Santa Cruz Operation
Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) was a software company based in Santa Cruz, California which was best known for selling three Unix variants for Intel x86 processors: Xenix, SCO UNIX (later known as SCO OpenServer), and UnixWare.
In 1993, SCO acquired two smaller companies and developed the product line that was named Tarantella. In 2001, SCO sold its rights to Unix and the related divisions to Caldera Systems. After that the corporation retained only its Tarantella product line, and changed its name to Tarantella, Inc.
Caldera subsequently changed its name to The SCO Group (NASDAQ: SCOX; now delisted: SCOXQ.PK), which has created some confusion between the two companies. The company described here is the original Santa Cruz Operation (NASDAQ: SCO). Although generally referred to simply as "SCO" up to 2001, it is now sometimes referred to as "old SCO" or "Santa Cruz" to distinguish it from "The SCO Group" (SCOX, SCOXQ.PK)).
The Santa Cruz Operation and UNIX
SCO was founded in 1978 by Doug Michels and his father Larry Michels as a UNIX porting and consulting company.
In 1983 SCO bought rights from Microsoft to be able to ship Xenix for the Intel processor, its first packaged UNIX System. Xenix was derived from previous branches of the Unix family tree. In 1987, SCO ported Xenix to the Intel 80386 processor. The same year Microsoft transferred ownership of Xenix to SCO in an agreement that left Microsoft owning 25% of SCO.
In 1986, SCO acquired the Software Products Group division of UK consultancy firm Logica to form their European headquarters. This was initially headed by Gary Daniels along with Steve Brophy, Bill Bateson, Geraint Davies and Peter Kettle running their European development operations. The European arm of SCO went on to grow rapidly becoming worth about 40% of SCO's worldwide revenues.
In 1989, SCO started producing SCO UNIX, which was derived from a more recent branch from the Unix family tree, System V Release 3.2. The initial version of SCO UNIX, Release 3.2.0, did not include TCP/IP networking or X Window System graphics. Shortly after the release of this bare OS, SCO shipped an integrated product under the name of SCO Open Desktop, or ODT.
Collectively, Xenix and SCO UNIX became the most installed flavor of UNIX due to the popularity of the x86 architecture.
The company went public in 1993 on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. 1994 saw the release of SCO MPX, an add-on SMP package for SCO UNIX.
In 1995, SCO acquired the AT&T UNIX source code from Novell and eventually became the licensor for UNIX, allowing it to complete the porting of System V Release 4 features into SCO UNIX.
SCO also acquired the UnixWare operating system from Novell, at which time it renamed SCO UNIX as SCO OpenServer. They were eventually able to re-use some code from that version of UnixWare in later releases of OpenServer. SCO released several versions of UnixWare, notably version 7.x starting in 1997, which featured a "merge" of UnixWare 2 and OpenServer 5.
From 1997-1999, SCO was also involved in 86open.
By the end of the 1990s, there were around 15,000 value-added resellers (VARs) around the world who provided solutions for customers of SCO's Unix systems.
SCO announced on August 2, 2000 that it would sell its Server Software and Services Divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, to Caldera Systems, Inc. The purchase was completed in May 2001. At that time Caldera changed its name to "Caldera International", and the remaining part of SCO, the Tarantella Division, changed its name to "Tarantella, Inc."
In August 2002 Caldera International renamed itself "The SCO Group" since the SCO UNIX products were still a strong source of revenue mainly due to the huge installation base dating back to the 1990s. That entity also soon started the SCO-Linux controversies.
On September 14, 2007, it was announced that The SCO Group had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Alliances
SCO was a primary partner in several industry alliances, intended to promote SCO operating system technology as a de facto standard for emerging hardware platforms. The most notable of these were:
- ACE - Founded by Compaq, Microsoft, MIPS Computer Systems, Digital Equipment Corporation, and SCO in 1991 to drive the next generation of PCs
- 3DA - Formed by SCO and Hewlett Packard in 1995 to define the standard UNIX for IA-64 systems
- Project Monterey - Formed by SCO, IBM, Sequent and Intel in 1998 to define the standard UNIX for IA-64 systems
None of these alliances was ultimately successful.
SCO was also part of 1993's COSE initiative, a more successful and broadly supported initiative to create an open and unified UNIX standard.
Client Integration Division / Tarantella Division
In 1993 SCO acquired IXI Limited, a software company in Cambridge, UK, best known for its X.desktop product. In 1994 it then bought Visionware, of Leeds, UK, developers of XVision. In 1995 the development teams from IXI and Visionware were combined to form IXI Visionware. This later became the Client Integration Division of SCO.
The Client Integration Division was relatively independent of the rest of SCO. Specialising in software to integrate Microsoft Windows and UNIX systems, it retained its own web site for some time and ported its software to all major UNIX platforms including those of SCO's competitors. There was occasionally friction between CID and the rest of SCO: broadly, CID saw SCO as being slow-moving and bureaucratic; SCO saw CID as being arrogant and deliberately uncooperative.
In April 2000 SCO reorganised into three divisions: the Server Software Division, the Professional Services Division and the Tarantella Division.
In 2001, having sold the UNIX business, the company renamed itself after its remaining product line, Tarantella, Inc..
See also
- Tarantella, Inc. for the continuance of the SCO corporation after 2001
References
- "SCO Announces Official Closing of Sale of two Divisions to Caldera" (Press release). The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. May 7, 2001. Retrieved 2007-01-23.
External links
- www.ocston.com, the alumni directory for the former Santa Cruz Operation