ShadowRAM: Sharpe's a happy camper with her Lancer

COMMENTARY: Rumours, truth and innuendo

Kellie Sharpe, who works at the Canberra office of business communication company Commander, looks like a happy camper. And why wouldn’t she after winning a Mitsubishi Lancer VRX, the major prize in a raffle organised by the ACT Brumbies rugby team in conjunction with its major sponsor Computer Associates.
 
The CA/Brumbies raffle was staged throughout the rugby season and drawn recently at the Brumbies head office at Griffith, ACT.
 
More than $75,000 in prizes was won and more than $50,000, which was generated through the sales of raffle tickets, will be donated to Brumbies’ 2005 charities Brainwave and Camp Quality. Hmmm, The Shadow wonders whether this is where our friends at printer company Kyocera got the idea for their Porsche giveaway!



Toughbook conquers Everest

We all know that mobile computing is popular these days, but Panasonic has taken “mobility” to the next level (or shall we say to the top of the world), teaming with 21-year-old Australian Rex Pemberton who took one of the vendor’s Toughbooks to the top of Mount Everest.
 
Apparently, during pre-expedition planning, Rex and his team approached Panasonic for an “extreme” notebook that could handle temperature ranges from minus 30ºC to plus 40ºC, as well as rugged vibrations and potential transportation through the mountains.
 
Rex needed to send emails via satellite phone during his two-month journey and also type his daily diary, store digital photos and video footage taken on the climb and to make notes for a book and documentary on the expedition. At minus 10ºC outside Rex’s tent and at 5500m above sea level, the Toughbook was still achieving a battery life of three hours. Obviously, the machine stood up to the task.



Information Builders clocks up 30 big ones

The folks at Information Builders must be doing something right. The company held its 30th birthday party this month -- not a bad dig for an IT company! It also took some time out to plug its latest software release WebFOCUS 7 to the 80 people in attendance.



CA non-compliant

Why is it that tech companies that claim they can help customers get compliant cannot seem to get compliant themselves?
 
Recently, CA asked the US SEC for a 15-day extension on filing its fiscal 2005 annual report because it has not completed its evaluation of internal controls over fiscal reporting as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
 
On a more positive note, CA has changed the billing structure for its salespeople after getting beaten up for naming more than 12,000 customers to its named-accounts line-up.
 
CA direct salespeople that work with an Enterprise Solution Partner (ESP) get their “billing” quota retired at 130 percent of the transaction value.
 
If a direct sales specialist works with an ESP but the partner fulfils services using CA professional services, the “billings” quota is retired at 162 percent of deal value.


Lost opportunity

As the Veritas-Symantec merger gets set to close, more than a few HP board members may be fuming about a lost opportunity.
 
At least three reportedly argued that HP should have purchased Veritas rather than letting it fall into the hands of Symantec.
 
Now the question is whether HP, in pursuit of higher-margin software opportunities, may in turn need to bid on Symantec. Meanwhile, Symantec’s acquisitive leader John Thompson apparently is being reined in by his own board to make sure the Veritas merger works before embarking on any other major acquisitions. He reportedly covets Citrix.


Chips or monsters?

IBM chipheads may have lost Apple, but they’re fully into the games push. Next-generation chips for Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox are respectively codenamed Waternoose and Smaug.
 
Waternoose is the malevolent, multi-appendaged boss in Monsters Inc., while Smaug is the dragon in The Lord Of The Rings.