Compagnie des Machines Bull SA yesterday finally unveiled the fruits of its Pegasus symmetric multiprocessing PowerPC programme in the shape of the Escala range, on which the loss-making French company is pinning a lot of its hopes as it aims to climb back into the black by the middle of next year. Escala is based on Bull’s PowerScale symmetric multiprocessing architecture and the 601 PowerPC chip supplied by Motorola Inc, with which Bull announced closer links last week. The range so far comprises five models: two mini-towers, two deskside servers and one rack-mounted server. With Escala, Bull has stolen a march on IBM Corp, whose own symmetric multiprocessing PowerPC systems have already been put back to early October. Nonetheless, despite yesterday’s launch of gallic verve for its new Escala systems, marred only by one or two small details, such as the fact that it was clearly news to Bull chairman and chief executive Jean-Marie Descarpentries that the Pegasus development label had been superseded by the Escala nameplate on the new boxes, Bull is still fighting from the back foot over how it will be able to compete with IBM now the development work is largely over and the marketing gloves coming off. The pricing war for the new machines will become clearer with IBM’s launch next month; Bull has priced a mini-tower configuration with two processors, 18Mb memory and a 4Gb disk at $30,500, while a four-processor deskside model with 256Mb memory and 4Gb will cost $91,900. Bull is sticking with its line that its Distributed Computing Model architecture will provide a better framework for the symmetric multiprocessing PowerScale machines, and is backing up this line with a renewed attempt to push more sales through the indirect channel, so that it can target resellers in niche markets. The aim is to push up indirect sales to 30% from 18%. Bull also says it will offer the PowerScale technology OEM to as many other companies as possible, but so far, Motorola is its most high-profile name. Meanwhile, the joint IBM-Bull development work continues, to produce systems based on the 604 and 620 PowerPC chips, while Bull itself plans a clustered version of Escala for release next year. On the agreement with Motorola, which is supplying Bull with low-end servers, Armand Malka, vice-president for Bull Unix Systems told Computergram yesterday that these low-end servers were to have come from IBM, but that the company’s Power Personal Systems division had run into some kind of trouble on the development: the agreement with Motorola is not exclusive, he said, so Bull could buy from IBM in future.
