NeXT's plan to infiltrate corporations with software seems to be working, as current NeXT-STEP purchasers stay the course and new customers sign on.
McCaw Cellular is seeking PC video solutions for customer-service apps developed in-house on NeXTs that don't currently fit on PC screens, said spokes-man Ingvar Petursson. The firm, he said, was "very confident about NeXTSTEP '486."
NeXTSTEP's future at AIG Trading Corporation is less certain. The trading arm of AIG Insurance moved to an interim OS/2 solution when NeXT stopped making the NeXTstations for which AIG had specifically built its new trading floor, according to John Hack, manager of systems development. "We still have a very good relationship with NeXT and like what we see on 66MHz machines."
According to sources, NeXT's decision to drop its hardware also threatened a sale to the Alberta Solicitor General's Motor Vehicle Division. But negotiations between the division, system-integrator DKW Systems Corporation, San DiegoÐbased Metrosoft, and NEC were on-going.
Other clients had no hardware qualms. Calgary, Alberta-based PanCanadian Petroleum, Canada's third-largest oil and gas company, purchased an unspecified number of NeXT-STEP-for-Intel seats, but a company spokesman said the firm "is committed to probably 60 percent to 70 of the [1330 company] desktops to go NeXT-STEP in three to five years."
Sources also reported imminent sales to United Parcel Service and Abbot Laboratories.