In what looks like a remarkable commentary on the nature of its agreement with IBM Corp for the RS/6000, Wang Laboratories Inc is to market Hewlett Packard Co’s Unix machines under a deal announced yesterday. Wang is re-writing its imaging and office integration software to run on the HP 9000 Series 800 business servers, and in a technology swap, Hewlett-Packard will be reselling this software to its own customers. Hewlett says that it expects the pact to generate around $100m of sales over three years. There have already been suggestions that Wang’s deal with IBM to sell the RS/6000 has not lived up to expectations – in June 1991 IBM took a stake in the financially troubled company, in return for which Wang agreed to sell the AS/400 and RS/6000 machines (CI No 1,697), but late last year said that it would not be adding to its stake as it had the right to do under terms of the agreement. Yesterday Wang UK’s Freddie Cook admitted that RS/6000 sales were initially slow, adding that demand was now picking up nicely. The poor start, he suggested, was partly due to a dearth of applications for IBM’s AIX Unix implementation. Cook characterises Hewlett-Packard’s Unix as being closer to standard Unix than IBM’s and the company’s boast of being the worlds largest supplier of Unix systems is an obvious attraction. Hewlett will be actively selling Wang’s Open/Image, Pace for Open Systems; Open/Office and Cobol Resource software to its own customers, where IBM took nothing. Cook said that IBM was aware of the announcement and is relaxed about the deal, despite its potential to diminish Wang RS/6000 sales. Wang Laboratories says it plans to file its Chapter 11 reorganisation plan with the US Bankruptcy Court on March 16, promising then to reveal its vision of the future.
