's market position, and the company itself, was rapidly collapsing.[228][232]
Final history
Asset sale and change of name
In March 2000, at the time of the first announced earnings shortfall, SCO had reorganized into three divisions: Server Software, Professional Services, and Tarantella.
On August 2, 2000, following several months of negotiations, SCO announced that it would sell its Server Software and Services Divisions, including UnixWare, to the Linux company
The idea of the purchase from Caldera Systems' perspective is that it would gain access to SCO's large VAR channel; the value of such channels was well known to former Novell chief
SCO was much the bigger company, with 900 employees at that point to Caldera Systems' 120.[235] Throughout the year there had been layoffs from SCO,[228] including the shutting down of the Watford development office.[69] In addition a number of longtime SCO employees chose to leave the company.[228] An especially large layoff took place in September 2000, soon after the Caldera Systems announcement, when 190 employees were let go, comprising 19 percent of the company's workforce.[232] This layoff included 40 employees in Santa Cruz itself.[228]
The SCO acquisition was originally scheduled to close in October 2000,[234] but got delayed due to concerns from the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the details of the merger.[236] However, the two companies' support organizations did get combined during this time.[236] In addition, there was confusion among the SCO customer base about the fate of OpenServer.[237] So in February 2001, the deal was renegotiated to include OpenServer in what was sold to Caldera Systems, although a percentage of OpenServer revenue would still go back to SCO. The monetary terms of the deal were adjusted as well, with Caldera Systems paying SCO more cash than in the original agreement.[237]
Finally on May 7, 2001, SCO completed the sale of its Server Software and Services Divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, to Caldera Systems.[206] At that time Caldera Systems changed its name to Caldera International,[238] and the remaining part of SCO, the Tarantella Division, changed its name to Tarantella, Inc.[239]
Aftermath
The sale of the company's Unix assets and renaming of what was left marked the end of an era for not just SCO but the town of Santa Cruz as well.[228] The staff going to Caldera moved into the 400 Encincal building while the newly named Tarantella occupied the 425 Encinal structure.[228]
There were ironies in SCO's demise being largely from the effects of Linux, since SCO had been a pioneer of the open systems movement. As one writer stated, "In some ways, SCO was Linux before Linux, popularizing Unix on low-cost Intel machines."[51]
In August 2002,
Those familiar with the Santa Cruz Operation, including those who worked there and those who wrote about it, became protective of that company's reputation, especially given the possible name confusion regarding the role The SCO Group played in the attacks on Linux.[40][51][77] As former Santa Cruz Operation employee wrote later about The SCO Group, "I'll spare you the sordid legal details, but by then, it was no longer our SCO."[40]
Company culture
Santa Cruz atmosphere
"The Santa Cruz Operation ... thoroughly reflected the ethos of the community for which it was named. ... SCO probably could have been a better-run company. My memory is that the stock analysts were fairly definite on that point, but it wouldn't have been nearly so much fun."
