Having outbid all comers in the auction for Lockheed Corp’s Cadam Inc computer-aided design software subsidiary, IBM has moved quickly to kill off Cadam’s disinterested moves to make its software available on a wide range of competing hardware: henceforward, it seems, Cadam will be an IBM proprietary program available only on IBM hardware. Cadam says that as from March 12 it ceased marketing all Professional Cadam mechanical design software ported to Apollo and Sun workstations and stopped work on developing versions for DEC workstations. Support for all non-IBM products will cease on June 30 1991. The most significant account to be hit by this move is the C4 project between General Motors’ subsidiary Electronic Data Systems and Cadam which was set up to develop a system enabling General Motors to cut its hardware suppliers down to Sun and Apollo. Sources have told Computer Systems News that IBM may continue to supply EDS with Cadam software for Apollo and Sun machines so long as EDS and General Motors agree on guaranteed volume purchases for IBM hardware in the future. Cadam says that EDS users interested in migrating their licence to the RS/6000 box will be able to receive the new AIX 3 version of the software free of charge.
