BEA Systems' stock opened this morning at $16.70, dropping from its position of over $18 a share last week, as Oracle's bid to buy the company at $17 per share expired yesterday.

Oracle issued a brief statement on Sunday, withdrawing its bid but not ruling out future offers for the company. However, the statement read, "BEA shareholders should not assume that Oracle will renew its $17 per share offer in the future. Over time many things can change: BEA's business might materially weaken, the stock market can fall further from its recent record highs, or Oracle may have committed its capital elsewhere."

BEA issued a statement on Friday restating its rejection of Oracle's offer. "As we have stated repeatedly, your $17.00 per share proposal is unacceptable to the Board of Directors of BEA Systems," stated the letter from BEA vice president William Klein.

"As fiduciaries, our Board cannot endorse a proposal that it has concluded significantly undervalues BEA. We therefore assume that your proposal will expire on October 28." Carl Ichan, who owns 13.22 percent of BEA's outstanding shares, demanded a shareholder vote on Oracle's offer over the weekend, and said in a statement that he has moved to file a lawsuit against BEA to force a shareholder meeting "before any scorched earth transactions" occur.

More to follow.

A blow-out quarter from Microsoft sent its shares soaring to a multi-year high Friday and boosted the Nasdaq by nearly 2%.

Microsoft shares surged 9.5% to 35.03, its biggest one-day gain in years, and benefited the likes of Dell and HP, as the company showed that a product upgrade cycle can still pack a punch. Microsoft's sales and earnings came in much higher than Wall Street analysts were expecting, thanks to strong sales of Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Windows Server, SQL Server and Halo 3.

Blue chip stocks posted strong gains on a hopeful outlook from Countrywide Financial and a possible change in leadership at Merrill Lynch, giving a boost to the beleaguered financial sector.

But chip stocks remained a laggard, as a 41% plunge in shares of Trident Microsystems on a weak outlook kept the sector from celebrating the good news from Microsoft. Micrel was another chipmaker reporting weaker than expected results.

Internet stocks were strong thanks to solid results from Baidu.com, and Yahoo gained 7.3%, continuing its run on a better than expected earnings report.

BEA Systems fell 5.9% on merger talks with Oracle that continue to stall.

Vonage surged 39% after settling its patent troubles with Verizon.

Omniture and Visual Sciences %26#151; formerly Websidestory %26#151; gained on plans to merge, and Verticalnet plunged on plans to be acquired by BravoSolution for $2.56 a share.

The Nasdaq surged 53 to 2804, the S%26P rose 20 to 1535, and the Dow gained 134 to 13,806. Volume declined to 3.58 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.59 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 24-8 margin on the NYSE, and 19-10 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 83% on the NYSE, and 68% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 259-99 on the NYSE, and 157-144 on the Nasdaq.

Bucking a trend that prevailed for much of the past decade, investment bankers are now betting big on private companies that have new ideas and business plans in addition to a more seasoned management team with well-defined global aspirations.

And while a handful of the most successful initial public offerings in the technology sector this year -- VMware, BladeLogic and Netezza -- have veered slightly from this new formula, all three possess most of the key characteristics that predict strong financial performance long after they've been assigned a ticker symbol.

Accounting and professional services firm Ernst %26 Young analyzed the traits and performance of 110 U.S. companies that went public from the beginning of 2006 through the first half of this year and that immediately qualified for listing in the Russell 2000, a popular index consisting of 2,000 small-cap stocks.

"When it comes to undertaking an IPO, preparation is unquestionably the key to success in both the short term and the long term," said Maria Pinelli, Americas Director in the Strategic Growth Markets group at Ernst %26 Young, in the release accompanying the study results. "Part of being prepared is to understand what the market responds well to so that you can determine if you are, indeed, ready."

The stats

Institutional investors are making fewer deals than they did during the dot-com madness, waiting instead for the fledgling companies to prove themselves before investing tens of millions of dollars at each stage of their development.