—Industry writer David Coursey in 2004.[51]
From its inception and co-founding by UC Santa Cruz graduate Doug Michels, the company drew upon the readily available technical talent who chose to remain in the central California coastal town of Santa Cruz after graduating. But the town and university affected the company as well. SCO was at the center of the Santa Cruz tech scene, with many employees moving from it to other tech companies or vice versa.[40][53] Some of the feel of the SCO offices was carried forward in coworking facilities later set up in Santa Cruz by two former SCO employees.[240]
New products were promoted with mock film posters.[51] The Vice President of Marketing and Communications was, through much of the 1980s and early 1990s, Bruce Steinberg, who was an artist and musician in the San Francisco area music scene,[241] whose credits included having designed the "flying toasters" cover of the Jefferson Airplane's 1973 live album Thirty Seconds Over Winterland.[51]
The Santa Cruz Operation name itself brought comments; one Canadian industry writer called it "One of the coolest company names I ever came across since entering this business".[242]
From its earliest days through to its last ones, The Santa Cruz Operation was known for reflecting the casual ambience of its namesake town.[228] Dress was casual to the point where some staffers went barefoot.[17] There was beer in the office, end-of-day meetings held on Encincal Street roofs, and an outdoor hot tub at the Mission Street office (dating from the facility's previous existence as a holistic health clinic) that was used during the day or for late-night, after-work parties.[105][53] One former employee said years later of her experience there, "It was a family. We played hard, but we also worked hard. I don't think I've worked anywhere since that's had that kind of feel."[105] The SCO reputation was exemplified by an oft-related story of a time where the company had to put out a rule that "clothing must be worn during office hours," caused by an instance where someone walking in from the hot tub had not done so and a potential corporate partner had been paying a visit.[77][53]
Over 500 former Santa Cruz Operation employees held a reunion at the
SCO Forum
Beginning in 1987, SCO hosted an annual Summer conference for the international Unix community. Called
Featured speakers over the years included
Due to its useful content and its relaxed, fun atmosphere, SCO Forum became known as one of the best such conferences to go to in the industry and was viewed fondly by those who attended.[249][250][51] It was the largest tech event in the Santa Cruz area and made a multi-million dollar impact on the local economy.[251]
Palookaville webcasts
Following the first live Internet concert in 1994, SCO continued in that tradition by sponsoring and producing a series of live Internet webcasts from the popular Santa Cruz night club Palookaville. These webcasts demonstrated the use of UnixWare 7 as a real-time audio and video webcasting server utilizing RealAudio and RealVideo technologies from RealNetworks.[252]
Trapping a hacker
SCO was a target of one of the most publicized security hackers of the 1980s and 1990s, Kevin Mitnick, who broke into the company's systems in 1987.[253] SCO's staff detected his intrusions and engaged in exchanges with him that allowed them to track his activities.[254] After about a week of this, it appeared that the intruder was trying to modify or copy Xenix code.[255] Authorities having been notified, the phone line Mitnick was using for the intrusions was discovered and he was arrested.[255] He reached a deal to plead to a misdemeanor for which he did no jail time,[253] but it was his first conviction as an adult.[255] SCO officials agreed not to sue him if he would explain his hacking techniques to them.[254] But when a SCO staffer traveled to meet him, he was uncommunicative.[254][255] In any case, Mitnick soon continued his intruder activities against other companies' systems.[253]
SCO Follies
From 1985 to 2001, the company hosted a
Year | Title | Description |
---|---|---|
1985 | Star Trek | Scripts in hand, early SCO employees go where no company has gone before. |
1986 | unknown | - |
1987 | unknown | - |
1988 | Cheers | Sometimes you want to go where no-one knows your login name. |
1989 | Larry Wants an Ad | Exasperated with Bruce Steinberg's hairbrained ideas, Larry Michels asks employees to submit concepts for a new ad campaign. |
1990 | Late Night with Doug Michels | SCO licenses the "Late Night" format from GE with Doug as host. Guests include the XENIX Colonel, Michael J. Foxplus (promoting "Backup to the Future II"), SCO's own Princess of Purple, and (direct from the mail room) "Elvis". |
1991 | KODT | SCO launches a cable television channel that requires a telethon to raise funds for the equally cash-strapped organization (operating under the banner of "almost" public television). |
1992 | Archaeological Dig | The year is 2100 and the world has only recently recovered from a catastrophic era known as "The Corporate Wars". Drs. Dave Loman and Jane Greenleaf are recovering artifacts from the original SCO site in New Santa Cruz. The archaeologists are working under the supervision of an overbearing AI known as the NED 9.0.1 Project Management System, and Michelle Michels, descendant of the founders of SCO. With a little hacking, a kinder, wackier NED makes for a much less stressful work environment. |
