Hewlett-Packard Co’s grandstand play to get its technology accepted by the Object Management Group, and its public and well-publicised embrace of Sun Microsystems Inc, has left some noses out of joint among fellow Object Group members. Other companies submitting to the Object Management Group’s Request for Proposal for an Object Request Broker, which Hewlett-Packard and Sun answered together with a precedent-shattering partnership, are now discussing partnerships of their own to strengthen their hands. These talks are said to include both companies that met the February 25 Object Group submission deadline and others. Sources from among these obviously biased firms claim the fanfare and publicity surrounding the Hewlett-Sun submission makes life difficult for the Object Management Group. It must decide whether it is a technology endorser or a standards group, said Joe Forgione, president of HyperDesk, one of the seven submitters. These same sources say there is now a party forming that would press the Object Management Group not to select any of the submissions at all, but rather comb through them for their common denominators which it could then bless as a common interface spec. The fact that Hewlett-Packard on its own could not win the Object Management Group’s endorsement is repeatedly reiterated (UX No 323). However, even with the inclusion (compliments of Sun) of another Remote Procedure Call in the Hewlett-Packard scheme, there are doubts that the company can get its distributed NewWave technology accepted. Some 20-odd companies sit on the technology task force charged with making a technical recommendation to the Object Management Group’s 37-man technical committee. Many of the companies on both the task force and the technical committee are large hardware vendors that, it is suggested, may not be comfortable endorsing a competitor’s product, especially when the source code is not in independent hands. Ironically enough, one of the companies now able to cast a vote is Microsoft Corp, whose eleventh-hour decision to join the Object Group earned it the last slot possible on the technical committee. Microsoft, whose combination with Compaq Computer Corp, MIPS et al, is a particular threat to Sun and Hewlett-Packard, if not all Uniphiles, is perceived as a prime motivator for the Hewlett-Sun alliance.
