With the Computer Associates International Inc alliance already under its belt (CI No 2,686), the recently-created object software division of Fujitsu Ltd’s San Jose, California-based Open Systems Solutions Inc plans to build a business around an integrated object database, ODB-II, and high-level development system, Intelligent Pad, integrated with an Obejct Request Broker and services environment called ObjectDirector that calls for profitability by 1997. It is looking for other partners and more channels to raise its visibility in the US. Headed by vice-president and general manager Dan Fishman who developed Hewlett-Packard Co’s Open ODB database out of the Iris object database – now known as HP Odapter – the 30-strong unit’s first task is developing the next generation of Fujitsu’s Intelligent Pad visual programming system, which is currently up under Windows, with Unix and Macintosh implementations under way. Applications are created using peel-on-peel-off components – tables, graphs, images, text – it calls pads, from a pad library or created using a procedure pad. It currently has its own scripting language, but Fishman’s team will make Intelligent Pad more extensible by integrating Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java and other tools. The Fujitsu and ICL Plc GraphicsPower C++ or Visual Basic environment already provides an interface builder for Unix or Windows applications. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture 2.0 Object Request Broker component, already available in Japan, is expected to reach the US by the middle of next year. Meantime, the unit is also creating a management package code-named Symphonet, which it said will bring mainframe management techniques to the client-server world using the Fujitsu Object Request Broker as its distributed mechanism. Symphonet will provide authentication, configuration, resource and peripheral management of personal computers from Unix. It will eventually put all of its object offerings up under Windows NT too. Fujitsu is also looking at how its own object technologies, and those that its ICL a ffiliate offers, can be unified around a single Object Request Broker mechanism.
