Sequent Accelerates its "Project Monterey" Milestones: DYNIX/ptx, AIX and UnixWare Systems Align

SAN DIEGO, Ca.—January 26, 1999—Sequent Computer Systems, Inc., the leader in Intel-based data center solutions, today provided the first details of its UNIX operating system strategy since the announcement of Project Monterey. Sequent will align its DYNIX/ptx® operating system with SCO's UnixWare operating system. DYNIX/ptx will be re-branded UnixWare ptx Edition in the fourth quarter of 1999. In the same timeframe, both Sequent and SCO will enhance their 32-bit Intel Architecture (IA-32) environments with IBM's AIX UNIX interface APIs, providing a clear path to IA-64 Monterey UNIX. The announcement was made at the annual meeting of the Sequent Users' Resource Forum in San Diego.

Project Monterey is an initiative through which IBM and its co-developers will produce a single source, high-volume UNIX for IA-64 and promote a single, compatible IA-32 UNIX platform. Today's announcement is Sequent's first step toward that single path to IA-64. Project Monterey is supported by numerous OEMs and includes Intel and IBM sponsored software vendor development funds.

UnixWare ptx Edition will be the high-end offering of the UnixWare products and will be compatible with SCO's UnixWare 7 and later versions. It will be available to OEMs using Sequent systems and deliver a direct path for software vendors porting tools and applications for the volume Monterey UNIX-on-Intel. Those IA-32 tools and applications will run on the IA-64 Monterey platform and will require a simple recompilation to exploit the 64-bit capabilities of the IA-64 architecture.

Additionally, Sequent announced that Sequent and IBM are concurrently working on ports of key IBM software, including web applications, middleware and the DB2 Universal Database relational database, all of which are expected to be available in the second half of 1999.

"We have been pleased beyond our expectations with the momentum of Project Monterey. The partners share a clear understanding of the initiative's goals and together we possess much of the industry's UNIX-on-Intel expertise," said Casey Powell, chairman and CEO of Sequent. "Above all, we recognize the requirement for a high volume, high-end UNIX that software developers and customers can embrace today as the logical, Intel-based path to IA-64. Today's announcement further signals the consolidation of the major IA-32 UNIX environments around UnixWare, and demonstrates the commitment of all the Monterey companies in delivering the leading UNIX-on-Intel."

"Enterprise ISVs and customers will have the opportunity to run their volume UnixWare applications on one of the most robust, scalable platforms available in the industry today -- Sequent's NUMA-Q," said John Miner, vice president and general manager, Intel's Enterprise Server Group. "This UNIX OS alignment by Sequent ensures a clear path to Intel's future Merced processor-based systems."

"We are convinced that Project Monterey offers the clear alternative for UNIX customers on Intel both for the IA-32 and emerging IA-64 platforms. Sequent and SCO bring considerable technology and expertise to this effort and have enabled IBM to achieve the level of momentum with Project Monterey that we projected when we made the announcement in October," said Rajiv Sammant, general manager, UNIX brand at IBM.

"SCO and Sequent share a common, powerful vision of combining the power of UNIX with the value of Intel-based systems," said Doug Michels, president and CEO of SCO. "Today, we're raising the bar even further to bring the benefits of industry standards to high-end enterprise solutions. SCO is very excited about the alignment of DYNIX/ptx and UnixWare technology, and Sequent's move to the UnixWare ptx Edition."

UnixWare ptx Edition

Sequent is committed to adding UnixWare source and binary compatibility into the DYNIX/ptx operating system which will be branded as UnixWare ptx Edition. It expects to ship the first version in the fourth quarter of 1999. UnixWare ptx Edition will retain all of the high-end functionality of ptx including the significant upgrades planned for 1999, plus the planned API and ABI technology alignment. Sequent's leading multipathing, partitioning and clustering technologies, for example, will be part of UnixWare ptx Edition. This level of compatibility is possible because of the common kernel source code that DYNIX/ptx and UnixWare share in part as a result of joint development work between the two companies in 1993.

In addition to being optimized to run all DYNIX/ptx applications, UnixWare ptx Edition will provide an attractive target for software developers to port new tools and applications that will run on both the IA-32 and IA-64 Monterey platforms. Software developers who develop or port to UnixWare ptx Edition using the Monterey UDK will be able to recompile those applications for the Project Monterey IA-64 UNIX. The convergence of the DYNIX/ptx and UnixWare technologies offers developers a larger IA-32 UNIX-on-Intel market and gives Sequent customers a secure all Intel path to IA-64.

AIX Alignment

In a parallel program, development teams are working to align APIs between Monterey UNIX for the IA-64 and the IA-32 platforms. This will simplify the application development or porting process and provide a common look, feel and management interface for users of the IA-32 operating systems and AIX beginning in 1999.

IA-64 Application Compatibility Tools

Sequent's IA-64 and IA-32 application compatibility tools will provide customers the flexibility to deploy IA-64 bit applications or development environments while leveraging investments in Pentium® II Xeon™ processor- and future IA-32-based systems. Additionally, Sequent will offer significant forward compatibility for IA-32 applications currently running on its DYNIX/ptx UNIX. Sequent's IA-32 to IA-64 compatibility allows the customer to bypass big and little endian data incompatibility issues raised in many RISC to IA-64 migrations.

About Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.

Sequent Computer Systems (Nasdaq:SQNT), the leader in Intel-based solutions for the data center, is committed to the success of its end-user and system integrator customers. Sequent's platform architectures and services are optimized for the scalability, availability and manageability requirements of corporate and institutional data center environments leveraging industry-standard technologies and best-in-class partnerships.

Sequent supports more than 10,000 installations worldwide, including many of the world's largest and most sophisticated OLTP, DSS and RDBMS applications. For further information, phone Sequent at (503) 626-5700 or (800) 257-9044, or visit our Web site at www.sequent.com.