Microsoft Corp’s stake in the Santa Cruz Operation Inc currently hovers around the 15% mark. It has one director sitting on the board. Santa Cruz UK’s system marketing manager, Mark Miller, says the two firms have kept out of each others’ way of late, but that their roles as system software providers to the ACE initiative developers means that they’ll be competing head-to-head for business for the first time pretty soon. If Microsoft is late to market with its New Technology operating system it’ll be good for Santa Cruz, says Miller, but its going to be neck and neck in any case. To boost its chances of attracting customers that would otherwise head straight for the nearest Microsoft shop, he says Santa Cruz is going to pick up an emulation package that will enable users to run Microsoft Windows applications under Open Desktop. Technology from Insignia Solutions Ltd – recently endorsed by Microsoft itself (UX No 347) – and Locus Computing Corp is currently under consideration. Miller believes one reason that the ACE initiative – on which Santa Cruz has staked much of its future will be a success, is that the firms involved will be able to band together to bid ACE-compliant technology on large contracts in the defence, public and corporate sectors, all of which are increasingly specifying the use of open systems standards. Indeed Miller says that rationale documents from the likes of the User Alliance for Open Systems and the Petrotechnical Software Corporation are gradually becoming de facto procurement specifications. He expects X/Open’s upcoming Xtra conference, November 13 to 15 in Reston, Virginia, to come out with a user document that will also become a widely-adopted guide to procurement.
Unheard-of
The rash of small – and in some instances previously unheard-of – companies in ACE, will be getting subcontracted work from the larger ACE members that can’t do specific pieces of development or integration work themselves. Miller admits Santa Cruz won’t be writing much of the code in its DEC Ultrix, Open Software Foundation OSF/1, AT&T Unix V.3.2 and MIPS Computer Systems Inc RiscOS-derived Open Desktop releases for ACE. However, while up to 80% of the code may be imported, the other 20% it is writing encompasses the vital compatibility, integration and standards work that enables it to be offered as a single, bundled package. Although effectively aligned with the Open Software Foundation side of the industry, Santa Cruz is keen to maintain its links with the Unix System Laboratories-Unix International camp. However Miller is critical of the way Unix V.4 is being brought to market. Although it is held by the hand of Unix International, and written by Unix Labs, by the time it [V.4] reaches customers it is coming from someone else, and inevitably those firms will stick their own proprietary bits in, he says, tilting at rival Unix supplier Interactive Systems Corp. He believes Unix Labs shot itself in the foot by pricing itself out of the low end of the market with the licensing terms it imopsed on Unix V.4. Indeed price is one of the main reasons that Santa Cruz hasn’t taken up Unix V.4 for its own purposes, he claims. If they [Unix Labs] had priced it lower, Santa Cruz might’ve had V.4 now. But in any case, Miller argues, Unix V.4 is a technology, not a product, and there is a problem developing to V.4 because there are a lot of imperfections. Commenting last week’s story that ACE lynchpin Compaq Computer Corp prefers Hewlett-Packard’s Visual User Environment front end to IXI Ltd’s X.desktop manager component of Open Desktop, Miller fully expects Compaq to backtrack and take whatever Santa Cruz offers to the ACE crowd. Presenting it almost as a fait accompli, Miller says that Compaq will come round to X.desktop in ACE Open Desktop because at the end of the day Compaq shifts hardware, Santa Cruz does the software. The ACE members will be able to build at least some differentiation into their MIPS Computer Systems-based systems – not the Intel Corp variants by virtue of Santa Cruz’s Hardware Abstraction Laye
r, a software tool built into the hardware that enables different system components – starting with Open Desktop – to be plugged in.
By William Fellows
The Layer will, for example, enable different types of mass storage systems or graphical user interfaces to be configured. It should also make the MIPS-based ACE systems uncloneable, Miller optimistically believes. As far as multiprocessing support goes – aside from those features in the Foundation’s OSF/1 Mach-derived kernel – the Intel version of ACE Open Desktop already has Corollary Inc’s multiprocessing technology in it. The MIPS version – although the ARC-compliant R4000-based systems on the whole are expected to be be uniprocessor offerings – will have multiprocessing technology in it too, eventually, Miller says. Santa Cruz is currently evaluating MIPS’ own multi-processing technology, that from MIPS chip customer, Silicon Graphics Inc, as well as Corollary’s, to do the job. Santa Cruz will also include a graphics library in the ACE system software, it is looking at ACE member Silicon Graphics’ offering, as well as other Unix graphics technologies like PEX and PHiGS. Miller is confident that DEC and Compaq will be first to market with ACE development boxes – DEC already has its ARC-compatible 5000 machines. They will be followed by 10 to 15 other vendors with what are expected to be the first commercial systems, around the third quarter of next year. Many of these will arrive on the back of OEM deals between the various ACE firms. Miller believes many ACE companies will not bother developing their own systems but will simply buy in boxes from one of their ACE compatriots, work in their own value-added features and sell them on under their own badge. Santa Cruz is confident that the relationship with MIPS will prove successful, but is pragmatic enough to admit that it – and ACE as a whole will turn to other chip systems if things don’t work out. Indeed Miller expects Open Desktop to be implemented across other architectures once the Intel and MIPS efforts are under full steam. He says ACE didn’t really consider Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparc RISC chip for its initiative, because its Sparc International supporters’ club controls only part of the technology, and Hewlett-Packard is on its own rule-the-world RISC trip in any case.
Object-oriented
But these relationships could change, Miller adds. Object-oriented technology is important to Santa Cruz, Miller admits, but it is not mature enough yet, in his view. ACE Open Desktop will include a new version of IXI’s desktop manager, X.desktop 3.0, which has a range of object-oriented features not in the present release. Santa Cruz will take its guidance from the Object Management Group’s efforts, and will buy in technology for Open Desktop from Group-compliant suppliers as and when it becomes available. The Foundation’s Distributed Computing and Distributed Management Environments will be added as and when they arrive. There will be three releases of ACE Open Desktop. An initial developers’ version, with conversion tools, language support and application programming interfaces will be followed by full-blown versions for personal systems and servers around this time next year. By then, Miller expects the top fifty software packages to be running under the environment. Miller reckons the current Santa Cruz Open Desktop product was three years too early. It was too advanced, he claims, admitting to sales of 10,000 – 6,000 of those to developers with around 300 applications now available for it. As well as the different releases, there will also – initially – be separate implementations of ACE Open Desktop for the Intel and MIPS architectures. The Intel version is derived from Santa Cruz’s existing Unix-based product. It comes with the Ingres relational database bundled. The MIPS edition will be based on the Ultrix-OSF/1 code supplied by DEC. This will include a non-proprietary SQL front-end so that developers and customers can add their own database choice. Following the two initial versions, all future releases w
ill be derived from the MIPS-based product. Miller says Santa Cruz’s UK development team is already working on the Ultrix-OSF/1 Open Desktop implementation for Intel systems. From October 1, Santa Cruz, which currently Europe from Watford in the UK – with local offices for sales – will open full-service subsidiaries in Germany, France, Italy and the Scandinavian countries, to work more closely with local partners – Santa Cruz has been hiring executives with experience in larger firms, bringing in big company culture – so Santa Cruz is changing, says Hewlett-Packard veteran Miller.
