There will soon be a new kid on the object request broker block in the shape of PostModern Computing Technologies Inc, which is due to release an Object Management Group Corba-compliant Object Request Broker at Object World in July. The Mountain View, California-based firm reckons that its Orbeline will appeal to a broader market than its existing NetClasses C++ object transport middleware, but says that it has not yet decided whether to sell Orbeline as a stand-alone product or simply as an element of NetClasses. In the existing version – 2.0 – of NetClasses, which currently runs on top of SunOS, OSF/1, HP-UX, AIX, and Lynx Real-Time Systems Inc’s LynxOS, objects are moved around the network via TCP/IP and an asynchronous interprocess messaging paradigm. However Sunnyvale-based First Pacific Networks Inc is already using Orbeline in a project it is undertaking for Entergy Corp. First Pacific is supplying Entergy with 440,000 80386-based personal computers, running LynxOS and a new Object Request Broker version of NetClasses. These will be hooked up to electricity meters in Entergy customers’ homes, collecting and transmitting electricity usage data back to central servers. Other PostModern customers include Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching firms Fujitsu Network Services and DSC Communications Corp, and financial organisations like Fuji Capital Markets.
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