The Santa Cruz Operation will offer software that allows its UnixWare operating system to be used in clustered computing environments, thanks to an agreement announced today with Compaq, Compaq officials said.
The six-server clustering capability is derived from a technology called NonStop Clusters, which was developed by Compaq's Tandem division in conjunction with SCO and Compaq.
The announcement is an important one for SCO, which is trying to position its Intel-based Unix platform as a viable alternative to the proprietary RISC-based (reduced instruction set computing-based) Unix systems from companies like Hewlett-Packard and Sun, which dominate the enterprise-level computing market.
Today's agreement allows SCO to sublicense the UnixWare clustering software for use by other hardware makers besides Compaq, said Mary McDowell, vice president and general manager of Compaq's industry standard server division. In return, Compaq will receive a portion of the licensing fee.
UnixWare NonStop Clusters, as the technology is called, allows customers to link together up to six servers of the same make, but which have different configurations and performance levels, officials said.
Clustering reduces network downtime because applications are automatically migrated to another server, or "node," when a server failure occurs. Clustering also significantly enhances the performance of a network, McDowell said.
UnixWare NonStop Clusters will begin shipping to server manufacturers in about two weeks. Compaq will release systems supporting the clustering technology through its distributors worldwide at about the same time, McDowell said.
Tandem first introduced the six-way Unix clustering technology in January of this year on Compaq ProLiant systems, but the company sold the software almost exclusively into telecommunications markets, SCO spokesman Brian Ziel said.
Today's agreement means UnixWare 7 will find its way into other large computing environments where high-availability is important, such as enterprise resource planning application servers; the Web and e-mail servers used by Internet service providers; and database and decision support servers.
Compaq and SCO will roll out this quarter in North America and Europe a program to certify SCO and Compaq resellers and distributors to sell the clustered UnixWare solution on Compaq servers. The program will be extended to other parts of the world in the future, the companies said.
RELATED LINKS
SCO chief looks to UnixWare 7 for growth
Network World Fusion, 8/17/98.
Four server vendors to support UnixWare
in data centers
Network World Fusion, 2/25/98.
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