Product Watch: Red Hat Unveils Linux Clustering Solution. Linux NetworX Unveils ClusterWorX. Sun Announces Forte Developer 6 Products.

July 14, 2000

SHORT TAKES

RED HAT UNVEILS LINUX CLUSTERING SOLUTION

Research Triangle Park, N.C. — Red Hat, Inc., a leader in open source Internet infrastructure solutions, today announced the Red Hat High Availability Server 1.0, a specialized version of the award-winning Red Hat Linux 6.2 solution. Red Hat High Availability Server is an out-of-the-box clustering solution that delivers dynamic load balancing, improved fault tolerance and scalability of TCP/IP based applications. It lets users combine individual servers into a cluster, resulting in highly available access to critical network resources such as data, applications, network services, and more. If one server in the cluster fails, another will automatically take over its workload. The Red Hat High Availability Server is ideally suited to Web servers, ftp servers, mail gateways, firewalls, VPN gateways and other front-end IP-based applications where virtually uninterrupted service is required.

“The Red Hat High Availability Server is optimized specifically for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and corporate customers who want to dramatically reduce the time needed for implementation,” said Paul McNamara, vice president, products and platforms, Red Hat, Inc. “In today’s demanding Internet environment, server failure means lost revenue and diminished customer satisfaction. With this product, we are providing customers with a flexible, affordable, and highly available front-end Internet infrastructure solution. Because the Red Hat High Availability Server software can be installed on any off-the-shelf commodity hardware that supports Linux – it offers service providers and corporate IT departments an option for increased availability at a significant overall cost savings.” The product supports heterogeneous network environments, allowing individual members of the cluster to run Red Hat Linux or virtually any other OS including Solaris, and Windows NT. Because the Red Hat High Availability Server is an open source product, customers are free from expensive technology lock-in that often occurs with proprietary solutions. Visit http://www.redhat.com for more information.

LINUX NETWORX INTRODUCES CLUSTERWORX SOFTWARE

Sandy, UTAH — Linux NetworX, Inc., a leading provider of large-scale clustered computer solutions for Internet, industry and research fields, announced the release of its cluster management software, ClusterWorX version 1.2. ClusterWorX allows users of Linux NetworX cluster systems to control the cluster as one single system and provides remote monitoring and management capabilities. A computer cluster is a set of independent computers linked together through a high-speed network to form a unified and more powerful system. “This first version of ClusterWorX allows users to easily manage small to extremely large clusters, up to thousands of processors,” said Glen Lowry, president and CEO of Linux NetworX. “ClusterWorX makes the management of a clustered computer extremely user friendly.”

ClusterWorX provides users with an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) featuring both command line and HTML. Other management tools include remote access, disk cloning and serial access to nodes, including remote monitoring and resetting of individual nodes without effecting the uptime of the entire system. Disk cloning is a valuable feature for large cluster systems because it allows software and other updates to be installed on one node and automatically distributed to the entire system. Features are architecture-independent with support for any standard ATX or XATX motherboard. Lockheed Martin Corporation uses ClusterWorX to manage a recently purchased Linux NetworX cluster system. The cluster is used to perform complex calculations to assist in the analysis of U.S. Navy aircraft. “Temperature is critical for us and ClusterWorX makes monitoring and controlling this issue simple,” said Jeff Layton, senior engineer at Lockheed Martin. “Recently we had a reason to reset the entire system, which the software handled without any problem.” ClusterWorX software is distributed with Linux NetworX cluster systems, and is not yet offered individually as a separate software package.

