Microsoft Corp has joined forces with Digital Communications Associates Inc, Alpharetta, Georgia to add an IBM host mainframe gateway for its OS/2 LAN Manager program, so that nodes on the network can get through to access data on a host. The DCA/Microsoft Communications Server will provide an Application Program Interface and terminal emulation functions compatible with IBM’s Systems Network Architecture. It will support most of the major networking protocols supported by Token Ring and packet-switched networks, including SDLC, DFT, X25, bisync and async links. The Communications Server software is being written for 80386 boxes – 80286 at a pinch – running OS/2 on a LAN Manager network, and will act as a gateway server for communication between nodes – running MS-DOS as well as OS/2 – on the local net and the remote host. Software developers will be able to develop applications using the Communications Server architecture, which is being designed to be transparent to the MS-DOS or OS/2 user, so that micro applications can be drawing data from a host without the user needing to know about it. Ashton-Tate Corp, Cullinet Software Inc and Information Builders Inc plan to write such applications. Version 1.0 is promised for fourth quarter 1988 with an eight-user licence to sell for $3,000, and a single-user version for peer-to-peer mainframe access will be $500. Version 1.1, adding asynchronous communications and a Presentation Manager interface, is set for second quarter 1990. A new Workgroup Services business unit at Microsoft will handle its server-based products – currently the SQL Server and Communications Server.
