Unisys Corp is hoping to make Convergent’s CTOS/BTOS operating system more attractive to developers and OEM customers by merging the variants, adding Posix compliance and publishing a standard specification to turn it into an open standard. According to Unisys, the user base for Intel-based CTOS hardware and software, developed in the early 1980s by Convergent Inc and subsequently taken on by Burrougs as BTOS, now numbers up to one million users worldwide, and the company says that now is the time to establish a single standard. CTOS is popular because of its multi-user, multi-tasking capabilities that includes built-in networking for distributed processing – the hardware is modular, and can be expanded by plugging in new system modules using the X Bus. The move may have been spurred on in part by Bull SA, which now sells CTOS systems in France under another variant, Starsys, and is thought to have plans to expand the operation to the rest of Europe and the US. All other variants of CTOS including TNOS and Hero will also be incorporated into the new merged version, which will be a superset of existing products, and Unisys hopes to be beta testing the Posix-compliant version by year-end. It also plans to add a standardised development environmnent to the system, including a set of Unix-compliant utilities. Unisys also added 20 new software products for CTOS, including enhancements to its OFIS office automation software such as new spreadsheet and mail facilities, and added a series of communications products including TCP/IP, SNA, and X25 and X21 facilities.
