By William Fellows
Intel Corp is going to establish a more systematic approach to get ISVs to port their applications to the half dozen or so flavors of Unix which are now available or being created for its 32-bit and 64-bit microprocessor architectures. Intel’s problem is that it needs to keep all of its partners happy, while each is trying to deep six the others. It’s likely that it will try to create some standard ground rules for ISV funding. The creation of a multi-million dollar ISV fund with IBM Corp to encourage developers to write to the AIX-based Monterey kernel on IA-64 is so far unique, said enterprise program director Mike Pope. Speaking – somewhat ironically at the unveiling of Sun Microsystems Inc’s Solaris 7 release – Pope told ComputerWire that the arrangement it has struck with IBM this week is so far a one-off. Intel doesn’t afford the same investment to Sun’s Solaris x86 campaign however, and the company is set to overhaul its entire ISV funding program in an effort to create a more level playing filed. With six or more Unix-on-Intel operating systems vying for market share it’s keen to be seen to be agnostic, although it has given IBM its most ringing endorsement to date, describing Monterey as the likely volume leader. It has also sanctioned the creation of a Merced emulator for Monterey, an honor bestowed so far only on Windows NT and SCO. In the meantime, players including Sun, IBM, SCO, HP, SGI are determined to find something uniquely important in its individual Intel relationship.
