Despite the widespread impression to the contrary, the ability of Microsoft Corp to walk on water is very limited and confined to a relatively narrow field of activities, and while Microsoft at Work seemed a very clever means of making a subset of the Windows user interface ubiquitous, and was initially endorsed by a vast army of office equipment manufacturers, the entire initiative seems to have collapsed in a heap – to the great benefit of Novell Inc. The NEST Novell Embedded Systems Technology (the N ought to stand for NetWare but doesn’t) has won commitments from Canon Inc, Cheyenne Software Inc and Ricoh Co to implement it in a new generation of intelligent office equipment that can be accessed and controlled over networks. Novell claims that it also has 35 other OEM customers for the technology that do not want to stick their heads above the parapet beyond giving their names. Novell Embedded embeds a NetWare client into the device, at which point it can become a node on a NetWare network. It is processo r-independent so as long as your coffee machine or copier does have a control processor, it can use NEST. Ricoh plans to implement the NEST Autoroute software within its facsimile machines, enabling users to access and distribute facsimile messages over the network. Users will be able to encode the message to be faxed into digital copy for routing to multiple destinations, and to mark it to be output on a printer or digital copier or dumped in an electronic mailbox. Canon is embedding the technology into its GP-55F machine, which combines the functionality of printing, digital copying, scanning, filing and facsimile, and in other GP series machines. The GP-55F supports both Token Ring and Ethernet, and is NetWare-tested and approved. And Cheyenne is embedding NEST into the facsimile software it supplies to a variety of hardware manufacturers making facsimile servers so users can choose the best delivery option. Using NetWare Directory Services, intelligent devices such as copiers, printers and desktop computers, will have addresses to which information can be routed. Other members of the NEST supporters’ club include Castelle Inc, Digital Products Inc, Securicor Telecom Ltd, Future Systems Inc, QMS Inc, Intel Corp, I-Data International Inc, Pacific Data Products Inc, Mita Co, Emulex Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Axis Computers Inc, Xerox Corp, Fujitsu Ltd, Lexmark International Inc, Kofax Inc, Epson Co and Tektronix Inc.
