Insiders say the reason Hewlett-Packard Co’s gone cold on its 3DA Unix alliance partner Santa Cruz Operation Inc is the realization that the $200m-odd company it used to wrest Unix from Novell Inc in the first place is incapable of distributing a single Unix-on- Intel binary or bringing the industry along with it. Witness, they say, NCR Corp’s expected defection to use Sun Microsystems Inc’s Solaris x86 on its Intel servers, and reservations companies such as Siemens-Pyramid, Sequent Computer and others have of SCO’s enterprise credentials. Sources says HP was surprised that SCO wanted anything to do with the whole alliance in the first place, given their potential competition for OEM business. The relationship has cooled significantly since the departure from HP of key 3DA and single Unix binary supporters such as former general manager of HP’s Computer Systems OrganizationWim Roelandts, and Rich Sevcik, former VP and general manager of systems technology. For the record, HP says it’s increased its spending on Unix system software by 13%.
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