1993 | How to Succeed in the Software Business | Job applicant Grace Hopper joins the company via social engineering. With the help of a book on the software business, Grace hopscotches across the SCO org chart with stints in Manufacturing, Support, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing. Meanwhile, VP and co-founder Doug Michels is rescued from a car crash and imprisoned by a deranged ex-SCO employee named Annie Wilkes. Grace is ultimately made CEO, but turns it down for a better job. This show includes the infamous "Die Hard" video by late Follies action director Peter (Israel) Rosencrantz. In the current climate, it's hard to picture a CEO giving permission for employees to parade through the building carrying automatic weapons, let alone appearing in the video himself. But Swedish-born Lars Turndal sat for an hour with guns trained on him by some wacky Americans as if he'd been doing it all his life. |
1994 | The Phantom of the Operation | Software engineer Eric T. Claudin runs afoul of evil VP Edwin Vincent Leach, who is bent on SCO's destruction. Disfigured in a hot tub "accident" arranged by Leach, Eric becomes the Phantom, a dark figure obsessed with saving the firm. Once again, then-CEO Lars Turndal proved he was a real sport and consented to appear in his second (and last) video, one that roasted the executive team for trying to censor the Usenet feed. Brian Moffet produced the stained-glass style panorama that opens the show. |
1995 | FCS Can Wait | For the uninitiated, FCS is "First Customer Ship," the magic goal of the product development cycle. Based on the films "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" and Heaven Can Wait," Engineering manager Jo Pendleton is hurled into the great void ahead of schedule. Bodies must be swapped and Heaven & Earth must be moved so that Jo can complete her project of a lifetime, "SCO DoomBugger". |
1996 | UNIX Won't Die | After a series of high-profile incidents involving glitches in the UNIX operating system (namely Apollo 13, Three Mile Island, and the Exxon Valdez), James Bond tracks the SPECTRE of his nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld into the hallways of SCO. Along for the ride is the mysterious Tilly Masterson (sister of the woman who was suffocated in paint by the nefarious Goldfinger). Software engineer Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley ("a schmuck from Legal") have stumbled onto the UNIX plot and are suspicious of Bond's presence. This show was the first to include digital compositing (a couple of laser beams and explosions). These early steps were taken on a Miro DC20 video card and Adobe Premiere purchased with pooled funds. Bill Welch created these effects and Mike Almond provided the opening Star Wars animation using Caligari TrueSpace. Thereafter, nearly all the effects for Follies were created digitally. |
1997 | Taming of the CEO | A Shakespearean romp where Viola Murch, a top female director who despairs of ever becoming a VP, decides to disguise herself as a man. She learns that the top floor is a far stranger place than she imagined. This show included a mock preview for a show called "Sliders" about parallel SCO universes. This marked the full use of digital effects and compositing. Mike Almond was responsible for creating such 3D items as a phalanx of Imperial Stormtroopers and a streaking Millennium Falcon. |
1998 | A Solstice Carol | The story of Ezekiel Kludge, a crusty longtime SCO manager who re-discovers the true meaning of SCO. |
1999 | The Wizard of OCS | IBM engineering manager Dorothy Gale is transported into the wacky world of OCS, where she meets a Marketeer who wants to lose his brain, A Salesman who wants to get rid of his heart, and an Engineer who wants to get rid of his life. |
2000 | Willy Wonka and the Software Factory |
Support specialist Charlotte Bucket dreams of visiting SCO's Software Factory and Willy Wonka, the "Chief Geek" who no-one has seen for years. It's an adventure populated with Corpa Lorpas, Waffling Precompensators, Paleoatavistic Patch Pellucidators, and Everlasting Spamstoppers. Not to mention Fizzy Linux stocks. And some arrogant, selfish, and greedy adult children get their comeuppance as well. |
2001 | Fiddler on the 425 Roof | The "final" SCO Follies occurred shortly after Caldera Systems purchased the Santa Cruz Operation. Thus the show's theme is change, with Caldera Systems as the Cossacks. The show opens with the "Dawn of Spam" sequence adapted from Stanley Kubrick's classic odyssey. The mood of the "Linux Company" finale was subsequently overturned when the radically downsized, later-named "SCO Group" turned against Linux. |
2012 | Raiders of the Lost Archive | When two members of a secret SCO organization are murdered, the SCOllegium assigns a team of ex-SCOites to find out who is responsible. |
Alliances
SCO was a primary partner in several industry alliances, intended to promote SCO operating system technology as a de facto standard for emerging hardware platforms. The most notable of these were:
- Advanced RISC ComputingSpecification (ARC)
- 3DA – Formed by SCO and Hewlett-Packard in 1995, to define the standard Unix for IA-32 and later IA-64 systems
- Uniform Driver Interface – Led by SCO and with work starting in 1997, the UDI project sought to establish an OS-neutral and platform-neutral portable interface for writing device drivers. The UDI project had the backing of Intel, HP, IBM, Compaq, Sun, and others.
