Insignia Solutions Ltd, based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, has consolidated its hold on the MS-DOS-under-Unix software emulation market with the acquisition of the emulation products of Phoenix Technologies Ltd, Norwood, Massachusetts. Phoenix, which says it now wants to concentrate on its core business of system software for personal computers and printers, has taken an undisclosed number of shares in privately held Insignia. The move clears the way for Insignia’s SoftPC emulators, now available for Sun, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, Intergraph, Silicon Graphics and Motorola hardware (including Apple and NeXT) to dominate the market. The main competition comes from competitors such as Interactive Software Inc’s VP/ix (originally developed by Phoenix), PC-Interface and PC Xsight from Locus Computing Corp, (included in Santa Cruz Operation’s Open Desktop package), but these run only on Intel iAPX-86 family machines. Hunter Systems’ XDOS software, which does encompass other architectures, depends on converting specific packages to run under Unix rather than emulating a full MS-DOS environment. Customers for the Phoenix DOSWindows product such as Sun and DEC have been shifting marketing emphasis towards SoftPC of late DEC now sells the product and there is speculation that Sun is also ready to adopt it. According to Insignia’s Ivor Share, who claims that SoftPC outperforms DOSWindows on a Sparcstation, the company does now have a contract in place with Sun. While the move fits in terms of Insignia’s marketing strategy, the company has not taken on any staff from Phoenix and does not appear to have any plans to use the technology. The deal also includes hardware co-processors such as those used in low-end Hewlett Packard Apollo workstations, but Share says that software emulators now outperform an 80286 co-process or quite comfortably. Headquarter ed in High Wycombe, Insignia also has sales, marketing and support offices over in Sunnyvale, Califor nia and in Andover, Massachusetts.