SUN ANNOUNCES FORTE DEVELOPER 6 PRODUCTS

Palo Alto, CA — Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the release of the Forte Developer 6 suite of products, an integrated set of development and productivity tools designed for enterprise developers. Formerly known as Sun WorkShop tools, Forte Developer 6 products include the high-performance Forte C, C++ and Forte Fortran tools. Key enhancements in the Forte Developer 6 suite bring increased performance, scalability, programmer productivity and usability with Forte C, C++ and Forte Fortran 6. Created for the Solaris Operating Environment, Forte Developer 6 products provide companies with the tools to build and deploy high-performance, mission-critical applications from the desktop to the data center. Forte Developer 6 products provide full support for 64-bit applications, ANSI/ISO C++ support, support for OpenMP and improved performance. The Forte Developer 6 product suite is available immediately for download at http://www.sun.com/forte .

“With more than 100,000 copies of the Sun WorkShop products currently in use, Sun continues to deliver on its promise to provide high-performance enterprise application development tools,” said Mark Herring, Director of Marketing, Forte Tools, Sun Microsystems. “Meeting the needs of Solaris Operating Environment-based developers to take advantage of the latest 64-bit hardware and operating environments, the Forte Developer 6 product suite offers new levels of scalability and performance tools to go beyond their desktop to mainframe-class servers 64-bit technology and the power and portability of ANSI/ISO C++ support.” Forte Developer 6 Product Suite Features Forte Developer 6 products include Forte C++ Enterprise Edition 6, Forte C++ Personal Edition 6, Forte for High Performance Computing 6, Forte Fortran Desktop Edition and Forte Teamware 6 tools. Forte Developer 6 products feature Forte C, C++ and Forte Fortran tools for full support of 32- and 64-bit technology for faster code writing and calculations. High performance compilers also offer significant boosts in both compilation and execution speed over previous versions.

LINUX VERSION OF COMPUTING SOFTWARE AVAILABLE

San Francisco, CA — Popular Power, the first company to launch commercial distributed computing software, announced a preview release of its client software for Linux. Linux users can now download the Popular Power software, which has been harnessing the surplus processing power of Internet-connected PCs since the Windows client became available in April. Participants donate their unused computing resources to important research projects and will soon have the option of selling that time to companies with large-scale computing needs. Once downloaded from http://www.popularpower.com , the Popular Power software operates in the background of Linux machines. When a PC is idle or has spare processing power, the program gets a small piece of a large computing task from the Popular Power server and returns results when complete. Popular Power’s general-purpose commercial software differs from that of earlier, non-commercial efforts in its ability to execute different types of jobs, as opposed to single functions.

“Linux users fueled a number of early distributed computing efforts, helping the field advance to where it is today,” said Nelson Minar, chief technology officer and co-founder of Popular Power. “Strong feedback from our Web site, coupled with a petition on the popular community site freshmeat.net, made Linux the most requested new system for us to support.” The company plans to make an open source release of its client software available early next year, as well as source code for some of the non-profit applications running on the system. “Linux developers and users have long understood the power of distributing work across a network, and working together to solve problems,” commented Brian Behlendorf, chief technology officer of Collab.net and a Popular Power investor. “It’s great to see Popular Power now available to this community.” Popular Power’s first project, currently running on participants’ PCs, is a non-profit research application that uses computer modeling to help better understand and improve influenza vaccines. This application allows participants to donate their time to a meaningful research project, while demonstrating the viability of the system for biomedical applications. Other types of jobs well suited to the Popular Power platform include financial simulations, computer graphics rendering and distributed network applications.

SOYO ANNOUNCES MOTHERBOARDS FOR AMD AND DURON CPUS

Fremont, CA — SOYO, Inc. announced the SY-K7VTA and SY-K7VMM, a pair of new motherboards designed to maximize AMD’s single Socket-A CPUs, including the high-performance Thunderbird and price-performing Duron processors to 1GHz. SOYO’s new SY-K7VTA pushes the microprocessor and chipset envelope to a new level with its Socket A-based support for AMD’s Spitfire or Duron CPUs, VIA KT133 chipset and 200MHz system interface. The ATX form factor board supports all Socket-A based AMD CPU’s to 1GHz. The board includes five 32-bit busmastering PCI slots, one 16-bit ISA slot and one AGP slot with 4X graphics support. The board uses standard SDRAM DIMM sockets with support to 1.5GBs of RAM. The SY-K7VMM supports both Thunderbird and Duron CPUs, and features VIA’s KM133 chipset and 200MHz system interface. The board excels as a high-performance component for consumer-oriented and space-saving systems with its embedded AGP 4Xgraphics chipset and built-in AC97 CODEC audio subsystem. The SY-K7VMM features three PCI slots and one AGP 4X slot. The board also uses conventional SDRAM, with two DIMMs socket, which hold up to 1GB RAM.

