THE TECHNOLOGY MONTHLY
Volume 2, Number 4
May 31, 2007
In this issue: Not your grandfather’s .NET
The new client software battle royal: Vista vs. Apollo vs. Open Source
SOA is dead, long live SOA
Stock story updates: MEMC, AT&T, 3Com
Adoption watch
Not your grandfather’s .NET
Over the last several weeks we have revisited
Microsoft’s .NET and some of the related technology
moves they are making with Vista. Many investors
seem to be out of date on .NET and unfamiliar with
some Vista-driven technology improvements that may
help Microsoft in the client software area as well (see
next story.) There is still a major dose of religious
fervor in the software industry, so we took pains to
avoid input from most evangelists. Instead we focused
on pragmatists who have decades of experience across
a broad range of software technologies and are charged
with delivering sophisticated commercial software with
demanding requirements and limited resources.
Perhaps the most striking value of .NET is the
efficiency it affords over other platforms. It’s the ability
to get to the job at hand vs. building scaffolding to get
started. Because .NET includes runtime server libraries,
UI components and Visual Studio it needs little added
infrastructure to build an application. Developers can
focus mostly on the logic and user requirements instead
of adding to the technology platform itself. In most
cases the resources required to build an equivalent
system in alternative environments is estimated to be
some multiple over what was required with .NET.
It’s obvious that Microsoft has by far the largest
installed base of technology and users today. It’s fair to
say that in the corporate and consumer world
Microsoft is ubiquitous. This situation is unlikely to
change soon due to the fact that corporations are
generally satisfied with their Microsoft products and
have made massive investments of capital, custom
applications and training. The appeal of something new
that has a few advantages over Microsoft isn’t very
compelling to enterprises.
It’s worth noting that a major proponent of an
open-source alternative platform called LAMP (Linux,
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Apache, MySQL, PHP) has discovered that the
enterprise market just has no appetite for creating a
whole new infrastructure outside of their existing Java
and .NET options. The corporate investment in
applications, training and management infrastructure is
a huge obstacle to overcome. The contrast between an
enterprise solution that is LAMP-based vs. .NET is
stark. In the case of .NET one small company we know
quickly vaulted to $30M in sales growing to $60M this
year while with LAMP most still stuck at the “educate
the market” stage in the enterprise.
There’s no question that Java-based systems today
are quite mainstream and common choices in
enterprise settings. Thanks to open source projects
such as Eclipse and other efforts the richness of the
offerings and supporting infrastructure has grown into
a mature platform. Just as some would say that the
problem with .NET is that it is so “Microsoft,” we
would counter that the rest tend to be so “Java.”
Furthermore there are plenty of additional language
implementations and toolsets for .NET. There is even
a Linux implementation of .NET available as an open
source project.
Consumers are a different matter altogether, but
they have made it clear that the one thing they are not
interested in is solutions that force them to learn
something about technology. The attempts to counter
this with free software and “plug-ins” have not gone
well from a usability standpoint. Today there are many
versions and frequent updates that users and
companies are not excited to download and use for
many reasons, not the least of which is security.
The plug-in problem is a serious one for the
industry. Our position is that the success of YouTube
stems from a small thing that they did which is to allow
a user to simply hit the play button and enjoy the video
where they were looking at it. Other solutions involved
player downloads, windows opening up, buffering
delays and other adoption-stopping steps to see the
content. Similar problems exist for different versions of
Adobe Flash and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Organizations such as Mozilla are trying to improve the
situation for their own products, but it’s tough going.
Most of the attention and reviews of Vista have
been on the negative side. However many would agree
that the UI is a step forward, and the OS has much
improved security. Until the first service pack is
shipped and the hardware requirements are sorted out
it will be in early adoption stage. However there is little
question that over time the installed base will be
moving. It’s been fashionable to talk about just
upgrading existing XP systems and installing the new
UI and browser. At first it seems like a great idea, but it
still involves time, money and effort. When the time
comes, it often makes more sense to buy a new
machine with the new OS and software installed. In any
case it will be a multi-year process, but alternatives are
limited. Most users can’t switch to Apple, and
alternatives such as Google Apps and Linux desktops
just aren’t near ready for production use.
The final nail in the coffin of the upgrade argument
will come from a new generation of Windows-based
computers, especially laptops and notebooks that are
enough to make an Apple user sit up and take notice.
One recent example is the Intel-Ziba Think Thin
model, which is a beauty but is only one of many
coming into the market this year. Microsoft has
suffered over the years in part because almost nobody
is making the kind of laptop that users want to carry. If
one or more of these designs become hits it can offer
price/performance advantages in addition to design
and usability excellence that will help preserve and
extend the Microsoft customer base.
Beyond development platforms, the advertising
game isn’t over yet despite the great success Google is
having. One area that Microsoft is leading in is games.
Most investors don’t appreciate the strength Microsoft
is building there. Beyond games there are several other
places where Microsoft can still obtain a leadership
position and consolidate into a respectable share of
digital advertising and improved investor perception
vis-a-vis Google. Its recent acquisitions in the space
bring critical mass of talent and industry expertise into
the fold that will need to be successfully integrated for
the overall effort to be sustained.
