Virtual reality is on the verge of becoming the standard interface for visualizing complex software management tasks, if negotiations between companies such as Oracle and Sybase and a small California start-up see the light of day in product form. Computer Associates has already implemented virtual reality interfaces within its Unicenter TNG edition of systems management tools, launched in January as the CA originated Real World Interface, and due to become available this month. CA demonstrated recently this at the DCI Client Server and Database World show in Boston, last month. The small 50 man technology start-up in question is Sense8 Corporation, of Mill Valley, California, and despite the fact that it has been shouting the CA relationship from the rooftops, it is still almost unknown that the revolutionary CA visualization within the TNG release is almost entirely down to the Sense8 WorldToolKit development system. A spokeswoman for Sense8 said: We announced our CA relationship in the Summer and we have both worked hard on this product. We’ve been touting the fact to anyone that browses our web site for a couple of months. But CA seems to have decided not to mention the fact in its own promotions. Indeed CA made great play of the technology when it announced TNG, but declined to mention any of its suppliers at the time. It subsequently came out that TNG will use the Fujitsu supplied ODB-II object database, instead of the much touted, but not delivered, object- relational extension of Ingres that CA promised. Sense8 jumped from 18 to 50 employees during the past year, expects to double its revenues during 1996 (but still hasn’t declared what they are yet), and dubbed the CA relationship as the first ever true commercial application of virtual reality, which is going a bit far, but certainly it seems destined to be the most widely installed VR system ever. Now Sense8 talks openly about advanced discussions with other software suppliers, and it sounds as if Oracle or Sybase are planing to follow CA’s lead whether or not they choose Sense8 technology. The CA deal allows for each corporate user to use the development version of its WorldToolKit to build a rendered visualization of its network and IT infrastructure, and for each systems management console to use a run-time version of the same tool. This, in conjunction with the active agent technology that CA inherited from the Legent takeover, makes for a systems management environment where the diagnostic lights on a laser printer 3,000 miles away can report a fault by showing in rendered form on a management console, or a piece of software that has not been correctly loaded can be dropped into a virtual PC and loaded by clicking on a rendered graphic of the real world software packaging. The spokeswoman added: CA is one of our biggest clients, though not the biggest, and we are very interested in pursuing the same business model with other major software suppliers. Sense8’s products start at $995 for single Windows development licenses and rise to $23,000 on the SGI Onyx Reality, with average user installations around $12,000.
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