Cambridge, UK company IXI Ltd is working on an object-oriented version of its X.desktop manager with which it will challenge Hewlett-Packard’s NewWave object environment. It is using Westborough, Massachusetts-based HyperDesk Corp’s local object manager technology as the basis for its new product set. Although X.desktop already gives the user graphical pictures of utilities and services available, their use is ultimately limited by the fact that they are no more than Unix files. IXI’s aim is to allow users of X.desktop to manipulate objects on the screen in much the same way as they are conceptualised and used in the real world. IXI sees object-oriented technology, embryonic though it may be, as crucial to its future plans. Indeed IXI president Ray Anderson believes that the struggle for a standard approach to object-orientation – which is now being played out under the gaze if not control of the Object Management Group – will ultimately prove more important than past industry struggles suc has rows over the use of different programming languages or ways of doing networking. IXI would like to see a standard approach, and although it is backing the HyperDEC horse, which it regards as the most dynamic and flexible, it is well aware that the Hewlett-Packard/Sun/NCR/ODI request broker may emerge victorious. Should IXI prove to have backed the losing horse it will develop an object-oriented version of X.desktop for the Distributed Object Management Facility too.However, Anderson’s greatest worry is that there may be a software company, or two, lurking out there with hungry eyes on IXI’s market and that is already working on systems that embrace both technologies – a single technology that may become standard.