So where does that leave us on Microsoft? We would
summarize as follows:
© Research 2.0 – May 31, 2007      Page ‐ 2
• The Microsoft platform is far more attractive for
building and running real applications than
investors think.
• The new UI capabilities using IE 7 and Windows
are very powerful and may be a leapfrog situation
over more existing solutions.
• Microsoft is ubiquitous and has usability and
security advantages over other platforms.
• Microsoft is developing success in digital
advertising with strength in gaming and
meaningful recent acquisitions.
• The perception of Microsoft in these areas by the
press and investors is negative in part thanks to
the love affair with Google and Apple.
Taken together we think the points above argue for
a long-term positive view of Microsoft stock. It’s a little
premature to produce a full valuation analysis on the
company. The shares, which have traded in a range for
the last seven years, reflect about an 18x P/E on 2008
estimates. Without a re-rating the shares can scrape
their way to $35. However if perceptions and sentiment
improves from the current ebb we could certainly
envision something in the $40 range. Those that don’t
find 15% annual returns interesting might consider an
options strategy to amplify the effects.
– Kris Tuttle
The new client software battle royal
After several years of relative peace the major
vendors are again innovating and spending heavily to
capture market share in the client software space. We
remember how painful the browser wars were, and
everyone was thankful when they ended and developers
could build functionality that just worked. Of course
the richness of the UI would eventually have to be
improved. Today we stand at a point where the open
source community has fielded a host of new
technologies, the most popular being AJAX, which
Google broke into the mainstream by using it for its
Maps product. The two vendor-based approaches
Flash from Adobe and Microsoft with IE 7, plus
additional technologies and OS integration.
Since the Macromedia acquisition, Adobe has been
moving toward advancing the tools to build, deploy
and enjoy rich Web-based applications. So far,
however, it has had very limited success outside of its
traditional core markets. Adobe still seems like two
companies rather than one. Its Creative Suite remains a
nearly unavoidable standard set of very expensive SOA is dead — long live SOA
products but isn’t integrated a great deal with the Web
and the Macromedia portfolio yet. Macromedia
We don’t think it was any coincidence that five out
products still have strong market positions
of six of the case studies presented at the May 15-16,
(Dreamweaver, Flash), but it hasn’t changed much
2007 InfoWorld Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
during a time when AJAX, PHP and other tools have
Executive Forum in NYC represented activity in the
been springing up around them. The larger question
services supply chain.
posed now, especially with Google launching Gears, is
how much affinity Adobe can have in conjunction with
In the product supply chain, manufacturers have
the next generation of online services and content.
always been laggards when it comes to IT adoption, at
least outside their R&D labs. Similarly, retailers and
Microsoft has been fairly quiet on this front until
distributors have been historically slow on IT uptake
now, but the release of IE 7 and then Vista started the
except at the point of sale. On the other hand, service
wheels turning, especially when one sees that Web
providers have tended to look to IT first for a leg up
content in IE 7 is rendered using native Windows
on competition. Banks, insurers, engineers, service
controls when running Vista (and probably soon an
bureaus, the transportation industry, and others have
upgraded XP.) This gives Microsoft an edge in
automated and re-automated their entire business
delivering a rich UI without a huge team of developers.
process flows more than once throughout the history
More recently, Microsoft has launched Silverlight, its
of IT. They not only automate the key processes in
own cross-platform set of Web development tools and
delivering their flagship services but also support their
runtimes.
back offices and supplier/client-contact points with
the latest, greatest IT.
There’s some general industry excitement around
Silverlight, which as been amplified with more
For that reason, we look to the services industries to
interesting announcements such as Popfly. Popfly is
gauge the uptake of SOA. Enterprises that provide
not yet generally released but offers a Microsoft version
service for a living seem to “get it” when it comes to
of the popular mash-up technique for generating new
something called “service oriented.”
Web applications. While not a new concept, the
implementation here looks to be well beyond anything
we have seen before, and the key to this technique • They understand the importance of service
being useful has more to do with back-end integration level agreements in real life, so they
and the ability to leverage real services (not just Flickr, understand it in terms of its IT meaning.
Google Maps and Craigslist) to build meaningful new • They build their businesses on applying the
applications. same technique to multiple different situations
(polymorphism), using the same subset of
We currently use mostly open source and Adobe techniques in multiple points of a client
tools to build our own applications and have looked at engagement (encapsulation), and reusing
most of the new client-side technologies. The latest techniques in multiple engagements for the
offerings from Microsoft are pretty compelling. If this same client as well as in work for multiple
level of execution continues, we believe Microsoft clients (inheritance).
could at least stop losing share and might be able to • They understand the need to respond when
claw some back. The part of the story we will be you get a call. IT folks call that client/server
watching most closely is the ability of the new tools and (C/S).
technologies to work well with non-Microsoft systems • In addition, for those investors who feel an
ranging from OS X to Google. The cross-platform asynchronous bus mechanism such as an
support in Silverlight is pretty good, but we have to see enterprise service bus is a mandatory element
it all in the field before we can be sure. This is the first in SOA, the service industry understands that
time our attention has turned this way. concept as well. That’s what the dispatcher or
– Kris Tuttle senior partner does.

