New York-based start-up New Paradigm Software Corp, a spin-off from another small software company, Management Technologies Inc, last week introduced a relatively novel piece of middleware called Copernicus, a message translation facility. New Paradigm claims the software, which is immediately available but implemented at only a few pilot sites, will automatically move data from any system to any system without a custom interface or changes to the systems involved. If it works as described, it will prove to be a much-needed piece of code, in these days of downsizing, upsizing and rightsizing, for salvaging data stored in legacy systems and moving it to modern environments. Copernicus itself currently runs under Windows 3.1 and HP-UX, and the start-up intends to have it on Sun Microsystems Inc, Data General Corp, Digital Equipment Corp OSF/1, RS/6000, VMS, OS/2 and Windows NT systems as well perhaps as mainframes via CICS. It says the exact source and target machines are irrelevant. One industry analyst compared the product to InfoPump, bought last year by Trinsic Corp, but said Copernicus was more modular, flexible, sophisticated and elegant though it’s bound to have trouble with some data stream somewhere. The analysts we contacted had been briefed on the software but none had seen it in action. Massachusetts Institute of Technology however is apparently interested in incorporating the technology in a Context Mediator prototype it is developing. Copernicus, which supports TCP/IP, Token Ring, DECNet, Async, LU 6.2, Ethernet, SDLC, X.25, 3270 SNA, NetWare and other protocols, is intended for software companies and systems integrators and is priced at from $25,000 to $100,000.
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