NCR hangs 64-bit plans on Solaris and Merced NCR's hardware manager, configuration technology to be integrated into Solaris By Rebecca Sykes

August  1997

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"We're going to use Solaris as our base for our 64-bit operating system as we move to Merced in the 1999 time-frame," said Bill Eisenman, senior vice president of NCR's Computer Systems Group.

Under the agreement, Sun will incorporate availability, reliability, and serviceability features of NCR's current Unix technologies into future versions of the Solaris operating system, Eisenman said. Those technologies include NCR's hardware manager, which has parts that can be configured while the machine is running, and start-up configuration technologies, which "tune" the machine based on its configuration, he said.

NCR technologies integrated into Solaris will be "deep in the [part of the] OS that people don't see," Eisenman said.

Sun CEO Scott McNealy said that the technology transfer is "a very strategic relationship that transcends just a buy/sell relationship."

"The value-add in integration services that NCR offers are just not available from Sun," McNealy said.

McNealy also said that adding NCR technology to Solaris will give Sun a boost in what he characterized as a Unix contest with just two contenders -- Solaris and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT. The Unix consolidation is over, having become a Coke/Pepsi, Evander Holyfield/Mike Tyson kind of relationship, he said. "We're very happy to be in the ring and have our ear bit a little bit," McNealy said, referring to the controversial ending to the most recent Holyfield-Tyson heavyweight title fight.

NCR's Teradata relational database management system will be migrated to Solaris once Merced is available, NCR officials said. In the meantime, Teradata utilities and access tools will be ported to the 32-bit version of Solaris, they said.

--Rebecca Sykes is a correspondent with the IDG News Service, a SunWorld affiliate

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Resources

• NCR
  http://www.ncr.com/
• Sun
  http://www.sun.com

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URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-08-1997/swol-08-ncr.html
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