Unix International Inc publishes the third edition of the System V Roadmap this week. The hefty document shows that the organisation is putting a lot of emphasis on distributed systems management and hopes to take a lead over the Software Foundation Distruted Management Environment with which it will be compatible. Its object-oriented, Tivoli-based framework will be out in the first quarter of 1993, along with five applications; back-up, restore, print services, software installation management, startup, shutdown and user group management. In 1994 it will add network management, software licensing management and storage device management. Unix International is also shooting to make its transaction processing more commercial and mainframe-like. This year it will add Cobol support for application development and a stored request feature enabling programs to schedule transactions for later execution. These will be followed in 1993 by enhanced CICS interoperability, support for large transaction processing configurations handling thousands of users and Open Systems Interconnection-based support providing interoperability between diverse transaction monitors. All the transaction technology will come from Unix System Laboratories Inc. Unix International is also making provision for support of the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment this year, and next year will add Open Network Computing enhancements from Sun Microsystems Inc that will improve Network File System performance and have it support wide area networks. The Open Network Computing remote procedure call will be made secure via Kerberos and RSA-based authentication. Support for object management and new naming technologies will follow by 1994.
