– By Dan Berkes –
IBM today announced third-quarter earnings of $1.6 billion, or 90 cents per
share, on revenue of $20.4 billion. Although the numbers were somewhat
better than analysts anticipated, numbers are down by almost 20 percent from
just 12 months ago.Most analysts were expecting the technology titan to report 89 cents per
share profit on total revenues of $20.86 billion. Watchers had downgraded
their earlier expectations, betting that the post-Sept. 11 purchasing slump
would have a serious impact on the company’s quarterly report.

Per-share earnings declined by 17 percent from one year ago, when the
technology titan reported earnings of $2 billion for $1.08 a share, on total
third-quarter 2000 revenues of $21.78 billion.

Services led the way for IBM this quarter, with its Global Services
consulting and outsourcing division experiencing a 7 percent increase in
revenue, excluding maintenance charges. CEO Lou Gerstner called it a
“fundamental shift in customer buying behavior” as companies start to spend
more money on mission-critical items such as application and systems
management services from outside companies instead of relying completely on
their own in-house solutions.

Hardware sales were off by 21 percent from last year, and Gerstner admitted
that IBM’s PC and hard disk drive market segments are in serious trouble. Even
with the decline, Big Blue remained upbeat about its server division, noting
major market share gains in the Unix end of the market. Much of that success
may be due to the $1 billion IBM committed to development and promotion of
its Linux services.

That promotion, among other marketing and development efforts, has led to an
increased demand for IBM’s zSeries mainframe servers. Gerstner said that the
zSeries has seen an overall growth rate of 40 percent for every fiscal
quarter this year, and a 42 percent increase for the recently concluded
third quarter.

IBM believes that part of the reason it saw a shrink in hardware sales this
quarter was the announcement of its new high-end Regatta servers. Announced
in early October, the new servers will be available for purchase during the
fourth fiscal quarter.

Total software revenues grew by 10 percent from the previous third quarter,
to $3.2 billion. Sales of its WebSphere development product jumped by 75
percent, and and DB2 revenues climbed 31 percent. That number doesn’t
include revenues gained from the purchase of the Informix database division,
and numbers for that particular area were not immediately available.

Shares of IBM closed Tuesday down 15 cents to $101.85.

Patrick Mullen writes, “The Duke of URL has posted their 13th Linux Buyer’s Guide. As usual, the guide covers new developments in Linux hardware over the last couple months, along with 3 custom Linux boxes in varying price-ranges. In addition to the guide is a short a sweet look at Linux-compatible peripherals.”

ZDNet has the story. “The recording industry is experimenting with new technology it hopes can smother online
song swapping by targeting music traders’ computers directly.”

Slashdot has the link and discussion about the EFF co-founder joining the board of directors. The original announcement is at Ximian.com.

IDG News Service reports that the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, is thinking about ditching
Microsoft Corp.’s Windows in favor of Linux, partly because of security issues.

Reported at CNET News.com: “Chipmaker Transmeta on Tuesday shook up its management team
for the second time this year, replacing Chief Executive Mark Allen after
just seven months on the job.” The newest CEO and the third for Transmeta since March will be company chairman Murray Goldman.

Posted at GNOME Gnotices: “After a several-month-too-long freeze on membership, the GNOME Foundation’s
Membership and Elections Committee is proud to announce that we are once again
accepting applications for membership.
If you have contributed a non-trivial improvement to GNOME (whether code,
documentation, translation, etc.) and are not yet a member, you can apply for membership by completing
the online application form.”

LinuxCertified, Inc. announces “Linux Fundamentals” course for busy IT professionals – October 20-21st, 2001. All attendees get a free Linux laptop.

info@linuxcertified.com
http://www.linuxcertified.com/

Linux is fast becoming a key component of the Network age of today
and the future. Linux is now core of systems ranging from small smart
devices to supercomputer clusters. A working knowledge of Linux is
critical for professionals who use computing devices as tools for their work..

“Linux Fundamentals” course is designed for busy professionals with no prior experience with Linux or any other flavor of UNIX. This two-day introduction to Linux broadens their horizons with a detailed overview of the operating system. Attendees learn how to effectively use a Linux system as a valuable tool. They get familiar with the architecture and various components of the operating system, learn both graphical and command line tools, and learn to do basic networking. This class is scheduled for October 20 – 21st, 2001.

In addition to carefully designed lecture material delivered by
experienced Linux professionals, there is a heavy emphasis on hands-on learning. Attendees get a powerful Linux laptop on their arrival, alongwith other class materials.
At the end of the class they take this laptop with them to further enhance their Linux expertise. Professionals with basic UNIX experience can enroll in the the popular “Linux Certification Bootcamp” class.

About LinuxCertified.com

The mission of LinuxCertified.com is to bring Linux to mainstream IT
usage. We firmly believe that Linux has an enormous potential, once it crosses over from the early adopters to the more mainstream users. Our goal is to help this transition by providing:

– Linux trained and certified professionals

– Linux certified products that cater to mainstream users rather than
early adopters.

Contact:

info@linuxcertified.com

http://www.linuxcertified.com/

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective
owners.

Posted at LinuxPR: “Borland(R) Software Corporation
(Nasdaq:BORL), a leading provider of e-business platform solutions, today
announced that its rapid application development (RAD) environment for the
Linux(R) platform, Borland(R) Kylix(TM), has been ranked as the most used
integrated development environment (IDE) by Linux developers. The research was
conducted and published by Evans Data Corporation, a market research firm
focused on the software development community.”

Linux Planet: “After last week’s review of StarOffice 6.0 beta, a few people asked me how it compared to OpenOffice. There seems to be the
assumption that there is a divergence between the two office suite applications. I am telling you now, there is hardly any difference in
performance or interface between OpenOffice and its parent-child StarOffice. Certainly not in the Writer component of each suite,
which is what I focused on for the purposes of this review.”