The Access Technology Inc 20/20 spreadsheet product that dominates the Digital Equipment Corp VAX market with its 83% share is now available on the IBM Corp RS/6000. Managing director of Access Technology Ltd, Mike Winn, believes that the RS/6000 environment will be as significant to his company as the VAX market is currently. This is despite the fact that a version of 20/20 is already available for the fast growing SunOS environment – but Winn thinks that the difference for the RS/6000 is that it has the name IBM behind it. It seems that IBM came to Access and requested the implementation because 20/20 is the mandatory spreadsheet for some big bids in the US and the UK. However, Access is still largely a DEC house and will not desert its DEC users although it now views the VAX market as ex-growth and thinks it too early to judge the success of Ultrix. But all Unix versions of 20/20 are binary compatible backwards and forwards with the VAX/VMS version. There are no current plans to migrate other Access Technology products to the RS/6000 and there are no development plans for the AS/400. 20/20 for the RS/6000 ships now and costs UKP600, while server configurations range in price from UKP3,000 for the Powerstation 320 to UKP14,000 for the Powerstation 950. Access is currently selling the product directly but negotiations are ongoing that may leave IBM with the exclusive distribution rights.