- Project Monterey – Formed by SCO, IBM, Sequent and Intel in 1998, to define the standard UNIX for IA-64 systems. Also intended to merge some of the proprietary Unix products afloat at the time.[20]
None of these alliances were ultimately successful.
SCO was also part of 1993's COSE initiative, a more successful and broadly supported initiative to create an open and unified UNIX standard.
SCO was a founding member of
See also
- History of Unix
- Timeline of operating systems
- Xinuos for the current owners of the SCO-related Unix products
References
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- ^ "Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS)". United States Patent and Trademark Office. July 16, 2007. Archived from the original on December 14, 2012. Retrieved May 3, 2008.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Pate, Steve D. (1996). UNIX Internals: A Practical Approach. New York: Addison Wesley Professional. pp. 9–11.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Barrier, Michael (March 1992). "How a California software firm is trying to open up the personal computer's future". Nation's Business. pp. 14ff – via Gale General OneFile.
- ^ a b c d Pittman, Jennifer (November 13, 1999). "Stroke Claims SCO's Founder". Santa Cruz Sentinel. pp. A1, A14 – via Newspapers.com.
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- ISBN 9780835211352.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shender, Steve (February 16, 1989). "SCO, local software firm, hooks up with Microsoft". Santa Cruz Sentinel. pp. A1, A12 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Remembrances: Notice: Lawrence Michels". Santa Cruz Sentinel. November 12, 1999. p. A-10.
- ^ a b c d e Falk, Bennett; Eisenhart, Mary (February 1987). "The Santa Cruz Operation: Taking Care Of Business With XENIX". MicroTimes. pp. 46–54. At p. 48.
- ^ "uncertain". Telephone Engineer & Management. 1977. p. 61 (issue uncertain).
- ^ Oates, Sarah (October 25, 1989). "Company thriving after switch in owners". The Orlando Sentinel. pp. F-1, F-2.
- ^ "Editor's Notes". Embedded Muse. The Ganssle Group. April 7, 2008.
- ^ Bezroukov, Nikolai (July 28, 2019). "XENIX – Microsoft Short-lived Love Affair with Unix". Softpanorama. Retrieved May 27, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Gaura, Maria (February 7, 1988). "Firm has a megabyte of future". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. D1 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ See for instance Doug Michels' Linked In page, which gives January 1979 as his start date with SCO.
- ^ a b c d e "Product of intelligence up for sale". Santa Cruz Sentinel. September 18, 1983. p. 54 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b Schultz, Brad (February 23, 1981). "AT&T's 'C' Called Flexible Language". Computerworld. p. 6.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Isenberg, Sara (April 21, 2016). "Watch: A look-back conversation with Doug Michels, co-founder of SCO". Santa Cruz Tech Beat. Interview itself published by BayLive Media, conducted by Jean-Baptiste Su, and is almost certainly from August 2006 at SCO Forum in Las Vegas.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-13-142901-7.
