Systems houses announce grand openings - Open Group open systems consortium - includes IBM, Unisys, Tandem, Sunsoft and DEC strategies for systems openness - Industry Trend or Event

Software Magazine, April, 1996 by Richard Adhikari

Computer manufacturers, anxious to sell software, are implementing interoperability strategies via standards compliance, object technology and middleware

Computer makers, who for years lived off their bread-and-butter proprietary software and squabbled over who had the most "open" version of Unix, have seen the light of "interoperability." The goal, of course, is to sell more software in an open systems market that's being driven by the move to distributed computing.

"For organizations deploying large-scale distributed systems, interoperability is becoming the crucial issue," said William Estrem, consulting specialist at 3M in St. Paul, Minn., and the interim co-chair of the recently formed Open Group Customer Council. "We're [3M] very concerned about interoperability, and we see open systems as a way of enabling interoperability."

For the customer, "things are getting better," said Estrem, referring to vendor efforts in the open systems arena. "And that doesn't necessarily mean a better Unix operating system, but better interoperability," he stressed.

Today, IBM, Tandem and others are working to make their software platforms interoperate with other vendors' products and getting behind standards efforts. As a result, they're broadening the definition of "open systems." At the same time, the open systems movement has been gradually coming together, reaching consensus on common goals.

After the Unix wars of the '80s, for example, X/Open, a Reading, U.K., consortium for the advancement of open systems, became responsible for managing the Unix trademark on behalf of the industry. Vendors can use the XPG4 brand if their products implement the Open Software Foundation's (OSF) Single Unix Specification APIs and pass several industry test cases. XPG4-branded products use a common set of Unix APIs. The intended result: Applications developed on one branded flavor of Unix will run unchanged on other branded flavors. Vendors compete by providing added functionality on top of the basic APIs rather than by offering different versions of Unix.

Another sign of the open systems market coming together is the recent announcement by X/Open and the OSF, Cambridge, Mass., another open systems consortium, that they would combine to become The Open Group. Under the consolidation, X/Open will continue to promulgate interface specifications for various product categories as well as brand products that conform to those specs. OSF will continue to facilitate collaboration among end users, system vendors and software vendors toward the development of new open systems technologies.

While X/Open and OSF have focused on different aspects of open systems -- X/Open with specifications and branding, and OSF with technology implementation -- many user companies couldn't afford to join both organizations, said 3M's Estrem. "By merging, it's making it possible for us [customer organizations] to participate at both levels."

Having moved beyond Unix, today's definition of "open systems" includes any or all of the following: integration with Microsoft Windows NT, which the U.S. government now recognizes as an open system for bids; incorporation of object-oriented technology through Corba 2, the Object Management Group's ORB standard; compliance with OSF's Single Unix Specification; and incorporation of middleware such as CICS to allow transparent access to multiple platforms and environments. Above all, open systems depend on the realization that the goal is to make things easy for the user. End users don't really care what technology is used as long as they can access the applications required, said Frank Kenney, director of software marketing at Data General Corp., Westborough, Mass.

John Logan, an analyst with the Aberdeen Group, Boston, agrees. The operating system, he said, has earned new importance, "because the computing environments we're moving to are distributed ones in which the ability to run production applications with minimal or no staff, or staff that's located remotely, has become even more important to enterprises." Aberdeen's research, he continued, "shows that financially healthy suppliers are spending more money than ever investing in operating systems and system software to run production applications more effectively than their competitors can."

Consider IBM. The company has adopted a five-pronged strategy to ensure its hardware and software work together, as well as with products from other vendors, said John Soyring, director of IBM's Personal Software Products Division (PSD), Austin, Texas. The facets of IBM's strategy: openness; making middleware cross-platform; offering network-capable new versions of its operating systems; incorporating object technology; and protecting customers' existing investments. Supporting industry-standard APIs is a cornerstone of IBM's strategy. AIX was the first Unix system to be branded with X/Open's XPG4 imprint, noted Soyring. MVS 4.2.2, released in November, has received XPG4.2 branding. IBM has also implemented "well over 90%" of the Single Unix Specification APIs in OS/400, the operating system for IBM's AS/400 midrange computer, and will finish the task soon, Soyring said.