Sun edged out Dell for third place in the server line-up behind IBM and HP in revenue. Dell, which sells Intel servers, was down 1.3% to $1.27 billion in server revenues. Dell is supposed to have 10.3% of all server revenues, down from 11.1%.

IDC said Sun was ahead four points in worldwide Unix revenues. Sun accounted for more than half of Unix server shipments in Q2, up 11.8%. Last year Sun was third in Unix, now it's first.

Sun's total Q2 server revenues, including AMD-based machines, were up 15.5% to $1.58 billion. AMD's Opteron chip captured 20.2% of industry standard server revenues in the quarter, up from 17.1% in Q1 and up from 9.5% last year.

IBM's overall position dropped 2.2% to 31% of revenues and HP fell 0.7% to 27.8%.

The market itself was up 0.6% to $12.3 billion in the second quarter.

AMD told Reuters in Shanghai that it thought it could capture 40% of the global server market as measured by units by 2009. AMD, which has been scoring in the 20 percentile lately, wasn't even in the server business three years ago.

The occasion for the claim was the press conference Tuesday celebrating the opening of AMD's new $16 million Shanghai R&D Center (SRDC). The new facility is supposed to focus initially on developing AMD's new-generation mobile platforms as well as validate and test its other processors.

The company said the place represents the "largest single expansion of system design and customer support resources" in its history and moves more of its "center of gravity closer to customers and technology end users."

It will be AMD's largest systems design hub outside the US employing 400 people in a few years.

Dell Exec Moves to Borland
Borland has named Peter Morowski senior vice-president of engineering, responsible for the company's R&D. He was vice-president of software at Dell, where he created its enterprise software organization. Before that, he was at IBM as CTO of Tivoli.

China Joins Oasis
China's Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance has joined Oasis' Technical Advisory Board (TAB). Other new members represent Nortel, Booz Allen Hamilton and Fujitsu Ltd. Existing TAB members represent Oracle, BEA and Sun Microsystems.

Dell Defends its CEO
Dell has had to defend its CEO Kevin Rollins and say Rollins has Michael Dell's "full support."

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that large institutions like Fidelity Investments and OppenheimerFunds were bailing on Dell because of the company's poor performance, which many people lay at Rollins' door.

The company's stock price is down 60% since Rollins became CEO 25 months ago and there's open speculation about his ouster. On CNBC Cramer told listeners Rollins wasn't a real CEO. "He just plays one on TV."

Meanwhile, Dell has canned its year-old house-branded Apple-competitive DJ Ditty MP3 player.

Microsoft Mulls Vista Discount
Microsoft may offer Christmas shoppers discounts on Vista, which isn't due until after Christmas - January at the earliest. Microsoft has confirmed that it's been talking to OEMs and retailers about a number of holiday promotions. Gartner figures the Vista delay will cost the computer industry $4 billion in revenue this year. Will a discount ward off installation fears?

Microsoft Forced To Unbundle in South Korea
Microsoft should have cut-down versions of Windows XP Home and Professional available in South Korea by now to meet regulatory demands that it unbundle instant messaging and the Media Player. There's also supposed to be another version that links to a web page where consumers can download rival widgetry.

IE7 Hits RC 1
After three betas, Microsoft made a feature-complete Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate available for download Thursday. The final version is due in Q4 as a high-priority security update for XP and is supposed to be in the peek-a-boo Vista.

Tulsa on Tap
Tulsa, the last NetBurst Xeon, is supposed to be formally unveiled in a few days. The thing has been shipping for a few weeks, earlier than expected, to meet the AMD threat.

A high-end fat-cache MP server chip, the 65nm widget's performance is supposed to surprise everybody despite its NetBurst heritage.

Intel will claim that it beats AMD on performance and performance-per-watt in its class. AMD will say it's a power hog.

It's supposed to be 70% better than the current Paxville Xeon MP.

Lenovo Raids Dell Again
Lenovo has been having a high old time raiding Dell's demoralized, stock-under-water executive ranks, That's how it got its CEO, the president of Lenovo Japan and the head of its Asia-Pacific operation. Now it's drafted the head of Dell Services for Asia-Pacific and Japan Christopher Askew to be senior VP of Lenovo Services, based in Singapore

CA Sells its Headquarters
CA, which started a $2 billion stock buy-back a week ago using bank debt and money on hand, has sold its Long Island headquarters to a private investment group for $204 million. It will lease back the campus for 15 years, with an option to stretch it out to 35 years. It'll pay $1.26 million a month in rent for the first year, an amount that can be jacked up 0.78% a year for the next 11 years.

NetWare Creator To Work for Cisco
It appears that Drew Major, the tight coder who wrote NetWare for Novell and basically invented the LAN market, is going to work for Cisco.

Cisco said Tuesday that it's acquiring the video-on-demand software start-up Arroyo Video Solutions that Major co-founded four years ago for $92 million in cash.

Cisco intends to add Arroyo and its 44 people to its $6.9 billion acquisition of set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta last year.

Cisco has also bought the maker of networked DVD players Kiss Technology, video content house Akimbo and on-demand video rental house Moviebeam.