A new drive for unity behind Unix
Intel-based server manufacturers joined with Santa Cruz Operation hoping to form a single Unix standard.
SCO announced that it has teamed with Compaq, Data General, ICL, NCR, Olivetti, Siemens Nixdorf, and Unisys to offer servers based on SCO's UnixWare operating system, a version of Unix that SCO would like to see become the standard.
Unix is a non-proprietary operating system originally developed by AT&T Bell Labs. Because the code is available to the entire industry, many systems vendors have developed their own "flavors" of Unix--such as AIX and Solaris--all of which share the same basic set of characteristics but can't run exactly the same applications. UnixWare is a version that many would like to see become the one that all vendors run instead of their own proprietary alternatives.
Before SCO, Novell had been the standard bearer for UnixWare. But when the company reorganized to focus on networking technology, it sold UnixWare to SCO last December.
SCO's UnixWare competes with Solaris for Intel from Sun Microsystems and increasingly Microsoft's Windows NT Server. But the support of the assembled systems vendors may swing the tide somewhat in SCO's favor.
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