- ^ a b c d e f Burk, Robin; Horvath, David B., eds. (1997). UNIX Unleashed: System Administrator's Edition. Indianapolis: Sams Publishing. pp. 10, 12, 653.
- ^ PC Magazine. pp. 219–263. At pp. 220–221, 240, 250, 252.
- ISBN 0-88283-035-X. At p. 315.
- ^ "Introducing the TYMSHARE DYNASTY/DYNIX Family". EDUCOM Bulletin. Winter 1981. p. 32. Advertisement.
- ^ Hare, John Bruno; Thomas, Dean (1984). "Porting Xenix to the Unmapped 8086". Proceedings of the USENIX Winter Conference. Washington, D.C.: USENIX Association. Abstract may be seen at in this December 1983 isssue of ;login:, page 26.
- ^ ISSN 0199-6649. Issue joint dated to January 2, 1984.
- ^ a b c d e "SCO obtains distribution rights for XENIX". Santa Cruz Sentinel. February 2, 1984. p. 10 (Computer Festival '84 supplement) – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Is There Any Unix Software?". InfoWorld. April 15, 1985. pp. 17–18.
- ^ IEEE Membership Directory. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. 1989. p. 1484.
- ^ a b "Xenix System V debuts for IBM micros". Computerworld. October 7, 1985. p. 54.
- ^ Salus, Peter H. (December 2003). "Nearly 20 Years ago in Usenix" (PDF).
;login:
. p. 68. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 26, 2004. - ^ Wojahn, Ellen (April 1990). "Fathers and Sons". Inc.
- ^ "Santa Cruz Operation Ltd. to Offer Source for Xenix". InfoWorld. December 8, 1986. p. 33.
- ^ a b "Around the county: Software firm announces changes". Santa Cruz Sentinel. December 7, 1986. p. D-1 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "This is ..." InfoWorld. November 9, 1987. p. 38. Advertisement.
- ^ "Santa Cruz Operation Replaces 8086 Operating System with Personal Xenix". Computergram International. Computer Business Review. April 2, 1989.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Scharf, Jeffrey R. (May 23, 1993). "SCO may go public this week". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. D-9 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Leibovitch, Evan (March 1997). "The Death of Xenix". Linux Journal.
- ^ "Accounting". Santa Cruz Sentinel. February 22, 1987. p. C-1 – via Newspapers.com. Advertisement.
- ^ a b c d e f g Isenberg, Sara (April 23, 2015). "Don't let anyone tell you tech is new in Santa Cruz!". Santa Cruz Tech Beat.
- ^ "Open House". Santa Cruz Sentinel. April 21, 1991. p. B-12 – via Newspapers.com. Advertisement.
- ^ a b "MOTIF Frequently Asked Questions". comp.windows.x.motif. November 16, 1996. Retrieved May 15, 2021. See entry for IXI Premier Motif.
- ^ a b c "Form 10-K, The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. for the Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 1996". Washington, D.C.: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. December 24, 1996.
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- ^ a b Marshall, Martin (June 18, 1990). "SCO Unix 3.2 Update Is Ready to Ship in July". InfoWorld. p. 45.
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- ^ a b Parker, Rachel (March 6, 1989). "SCO Announces Implementation of OSF's Motif". InfoWorld. p. 8.
- ^ PC Magazine. p. 192.
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- ^ ProQuest 447072169– via ProQuest.
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- ^ ProQuest 225014967– via ProQuest.
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- ^ S2CID 15117148.
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- ^ ProQuest 208135058– via ProQuest.
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- ^ S2CID 1522664.
- ^ a b "SCO Unveils Targeted Release Strategy for UnixWare 7" (Press release). HPCwire. November 14, 1997.
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- ^ a b SCO Forum97: Proceedings and Conference Guide. Santa Cruz Operation. 1997. pp. 2, 4, 5, and associated presentation slides.
