/xenix: The "386 Summit" for
XENIX®
©1987 - Richard A. Bilancia - All Rights
Reserved
to be published first in the November 1987 issue of
UNIX®/World
On July 22, 1987 the Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (SCO, Santa Cruz, California) sponsored an event called the "386 Summit" where representatives of many of the major 386 product manufacturers and distributors assembled to promote and acclaim the first widely available, standard operating system that can fully take advantage of the architecture and features of the Intel 80386 microprocessor, SCO XENIX® System V 386.
In addition to the remarks of SCO President Larry Michels, approximately 300 guests were able to hear the opinions, projections and forecasts from an impressive list of industry leaders that included: Alan Hald, Chairman of the Board of MicroAge Computer Stores, Inc.; Steve Ballmer, Vice President, System Software, Microsoft Corporation; Subhash Bal, Excelan Vice President of Marketing; Mike Swavely, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Compaq Computer Corp.; Doug Michels, SCO Vice President; Robert Dilworth, President Zenith Data Systems; Wendel C. Harrison, Director of marketing, Texas Instruments Michael P. Richman, Vice President of Marketing, Wyse Technology; and Max Toy, Senior Vice President of Sales and Government Products, ITT/XTRA Business Systems.
Exhibits were also staffed by these above corporations as well as: ARNET Corporation (Atlanta, Georgia), Autodesk, Inc. (Sausalito, California), Bell Technologies (Fremont, California), Corollary, Inc. (Irvine, California), Graphic Software Systems, Inc., Intel Corporation (Hillsboro, Oregon), Olivetti, Inc., PC’s Limited (Austin, Texas), Rexon Inc. (Simi Valley, California), SBT Corporation (Sausalito, California), State of the Art (Costa Mesa, California), and Unify Corporation (Sacramento, California).
The Theme.
Most personal computer industry observers look at today’s 386 systems as nothing more than faster, larger and better PCs. However, most of the participants at "The 386 Summit" truly believe that these same systems can be used to replace the the functionality of the much more expensive multiuser minicomputer systems. In fact as Doug Michels put it in one of his introductions, "But, I think, the one thing that...[all the speakers have]...in common is an understanding that these new machines they’ve created have more power and more capability than can be used by most users in a pure single-use, single-tasking environment. And that to fully achieve the potential of this marketplace we need to find ways to use them in ways that larger computers have been used in the past." Accordingly, the theme of this event was "...to affirm the dawn of a multiuser era for personal computers" called "interpersonal computing."
Along the same lines, Mike Swavely, Vice President of Sales and Marketing from Compaq Computer Corporation predicted that the delivery of XENIX® 386 "...over time will lead to a total restructuring of the worldwide computer industry and will have a significant impact on the balance of market power among computer companies over the next several decades." I must say that this is quite a bold statement to make about an operating system that started its evolution nearly twenty years ago in an industry where Apple has been periodically (yet inaccurately) predicting the eventual demise of the industry leader. However, I must confess that I’d really like to see both predictions come true. In fact, if Michael P. Richman’s, Vice President of Marketing at Wyse Technology, statistics that "...there are more than 1500 application software programs capable of running on XENIX® today..." are correct, the evolution/revolution has already begun.
Mr. Richman went on to hint about a joint marketing program between SCO and Wyse. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait to find out the details.
It has often been said "...that the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys." While I’ve been able to make an adequate living in the computer industry, my wife often reminds me of that saying. For that reason I found considerable insight in the presentation from Robert Dilworth, President Zenith Data Systems. Mr. Dilworth’s presentation focused on selling multiuser solutions to the government, but has application for all of us. In trying to understand why it has been historically so easy to sell single user computer systems while it has been much more difficult selling multiuser ones, Mr. Dilworth offered his answer. "...I was convinced that maybe the problem had to do with going back to our childhood, and that is we basically don’t like somebody to share our toys. What...[we’ve been]...doing was trying to...[tell]...someone that he had to share his toys." In the government, particularly the military, there is often someone (typically a general) ordering that toys must be shared. While those of us selling to the private sector usually won’t typically find such orders being given, we can use this insight to help our customers and clients understand that can be much more economical to share our toys.
