Data General Corp used last week’s Hannover Fair as the launchpad for its new 12- and 16-processor 88100-based AViiON AV9500 servers (CI No 2,377), and also announced that it now has the means to cluster up to four of them together using Oracle Corp’s Parallel Server. The systems also run the Tuxedo transaction processing monitor […]
Data General Corp used last week’s Hannover Fair as the launchpad for its new 12- and 16-processor 88100-based AViiON AV9500 servers (CI No 2,377), and also announced that it now has the means to cluster up to four of them together using Oracle Corp’s Parallel Server. The systems also run the Tuxedo transaction processing monitor and can perform batch and on-line processing simultaneously. They start at $400,000. The company also added new entry-level AV4500 servers starting at $9,490 as well as AV450s priced from $11,995 and AV550 workstations coming in at $15,000. It unveiled new CLARiiON storage systems supporting Microsoft Corp Windows NT-based servers, which range in price from $26,200 to $73,690, and also introduced new 60MHz Pentium-based personal computers. These run Windows NT and Windows, Novell Inc NetWare, Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix and Interactive Unix.
Installed base of 25,000 AViiONs
A 16Mb model starts at $8,300. And Data General also announced it had signed 17 new or enhanced agreements with such software vendors as Baan International Inc, Computer Associates International Inc, and Datatel Inc. And in the US, the Westborough, Massachusetts company has signed the Avnet Computer division of Avnet Inc’s Computer Marketing Group to resell the General’s AViiON servers and CLARiiON storage systems to large businesses that are making the transition from proprietary to open systems computing environments. Data General already has an agreement with the Hall-Mark Computer Products division of the Avnet Computer Marketing Group: Hall-Mark Computer distributes the AViiON and CLARiiON lines to resellers. The company also took time to give updated information on its position in the market, saying that it now has an installed base of 25,000 AViiON systems and product and service revenues for the Unix line reached some $500m in fiscal 1993. The company noted that the Unix side had been growing at about 40% compounded annually over the past five years, and that while it is relatively easy to grow at dramatic rates in the early years when you start from ground zero as Data General did, the company is still forecasting that it will grow at double the overall Unix market growth rate of 11% to 12% a year over the next two or three years. The open systems business, in which Data General includes the CLARiiON storage arrays as well as the AViiON servers, accounted for about 75% of total revenue last year, up from just 5% of the total in 1989. Unix markets are very difficult to define, and anyone can be number one on the basis of market sector definitions of the total number of machines sold in Skegness on wet Fridays in August kind, but in October, International Data Corp gave Data General 5% of the world server market, 12% of the mid-range server market, but the company reckons that it has made further progress in terms of market share since then.
