Hi Bob,
I'm not sure what software you are referring to. MSFT did pay Tandem big bucks for expertese in porting software to do with fault tolerance and clustering. These are things Tandem understands and has lived with for 20 years (since its foundation in fact).
I may be wrong but I dont think we (I work for Tandem) were paid for porting the Tandem database software, I think that was our own initiative. Possibly a search on the Tandem web site through the press releases would give an answer.
"Could someone else leverage the Tandem assets. IBM maybe?" Your question.
Well, IBM didnt do a great job of leveraging its own, similar assets in the early 90's either! ( A great many of those Tandem systems connect(ed) into IBM mainframes). The thing to realise is that the reason that Tandem had (and has) that position is not just the systems, but also the experience of its people, in fault tolerance and expandability. How would IBM be able to take advantage of that? The couldn't do it in the70's and early 80's when they ruled the computing roost.
What Tandem is planning to do now, is move that expertese into NT systems, where (so the plan goes) there will be a greatly increased base of customers compared to Tandems previous high end (but somehwat of a niche) customers. Plus, Tandem plans to make money through royalties on software and hardware, which it couldnt do with its previous, proprietary systems.
Your final q, about MSFT Transaction Server vs NonStop.
NT is a BIG market. From single user servers to systems supporting 10,000's users. At the low end, customers will use MSFT, at the high end Tandem (thats our plan, and our area of expertese). Lets be really pessimistic and say MSFT gets 90% of even the high end. Well, 10% of something we wouldnt have otherwise, and what may turn out to be 10% of the computing market, minus PCs, would be nice to have, wouldnt it?
Here's to NT really taking off!
Regards
Joe C |
