MVTech MVTech (June 25, 2004)

Notes from Mountain View's high-tech industry

By Kristine D. Dworkin

Google sharpens search tools -- for a price

If you think Google isn't doing enough for you, consider using the next generation of Google's Search Appliance, a search tool package that's being sold to companies, schools and government agencies.

Designed to provide prospective customers with services such as indexing and searching information on their privately guarded intranets, this hardware-and-software package is not your father's search engine -- it's a souped-up model with capacity for more than 300 queries per minute and expanded collections that scale 150,000 to 15 million or more documents.

Google has high hopes for this upgrade of the search package, sometimes referred to as "Google in a box." If things go according to the company's plan, Google's Search Appliance will create a new revenue stream to ease its dependence on online advertising.

In Google's first-quarter revenue, online advertising accounted for all but 4 percent. This has raised a few eyebrows among some industry analysts as the company prepares for a highly anticipated initial public offering of stock. The IPO is expected to be several months away.

Do they call it McLegato?

When Glasglow, Scotland's Strathclyde University called for back-up, Legato delivered what it was looking for. The institution for higher learning had been experiencing a long run of bad luck with other back-up software until Legato agreed to handle its storage software management.

The move is not without controversy, however. Strathclyde University, which has 20 computing facilities across its campus, is a well-known user of Sun Microsystems hardware and software, which prefers to partner with Veritas, not Legato.

"We've tried a lot of back-up solutions, going through most of the software you can have but we've had problems with all of them," said Vincent Anglim, computing officer at the university. He said the Legato option is proving to be reliable and easy to use.

SGI as weather forecaster

The company that played a hand in creating the extreme weather thriller, "Twister," is now producing precise weather forecasts for U.S. military operations all over the world.

SGI sold an Origin 3900 supercomputer to the U.S. Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, which already hosts an arsenal of SGI Origin family supercomputers and on-site SGI Professional Services to create higher-resolution weather models.

Located in Monterey, the center is one of the world's leading numerical weather prediction operations, using sophisticated meteorological and oceanographic models to forecast all aspects of the air-sea environment.

Industry honors Veritas

Veritas took top honors at the software industry's version of the Oscars, the Software & Information Industry Association's 2004 Codie Awards. Veritas' SANPoint Control was recognized for outstanding product achievement in the "best storage software" category. The software aims to simplify management and automate provisioning of storage in mixed vendor environments.

Veritas was selected for this award by industry trade press, mainstream technology writers, industry experts and members of the Software & Information Industry Association.

Intuit alliance offers painless payroll

More than 80,000 small and mid-sized customers could begin reaping big-business benefits from an alliance between Intuit and the National Financial Corp. This deal will make Intuit's full-service payroll and human resources services available through the National Bank of Commerce and Central Carolina Bank as part of Intuit's Outsourced Payroll Strategic Alliance program.

The banks will also offer Intuit's QuickBooks financial management software, TurboTax tax preparation and filing software to their customers.

"Small business customers perform payroll tasks on their own which is time-consuming. The bank that brings the best solution to their customers wins the customer for the long haul," said Intuit's bank marketing manager Dan Morrison.

Intuit is currently in talks with several financial institutions to create more alliances of this kind, he added.

Editor's Note: This week the Voice launches "MVTech," a roundup of news from Mountain View's high-tech industry. Please send news items, comments and suggestions to Kristine D. Dworkin at mvvoicetech@yahoo.com.

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