The troika of European vendors supporting UnixWare 2.0 – ICL Plc, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG – intend to stand squarely behind their original UnixWare 2.0 plans, at least for now. ICL is the most vocal in its support for the arrangement, no doubt influenced in part by the fact that it offers both Novell Inc and Santa Cruz Operation Inc operating systems software on its iAPX-86-based systems. ICL said it is still on course to ship UnixWare 2.0 on Sparc systems by the end of the year and is committed to offering both future UnixWare iterations and Santa Cruz OpenServer versions leading to the combined UnixWare/OpenServer, in the first half of 1997. Siemens Nixdorf, which is converting some of its System V.4 Sinix middleware components to UnixWare, said it will ship the first release in the next three weeks, while the rest of the components will be on UnixWare by the end of the year. The Paderborner admitted not having all the details, but for the present saw no reason to change its original plans and said the future of Unix was more assured with Santa Cruz. With Novell, there was always a doubt as to how serious they were about the future of Unix, said a company spokesman. Olivetti is playing its cards much closer to its chest, saying it will continue migrating its System V.4-based systems over to UnixWare for the meantime. We are reassessing the technical situation and are speaking to Santa Cruz, it said. The company expects to have a reached a decision by the middle of this month.