What we heard at the InfoWorld conference was

ÇÇÇ that SOA is following the normal historical path of
 
© Research 2.0 – May 31, 2007      Page ‐ 3
 
technology adoption. Users will keep experimenting
over the next few years, the tipping point should come
in 2010 or 2011, and SOA should be considered the
status quo around 2015.
C/S grew at a similar pace, gradually overtaking the
1960s-era monolithic approach to organizing business
processes, applications logic, and data (and the
infrastructure needed to support them). For example:
• The buzz around C/S started in the late
1980s, but it was the turn of the century
before C/S-based packaged apps’ revenue
exceeded monolithic packaged apps’ revenue
(including annual maintenance fees).
• In-house-developed C/S apps, based on tools
such as Powersoft and Visual Basic,
permeated business more quickly but may
have never really replaced the base of in-
house-developed monolithic apps.
There is no reason to assume a faster uptake of
SOA in making investment decisions, or to be
disappointed by its adoption rate. Although we have
been talking about SOA for years, the first SOA-based
packaged applications are just now beginning to ship.
It will be a decade before they dominate application
market revenue flows. In addition to the technology
challenges inherent in SOA (granularity of
decomposition, scale, security, and so forth),
enterprises have to deal with their own application
ROI/retirement cycles and business issues—such as
the timing of new services and products—that have
nothing directly to do with IT.
Three SOA snapshots: Of the three companies
presenting at the Forum, there were some interesting
points that might spell investment success or failure
for SOA early movers in the supplier community.
Amtrak was probably the shortest distance down
the tracks in terms of making the transition to SOA,
but it is “en route.” In a presentation themed
“Heading toward the Light” (hopefully not of a
locomotive coming the other way in an Amtrak
tunnel), Web Architecture Director Thomas Krotchko
spoke of how Amtrak’s need to connect into the
OpenTravelAlliance services, schema and standards
efforts was a key driving factor.
© Research 2.0 – May 31, 2007      Page ‐ 4
Earlier enterprise application integration (EAI)
efforts had been stymied by Amtrak’s infamous early-
decade budget problems. That turned out to be a plus
in terms of moving Amtrak to SOA faster than it
might otherwise have done. SOA let Amtrak quickly
decouple its growing number of input sources,
including its own Web site and station kiosks, from
the back-end system. Next, Amtrak will be looking at
how to (and whether to) swap out an underlying
synchronous backbone with a messaging system
without losing required high-availability features.
Availability and scalability are issues many users are
looking at in terms of dependability before going “big
bang” with SOA.
As an aside, the existence of organizations such as
OpenTravelAlliance, ACORD in the insurance
industry, the Open Financial Exchange in banking and
finance, and others seems to drive services providers
down new technology paths more quickly than
enterprises in the product supply chain.
Rakesh Kumar and Jun Zhang of the Standard &
Poor’s (S&P) division of McGraw-Hill spoke of S&P’s
move to SOA, which is taking more of the big bang
approach. That is, the pair started with a bus and laid
the SOA plan in all at once. Even then, acquisition of
many of the pieces is incremental.
An interesting twist in the S&P presentation was
the company’s introduction of a new IT professional
called an “integrator.” This function is different (lower
level of the stack) than the business process analyst’s
“integrator” role and provides staffers who have
“make SOA work” stamped on their foreheads.
Needless to say, such a new role required some top-
management buy-in, always a key to rolling out new
IT. The idea could be problematic because, if needed
in all firms, the function might be a market inhibitor.
But the idea does spell opportunity for the IT
consulting community wherever a company does not
want to increase headcount. A win-win for users and
investors in services companies would occur if the
need is temporary, only an SOA implementation issue.
The third company, ADP, has to be looked at two
ways: as both the human resources/payroll service
