Lotus to port desk suite to HP PA-RISC

Electronic News, August 17, 1992 by Craig Stedman

CHELMSFORD, MASS.--Lotus Development agreed to port its full suite of desktop applications software to Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC architecture, a move that HP hopes will make its workstations more competitive with high-end PCs in commercial markets. HP, which is putting increasing emphasis on the commercial sector in light of claimed sales gains there this year (EN, May 18), also is counting on the Lotus packages to give it an advantage over Sun Microsystems and other workstation rivals in targeting business accounts.

The PA-RISC machines would be the first Unix systems to get support for all of Lotus' major applications. David Rome, general manager of Lotus' Unix business unit, said the deal with HP "goes well beyond" an existing one under which the 1-2-3 spreadsheet runs on Sun workstations.

However, Mr. Rome added that Lotus' strategy "obviously in time" is to support other hardware platforms beyond PA-RISC. He declined to comment on when additional Unix ports might become available, saying his development plans "aren't firm enough yet to be sure."

Mike Gallup, worldwide marketing manager for HP's workstation operation based here, also wouldn't say how long a lead time he expects to get through the new deal, which covers Lotus' Notes work group software plus its E-mail, word processing and business graphics programs.

Mr. Rome did note that Lotus is already doing a Sun port for the mail software, but wouldn't say when that would ship relative to the PA-RISC version. The release schedule for HP's machines was also left rather undefined, with the companies saying only that all four packages should be available within the next year.

Lotus is doing the ports itself, with some assistance from HP, and will handle all sales of the PA-RISC software. While HP thus won't derive any direct revenue from the packages, Mr. Gallup is looking for the deal to make it easier to place workstations with commercial customers.

The share of HP's workstation sales coming from business markets has increased to between 15 and 20 percent this year and is expected to almost match its traditional technical channels by 1995, he said. "I think in two to three years we're going to see it not in the majority, but certainly well over 40 or 45 percent."

The Lotus software will also run on HP's Unix business servers and its X Window terminals, although Mr. Gallup indicated that the deal is oriented mainly toward the HP 9000 Series 700 workstation line. Like Sun's hardware, the HP machines already support 1-2-3 and Lotus Realtime, a package that allows 1-2-3 to be used for real-time analysis.

The deal furthers a growing relationship between HP and Lotus, which also collaborated on development of HP's 95LX palmtop computer. Mr. Rome said, meanwhile, that Lotus committed as part of the agreement to develop future Unix releases "fairly concurrently" with its Windows versions.