As expected (CI No 2,753), IBM Corp has won fellow Distributed Computing Environment adherent Hewlett-Packard Co as a licensee for its Print Systems Manager software which is designed to manage networks of distributed printers from a Unix console. IBM currently has Print Systems Manager up under AIX 3.2 and DCE 1.0x. It has had to delay a planned AIX 4.1, DCE 1.1 implementation until the spring to give the Distributed Environment time to settle down. Hewlett-Packard will show an early release of Print Systems Manager on HP-UX at UniForum this week, but is not saying when it will begin selling the software. Print Systems Manager is based on the ISO DPA Palladium print model standard and requires a Distributed Environment license. Remember this is Unix and remember the Remote Procedure Call wars are still being fought and you’ll understand why Print Systems Manager is facing off against a rival distributed print management mechanism called Printxchange backed by Digital Equipment Corp, SunSoft Inc, Xerox Corp and others, including Eastman Kodak Co and Novell Inc. Printxchange is based on the same print standards as Print Systems Manager and does not require the Distributed Environment. It will however run on the Sun-derived Open Network Computing distributed computing environment but is nowhere near being a product yet. Beta code is not expected until September at the earliest, though the development is still on track, SunSoft says, claiming the resulting software will be bundled free of charge or available unbundled at no cost. The other player, Dazel Corp already offers its Output Management System for print management on Unix. Although SunSoft et al claimed to have drawn Novell Inc’s NetWare attention to Printxchange at their announcement last year and say their mechanism will include NetWare directory print services, Hewlett-Packard is confident its new relationship with Novell on Unix will lure the same services to Print Systems Manager. So far no Printxchange adherents have taken up IBM’s offer to license Print Systems Manager and although IBM and Hewlett-Packard understand the need for interoperability, they say the Printxchange people are not at a point where they can discuss interoperability yet. The respective business managers talk at regular intervals or so we’re told.
