Microsoft teams up with Unisys on NT

Another concerted - and co-ordinated - attempt to move Windows NT forward as a "enterprise-class" operating system was made yesterday as computing giants Unisys and Microsoft held a joint press conference in London to explain their strategic alliance. While NT has begun to make a dent in the Unix-dominated American enterprise market, European business has been more reluctant to embrace NT. A partnership with a senior player in the large enterprise market, such as Unisys, adds credibility to NT.

Unisys is well-known as a builder of the mainframe computers and servers which power big organisations, and the formerly ailing firm clearly hopes to build on its recent corporate turnaround by betting on NT's future success.

"There's a significant commitment from the top to the bottom of the company to make this happen," said Mr Mahendra Vora, Unisys vice-president and general manager for Enterprise Business Software. NT, which holds 20 per cent of the market today, is expected to become second only to Unix by 2001, according to senior analyst, Mr Jay Bretzman, of Boston analysts, International Data Corporation, who also spoke at the conference. Microsoft has increasingly looked towards partnerships which address NT's current areas of weakness. "We're eager to work with partners who bring their expertise to our solutions for our customers," stated Mr Michel Lacombe, president of Microsoft Europe. He said of the partnership: "This demonstrates Microsoft's increased investment and commitment to enterprise customers," adding that the partnership would initially target the financial sectors.

According to Mr Lacombe, the collaboration between the two companies means that 40 per cent of Unisys's service and support staff and all of its sales force will be trained and certified by Microsoft on Windows NT.

Unisys will establish five application development centres dedicated to Microsoft solutions - one exists already at Unisys's Pennsylvania headquarters, with a second opening in early 1998 in Britain. Finally, Unisys will develop solutions and services based on a Microsoft software suite.

Windows NT currently has its strongest foothold among departmental servers and on the desktop. Mr Vora indicated that the two companies hope to push NT on to enterprise servers and finally position it as an operating system for data centres.

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