Nothing has been heard of the original since it was announced last year (CI No 2,739), but IBM Corp is ploughing on with its 7596 Cross-Platform Server, a multiprocessor machine primarily designed to enable it to mop up VAX users that have had enough of Digital Equipment Corp and can’t face a move to Alpha. What is striking about the product is that DEC founder Ken Olsen is actually helping IBM to plunder his former charge’s customer base. IBM gets the 7596 from Advanced Modular Solutions Inc, of Acton, Massachusetts, and Ken Olsen is in the driving seat at Advanced Modular. The 7596 is composed of prebuilt linkages between VAX-, RS/6000- and Pentium boards in a single chassis, enabling data to be maintained at a single source. Via a Distributed Resource Broker, the 7596 enables older VAX/VMS-, AIX and Windows-based client-server applications to co-exist in a preconfigured, preintegrated environment. It costs $39,150.
