OS/2 Warp Weekly Newsletter OS/2 Warp Weekly, produced by PSP Worldwide Marketing Support covers information relevant to OS/2 Warp and LAN Server. CONTENTS 1. ICL PERSONAL SYSTEMS PRE-INSTALLS OS/2 WARP 2. UNISYS CORPORATION PRE-LOADING OS/2 WARP CONNECT 3. OS/2 WARP CONNECT IN THE NEWS 4. OS/2 WARP PROTECTION 5. A WEB SITE TO BEHOLD 6. LIVEWIRE PUBLIC BETA 7. IBM ANNOUNCES NEW DEVELOPER API EXTENSIONS FOR OS/2 WARP 8. OS/2 WARP GETS A+ IN COLLEGE NETWORKING CLASS 9. SMALLTALK INDUSTRY COUNCIL FORMED 10. WHITE PAPER ON TALIGENT AND IBM PLANS 1. ICL PERSONAL SYSTEMS PRE-INSTALLS OS/2 WARP Another PC vendor has joined the growing pack of PC providers that are pre-loading OS/2 Warp. ICL announced on May 16, 1995 that they will begin pre-loading OS/2 Warp on a number of models in its Fujitsu ICL ErgoPro and ErgoLite PC ranges. Some models will always pre-load OS/2 Warp and on other models, OS/2 Warp will be a pre-install option. "The advantages our customers receive from OS/2 Warp lie in the robust 32-bit multitasking, the ease of use and the built-in application software including easy Internet Access and Office applications. In addition to this, the OS/2 Warp family will grow to offer further interesting solutions for both professional and home users of our PCs", says Mr Jorma Niinivaara, Director, Software and Networking, of ICL Personal Systems. OS/2 has won 57 awards worldwide for technical excellence and OS/2 Warp has sold in excess of 2 million copies since its availability in October, 1994. Worldwide over 8 million copies of the OS/2 operating system have been sold. ICL Personal Systems Personal Systems, part of ICL Volume Products is the recognized leader in ergonomic PCs. In 1994, ICL shipped close to 300,000 PCs and estimates for 1995 exceed 400,000. In March 1995, Volume Products introduced the Fujitsu ICL brand for PCs, servers and connectivity products. Based in Helsinki, Finland, Personal Systems has development and manufacturing operations in Finland, Sweden and the UK. ICL ICL PLC is an information technology company specializing in systems integration in selected markets. Operating in over 80 countries worldwide, with 23,000 employees, ICL generated revenues of GBP 2.65 billion in 1994. ICL is a member of the Fujitsu family of companies, the world's second largest IT group. *********************************************************************** 2. UNISYS CORPORATION PRE-LOADING OS/2 WARP CONNECT Unisys Corp.'s products will support the OS/2 Warp Connect operating system. In a press release, Unisys said it will offer the option of the operating system pre-loaded on its servers and PCs, beginning in June. From the Unisys press release: "Many of our customers have standardized on OS/2 for personal productivity and mission-critical applications and we want to be able to ship the latest OS/2 operating system technology as quickly as possible," said Vaughn G. Hysinger, vice president, marketing operations for the Unisys Personal Computer Division. "Unisys has led the industry in being able to build 100% of its PCs and servers on a Build-To-Customer-Order basis, including the option of having pre-loaded software. Now our customers will have an OS/2 option as part of our BTCO manufacturing and delivery process." ************************************************************************ 3. OS/2 WARP CONNECT IN THE NEWS OS/2 Warp Connect garnered lots of press coverage during the past week. Here are some references you may want to read. IBM TO SHIP OS/2 WARP CONNECT IN WINDOWS, 'WIN-LESS' VERSIONS Steve Kovsky, PC Week, 5-22-95 IBM is shipping the WIN-OS/2 version of OS/2 Warp Connect this week and will ship a "Window-less" version later this summer. IBM'S WARP CONNECT KEY TO OPEN BLUEPRINT PLANS Ed Scannell, InfoWorld, 5-22-95 IBM described OS/2 Warp Connect as a key element of their Open Blueprint strategy. WARP CONNECTS InformationWeek, 5-29-95 IBM launched OS/2 Warp Connect May 17 in New York. This summer, IBM will offer an additional Connect CD-ROM with SNA communications software. IBM IMPROVES PC COMMUNICATIONS The Sunday Business Post, 5-21-95 IBM's OS/2 Warp Connect will ease communications between personal computers. NEWS 4 NEW YORK AT 11:00 Dave Browde, WNBC, 5-20-95 Interview with Lee Reiswig about the launch of Warp Connect and how it compares to Windows 95. Browde says, "Now we have tried Windows 95 and Beta and OS/2 for real. The difference to us? OS/2 is available and solid; Windows 95 is still officially slated for August release." IBM DELIVERS NET-ENHANCED WARP CONNECT Marcia Jacobs, Communications Week, 5-22-95 IBM has launched OS/2 Warp Connect with networking features such as peer-to-peer capabilities, connectivity to many types of servers, remote access, enhanced TCP/IP support and Lotus Notes Express. ************************************************************************ 4. OS/2 WARP PROTECTION Security Integration Inc. has introduced StopLight OS/2, security software that allows companies to restrict access to networked OS/2 PC drives, partitions, directories and individual files. ************************************************************************ 5. A WEB SITE TO BEHOLD Do you want a current, complete, accurate