Auspex Systems Inc, the Santa Clara, California network server company that struck up a deal with IBM Corp recently, is said to be looking to expand its operations internationally, before going public, possibly by the end of the year. Speculation has it that Auspex has its eyes on its current distributor, Thame Microsystems Ltd, as the basis of its UK operation, although Thame’s owner Memory & Electronic Components Plc is likely to retain a stake. Thame – an erstwhile distributor of Motorola Computer Systems boxes, was showing Auspex NetServers at the UK Computer Management Group exhibition in Brighton last week, along with he new Sparc-based Epoch-2 data storage servers from Epoch Systems Inc. Auspex recently struck up an OEM deal with IBM, which involves development of a new version of the machine using a Rios chip rather than the current Sparc. In the meantime IBM is already said to have sold a number of Sparc-based models, and may have its own version ready by year-end. IBM versions use IBM disks rather than the 1.35Gb (and soon 2Gb) Hewlett-Packard drives used by Auspex. The change of chip is largely a political move, since the CPU is used mostly for housekeeping matters on an Auspex server, the main work is carried out through a series of custom and ASIC chips handling Ethernet, File and Storage processing. The key to the performance advantages of an Auspex server over, say, an IBM RS/6000, is that the Auspex machine has no Unix overhead – there is a 55Mb backplane for network traffic alone, unimpeded by instruction or Unix traffic. There are currently over 400 systems installed, running up to 200 workstations or 100 X-terminals, and up to 5Gb disk storage. Expansion in the number of users and disk storage supported are on there way. There are also rumours that Digital Equipment Corp has struck up a deal with Auspex, although DEC UK wouldn’t comment.
