Signs are that, as reported briefly (CI No 1,824), the Santa Cruz Operation Inc is now hedging all bets it has placed on the Advanced Computing Environment initiative. Under pressure following last month’s revelations that it would be delaying the release of its ACE Open Desktop operating system environment, Mike Hill, Santa Cruz European market and product planning manager, admitted that the OSF/1 version of Open Desktop for ACE’s Intel Corp systems is now unlikely to make a showing before 1993, and that what exactly it will feature it is still very much in question. To plug one of the many holes from which ACE is now leaking, and in an attempt to keep some kind of Unix effort at the initiative afloat, Digital Equipment Corp says it has taken over responsibility for development of Open Desktop-OSF/1 for the MIPS Computer Systems Inc-based ACE architectures. That environment should still be ready by next summer, at around the same time that Microsoft Corp’s NT is expected to make its debut on the Advanced RISC Architecture. DEC – which is due to announce products based on the technology early in the new year – is to license the OSF/1-derived Open Desktop back to Santa Cruz, which will be marketing the thing. The developers’ snapshot promised for the end of this year is apparently still on track, but it won’t contain all the planned functionality, and there will have to be a further development kit next quarter. In the disputed area of a graphical user interface for Open Desktop on ACE, DEC’s OSF/1-based Open Desktop includes IXI Ltd’s X.desktop manager. Santa Cruz’s existing Unix System Laboratories Inc Unix-based Open Desktop for Intel processors already includes the thing, but its delayed OSF/1-Open Desktop for ACE-Intel systems may feature a different metaphor – or at least allow for others to be plugged in – to satisfy the likes of Compaq Computer Corp, which had been pressing for the inclusion of Hewlett-Packard Co’s Visual User Environment interface. Santa Cruz says it is still talking with IXI and other technology providers. Alongside the OSF/1 and Ultrix melange, DEC’s Open Desktop for MIPS includes some Unix System V.4 code, and will have some functional compatibility with System V.4, says Hill. It will include the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment and will be compatible with its Distributed Management Environment.

Permutations

Santa Cruz admits that industry analysts monitoring the initiative’s progress have mapped out as many as seven different scenarios to which the ACE game plan may lead. Indeed, just a fortnight ago, California compiler house Translation Systems Inc said it was proposing to build an ACE distribution format that would enable independent software vendors to access all possible ACE permutations at one stroke. That task now embraces the R3000, R4000, iAPX-86, two versions of Open Desktop, System V.4 and Windows NT. The whole thing is beginning to feel more like a journey on a dungeons and dragons machine, where the player travels on a route of his own volition, than to the birth of a new standard of computing modelled on the MS-DOS personal computer paradigm. If it all sounds like a bit of a come-down from the halcyon days of spring when ACE first bloomed, then it is. ACE may fail, muttered Santa Cruz last week, after passing off its latest moves as a change in perception, rather than attitude. It could of course have more to do with Santa Cruz focusing on Intel – where its strengths lie – rather than on longer term business, in preparation, some commentators have suggested, for a possible initial public offering of shares. Santa Cruz has done nothing to derail such talk. It has always said that it will go public at some point and as Hill admits, to do that we need to concentrate on core business. Looking at it another way, it may just be that Santa Cruz is tired of being tripped up at every step on the ACE journey it embarked on with the best intentions. It all leaves ACE looking more like it always probably was: a Microsoft NT-on-Intel iAPX-86 play.