Having decoupled the StreetTalk Global Directory, Intelligent Messaging, security and network management software technologies from its Vines Unix implementation and offering them as Enterprise Network Services, Banyan Systems Inc’s next move will be to plant a bunch of flags in the ground for where it wants to be in three years, and then work out how it is going to get there. It is a vision the company will roll out at the end of next month, at the same time as it unveils the promised 6.0 version of Vines, Enterprise Network Services plus Unix V.3. While Banyan has an impressive record in providing what is effectively a meta-network on top of mixed NetWare implementations, or across heterogeneous Unix systems, it is on the one hand getting squee zed by the increasing power and complexity of vendor-specific local area network offerings and on the other, by the painfully slow emergence of broad-based distributed networking technologies such as the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment or Sun Microsystems Inc’s Open Network Computing. With this in mind, Banyan plans first to unbundle Enterprise Network Services into developer products that perform distinct functions. Find functions will use StreetTalk directory as the backbone, share functions are to use its Intelligent Messaging system and services, and manage functions will be based upon its DeMarc distributed enterprise management architecture, agents and applications. In conjunction with current partners such as Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and Santa Cruz Operation Inc, it will create messaging and directory software building on what is already in place – Sun’s NIS naming service for example – to create packages for managing personal computers from Unix. Other systems will be handled by the enterprise.
Flurry
As well as turning StreetTalk into an X500-compliant directory next year, it is also working on several new implementations and has a prototype that can store 100m references for example. It hopes that its Directory Application Programming Interface, DAPI, initiative will attract a flurry of independent software vendors. Packaging details for the Directory Application Programming Interface will also surface next month with Toolkits out in July. At Networld+InterOp 95, Banyan finally unveiled its delayed Solaris version of Enterprise Network Services, which costs from $5,500 for up to 20 users to $55,000 for 1,000 users. Enterprise Network Services is already up under NetWare, HP-UX, AIX and Santa Cruz Unix. It has no plans for UnixWare or Digital Unix versions. After a Sinix implementation, Banyan’s next port of call will be Enterprise Network Services on Windows NT, which is promised by the end of the year although it will not admit to having any working code internally worthy to show customers or partners. It will operate under NT System Management Server. Banyan Enterprise Backup & Restore modules are due out next month. An Enterprise Data Distribution application for collecting and distributing data from Windows will ship next quarter. Vines still accounts for some 75% of 11-year-old Banyan’s revenues.
