Linc's repository about to open up: Unisys plan underway to attract support fo its generator tool - one of six articles outlining the CASE strategy of major hardware vendors

Software Magazine, March 15, 1990 by Mike Bucken

LINC's REPOSITORY ABOUT TO OPEN UP

Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, Pa., sees a huge advantage for itself in the computer-aided software engineering market--the firm is not looking to make bundles of money selling Case tools.

Rather, Unisys wants to exploit the cost-effectiveness of the tools to sell its hardware, where the firm sees the big money being made.

The Unisys strategy calls for selling or jointly marketing all kinds of Case tools that are expected to stimulate sales of hardware throughout its mainframe, minicomputer and personal computer families.

"As a supplier of hardware and solutions, we don't see us making a stack of money in the market for Case tools," said Hugo Simpson, vice president for information and productivity systems at Unisys, and the overseer of the Unisys Case strategy.

"In fact, over the long run, I think there will be a lot of disappointed vendors of Case tools," he said. "Even if the market does reach $3 billion or $4 billion, if you divide that among all the players, it doesn't seem so big."

COMPLETE MIS SOLUTION

Therefore, Simpson said, Unisys markets its Case tools as part of a full commercial MIS solution, which will include very high-margin, high-end computer systems along with bundled Case software. That strategy gives a hardware vendor a pricing advantage because the low-margin tools will be offset by the high-margin computers, Simpson reasoned.

Unisys will begin a formal solicitation of third-party Case vendors this spring when the company introduces the internally developed Linc Case Interface (LCI). Unisys promises that the LCI will link the repository in its Linc II systems generator software to the tools of independent vendors.

The company last fall disclosed plans to develop the link, but by mid-February had not announced any agreements.

In addition, Unisys is marketing the Linc II system generator software and Mapper software, described as a Case environment for the end user, to its installed base of 6,000 mainframes, Simpson said.

Unisys claims an installed base of 6,000 Linc and Mapper packages with an estimated one million users.

The two companies that were joined to form Unisys--Sperry Corp. and Burroughs Corp.--were both players in the market for back-end Case prior to the merger. Burroughs had been marketing the Linc tool while Sperry sold the Mapper and Ally software packages. Both packages now run on the full line of Unisys mainframes, including the A Series, spawned at Burroughs, and the 1100 and 2200 families, developed at Sperry.

Peter Stephinson, Unisys program marketing manager for information and productivity systems, described Linc as a systems generator that incorporates an object-oriented design method that the company calls the Linc Systems Approach. That package targets Unisys mainframe computers. Over the long term, Unisys plans to open the architecture to the computer systems of other major vendors, such as IBM and Digital.

Mapper is described by Unisys as an easy-to-use departmental system generator. Simpson compares it to an Executive Information System (EIS) or a Decision Support System (DSS).

NEW FEATURES

The company bolstered the ease-of-use features in Mapper Release 4RI, which was unveiled last fall.

That latest release added: a Mapper relational interface for accessing the DB2 and Oracle relational database management systems from IBM and Oracle Corp., Belmont, Calif., respectively; enhancements to the end-user presentation layer, online documentation and graphics capabilities; and new interfaces to third-generation languages and to PC applications.

Simpson describes Ally as "a 4GL in the true sense of 4GLs. And it is totally open, it will work with any Unix and with any database, like Oracle and Informix, [Menlo Park, Calif.]."

Sperry acquired Ally from Encore Computer Corp., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., prior to the 1986 Sperry-Burroughs merger. Encore had acquired the package's developer, the former Foundation Software, in 1984.

Unisys has promised to port all three of its strategic Case packages to Unix, though it has not yet disclosed a schedule for introduction of the ports.

In a statement, Peter Bakalor, vice president of strategy and analysis, said the firm will focus future development of the Case packages on both the Unisys operating systems and on "industry standard operating systems--Unix, MS-DOS and OS/2. We are in the process of opening up our environment to the Unix market at large. This means that users may select a Unix platform from any major hardware vendor and run the Unisys productivity software environment virtually unchanged on any of them."

When the Sperry-Burroughs merger was completed, Michael Blumenthal, chairman and chief executive of Unisys since the marriage, created the new information and productivity systems operation. The operation was designed to take advantage of opportunities by joining the marketing of Linc, Mapper and Ally.

Each of those three mainstay products, along with a newer front-end tool called the Linc Design Assistant (LDA), has been or will soon be ported to, or linked to, all of the Unisys operating systems.