As expected (CI No 3,217) NCR Corp has signed an agreement with Sun Microsystems Inc that will see it selling and supporting Sun’s Solaris x86 Unix operating system with its Intel Corp-based WorldMark servers. NCR says Solaris x86 will be supported on some of the servers by year-end and on the full range by the end of the first quarter of 1998. Sun will also incorporate key features of NCR’s existing MP-RAS Unix offering into future versions of the Solaris operating system – including on-the-fly upgrading, hot-swapping of devices, installation, configuration and management technologies – and will use NCR’s WorldMark 4300 as its reference platform for developing Solaris x86. Much of the integration will be done in the channel: Sun will get a royalty of each WorldMark-with-Solaris sale. While NCR will continue to support customers using its 32-bit MP-RAS, the focus of the agreement is a new 64-bit version of Solaris x86 which Sun will target for systems built upon Intel’s next-generation 64-bit processors, beginning with Merced. NCR, which expects to introduce its Merced-based servers beginning in 1999, says the nature of its relationship with Intel also means Sun will get its hands on certain Merced documentation early next year, sometime before it might otherwise have gotten access to it. Sun, which now preaches co-existence with Windows NT, says it is also building new functionality into Solaris that will provide better integration and for customers that have both Unix and NT systems. It’s thinking of integration with NT Active Directory, security and messaging in addition to the kinds of print, file and mail sharing facilities already available. Sun expects users and ISVs to move from MP-RAS to 32-bit Solaris x86 and on to 64-bit Solaris x86. Sun claims 3,000 applications up on Solaris x86 compared with 12,000-odd available for its Sparc version of Solaris. The company claims it has other OEMs in hand for Solaris x86, mostly those who live in the other sector when the market research companies break down vendors’ market shares. We know that companies such as Siemens-Pyramid and Sequent Computers Systems have yet to reveal a source for their future Unix technology base. With the NCR win, Sun CEO Scott McNealy claims the industry is down to two Unixes – Solaris and NT; if I can take some liberty with the word Unix. Sun says the fact is that we’d prefer it if customers bought Solaris rather than NT. And yes we think NT still lacks some enterprise and mission critical features. But NT is out there. The struggle with Microsoft, it seems, has moved to the desktop, where Sun’s Java is battling with Windows.
