IP: Unisys and M$ attack Unix servers as "inflexible"

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ari Ollikainen <Ari () OLTECO com>
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 11:37:55 -0800
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Unisys and M$ attack Unix servers as "inflexible"

    $25+Million on FUD attack on Unix as a server OS.

Unisys, Microsoft to launch anti-Unix ads
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 28, 2002, 12:35 PM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-870805.html

Unisys and Microsoft plan to launch a marketing campaign Friday that
seeks to undermine Unix, the operating system at the heart of
powerful server lines from rivals Sun Microsystems, IBM and
Hewlett-Packard.

Unisys is spending $25 million on the campaign, spokeswoman Pasha Ray
said. Microsoft is adding funding of its own but declined to say how
much.

The 18-month project will include advertisements, technical sales
efforts and other marketing work plugging Unisys' high-end server and
Microsoft's top-end version of Windows--two products that so far have
made only their first steps into the data centers where high-end
servers often reside.

The campaign, called "We have the way out," describes Unix as an
expensive trap. "No wonder Unix makes you feel boxed in. It ties you
to an inflexible system. It requires you to pay for expensive
experts. It makes you struggle daily with a server environment that's
more complex than ever," one ad reads.

The same ad depicts a scene in which a computer user has painted
himself into a corner with purple paint. Sun's servers are
manufactured in a shade of purple similar to that in the ad.

Sun responded to the campaign in a statement. "Sun still does not see
Microsoft as a real threat in the datacenter market where
reliability, availability, serviceability and security are key," the
company said. "As for Unix being 'inflexible,' 'expensive,' and
'complex,' we feel those are terms much better suited to the closed
and proprietary world of Windows."

Two technologies are at the center of the campaign. The Unisys ES7000
server can accommodate as many as 32 Intel processors and can be
divided into independent "partitions," each with its own operating
system. The Datacenter version of Windows 2000 can run on machines
with as many as 32 processors. These top-end configurations are rare,
Unisys has said, with eight-, 12-, or 16-processor partitions more
common.

Unisys faces competition not only from Unix servers, which have
accommodated dozens of processors for years, but also from IBM's new
Summit servers, which top out at 16 processors but cost considerably
less than the ES7000.

Another obstacle for Unisys: Only a few hundred ES7000 servers have
been sold so far, and sales partnerships with Dell, Compaq and
Hewlett-Packard have all fallen apart.
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Dilbert's words of wisdom #18: Never argue with an idiot. They drag
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        OLTECO                    Ari Ollikainen
        P.O. BOX 20088            Networking Architecture and Technology
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