Fujitsu Ltd has introduced a new concept for systems development for the decade ahead, which it is calling Message 90s. According to the company, until now users in Japan have been of one of two types: they have either designed and developed their own systems, or they have bouught packaged applications. In the former case Fujitsu customers could use the SDAS architecture, which was claimed to raise productivity in systems development by 200%. But Fujitsu is now proposing a new type of systems development called Combination style, which it predicts will be used by 30% of its cusotmers within the next three to five years. In the Message 90s con-cept, the idea of a mainframe computer as a host machine is discarded and replaced by three types of data processing systems – central business systems with operational data; decision information systems designed for departmental use management data; and documents, graphs and tables office data. Using personal computerbased software, the user should be able to obtain and process any of these types of data, including data from mainframes and office processors, without being aware of the system or the software bridges being used. The concept of the corp-orate mainframe being a server for personal computer and workstations is based on agreements concluded with four independent personal computer software vendors – Ascii Corp, distributor of Informix Software Inc’s Wingz spreadsheet, Just Systems Ltd, the onlie begetter of the Japanese Ichi-Taroo word processing package, Microsoft Corp with the Excel spreadsheet and Lotus Development Corp with 1-2-3. In addition, Fujitsu’s own office automation software products, Oasys and its Epoch family can be used. Suites of software bridges will be made available, including AP/Join on the operational data side, to link Lotus 1 2-3 with data on a mainframe host; Spool/Join to enable reports designed for host system printers to be output on a personal computer printer; F447D to support MS-DOS floppy disks directly on a host computer; DB-Express to extract data from Fujitsu’s network database AIM/DB and put it onto its relational product, RDBII. Other vendors’ personal computers will also be supported, including Toshiba Corp’s J3100 and IBM Corp’s PS/55. The full range of bridge software will be available between September 1991 and July 1992. The day after the announcement of the Message 90s architecture, Fujitsu also announced a specific set of Message 90s products for the 32-bit G-series workstations. The G-series are Motorola Inc 68030 and 68040-based workstations which run an SX/G Unix environment including the Open Look Graphical User Interface, and provide PEX support based on the international standard PHIGS/PHIGS Plus. Under Message 90s, support is also provided for MS-DOS and Oasys data formats and for the FM Notebook. – Anita Byrnes
