SHORT TAKES

SUPERCOMPUTER 2000 MANNHEIM – PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES

Mannheim, GERMANY — Professor Hans Meuer and his team put the photos of all the speakers and chairmen, theExhibition, the Get-together Party and the Social Event on their web-site: http://www.supercomp.de/

Thus the participants and readers can view the European HPC scene. It is still possible to order the Proceedings on CD-ROM, also via the Webserver. The next event, SC2001 in Mannheim will take place from June 21 – 23, again in the Congress Center Mannheim, Rosengarten.

GADZOOX NAMES NEW EXECS AMID TURMOIL

San Diego, CA — Storage network hardware maker Gadzoox has replaced two more high-level executives in the wake of financial problems and the arrival of a new chief executive. Clark Foy has taken over as vice president of marketing, replacing Dave Tang, the company said. JoAnn Rogers has been named vice president of human resources, replacing the former director of human resources, Cynthia Jordan. The moves come amid turmoil at the company. Last week, the company was forced to restate earnings because of an accounting change resulting from an unnamed “affiliated shareholder” who traded Gadzoox stock during a particular time. The trade required Gadzoox to change the accounting method by which it acquired another firm, SmartSAN.

On Tuesday of last week, Gadzoox named Michael Parides president and chief executive, replacing Bill Sickler, who resigned. Parides previously was group vice president of the storage, computer systems, software and document management group at Gartner’s Dataquest division. Foy was vice president of marketing for hard disk maker Quantum’s high-end storage division. Rogers previously worked at Network Computing Devices. Gadzoox is based in San Jose, Calif., and makes routers, switches, hubs and other products for storage area networks, centralized high-speed storage systems that are most popular at large corporations.

COWPLAND LEAVES COREL

San Diego, CA — Defeated in his fight to break into technology’s big leagues, Michael Cowpland has left Corel Corp. to wage smaller battles. The high-flying executive, who resigned abruptly late Tuesday from the software company he started 15 years ago, said he will now get his hands “really dirty” working with Linux start-up companies. Cowpland – who made international headlines in 1997 with his highly-publicized but doomed battle with Microsoft Corp. to win the word processing market – said he will remain a director at Corel and advise on technology issues. He is still is Corel’s biggest shareholder with about 5.2 million shares, or 7 percent of Corel’s 73.5 million shares. “As people know, I’ve always been interested in technology start-ups and getting things going,” Cowpland told reporters in a harried, last-minute press conference that was typical of his frenetic style. “It’s maybe never a perfect time, but today’s as good a time as any to pass the baton on to a new management team.”

If timing is any clue, Cowpland’s decision to quit could stem from a failed effort to purchase Inprise/Borland Corp. in May. Cowpland said he first discussed resignation plans with Corel’s board about three months ago, about the time that deal crumbled. One month later, Corel posted a deep second-quarter loss, a performance it expects to repeat in the third quarter, and cut 20 percent of its staff. Cowpland had said the Inprise acquisition would vault Corel into leadership in the market for Linux, a still-fledgling computer operating system that supporters claim is superior to Microsoft’s Windows. The expansion plan echoed Corel’s earlier battle with Microsoft, when it bought WordPerfect and pitted it against Microsoft Word, a fight that left Corel bloodied and battered. “If you look at what’s happened over the last five years, it’s probably just not been a lot of fun,” said Jean W. Orr, analyst at Bluestone Capital Partners. “He wants to concentrate on the new things and he’s got this ball and chain of this existing company – I think he just decided that he could do more what he wanted away from Corel rather than as a part of it.” While vague about his plans, Cowpland, 57, said he will focus on helping young Linux companies to grow with financing, advice, or management.

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