IBM has marshalled 50 exhibitors to cram into one of the smaller halls at Olympia for the OS/2 Show, which goes into its final day today, but the event did little to convince sceptics that the operating system had much future outside IBM’s own base of mainframe users, where OS/2 is being assiduously developed so as to ensure that over time the vast majority of 3270 terminals are replaced by PS/2s running OS/2.
o s 2
A pointer that that is the way things are going is that IBM admits that OS/2 Extended Edition is outselling Standard Edition – it makes no sense for 370 mainframe users to buy Standard Edition – the things that IBM has mapped out for their future are all in Extended Edition.
o s 2
But the overall numbers are far from impressive – MS-DOS is still thought to be outselling OS/2 nine to one – and as the performance of desktop computers soars with the arrival of the 80486, Unix is rushing down to meet them, and increasingly are offering all the power and ease of use promised for OS/2.
o s 2
And some operating system projections from IBM are calculated to raise the odd eyebrow: the company estimates that of system shipments during 1988, MS-DOS machines accounted for 18% of the total by value; all 370 operating systems accounted for 26%; Unix 6%; VAX/VMS 5%; System 36 and 38, 4%, and others 41%; for 1991, IBM projects a two point fall to 24% for 370 operating systems; MS-DOS and OS/2, 23% – and it won’t break the two out; Unix 22%; VMS 6%; AS/400 a lowly 2% – clearly those System/36 users are going elsewhere – and others 23%.
o s 2
IBM UK is highlighting its 4M-bit memory chips for the 80386-based PS/2s at the show: there are two 16Mb 32-bit memory expansion options for the PS/2 70, P70 and 80; also on show is the PS/2 486 Power Platform upgrade path for PS/2 Model 70-A21; the 32-bit microprocessor is accommodated by the Micro Channel, therefore the memory and hard disk remain unchanged; IBM expects to ship the upgrade this quarter 1989, but like everyone else in the personal computer world, that all depends on Intel.
o s 2
IBM is demonstrating its Trading Systems RDXII OS/2, developed by the London International Stock Exchange, and designed to be used on PS/2 workstations on a Token-Ring local area network: RDXII MS-DOS workstations, PS/2 Model 50 and upwards, support the 3270 Information Display System, ANSI X3.64 (VT 100), and Quotron PC 1000; the OS/2 workstation interface conforms, to a degree, with the SAA Common User Access; some of the Presentation Manager features included are menu bars, icons and windows, and mouse selection of options and fields; IBM says that the RDXX meets three major needs of the trading room by providing gateways to digital data feeds and in-house computer systems, processors to monitor and manipulate data, and the option to run components on rack-mounted industrial computers such as the 7542; licensed programs and documentation arrive later this month.
o s 2
IBM’s RPG II Application Platform Version 1.1, an upgrade of Version 1.0 released in the US last year, was described as a multi-user application base for OS/2; it supports up to eight 3151 terminals, offers local area network support for 16 workstations, and enables migration of System 36 applications to the PS/2; it comes from California Software Products Inc.
o s 2
Oracle UK is at the show to demonstrate its Server for OS/2, available in the US fsm the end of this month, and in the first quarter 1990 in the UK, priced at UKP2,000; the server runs over a 3Com 3Open LAN Manager network, in addition to Novell NetWare and IBM’s LAN Server; however, Oracle is being quite canny in its approach to OS/2, and while it says it is meeting the needs of large corporate users, the company also caters for the Unix market with its Server for Unix V.386, and for Banyan users with Server for Vines; Dinesh Vadia, UK product manager, believes OS/2 will take some time to filter down to a wide user base, but he doesn’t believe Unix will supplant it since its no less power hungry than OS/2.
o s 2
Torus Systems Ltd is demonstra
ting its recently announced networking software, Tapestry II Enterprise, which has LAN Manager servers and supports OS/2 and MS-DOS on file servers and workstations: on the latter, OS/2 support is provided for multi-tasking, icon tasks, and Presentation Manager applications.
o s 2
Microsoft’s showpiece is Excel for OS/2 which supports any network compatible with LAN Server or LAN Manager; it requires OS/2 version 1.1 and 2.5Mb of memory, although the company recommends 4Mb; Microsoft claims that Excel for OS/2 enables models to be developed more quickly using the view and link spreadsheets, point and click data selection, and auditing tools; it works with other OS/2 applications and uses the dynamic data exchange to link OS/2 applications; the same files can be transferred across Macintosh, Windows, and OS/2 versions of Excel, and there is a migration path from Lotus 1-2-3.
o s 2
Frank King, senior vice president of Lotus Development Corp’s Software Products Group, unveiled the new 1-2-3/G spreadsheet, designed for OS/2 and Presentation Manager: the graphical interface has a What – You – See – Is – What – You – Get display, windowing and mouse support, and provides access from within the spreadsheet to external databases via Datalens drivers; 1-2-3/G can operate as a stand-alone application or in conjunction with 1-2-3 Release 3 and the mainframe application 1-2-3/M, under MVS and VM.
o s 2
Henley Business Software Ltd and Gupta Technologies UK used the OS/2 show to demonstrate several clientserver workstations running under OS/2, PC-DOS, and MS-Windows, and connected to Gupta’s OS/2 SQLBase server: Henley Business also demonstrated the JYACC Application Manager for OS/2, PC-DOS, and Unix, and it has enhanced the tool to interface with 10 SQL databases on various computers and under various operating systems; the company says that the JYACC Application Manager is the only front end development tool to run under OS/2, and support both SQLBase and SQL Server; version 4 of the product is available now from Henley and sells for UKP750.
