HP and Apollo "Increasing the Overlap" Between OSs
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
It's been some time since Hewlett-Packard tied the knot with
Apollo Computer. Now that the honeymoon is over, we were
wondering how the relationship was going. At the HP press
conference last week, we were able to talk to Jeff Hornung,
HP's manager of business development for the workstation
division. We were particularly interested in the fate of the
company's two operating systems: HP's own Unix version
(HP/UX) and Apollo's Unix-like Domain operating system. Are
the rumors correct that HP would kill the Domain system?
 
According to Hornung, HP will "continue to enhance" both
HP/UX and Apollo's Domain, "increasing the overlap" between
the two operating systems over the next year. Then, HP will
gradually "bring in the OSF technology, with our first OSF
product out in early 1991." At that point, the OSF-based
operating system will become the standard and HP/UX and
Domain users will have to "gradually migrate" to the
OSF-based system (which at this points looks like it'll be
Motif and Carnegie Mellon's MACH version of Unix).
 
In the meantime, HP is now operating a single sales force
for both HP and Apollo systems. The main selling criteria
depend on the software requirements of the customer, said
Hornung. In other words, some programs run on the Apollo
systems but not on HP's, and vice-versa. Also, the Apollo
systems offer better network connectivity to DEC
minicomputers, which is sometimes an important
consideration.
 
                              --- BYTEweek Staff
 
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