SCO Sells Out to Caldera
- 03 August, 2000 12:01
FRAMINGHAM (08/02/2000) - Ending an era, The Santa Cruz Operation Inc. will be selling off its Unix product line and professional services arm to Linux vendor Caldera Inc.
The merged companies will offer the market yet another acronym: OIP. Short for Open Internet Platform, OIP combines Linux and Unix software products and services. The firms claim that this will result in a set of new Web-based offerings that let users run e-business applications on everything from thin clients to data centers with clustered server machines.
SCO, the leading Unix-on-Intel vendor, already has a wide variety of applications and technologies for security and clustering available to enrich Caldera's Linux product line. It also offers a large worldwide channel infrastructure - possibly the largest Linux channel in the world with 15,000 partners - to move the OIP wares. Users will get all the robust features of SCO's Unix products, but at a Linux price, Caldera claims.
Some of the buyout's specifics include plans by Caldera to create a separate holding company called Caldera, Inc., to handle the SCO server software and professional services divisions. SCO in turn will get 28 percent of the new company and US$7 million in cash.
The deal was announced early Wednesday morning several weeks after rumor of the sale appeared in the press. Just prior to the rumor, SCO had detailed plans to roll out its own Linux distribution.
Caldera says it will remain committed to servicing and supporting SCO UnixWare and OpenServer communities. SCO will retain its Tarantella Web-enabling middleware division. www.sco.com.