Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Fifth Generation Systems Inc, a little spitfire in the MS-DOS world, has moved on to the Unix scene with its first Unix product, Fastback Plus Unix, a $345 backup and restore utility for Intel Corp 80386 and 80486 machines running UnixWare, Interactive, Santa Cruz Unix, System V.3 and V.4 and Consensys V.4.2. It claims to be the fastest personal computer Unix back-up program on the market clocking up to 17.5Mb a minute. The company went out-of-house for the base technology, hooking up with Unisource Systems Inc, experts in big-time disaster recovery. It has added its own full-featured easy-to-use character-based interface. Fifth Generation is an interesting notch in Unix’s belt. It is one of the 20 largest software companies in the US, its MS-DOS Fastback package is the industry standard and it knows a thing or two about distribution and support. It is also not the kind of company that throws its money around so it must be confident making some on Unix. Fastback Plus Unix product marketing manager Neil Norton figures they’ll start moving 1,000 units a month direct to some large customers and through their channels. Right now it is shy of OEM deals. The company claims its 2m MS-DOS Fastback customers have never reported a case of data loss as a result of product malfunction.