provider it is well known as and as the application
technology provider that it is less well known for. In
 retrospect, ADP was delivering SaaS before the term
was invented five years ago (and ASP before that term
was invented 10 years ago). From both perspectives,
ADP is depending on SOA in a big way. Bob
Bongiorno, ADP senior vice president and chief
information officer of employer services, outlined how
ADP, like Amtrak, used the portal approach to SOA
(our term, not theirs) of decoupling the input sources
from the backend systems. This lets ADP support its
classic basic payroll business service as well as a
growing business process outsourcing practice,
professional employer organizations (PEO) such as
staffing companies, and embedding ADP application
technology into other applications such as Microsoft
Office accounting (part of the Office Online family)
without changing the core application. That might
sound like vanilla 1990s screen scraping, but the SOA-
based approach involves rich user experiences and the
ability to move the processing platform around the net
as needed without constantly rewriting APIs and other
connectors down to the lower levels of the stack.
ADP will then begin to decompose the backend
systems to achieve the kind of “true” services
orientation described below. Our market analysis is
based on the assumption that there will be thousands
of such enterprise applications services next decade
where today there are hundreds of application
modules. Based on its progress to date, ADP is very
likely to be a leader in this decomposition/
recomposition process
Users don’t have to start with decomposition of
existing modules but leading packaged application
suppliers such as ADP are likely to. Users can start
from scratch the way they did with Powersoft and
Visual Basic 10 to 15 years ago. That scenario will
become less likely as someone builds a true enterprise
applications services “catalog,” but many early
adopters will have no choice but to roll their own even
while knowing that they are reinventing the wheel.
Combined with other user interviews we come
away with three findings worth digging deeper into as
the SOA trend gains traction:
1) Two of the three users were approaching SOA
from the portal perspective rather than a big bang
approach. That is true of SAP’s initial SOA
implementation of R/3 as well. It is a much more
conservative but investment-protecting approach
then the way then-ERP-market-leader SSA tried
© Research 2.0 – May 31, 2007      Page ‐ 5
to move to C/S in the early 1990s. To the extent
SOA is being rolled out today, prior to SOA-
based packaged applications being available in
quantity, adoption involves the use of SOA tools
and infrastructure. That means it involves
decomposing in-house-developed C/S
applications, which are now as much as 10 years
old at the UI level. Based on this very small
sample, concentrating on the UI seems to be a
preferred method. One of these users went with
the big bang approach of laying in a bus first but
the bus is only initially supporting a discrete need
as opposed to the whole company.
2) In terms of decomposition, none of the users
are really into anything too granular yet. That is
true of the packaged application suppliers as well.
Oracle announced in May that it is rewriting its
middleware and promised EDA/SOA/BPM
functionality in that rewrite should support more
granularity in the Fusion generation of Oracle
applications. In SOA theory, there will one day
be—for example—a single universal “city” service
that handles address format for customer records
in different countries (discriminating among state
or province, zip or other postal code, and so forth
and “displaying” the result correctly for that
country), ties the related address to GPS
coordinates to clarify which exact city is being
referenced (correctly choosing between San Jose,
California and San Jose, Costa Rica for example),
and even ties the city to various tax-calculation or
other geopolitical-related “services.” In theory,
every application will use this “city” service (why
reinvent the wheel?) as appropriate. When the
service gets updated because a tax changed or a
postal code moved, since all applications “call”
that one service, what you change once, “runs”
everywhere. But the change will also cascade out
to any other service that inherited any of its
