F O R I N T E R N A L U S E O N L Y COMPETITIVE ACTION - WEEKLY UPDATE JULY 8, 1993 If you would like to be added, deleted or you have changed locations, please send a message to Competitive /HP6650. Include your HPDesk address. Competitive Action is posted to HP-UX notes in the group hp.marketing. The string is entitled "hp.competition for ". BC = Beyond Computing BW = Business Week CC = Corporate Computing CIO = CIO CW = Computer World DM = Datamation DNR = Digital news & review EN = Electronic News IW = Information Week MS = Midrange Systems NC = NCR Connection OST = Open Systems Today RSM = RS/Magazine SE = Sun Expert SO = Sun Observer SJMN = San Jose Mercury News SW = Sun World UGX = Unigram-X UR = Unix Review UW = Unix World WN = Workstation News WSJ = Wall Street Journal Editor, Nadine Halsted *********************************************************** INSTRUCTIONS FOR REQUESTING MORE INFORMATION *********************************************************** Send a message to Competitive /HP6650 and include: 1. Name 2. Non-telnet and telnet fax number. For numbers outside of the US, please note as international. 3. Number that precedes the article you need 4. Limit your request for faxing to a maximum of 3 articles. For 4 or more articles, send your mail stop or street address. Missing or incorrect information may delay delivery of your request. *********************************************************** DG ARTICLES *********************************************************** 701. ** DG LAUNCHES NEW-GENERATION 1000 TPS AVIIONS (UGX, 7/5/93, pg. 2) DG announced its next generation of AViiON enterprise servers. Along with the six to eight-way AV9500s, the mid-range two-to four-way AV8500s and the supporting AV 500 workstations, DG demonstrated the new high-availability features of its DG/UX 5.4 release 3 operating system. DG says the new systems should perform at around the following transactions per second rates using the TPC-A benchmark (not officially audited yet): 2-way 120 tps; 4-way - 210; 8-way - 500; 12 -way - 750; 16- way - 1,000 tps. *********************************************************** HP ARTICLES *********************************************************** 702. ** HEWLETT-PACKARD's GUIDON ON COSE, MICROKERNELS, NEXT AND ALLIANCES (UGX, 7/5/93, pg. 7) Guidon believes HP will be first out with a COSE-compliant desktop product. IBM will follow soon after. It also makes sense, argues Guidon, for HP to become an integrator for what he perceives to be the current object-oriented market leader. 703. ** HP: DOING WHAT WE DO BEST (IW, 6/28/93, pg. 108) According to Wim Roelandts any part of the company's operations deemed "less than world-class" is contracted out as the company constantly evaluates its core competencies. The strategy seems to be working: During its latest quarter, HP sold $3.9 billion worth of equipment, second only to IBM. 704. ** HP HELPS FUND NEW LAB AT INFORMIX (UGX, 7/5/93, pg. 5) HP and Informix announced that they will jointly build and staff a research and development laboratory at Informixs Menlo Park headquarters to maximize overall speed and optimization of Informix products on HP 9000 Series 800 Unix business systems and servers. 705. ** SAP TEAMS UP WITH HP FRANCE, AXIME, AXISSE (UGX, 7/5/93, pg. 5) SAP France has signed a partnership agreement with HP and software consultants Axime Ingenierie and Axisse, in which the three companies will provide a comprehensive service for integrating SAP's R/2 and R/3 enterprise management software. *********************************************************** IBM ARTICLES *********************************************************** 706. ** IBM IS PLANNING $2 BILLION CHARGE TO SLASH JOBS (WSJ, 4/2/93, A3) IBM stilled mired in its worst slump ever is preparing to announce this month a massive new charge in the range of $2 billion to pay for slashing its work force by about 50,000 people this year, twice as many as it had predicted. 707. ** IBM TO LAUNCH TWO PC UNITS IN NEW MARKETS (WSJ, 4/1/93, pg. B1) IBM is preparing to launch two entirely new personal computer subsidiaries, an ambitious move that will take it into new markets but also create competition for its existing PCs. One unit will create high-end machines with the new PowerPC microchip. The other, dubbed Ambra, will sell ultra-cheap machines that won't bear IBM's name. 708. ** IBM's U.K. UNIT REGROUPS SALES FORCE TO BOOST PROFIT (WSJ, 4/1, 93, pg. B6) IBM United Kingdom Ltd. said its sales force will have greater autonomy to meet customers' needs under a recent reorganization that separates sales operations into individual divisions, each catering to a different segment of the market, such as retail customers or manufacturers. 709. ** IBM (IW, 6/28/93, pg. 8) IBM completed the acquisition of CGI Informatique, the Paris-based vendor of PacBase tools, which generates most of its $350 million in annual sales from CASE software and related consulting in France. 710. ** WORLDSPAN RESERVES SEAT FOR IBM (IW, 6/28/93, pg. 16) Worldspan, the computer reservation system jointly owned by Delta, Northwest, TWA, and several other airlines, has signed a $100 million software integration and services deal with IBM. 711. ** FIVE FOR THE SHOW (MS, 6/22/93, pg. 1) AS/400 users were asked to describe a birthday gift for the AS/400. Comments included: "Support for multiple operating systems;" "IBM's soon to be announced 64-bit RISC microprocessor because it's time for more than a 30 percent growth in performance;" " A CD-ROM directly attached to the As/400;" and, "The ability to be a fast data server." 712. ** IBM EMBRACES AS/400 WIRELESS (MS, 6/22/93, pg. 16) IBM will market two of Business Partner Solutions Inc.'s products. PagerPac/400 enables one way wireless communication to pagers over private and public paging services. RadioPac/400 facilitates two way wireless communication mobile PC-compatible clients over server RF networks. 