Data General Corp wants us all to be clear that it is sticking with the Motorola Inc 88000 RISC family for the time being, and it’ll be at least the next two or three years before it makes a decision about where to place its processor business next. Data General says it will take around 12 months to convert the whole DG/UX operating system environment, including the high-availability features, to another CPU architecture when that move becomes necessary. This year it expects to do some $400m business on its 88000-based AViiON Unix system series, most of that being sales of server configurations. Unix revenues surpassed those from its proprietary Eclipse MV line at the beginning of the year and in the UK, 80% of sales are now derived from its AViiON product line. Data General, which aims to be a key player in the medium-scale server market, says it is now seeing real business from customers that are downsizing. Not, it says, that users are throwing away their mainframes, rather they are avoiding mainframe upgrades by putting anything new onto open systems. Data General says that two thirds of its Unix business comes from customers new to the company, the rest are sales into its installed Unix and Eclipse MV base – 60% of new AViiON systems go out with CLARiiON RAID attachments. In the UK, Data General is still looking for an indirect channel to replace ICL Plc’s personal computer reseller, Technology Plc, which sold its kit for a very short time: the two parted company because neither was achieving the results it wanted from the deal. According to Data General’s UK marketing director, John Coon, the decision was a business one – not only were the two organisations different both culturally and organisationally, but Data General underestimated the time it would take to get them [Technology] up to speed – in other words, the time it took to skill up Technology wasn’t worth it in volume sales terms. Technology was the company’s first UK distributor of low-end AViiON Unix servers and CLARiiON disk array products.
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