list of OS/2 applications? And a source for OS/2-related services? Point your Web Explorer at http://www.mfi.com/os2dev. Search for OS/2 software by industry or product category, locate OS/2 service providers, submit nominations for new entries, and more. Check it out! Then spread the word! The site opens officially June 24th but lots of applications are there already. ************************************************************************ 6. LIVEWIRE PUBLIC BETA DataMirage Software is announcing the public beta of LiveWire 3.0 for the WorkPlace Shell. LiveWire 3.0 for the WorkPlace Shell is an object- oriented 32-bit multi-threaded professional communications program for OS/2 Warp Version 3.0. LiveWire 3.0 retains the great features of the text mode version of LiveWire (version 2.2) along with a set of new features and an excellent new interface. Truly object-oriented, LiveWire is a collection of familiar WorkPlace objects (Terminal, Phone Book, and Log) that interact loosely. More than one terminal, phone book, and log object with its own settings can be created and in use on your desktop! LiveWire's intuitive and elegant interface allows you to get online right away. Advanced users will find extremely pleasing the fully multi-threaded GUI. LiveWire 3.0 can be retrieved from one of the following places, filename LW30B1.ZIP (uppercase!): ftp site hobbes.nmsu.edu CompUServe (GO OS2SHARE) DataMirage Software BBS at 1-714-856-2071 * NOTE: Read the READ.ME on DISK1 for install information. ************************************************************************ 7. IBM ANNOUNCES NEW DEVELOPER API EXTENSIONS FOR OS/2 WARP NEW ORLEANS, May 22, 1995 -- As part of its ongoing campaign to reduce software developers' costs and give them opportunities to capitalize on the rapidly growing OS/2* market, IBM announced its new Developer API Extensions at The 1995 IBM Technical Interchange conference here today. The company also showcased a range of technologies and tools that will allow ISVs to bring multiple-platform applications to market quickly and easily. "Application developers are forced to make tough choices," said John W. Thompson, general manager, IBM Marketing and Solution Developer Programs in his keynote address to 4,000 software vendors and corporate developers. "If they bet their business on one operating system platform, they may limit their market opportunity. But supporting multiple platforms means maintaining separate code bases at significant expense. Today we're showing IBM's unequivocal commitment to help software developers increase their market opportunities while decreasing risk, by giving them ways to develop and manage common source code across multiple platforms." IBM's growing set of developer tools and technologies includes its new IBM Developer API Extensions, SMART****, Hyperwise*, VisualAge C++*, the IBM Open Class Library and OpenDoc***. The IBM Developer API Extensions announced today enhance the portability of 32-bit Windows** applications to OS/2 Warp, helping software developers deliver their applications across PC operating systems including Warp, Windows 3.1, Windows NT and Windows 95. The Developer API Extensions are extensions to the OS/2 Warp interfaces, designed to make existing investments in Win32 APIs portable to OS/2 Warp. The Developer API Extensions are comprised of a subset of over 700 APIs and 300 messages that are consistent with Win32 APIs and messages. The subset includes the most frequently used Win32 APIs, and was chosen based on the analysis of more than nine million lines of source code from a variety of popular Windows applications. Windows applications that use the APIs defined in the Developer API Extensions can be recompiled to produce functionally equivalent OS/2 Warp applications. Selected software vendors will begin limited alpha testing of the Developer API Extensions next week. The extensions will be available for broad beta testing this summer, and IBM expects them to be generally available by the end of the year. The Developer API Extensions will eventually be shipped as part of the base OS/2 Warp operating system. "With our Developer API Extensions as the solution for migrating existing Windows applications, IBM's object-oriented VisualAge family of application development tools represents our long-term commitment to helping developers succeed, by enabling them to reach multiple, growing market segments from a single development environment," said John Swainson, IBM vice president of application development solutions. "The future application software market leaders will be companies that leverage their migration investments into competitive advantage by exploiting object technology in the form of portable and interoperable class libraries and frameworks." ************************************************************************ 8. OS/2 WARP GETS A+ IN COLLEGE NETWORKING CLASS We recently completed an advanced networking class at a local technical college. The course used NetWare 3.x and 4.x in a lab environment. 