Microsoft Corp wants a piece of the Unix-NT interoperability marketplace, and yesterday announced its plans to offer a Unix add-on pack to Windows NT 4.0 that would make it easier for customers to integrate the two operating systems. Due out in the summer for both Intel and Alpha platforms, the Windows NT Services for Unix Add-On Pack will enable resource sharing, remote administration, password synchronization and common scripting across platforms. The core of the product is the Network File System technology Microsoft has licensed from Intergraph Corp’s Software Solutions division, which launched an NT gateway for NFS last year, and also carried out joint development with Microsoft on the DiskAccess NFS client product (CI No 3,225). Remote administration, through Microsoft’s existingTelenet implementation, will give users the ability to remotely log into and execute commands on NT or Unix systems. Password synchronization will enable a common password to be maintained between NT and Unix machines. Scripting comes courtesy of the KornShell and 25 portable Unix scripting tools developed by Mortice Kern Systems Inc. Companies such as Softway Systems Inc and NetManage Inc were at pains to point out that their own full featured Unix to NT integration tools would still be needed to fill out the gaps. Softway said it was increasing its co-marketing efforts with Microsoft, particularly on direct sales to corporate customers. Microsoft pointed to the news as evidence of its broad commitment to enterprise interoperability. It already has similar services packs for Macintoshes, Novell NetWare, IBM mainframes and AS/400s, supports TCP/IP, LDAP and Kerberos, and has begun the process of making its Component Object Model available on non-Windows platforms.
