Whatever the outcome of the merged Santa Cruz OpenServer/UnixWare development, Esix Systems Inc, Anaheim, California, the Unix-on-iAPX-86 house now owned by Minneapolis-based personal computer-to-Unix communications house James River Group Inc, says its own cleaned-up version of Unix System V.4.2MP will continue to find favour with mission-critical types. It points to Intel Corp, the US Air Force and Hallmark Inc, all of which use its implementation precisely because of its bug-free reputation. Esix, and other iAPX-86 Unix houses claim a key advantage over Santa Cruz Operation Inc is the immediate, first-tier technical support they can provide. Meantime, like Novell Inc, Esix appears to have shelved a planned PowerPC implementation of its Unix due to lack of interest (CI No 2,575). It is currently working on Internet server editions and Windows95 clients for Esix Unix, which is priced at from $1,200 for individual copies, with heavy discounts for multiple licences. The 15-strong Anaheim group said it accounts for some $4m of James River’s $10m-odd turnover. Scotts Valley, California-based Microport Inc, a Unix System V.4-on-iAPX-86-turned-UnixWare OEM customer, believes the transfer of Unix to Santa Cruz is good news, because for the first time it unifies the majority of iAPX-86 Unixes, and Unix is Santa Cruz’s only business, said vice-president and general manager, Pete Holstrom. With Digital Equipment Corp already selling 64-bit Unix, Silicon Graphics Inc near and SunSoft Inc working on it, Microport said it is important that Hewlett-Packard co is doing 64-bit Unix-on-iAPX-86 work, even if it does hold the stuff for itself initially. Microport, a long-time Unix source company, hit the wall in 1990 and was subsequently rescued, but realised soon after that Novell Inc’s UnixWare 2.0 product left it little room to manoeuvre. So it packed up its development work and started over with UnixWare. It believes Novell’s $30m UnixWare 2.0 development was money well spent, pointing to the product’s eight-way scaling versus Santa Cruz’s older SCO MPX-based multi-processing extensions from Corollary Inc which Microport said top out at four-way arrangements. UnixWare 2.0 already runs the majority of Santa Cruz applications in any case, Microport observes, and at Unix System V.4, System V.4.2MP and UnixWare 2.0, Novell code is already several generations ahead of Santa Cruz, it believes. The company offers an Internet server implementation of UnixWare with home page tools, plus local area network gateways. It says it welcomes the driver work and reseller channel that Santa Cruz will bring to UnixWare.
