SCO announces Internet products; BTG, DLT, GBC/Globelle to resell wares

The Santa Cruz Operation Inc., a leading Unix vendor in the federal market, will announce today the first two offerings in its planned line of Internet products.

In both offerings, SCO has integrated best-selling Internet packages from Netscape Communications Corp., Morning Star and others with its Unix operating system.

"We've created a family of products that make it easy to get into the Internet," said Jeff Ait, vice president of Internet products at SCO. "We're bringing industry-leading Internet technology and bolting it together with SCO's robust, reliable Unix operating system."

The SCO Internet family includes the communications, commerce and proxy servers from Netscape as well as a security package that features Data Encryption Standard-level encryption and dynamic packet filtering. This product family includes tools from Micro Computer Systems for connecting SCO's Internet services to Novell NetWare networks. The point-to-point protocol (PPP) from Morning Star is also available. Additionally, SCO will sell Netscape Navigator packs for 10, 25 and 100 users. Designed for SCO users, this family of products can be layered on top of SCO OpenServer.

The SCO Internet Fast Start Bundle is for users who need to get a World Wide Web server up and running quickly. It features SCO's OpenServer Release 5.02, Morning Star's PPP package, Netscape's communications server and navigator packages and SCO-developed configuration tools. With a retail cost of $995, the Internet Fast Start Bundle is priced at almost half the cost of the individual components.

Ait said what differentiates the SCO offerings is the tight integration of the parts and availability from a single source. "We've taken the best-of-breed technologies and done the systems integration and testing," he said.

The new products will be available in June on the General Services Administration schedule through BTG Inc., DLT Solutions and GBC/Globelle authorized agents, said Mike Buchko, general manager of SCO's government systems group.

Buchko estimated that GSA schedule pricing would be about 30 to 35 percent less than retail pricing.

Buchko said SCO has also pitched the products for addition to BTG's Integration for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence contract and PRC Inc.'s Supermini program.

"I'm seeing a huge interest in the civilian agencies that don't have much of an intranet infrastructure," Buchko said. "These agencies have [Novell] NetWare networks and Banyan VINES networks that they want to connect together. Intranet servers can be the glue."