In response to the threat posed by client-server systems, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssyteme AG is trying to position its BS2000/OSD mainframes as open systems. At Cebit next month, the company will demonstrate how the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment can be used with Siemens Nixdorf’s Sinix Unix, and personal computer client machines with a BS2000/OSD 7.500 series mainframe running its Universal Transaction Monitor. It also intends its mainframes should be Posix and X/Open Portability Guide-compliant by 1995. Siemens Nixdorf says it is now developing its last mainframes based on ECL technology. From the start of 1995, the company will copy the IBM Corp idea of Sysplexing multiple microprocessor-based mainframes and start building new systems based on ES/9000-like CMOS microprocessors made by Fujitsu Ltd, which, it claims, will offer price-performance improvements of 20% to make them more competitive against high-end Unix servers. Such mainframes, it says, will be clustered via fibre-optic, channel-to-channel coupling and global storage, but will have a single system image – but then despite not offering MVS compatibility, Siemens has always slavishly copied IBM’s every step in mainframes. Siemens Nixdorf will also launch a raft of software at Cebit to support this repositioning, including a new version of Drive/Windows, a graphical object-oriented development environment that enables users to build either pure Sinix or pure BS2000/OSD applications, or distributed applications. On the Unix side, the company says, it is developing a new massively parallel system with Kendall Square Research Inc – it already markets Kendall Square’s KSR-1 and 2 in Europe, and is collaborating with Pyramid Technology Inc on multiprocessing software. And on the client side, it plans to put Microsoft Corp Windows NT on its personal computers and workgroup servers. And support for Chicago and Cairo will follow, as they become available.
