INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation

INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation (ISC) was a software company, known for their versions of the Unix operating system.

In 1977, ISC was the first commercial Unix vendor, selling IS/1, a Version 6 Unix variant enhanced for office automation which ran on most PDP-11's.. The later IS/3 and IS/5 were enhanced versions of System III and System V for PDP-11 and VAX.

ISC became especially well known for their Unix ports to the IBM PC. The first of these was a variant of System III, developed under contract to IBM, and known as PC/IX (Personal Computer Interactive eXecutive). Later ISC releases were branded 386/ix and finally INTERACTIVE UNIX System V/386 (based on System V Release 3.2). ISC was AT&T's official "Principal Publisher" for System V.4 on the Intel platform. [cite web | url=http://static.highbeam.com/s/softwareindustryreport/march181991/interactivesystemscorpofrestonvahasinkedadistribut/ | title=INTERACTIVE Systems Corp. of Reston, Va., has inked a distribution agreement with Government Micro Resources | pulisher=Software Industry Report | year=1991-03-18 | accessdate=2006-04-12]

ISC was also involved in the development of VM/IX (Unix as a guest OS in VM/CMS), IX/360 (native Unix on the System/360) and AIX, again under contract to IBM. ISC also partnered with Segue Software and Peter Norton Computing to develop the Unix version of the Norton Utilities.

ISC was acquired by Eastman Kodak Company in 1988. [cite book
title=The diversity, complexity, and evolution of high tech capitalism
url=http://www.stenthore.info/The%20Diversity,%20Complexity,%20and%20Evolution%20of%20High%20Tech%20Capitalism.pdf
publisher=Kluwer Academic Publishers
author=Sten A. O. Thore
isbn=9780792396390
pages="pp" 78] Kodak sold the Intel-UNIX operating system business to Sun Microsystems on September 26, 1991. [cite web | url=http://egle.lanet.lv/ftp/unix/sun-info/sunflash/1991/Sep/33.26.interactive | title=SunSoft To Acquire INTERACTIVE Intel-Software Division Of Kodak, SunFLASH Vol 33 #26 | pulisher=Sun Microsystems | year=1991-09-26 | accessdate=2006-04-12] Kodak sold the remaining parts of ISC to SHL Systemhouse Inc in 1993. [cite web| url=http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/computer-software/350084-1.html|title=Kodak sells Interactive to US subsidiary of Canada's SHL Systemhouse.|accessdate=2008-09-30]

Final support for Interactive System V/386 from Sun ended on July 23, 2006.

References

* Maurice J. Bach, "The Design of the UNIX Operating System", ISBN 0-13-201799-7, Prentice Hall, 1986.
* Peter H. Salus, "Nearly 20 Years ago in [Usenix|U [SE] NIX] ," ;login: 28(6), December 2003 [http://www.usenix.org/publications/login/2003-12/openpdfs/salus.pdf]