The advanced features of both boards make them perfect for functions such as digital content creation, 3-D graphics processing, commercial 3-D modeling, CAD/workstation, image compression, speech recognition, and a variety of mainstream applications. “With our Symantec software bundle,which includes Norton Anti-Virus, Ghost and Virtual Drive, and SOYO’s jumper-free advanced configuration features our AMD Socket A boards are the highest performance, most flexible, and best-valued motherboards on the market,” according to Ming Chok, SOYO Technical Manager. Features present on both SOYO boards include: on-board Ultra I/O includes double stack back-panel connectors with four USB ports, one floppy disk port, two RS-232 serial ports, one parallel printer port, PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports, and an IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver. Visit http://www.SOYO.com for more information.

DEXTOP CDE MAKES BIG SPLASH IN LINUX INDUSTRY

Denver, COLO. — A complete, easy to use desktop interface has been released by Xi Graphics Inc. The new DeXtop graphical user interface (GUI) is based on the Open Group’s CDE or Common Desktop Environment, an environment that’s familiar to the computing industry, yet easy enough to use for those new to the Linux operating system. “This product will definitely appeal to the corporate market,” said Lee Roder, national sales manager at Xi Graphics. “It is the same Motif/CDE interface found on workstations from Compaq, IBM, HP and Sun, and offers complete interoperability with these platforms.” The package includes Open Motif 2.1.30, CDE and a complete development environment including all the components necessary to compile CDE/Motif applications. Linux desktop and laptop users will find that DeXtop is a powerful GUI for all Linux distributions. Although DeXtop may work with other X servers, it is highly recommended that it be used with the Xi Graphics Accelerated-X(TM) or 3D Accelerated-X Display Servers. (X servers contain the software that controls and drives computer graphics hardware; they are not part of the Linux operating system.)

CDE is a commercial GUI developed, maintained and licensed through a set of standards regulated by the OpenGroup ( http://www.opengroup.org ). Member organizations pooled their technologies to develop the Motif-based CDE window manager, which contains most of the elements of the CDE graphical user interface. Together, Motif and CDE represent a stable, consistent target for applications developers. “The OpenGroup maintains and controls the target GUI,” said Roder, “and this ensures the stability of the Motif/CDE target by adhering to strict standards.” Other DeXtop features include integrated support for utilities such as Netscape, Acrobat, Postscript viewer and an image viewer. Visit http://www.xig.com for more information.

MACMILLAN USA RELEASES LINUX-MANDRAKE 7.1 DELUXE

Indianapolis, IND. — Addressing the power Linux user and high-end market, Linux-Mandrake 7.1 Deluxe is tailored for the SoHo, small businesses, and professionals that are interested in rolling out Linux technologies with easy-to-use, friendly tools. For this segment of the market, Macmillan USA announces that Linux-Mandrake 7.1 Deluxe is now available in retail stores. Macmillan’s Linux-Mandrake 7.1 Deluxe offers applications that Complete users are familiar with, including StarOffice 5.2, the powerful and easy to use DrakX, one of the easiest and powerful graphical installations programs available. As always with Macmillan’s Linux products, free 24-hour technical support is provided via internet and fax for installation issues.

In addition to the most up-to-date core functionality, cutting-edge Xfree 4.0 and customized KDE desktop, Linux-Mandrake Deluxe 7.1 includes a multitude of advanced features for the savvy Linux user, including an enhanced Apache web server, a highly customized version of Webmin (a web-based interface for system administration), and more than 1,700 Linux applications, utilities, and tools (including Sun Java JDK 2 Standard Edition). Visit http://www.macmillanusa.com for more information.

