The triumphant arrival of Unix, and the unstoppable march of the concept of open systems means that the world looks a far more dangerous place to computer companies and users alike than it did three years ago, and both are seeking comfort and solace by huddling together in what is becoming a bewildering proliferation of industry and user groupings. The latest, which arrived this week brings together Dell Computer Corp, IBM Corp, Intel Corp and and NCR Corp as founding members of the Business Applications Performance Corp, a non-profit corporation chartered to develop and distribute a set of objective performance benchmarks based on widely-used computer applications and industry standard operating systems. The organisation is open to additional members to contribute to the development of the benchmarks, and others that have already joined include Hewlett-Packard Corp, InfoWorld, Microsoft Corp, the National Software Testing Laboratories and Novell Inc. The benchmarks will be based on retail packages sold via stores and will be designed to fix the snag that processor speed is a poor indicator of applications performance.
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