Watch customer reaction to the IBM Unix announcements….From page 2 These are expected to ship by the third quarter, and IBM contemplates 1,000 or more packages by year-end – but depending on third parties is always risky. Their priorities – and resource capabilities – can change quickly. IBM needs to quickly sign up more software developers, especially major Unix developers and vertical application developers; it needs to provide vast amounts of hardware and technical support to porting developers; and it needs to follow market trends with dedication. IBM proclaims its strong commitment to standards now it will need to follow up. Is NeXTStep really an alternative commitment to Motif, or just a by the way? IBM says nice things about NeXTstep when Mr Jobs is in the room, but much less when he’s not around. We suspect they intend to let the market decide – and the number of NeXTStep demos at the announcement (one out of about 40-odd systems) could be a hint. Watch customer reaction to the IBM Unix announcements: this will be the best way to see how these and other mysteries might be resolved, and whether IBM is destined to enjoy a large and prosperous future in the Unix market. – Amy Wohl

The Positioning Problem: the next year will be critical – by Judith Hurwitz

IBM finally announced its long-awaited Unix workstation and server family after much delay and much speculation. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely. IBM has done an incredible job of designing an architecture that will take the company into the 1990s. First, unlike many other RISC CPUs, it consists of several different chips that have been integrated into a system. IBM has particularly excelled in providing industry leading floating point performance. IBM has also eclipsed RISC performance, moving beyond the single instruction per cycle to as many as four instructions per cycle. This is, therefore, superscaler performance. So why the bottom line? IBM is in the RISC race this time. But the RISC market is very much like the semiconductor market of the late 1970s and early 1980s – it is a cut-throat business where a vendor is on top only for a matter of moments. IBM seems ready and willing to play in this game. The company has learned some hard lessons with its first entry into the RISC marketplace back in 1986, when it failed to capture anyone’s attention. The fact that IBM has a credible platform is the first step towards it becoming a major player in Unix. I believe that they have the corporate backing and the pieces in place to make that happen. IBM’s first goal is to gain credibility in the developer community. Therefore, it will go to great lengths to provide hardware discounts (as low as $6,500) to developers. At first, it will be content to have thousands of ports of existing Unix-based applications. IBM’s real goal is to be the preferred platform for these developers – the platform on which they do their initial development. IBM sees the numerical-intensive market as a natural, given the floating point performance combined with the high performance graphics it offers. It is also the easier market for IBM to position itself in. Since IBM has a very minor role in numeric intensive industries (visualisation, process control and the like), there is no problem positioning the RS/6000 against its SAA platforms. A more difficult task will be positioning the RS/6000 alongside the AS/4000 and the high-end of the PS/2. In the short run there are more applications available on the AS/400 for the small and medium business market, but in time, those software developers will find in the RS/6000 an attractive platform in terms of price-performance.

Judith Hurwitz is vice-president of Patricia Seybold’s Office Computing Group in Boston, Massachusetts. She is Editor-in-Chief of Unix in the Office, a research report on commercial Unix applications and developments that appears monthly.

The same scenario will follow for the high-end PS/2s running AIX. IBM’s greatest opportunity and challenge with the RS/6000 will be in the commercial Unix sector. It is well positione

d to gain the attention of MIS organisations that already have a base of IBM SAA equipment, wishing to implement some Unix system. They trust IBM. The added features of AIX 3 are bound to attract commercial customers, including an easy-to-install operating system and device drivers, and a file system that does not have to be rebuilt if something goes wrong – features that IBM and other proprietary vendors have provided for 20 years, that are finally coming to Unix. The next year will be a critical period for IBM as it brings these systems to market. It will have to prove the stability of its operating system and tools, and its ability to lure thousands of developers to provide applications to attract a brand new group of customers.

Free MIPS one day? – Bob Djurdjevic

Another leading analyst and IBM watcher, Bob Djurdjevic of Annex Research, was in town at the end of last week, and was also asked his view on IBM’s new babies. Turns out he buys the line IBM is putting over in the US – that these machines are a serious effort to get a slice of the technical and scientific market, and he doesn’t see it as a threat to the AS/400 or 9370. For anyone considering the residual values on the machines, he advocates conservatism. The RS/6000s will depreciate very quickly because of the rate of upgrades, and the temptation will be for IBM to give the box away and focus on software and services. The box, says Djurdjevic, won’t provide free MIPS, but its grandchild might.

Tailpiece: the IBMers’ view

Nicholas Donofrio, President of IBM’s Advanced Workstations Division, said at the launch We’ve really just begun. The real measure of what we are capable of will be shown a year or two from now. This is a very competitive market, and we’re in this for the long haul; to do better, to listen to our customers. We’re very proud of what we’ve done. And senior vice-president George Conrades added IBM is viewing the launch as a new business. IBM has shipped some 350 units to business partners and customers, and has passed around hundreds internally to get IBM people acquainted with them. We were a powerful force in the PC revolution, and I can assure you, we intend to be a powerful force in the Unix workstation market, he said.