SST ENTERS EMBEDDED MASS STORAGE MARKET

Boston, MASS. — SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.) announced that it has entered the embedded mass data storage market with the introduction of a flash memory-based ATA-Disk Chip (ADC) product family. Utilizing the company’s proprietary SuperFlash technology for the ATA controller, SST’s ADC is the industry’s first ATA/IDE protocol-compatible solid-state mass data storage product housed in a multi-chip packaged device. SST’s ADC uses a standard ATA/IDE protocol and can be used as a replacement for conventional IDE hard disk drives. The new product family is ideal for embedded mass data storage applications that require low-power and high-performance yet at the same time, smaller and more reliable mass data storage. These applications include set-top boxes; thin client systems; network computers; Internet appliances; PDAs, cellular phones, MP3 players; digital cameras and other digital handheld devices.

SST’s ADC family provides complete IDE hard disk drive functionality and compatibility in a single device. The ADC has built-in microcontroller and file management firmware that supports the ATA standard interface. Because SST’s ADC supports the standard ATA-protocol, the host system does not require additional or proprietary software, such as Flash File System (FFS) or Memory Technology Driver (MTD) software to support the ADC. The ATA driver is a standard part of all major operating systems such as Windows 95/98/2000/NT/CE, MAC, Linux, UNIX, etc., and no additional BIOS or OS modification is necessary. “The announcement of our ADC family underscores SST’s commitment to provide our customers with nonvolatile memory solutions that enable them to achieve fast time-to-market and take advantage of emerging market applications,” said Bing Yeh, president and CEO of SST. “We believe the ubiquity of wireless data transfer to be enabled by the Bluetooth technology in the future may constrain the growth of removable flash card products. Our entry into the embedded mass data storage market allows SST to target a potentially multi-billion dollar digital electronics market that will benefit greatly from a semiconductor equivalent to a hard disk drive.” Visit http://www.ssti.com for more information.

QUANTUM|ATL ANNOUNCES PRISM LP130

Irvine, CA — Quantum|ATL, an element of Quantum’s DLT and Storage Systems Group and a leading supplier of intelligent DLTtape automation for networked computers, announced the Prism LP130, a new embedded Storage Consolidation Option for P3000 and P6000 series libraries that makes possible the partitioning of the library into as many as 16 virtual libraries. Each virtual library can be controlled by a different kind of host platform (such as UNIX, Windows NT/2000 or a legacy system), and/or a different storage management application (such as VERITAS NetBackup and Legato NetWorker). The P3000 and P6000 with LP130 are intelligent tape libraries that provide for consolidated data protection and reduced storage management costs for multiple, heterogeneous servers on a network. As part of ATL’s Prism Storage Options, Storage Consolidation is a software feature that runs on the P3000 or P6000 Prism Management Card (MC100).

“A majority of those responsible for managing enterprise-scale network systems are seeking to consolidate their data storage resources to make them more manageable and reduce costs,” said Neal Waddington, chief operating officer of ATL. “Such consolidation is essential to gaining more control over their rapidly growing and absolutely critical storage devices in heterogeneous networks.” One of the best ways to consolidate secondary storage, according to Waddington, is to deploy the P3000 or P6000 enterprise-class tape library from ATL with the Prism LP130 option. The embedded library partitioning for both SCSI and Fibre Channel-based libraries provides a new level of manageability for the P3000 and P6000. “As storage capacities have increased by 100 percent and more per year in most enterprises, the cost of managing storage is one of the most significant problems faced by IT managers today,” said Waddington. “The Prism LP130 Storage Consolidation Option helps control total cost of ownership because fewer libraries are needed and management costs per gigabyte are significantly reduced. As organizational needs change, the numbers and sizes of virtual libraries are easily modified to accommodate these changes.” Visit http://www.atlp.com for more information.

