The Santa Cruz Operation has announced that its Tarantella application broker is now available for Compaq Computer Corp’s Tru64 Unix for Alpha-based servers and workstations. Tarantella performs functions that are similar to web application servers and various web-to-host connectivity programs, namely enabling web users to access applications residing on various midrange equipment regardless of the fact that they were never written to do that.
Specifically, Tarantella enables access to Unix, 3270 mainframe and Windows applications from a Java-enabled web browser or a Windows-based PC. (It does not offer support for the AS/400’s 5250 green screen applications, but it probably should. A Linux version of Tarantella would probably be a dubious idea, but it could happen.) The Tru64 port of Tarantella was actually created at the request of Compaq’s Communications Industry Solutions organization, which wanted to give Compaq’s telecom customers access to internal Compaq applications running on Alphas over an extranet.
Tarantella for Tru64 will be available this week, and can be downloaded from www.tarantella.sco.com. The program costs $395 per concurrent user, and is also available on HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Reliant and UnixWare.
