A new US-wide sales vehicle for commercial Unix personal computer and Sun Microsystems Inc software is about to be born. The Sunnyvale, California start-up, Unix Connection Inc, is the brainchild of Bill Shott, who started and managed the $12m BTOS Connection Inc, a similarly chartered internal reseller, while at Convergent Technologies Inc, later part of Unisys Corp. The fledgling is backed by $1.7m in venture capital funding from Alpha Partners in Menlo Park, California and will officially kick off August 1. Shott has gathered some 50-plus pieces of off-the-shelf software to resell direct to end users including dBase IV, eXclaim!, Framemaker, 1-2-3, Mathematica, Wingz, WordPerfect, Island Write, Paint, Draw and X.desktop. He’s of the firm belief that most users don’t know what products are available let alone where to buy them, since the MS-DOS-dominated marketplace has given Unix software little shelf space. As a result, in the autumn, Unix Connection will publish and mail to 100,000 end users a four-colour 32-page co-operative catalogue featuring the software it’s selling. The company, which reckons it will have half a million end user names in its database within 12 to 18 months, expects to use this vehicle as an initial lever to its telemarketing push. The lists are coming from the vendors themselves as well as trade show organisers and Unix publications. Behind the catalogue are Unix Connection’s 12 sales reps and applications engineers, specialised by product category and knowledgeable about compatibility and configuration issues. Unix Connection’s support will all be over the phone and the vendors, for which the company will sell support contracts, are expected to become involved. The company, which says it has all the products it’s selling running in-house, as well as an inventory product to be able to deliver to customers within 24 hours, will focus primarily on horizontal applications covering office automation, databases, groupware, networking, utilities and, in the future, peripherals. The company is evaluating the idea of selling the operating system itself, but would also like to steer clear of party politics.