CAMINOSOFT LAUNCHES NEW VERSION OF HIGHWAY SERVER

Westlake Village, CA — CaminoSoft Corp. launched a new version of its popular hierarchical data storage management system, Highway Server, to provide automated network storage access management system for Novell NetWare 5.x operating system platform. “The launch of this new Highway Server version represents another key milestone achievement in our continuing development partnership with Novell and in CaminoSoft’s continuing strategy to invest in the development of advanced data storage solutions,” said Walter Kornbluh, president and chief executive officer.

“With Novell’s Netware products being used in more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies and installed in nearly 4 million servers worldwide, the introduction of this newest version of Highway Server – which we believe is the only automated data storage solution for the Novell Netware 5.x platform – will assist CaminoSoft in further accelerating market penetration of our products and services.” The latest version of Highway Server provides advanced data storage management capabilities, enabling automated network access to archived files any time from any station.

M-SYSTEMS’ DISKONCHIP RECEIVES INDUSTRY SUPPORT

Boston, MASS. — M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. Monday announced that leading Linux operating system developers are providing support for DiskOnChip in existing and upcoming Linux distributions. Lineo, a leading developer of embedded Linux systems software, is currently integrating support for DiskOnChip into Embedix, its embedded Linux software line. Infomatec AG has also integrated DiskOnChip into its Java network technology. Linux-based products supporting DiskOnChip are now shipping in high volume in a wide range of applications including set-top boxes, Internet infrastructure, networking and embedded devices. With the huge increase in demand for Linux in these markets, the addition of Lineo to the existing support providers will offer additional solutions to the design community. Linux, an open source Unix-compatible operating system that is scalable down to a size as low as 1MB, is suited for use with M-Systems’ DiskOnChip products that range in capacity from 8 to 288MB. Within its small footprint and solid-state nature, DiskOnChip provides ample capacity for the operating system, applications and data files needed in most Linux-based devices. DiskOnChip can also serve as a hard disk disaster recovery device in Linux-based server and Internet infrastructure applications.

In a recent poll conducted by LinuxDevices.Com, DiskOnChip was selected as the storage medium of choice for embedded, real-time and applied computing applications running Linux. The survey yielded the following results when asked, “What will the operating software load from?” 33 percent of respondents chose DiskOnChip. 26 percent chose ordinary EPROM/ROM/Flash. 11 percent chose conventional IDE hard disk.

TERRA SOFT TO DEMONSTRATE BLACK LAB CLUSTER

Loveland, COLO. — Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., a leading developer of Linux solutions for PowerPC microprocessors, will demonstrate a rack-mounted, 8-node, Apple G4 cluster running Black Lab Linux with Myricom’s high-performance networking fabric. In the general vicinity of the Apple Science & Technology pavillion, MacWorld attendees will find an iBook running Black Lab Linux and displaying computation intensive images generated on the 8-node supercomputer – with only AirPort to connect the iBook to the cluster. “We first introduced Black Lab Linux to MacWorld NY attendees in 1999 with three G3 systems. Following the success of the 4-node system demonstrated throughout the Apple Science & Technology Roadshow, this is the first publicly showcased 8-node, 500 MHz G4 cluster,” states Kai Staats, CEO, Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.

Black Lab Linux offers the ability to connect a half dozen to over 1,000 Apple G4s in parallel. And with Myricom’s “Myrinet” networking fabric, which consists of a PCI card, cables, and custom switches, these supercomputing systems enjoy a low latency, 160 MB (not Mb) per second dedicated throughput per channel. Marathon Computer will provide the rack-mount frame and accessories to mount the 8-node system. With a recent surge in user base, Terra Soft has gained Black Lab Linux customers General Dynamics, MIT, Smithsonian, NASA, JPL, Northrop Grumman, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore Labs to name a few. The recent support of AirPort offers increased flexibility for system admins to monitor their serial and parallel systems outside of the traditional server environment. Troy Benjegerdes, lead developer of Black Lab Linux, states, “For the first time in three MacWorlds, I will be able to run demos AND visit other booths at the same time.” For more information, please visit http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com and http://www.blacklablinux.com .

