Hewlett-Packard Co confirmed a report in US PC Week that it has abandoned a plan to sell a native Precision Architecture RISC-based version of Novell Inc’s forthcoming Processor-Independent NetWare first announced in April. John Saw, Hewlett-Packard’s distributed systems manager in the UK, says that the decision was made because it was felt that the native Precision RISC version of Processor-Independent NetWare would effectively duplicate Hewlett-Packard’s other efforts in the field: he says that the company believes that its iAPX-86-based NetServer product line, of which around a third are sold with NetWare pre-installed according to Saw, satisfies the superserver market, while its Portable NetWare for HP-UX Unix offering caters for those customers specifically wanting Precision Architecture RISC-based servers. Saw denies, however, that the move is a protectionist one designed to prevent the erosion of NetServer sales. What Saw terms the final piece of the jigsaw in deciding against selling the forthcoming version of NetWare, was the deal which Hewlett-Packard has signed with Intel Corp under which the two are to merge their future 64-bit RISC architectures. Saw says that the company now feels that there is little point in producing the Precision RISC version of Processor-Independent NetWare, when it and Intel will have next-generation marketable products within the next 24 to 36 months. PC Week says that Novell’s other partners for the environment – including Digital Equipment Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc Microsystems Corp and Apple Computer Inc – are pressing ahead with their plans to offer it on their RISC systems.
