When the Open Software Foundation finally takes the wrapping off its plans for a Distributed Management Environment today, it is expected to announce at the same time that the technology, by the time it begins to find its way into commercial products of any sort – not likely for at least 12 months – will be compatible or synonymous with the Object Management Group’s object-oriented Object Request Broker mechanism (CI No 1,759). The Management Environment was conceived to establish a vendor-neutral framework for the development of applications that manage distributed computer systems and networks. The Object Request Broker, meanwhile, provides the mechanisms via which objects transparently make and receive requests and responses. Its significance is that it provides the interoperability between applications on different machines in heterogeneous, distributed environments: it will seamlessly interconnect multiple objects. A technical meeting of the Object Management Group’s task force last Wednesday voted unanimously to adopt the composite technology submission from Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard, NCR Corp, Object Design Inc, Digital Equipment Corp and Hyperdesk, that will make up Object Request Broker. The Object Group’s technical committee is now voting on that decision – effectively a rubber-stamping exercise – the results of which will be known within a month. While not wanting to pre-announce the Foundation’s Distributed Mmanagement Environment intentions – or steal its jealously-guarded thunder – Object Group president Chris Stone, who has also acted as a consultant to the Foundation on this Request For Technology, said that the 12 months or so between the Distributed Management announcement and first expected products based on it would give the Foundation a chance to work on making its technology compatible with the Object Request Broker. Although there has been much speculation that the two might end up sharing the same technology – Hewlett-Packard for one has submitted similar technology and has been a prime mover in both efforts – it is understood that the Foundation and the Object Group have agreed, at board level, not to announce overlapping technology, or use the same code. Nevertheless the Distributed Management Environment is going to be very object-oriented, Stone says. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard claims it doesn’t know yet whether its Distributed Management submission to the Foundation has won or not, but that isn’t stopping it from flying in cadres of executives under the tutelage of Networked Systems Group vice-president Wim Roelandts for a post-announcement get-together in Boston later today with press and analysts. It’ll either be a wake or a wedding. However, somehow we suspect its technology, submitted in combination with IBM, Tivoli Systems Inc and Wang Laboratories Inc in opposition to DEC and Microsoft Corp, will win the day. Hewlett-Packard says the joint submission answers 70% to 80% of the Open Software Foundation’ Request for Technology requirements.
