Desktop interface company TriTeal Corp and Corel Corp have got together to swap technologies to fill in gaps in each other’s Java offerings. TriTeal has tapped Corel for the HTML editor and personal information manager (PIM) components of its Office for Java suite, and in the other direction, Corel is taking TriTeal’s SoftNC, TED and Win Ted desktop technology. SoftNC is a Java interface for network computers, while TED and Win TED are the company’s CDE Common Desktop Environment-based desktops for accessing Unix and Windows NT applications. Corel says it will use SoftNC as the default desktop for its long-delayed Video NC, which having initially been expected by now, is now slated for the fourth quarter. Back at JavaOne in early April, Corel chairman and CEO Mike Cowpland promised a major OEM deal for Office for Java within a couple of months, though warned that it would be smaller than the one with Marimba Inc in the first quarter (CI No 3,081). Neither company would reveal any details about the terms of this deal. The TriTeal technology complements Corel’s existing Unix and Windows NT servers, enabling its Java, NT and Unix suites to run across NC, PC and Unix desktops, using SoftNC, WinTED and TED respectively. Corel had already licensed Insignia Solutions Inc’s NTrigue server to run NT applications, but it was not clear what has happened to that agreement by press time. Meanwhile, TriTeal has laid out what it calls its Network- Centric Computing Architecture (NCCA) in a white paper on its website. It amounts to a coming-together of its existing distributed computing technologies with Java agents, and SoftNC is the generic name it is given to its implementation of the architecture, comprising SoftNC Desktop, Desktop Server and Agents to make up a 100% Java desktop environment. The agent technology (CI No 3,154) is the way TriTeal moved functions to the server to keep the clients thin, while maintaining communications between the client and server applications.
