Hummingbird Communications Ltd, Toronto has broadened its product base by prevailing upon McGill University and PolarSoft Inc to part with their rights in the TN3270 and TN5250 IBM Corp terminal emulation software for about $6.3m. Hummingbird reckons there are still plenty of users that would love to jettison the green screens through which they peer dimly into their 390 mainframe and AS/400 files, and instead access their data from a personal computer via the Internet. The immediate benefits of Web-based mainframe access, Hummingbird is persuaded, are ease of use, potentially eliminating the need for training. The purchase includes all rights to TN3270 terminal emulation software and all intellectual property and goodwill, and Hummingbird says it will enable it to offer customers TN3270 communications for Windows 3, Windows NT, Windows95 and Macintosh.
