Following the acquisition of Santa Cruz Operation's server software and professional services divisions by Linux specialist Caldera Systems, SCO's Australian management is promising its staffing and channel strategy will remain intact.
Caldera announced its acquisition of the Unix specialist in August, followed this month by the laying-off of 19 per cent of the worldwide SCO workforce. But while much of Asia was affected by the decision, Kieran O'Shaughnessy, SCO's Australia/NZ regional general manager, expects the only significant change in Australian operations to be the name of the company.
"All SCO staff in Australia are in the server division that is being sold to Caldera," he said. "Access to SCO's remaining Tarantula products will also continue to go through our division: it will be the same bodies on the ground."
"We should remain static: we have a small team here that has been running at optimum level," he said. "On the Caldera side, there was only one Caldera representative anyway."
Currently SCO's products are distributed by Express Data and MUA, who also sell on to smaller resellers and integrators. O'Shaughnessy sees the move as beneficial to both major distributors, as MUA already distributes Caldera products and Express Data has long been interested in selling larger volumes of the Linux products Caldera produces.
"Caldera knew that one of the advantages of buying these SCO divisions was that they have also bought a channel infrastructure," he said. "It values the channel very strongly, so I expect our strategy to remain the same."