By William Fellows
Compaq Computer Corp is finally ready to make public what it has managed to salvage of its depleted Bravo Unix strategy in a Unix Alpha server and workstation announcement next week, and Santa Cruz Operation Inc is trying to dispel the notion that Bravo will bad for its business, or that Compaq has any notions of bundling Linux on its Intel servers instead of recommending SCO. Some 25% of SCO’s shipments go to Compaq customers. Last year the PC maker sold some $1.3bn of servers and options that are running SCO. Compaq is expected to port its 64-bit Alpha-based DEC Unix to Intel – Bravo Unix is the project name – and was hoping to attract a train of support that would install it as a front- runner Unix alongside Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and SCO. Initially Sequent Computer Systems Inc bought a ticket for the ride, then it jumped tracks to board the IBM Corp project to port an enhanced version of its AIX Unix to IA-64 as Monterey 64. SCO will use Monterey 64 as the basis of a future 64-bit UnixWare offering. Compaq got involved in the messy business of owning a Unix when it bought Tandem Computers Inc (Tandem’s Unix is not being extended for 64-bits and is effectively dead in the water) and then DEC, which offers Digital Unix on its Alpha systems. Compaq was forced to speak up for its acquisition when the Bravo Unix plan was announced, with CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer declaring that Bravo Unix would be Compaq’s choice of Unix for 64-bit platforms but would continue with its SCO partnership for the volume 32-bit space. Indeed it went so far as to say it would build source and binary compatibility with Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix into Bravo Unix running on IA-64 allowing SCO UnixWare applications to run on Bravo, though it still hasn’t gone public with many details of this. Develop for UnixWare today and be ready for Merced running UnixWare or (if you choose) Bravo Unix, was how SCO responded on hearing of Compaq’s Unix plans. Edmundo Costa SCO’s OEM relationship executive notes it’s always important to establish which bit of Compaq is talking when the conversation turns to Unix. Mary McDowell’s industry standard server division – the piece of Compaq that peddles Intel servers up to eight-ways and where SCO’s OEM relationship lives – may find Bravo Unix technically interesting Costa says, but clearly the division does not think Bravo Unix to be a industry standard today, he claims. Moreover, Costa dismisses the suggestion that Compaq will brush SCO aside for Bravo Unix even when the company begins delivering 64-bit Intel systems. Who ever wins on IA-32 wins on IA-64, Costa believes. Compaq’s Unix strategy on Alpha is an externality to the SCO/Compaq relationship, Costa says, who maintains that both companies will remain focused on the IA-32 bit market for at least the next 18 months. Compaq does not actually take possession of SCO products, once installed they are supported by SCO. Costa said Compaq knew about SCO’s plan to switch to the AIX kernel which is the basis of Monterey 64 well before the IBM project was announced but has not changed its relationship with SCO. Costa says $2m to $3m has been spent so far marketing a clustered version of UnixWare 2.1 called NonStop Clusters, which as the name suggests, incorporates the single system image software from Tandem’s venerable NonStop fault- tolerant operating system. SCO is going to be able to offer the combination to OEMs although the big push does not come until the summer when the technology is made available for use on SCO’s newest UnixWare 7 operating system. The software currently runs over Compaq’s ServerNet system interconnect but SCO has previously said it will port the work to run other types of system interconnect as well (CI No 3,322). It’s a way of taking the SCO operating system higher up the MIS food chain, especially now that Oracle’s parallel database now runs on the software too.
