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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On 20 Sep 1996, Dave Tholen wrote:

> Bernd Backhaus writes:
> 
> > jw@qits.net.au wrote 18 Aug 96 in article <4v73ur$qce@hobyah.cc.uq.oz.au>:
> 
> >> This is interesting.  I've seen lots of PPC offerings from Motorola
> >> and Apple but IBM seems to be a little quieter?

IBM has been shifting to AIX for the last 3 years.  It is a quiet
"evolution".  AIX is mostly like UNIX except that it has better
internationalization features.  Also, AIX has a strong NICHE in the
bridging of SNA/SAA to the TCP/IP environment.

Most manufacturers realise that their best chance at keeping their markets
is UNIX/OSF/Linux/...  Unfortunately, there is very little that is
newsworthy, little that gives one a competitive edge over the others, and
it is better marketing strategy to hype the daylights out of things like
MVS/ESA, AS/400, and OS/2, where profit margins are larger and competition
is non-existant.  Even in these domains, most contracts are going with
specialist engines such as MVS on the Mainframe and AIX on a RISC/6000 as
the "Communications Front End".  This protects their "high margin"
products while minimizing resistance to an "All SNA Solution".

> > Expect that to change soon. IBM has already started with Object REXX and  
> > OpenDOC for NT and obviously just teamed with Motorola and Bull to encourage  
> > ISVs to port to NT/PPC. IBM themselves are rumored to port MS Office to
> > PPC...

Nobody is being stupid.  IBM can afford to throw away $10 Million on a
development team to support NT.  For them that is 'Pin Money'.  DEC
learned the hard way the cost of putting all of your eggs in the Microsoft
Basket (Laid off 1/3 of their work force over 3 years?).  It seems like
Rueters, Dow Jones, and S&P are about the only major VMS shops left.  None
of them received anything like a working NT for an SMP Alpha. 

> Interesting rumor.  Do you think Microsoft is likely to provide source
> code for their Office suite to IBM?

Possibly, in exchange for source code the the Lotus Office Suite.
Remember, IBM got exclusive control of OS/2 2.x and the result was a
disaster.

	Rex


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Thu Oct 24 01:55:04 1996
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