On his recent press tour, Unix Systems Group’s president and chief executive Larry Lytle talked at length about the difficult process of rectifying a bad first impression. With evident satisfaction as he handed over a UnixWare strategic direction paper authored by Novell Inc, Lytle noted how far Novell has come from the first press conference it held in New York after acquiring Unix. Everyone was expecting Novell to give its directions for Unix, but it was just NetWare, NetWare and more NetWare. I stood in the back and watched people walk out, he said. Since then, with a recent conference with analysts and journalists in the US and some important customer and manufacturer support, Lytle believes UnixWare is gaining momentum. Some people say ‘But you’re not selling millions of copies!’ That’s true, but the Internal Revenue Service is buying 50,000. That’s not insignificant, he said. Lytle could not resist recounting the US Air Force’s negative experience with UnixWare’s competitor Windows NT. The Air Force installed UnixWare in its Pacific Rim operations among a staff of Cobol programmers and local network people who are scared to death of Unix, Lytle said, adding that the users were told to go directly to the vendor for assistance if they needed it. After 80% of the facilities had reported back, the service chose UnixWare because its users found it enormously difficult to get proper support from Microsoft Corp in Redmond, Washington. He also explained why Hewlett-Packard Co chose to join UnixWare Technology Group and recommends UnixWare on its iAPX-86 personal computers. Bernard Guidon told me the company had three reasons. One, they have no reason to develop their own personal computer operating system. There’s not enough margin to spend lots of money there. Second, they want to influence the interoperation of UnixWare with DCE, since they have invested so much energy there. Finally, he said, Hewlett-Packard believes that there may be some kernel technology components that it could license for use in its own products or that it might be able to put forward some of its own kernel technology, Lytle said. In terms of Unix Systems Group’s kernel technology, Lytle confirmed Unix Systems Group’s preference for the one from Chorus Systemes SA. If you take a look at what is endorsed as a commercially viable kernel technology, it is what Chorus is doing, he said, adding that there are some things in Mach, however, that could find their way into SuperNOS. Lytle said that Unix Systems Group has been talking to Digital Equipment Corp, but that joining UnixWare Technology Group is problematic for DEC. They will obviously be careful how they handle it, since joining UnixWare Technology Group could be seen as confusing [with its existing operating system strategy], he said.
