Apollo Computer Inc was celebrating a further endorsement of its Network Computing System distributed computing software this month with the announcement that DEC had taken a licence to the software for evaluation and possible inclusion within future products (CI No 1,086). In recent months, IBM and Hewlett Packard Co have also licensed the software, which enables users to distribute parts of a single application program across a multi-vendor network to the computer most suited to the task. And according to Apollo spokesman Jim Barbagello, there will be a fourth announcement in the next few weeks. Introduced in 1987, the Network Computing System has now been implemented by over 100 users, according to Apollo, and now supports Unix-based hardware from Alliant Computer, Convex Computer, Cray Research, DEC, Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM, Multiflow Computers Inc, Prime Computer, Stratus Computer and Sun Microsystems. Barbagello said that the networking system would enable DEC VAX hardware to be used as the host system for a multi-vendor networked computing solution. Sun has recently unbundled the Open Network Computing component of its Network File System as a direct competitor to the Apollo product, but does not include a location broker for automatic compute distribution, or automatic data translation between machines.
