Bull HN Information Systems Ltd has brought in Bull’s ImageWorks software for a client server environment. It is said to provide functionality for the integrated capture, storage, management and retrieval of paper-based and electronic information. It interfaces with the Application Services sector of Bull’s Distributed Computing Model and has Token Ring and ISDN gateways, both of which will be directly embedded during 1992. The initial delivery will be on a TCP/IP Ethernet local area network and Bull’s DPX/2 Unix-based servers, and it will provide folder and document management, optical disks and jukebox capabilities. The optical disks are being sourced from the ATG joint venture between Alcatel NV and Thomson SA, and Laser Magnetic Storage International Inc, and the jukebox is from Cygnet Systems Inc. The Series 1800 Expandable Jukebox family supports ATG’s write-once-read-many drives and provides nearly 1Tb of online optical storage, while the 6.4Gb drives have an average seek time of 90mS with a formatted transfer rate of 1.5Mb per second. There is talk of object oriented technology, but the software is written in C and the relational database management system is Oracle. There are communications links for MS-DOS kit with support for Apple Macintosh IIs and Unix workstations planned this year.
