Vicom jumps on Sun bandwagon

While Silicon Graphics has joined computer vendors in competitionwith Sun Microsystems, another image processing company activein the medical field has teamed up with Sun to provide an image/fileserver capability for Sun-based local area networks.

Vicom Systems of Fremont, CA, has also licensed Sun microprocessingtechnology that will make Vicom Systems' equipment compatiblewith computer applications written for Sun workstations.

Vicom Systems signed a licensing agreement with Sun this monththat will allow the firm to integrate Sun visualization softwareand graphics accelerator technology into the Vicom Image DataServer. The deal builds on a cooperative relationship with Suninitiated in October, said Ronald Cornell, Vicom Systems presidentand CEO.

Cornell was promoted to his position at Vicom Systems thismonth after serving five months as vice president of engineering.Prior to joining Vicom Systems in November, Cornell ran a start-upcomputer networking company. He had also served as vice presidentof engineering for Sun. Al Winegar, former president and CEO ofVicom Systems, has been named chairman.

"We are moving quickly to refocus our business towardopen (computer) systems and less toward proprietary stand-aloneproducts," Cornell told SCAN.

About 20% of company sales, both OEM and direct, are in medical.GE Medical is the firm's largest OEM customer, he said. Cooperatingwith Sun should increase Vicom Systems' medical business, sinceSun workstations are in wide use by medical imaging OEMs and picturearchiving and communication system integrators.

Sun has licensed Vicom Systems source codes for the softwarethat runs on Sun workstations. With this technology, the VicomImage Data Server can be designed to obey all the commands operatingon the Sun equipment in a transparent fashion, Cornell said.

Applications running on the Sun equipment will function onthe Vicom Systems server without special commands or softwarechanges.

"Rather than be victimized by the general transition (toopen software systems) occurring in the marketplace, we want tobe out in front of it," Cornell said. "We want to growas a company that supports applications written for other platformsrather than trying to attract applications to our own distinctproprietary platform."