While the Unix vendors got together last week for yet another attempt at unifying their offerings, Novell Inc, the next owner of Unix system technology, is convinced that things must go a lot further yet. Volume is driving the market, and volume currently belongs to the twin dominators, Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp. Kanwal Rekhi,executive vice-president of Novell’s interoperability systems group, thinks his company has the resources to challange Microsoft in the corporate, client-server marketplace, and even claims that Novell will take at least half of the market from the clutches of Microsoft’s NT. Users, he says, are not prepared to see Microsoft alone dominating the marketplace, and want to retain a choice. In local area networking, Novell has weathered the storm whipped up by Microsoft by holding onto a 70% share of the market with NetWare, and says it is now the biggest shipper of TCP/IP, sending out code for 40,000 to 50,000 terminals a month. And Windows for Workgroups is a flop, Rekhi reckons. But, he says, many of the Unix vendors have lost their way. The innovation once focused around Unix hardware vendors is slipping towards the personal computer. Intel’s 80486 is very cost-effective and volumes are infinite, says Rekhi. And customers now have a choice of MS-DOS, Windows, NT, NetWare, UnixWare, Solaris, NextStep or OS/2 on their personal computers, while a Sun user, for instance, must stick with Solaris. With five main players dividing up the RISC market, RISC processors still amount to only 5% of the overall volumes shipped, with Intel taking the rest. In short, many Unix vendors are shackled by their desire to own everything.
Margins won’t sustain level of investment
Unfortunately, the margins won’t sustain the level of investment that staying in the game demands. Rekhi thinks that it will be the pure companies without the old-fashioned mind-set that will flourish: pure hardware companies such as Dell Computer Corp and Compaq Computer Corp; pure software houses such as Novell and Santa Cruz Operation Inc; applications vendors such as Lotus Development Corp; and a newer breed of company that will integrate everything, such as the reborn Unisys Corp. Rekhi says that Novell tried to work with Santa Cruz Operation on Unix back in 1990, and later approached Sun Microsystems Inc to help with its Intel-Unix effort, but both efforts came to nothing. So eventually it stepped in and moved to buy Unix System Laboratories Inc. Now, says Rekhi, market pressures will force the vendors to rely on Unix Labs for the operating system and concentrate on their key strengths, thus finally unifying the Unix effort. Unix Labs will implement the technology for everyone, while Novell’s Univel division will concentrate on the Novell-Unix package. As for the high-end and non-Intel vendors, they too will benefit from the innovations as users scale up, claims Rekhi. But the low end must be driven hard by Novell. Thus it is that the company is halving its prices, making it clear that the competition with NT will be serious. This is not a desperation move, he insists, but is a pre-emptive strike against Microsoft: We are taking the bull by the horns.
