Control Data Corp is the latest proprietary mainframer to be bitten by the Open Systems bug: last month in Vienna the company demonstrated its multi-vendor networking products to to customers and journalists, claiming that it was now half way through its Transparent Computing Environment programme. CDC can currently link up MS-DOS micros and Apple Macintoshes to its Cyber mainframe systems running the NOS/VE operating system, as well as workstations from Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, which it rebadges. Macintosh users can access the mainframes via the Mac user interface using the Desktop/VE product, and the company also has interfaces for MS-DOS machines running its Officeware office automation system; it is also working on an implementation of the X Window System. And the Minneapolis mainframer is also promising to incorporate Open Systems Interconnection – compliant protocols within its CDCNet networking product by the first quarter of 1989, and says it will standardise around a cohesive software architecture consisting of standard language implementations – Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, C and Ada – and operating systems services based around Unix on all its hardware platforms. Unix currently runs native on the Cyber workstations and ETA supercomputers, and is promised for the Cyber 900 mainframe family by the end of 1989.
