The Santa Cruz Operation’s next generation merge of its two Unix operating system lines – Unixware and OpenServer – was originally set to ship during the summer, but in August the company changed its mind and promised the software by the end of the year. Now SCO has set forth what it calls a targeted release strategy for Gemini, and officially named it Unixware 7. Initially aimed at high-end users, the binary master release of Unixware 7, built on top of the 64-bit ready SVR5 kernel, is set for delivery to OEMs, independent software vendors and developers by year-end as promised, although packaged production releases will be out in the first calendar quarter of 1998. SCO, in a move mirroring its rival Sun Microsystems Inc’s strategy with Solaris, says it also plans to deliver purpose built versions aimed at key market segments, including departmental database and applications servers, mail and messaging, intranet and enterprise versions. As it’s already said (CI No 3,232), in the second half of next year, SCO will begin to push Unixware 7 to its older OpenServer customers in the small to medium business markets, adding the necessary migration tools to ease the journey. OEMs expecting delivery of UnixWare 7 for Christmas include Compaq Computer Corp, Data General Corp, IBM Co, ICL Plc, Unisys Corp and others. A UnixWare 7 development environment and applications certification program will be ready in December. The move to UnixWare 7 is crucial to SCO as Sun puts the pressure on Intel- based Unix vendors to switch over to use Solaris, as NCR Corp has already done.
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