713. ** IBM READIES RISC PROGENY IN UNIX PUSH (EN, 6/28/93, pg. 1) IBM plans to introduce later this year the first in a series of new RISC- based computers for high-performance Unix markets, such as multi-media, technical and scientific computing. The new 0.6 -micron CMOS chip set, called RIOS 2 will also help begin an era of hyperscalar RISC. 714. ** IBM PICKED OVER EDS, TRW, GTE FOR POTENTIAL $474M ARMY AWARD (EN, 6/28/93, pg. 20) IBM Federal Systems was awarded a potential $474 million US Army contract for the Sustaining Base Information Services computer program - beating out EDS, TRW, and GTE. 715. ** IBM READIES SERVER VERSIONS OF AS/400 (CW, 7/5/93, pg. 10) IBM will make high-end AS/400 central processors available on lower-end models, off-load file processing functions from the CPU to I/O processors and offer a streamlined kernel version of OS/400. The new low-end platforms will be positioned as specialty models optimized for client/server. 716. ** MIDRANGE TO GO (CS, 7/5/93, pg. 90) IBM has a luggable single-user AS/400 in the works that would be aimed mainly at software vendors and resellers looking to do on-site customer demonstrations and AS/400 programmers who want to take their work home or on the road with them. Pricing is expected to start in the $5,000 to $6,000 range and include the OS/400 operating system. 717. ** IBM DETAILS AIX ROADMAP, PS/2, AIX/ESA FUTURE UNCLEAR (UGX, 7/5/93, pg. 1) IBM will offer five new variants of AIX over the next two years. The roadmap details AIX Classic, a repackaged version of AIX/6000; AIX Lite for PowerPC and low-end RS/6000 workstation users; AIX Run-Time, for PowerPC-based embedded applications; AIX Cluster for clusters of five or more RS/6000s; and AIX SMP, the symmetrical multi-processing extension of AIX that IBM is working on in conjunction with Groupe Bull. 718. ** COMMENTS (UGX, 7/5/93, pg. 8) IBM has announced immediate availability of software speech recognition development tools for the OS/2 and AIX environments. 719. ** IBM's GERSTNER HOLDS BACK FROM SALES FORCE SHAKE-UP (WSJ, 7/7/93, pg. B1) In his first major strategic decision to surface since he took over as chairmen three months ago, Gerstner cited the sales force as a key to the company's ills but decided to let it ride for now. *********************************************************** MICROSOFT ARTICLES *********************************************************** 720. ** VENDORS SHOW A TOUCH OF CLASS (IW, 6/28/93, pg. 78) Microsoft opened Microsoft University, chartered to help train customers in desktop operating system and local area networks. Novell offers Certified NetWare Engineer (CNE) professional training and certification at more than 400 training centers across the United States. *********************************************************** SEQUENT ARTICLES *********************************************************** 721. ** SEQUENT SERVER CLUSTERS BUST BENCHMARK BARRIERS (CW, 7/5/93, pg. 58) When it comes to running the Oracle 7 Parallel Server database, it is Sequent's turn to claim it has built a better mousetrap - or at least a better cluster. Sequent scored a 1,002 tpsA rating using two Symmetry 2000/750 servers housing a total of 46 50-MHz processors. The cost per transaction score was $9,313. *********************************************************** SUN ARTICLES *********************************************************** 722. ** SUN TARGETS NEW GRAPHICS MARKETS, PREVIEWS SX, SUNVIDEO COMPRESSION (SW, 7/93, pg. 19) SMCC plans to demonstrate more graphics leadership in a two-prong technology announcement. Already the dominant player in 2-D graphics and a major player in most 3-D fields, Sun plans to attack imaging and video fields with two new technologies, both of which will bear fruit in late 1993 and early 1994. 723. ** SUN SIMPLIFIES SOLARIS MIGRATION (CW, 7/5/93, pg. 10) Responding to user complaints about moving applications to Solaris 2.X, Sun has provided software and services to ease migration from older SunOS systems. 724. ** COMMENTS (UGX, 7//5/93, pg. 8) Sun knows why Brazil is known to its native inhabitants as the kingdom of the ants. It got an e-mail from its local representative down there asking how to get rid of bugs. A user, returning after a few days, powered his workstation on and was greeted by some nasty crunching and popping sounds coming from an army of ants. Pest control was hurriedly dispatched and the system was soon up and running - just proves that Sun knows its stuff when it comes to bug fixing. ********************************************************** TANDEM ARTICLES *********************************************************** 725. ** TANDEM COMPUTERS INC. (WSJ, 4/6/93, pg. B4) Tandem will post a fiscal third-quarter operating loss, dashing analysts' expectations, because of slumping product sales. Tandem computers designed with special backup systems to prevent failure, plans to unveil more powerful, lower-priced system in the next few weeks. *********************************************************** OTHER *********************************************************** 726. ** LITIGATION (IW, 6/28/93, pg. 10) In a rare example of a vendor suing an industry research firm, Oracle last week disclosed it filed a trade libel suit against The Standish Group. Oracle charges Standish with making "spurious claims" against Oracle. Specifically, a May 15 report stated that recent Oracle 7 TPC-A benchmark results were fraudulent and misleading to users. 728. ** AIRLINES CURTAIL PC USE (CW, 7/5/93, pg. 40) United Airlines recently became the latest carrier to limit passenger use of personal electronic devices (PED), including PCs, during takeoffs and landings. ******************* END OF DOCUMENT ********************