Microsoft is coming after Unix, says this writer, with Win2k and
the Itanium. He says IBM's AIX5L, a Unix with Linux affinities, is
properly positioned for the next step, with enough of a Linux feel
to bring up a new generation of developers who'd otherwise avoid
Unix:
"It used to be that the only game in town for serious computing
below the mainframe level involved one variety of Unix or another.
Various factors entered into companies' decisions as to which Unix
to use. Hewlett-Packard and Sun both have die-hard followers, but
IBM's advantage has always been its large installed base of
mainframe customers, for whom Unix boxes are strictly midrange
systems.
Frankly, all flavors of Unix are about the same when it comes to
management tools. It hardly matters whether the user interface is
presented as a command line, a set of character-based menus, or
even a point-and-click X Window application -- the end result is
something less than intuitive.
Unix vendors had better wake up fast because an 800-pound
gorilla is breathing down their necks, and he's wearing a Microsoft
giveaway shirt. With the advent of Windows Datacenter Server and
Intel's long-awaited Itanium processors, Microsoft is finally ready
to enter the big-stakes world of 64-bit computing, and it's
bringing a lot of momentum to the table."