- ^ Everett, Cath (June 22, 1999). "SCO perks up its Java performance". Computing.
- ^ "US6931544B1: Method and apparatus for executing multiple JAVA(™) applications on a single JAVA(™) virtual machine". U.S. Patent Office. Retrieved July 13, 2022.
- ^ SCO Forum96: Proceedings and Conference Guide. Santa Cruz Operation. 1996. pp. 12, 16–19.
- ^ "SCO–vs.–IBM". AUUGN. 24 (2): 45. June 2003.
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- ^ "QuickSpecs: SCO UnixWare 7: Compaq and SCO Partnership: Compaq Support for SCO UnixWare 7". Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Retrieved April 26, 2021.
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- ^ a b c d e f g h Kimura, Donna (December 22, 1999). "SCO stock smashes old record". Santa Cruz Sentinel. pp. A-1, A-12 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b Deckmyn, Dominique (March 1, 2000). "SCO makes ASP play". Computerworld.
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- ^ Krasne, Alexandra (August 19, 1999). "Web interface makes Unix friendlier". CNN. IDG.
- ^ a b c d Vijayan, Jaikumar (November 2, 1998). "Unix regroups against NT at the high end". Computerworld. pp. 1, 105. Includes "Vendors pitch 64-bit Unix for Merced" sidebar.
- ^ a b "Caldera Systems completes Santa Cruz acquisitions". Deseret News. May 8, 2001.
- ^ a b c "SCO Exec Says The Company May Revive Project Monterey". Information Week. August 30, 2002.
- ^ Norton, R. D. (June 1998). "Where Are The World's Top 100 I.T. Firms – And Why?" (PDF). Bryant College.
- PC Magazine. pp. 100, 128.
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- ^ a b c "SCO warns of sharp shortcoming". CNET. July 9, 1998.
- ^ "SCO Updates Its Original OpenServer Unix". Computergram International. August 18, 1998.
- ^ a b c d e f Orlowski, Andrew (April 30, 2015). "SCO, Groklaw and the Monterey mystery that never was". The Register.
- ^ Shankland, Stephen (July 8, 1999). "Intel's Merced chip may slip further". CNET.
- ^ "UnixWare Apps Will Run on Bravo Unix". Computergram International. September 15, 1998.
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- ^ a b c d e Connor, Deni (November 9, 1998). "Monterey: Intel's premier Unix OS". Network World. p. 19 – via Gale General OneFile.
- ^ a b Weil, Nancy; Scannell, Ed; Pendery, David (November 2, 1998). "IBM rallies industry giants behind 64-bit Unix version". InfoWorld. p. 36 – via Gale General OneFile.
- ^ ProQuest 227566409– via ProQuest.
- ^ Songini, Marc (August 6, 1999). "IBM: Monterey isn't the end of AIX". Network World. p. 15 – via Gale General OneFile.
- ^ "Is IBM Really Killing Project Monterey?". HPCWire. August 25, 2000.
- ^ Eyes, David; Record, Ronald Joe (February 1999). "SCO and the Open Source Movement". SCO World. Archived from the original on November 21, 2000.
- ^ a b c Kimura, Donna (October 27, 1999). "SCO sets earnings record". santa Cruz sentinel. p. B-5 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c d e f Boulton, Guy (July 22, 2000). "Caldera May Buy California Company". The Salt Lake Tribune. pp. B-5, B-10 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c Pittman, Jennifer (August 31, 1999). "SCO stock climbs; Linux growth cited". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. B-4 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c d "Santa Cruz Operation Warns of Earnings Shortfall". The New York Times. Reuters. July 11, 2000.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Pittman, Jennifer (October 16, 2000). "Parting Company: Local high-tech firm prepares to merge, spin off and disappear". santa Cruz Sentinel. pp. A-1, A-10 – via Newspapers.com. See also "'New Caldera' employees to remain in Santa Cruz" and "Tarantella focuses on Web software" sidebars, same by-line, same pages.
