Novell Inc. recently announced it has filed a suit in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City against Microsoft Corp. for allegedly making and distributing false and misleading statements about Novell and its products in violation of state and federal laws. Novell is seeking injunctive relief to immediately stop dissemination of the allegedly false and misleading statements by Microsoft, in addition to seeking corrective advertising, a recall of the false advertising and unspecified money damages.
Microsoft’s statements were contained in a marketing piece shaped like a breakfast cereal box that it recently distributed to a large number of Novell customers across the country. The box was headlined “Microsoft Server Crunch,” and on it were printed a number of false and misleading statements, according to Novell.
Two Canadian firms win Microsoft award
Microsoft Canada Co. recently announced that Canadian-based eOptimize Inc. and Acrodex took top honours in their respective categories at the MEC Awards 2001 in Orlando, Fla. The two companies were selected from more than 700 nominated companies from around the world competing in ten categories.
Acrodex of Alberta won the award for Best Productivity Solution. This award recognizes a solution, product, or service that positively impacted strategic business processes and increased the value of Exchange 2000. eOptimize Inc. of Kamloops, B.C., won the award for best Vertical-Focused Solution. This award recognizes a solution, product, or service targeted at a specific vertical market.
O’Hare to use fingerprint recognition
In the first-ever large-scale use in aviation, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport will upgrade its existing building access-control system based on fingerprint-recognition technology from SecuGen Corp., according to the company.
Beginning this fall, new smart card fingerprint-verification readers using SecuGen’s technology will be installed on approximately 1,100 doors at both O’Hare and Midway airports. The readers verify the smart-card holders’ identity and allow only authorized employees to enter restricted airport areas such as jet ramps, baggage handling and other secure rooms.
Quantum countersues Imation
Network storage company Quantum Corp. filed suit against Imation Corp. recently, alleging Imation misappropriated trade secrets and is engaged in deceptive and misleading advertising by releasing DLT (digital linear tape) products without meeting Quantum’s qualifications. The suit comes two days after Imation filed a federal antitrust suit against Quantum, charging the company with conspiring to monopolize the digital linear tape storage market.
In Quantum’s suit filed in California State Court in Santa Clara County, the company said Imation is taking “illegal and unfair advantage” of proprietary information received after Imation signed a 1999 licence agreement giving Imation access to Quantum’s DLT intellectual property.
Nortel expects loss of $3.6 billion
Telecommunication equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp. recently announced a projected loss for the third quarter of US$3.6 billion and said it would lay off an additional 10,000 employees.
The company also said that chief financial officer Frank Dunn would replace John Roth as president and CEO effective Nov. 1. Roth, who had notified the Nortel board in April that he would step down as CEO, will remain with Nortel as vice chairman until the end of 2002, company officials said. Brampton, Ont.-based Nortel, which started the year with 92,000 employees, will have a workforce of nearly half that, or 45,000 by the end of October due to continuing layoffs, officials said.
Cray launches supercomputer
Supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc. has launched in the U.S. a new sub-US$1 million supercomputer designated the Cray SX-6, capable of making eight trillion calculations per second (eight teraflops), the company said in a statement recently. The machine is a remake of a version of NEC Corp.’s SX-6, and the launch marks the first time that NEC supercomputers have been made available for sale in the U.S., following the lifting of import duties earlier this year, Cray said.
The SX-6 consists of up to 128 separate nodes; each node contains eight single-chip processors, each capable of performing eight billion floating-point calculations per second (eight gigaflops). The nodes communicate through the SX-6’s symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) shared memory system. Supercomputers are used for the heaviest number-crunching loads found in civilian, government and military applications. Typical applications include image and graphics processing, acoustic analysis, plus large-scale simulations for weather forecasting, fluid dynamics, automotive, aerospace and computational chemistry purposes.
