May: DEC gets the first ACE-compatible MIPS-based DECstation out of the door. Increasing competition forces IBM to cut RS/6000 prices by up to 60%. The five runners in the Object Management Group’s Object Request Broker technology request become three, then two as NCR-Object Design throws its lot in with Sun-Hewlett-Packard to face HyperDesk-DEC. AT&T wins NCR’s hand for $7,480m: the combined computer business to be run from NCR’s Dayton, Ohio headquarters under president Gilbert Williamson. Former NCR chief Charles Exley, who led the fight against AT&T, resigns. NCR unveils first fruits of its development agreement with Teradata: the NCR 3600, with up to 288 Intel 80486 CPUs, uses Teradata Corp’s back-end database processing system. ICL Plc’s VME mainframe operating system wins X/Open Portability Guide XPG3-compliance. IXI Ltd plans a object-oriented version of its X.desktop manager using HyperDesk technology. Sun’s Unix V.4 and Galaxy multi-processors are promised by the year-end.
June: ICL Plc will buy Finnish systems integrator Nokia Data A/S, for UKP330m, to become a UKP2,000m business. Chorus Systemes SA, the French micro-kernel Unix house, wins Alcatel NV, the worlds largest supplier of public and private communications systems, as a customer: Alcatel will put Chorus Mix on all its future PABXs. IBM gets Texas company UHC Inc to do its dirty work: implementing Unix V.4 on to the PS/2 which it bids on a contract with US retailer, K-Mart. More jobs go at troubled Unisys Corp: the original 126,000 workforce is now down to 70,000. Object Management Group tells the two Object Request Broker hopefuls to go away and combine their technologies by August – or forget it. The UK’s Royal Signals and Radar Establishment wins the Open Software Foundation’s Architecture Neutral Distribution Format, RFT. Royal Signals’ Ten15 technology will enable software applications to be developed independently of the target hardware. In January, Computergram reported that Apple Computer Inc and IBM were up to something: now high-level talks between the two are overheard. European Unix show is hit by absenteeism: Groupe Bull SA, Data General Corp, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, ISL, Ing C Olivetti, Sun Microsystems and Unisys Corp all stay away. NCR says it will ditch AT&T’s Tuxedo transaction processing monitor in favour of its own top-end system. Motorola wins Ford Motors to its 88000 RISC: the firm will use it as an embedded processor in car control systems. UK office automation firm, Uniplex, is thought to be up for sale. Financially-stricken Wang Laboratories becomes IBM reseller in return for $25m investment, and meantime it cuts 4,000 more jobs.
July: Sun Microsystems Inc gears-up for the future, rolling out SunSoft and SunTech subsidiaries. IBM and Apple announce long term plans to cooperate on an object-oriented operating system, expected by 1994, and PowerPC, a cut-down version of IBM’s RS/6000 RISC which will drive future IBM and Apple computers. Motorola will manufacture the part. Summer of discontent: Sequent Computer Systems Inc ends OEM sales and cuts 140 jobs after a bad quarter; DEC, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Unisys all shed more staff. Sun and Solbourne announce new low-end boxes: Sun’s IPX and diskless IPC come in at $12,000 and $5,000 respectively. Now DEC buys Philips Information Systems. Silicon Graphics debuts multi-media MIPS RISC-based Indigo station at $8,000.August: 5,000 jobs go at AT&T Computer Systems in the wake of its NCR acquisition and MIPS Computer looks shaky after second quarter loss – job and salary cuts follow. Sun tops $3,000m, with profits rising 70% to $191m on revenue up 31% at $3,221m. Universal Software has IBM System/36 software emulator for the RS/6000. Unisys wins the K-Mart deal that led IBM to acknowledge the existence of Unix System V.4 back in June. X/Open says it’ll give more power to users in future policy decisions. Oracle embarks on new product directions and image overhaul after turning in a $12m loss: looks to Nippon Steel for a cash injection. DEC launches the MasPar massively parallel system
as the DECmpp 1200, with up to 16,384 CPUs. Stardent Computer Corp spins off its popular Application Visualisation System, a high-end graphics environment, into a separate company, AVS Inc. Graphical user interface trouble brews in the Advanced Computing Environment camp, as Compaq demands Hewlett-Packard’s Visual User Environment front-end for Open Desktop in place of IXI Ltd’s X.desktop manager.
September: creation of a new standards body is urged by the latest end-user alliance. The group of ten is backed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and some believe its that Strategy for Open Systems could threaten X/Open’s pre-eminent position. We report that Eastman Kodak’s Interactive Systems has been secretly put up for sale and that SunSoft is the likely buyer. Meanwhile, SunSoft reveals Solaris 2.0, its implementation of System V.4, and UK firm Tadpole unveils its Sparc-based notebook computer at Comdex in Las Vegas. The Foundation chooses technologies from Tivoli Systems and Hewlett-Packard as the basis of its Distributed Management Environment, and rapprochement sweeps industry as Unix International endorses the Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment, DME and Motif technologies in its own vision of distributed computing: Atlas. SunSoft comes clean and admits it plans to buy Interactive. Novell and Unix System Labs begin talks on closer collaboration. There is dancing in the Putney corridors as ICL Plc beats IBM Corp to a UKP200m deal with British Gas.
