Sources say that next week at Object World, Dublin, Ireland-based Iona Technologies Ltd will disclose strategic relationships with both Motorola Inc and Novell Inc. Novell is said to be going to outline an object-oriented strategy that will encompass Iona’s Orbix object request broker. Motorola is also signing up for Orbix for its Information Highway-in-the-Sky Iridium low earth orbit satellite mobile phone project. Some people see the alliance as a kick in the groin for Microsoft Corp, whose boss, Bill Gates, has his own billion dollar-backed I-did-it-my-way Teledisk project since Orbix is compliant with the Object Management Group’s standard wannabe CORBA or Common Object Request Broker Architecture. The deals are a coup for the Irish company, which adamantly refused to comment on either of them last week. Sources thought it might be because the Motorola contract still was not signed at press time. Sun Microsystems Inc has a small stake in Iona.
