BM this week joins the list of companies standardizing on the Santa Cruz Operation's UnixWare as the Unix operating system for its PC server platform. With IBM on board, almost all of the major proprietary Unix vendors running on Intel platforms have rallied under the SCO banner. This helps to get the server world much closer to a single flavor of Unix-something users have been asking for and the Unix market needs in the face of Windows NT's momentum.
On July 7, the IBM PC Co. will designate UnixWare as the standard enterprise Unix version it ships on its IBM PC Server systems. IBM sells its AIX Unix operating system for Intel platforms, and will continue to offer AIX for customers who want it. But IBM plans to focus its development energies on UnixWare, company officials say.
IBM joins a list of companies that includes Compaq, Data General, ICL, NCR, Olivetti, Siemens Nixdorf, Unisys, and Intel that have signed on to support UnixWare. PC server vendors such as Compaq say thei
r sales of UnixWare have been increasing. "It's a very scalable operating system and it has a big following overseas," says James Schraith, Compaq's VP of North American marketing.
Next month, SCO will unveil Gemini, the code name for its next UnixWare version. Gemini will expand the operating system's symmetric multiprocessing capabilities to support servers with as many as 16 processors, add multinode clustering, and add 64-bit addressing for memory and hard disks, allowing up to 16 Gbytes of memory and files as large as 2 terabytes.
SCO, in Santa Cruz, Calif., also is working with Hewlett-Packard on Gemini II, a version of Unix that will support true 64-bit execution on a new generation of 64-bit processors, code-named Merced, being developed by HP and Intel. HP officials say Gemini II is slated to ship in 1998 or 1999, when the Merced chip ships.
Back to News in Review
Send Us Your Feedback
Top of the Page
BM this week joins the list of companies standardizing on the Santa Cruz Operation's UnixWare as the Unix operating system for its PC server platform. With IBM on board, almost all of the major proprietary Unix vendors running on Intel platforms have rallied under the SCO banner. This helps to get the server world much closer to a single flavor of Unix-something users have been asking for and the Unix market needs in the face of Windows NT's momentum.
