Novell Inc is in discussions with 20 hand-held and personal digital assistant manufacturers on ways to tie the mobile technology into corporate networks. The company says that says that several of the 20 – most of which are Japanese – have signed up to incorporate Personal NetWare in their devices. The drive to support mobile computing was behind many of Novell’s investments and takeovers over the past three or four years according to executive vice-president Darrell Miller. In particular International Business Software, bought in April 1992 has virtual server technology key to keeping files on remote devices synchronised with the central server. Mobility is also central to the development of AppWare, Novell’s distributed application development environment (CI No 2,200). AppWare is built on visual programming tools from Serius Corp and cross-system tools from Software Transformation Inc – both recent aquisitions. The other key plank is an object reqest broker from HyperDesk Inc, in which Novell has a 20% stake. A prototype Personal Server combining communications and applications server functions are currently running at Novell under UnixWare, but it will take a couple of years for the elements that Novell has developed to evolve into a marketable product. In the meantime Novell will provide a selection of tools to help pioneering corporate users build their own AppWare-based systems; Personal NetWare, the client end of the technology, is a nebulous, umbrella term, used to describe NetWare services that can be embedded into a variety of operating systems. The first public licensee is Go Corp which has incorporated Novell’s IPX network protocol and its Message Handling System into its PenPoint pen operating system.