The Announcements.
As mentioned above there was an exhibit area at "The 386 Summit" in addition to the presentation. Several new and exciting products, both hardware and software, were announced or displayed.
The product that I personally found most exciting was the ATtain® 386 processor announced by Corollary, Inc. Last year I had the privilege of meeting George White, Corollary’s President, at COMDEX/Fall ’86 when he first outlined for me his plans for a multi-processor 286-based system. At UniForum this past January, he was able to demonstrate on the show floor an IBM PC/AT running XENIX® with five separate Intel 80286 processors, each sharing the processing overhead in a true parallel processing installation.
Since that time Corollary and SCO have announced that SCO will provide the XENIX® kernel for Corollary products ensuring binary code compatibility with all software running on other ports of SCO XENIX|(rg, but at "The 386 Summit" Corollary announced and displayed their 386 version of the same product. Most 386 hardware vendors claim that a proerly configured 386 system running 386 XENIX® will support between 16 and 32 users (it is not uncommon to see 12 to 16 users running today on a single 286-based system). However, Corollary maintains that a fully configured 386 desktop system with four of their ATtain® 386 processor boards installed will support up to 128 users.
I find this product particularly exciting because systems can now be initially configured to support only the currently required number of users, yet with the simplicity of add-in boards can be expanded as needed as requirements change. Additionally, and probably even more importantly, the entire store of software available for XENIX® (and for DOS as soon as VP/ix becomes available) will be available to run on a computer supporting up to 128 users!
One of the other very interesting announcements was the unveiling of a technology and distribution agreement between SCO and Bell Technologies. The relationship between SCO and Bell has not been without its strained moments, so it came as quite a surprise to see these two vendors (who are both so very committed to the small multiuser market) once again join hands and technology to provide sophisticated hardware solutions for their customers.
In addition to providing SCO XENIX® users with Bell Technology’s Intelligent Channel Controller expansion card (ICC that provides 6 serial ports per board) and 200 other Bell supplied products, the agreement specifies that "...SCO will provide support for Bell’s development of a microchannel version of its ICC expansion card for IBM’s PS/2® Model 80 running SCO XENIX® System V," by the end of October, 1987.
The third major announcement was that SCO has begun bundling the "...first device-independent bitmap and vector graphics development tool available for XENIX®," (GSS*CGI® from Graphic Software Systems, Inc.) with all SCO XENIX® Development packages for both the 80286 and 80386 hardware. For those software developers that want and need to create graphics applications, this announcement should be of particular interest.
Other announcements, such as a distribution agreement between SCO and Wyle Laboratories, were also made.
Conclusion.
"The 386 Summit" once again demonstrated that the future of multiuser computing on what have been called up to this time "personal computers" is a bright and exciting one.
None of us will probably ever see another success like the original PC, however we can all now participate in the next phase of that same phenomena. Many of us will never really need the multiuser capability user capabilities of UNIX® that XENIX® has to offer, but will be more than satisfied to exploit the UNIX® multitasking capabilities.
UNIX® and XENIX® are available today to allow us to begin taking full advantage of the 386 microprocessor. We don’t need to wait for a new operating system that will not have the wealthg and XENIX®. All that we really of tools that come with UNIX need is an application (that may now be being worked on in someone’s garage) that will accelerate the transition the way Visicalc accelerated the acceptance of the original 8-bit (limited to 64K RAM) personal computers.
Maybe someone that attended the first annual XENIX® Developer’s Forum, that was held in late August at the University of California in Santa Cruz that I’ll be covering in next month’s column, is already working on such a product.
Boy!! Have we come a long way in the last ten years!