The Licensing agreements cover a number of different categories. First of all the Vintela products are tightly integrated with the Microsoft products and make use of Microsoft protocols, and patented technologies. Secondly, the Vintela products operate as integral with products like SMS and Active Directory, in such a way that the Unix user needs to be licensed in the same way as the Windows user. Vintela and Microsoft have signed a series of agreements that cover all of these contingencies, and takes account of different circumstances including Education, major accounts, etc.
6. I understand that the Vintela products grew from technology developed at Caldera. Is there any connection between the Vintela technology and DR-DOS, which Caldera took over from Novell back in the day?
Vintela has former associations with Caldera Systems, who where one of the original Linux distributions, and pioneered many ground breaking developments for Linux. Caldera of DR-DOS fame is a separate entity and as such has no associations with Vintela.
7. On the subject of Caldera, IT conspiracy theorists are quick to point out a connection between SCO Group (which is the product of the merger of Caldera and SCO) and Vintela, noting that Microsoft’s support for a company affiliated with SCO is not only noteworthy, but highly suspicious. What is Vintela’s current affiliation with SCO? To ask the question more directly, both SCO and Microsoft have made major efforts to undermine Linux’s foothold in the IT world. Since your company is connected to both of these firms, do you think Vintela’s products will end up helping or hindering the wider use of Linux in enterprise IT adoption, long term?
Many of your questions are aimed at trying to determine if Vintela is in the Microsoft “camp” or the Linux “camp”. Vintela is in the user camp, and one of the reasons that Microsoft is so interested in Vintela is that the users are voting for this approach to IT by adopting our products, in large numbers. An analyst once described Vintela as the Switzerland of the OS management world in that we maintain a careful balance that is aimed at doing what the customer wants in his overall IT environment. If the whole world moved to Microsoft, OR to Linux (or even to Sun, or IBM) then Vintela would have no business. Vintela instruments standards consistently across Linux, Sun, HP, etc and those standards are common to Microsoft management products – Kerberos, LDAP, WBEM/CIM, etc. The user is looking for proper integration around standards that are consistently implemented on all platforms, so that they can reduce duplication of redundant infrastructure. Vintela is a completely independent company that passionately believes in this mission.
8. The Vintela product seems to have initially been called “SCO Authentication for Microsoft Active Directory,” and was renamed “Vintela Authentication from SCO” but the Vintela organization was apparently spun-off from Center7, another Canopy Group company. Is this a correct characterization of the Vintela history? And can you expand on that a bit?
First of all it is important to understand that Vintela is an independent company, and the vast majority of our products have been developed as that company, or by Wedgetail, a company acquired by Vintela. Some of the original R&D work was done at Caldera Systems, as part of their investment in Linux and Open Standards technology, specifically the Kerberos and WBEM work. The Founders of Vintela approached Canopy, who had historically invested very heavily in Linux-related development, and they agreed to support an effective Management Buy Out (MBO) and incubate the focused development of these management related tools under Center 7, who itself is a managed Services company. Vintela subsequently became independent. Vintela had agreed to OEM the Vintela products to SCO, when they were complete as part of the MBO. The products you refer to were all VAS under an SCO brand.
9. On the subject of history, the “official” history of your company, listed on your web site is quite short on detail. It makes no mention of Caldera, SCO, or Center7. Is that because those companies have waged controversial legal battles that have brought negative attention to them and their investor, the Canopy Group?
The Vintela website refers to our history as Vintela, and nothing else. Vintela is an interesting company in that it is a fairly young company, whose technology has been under development for a much longer period of time, in a variety of corporate identities and geographic locations. The history of many companies is equally convoluted. Vintela has no involvement in SCO’s litigation and would neither benefit nor suffer from an outcome either way. There is nothing to hide, but also there’s nothing of substance to tell. As we have outlined above some of our R&D (and staff) originated at Caldera Systems, who played a major role in establishing Linux as a serious technology in our industry, and the people who worked for Caldera Systems are very proud of their achievements. Many of those people continue to drive innovation - as part of Vintela or SuSe, or Novell, etc., but we need to focus in on Vintela.
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