Analysis & Commentary:

SUPER SIZE DEAL FOR CALDERA

As reported by Joseph C. Panettieri, McDonald's is hungry for Unix. Sources say the fast-food giant is set to order 4,000 OpenUnix licenses from Caldera International. An official announcement from both companies is expected within a few weeks.

Sources say McDonald's will use OpenUnix (formerly known as SCO UnixWare) and IBM's MQSeries to track data and crunch financial information across its restaurants.

OpenUnix is relatively popular within the fast-food industry. Sources close to Caldera note that KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell all are major OpenUnix customers.

The McDonald's deal comes at a critical time for Caldera, which is trying to unify the Linux and Unix worlds. Faced with slowing sales growth and continued financial losses, Caldera is shaking up its marketing department and gearing up for a major developer conference in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Caldera earlier this week named Timothy Ashby as executive vice president of worldwide marketing and Angela Yearta as director of analyst and public relations.

Ashby previously worked for MarchFirst as head of eBusiness for the Western region. (MarchFirst, an e-consulting firm, went bankrupt earlier this year.) Yearta's background includes international and domestic public relations, advertising and marketing, according to Caldera.

Caldera on Aug. 19 will kick off Forum 2001 at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The conference will focus on development, deployment and management solutions for Linux and Unix.

For its Q2 ended April 30, Caldera's revenue grew 17 percent to $1.6 million. The company had a net loss of $11.7 million for the quarter, compared with a $9.2 million loss in Q2 of 2000.

Caldera acquired SCO's server and professional services division on May 7.