Unix International Inc made a little trip to India earlier in the month, which was almost derailed last week because of the fracas with the Open Software Foundation, but it has borne fruit anyway, according to president Peter Cunningham. The Indian government and the major banks and financial institutions there have agreed to set in motion policy aimed at implementing Unix System V throughout their computer installations. Unix International marketing vice president Dave Sandel, who substituted for Cunningham on the trip, reported that the Industrial Bank of India, for instance, as well as the State Bank were attracted to Unix particularly because of scalability and want to look at everything from mainframes to personal computers. India’s CMC Group, the government’s consultative wing on information technology policies – and ironically the former maintenance operations of the defunct IBM India, is also interested in the export of locally written Unix system software and networks and will work on the scheme to encourage – and perhaps fund – the development of this industrial base. Bombay’s National Centre for Software Technology, which threw its support behind the adoption of Unix, would be charged with implementing the policy, Cunningham said, indicating that the Indians are also heavily in favour of Unix V.4. Wipro Pte Ltd, an Indian systems supplier, has joined Unix International. CMC – it stands for Computer Maintenance Corp – generated both derision and resentment when the state moved in and snapped up the operations after IBM took its ball away rather than play by the local rules, but it is now viewed primarily as another repository of Indian bureaucracy.
