Unisys Announces Plans For Unix Systems Development With AT&T

Licenses Sun SPARC Technology For Future UNIX Systems Products

BLUE BELL, Pa., March 9, 1988 -- PRNewswire -- Unisys Corp. (NYSE: UIS) announced today that it is working with AT&T (NYSE: T) to assist in significantly enhancing the commercial functionality of the open Applications Operating Environment for UNIX (R) System V.

Unisys also announced it has signed a technology agreement with Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), to license Sun's SPARC (TM) (Scalable Processor Architecture) microprocessor design, a RISC-based architecture, as the basis for future high performance UNIX system computers. The future SPARC systems will operate AT&T's UNIX System V and will complement the Unisys broad range of products based on UNIX System V.

"Today's announcements reflect a strategic commitment to open systems and the UNIX operating system in particular," said W. Michael Blumenthal, Unisys chairman and chief executive officer. "The UNIX operating system clearly has been established as the key industry standard for the 1990's. Our business based on UNIX System V, with revenue currently over $500 million annually, already has considerable momentum and extremely bright prospects for the future. We are pleased to be working with AT&T to help bring UNIX System V to its full potential as a truly open system in the rapidly changing information system industry. And, we believe Sun's SPARC technology, which is licensed and multi-sourced, will help expand the UNIX System market in the 1990s."

Commenting on the Unisys announcement, James Olson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T, said, "AT&T is committed to enhancing the Applications Operating Environment for UNIX System V and we look forward to working with Unisys on these efforts."

Scott McNealy, president of Sun, said, "The Unisys agreement validates the importance and potential of our SPARC architecture and customers' demand for a single, unified UNIX system standard. Unisys will be a great asset in expanding the UNIX system into the broad commercial marketplace through their expertise in areas such as multi-processing."

As an extension of its commitment to open systems, Sun has licensed its SPARC technologies to three semiconductor manufacturers that will produce SPARC chips for sale on the open market: Fujitsu Microelectronics, Cypress Semiconductor and Bipolar Integrated Technology. Sun offers the Sun-4 (TM) family of UNIX system-based workstations and servers, based on Fujitsu implementations of SPARC, and has shipped more than 1,000 of these systems to date.

Vittorio Cassoni, president of AT&T's Data Systems Group, said, "We are pleased that Unisys has decided to adopt the UNIX System V and SPARC platform -- an open computing platform that will provide users freedom of choice and the ability to take advantage of new technologies.

"We're also pleased that Unisys is willing to be a working partner in furthering the commercialization of the UNIX operating system. We think that they bring some unique capabilities that will further expand the market for UNIX System V. Cooperation like this will benefit the entire industry," Cassoni added.

Unisys said its new products based on UNIX System V will conform to the Application Binary Interfaces (ABIs) being defined by AT&T for SPARC and other microprocessor architectures. Each ABI will allow users to run UNIX System V applications as interchangeably on an architecture as personal computers run PC software today.

Unisys also said a key objective of its cooperation with AT&T was to accelerate development of the UNIX system as a commercially oriented applications environment. As an industry pioneer, Unisys has broad experience as a vendor of commercial computer systems from desktop computers to advanced mainframes. Potential areas for joint development include enhancements involving development tools and high volume transaction processing.

"Unisys brings to its cooperation with AT&T a corporate commitment to UNIX System V at the highest level, a commitment to it as an open industry standard, and a commitment to invest in its further rapid development," said Jan Lindelow, Unisys senior vice president in charge of corporate marketing and services. "We will unite our Unisys products based on UNIX System V and our established system families with industry standard networking technology and common software environments based on Unisys fourth generation language technologies. The UNIX operating system is important to us in giving users maximum access to all industry technologies and expanding their choice in the marketplace."

Lindelow also said Unisys intended to market value-added software for System V products on other vendors' equipment.

Since entering the UNIX System marketplace in 1985, Unisys has grown rapidly with the industry's broadest product offering from PCs to mainframes. UNIX revenues tripled in 1987 and Unisys projects very strong growth in 1988.

Unisys Corp. is a $10 billion manufacturer of commercial information systems, defense systems and related services. It has more than 90,000 employees and 60,000 customers in more than 100 countries.

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UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T. SPARC and Sun-4 are trademarks of Sun Microsystems Inc.

/CONTACT: Wayne Adams of Unisys, 215-542-4673, or Barry Campbell of AT&T, 201-221-2888, or Carol Broadbent of Sun Microsystems Inc., 415-691-7737/