Solaris, the new operating system available from SunSoft for Sparc and later, Intel iAPX-86 systems, was the focus of much attention at the conference, and many of the top people in SunSoft, the Sun subsidiary formed last year incorporating Interactive Systems Corp were in attendance. Presentations on Solaris were given by Bill Coleman, vice-president of systems software, and James Billmaier, the vice-president of Product Marketing, and on Project Distributed Objects Everywhere and object-oriented technology, which will make major contributions to Solaris by Steve Martino of product marketing. SunSoft’s effort in Japan is still controlled from within Nippon Sun, where new appointments have been made to head up the work. Currently, effort is focused on the promotion of Solaris to Sun’s existing OEM customers, such as Fujitsu and Toshiba. By implication this however does not include the largest (over 50% of the market) Intel system in Japan, NEC’s 9801 series of personal computers. For Solaris on Intel to be successful in Japan an arrangement with NEC will be essential. SunSoft claimed that by this time next year, a Japanised version of Solaris for Japanese Intel machines will be available, and hints were thrown out that the operation could be run from a separate company, called SunSoft. Company registration of a Nippon SunSoft was recently completed in Tokyo, something that cost time and money because the name was already being used by another company well-known in the games world.