30% of our final grade was contingent on the final team projects. The majority of the students were network administrators for local companies and the state; virtually all were Windows shops. The projects were based on NetWare. For the final project, most of the teams chose to install and demonstrate average network applications, all of which were DOS or Windows-based running on NetWare. Although NetWare uses DOS to bootstrap itself, it is itself a full-fledged 32-bit NOS; you can remove DOS after it is up. Unlike OS/2 LAN Server, the network supervisor has to sneaker-net to another machine to log-in, install applications and manage the network. Our team, understanding the true power of OS/2, decided to demonstrate what no other OS could do. We decided to install NetWare 4.1 Server on OS/2 using IPX, TCP/IP, and Token Ring as the underlying protocols and topology; Netware 4.1 for OS/2 allows NetWare to run as a native guest OS under OS/2, sharing memory and DASD concurrently. For extra credit, we decided to run a NetWare Client on the *same* machine using 1 network interface card (NIC). The instructors had never seen this (neither did we) and thought that this alone was enough to claim success (in fact, they appeared skeptical). Then came project presentation day: We fired up OS/2 Warp and spent a few minutes demonstrating the Workplace Shell(tm). You could sense the excitement grow as we used OS/2's object-oriented drag-and-drop interface. Just for fun, we put all of the NetWare icons on the LaunchPad and launched them. Then we fired-up NetWare 4.1 Server in a window. NetWare 4.1 runs in 8M of RAM, but Novell strongly recommends 16MB. We gave it 8M and it was responsive on our 16MB 66Mhz 486 machine. We gave the other 8MB of RAM to OS/2. In a production environment, giving NewWare its full 16MB compliment is highly recommended. As always, the more RAM the better. Next we fired up both an OS/2 NetWare client and a Windows NetWare client and logged to the NetWare server as 2 different users - each having their own environments and drive mappings. You could hear gasps. Our project objective's secure, we then ventured where no OS has gone before. We fired up NWADMIN, NetWare's Windows-based graphical network administration program. Next, added a few users and resources to our new network. The machine was very responsive considering the load we had placed on it. We then switched back to the WP shell and fired up NetWare's graphical monitor. We were now well beyond the scope of our project. Someone asked how much further could we push OS/2 multitasking before the system would crash. Remember, we were running on only a 16MB machine with 2 full-fledged 32-bit operating systems running concurrently, not to mention the multiple requestors and applications. Our team had never tried to stress our system or OS/2 Warp beyond this point in our preparation, but OS/2 Warp rose to the challenge. We opened window after window of independent DOS sessions and ran commands and utilities, then we did the same with OS/2 windows. We switched back to look at our Windows programs, NetWare's real-time graphical monitor application, our logged-on Windows and OS/2 clients, and various applications all continued to run without even a pause; The NetWare server on the same machine never broke a sweat. OS/2 Warp handled it all with grace. In our post-demonstration Q&A, people asked more about OS/2 than our project. The BonusPak for OS/2 Warp, especially the Internet access, added to their intrigue. They asked what all of this cost. We had to repeat the answer a few times; they couldn't believe that an OS for less then œ80 could support Windows, DOS, OS/2, NetWare, Internet access, drag-and-drop, and more, with the stability they witnessed. We had a pile of œ25 rebate coupons from the OS/2 employee program; everyone wanted one. We're awaiting our final grade. We know OS/2 got an A+. Mike Iantosca (NSD) Terry Olenchuk (NHD) ************************************************************************ 9. SMALLTALK INDUSTRY COUNCIL FORMED IBM is one of eleven companies that joined in the formation of the Smalltalk Industry Council (STIC). This nonprofit trade association was formed to promote growth in the Smalltalk market. Other initial members of STIC include: American Management Systems, Easel Corporation, Knowledge Systems Corp., ParcPlace Systems and Object Technology International Inc. ************************************************************************ 10. WHITE PAPER ON TALIGENT AND IBM PLANS A new white paper - CommonPoint Application System - is now available. This paper is intended to give an overview of Taligent's CommonPoint application system and IBM's plans to deliver products based on it. This paper is intended for a general audience that has some familiarity with the concepts of object oriented programming. The paper covers: Taligent's evolution Taligent's product lines A CommonPoint Overview IBM's product plans The market focus for CommonPoint CommonPoint's Advantages CommonPoint Development Tools Coverage CommonPoint's Competition CommonPoint's positioning within IBM's OO family Summary This White Paper is available on IBM's Taligent Project Office Home Page with address: http://w3.austin.ibm.com/austin/projects/taligent/homepage/TPA1.HTM ************************************************************************