Of the 110 companies studied, only 11 percent went public in their first two years of operation, and the average company was eight to nine years old. It's a sign of more discerning capital markets and a more cautious and circumspect attitude within the private companies.

With age comes stability and size. Of the companies that went public in the last 18 months, those founded before 1995 had average annual sales of more than $700 million. The younger ones, launched after 1995, had an average of just $190 million in annual sales.

Not surprisingly, these younger companies had a lot more volatility and risk. The worst performing of these younger companies actually lost 51.7 percent of its market capitalization within 90 days of its IPO while the worst-performing older company shed only 20.5 percent of its value within three months of going public.

As for the CEOs at these newly public companies, the news isn't good for women. Only 2 percent of the 110 companies tracked for this study had a woman calling the shots, and that doesn't even include VMware CEO Diane Greene who spearheaded the virtualization software firm's sensational IPO in August.

While it may still be an Old Boys Network, it's the young guys who are actually doing the best job.

The average age for both CEOs who either outperformed or underperformed compared to the rest of the Russell 2000 Index ranged in age from 50 to 54 years old.

Only 8 percent of the underperforming companies were headed by a CEO less than 40 compared to 20 percent for those with CEOs over 60. Among outperformers, it was pretty much a wash. Thirteen percent of CEOs under 40 and about 15 percent of CEOs over 60 outperformed the Russell 2000.

And while Microsoft CEO Bill Gates may be the world's wealthiest man and a college dropout, this study suggests CEOs who emulate Warren Buffett (he earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University) are more likely to succeed -- albeit slightly.

Among outperforming companies, 71 percent of those CEOs held a higher degree than a bachelor's compared to 61 percent for underperformers.

Some preliminary details on AMD's planned tri-core processor have emerged, thanks to loose lips at motherboard manufacturers. The tri-core chip, first announced in September, is based on the same design as AMD's upcoming Phenom line of processors, which will come in dual and quad core configurations.

Phenom itself is based on the same quad core design as the Quad Core Opteron, a.k.a. "Barcelona." AMD finally released that chip in September, six months overdue. Phenom is meant to be the replacement to the long-running Athlon family of desktop processors and will use the same highly efficient multi-core design.

The tri-core chip will be a quad-core chip with one core turned off. This might allow AMD to amp up the clock speed a little, theorizes Nathan Brookwood, research fellow with Insight64. "The power used for a fourth core can be doled out to the other three, so to the extent you are limited by power and thermals, you can pump out a little more processing power," he said.

The tri-core chip is reported to go by the codename Toliman and will be a 65nm processor that supports the AM2+ socket, HyperTransport 3.0 and have 2MB of L3 cache. It will be launched by March 2008, according to a report in the Asian IT publication DigiTimes. "Toliman" is an alternative name for the star Alpha Centauri and the name of a city in Mexico.

AMD would not comment on unreleased products. Brookwood said the specs are right in line with the Phenom, but could not comment on the release date.

The next generation of the tri-core chip, and presumably of the Phenom line, will come in the first half of 2009. They will be based on a 45nm manufacturing process, use the new AM3 socket, support HyperTransport 3.0 and support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory.

Brookwood said customers will clearly get a more capable system with a triple core than with a dual core process. The question is how much better, and at what price. "If they get those two parameters right, it will be attractive," he said.

Both the Web 2.0 and the SaaS (define) paradigms are almost always dependent on one common denominator: the Web browser.

It is from the browser that Web-based applications are accessed and run. Yet the browser model, with its forward, back and other navigational toolbars, often add bloat and confuse Web-based applications.

Mozilla thinks it may have the answer.

The idea is to separate the traditional browser out into a standalone that will provide a browser shell for Web-based applications. The effort was formerly known as WebRunner and has now been rebranded by Mozilla as Prism.

The Prism effort is being run in the Mozilla Labs division that works on experimental new technologies and features. According to Mozilla's official description, "Prism is an application that lets users split Web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop."

