Unix Expo: Zander outlines future of network computer And servers, software, storage debut By Rebecca Sykes

October  1996

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New York -- Maybe it was the free cappuccino and latte, but the Sun Microsystems Inc. booth at Unix Expo Plus was packed with attendees after a rousing Java-centric speech by Ed Zander, president of Sun Microsystems Computer Corp.

In the first of several keynotes at the conference, Zander outlined the future of the network computer as it relates to Java and called upon conference attendees not to heed the warnings that Windows NT will usurp Unix in the network market.

"Unix is alive and well," Zander told the crowd, citing the staying power of the operating system in an industry that changes flavors every year. "We think there is a heck of a lot of headway and runway left in the Unix marketplace."

Zander took more than a few pokes at Microsoft Corp. CEO Bill Gates, who tried to boost confidence in NT and Unix coexistence during his keynote the following day. Zander said Microsoft continues to load the desktop with unnecessary software, driving up the cost of business computing. Citing a Gartner Group Inc. report, he said the average cost of operating a PC in the business space is $13,000 per year, a cost that Sun's network computing model can reduce by 70 percent through "Webtop" thin clients sucking applications off a server.

"The best thing to happen to Sun in the industry was Windows 95," Zander said. "It made people stop and ask, `Do I really need that?'"

Some show attendees answered yes. Rick Strom, director of system software marketing for Data General Corp. in Westborough, MA, said while there is a place for the thin client model in some businesses such as banks, Webtops will not displace Microsoft software on the PC.

"You start taking things away from people on `the desktop,' and they are not going to be very happy," Strom said. "I don't think [the Webtop is] going to be widely adopted, but there is a place for it."

Zander outlined three driving forces behind Sun's network-centric computing model:

• Expansion of the Internet. Electronic commerce and the proliferation of intranets in the workplace will force applications onto servers and away from the desktop.

• Bandwidth ubiquity. Adoption of fiber and ISDN is more commonplace, and bandwidth requirements will increase as high-speed access is demanded by the PC user.

• The Java net application paradigm. Sun will continue to embed its language in everything from cellular phones to pagers. Zander also claimed that the Java paradigm solves problems of security, application distribution, cost per seat, and client administration.

In a final appeal to his Unix audience, Zander challenged developers to continue writing for Unix, taking advantage of its scalability, security, and manageability over NT.

New product roundup
In case you missed the noteworthy product introductions at Unix Expo, we give you the gist:

• Sybase Inc.announced its enterprise data warehouse server for Sun Microsystems Computer Corp.'s new Ultra Enterprise Clusters. Sybase's MPP 11.0 for Sun Ultra Enterprise Cluster supports symmetric multi-processing (SMP), clusters of SMPs, and massively parallel processing (MPP) systems. The server is designed for large enterprise data warehouses, and provides linear scalability across hundreds of processors and terabytes of data. Sybase MPP 11.0 is available now and pricing, which is dependent on configuration, starts at $120,000.

• Falcon Systems Inc.'s FastfilePro-HA is a server designed to offer affordable capabilities such as high availability and World Wide Web access. The server delivers high availability by using a passive processing unit that monitors the status of the active processing unit in a "heartbeat" fashion, and shuttling opertations over to the passive unit if it detects CPU failure. FastfilePro-HA delivers Web access with a new HTTP module, providing read-only access to Web files. Pricing ranges but begins at $84,968 for a system with 38 gigabytes of storage capacity, monitor, keyboard, redundant power, Ethernet and FDDI interfaces and software.

• On the software front,Devcom Mid-America Inc. debuted Fax.FX 2.5, fax management software for both Unix and Windows NT-based servers. The fax software operates from clients running on Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, Mac and Unix clients, as well as from character-based terminals.

• UniPress Software Inc.'s Web-based help desk system designed to record and track problems, solutions, bugs, and change requests for groups of users is now available. Called FootPrints, the software is platform-independent and permits user-defined fields. Starter licenses include server software and three user licenses and costs $1995; additional licenses are $495 each.

• New Dimensions Software introduced its latest version of Control-M Option for R/3, software which lets Control-M enterprise production control and scheduling software manage the scheduling and monitoring of R/3, SAP AG's client/server application suite. The new version of Control-M lets users automate the scheduling and management of both ABAP/4 reports and SAP jobs. The new version is available immediately, and pricing starts at $32,000.

• Black&White Software Inc. announced the addition of Java capabilities to its CORBA productivity toolsets, UIM/Orbix and DB/Enable. The new Java components will let developers use drag-and-drop techniques to develop clients which interact with Internet servers. In addition, existing projects based on C and C++ and built in UIM/Orbix and DB/Enable can be converted to Java.

• In the storage arena, Box Hill Systems Corp. introduced a Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) storage system designed to produce data transfer rates ten times faster than SCSI. The hot-swappable, dual FC-AL storage system offers capacities of up to 72 gigabytes per enclosure, using eight 9-gigabyte fibre channel drives, company officials said. Additional storage of up to 1,125 gigabytes is provided by daisy-chaining enclosures for a total of up to 125 drives per each dual FC-AL system.

• Smart Storage Inc.'s SmartCD, the company's integrated recording and access software, will be available in December for Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX version 10.01 workstations. SmartCD software manages all CD data as a standard NFS mount point, and also offers an API toolkit. SmartCD is priced at $795 for HP-UX, IBM's AIX, and Sun's Solaris.

• SCO announced the availability of free SCO UnixWare operating system licenses in January as well as source code licenses for SCO Unixware for universities and other educational institutions. Two months ago, SCO announced free SCO OpenServer licenses, for which the Santa Cruz, CA-based company has already processed 8,000 requests, officials said.

Resources

• Sybase
  http://www.sybase.com
• Devcom Mid-America
  http://www.devcom.com
• Falcon Systems
  http://www2.falcons.com/falcon
• Unipress
  http://www.unipress.com
• New Dimension Software
  http://www.fedcenter.com/fedcenter/ffdi.html
• Black&White Software
  http://www.blackwhite.com
• Boxhill Systems
  http://www.boxhill.com
• Smart Storage
  http://www.smartstorage.com
• The Santa Cruz Operation
  http://www.sco.com

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