It has finally dawned on IBM Corp that split site development of OS/2 might have been a mistake, and the company is concentrating all the OS/2 effort at Boca Raton, Florida. About 1,000 people in software development and product services and support in Boca Raton will be affected, and about 800 of those will be offered jobs in Austin. This does not represent a change in IBM’s unwavering commitment to OS/2, said John Thompson, general manager of IBM’s Personal Software Products division. IBM said that it will still have 1,000 other employees in its Boca Raton facilities and is not closing it down, although it is expected to sell it in due course. The company expects to save tens of millions of dollars through the consolidation of OS/2 operations under one roof, said Personal Software Products General Manager John Thompson. He added that the move will not force IBM to retreat from its promise to deliver OS/2 for PowerPC before the end of this year. Florida had been responsible for handling the development of the OS/2 base operating system, as well as issues related to the user interface and multimedia capabilities. Austin had been responsible for extensions such as LAN Server, Warp Server, object extensions, distributed computing, and the IBM microkernel.
