Following the example of its biggest OEM customer for Unix machines, Unisys Corp, NCR Corp has reportedly opened talks with AT&T Co about collaborating in the further development of Unix for commercial applications. The news seems to put NCR into the AT&T-Sun camp alongside the likes of Unisys and Xerox Corp: NCR says it has had the same kind of discussions as Unisys with AT&T and points out that it has already developed transaction processing extensions to Unix, one of the key areas marked out by the AT&T-Unisys agreement. But on the hardware side, NCR has not yet decided to go with the Sun Microsystems Sparc microprocessor for its future Tower top-end, saying that it is still evaluating the Sparc and the Motorola 88000 RISC. NCR was originally one of the dissident Hamilton group opposed to AT&T’s Sun tie, but Frankly, they got a little more aggressive with AT&T than we ever wanted to, chairman Charles Exley told Electronic News.
