Dell drops Unisys in the mire

'Fickle Dell!' - or at least we think that's what Unisys was saying...

Dell has reneged on its deal to sell Unisys' high-end Intel servers leaving the company high and dry just as it is launching an upgrade to its flagship product. Dell has reportedly changed its mind on a December 2000 deal which it initially said would extend its portfolio right up to the top end of the market. Unisys' ES7000 server family is based on its cellular multiprocessing architecture (CMP) which it had tried to spread as an industry standard for high-end Intel-based machines. However, Dell is now the third major vendor to pull out of a deal to sell the systems, according to a US report. Compaq and HP have already made similar decisions. Undeterred, Unisys today launched the latest version of its CMP server based on Intel's Xeon processor and promising a 20 per cent increase in performance.