IBM snubs AIX for UnixWare

IBM will ditch its preferential attitude to its AIX Unix OS tomorrow when it formally endorses UnixWare from the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO). The move is expected to almost guarantee UnixWare as the standard flavour of Unix running on Intel-based servers.

IBM's decision follows a number of leading vendors to support UnixWare as standard, including Compaq, Intel, Siemens-Nixdorf and Olivetti. Like its rivals, IBM will focus its development on UnixWare but will continue to offer AIX for customers who demand it.

Next month, SCO will unveil Gemini, the code name for its next UnixWare version, which will expand the operating system's symmetric multiprocessing capabilities to support servers with as many as 16 processors. It will also add multi-node clustering and add 64-bit addressing for memory and hard disks.