Siemens AG’s US video-on-demand partners (CI No 2,538) turn out to be Sun Microsystems Inc and Scientific-Atlanta Inc, and the three have agreed to develop and market an architecture for combined multimedia and telephone networks, called IMMXpress; content providers may be invited to join the alliance. The partners have already invested $100m and see that rising to $1,000m by 2000, Sun says. They hope to get into the market quickly enough to set standards. They will start in the US. Teaming with Sun will take Siemens into the Sparc RISC camp: up to now, its allegiance has been primarily to R-series, which it fabricates.
