In the latest of its NT-boosting alliances, Microsoft Corp is handing over $30m to Tandem Computers Inc to enable it to convert Tandem’s ServerWare middleware from its massively-parallel Himalaya NonStop architecture to Windows NT, in an attempt to ride NT into in the higher-end marketplace on the back of Tandem’s impressive but dwindling reputation. For Tandem’s part, NT – standing for ‘New Tandem’, as president and chief executive Roel Pieper quipped – will provide the glue between its ServerNet clustering technology, which will be split into components, in the same way that the proprietary Guardian system software provides the glue for Himalaya according to Rieper. Selling high-availability NT servers will provide a much-needed revenue boost, even by the end of the year, according to Pieper. All the NT servers Tandem builds will be based on Intel Corp processors. Tandem will support Microsoft’s WolfPack clustering technology by the first quarter of 1997. Microsoft will put ServerNet drivers into NT so that any application built under NT using the WolfPack Application Programming Interfaces will run on ServerNet-compliant hardware from Tandem or Compaq Computer Corp, which also chipped in with its intention to have NT servers available this year. Microsoft will get to use the ServerNet stuff for free, which is not surprising considering the level of its cash injection. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s executive vice-president said the WolfPack clustering extensions will be out in the first part of next year. By the second quarter of next year Tandem will begin shipping NT servers complete with the ServerWare middleware, with a full roll-out by the third quarter, promised Pieper. The pair will engage in a $20m joint marketing effort as well. The only mention Digital Equipment Corporation got was an abstruse reference that unlike Tandem, it has no software business. Digital has committed itself wholeheartedly to Microsoft and NT, and until Tandem rode into town, was seen as Microsoft’s route into the enterprise space.
