Compaq began shipping the Unisys Cellular Multiprocessing (CMP) server under the Proliant ML770 name earlier this year. But the company said corporate clients favored running data centers that operated off of eight-processor systems.

Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys had counted on cashing in on a business strategy that required other companies to sell its products under their own names. Hewlett-Packard and Dell were among several companies that signed on to the program, but several weeks ago HP backed away from its decision to sell the CMP server.

The CMP server is designed to meet future IA-64 Intel Itanium processor power needs. With 96 I/O channels and processor access to 64GB of memory the ES7000 server is capable of executing numerous transactions against large transaction databases. The ES7000 is the most powerful server available to run Microsoft's Windows 2000 Datacenter Server software.

George Gazerwitz, president, Unisys Systems & Technology blamed the downturn in computer sales with putting Compaq in a difficult position of choosing between selling the ES7000 or devoting cash to other needs.

"CMP has proven itself to be the only viable scale-up solution for the Windows 2000 Datacenter Server environment, most effectively handling large databases and offering great advantages for server consolidation.

We understand that in this difficult economic environment, companies must make choices to focus their limited resources," he said.

Compaq did not return calls for comment.

Gazerwitz said the company would focus on the Intel server market and would add more than 200 new CMP sales and technical support positions to serve that space.

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Hitachi Ltd. and ICL, a British unit of Fujitsu Ltd. continue to sell the Unisys' CMP systems.