Clearly enjoying OS/2 Warp’s current spell in the limelight as the only 32-bit operating system designed for the desktop, IBM Corp previewed OS/2 Warp Connect, a communications extension, at CeBIT. Last month, PC Data reported that in November, the month for which it had most recent figures, OS/2 Warp outsold MS-DOS as the top-selling personal computer program in the US (CI No 2,602), this despite the various problems experienced with Warp crashing people’s systems and losing data. But IBM is revelling in the speculation that surrounds the eventual launch date of Windows95 and says despite the problems, customer response to OS/2 Warp has been extraordinary. When launched last October (CI No 2,524), Warp, with all its multimedia capabilities, seemed aimed squarely at the fun and games market, but OS/2 Warp Connect is designed for use in local area networks, or for people accessing information remotely, and so IBM seems to be going for office workgroups with this addition to the operating system. Wally Casey, director of marketing for OS/2 Warp, said that customers had asked for the product, saying that they wanted IBM to act as their network integrator.
Extraordinary response
IBM says OS/2 Warp Connect provides hooks to the most widely-used servers, enhanced TCP/IP support for dial-up or local area network connections to the Internet, or on-line services, and the company will bundle Lotus Notes Express with it when it ships. Beta versions should be shipping now. The product combines the operating system with Win-OS/2, with peer-to-peer networking capabilities, enabling OS/2 Warp peers to share applications, printers, modems and files, located on any personal computer in the network. In a peer network, OS/2 Warp Connect does not require a dedicated server, making it suitable for small workgroups lacking a network administrator. The product will ship with a CD-ROM detailing the answers to commonly-asked technical questions, an attempt to reduce end users’ costs. It has built-in local area network requestors that link desktop systems to each other and to OS/2 LAN Server, NetWare and NT Server; OS/2 Warp Connect supports communication via NetBIOS, TCP/IP and Internet Packet Exchange on Token Ring, Ethernet or Fibre Distributed Data Interface networks. IBM claims that it is very easy to install, and that this is possible from any personal computer on the network. In the future, IBM is looking at wide area network connections and support for symmetric multiprocessing, up to 16-way with one application programming interface and one graphical user interface.
