Confirming a rumored but closely guarded transaction, three major vendors announced on Sept. 20 that Novell will acquire 6.1 million shares of stock in the Santa Cruz Operation in exchange for the Unix System V.4 source code and Novell's UnixWare implementation. At the same time, the companies announced that Novell and SCO will support Hewlett-Packard's efforts to develop a 64-bit Unix system to run on the next-generation processor being developed jointly by HP and Intel.
The announcements, made in a hastily organized press conference at the Unix Expo trade show, could prove to be an important, if partial, advancement of open systems alliances. Development of the Unix kernel will pass to a company whose main business, unlike Novell's, has always been Unix. Novell will return to its strength, developing networking software, with the aim of integrating NetWare and its services with Unix. And future development could produce a Unix version that scales across all sizes of systems, from the small business and departmental SCO market to high-end HP enterprise environments.
Initially, SCO will combine UnixWare with its Open Server Unix, and in 1997 will merge the two, at which time UnixWare will cease to exist. SCO will concentrate on expanding high-volume sales of Unix, hoping to use as leverage the support from integrating Novell services. Under the new arrangement, SCO now owns Unix, but apparently it will divide the royalty revenue with Novell.
Some 150 of the current 400 Unix engineers at Novell will move to SCO or HP, and SCO probably will open a development center in New Jersey, using some of the Unix engineers who came from AT&T to Novell two years ago. Eventually, SCO will license from HP its 64-bit architecture, and both operating systems will run on the forthcoming HP/Intel chip
"This is a leveraged R&D model made possible by a commitment to open systems,"said Alok Mohan, CEO of SCO. He and Wim Roelandts, senior vice president and general manager of HP's computer systems organization, agreed with Novell CEO Robert Frankenberg that the companies wanted to reduce the "huge overlapping investments in Unix" that sap resources and contribute to the perception of incompatibility among Unix systems.
The relationships also are intended to extend the mantle of open systems to NetWare/Unix connectivity. "We're not bolting NetWare onto Unix," Roelandts insists. "We're really talking about integrating it." The primary means of doing so will be for HP and SCO to license Novell's NetWare Directory Services (NDS).
UniForum applauded the announcements. "We endorse this further effort at collaboration in the Unix industry," said Richard Jaross, executive director. "It typifies the spirit of shared development that characterizes the open systems community. Competitors each focus on what they do best yet work together for the benefit of the industry and its customers."
The relationship seems likely to answer customer calls for more unified Unix systems that are optimized for particular platforms and price points yet share data and applications easily. This effort in effect furthers the mission of UniForum, Jaross said, which advocates choice and interoperability among computing solutions for users.
Of course, a shift of this magnitude raises new questions as it answers current needs. Three vendors joining together does not encompass all Unix systems. Integrating NDS with DCE may not be easy and could result in incompatibility with DCE versions from other companies. Frankenberg said, "We are in discussions with other DCE supporters" and named IBM as an example. Sun Microsystems, which bought out its Unix license from Novell last year, is unlikely to be among them.
In addition, it remains to be seen whether current UnixWare resellers will be as eager to sell SCO Open Server instead.
Finally, to integrate with System V.4, HP and SCO must migrate their current Unix versions from their V.3 bases. Doug Michels, SCO chief technology officer, strongly denied that the process will disrupt the partners' user bases, as happened when Sun moved from SunOS to Solaris.
Such an industry realignment generates much heat in terms of press coverage and vendor promises. It will be interesting to see if this one also casts meaningful light on open computing. UniForum expects to be able to update attendees of UniForum '96 in San Francisco on Feb. 12-16 about its progress.