Montreal, Canada-based Eicon Technology Ltd has launched a suit of emulation tools called Universal Access, to connect personal computers running under Windows, Windows NT, MS-DOS and OS/2 operating systems to IBM Corp mainframe and mid-range systems. Eicon, software developer for micro-to-mainframe and proprietary to open communications products, says it is the first to develop a product that connects multiple desktop operating systems, disparate SNA hosts, and multiple local and wide area networks. Eicon believes its product to be unique since emulators, historically, could only access different host machines if users had Windows on their personal computers. According to David Carew-Jones, Eicon’s director for European marketing, the recent agreement of Attachmate Corp to acquire Digital Communications Associates Inc (CI No 2,543) will create an opportunity for Eicon to sell its Universal Access software to both companies’ customer bases. Carew-Jones said the combined company cannot realistically afford to have two different emulation products in the same marketplace. He anticipated that once the merged companies have just one emulation product, existing users of the other, will want a product line with a future and, therefore, will opt for Eicon’s Universal Access. Eicon says its software will end licensing headaches as a licence is based on the number of users with SNA links rather than on the network links and the number of operating systems each user has. Eicon’s first customer for Universal Access has been the UK Royal Mail, which has bought 4,000 user licences. Eicon also has plans to tackle the market for remote access users and is designing a product to connect remote users to host based systems, which it expects to launch within the next four to five months. Universal Access is shipping now and costs $30,625 for 100 users.
