Re: supporting second tier OSes

Ian Dunkin (imd1707@ggr.co.uk)
Thu, 7 Sep 1995 16:54:26 +0100 (BST)

- On Wed, 6 Sep 1995, Steve Smaha wrote:

> 5.  Here's a little quiz.  Your company depends on sales of Unix
> security software, rather like Haystack Labs.  Your company currently
> supports IBM AIX and Sun (SunOS and Solaris and Trusted Solaris)
> platforms, and you want to do some additional ports with your 
> limited development and support resources.  Your customers and
> prospects have identified the following new platforms as the main ones
> for which they will pay money: {HP 9.X, NT, Novell 4.X}.  You have 2 
> inquiries for SGI in your database of 1450 entries.
> 
> Questions:  Which would you do first?  Which would you do second?  
> Would you do SGI?

Accepted that SGI don't have the market share of SUN and HP.  However,
it does have a growing niche particularly in research sites, which are
anyway likely to be heterogeneous: it'll be there.  

If the offerings of someone selling (say) IDS software cover SUN and HP,
but will not cover these niche architectures, then any company seeking a
total solution will simply look elsewhere.  We have certainly taken this
line on other `enterprise wide' security offerings, which would not
(`yet'), run on SGI (etc) boxes.  You won't even hear from these
potential customers. 

    I.

-- 
Ian Dunkin <imd1707@ggr.co.uk>
--