Gradient Technologies Inc, Marlborough, Massachusetts has taken umbrage over Open Environment Corp’s comments about its PC-DCE client software, to which the latter has been comparing its new DCE Adapter client (CI No 2,653). For starters, Open Environment is still selling PC-DCE to its customers, Gradient claims. Second, PC-DCE requires from 600Kb to 3Mb on an 80386 with 8Mb or better, not the 2Mb to 4Mb that Open Environment claims. Third, PC-DCE is not more costly than DCE Adapter. And fourthly, it will be able to run on the same systems as Open Environment’s when it ships its full client-server implementation of its Distributed Computing Environment suite for Windows NT in 30 days, and the Macintosh client is promised by year-end. Gradient’s DCE for NT starts at $3,000 per server, $109 per client. The Gradient directory, naming, security threads, Remote Procedure Call and timing services for NT are conversions of its UnixWare implementation. It doesn’t use Microsoft Corp’s more lightweight, re-architected version (for which Microsoft doesn’t have to pay the Open Software Foundation any royalties). The Gradient software will support Transarc Corp’s DCE/NT work when it arrives; Encina is promised in client and server versions i n the third quarter; the Distributed File System client by year-end, followed by Distributed File System for NT server. Gradient views Transarc’s DE-Lite Distributed Computing Environment client as an extension cord enabling small footprint clients to access Distributed Computing Environment services, engineered for the environment’s users with slow communications facilities.
