Week in Review

Nerves have been jangling in the operating system world. Programmers and vendors gathered in California to hear the latest news of Project Monterey, the project to develop affordable and scalable 64-bit Unix on the Intel platform.

But there was concern that Monterey - which has a growing camp of backers including IBM and the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) - could now lose out to the increasingly popular Linux open source Unix operating system.

IBM last week joined the Trillian Project to develop a 64-bit version of Linux. But Doug Michels, SCO president and chief executive, tried to calm fears that the two operating systems could compete, or that IBM was moving closer to Linux.

'IBM has joined so many things over the years it's not funny,' he said.

'IBM is not looking at Trillian as an alternative to Monterey.'

Then something strange happened: Compaq, which has a foot in both the Monterey and rival Windows NT camps, laid off more than 100 people who were working porting Windows NT and Windows 2000 to its 64-bit Alpha platform.

Windows NT had hit Unix sales hard during the last three years, but recent signs suggest a backlash is underway. Analyst the GartnerGroup expects future Unix sales to increase rather than decrease (see page 12).

Compaq, which is juggling a plethora of server operating systems, clearly felt something had to give and 64-bit Windows NT and Windows 2000 was the weakest point.

Novell, manufacturer of the Netware operating system, had good reason to laugh this week. Like Unix, sales of Netware have taken a pummelling from Windows NT.

But company revenues have leapt 20% to $327 million (£202m) for the third fiscal quarter ended 31 July.

Driving these sales were versions of Netware which ship with the popular Novell Directory Services (NDS), used for management of network resources.

Sales of Netware 5.0, the latest version, rose by 34%, while older versions of the operating system that do not include NDS fell by 37%.

Marc Andreesen, chief technology officer of America Online (AOL), saw his personal profits soar. He plans to sell 940,680 common shares he holds in the Internet services giant, at a total value of $88m.

AOL says Andreesen's decision is not unusual and that company executives regularly sell shares. Andreesen's decision to sell won't drastically affect his portfolio or his ability to raise cash though future sales - he still retains one billion AOL shares.

Faring less well was Jordie Glore, Iomega president and chief executive. Glore resigned following increased losses at the Zip drive maker - $47.1m in the second quarter compared with $39.9m the previous year.

Glore cited personal reasons for his departure rather than the company's poor performance.

The oldest working computer was tracked down in the US. A 22-year-old MITS Altair 8800b was discovered by Dell Computers in the offices of Illinois attorney John Shepard, where the machine is still cranking out legal documents.

The Altair, which uses a 2MHz processor and 256bytes of memory, was bought in October 1976. Dell has awarded Shepard a Dell server and PCs worth $15,000 for his pains.

Don't expect some of today's technologies to be around 22 years from now, however. The future of the Lotus eSuite, a Java-based thin client software productivity suite, was open to question as Lotus was reportedly ready to can development. eSuite has seen meagre adoption since its launch, which one anonymous Lotus source blamed on the failure of the idea of the Network Computer.

Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems and IBM ceased development of the JavaOS for Business - the operating system had been due to ship on both companies' planned thin clients.

Away from the Java spotlight, both companies had a mixed week. Sun was in the process of buying German free office suite vendor StarDivision, and closed a deal to acquire application integration and development products vendor Forte for $540m.

IBM, meanwhile, was embroiled in a licensing controversy. Complaints were made about the small print in IBM's Software Subscription licensing programme, which covers upgrade, after one user was asked to pay £7,000 for upgraded AS/400 software. IBM said it was willing to discuss such cases with users.