- ^ Pittman, Jennifer (August 17, 1999). "SCO stock, CEO on a high note". Santa Cruz Sentinel. pp. A-1, A-12 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c "Tarantella Inc SCO's Second Coming". Dataquest India. September 22, 2000.
- ^ a b c d Deckmyn, Dominique (March 27, 2000). "SCO Reorganizes, Expects Low Sales". Computerworld. p. 32.
- ^ a b c Weiss, Todd R. (September 8, 2000). "SCO lays off 19% of its staff as it repositions itself". Computerworld.
- Lea, Graham (August 2, 2000). "Caldera goes Unix with SCO acquisition". The Register.
- ^ a b c Malinkoff, Marina (August 3, 2000). "SCO spins off two divisions for cash, stock". Santa Cruz Sentinel. pp. A1, A12 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ ZDNet.
- ^ a b Shankland, Stephen. "Caldera deal provides ammunition against Red Hat". CNET. c. February 1, 2001 (date on article now on website is wrong).
- ^ a b Shankland, Stephen (February 9, 2001). "Caldera Systems expands Unix acquisition plans". CNet. Archived from the original on June 12, 2001.
- ^ "Caldera Completes Acquisition of Two SCO Divisions; Becomes Largest Linux Company in the World with Global Services/Support" (Press release). Caldera Systems. May 8, 2001.
- ^ "SCO Announces Official Closing of Sale of Two Divisions to Caldera" (Press release). Tarantella. May 7, 2001. Archived from the original on October 1, 2007. Retrieved January 23, 2007.
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- ^ "Bruce Marshall Steinberg". Legacy.com. January 10, 2008. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
- ^ Buchok, James (March 19, 2003). "IBM does the Tarantella". ITBusiness.ca.
- ^ Lasnier, Guy (August 21, 1991). "Corporate cultures splash at SCO industry forum". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. B5 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Perez, Steve (August 24, 1995). "SCO Forum gets bigger each year". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. C3 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "QuoteGeek Your favorite quotations, online". Katharine Hammer. July 23, 1999. Archived from the original on December 10, 2008. Retrieved May 20, 2008. Speaking at the 1997 SCO Forum, Douglas Adams said "The difference between us and a computer is that, the computer is blindingly stupid, but it is capable of being stupid many, many million times a second."
- ^ "SCO Forum98 Conference Schedule". SCO. Archived from the original on December 5, 1998. Retrieved May 20, 2008.
- ^ Frazier, Belinda (November 1, 1995). "Linux at SCO Forum". Linux Journal. Retrieved May 20, 2008.
- ^ "SCO Forum's Legendary Social Events". VisionWare. Archived from the original on December 6, 1998. Retrieved May 20, 2008.
- ^ Birnstock, Andrew (April 1994). "It's showtime!". UNIX Review. p. 7 – via Gale Academic OneFile.
- ^ Leibovitch, Evan (August 30, 2000). "SCO Forum: This ain't no trade show". ZDNet.
- ^ Pittman, Jennifer (August 17, 1997). "Techies turn out for SCO forum". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. D1 – via Newspapers.com.
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- ^ Marino, Stephen. "motibloc's Playlists". YouTube. Retrieved May 14, 2008.
External links
- The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (archived web site sco.com from 1997-02-15 to 2001-04-05)
- www.ocston.com Alumni directory for the former Santa Cruz Operation
- Youtube.com: Motibloc's video account, with collection of SCO Follies videos
- The Santa Cruz Operation's timeline of its own history, 1999
- The SCO Group's timeline of its own history, 2003
- Jorn Barger's Timeline of GNU/Linux and Unix, 2002
- David P. Bianco, "The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.", International Directory of Company Histories, 2000, as hosted at Encyclopedia.com
- SCO Company History at the Operating System Documentation Project, 2006
- William Bader's SCO History site, 2009