NQue Technologies Corp, a Santa Clara County start-up, has mapped out a wholly different approach to the Windows-on-Unix issue so wily and obvious it’s amazing it’s taken the industry this long to come up with it. Rather than converting Windows applications for Unix in the current fashion, nQue is doing a version for Unix that will run atop Windows. It is taking System V.4.2 and putting it on top of Windows 3.X as a Windows application. It says the two complete kernels will be able to sit side-by-side on Windows systems and run their respective applications. Its technology is the first integration of both the Unix and Windows operating systems on a single machine. NQue fancies itself a non-threatening bridge to migrate Windows users painlessly to Unix and snatch them, in the process, from the jaws of Microsoft Corp’s Windows NT. (It believes that’s where Microsoft ultimately intends pushing all its Windows clients). NQue, however, is using Microsoft’s own technology to create a low-cost shrink-wrapped retail package called OpenAgent that adventuresome users can install on their Intel Corp iAPX-86 machines without hazard to explore the potentials of Unix: its standards, maturity, 32-bit architecture, communications, multi-tasking, distributed computing strengths and application base, which nQue believes will be stronger than NT’s for some time. The company calls OpenAgent Unix with training wheels. Unlike UnixWare, Solaris-on-Intel or even NT, OpenAgent won’t require users to wipe their disks and then replace their applications, an inhibiting thought for most people according to nQue founder William Thompson. Thompson says OpenAgent can be a 30-minute install from a CD-ROM and everything already on the machine is protected. NQue believes its approach, which harnesses the full potential of Enhanced-Mode Windows using its Virtual Machine capabilities, yields performance and compatibility far superior to any Windows emulator. It claims 100% compatibility with Windows 3.X (as it is now and as it may become to ward off emulators) and no degradation in the performance of any Windows application. NQue also claims native-mode Unix applications will run at 94% of their potential performance. The company is currently raising $1m in seed financing from private sources and will seek a final $8m round, perhaps in part from key OEM customers. It expects to beta test the initial pieces of OpenAgent early third quarter and ship to OEM customers late in the fourth. The initial pieces of nQue Technology’s Unix-on-Windows OpenAgent software include the two-user Destination, the Unix System V.4.2 binary execution system, the utilities and the graphical desktop interface, and Connection, the networking and multi-user sets. NQue intends that these first two pieces appear simultaneously on retail shelves at under $300 each and distributed on CD-ROM.
Follow-on products
Follow-on products include Generation, a development set, Transaction, with Tuxedo and an auditing set, and Projection, with the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing and Distributed Management Environments. NQue’s distribution strategy puts OEM customers first and retail channels such as CompUSA Inc six months after. Unix System Laboratories Inc, whose System V.4.2 nQue licensed as its Unix system, is said to have right of first refusal as an OEM channel. NQue says Unix Labs is waiting to see how the system shapes up. NQue sees Unix Labs making OpenAgent technology available to its OEM customers, such as Univel, as an installation option for System V.4.2. To run, OpenAgent needs a 33MHz 80386 box with 16Mb or better a 33MHz 80486 with at least 8Mb. The hard disk should be an 80Mb IDE or larger with a network install option, a 200Mb SCSI is optimal. OpenAgent Destination needs Windows 3.X and MS-DOS 5.0. OpenAgent Connection may require Windows for Workgroups to take advantage of its management interface or Windows 3.1’s follow-on Windows 3.2. William Thompson, nQue’s founder and an old Unix soldier, developed the key technologies in Lachman Associates Inc’s Stream
s-based Network File System and TCP/IP while at Convergent Technologies Inc and later joined Lachman. Lachman president Ron Lachman was of course the force behind the creation of WABI, Sun Microsystems Inc’s Windows-on-Unix system. David Van Daele, a Lotus alumnus, who was once vice-president, sales and marketing at Digital Reseach Inc and chief architect of the DR-DOS’ retail strategy is a member of nQue’s board. He believes the product would give Univel a competitive advantage and be a no brainer for Windows users. – Maureen O’Gara