characteristics. An “Address Line” service, for
example, that inherited the zip code algorithms
would update. In reality however, most enterprises
are still trying to figure out who their customers
are and to find some way to be sure they are
storing each customers’ name, address and phone
record in one place. Very granular services such as
for each line in a user record are a ways off.
3) There is a historically consistent role for
consultants. The three companies were using
consultants as well as their own staffs to
 implement SOA so there is some hope yet for a
BPR reprise among the Accenture’s and E&Y’s of
the world
What it means to investors: If you combine the
historical pace of SOA adoption with what the users
said, the infrastructure players and consulting
companies are the first to enjoy growth from this
market.
• The UI or portal-based approach probably
favors BEA (BEAS - $12.42), which acquired
the leading portal vendor, Plumtree, in 2005.
Numerous point solution providers that can
make an individual application or component
SOA-enabled are also doing well in these
situations.
• Those thinking about more of an
infrastructure first strategy, whether it’s an
enterprise service bus or something else, will
have a broad array of providers to choose
from. BEA plays in this space as well as do
public companies such as Progress (PRGS—
$31.61), Tibco (TIBX—$8.90), IONA
(IONA—$5.11) and Software AG due to its
recent acquisition of webMethods.
Longer-term, just as C/S-based packaged apps
lagged C/S-based in-house development, it will be
time to invest in SOA on the applications side. SOA-
based packaged applications become a substantial
opportunity. So it is very likely that only one real new
breakout success will emerge into the existing (highly
compacted) pack of application players. Looking at
examples from each of the last three decades, who is
the SAP (SAP—$47.33), PeopleSoft or Siebel of the
SOA era?
Some would say it’s Salesforce.com (CRM -
$45.90), but it’s much too early to make that call. Each
functional area (customer automation in this case)
tends to produce only one new category leader, and in
the case of CRM, Siebel is already associated with that
honor. Salesforce.com could just as easily turn out to
be Baan. The company that figures out how to market
hundreds or even thousands of universal services like
the two described above will be the long-term success.
Salesforce.com has started to touch this area with
AppExchange, but it has yet to be proven. It’s also
clear that Oracle and SAP are not standing still as they
move toward the same goals with Fusion and
© Research 2.0 – May 31, 2007      Page ‐ 6
NetWeaver respectively. Lastly we are clearly seeing
real potential for a Microsoft-centric vision of a
services architecture with improving .NET maturity
and functionality.
As SOA evolves it will change the dynamics of
software in a way that looks very different than
traditional applications today. Hundreds or even
thousands of universal services will combine with
others that are customized to create a much more
flexible, distributed set of easily accessible services that
enterprises will come to rely on. Given how early we
are in this game there is only realization in the major
players now and plenty of room for some market
share shifts and the emergence of a new category
leader.
– Dennis Byron
ÇÇÇ
Story updates
MEMC (WFR—$57): The shares are up about 10%
since our note in April regarding our view that it is
more than a pure cyclical play on silicon supply. We
continue to believe this is a long-term growth story. It
was also just announced that WFR will be added to the
S&P 500.
AT&T (T—$40): Continued enthusiasm for a
renaissance of AT&T has driven the shares up 5% in
the last month. Our view on the shares continues to
suggest a $45–47 range as more investors begrudgingly
admit that the iPhone is a positive catalyst for the
company.
3Com (COMS—$4.50): We feel more lucky than
smart on 3Com these days. The shares have moved up
10% since our note last month. During this time we
have received little if any new information supporting
the company’s recovery story—which, of course
doesn’t mean it won’t happen. However we are
research types, so we are taking 3Com off our active
story list for now.
– Kris Tuttle
ÇÇÇ
Adoption watch
Skype Usage Patterns - (08/07 - 05/07)
10.5
The Web 20 Average Peak

