Unix Wars: Novell’s Noorda could just be the man that finally brings it all together
For the first time ever, Unix is teetering on the brink of real consolidation, with all its hopes focused on a humble billionaire businessman who wears $180 suits, plays golf with $90 clubs from a discount outlet and bought Unix in time for Christmas. It’s as though that’s exactly the present the industry was hoping to find under the tree. More than just buying an operating system and securing a future for Novell, Ray Noorda – a man held in high regard by a wide cross section of industry executives – takes on the expectations of all those seeing him as a Moses figure capable of stitching up the highly personalised wounds inflicted during the Unix Wars and the aborted peace attempts. Digital Equipment Corp perhaps captured the expectation best: Do you think he could buy himself a plane ticket and go on a personal tour of all of us – IBM Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Sun Microsystems Inc, DEC – and bring us together in kind of an Open Software Foundation II with all of the chief executives on the same dais saying the past is behind us? The image is vivid, particularly so for end users who have begged the industry for years to consolidate, only to be ignored, then forced to retaliate by not buying. And it’s not just important to DEC, which freely admits its whole strategy is dependent on a unified Unix and desperately needs last year’s deal between the Open Software Foundation and Unix Labs on common Application Programming Interfaces to come to fruition. Hewlett-Packard says the only thing that makes Unix questionable at all is that there is more than one version. For the first time, companies seem willing to bend a bit, maybe even give up a cherished shibboleth or two. Even Sun Microsystems Inc, which prides itself on its belligerent consistency or sometimes just on its belligerence, said it could see itself negotiating issues. NCR Corp is talking about seizing the opportunity to form an effective user group that includes systems companies and customers. Novell has become famous for the way it manages its relationships and believes that relationships are the way to conduct business. But on the other hand, as much as Novell might be just the right tugboat to guide Unix to safe harbour, much of the industry’s optimism stems from the fact that Unix is no longer in AT&T’s hands. The hurts of the last years run so deep they just could not be solved with AT&T involved. Hewlett-Packard vice-president Wim Roelandts said flatly that it was because of the all bad feelings built up when the late Vittorio Cassoni was running Unix that Unix isn’t the dominant operating system today. As AT&T’s Bob Kavner, soon to be Unix Labs’s erstwhile chairman, says, Novell’s purchase will take the emotions out, leaving people to get on to the real issues.
Bullish Microsoft plays the NT numbers game
Forty-eight hours after the Novell-buys-Unix announcement hit the streets, Microsoft Corp was telling folks like the Wall Street Journal that it would sell more than a million copies of its great white hope, the Windows New Technology operatinng system in the first year after it comes out. Microsoft didn’t fail to make the point that it expects to take market share away from Novell with NetWare because NT includes networking, while at the same time trouncing Unix. It said it had sold 38,000 NT developers’ kits to date. It’s also telling people that it was expecting to have an installed Windows 3.1 base of more than 8m systems at the end of 1992. A Microsoft spokesman pointed to Novell’s acquisition of DR DOS developer Digital Research Inc, now almost completely subsumed within Novell, and predicted Unix would go the same way. He also claimed that high-end multiprocessor and security features would be delayed by Novell concentrating on the desktop.
Now the fine print of the merger agreement has to be negotiated
Unix Labs and Novell now have to work out a definitive merger agreement which includes defining exactly how free-standing and independent a subsidiary Unix
Labs will be in the future. Doubtless insiders are writing white papers and politicking their points of view and doubtless Mr Noorda, reputedly a pit bull when it comes to business, will have his prevailing view. However, things are apparently still up in the air and OEM customers are expected to gang up on the doorstep to get their two cents in. Otherwise, the lawyers have to sort out things such as what rights are retained by shareholders, who will get early access to new revisions, the compensation plans, employment contracts, shared AT&T Co-Unix Labs patents, pension plans and whether Unix Labs employees still have a right to go back to work at AT&T, an enticement used to get them to go to Unix Labs in the first place. One thing Novell needs to avoid is internal conflict over what it sells – otherwise it wull find itself in DEC’s position of having Unix on the books, but preferring to push its proprietary offerings.
Sun and Santa Cruz evaluate their positions…
Sun Microsystems Inc president Scott McNealy was warned off making any trouble over the Unix Labs/Novell merger the morning of the announcement by AT&T. Perhaps that’s why when our sister paper Unigram.X spoke to him about it later that day he put a surprisingly good face on it, but it’s hard to believe the young warlord won’t rattle around in his armoury for just the right mace. McNealy was the only one on the list of major Unix Labs customers contacted that day to say anything. The industry seems to think that Novell is now as much of a threat to Sun as the Open Software Foundation was. The Santa Cruz Operation is another player potentially sidelined by the merger, and its recent moves to begin a reconciliation with Unix System Laboratories now look more urgent than ever.
…as rest of industry gives thumbs up to the deal
Other industry reaction was mostly positive. Unisys Corp, ICL Plc and Digital Equipment Corp were all very happy to see Unix out of the hands of AT&T. IBM Corp would not comment, but aside from the position of OS/2, it wins on the deal through its existing collaboration with Novell announced early last year. Hewlett-Packard Co has also been getting close to Novell, and has been working on a NetWare implementation for its Precision Architecture RISC chip a move ahead of other players. Unix International spokesman Dave Sandel said he took at face value assurances that Unix Labs would honour all its commitments to customers. The Unix International Roadmap, due to be revealed on February 11 to 12 at the club’s members meeting in post-Mardi Gras New Orleans, remains unchanged – it details both OEM wants and Unix Labs development commitments for future Unix technology.
Talks on and off for year: Kavner
Unix Labs chairman, AT&T executive Bob Kavner, says he talked with Ray Noorda on and off over the last year about acquiring Unix Labs. Initially at least, it was not what Kavner had in mind. Sometimes they went for two months without talking. Kavner is not clear as crystal on what exactly changed his mind though he says it wasn’t the money – and claims not to know what persuaded Noorda to push it in November when it all started to happen. Kavner says he assumes Noorda and company had been evaluating their options and finally decided to spend some of their high-value paper on Unix. Kavner reckons with the valuation Noorda has put on the deal he’ll be pretty careful how he treats Unix Labs. – Maureen O’Gara.
