Turns out Caldera and SCO have a marriage made in Vegas. That's where Caldera -- now SCO Group, Inc. -- held a celebration on August 26 at the combined company's GeoForum event, announcing the new corporate identity.
The original SCO was Santa Cruz Operation, one of the most enterprising and independent UNIX companies of the 80s and early 90s. With the rise of Linux and the whole free and open source software movements, SCO languished for lack of a spotlight on its work -- but less so for a lack of business. While SCO and other established UNIX brands were hurt by Linux, the company maintained a core base of customers, including names as big as McDonald's. It was also very strong in the reseller channel, where Caldera has always had a strong focus. As a result, Caldera was able to buy an undervalued company that was much larger than itself.
Also significant was SCO's custody of the original UNIX, which had passed from AT&T to Novell to SCO, and now to SCO Group.
SCO Group is a substantial company. Its products are installed on 2 million servers. Its revenues are past $40 million (as of August 26, when this is being written), and projected by CEO Darl McBride at more than $60 million. For perspective, Red Hat's current revenues are just over $70 million. SCO Group has 545 employees, compared to Red Hat's 634. SCO Group's gross profit margins are a nearly identical 73.17%. And it's ahead on turnover of inventory, assets and net receivables flow. It also has no debt.
To bracket both SCO Group and Red Hat, SuSE has comparative sales and headcounts of $35.4 million and 380, respectively.
SCO Group's 12-month revenue growth is very positive: 1,324%, compared to Red Hat's (35.6%). Both are in a market (8000 public companies) that's only growing at 0.5%. (To be fair, Red Hat's 36-month revenue growth is 71.4%.) The source for all the numbers above (other than McBride's) is Hoovers.
Other reports (e.g. Maureen O'Gara in LinuxBusinessWeek.com) say Caldera's revenues in the last year were $71 million, compared to Red Hat's $77 million. They also report that 90% of the company's revenues had been coming from the old SCO side of the business. In other words, SCO's UNIXes were doing a lot better for Caldera than Caldera's Linux. The name change does much to remove those distinctions, though it remains to be seen how much the Linux and UNIX sides of SCO Group can leverage their apparent synergies. In this respect, SCO Group is now in the same boat as Sun, HP and IBM.
Caldera acquired SCO's business in May 2001 -- a process that began the prior August. Now it appears the merger is finally complete. In addition to the corporate name change, these other identities have also been updated:
SCO Group also announced SCOx, a new component in its partner programs. As part of TeamSCO, SCOx "provides additional product and service opportunities plus a unique 'buy-out' plan allowing solution providers the option to turn their SCOx business into cash by selling it back to SCO", says a SCO Group press release, which adds, "SCOx is designed to benefit solution providers by creating new revenue opportunities, expanding solution offerings and providing increased rewards and incentives".
The name change and other moves do not change the company's standardization on United Linux, which it formed last summer with SuSE, Conectiva and TurboLinux.
- Doc Searls