By William Fellows
IBM Corp believes that Unix faces no real challenge as an enterprise operating system from Windows NT until at least release 6 (or Windows200x) which is some years out. Only then will it be able to deliver the kind of multi-application serving functionality in Unix.
That’s the opportunity for developing a common Unix for Intel’s IA-64 architecture, which is why IBM is setting some considerable stall by the AIX-based Monterey64 Unix it is developing with partners for use on IA-64, PowerPC and Alpha.
Industry-watcher Andrew Allison says it’s nothing less than a full frontal assault on NT. He expects that in the long-run the various Monterey implementations plus Linux distributions will fight it out for leadership of the Unix-on-IA market. Moreover Monterey is also going to be providing interoperability and support for open source applications through Linux. No date has been set, but it’s in keeping with IBM’s other Linux moves. Monterey64 is up and running on a Merced simulator and is expected to be up on a prototype IA-64 platform in the third quarter.
