Taligent staff no longer in the Pink

IBM has informed staff at its its Taligent subsidiary that it will be closed by the end of this year in an effort to increase efficiency and cut costs.

The ill-fated organisation started life about six years ago as a joint venture between IBM, Apple, and later Hewlett Packard, to develop Pink ? an object-oriented version of the Mac operating system.

When IBM and Apple later hit financial troubles, the development effort was scaled down to focus on object-oriented development frameworks, but the alliance finally collapsed in February 1996 when HP and Apple withdrew funding and Taligent was absorbed into IBM.

An IBM representative confirmed that the Taligent laboratory in Cupertino, California, would be closed by the end of the year, and most of the personnel, mainly software engineers, would be relocated to IBM?s Santa Teresa labs.

Those with Java skills are to be redeployed to the Java tuning and porting centre jointly set up by Big Blue, Netscape and Sun. Each member is expected to contribute between 20 and 40 staff.

A further 20 non-software developers will ?have opportunities for employment elsewhere in IBM?, although redeployment for all Taligent staff will not be automatic.

The representative said: ?We?re completing the transition of Taligent into IBM to increase development efficiencies and reduce costs.

?I would like to emphasise that the work going on at Taligent is integral to IBM, which is why we are doing this.?

The Taligent brand is unlikely to be used by IBM in future development projects or products.