Brian Walsh, engineering and scientific director at Hitachi Data Systems, formerly with Cray Research Inc and the US University of Notre Dame, believes that add-in vector processors may well be part of the workstation environment in the not-too-distant future. He also says we may see Unix on Hitachi mainframes within the next three years – it’s been on Amdahl mainframes for almost a decade, and Hitachi Data has received a number of queries from its MVS base on that very possibility. Walsh feels that competition between Unix International and the Open Software Foundation can only be to the users advantage, and in a memorable phrase, claims that racing improves the breed – but then Hitachi is in the rebel Open Software Foundation camp, and rebels have to come up with some populist justification for their existence. Unix seems to be on the mind of Hitachi Data, and the company is hoping that the Unix workstations being developed by Hitachi in the US, will wing their way towards the UK by the end of this year. In the short term, Hitachi Data reckons it would be a pity to go on vacation during the summer, since its new mainframe offering is likely to appear around that time. The company acknowledges that it would prefer to wait until IBM has shown its hand, which it may well do on May 16. But if it doesn’t, then Hitachi Data will just have to keep some functionality under wraps until it’s politic to reveal all. Unlike Mark Butlein of the Meta Group, Walsh believes that 3090s will be upgradable to IBM’s long-awaited offering, but he thinks that the architecture will be new, even if does look like standard 370, first launched in 1963. On IBM itself, Walsh says that some senior managers have recognised the need to restructure the company. However, even if John Akers is acutely aware of that necessity, he has to face the uphill task of dismantling several decades of bureaucracy and tradition. And the older one gets, the more difficult it is to change. Walsh reckons IBM will be around to make significant contributions for a long time, but he also feels that the might and ethos of Japanese companies will further reduce its market share. Which seems to herald a return to the days when IBM had under 50%, and Control Data et al actually represented viable competition to Big Blue. – Janice McGinn
