Claiming it to be only the second time in the last 15 years that a US computer maker has chosen French-engineered software, Groupe Bull and Tandem Computers Inc yesterday announced a worldwide technical-commercial partnership for Bull’s Integrated Systems Management software and Tandem’s MIPS-based Integrity servers. Under the agreement, to be announced in New York at Unix Expo on October 5, Tandem will distribute the product worldwide. David Van Antwerp, director of strategic relations for Tandem Computer Inc told Computergram later that there is executive commitment on both sides for more co-operation between Bull and Tandem. I don’t think this will be the last agreement you’ll see between us. The agreement follows hard in the heels of another one signed by Bull with Motorola Inc, a company that shows more and more signs of discontent over its PowerPC agreement with IBM Corp – as indeed does Bull since IBM sat on its hands when Bull passed round the hat in its last equity capital-raising exercise. Bull and Motorola will agree joint definition and development of a wide range of advanced products based on the PowerPC and continued development of Bull’s symmetrical multiprocessing technology and its use in both companies’ future PowerPC systems; they will also jointly develop a Peripheral Component Interconnect input-output interface designed for use in both companies’ systems. Motorola will be using Bull’s PowerScale symmetric multiprocessing in its high-end and mid-range systems based on PowerPC – as indeed will IBM Corp with the RS/6000. And Bull plans to use Motorola’s low-end systems technology in its systems based on PowerPC – that sounds as if it will buy PowerPC boards OEM from Motorola: up until now it has got them all from IBM.
