IBM Corp is not pinning all its bets on the rather ludicrous idea of using the mainframe as a giant video jukebox, and in the bidding to supply Bell Atlantic Corp with thousands of video servers for a video-on-demand service, it is bidding the RS/6000, the Wall Street Jorunal reported. But even that offering looks dated beside its competitor for the bid – Oracle Corp has teamed up with nCube Corp to offer massively parallel systems and the latter claims that the system will cost $500 per video stream and suggests that that is one-tenth the cost of IBM’s proposal – and will be down to $100 per stream in two years. The first stage of the project is for equipment to serve a projected 20,000 homes in the Arlington, Virgina area, moving on to 110,000 more homes in five other cities. Unnamed others are also said to be bidding.
