By William Fellows
As we anticipated (CI No 3,524), IBM Corp has teamed up with Santa Cruz Operation Inc and Sequent Computer Systems Inc to develop a new AIX kernel called Monterey that IBM will use to establish a Unix-on-Intel IA-64 business. SCO and Sequent will utilize Monterey as their strategic 64-bit Unix offerings, superseding their respective 32-bit UnixWare 7 and Dynix/ptx offerings. IBM will implement the same kernel on its PowerPC hardware. APIs will be harmonized as far possible across all three architectures, IA-32, IA-64 and PowerPC, to present a credible target for ISVs. The 64-bit operating system technology is between 18 and 24 months away from launch, depending on who you talk to, and marks the latest sea-change in the turbulent world of Unix. IBM’s last attempt to foist its AIX kernel on the industry as OSF/1 failed miserably. This time it’s created a Unix brand group within Bob Stephenson’s server division to evangelize the work. In addition to SCO and Sequent, IBM has also forged an agreement with Intel Corp, which is usually agnostic to these messy Unix affairs. Intel though, is sufficiently impressed to predict that Monterey is positioned will to be the leading Unix on volume platforms. It has even sanctioned the creation of a new Merced emulator for Monterey’s development. Intellectual property ownership and the royalty stream will be divided among the parties according to contribution. SCO gets the channel, and Sequent contributes unidentified data center technologies. A key part of the strategy involves the porting of IBM middleware such as Domino, OLTP and messaging to Monterey as well SCO’s existing 32-bit UnixWare 7 operating system, which IBM resells on its NetFinity PC servers. Future IA-64 NetFinities will run Monterey. IBM’s game plan is going to light a fire under Sun Microsystems Inc’s campaign to establish Solaris x86 as a leading Unix-on-IA- 64 Unix and stealing Sequent away from the rival Bravo Unix kernel built on top of Digital Unix will put further pressure on Compaq Computer Corp’s Unix ambitions. IA-64’s co-designer Hewlett-Packard Co looks even more stranded. For more details see separate story.
