The integrated SunNet Manager-CA-Unicenter network and system management combine trumpeted by chiefs Scott McNealy and Charles Wang last autumn and promised by Sun Microsystems Inc and Computer Associates International Inc by the end of calendar 1995 is now expected to be ready to go later on this quarter.
Hewlett-Packard Co’s now pitching its 64-bit PA-8000 at 9.5 SPECint95 and 17.5 SPECfp95 compared with the 8.6 and 15 numbers it was bandying about a couple of months ago; PA-8000 systems are due this quarter.
Jon Kannegaard, the SunSoft Inc executive who stepped into Ed Zander’s shoes as president of Sun’s software business last April but quit a few months later, has re-appeared as chief operating officer of the new Java products division.
Oracle Corp’s $967m second quarter included a 36% increase in Unix revenues and a 64% increase in desktop products (Windows NT, OS/2 and NetWare) – its applications business (with 75% now graphical user interface-based) grew by 104%.
Micom Communications Corp says its Frame Relay products have been certified by AT&T Corp, Sprint Corp and WorldCom Inc: according to the company, its Marathon Integration Multiplexer and NetRunner Integration Router product lines have met all compatibility requirements for AT&T InterSpan, Sprint and WorldCom Frame Relay network services.
Rochester, New Hampshire-based Cabletron Systems Inc has won a multi-million-dollar contract to supply the UK Royal Air Force with its Spectrum enterprise management platform: the main contract was won by the Nortel World Trade Business Services division of Northern Telecom Ltd, with Cabletron as the strategic sub-contractor; the contract involves the provision of distributed network management across 24 RAF sites around the world, two copies of Spectrum at each one.
Acer Computer International Ltd of Singapore said it had increased its investment in its unit Acer Computer Australia Pty Ltd by $7.5m: Acer Australia’s paid-up capital is now $12.3m; the company is responsible for sales, marketing and technical support of ACE brand computers, peripherals and electronic and telecommunications and products in Australia, the company noted.
Cascade Communications Corp is now shipping beta test versions of its 16-slot high-end Cascade 500 Asynchronous Transfer Mode switch, announced last June; general availability is scheduled for towards the end of the first quarter this year.
Andrew Allison thinks that Intel Corp’s Pentium Pro marks the beginning of the end for Unix as a client system and of the workstation and server as we know them: the only question is how far and how fast the Wintel axis will penetrate these markets; if it does 100,000 by the end of this year that’s aready 15% of the entire RISC-based market share, Allison postulates.
Novell Inc’s Europe, Middle East and Africa unit has announced a restructuring of its marketing organisation and six new departments are to be formed: Programmes Marketing, for building its channel and business infrastructure; Market Relations; Marketing Services; Solutions Marketing, for managing and integrating European marketing teams with Novell; Events Marketing; and Major Account Programme Marketing, the company announced.
Naperville, Illinois-based Spyglass Inc licensed its Mosaic Web client technology to Software602, Prague, Czechoslovakia, for incorporation into the company’s Mail602 electronic mail system; financial terms were not disclosed but Spyglass says that the agreement is its first with a software producer that serves Central and Eastern Europe.
Newport News, Virginia-based designer and manufacturer of projection computer display products nView Corp announced that it will reduce management’s base salaries up to 20% and lay off of about 15% of its 135-person workforce in an effort to return to profitability this year.
US distributor Merisel Inc has formed a Technical Products Division to sell services and training to value-added resellers in response to
their demands for help with mass storage and communications tools: Merisel has also formed an Integrated Solutions Programme and is creating an X-Change Desk for large-volume resellers that buy their storage products in bulk.
SAS Institute Inc, Cary, North Carolina joins the MetaData Coalition.
Kirkland, Washington-based Applied Voice Technology Inc acquired Cracchiolo & Feder Inc, a developer of fax server software for local area networks that trades as RightFAX, for $4.2m in cash plus 160,000 Applied Voice shares: Applied Voice said it also may pay up to an additional $3.8m in a combination of cash and common shares over the next three years under the deal; it said it expects RightFAX operations to add to net profit, earnings per share and cash flow, except for the write off of purchased research and development in the first quarter; RightFAX technology will be used to advance Applied Voice’s development of unified-messaging products that give a way of managing voice, facsimile and electronic mail messages.
My back pages… how come AST Research Inc is in so much trouble that Samsung Electronics Co is having to take an ever tighter grip on the company? The New York Times may have an inkling of the problem: noting that the World Wide Web was created in 1989, it points out that that year, AST proudly proclaimed to the Web community that its Premium 286 Utilities would soon be Updated for Windows 2.0 – the software may have been updated, comments the Times, cruelly, but the Web page certainly has not.