9.5
May has been a good, steady month for the Web 20

Concurrent Skype Users (M)

with the group up about 4%. Gains of 15% and 14% 8.5
by Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN), respectively,
easily offset the 10% drop in WebSense (WBSN) 7.5

driven by decreasing operating margins.

6.5

5.5

4.5

7
7

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07

7
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b-

ay
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pr
ov
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ar
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Fe
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M
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D
Date

Figure 2—Skype Usage Patterns

While it is important to note that Mother’s Day,

Figure 1—Web 20 MTD Performance
Skype
After an unexplained dip in both peak and average
usage in April, Skype has returned to growth in May,
yet not quite recovering to the peaks it reached in
March. On average, monthly growth of average and
peak user concurrency has hovered around 4% and
3.5% respectively since we started collecting data in
August of 2006. May has shown growth of only 2% for
average users and 1.25% for concurrent users.
while celebrated in many countries across the world, is
only celebrated on May 13 in the U.S. and Canada, we
still would have expected increased volume across the
board. Further investigation found that many of the
users attempting to take advantage of this offer either
couldn’t make calls, due to a lack of funds, or had
credits taken from their SkypeOut accounts. It looked
like for each user satisfied with the promo, there was at
least one unsatisfied user. Overall, it looks like it was a
poorly planned, overly complex, or misunderstood
promotion that many users had difficulty using and
certainly caused some minor backlash in the Skype
community.
Skype - Usage Statistics (May 2007)
10
Average Peak
9.5
Concurrent Skype Users (M)

Additionally this month, on May 13 (which was 8.5

Mother’s day for all of you negligent sons and 8

daughters out there), Skype ran a promotion that 7.5

allowed free SkypeOut calling to any worldwide land- 7
based line from the U.S. and Canada. While we don’t 6.5
have direct access to the percentage of calls that were 6
made via SkypeOut, we anticipated an overall increase
5.5
in network activity and found there to be exactly no
1

statistically significant increase in either average or peak

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usage. In fact, in looking at May 13 in Figure 3, it looks

20

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pretty much like any other normal Sunday during the

month. Figure 3 – Mother’s Day Effect?

 
© Research 2.0 – May 31, 2007      Page ‐ 7
 
 Also this month, in an effort to further integrate the non-beta version this month, had a 16% increase over
three disparate eBay platforms (auctions, payments and last month, jumping from 14% to 16% of the overall
communications), Skype is now allowing its users to distribution pie. These gains came primarily at the
send money to others through Skype via their Paypal expense of openSUSE, which fell from 13% to 11%
accounts. We guess this makes sense in the face of its overall.
release of the SkypePrime beta a few months back,
their new global expertise marketplace, and we will Linux Distro Popularity - YTD 2007
definitely keep a close eye on the integration as it Mint
Damn Small
5%
Ubuntu

develops.
22%
Mandriva 6%
7%

Sabayon

Second Life 8%

The folks over at Linden Labs have made some MEPIS PCLinuxOS

interesting moves lately that may drive adoption of the

8% 16%
Debian
Fedora openSUSE
platform but cause headaches down the road. 8%
9% 11%

Following the open sourcing of their client software, it Ubuntu PCLinuxOS openSUSE Fedora Debian
MEPIS Sabayon Mandriva Mint Damn Small
has subsequently announced its intentions to release
the server software under the same unrestrictive GNU
General Public License. Figure 4—Linux Distributions by Popularity

This could be used both by individuals, who simply
want to develop and manage their own public virtual
worlds, as well as internally at enterprises looking for
new and innovative ways to expand their collaboration
platforms without having to worry about the general
riff-raff floating around on the publicly hosted servers.
Currently, Linden Labs generates a majority of its
revenue from the sale of and “maintenance” of private
tracts of virtual land. Private, internal corporate
adoption could open up a host of new revenue
possibilities for Linden, with support contracts and
potential custom coding being the most self-evident.
Furthering its functionality, Second Life was
supposed to be releasing its voice capabilities from beta
testing to all users on the grid. While not disclosing any
technical details for the hold up, Linden Labs
announced that it would keep the voice service in beta
for at least a few more weeks and initiate a phased roll-
out across regions on the grid. Adding voice will make
the virtual world a much more natural place for
business to occur and potentially speed up the adoption
for business users not yet comfortable with the texting
that is currently the primary form of communication in
the game.
Linux distributions
There was little movement in the buzz-rankings of the
Top 10 Linux distros this month, with one notable
exception. PCLinuxOS, which released its first full,
© Research 2.0 – May 31, 2007      Page ‐ 8
Dell’s continued commitment to Ubuntu Linux on the
desktop and SUSE Linux on the server is certainly
helping keep them among the leaders.
ÇÇÇ
THE TECHNOLOGY MONTHLY
Kris Tuttle, CEO
Pete Bishop, Senior Analyst
Dennis Byron, Senior Analyst
Nancy Hendryx, Chief Editor
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