An Update on The "Other OS":UnixWindows NT may get the bulk of the press, but venerable Unix continues to hold its own in the enterprise market.by George Pajari SCO (the Santa Cruz Operation) is the world's leading supplier of Unix. When the first annual SCO Forum was held 11 years ago, Novell was in its infancy, and Windows NT wasn't even a gleam in Bill Gates' eye. The world of computing has changed a lot since then, but Unix continues to be an important business- and mission-critical operating system (OS) for the corporate market. SCO Forum 97, held in late August on the campus of the University of Santa Cruz, California, drew almost 3,000 participants to nearly five dozen seminars covering systems engineering, systems administration, business, and the Internet. There were demonstrations of the newest products from SCO as well as vendors such as Compaq, Fujitsu, IBM, and many smaller ISVs (independent software vendors). While the Windows NT deluge was on everyone's mind, Dan Kosnetsky, an industry analyst with IDC, provided an interesting perspective on the struggles in the networking marketplace. Kosnetsky noted that although NT server shipments slightly exceeded Unix shipments in 1996, Unix actually led by a two-to-one margin in terms of the number of clients supported by those servers. The other "new technologies" One of the problems facing enterprise MIS (management information systems) departments is efficiently providing users with access to the corporate applications - a problem made worse by the mix of platforms (mainframe, Unix, Windows NT, etc.) that need to be supported. Tarantella, which runs on a server connected to the enterprise's various application platforms, allows users on Network Computers or PCs running any Java-capable Web browser to access the applications they need. Besides allowing the user to access applications on a range of different platforms as if they were directly connected, Tarantella greatly simplifies the administration of corporate desktops. The general feeling at SCO Forum 97 was that Tarantella is not only a significant product in itself, but that it represents a watershed in SCO's evolution. The first versions of Tarantella will run on Unix servers (including SCO UnixWare and Sun Solaris), but SCO plans to port Tarantella to Windows NT. This represents the company's largest investment so far in a product not directly related to its original OS business, and offers SCO the potential to widen its revenue base and to ensure its future regardless of the vicissitudes of the Unix marketplace. SCO's other major project has been Gemini, the massive enhancement of its enterprise UnixWare product. SCO announced at the Forum that the final version would ship before the end of the year. Some of the new features include a 250% increase in network performance, support for up to 64 gigabytes of memory and 1-terabyte files and disks, and 64-bit file systems and libraries. When Intel's new 64-bit "Merced" processor becomes available, it seems SCO will have the first operating system to take advantage of it. And with Gemini's support for 64-bit APIs, ISVs can start developing today for the forthcoming 64-bit Intel hardware. Unix in Japan A number of attendees from Japanese companies came to learn more about Gemini and Tarantella, as well as SCO's plans for the Japanese versions of these products. One engineer from a Japanese maker with plans for a competitive 64-bit operating system said his company was particularly interested in learning more about Gemini. Among the many sessions designed to assist resellers and ISVs was one focused on conducting business in Japan and other Asia-Pacific countries. Andy Suzuki, general manager of SCO KK in Tokyo, told attentive participants that many companies "don't realize the importance of the Asian market, which is larger than the European Unix market in size." SCO's Greg Greeley confirmed that while the Asia-Pacific market represents less than 10% of SCO sales, it is growing faster than other markets and has "large growth potential." Indeed, in the days preceding the Forum, SCO announced that Matsushita had selected SCO UnixWare for its world-leading Passenger Management System. Suzuki told Computing Japan that Japan currently represents about 5% of SCO's market, and is growing at about 20% annually. He explains that SCO's business is divided between SCO KK, which he manages and which has responsibility for client integration products (such as the Vision product line), and Nihon SCO Ltd., which is responsible for SCO's server products. Jiro Monden, general manager of Nihon SCO, confirms that work on localizing Gemini for the Japanese market is underway, and that the Japanese version of Gemini will ship at the same time as the English version. Plans for the Japanese version of Tarantella are being drawn up; no dates have yet been announced for this product.? George Pajari is a freelance writer and programmer whose Unix programming experience goes back to Version 6 and the PDP-11/45 (over two decades ago). He is president of Faximum Software, Inc. a Unix/Internet fax software company.
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