Hewlett-Packard Co has made a declaration of intent to make a big pitch for the business end of the Unix market. Commercial Systems Business Unit general manager Douglas Spreng revealed at Unix Expo in New York this week that the company has set in train a programme to expand product development and marketing to meet what it sees as increasing customer demand for business computing systems based on Unix – and gave the impression that henceforward, Unix would have equal billing with the company’s own proprietary MPE business operating system. Unlike our major competitors, HP is strongly positioned with products, experience and commitment to expand opportunities with business Unix operating-system cus-tomers and succeed in becoming the leading vendor in this growing system market, claimed Spreng. He cited Dataquest forecasts that the market for business Unix system applications will grow to $10,000m by 1990, from $2,800m in 1986, a 28% compound annual growth rate. Spreng made it clear that the HP9000s, which run the HP-UX implementation of Unix System V.2, should no longer be seen only as technical machines, but equally as business machines. The Unix line ranges from the RISC-based 7 MIPS HP9000 Model 850S at from $200,000 through the 4.5 MIPS Model 840S to the 3 MIPS 825S, down to the 68020-based HP9000 Model 330. The company is also pitching its 68000-based Models 310 and 318 work-stations, which range from $4,845 to $56,000, for business applications such as stockbroker systems. The approach is in marked contract to that of DEC, which seeks to ensure where possible that Unix plays second fiddle to its own VMS on the VAX line.
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