Instead of needing to boot up a browser to access Web-based apps, a simple icon can be clicked on a desktop. The icon would pull up the application inside of a Prism window providing the user with access without the additional browser bloat.

From a developer point of view, Prism doesn't represent a new platform as it's built on the same core platform as Firefox and supports the same basic features. The first Prism release, Prism 0.8, is only available for Windows though Mac and Linux support is expected to follow.

"I believe Prism is important not just for the future of the Web, but for the future of the desktop as well," Mozilla's User Experience Designer Alex Faaborg blogged. "Prism will allow new innovative applications on the Web to integrate into the user's desktop experience without any additional development effort for the applications' creators."

Though Mozilla may be excited about Prism, not everyone shares the same enthusiasm. Adobe's AIR platforms as well as Microsoft's Silverlight are possible competitors, though they both are more about application delivery infrastructure than just being a stripped down browser.

"I'm sorry but I installed this and I just don't get what there is to be excited about," a commenter named Jason wrote on the Mozilla Labs blog. "A webpage (i.e. Gmail) now has an icon and runs in a Firefox window without any buttons. Wow."

Thirty years ago this week, Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) released VMS v1.0 with support for the DEC VAX hardware platform.

DEC has long since faded from the computer landscape, first going to Compaq in 1998 then to HP in May 2002 when it bought Compaq. But OpenVMS lives on.

As part of its anniversary celebrations, HP is rolling out a new marketing campaign for the middle-aged OS, as well as an incremental upgrade for the platform on HP's Integrity platform.

"OpenVMS 8.3.1H1 includes support for all of the really advanced management features within the blades environment," Dan Klein, marketing manager for OpenVMS at HP, told InternetNews.com. "OpenVMS will now be fully on a par with HP-UX."

Klein was quick to point out that HP-UX, which is HP's Unix operating system, is a completely different system than OpenVMS. With the new release, OpenVMS gets the same power and cooling management functionality features to take full advantage of the HP Integrity blade environment that HP already has in its HP-UX 11i version 3 system.

The new release is only for the Integrity version of OpenVMS and is not for Alpha, the other key constituent architecture that OpenVMS supports. The Alpha-based server is a descendant of the DEC Alpha product line that HP inherited from DEC in 2002.

The first VAX machine.
Source: HP

Klein admitted that the 1H1 release was not part of the OpenVMS plan earlier this year, as HP was not sure how much interest there would be for blades in the OpenVMS world. According to Klein, there has been a huge upswing in customers' interest in blades between April and October.

Though the 1H1 release is all about OpenVMS on Integrity, HP is still strongly supporting Alpha.

Klein noted that the next release with support for both Alpha and Integrity is set for the end of 2009. While HP no longer produces Alpha-based servers, HP has publicly committed to guaranteeing OpenVMS support for Alpha until at least 2012.

"From a functionality perspective Alpha customer don't need to move and we're committed to a single code stream," Klein said. "As customers look to improve their bottom lines, they're going to want great efficiency, and Integrity gives customers more opportunities for consolidation."

Klein argued that Alpha users can save 30 percent on power and cooling by moving from Alpha to Integrity. The Integrity platform is also capable of running Windows, HP-UX and OpenVMS in a single chassis thanks to HP's virtualization engine that ships with Integrity servers.

Though HP would like customers to move to Integrity that doesn't mean Alpha's will end up in landfills. In fact Klein revealed that HP is still supporting VAX systems that customers bought 25 years ago.

"A fair assumption is that as long as a customer wants support and will pay, we will support it," Klein said.

As OpenVMS hits its new-age milestone, HP is also rolling out a new marketing push and an anniversary Web site, both of which Klein said celebrate customers, which include Amazon.com, the U.S. Postal Service and the national railways systems of Germany, Holland, Belgium India and China.

"People don't realize that it's out there and it just keeps working," Klein said. "So one of the things we're trying to do is increase awareness."