Not so long ago there was a great deal of talk about Unix on the desktop. Bolstered by a Windows-like front-end (Motif), first AT&T Corp with Destiny and then Novell Inc with UnixWare, tried to push Unix as a package for desktop users. Their efforts were met with market indifference. Santa Cruz Operation Inc appeared to be in two minds with Xenix, the only desktop Unix making any impact on the market that also had broad multi-user and network appeal. When it launched a higher-end Unix implementation in the late 1980s it confusingly chose the name Open Desktop, largely on the strength of a revamped graphical user interface it bundled with it. Alas, like other Unixes before it, Open Desktop proved to be too unwieldy for all but the most determined of desktop users and most sales were actually to the server market. Santa Cruz Operation’s next generation of server technology is called Everest and while the company is seeing continued growth in sales of Unix as a server, in order to fuel that growth it is vital that the personal computer user – the most ubiquitous of clients – is not left out.
Turning point
Although it supports the Spec 1170 standard, Santa Cruz has eschewed belief in a common Unix desktop, the Common Desktop Environment put up by the Common Open Software Environment initiative, which it helped create, instead repositioning itself around a Windows Friendly strategy with Unix (and Motif) on the server and Windows as the desktop environment accessing it. That is why it bought Cambridge, UK-based IXI Ltd, which made its initial impact developing X Window desktop management software and went on to become the major supplier of Motif worldwide. IXI says it had already decided to concentrate on Windows Friendly product development before Santa Cruz hove into view and proposed acquisition. Indeed its X.desktop Motif interface management product line was effectively made obsolete by the UniForum ’93 Common Desktop Environment announcement. One X Window house, which describes Common Desktop as a turning point in the independent software vendor community, says IXI effectively stopped being a Unix independent software vendor and overnight became a corporate independent software vendor. IXI’s Ray Anderson admitted that sales of X.desktop almost halted with the Common Desktop announcement. But they picked up once users realised that they would not be able to get their hands on Common Desktop Environment any time soon, he said. Nevertheless Common Desktop meant the world was not going to go X.desktop. After a revaluation, IXI decided to go towards Windows X.desktop, positioned as a more robust and feature-rich Common Desktop Environment alternative.
By John Abbott and William Fellows
X.desktop remains an important part of IXI’s business at 30% of revenues, although that is down from 60% or 70% a couple of years ago. Meantime, the upshot of IXI’s two-year development effort is the Eye2Eye Unix-on-personal computer integration software – technology inspired, Anderson said, by IXI users Compagnie des Machines Bull SA and NCR Corp – some of which is being harnessed in the Jekyll & Hyde initiative. When accessed from a personal computer through a local iAPX-86 X server, Eye2Eye uses intelligent agents to give Unix applications and utilities the appearance and behaviour of Microsoft Corp’s Windows. Eye2Eye resides on the Unix server and is downloaded to Unix and Windows desktop clients. Unix clients can use X.desktop or Win-tif front-ends, IXI technology that can give Motif environments the appearance and behaviour of Windows. Common Desktop is just the wrong kind of technology in Anderson’s Windows Friendly world. It is too little, too late and he does not expect very many independent software vendors to write to what he describes as essentially a bunch of proprietary Unix application programming interfaces. Common Desktop does not support Windows integration or even stuff that is becoming standard in other environments, such HyperText Mark-up Language for World Wide Web use. It is a w
orld view IXI could not articulate properly even a year ago when its only products were its Motif-based desktop collection. Win-tif is an add-on library that gives Motif the appearance of Windows on Unix desktops, an interim product to keep IXI products rolling before Eye2Eye arrived. Eye2Eye does not yet include support for the Common Desktop’s SunSoft Inc-derived ToolTalk inter-application messaging system – though that is coming – or Wi ndows diary and MAPI Messaging Application Programming Interfaces, support for which is also underway, Anderson said. IXI is also working on technology that will enable developers to go the other way – putting Unix-hosted development up under Windows. While IXI has been working on personal computer-Unix integration from the Unix side, Santa Cruz’s other UK acquisition, Visionware Ltd of Leeds, has been figuring out what else Windows needs to be hooked up to Unix servers. We realised a few years ago that personal computer emulation products do not give you enough control at the personal computer end, while Visionware, from the other way around, was starting to realise it needed to put in more support from the Unix server. Anderson reckons 4m Windows personal computers are getting hooked up to Unix servers annually.
Thick clients
Half are thick (wide) clients, with a lot taking place on the personal computer: Oracle front-ends to a database server and NetScape accessing a Unix system on the Internet for instance. Thin clients, such as personal computer X servers, make up around 700,000 of the shipments. Both are growing fast. The third middle area makes up the other 1.3m shipments. This is where the personal computer acts as an emulator through products such as PC-Connect and Century Software. Santa Cruz has a slice of all three with IXI and Visionware but will concentrate on the middle and thin approaches. Although Anderson is leading the effort to integrate IXI and Visionware technologies – project Envision – the products do not clash so there is no great hurry, he maintained. First efforts were shown at Demo 95 recently. Meantime, Visionware has new products in the pipeline which it has been unable to launch due to the delay in Windows95, although Santa Cruz is now figuring out whether to give up on the wait and go with the stuff on Window 3.1. The company will obviously include both technologies in its Unix server products and, although Microsoft will argue Windows NT is the ideal alternative, Anderson believes developers will continue to prefer to write mission-critical applications under Unix and deploy them on personal computers.