Meanwhile Unix International Inc has taken Tuxedo to its bosom, endorsing it as the transaction monitor reference implementation for Corporate Hub, its proposed transaction processing environment. Unix International is adopting Tuxedo, it says, because of the broad-based industry support it’s garnered. But the Corporate Hub framework also includes standard application programming interfaces that should enable other interface-compliant transaction monitors to be implemented under its scheme. Unix International has identified the transaction monitor, commercial file system, capacity planning, fault management and symmetrical multi-processing as core technologies of Corporate Hub. Other critical technologies are systems management, security and Open Systems Interconnection. Unix International is going to pit Tuxedo against the Transarc Software Inc technology backed by the Open Software Foundation in its Distributed Computing Environment, pressing what it believes is a technological lead of some 18 months gained from actual availability over Transarc’s vapourware, plus its derivative economic advantages. Unix International president Peter Cunningham estimates the current investment going into Tuxedo itself and Tuxedo-based applications at $30m a year. Those investments are being made by Unix System Laboratories Inc for base development, $4.5m; by some 20 independent software vendors developing applications, $3m – a figure Cunningham claims is ramping up; and by 24 OEM customers – including Groupe Bull SA and Digital Equipment Corp, $22.5m. Cunningham says there are now four or five commercial applications available under Tuxedo, separate from the 40 to 50 non-commercial applications used by the Baby Bells. Unix International says it is hoping that that population will have grown to 100 by the year-end.
