At the launch Sun also announced a $200m pact with Xerox Corp, which will resell Sun systems as the basis of a new family of document processing systems. Xerox officials were on hand at the IPC launch, and vice-president Joe McGrath indicated that the workstation was in fact co-developed by Sun and Xerox – part of the technical alliance the two struck way back in October 1987 though Xerox’s input was essentially specifying what was needed for a commercial product. It was Xerox’s idea for example to pre-load the 100Mb of software, have a small footprint for the box and work with low power requirements. In terms of pure technology research, McGrath said the two collaborated on chip-level and interface development. The technical alliance between the two expires in October, suggesting that Xerox will have a product out before then. The company also disclosed that the Ventura desktop publishing software that its subsidiary is coverting for the Sun Sparc line, will not be available until late next year. It will be followed by versions for other Unix systems. The majority of boxes that Xerox buys under the $200m deal will be IPCs, but other Sparcstations will also be included under the agreement – Xerox sees them as the glue that binds together its intelligent peripherals business – lasers printers and scanners – into a complete system.
