Separately, Banyan has also announced two new support programmes – Banyan Emergency Technical Support and Banyan On-Site Support. These services are to be marketed by Banyan’s Authorised Channel Partners. Banyan is also to work with Hewlett-Packard’s Network Management Division to ensure that the products can be managed from Hewlett-Packard’s OpenView Windows and Unix management software. An expanded relationship with Hewlett-Packard’s Printer Division will produce an MIO Print Option, to provide direct support for Hewlett-Packard printers supporting the Modular Input-Output interface. Hewlett-Packard is not the only printer hardware manufacturer that Banyan is to work with; it has also announced a co-operative effort with printer Digital Products Inc and Lexmark International Inc, designed to provide customers with highly integrated, easy to manage printing for their enterprise networks. Already announced as a result of the collaboration with Digital Products are new products intended to deliver high speed printing and eliminate printer bottlenecks across enterprise-wide, multi-vendor networks. Banyan has announced expansions to its platform certification programme in the shape of new local network adaptor and SCSI disk drive certification programmes. These are expected to help with compatibility testing. A phased approach to toolkit development has also been introduced, and is intended to enable qualified local network adaptor and other peripheral developers to create driver software independently and to perform the testing that is required to assure joint customers of the full integration of new hardware with Banyan’s software products. Participants in Banyan’s expanded certification programme will receive current releases of Banyan networking software as well as a Banyan-developed test suite.
