Digital Equipment Corp has announced further products from its partners and enhanced its own product range in its global networking Polycenter portfolio. The aim of Polycenter is to create a heterogenous worldwide computer and data communications network system which is intelligent, automated, integrated and self-managing. DEC claims that the system will be complete in five years and will be achieved through complete integration of the various products in the portfolio so that each application can run under a multiplicity of operating systems and interact with each other. At the moment Polycenter, which is based on DEC’s Enterprise Management Architecture, provides pockets of distributed management, artifical intelligence, remote management, mostly running under its proprietary VMS operating system, with lesser degrees of capability in other environments. The new products come from four vendors, which join 18 others committed to Polycenter. These are Computer Associates International, Applied Information Systems, Raxco Inc, and UIS. Computer Associates’ software runs DEC’s VAX machines. They are the CA-PMA/ChargeBack for function resource accounting and chargeback, CA-1 for tape library management and CA-7 for job and resource scheduling. Applied Information Systems’ Burcom and Ulysses products provide gateways for Unisys’ A and V series computers and peer-to-peer communications from VAX to Unisys 1100/2200 and System 80 machines respectively.Applied Information Systems also intends to enhance it products to enable DECmcc director management of Unisys network environments. DECmcc is one of the central implementations of the system. Raxco Inc has amended its security products, to become part of the management solution and Raxco is also to move its security software to Ultrix and comply with X/Open, and Posix. UIS is to include Ultrix support and compliance with Polycenter’s architecture interface for its resource management accounting, system management environment and file and retrieval storage management. DEC enhancements are to software management tools which run under its proprietary operating system and on VAX machines. To expand Polycenter’s remote management capabilities DEC has also introduced a new VAX link to Storage Technology Corp’s Automated Cartridge System, making terabytes of data all but on-line to VAX users.
