A migration off CMOS could save money for ClearPath mainframe user Greg Schweizer, a systems administrator at Oregonian Publishing Co. in Portland, Ore. Any Unisys plan that allows users to move the mainframe operating system to a commodity server "will be very well received, I think." Oregonian Publishing runs custom-built applications on its two-processor Unisys mainframe.

Moreover, focusing on systems and services instead of processor development "should make Unisys stronger," said Schweizer.

Schweizer said his understanding -- based on customer briefings by Unisys -- is that any potential move to Intel will happen only if the chip maker can produce chips as good as CMOS. "That's what they've told us, and I believe that," he said.

Marian Ritland, development and operations manager at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire, began using a ClearPath-based mainframe running MCP on Intel chips in April after previously using a CMOS-based system. She said it's been obvious to users that Unisys is heading to a single hardware platform.

But Ritland, who is also chairwoman of a Unisys user group in Claire Shores, Minn., said Unisys "has been proceeding cautiously in this direction" and is giving users a choice of environments "at a pace that allows people to pick and choose."