Jerry Gluck said:
I think you've missed your true calling. You should be doing industry analysis for a large, nice-to-work-for, computer periodical publisher...
Well, I'm not, so in the meantime, y'all have suffer with my opinions. :-)
The Santa Cruz Operation (SCOC) reorganized.
SCOC has been the most likely of the *N?X players to take a dive because of Linux, since they compete directly on x86 hardware. The next most likely was BSDI, but they remedied that by merging with Walnut Grove and supporting FreeBSD. SGI has a weak company, so they'll probably be the next to fall, though they have been making significant internal changes to deal with the threat, including the release of products typically layered on IRIX.
SCOC is now attempting that strategy, but I think it'll be too late. Since they are the remaining partner with IBM in the Monterey project, I would expect an IBM purchase in the not so far future. Purchase of SCOC makes sense in terms of an _IBM_ UNIX option on IA-64. Meanwhile, they're beating SUNW in the midrange with AIX and keeping their options open with Linux. Also, SCOC doesn't have product that can compete except Tarantella, and that is against Citrix and Microsoft.
Now here I go making market predictions again.
Operating systems are becoming a commodity item. This is leading to consolidation, driven primarily by GNU/Linux and open source software. The next few years will see the UNIX server and workstation manufacturers crumble unless they can successfully integrate open source into their business model. The remaining players will be IBM, HP, and Compaq/DEC, because they are diversified companies, and Sun, because of their installed base. Microsoft's sales will be affected, but their prospects remain healthy because of their dominance of the desktop market. Overall server market expansion will tend towards UNIX-like operating systems, dominated by open source software such as Linux and FreeBSD. Overall workstation market expansion will tend towards Intel architecture systems, because of costs, dominated by open source software and Microsoft.
The primary threat to IBM, HP, CPQ, and SUNW from open source software would be if something along the lines of the clustering and high availability solutions were available.Beowulf is close, but not yet the cigar.
/cwc