Bill Foster, president of Stratus Computer Inc, has revealed that the company’s entire product line will be running under both VOS and Unix by the springtime of this year. Foster announced this major innovation, one that Tandem Computers Inc won’t like, in the middle of a whistle-stop tour of Stratus’s subsidiaries in the UK, Ireland, Japan, and the Unix plant in San Francisco. He claims that the architecture of Stratus machines makes it more amenable to openness and software portability. The breadth of conversion also suggests that Stratus sees Unix as being appropriate to wider markets, although Foster insists that the operating system still poses problems that Unix International has to address, and the immediate thrust for System V will be in telecommunications. He says that Stratus is unequivocally committed to System V, and intends to implement AT&T’s System V.4, despite the close relationship between Stratus and joint Open Software Foundation founder, IBM. The five-year old relationship between the two companies, according to Foster, was never intended to be a stop-gap measure while IBM developed its own fault-tolerant range. The supply of System 88s was planned to be a long-term arrangement, and he hopes to see it continue for another 50 years, which is hardly surprising since IBM business represents between 25% and 30% of revenue. The likelihood of IBM terminating the agreement and Stratus suffering subsequent financial embarrassment he regards as a remote possibility.
Baby Bells
IBM may introduce elements of fault-tolerance, such as mirrored disks, but Stratus is confident that System 88 isn’t seen as a commodity, and that IBM has committed itself to long-term support. Even if that weren’t the case, IBM still derives the bulk of its profits from a 20-year old, 360-based architecture and user base, and true fault-tolerance isn’t a case of tweaking and augmenting what already exists. Rather ironically, it will be AIX Unix that will tie IBM’s product range together. Foster believes that IBM is secretly grateful for Stratus’s commitment to Unix System V. System 88 will be the only IBM offering to run under System V, and IBM has sold System 88s to five Baby Bells, which regard it as standard. In other words, it’s more marketable than AIX. On the subject of Stratus’ new Intel 80860 RISC-based machines, Foster refuses to specify availability, beyond a rather vague 1991. When Stratus announced that it was switching from Motorola’s 88000 RISC, it was accused of abandoning that company (CI No 1,142). Stratus denies this, and will continue to offer Motorola-based products, although it has no plans for the 68040, and future offerings are to be RISC-based. Foster says that there is more software support for the Intel chip, although the decision could have gone either way. Stratus’ other major sales partner is Olivetti & Co SpA, which accounts for 5% of revenue. The two companies have been collaborating on the new Unix products. Foster was reluctant to describe the former shareholder’s role in any great detail, but acknowledges that a lot of work went into hardening the Unix kernel. As regards the company’s performance over the last year, he believes that there was an over-reaction to the mild profit warning in September (CI No 1,270). Stratus will continue to report a healthy cashflow, 25% to 30% return on equity – and no debt. – Janice McGinn
