ICL Plc and Computer Associates International Inc announced on Friday the start of what they described as a far-reaching programme of global co-operation. The two plan to integrate Computer Associates’ CA-Unicenter systems management product, which has its origins in the mainframe world, with elements of ICL’s own systems management offering for the client-server arena. This includes ICL’s Open Systems Management Centre and Automated Systems Management product as well as the Team Distributor, Team Manager and Access Manager elements of its TeamOffice groupware product line. All Unicenter extensions will be made available on both ICL’s VME mainframes and its Goldrush massively parallel database server, although no time-scale was given, and ICL will also henceforth distribute Unicenter on CD-ROM with every TeamServer and SuperServer it ships as part of its Easy Pack option. Computer Associates for its part will start marketing and selling ICL’s TeamOffice software as its core groupware offering, and will also distribute its Access Manager user access control and management product. Computer Associates has also acquired the intellectual property rights to the parallel extensions to the Ingres database that ICL developed for Goldrush for an undisclosed sum. These include systems management and diagnostic tools and parallel enabler technology, which Computer Associates intends to integrate into future versions of Ingres. The deal took less than one month to close, and marks the start of closer relations between the two firms.
