“Merced silicon had barely left the fabrication plants before
the rumour-mill started up. Currently the lines are being drawn
between a 64-bit version of Linux and a Windows beta for
IA-64. HP-UX and Monterey, both Unix flavours, are next on the
list.”
“Then, there will be the inevitable betas and delays. It is
Microsoft who are the most disadvantaged here, as Monterey, HP-UX
and Linux development for IA-64 is already underway but
Microsoft will not be able to fully commit resources until
after the release of Windows 2000.”
“There are several factors that will decide the success of the
operating systems in the IA-64 space. The first is time to market:
any delays will severely dampen the market’s interest. The second
is application availability, which is less and less of an issue
even for Linux. The third is down to marketing and acceptability.
Here Microsoft is very strong but Linux is carving its own
credibility. HP-UX is likely to have support, not least from the
Hewlett Packard user community, but it is unlikely to be ‘the one’.
The riskiest player has to be Monterey, which despite strong
backing from the vendor community, may well end up as the Unix
also-ran.”