SCO Web-enables apps for small enterprises

In the Web services world a noticeably quiet company is The SCO Group. But recently, SCO has been making more than a little noise over its $1 billion lawsuit against IBM and is considering what more mayhem it can create by going after Linux distributors such as Red Hat and SuSE Linux.

Legal shenanigans aside, SCO has just announced a development framework called SCOx that is intended to allow resellers and developers to package applications and services for the small-to-mid-size business market.

The concept of SCOx is to enable applications for SCO’s Unix and Linux platforms to be exposed as Web services and allow the integration of Web services-enabled applications including those written under Microsoft .Net and SunOne J2EE.

The key SCOx components are:

*E-Business Services – Web-based software components initially include an eCommerce engine, member services, and a presentation layer.

*Web Services layer – Simple Object Application Protocol and XML libraries for C, C++, G++, Java, PHP, and Perl.

*Web Services Security Layer – SSL libraries.

*mySCO Distribution Portal – reseller portal.

*Hosted Services – servers, software, operating system/platform support, and administrative services.

*Software Development Kit.

An important underpinning of SCOx is that there are more than 4,000 applications on SCO platforms and SCOx will make it possible for users to integrate these with SCO’s own e-business products such as SCObiz.

SCO plans to showcase many of the first applications available for the SCOx framework at its annual SCO Forum conference held in August.