Proprietary systems make very few competitive wins these days, but Unisys Corp has IBM Corp’s AS/400 in its sights with the new A14 Series mainframes from the old 48-bit Burroughs line. The A14 is billed as a mid-range system and has been priced to compete directly with the AS/400 and Hewlett-Packard Co’s HP 9000 – but is claimed to offer non-stop-class performance for the mid-range market, a capability previously associated with large-scale system environments at much higher prices. It is designed to support Unix, Windows or OS/2 machines co-operatively with the MCP operating environment. It uses a single chip CMOS processor that reduces power consumption, heat and air conditioning by 70% over prior systems, and takes up 5.5 square feet. Independent power supplies control each processing partition, eliminating any single point of failure. Dual A14s can be dynamically partitioned. It is available now at from $35,000 to $296,000.
