Stacy Cowley

NEW YORK (IDG News Service) — In mid-2001, Morgan Stanley began overhauling its IT infrastructure, aiming at a new management architecture based on a thin-client model that would allow all data, applications and even operating systems to be hosted on network servers. The guiding goal was flexibility, said implementer Jeffrey Birnbaum, managing director and global head of enterprise computing in Morgan Stanley's institutional securities division. With thousands of internally developed applications and 36,500 supported PCs spread throughout 20 countries, Morgan Stanley wanted an architecture that would let it quickly deliver anything that needed to flow to end users, including data, applications, software patches and system configuration changes. It also wanted the ability to add new applications and machines to its network for the lowest possible cost, Birnbaum... (more)

Embedded Linux Consortium releases built-in-software spec

(IDG News Service) — The first version of a specification that the Embedded Linux Consortium hopes will aid application interoperability and spur interest in Linux development in the market for built-in systems software was released Wednesday. The "embedded" systems sector is a diverse one, covering devices as varied as mobile phones, handhelds, automobile computers and industrial equipment. Founded in 2000, the Santa Rosa, California-based consortium began aiming last March to create a specification to guide developers in creating applications that will work on a variety ... (more)

Lindows.com summary judgment motion dismissed

NEW YORK (IDG News Service) — A judge dismissed Lindows.com Inc.'s motion for summary judgment Wednesday in its trademark-infringement tangle with Microsoft Corp., leaving the issue to be decided at a jury trial scheduled for April. Microsoft filed suit against Lindows in the U.S. District Court in Seattle in December 2001, charging that "lindows" infringes on Microsoft's Windows trademark. Lindows.com's counterargument is that "windows" is a generic term for graphical software interfaces. Lindows.com, based in San Diego, sells a Linux-based operating system, LindowsOS, i... (more)

LinuxWorld Expo: IBM's Mills sees Linux in 'new era'

NEW YORK (IDG News Service) — Even now, Steve Mills fields incredulous questions about how his company and other vendors make money working with freely available open-source technologies like Linux, the IBM Corp. software head said Thursday. In a Thursday morning LinuxWorld keynote address primarily devoted to a run-down of some notable IBM customer deployments of Linux, Mills affirmed that Linux is a large and growing revenue generator for IBM. IBM estimates that industry-wide Linux expenditures will grow at an average annual rate of 35 percent through 2006. Hardware spe... (more)

LinuxWorld Expo: CA forms internal Linux Technology Group

(IDG News Service) — When visitors walk into Sanjay Kumar's office, they're greeted by a 4-foot stuffed penguin. "Tux" is perched beside the chief executive's desk to make sure Linux is always on the minds of those at Computer Associates International Inc., says the head of CA's newly formed Linux Technology Group. "When a brand executive comes in, he's not only got to show his plans to Sanjay, he's got to show them to Tux," said Sam Greenblatt, CA's senior vice president and chief architect of the Linux Technology Group. CA officially formed the unit in late 2002, just bef... (more)