In a raft of announcements at Uniforum, the X/Open Ltd standards consortium has won further support for its Common Applications Environment from AT&T Co and Microsoft Corp, and consolidated its software vendor and user advisory councils. Both AT&T and Microsoft said at the show that they would support the Applications Environment in future operating system and application products, with Microsoft becoming the thirteenth member of the Independent Software Vendor Council. On the User Council, investment banker Salomon Brothers has joined. X/Open also revealed its software partners programme, offering independent systems vendors a direct communications channel with the Group and technical and marketing help with X/Open-compliant products. Chief technical officer Mike Lambert revealed that future developments to the Common Applications Environment would include revised system calls and libraries (remaining consistent with Posix), a programming interface to the Open Systems Interconnection Transport level 4 for networking services, X Window window management, and security.
