IBM announced yesterday that it has licensed parts of Hewlett-Packard Co’s OpenView network and systems management and said it intends to expand its NetView family of products to embrace network management for an AIX-based open network management system to support management of AIX and other Unix-based networking environments and telecommunications equipment. The announcement is an outgrowth of the two companies’ complementary submissions on Distributed Management Environment technology to the Open Software Foundation. They say they now realise their approaches to network management software development are complementary.IBM is licensing OpenView Network Node Manager and Network Management Server and is evaluating the software for use as a partial basis for its planned AIX-based network management system.
X-stations to be built around a RISC chip for use with its new HP 9000 Series 700 machines. No details arrived by press time.
IBM sowed more confusion in the minds of its users yesterday as Dale Harris of IBM Austin was brought in to explain that the 1990s will be the decade of open systems, and that IBM was no longer thinking in terms of its proprietary Systems Application Architecture on the one hand and AIX Unix on the other: its open systems approach will encompass both SAA and AIX. IBM’s definition of open systems is the Posix definition of interoperability and portability of data, applications and people. Within IBM the open systems movement is owned by Mike Saringa who is responsible for developing the new structure under the aegis of concept man Earl Wheeler who has hitherto been known as the father of SAA, but who is probably now contesting paternity. Anyway, there is apparently no longer a separate SAA body politic under Wheeler, there is simply an open systems strategy. As part of this IBM New Age, SAA is being opened up to embrace industry standards: for example, the SAA Common Programming Interface for Communications is being submitted to the Open Software Foundation, as is the Common User Access interface, because IBM wants a single look and feel for the industry. IBM is also, according to Harris, working towards supporting Open Systems Interconnection, so that IBM can offer a single stack by extending OSI to meet SNA. However, Harris moved quickly to reassure the IBM world that although the company will continue to open up SAA, it will not abandon its customers that have a long-term commitment to SAA and AIX – it will continue to add value but claims it no longer wants to lock people in to IBM kit, it wants them actively to prefer it. Asked how this new Open IBM applied to AD/Cycle Harris promptly to object-oriented technology as offering the next software development paradigm, saying that IBM will offer more broadly industry-accepted environments that could sit alongside AD/Cycle, or AD/Cycle could be extended to make it more acceptable as an open environment. Harris said that IBM is negotiating to join the Object Management Group and sees this organisation as key to next generation software. As regards the vexing question of when AIX will be included in the AD/Cycle environment, IBM pointed gnomically in the direction of the Japanese Sigma project, which has similar goals to AD/Cycle but is being developed specifically for Unix environments – IBM is part of the project but declined to explain its relevance to AD/Cycle. As part of this new look and feel IBM, John Glyde, hitherto IBM UK’s AIX manager is now to be IBM UK’s IT Infrastructure manager, providing the infrastructure for customers, whatever they want to do.
