Banyan Systems Inc’s quest to make its Enterprise Network Services independent of its Vines network operating system has advanced with the launch of ENS for NetWare. As reported, the Westborough, Massachusetts company’s product makes Banyan Intelligent Messaging, Network Management, Systems Administration and Security services available to NetWare users. Next to be developed will be a version of the suite for Microsoft Corp LAN Manager installations according to James Ringrose, European marketing director. Ringrose says he expects the Enterprise Network Services and Vines for Santa Cruz Unix products to make up 30% to 40% of company revenue within a couple of years. But will the forthcoming NetWare version 4.0, which includes improved enterprise management facilities, cut the ground from under Banyan’s feet? Ringrose thinks not and points to the large existing base of NetWare 2.15, 2.2 and 3.X users that do not want to upgrade their entire network. ENS for NetWare works with both the older and new versions of NetWare; the Vines services themselves sit on a separate Enterprise Network Services server. The only component to clutter up the NetWare server is a small Value Added Process or NetWare Loadable Module which acts as a communications gateway to transfer such data a NetWare Bindery updates. The move to make Banyan Intelligent Messaging programming interfaces available on other networks was welcomed by Wordperfect Corp, which said it intends to include support for StreetTalk in future releases of WordPerfect Office. Unfortunately Banyan has remained aloof from both the MAPI and VIM efforts to find a standard way of mail-enabling applications – so that’s yet another API for developers to write to. ENS for NetWare costs UKP3,000 in the UK. The NLM/VAP is priced per user starting at UKP47 per user for five users and dropping to UKP11 per user for 250.
