Opus Systems Inc, Irvine, California, one of the companies that had a hand in creating the technology that spawned the Sparcsystem clone market some months ago, is now backpeddling on its own commitment to move its own Sun Microsystems Inc Sparcstation-compatibles. Its recent experience trying to sell Sun Sparcstation 1 clones has convinced it to change its emphasis and focus instead on its Sparc mother boards, the 500 Personal Mainframe, which fits into a slot in an MS-DOS personal computer and enables the Intel iAPX-86-based machines to run SunOS and Unix applications. Another persuasive reason behind the shift in focus is said to be the fact that it found several customers interested in buying between 8,000 and 23,000 boards. The reorientation is also the result of a political tussle inside the company that has cost Opus president Mark Johnston his job. Following a second-round, $8.5m injection of venture capital funding last month, which brings total investment in the firm over the past six months up to $12.5m (CI No 1,722), it is understood that a US analyst did a whirlwind tour of 10 of the Sparcsystem builders, and on the basis of a report, the venture capitalist – which assumed the right of hire and fire with its latest cash infusion – decided that Opus was pricing its products too high, called for Johnston’s head and for prices to be lowered. Opus’ 500 Personal Mainframe board was subsequently dropped 40% in price. According to Marsha Case, a product marketer with the firm, the company did not find sufficient demand for Sparcstations in the market it was targeting to justify it competing against other cloners with overseas factories and large volume capacities selling commodity products on the basis of price. Ms Case said prospective customers did not want to bring in new hardware and instead asked Opus for a migration path that would enable them to salvage their installed base. Hence Opus’ emphasis on the added value of the 500 Personal Mainframe. The inability of Opus, perhaps the most aggressive and by its own account most successful of the current crop of Sparc cloners – claiming over 1,000 units sold since it started delivering October 22 – to crack the market with a Sparcette is indicative of the difficulties they have all been having since last autumn when they announced their Sparc intentions. None of the dozen or so largely offshore firms with personal computer backgrounds that announced Sparc boxes has made much headway, beset, it seems, primarily by the problem of finding the right market and the proper distribution channels for the box.

Darwinian

On the other hand they have done seemingly little to stimulate demand or add value, though some of the technology for adding value – such as 40MHz chips and graphics accelerators – hasn’t been available. In addition, their plight has been aggravated by Sun which – in its own self-defence – has barred them from piggybacking on its own resellers and is now creating further barriers with its latest pricing scheme. Though it may not have communicated its message well, Sun expected its cloners to break new ground and create a massive commercial Sparc market. With its own strategy for attaining marketing dominance now perhaps in jeopardy, Sun simply shrugs its shoulders and talks in Darwinian terms of the winners maybe being in the next group of cloners. It knows however that its new SunSoft subsidiary has to come up with some answers pretty soon. Opus, now being led by founder Craig Forney, said last week that it is conducting an executive search to find a replacement for Johnston. Case said the company intended to support its Sparcstation 1 customers and provide upgrades to 40MHz chips when they become available. Unanswered is the question of whether it will team up with LSI Logic Corp in creating an instant Sparcstation 2 kit for other cloners as it did previously for the Sparcstation 1. Opus is also thought to be considering the withdrawal of its slow-moving Motorola Inc 88000-based products, perhaps the first fallout from the Apple Computer Inc-IBM Corp-Mo

torola alliance, which some see as the beginning of the end of Motorola’s RISC as a CPU.