Are we there yet?
In May 1999, a study by D.H. Brown Associates Inc. concluded that Linux wasn’t quite ready for the enterprise, but supporters thought otherwise. Drew Sullivan, head
of Systems Software in Toronto admitted that while Linux wasn’t “”there”” yet, he predicted that it would be in the enterprise in the near future. “”Will it be there next year? Yes.””
Maybe it didn’t make it by 2000, but according to a panel discussion at the Real World Linux conference at the end of April, enterprises are opening the door for open source in the server space. As for the desktop? Not yet.
Oracle cranks it up to 11
Oracle Corp. previewed Release 11i in May 1999, claiming it would catapult them ahead of the competition. Oracle’s president and CEO, Larry Ellison, called the client/server model of sharing enterprise applications a colossal mistake, referring to it as a pterodactyl in the evolution of computing. “”We thought we were distributing power, when all the while we were distributing complexity,”” he said.
At AppsWorld 2003 in San Diego, Oracle announced an upgrade for the 11i suite of enterprise applications. Mark Jarvis, Oracle’s chief marketing officer, told conference delegates an estimated 75 per cent of its enterprise clients are either running or upgrading to Oracle’s 11i suite, compared to 11 per cent from the previous year.
Lycos launches portals to attract “”100 per cent of the market””
Lycos Inc. launched My Lycos, a site designed to enable users to personalize a Lycos start page to serve as a welcome mat to the Internet, e-mail accounts, online shopping and chat groups. This portal personalization feature was an attempt to get visitors to stick with the site once online.
According to a spokesperson, My Lycos was taking aim at 100 per cent of the market and expected that the site would attract advertisers. A year later, Lycos formed a partnership in Canada with Bell Canada, which has since dropped the Lycos name from its Sympatico branding.
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