Q&A: New head of SCO sees return to Unix marketplace

By Todd R. Weiss

October 8, 2002 12:00 PM ET

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Computerworld - It's been a busy three and a half months for Darl McBride, the new CEO and president of Unix and Linux vendor The SCO Group Inc.
McBride, 42, joined the Lindon, Utah-based company in June when it was still known as Caldera International Inc. and helped guide it through its return to its former SCO nameplate last month (see story). As part of the renaming, the company said it would focus more attention on its Unix roots, while continuing its work with Linux.
McBride, with 18 years of IT experience, was president of FranklinCovey Co.'s online planning business before joining SCO. He spoke with Computerworld yesterday about his plans for the business and his vision of SCO's future.

There have been lots of changes at SCO since your arrival. Last month, the company announced a major shift in its business to return to its Unix roots. What's happening, and what's the future of SCO?


Darl McBride, CEO of The SCO Group Inc.

The opportunity for this company is to really tap into the heritage that it has with the Unix operating system on the Intel platform. Some people are saying we're rushing back to the 1980s with our strategy. I like to think we're going back to the future. The interesting thing when I got here is we started looking at the history of this whole thing.

So what is SCO now, a Unix company, a Linux company or a Unix and Linux company combined?
I really think it's a matter of Unix and Linux moving forward together. One of the reasons that Linux is so popular is that it's a clone of Unix. It's not like these two products are that dissimilar. If they were in the zoo, they wouldn't be at different ends of the zoo. These are similar animals and would probably be in the same cage. SCO was always known as the king of Unix on Intel. It's not a long putt to get from where we are to where the Linux game is being played. We are in a position to ride either horse.

How will you make SCO relevant today to IT professionals? What can you do to bring the company back to make it successful in the Unix marketplace again?
We go back to our channel partners now and we have a proposition for them. It's the same one they've had for 20 years [with the former SCO business]: Here's a boxed product, and go sell it to your customers. I think the

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