Siemens Data Systems Group this week announced the Siemens Co-operative Processing Environment – or SCOPE – client-server architecture, which it deems to be analogous with IBM’s Systems Application Architecure approach. The aim is to enable users to link together systems that combine the company’s personal computers, Sinix MX Unix range, IN line of Pick systems from its Intertechnique Informatique affiliate, and the 7.500 series of 370-like – but not compatible – mainframes. As well as TCP/IP, IBM 3270, DEC VT100-VT220, X25, X400, Ethernet, Token Ring and FDDI protocols, Siemens is promising full communications with IBM MVS and CICS, with co-existence of its systems in SNA networks, and comparable communication with ICL systems. The company is offering Sun Microsystems’ Network File System on its BS2000 mainframes as well as Unix systems, PC-DFS on MS-DOS micros, and R.COM spool remote printing for IBM mainframes – all the sort of things that most of the majors are talking of. SCOPE, as Siemens’ UK marketing manager David Cliffe admitted, is an exercise in consultation and marketing, aimed at bringing users’ attention to the various options that are, or will be available in the future to interconnect hardware and software in all sorts of ways. On the Unix battle, Siemens is a lot more reticent – unlike its Open Software Foundation bedfellows DEC and Hewlett-Packard, which recently firmed up their respective commitments to the OSF/1 operating system, Siemens remains shy, and says it has not yet made up its mind which Unix road to follow. The UK Data Systems Group is aiming to be a UKP500m-a-year business by 1995, and says that it will look for joint ventures and acquisitions to help achieve its objective.
