Santa Monica, California-based Locus Computing Corp, which has had a long-term presence in the UK through the product side of its business, especially PC-Interface, now hoping to capitalise on its distributed computing expertise, following the appointment of former Uniplex director Tony Heywood to the post of managing director at the end of last year. Since then Locus has also employed long-term Uniplex employee Ann Purton as marketing director, and Carl Chilley from X/Open Co Ltd as principal consultant, along with a team of five technicians from Kernel Technology Ltd, thought to have been disaffected by that company’s take-over by F I Group Plc last year. Locus will offer software development and consultancy services to large users, software and hardware companies looking to implement distributed computing technologies, such as those based on the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment. Locus recently won a contract from the Open Software Foundation to develop a software test suite for Distributed Computing Environment, to check whether products conform to the remote procedure component. As well as working with third party products and on strategic issues, Locus is keen to push its own-developed technology into the market, including the Transparent Computing Facility remote execution facility jointly-developed with IBM Corp and called TCM by Locus, which no doubt wants to confuse its partner, which calls its mainframe Thermal Conduction Modules TCMs. A few years back, TCM was to be offered to the general marketplace – it was later pushed out of the Decorum proposal that became the basis of Distributed Computing Environment. Now, hints Locus, there are negotiations under way that will put the technology back on the map, to be completed within six months.
