Microsoft Corp plans to enter the network operating system market with OS/2 LAN Manager later this year, and claims that the product will enable Personal Computers running either MS OS/2 or MS-DOS, to be connected on a network in which any computer can act as either a server or workstation. According to chairman Bill Gates, it will enable applications developers to write one version of a program to run on either a stand-alone machine or on a network, because of the operating system’s interprocess communications capability. OS/2 LAN Manager will be released to developers in the fourth quarter, and Microsoft says that it will be fully compatible with previous revisions of Microsoft Networks for both MS-DOS and Xenix, and will include network administration tools such as remote server control and restricted server access. It will use a protected-mode NetBIOS adaptation layer for integration with proprietary networking cards. MS OS/2 LAN Manager will be tightly integrated with MS OS/2 and will support OS/2 system level interfaces, including network interprocess communications, so that different machines on the network can talk to each other, and a system running MS OS/2 with OS/2 LAN Manager could be added to an existing MS Networks system, where it could function as both a server and a workstation.
