* Tarantella kept its head down and is coming up roses
It really is a small world, especially in the technology sector. While checking back on what I might have written about the SCO Group (formerly the Santa Cruz Operation) in light of all the hoopla about its lawsuit against IBM, I came across an issue of this newsletter from March 2000, headlined, “Tarantella begins its dance.”
It was about a newly introduced SCO technology for remote, thin client computing that promised to be a very viable competitor to Windows NT Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe. I made a note to investigate further and find out what had happened to this SCO technology.
Fast forward to May 2003 when we ran a newsletter headlined, “A New Moon for Windows Terminal Services,” in which, once again, I was touting a competitor to Windows Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe, this time New Moon Systems’ Canaveral IQ.
I really like Windows Terminal Services and I admire Citrix. Way back in 1998, I described Citrix as an outstanding exception in the stable of one-trick companies – vendors with essentially one software product. Such companies either end up being bought out (when a larger vendor wants their technology) or edged out (when someone wants their technology but won’t pay the asking price). As it turns out, Tarantella could be another exception.
You see, when the Santa Cruz Operation sold its operating systems to Caldera (which later became “the SCO Group”, sued IBM, got in a nasty fight with Novell, etc.) the remnant that wasn’t sold was the terminal server technology. The company changed its name to Tarantella, Inc and continued, quietly, to innovate in the terminal server space.
Now Tarantella has bought out New Moon (what did I say about the fate of some one-trick companies?) in order to broaden its scope.
Tarantella’s software (as befits a spinoff of the Santa Cruz Operation) runs on Unix or Linux servers to enable thin-client access to Unix, Linux, mainframe, AS/400 as well as Microsoft Terminal Server applications. New Moon’s Canaveral IQ, on the other hand, runs on Windows servers. Tarantella’s thurst has been towards massively scalable installations for large enterprises while New Moon has focused on a more minimalist vision – only the services you need for the small to midsized organization.
When you put these two together it seems they have all the bases covered and could, in fact, have a wider, broader and deeper reach than either Microsoft or Citrix in the remote access arena.
It might simply be one more area where Linux makes inroads on Windows servers, or it could be a very formidable “changing of the guard” in terminal services. Either way, you should pay attention to the announcements coming out of Tarantella in the near future.