EMC EXTENDS HP METRO CLUSTER FAILOVER CAPABILITIES

Hopkinton, MASS. — EMC Corporation, a world leader in information storage, announced it has extended the automatic failover capabilities of EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems with Hewlett-Packard’s HP MetroCluster software. The award-winning high availability solution now supports automatic remote failover of multiple Symmetrix systems in an HP environment, providing customers with the highest levels of scalability for their mission-critical applications. HP MetroCluster with EMC SRDF integrates EMC’s industry-leading Symmetrix Remote Data Facility software, which provides remote failover of EMC Enterprise Storage systems, with HP’s MC/ServiceGuard high availability clustering software, which reduces downtime by protecting against hardware and software failures. The solution enables automatic failover of clustered HP server environments, applications and their EMC Enterprise Storage at distances up to 50 kilometers, providing customers with a disaster tolerant data center solution. The ability to support multiple Symmetrix systems enhances this technology to allow customers to scale their information storage environments as needed, while still providing automatic failover of all information.

Ms. Christine Puchegger, Manager of SAP/R3 Technical Support at Telekom Austria, which has implemented HP MetroCluster with SRDF to support its SAP environment, said, “HP MetroCluster with SRDF supports our most mission-critical application and ensures that it will be available 7×24. As our business requirements have grown, we have deployed several Symmetrix systems to support our growing volumes of data. With this new capability, the multiple Symmetrix systems, the servers and the applications are all capable of remote failover, which provides Telekom Austria with the levels of availability needed to give our customers the levels of service they require.” Mark Hudson, Senior Director for HP’s Business Critical Computing Unit, said, “HP’s MetroCluster with SRDF is providing customers with a high level of business continuance capabilities. The extension of this technology to support multiple Symmetrix systems is a testament to the efforts between HP and EMC to provide customers with a choice of storage solutions for HP servers that meet their uptime/disaster recovery requirements.” Visit http://www.EMC.com for more information.

TANTIA LAUNCHES MARKETING AND SALES EFFORTS

Boulder, COLO. — Following the April 10 launch of Tantia Technologies as a wholly owned subsidiary of BETA Systems Software AG, the company announced that its marketing and sales efforts will leverage the strengths of its parent company to bring successful mainframe technology to the open-systems market. Tantia will capitalize on the technology it has inherited from HARBOR Systems, which provides completely integrated, enterprise-wide storage-management solutions to heterogeneous IT structures. Its sales and marketing efforts will benefit from the experience gained with BETA Systems’ systems-management solutions.

“As we target SAN opportunities in the mainframe, open systems and web-storage markets with robust high-availability solutions, we are fortunate to have the legacy of providing the world’s first true SAN implementations,” said Victor Walker, president and CEO of Tantia Technologies. “As a new organization, we are already one of the largest companies to integrate OS/390 technology with open systems to share data between all strategic platforms and to store data in tried, tested and proven OS/390 repositories. That gives us a big advantage in serving our primary target markets of co-located system 390, NT and UNIX servers.” Walker pointed out that approximately 30 percent of North America’s Fortune 1000 companies and more than 60 percent of Europe’s largest companies currently use one or more of BETA Systems’ enterprise productivity-management applications or Tantia’s storage-management products.

MERCURY SHIPS “G4”-BASED PRODUCTS

Chelmsford, MASS. — Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. reports that production of its RACE++ systems based on the Motorola PowerPC 7400 processor is shipping according to plan. During the quarter ended June 30, 2000, Mercury moved to initial volume production of its embedded, real-time digital signal and image processing systems containing the new microprocessor. The leading-edge PowerPC 7400 microprocessor with AltiVec technology, known widely as the “G4,” is designed into many of Mercury’s new products that are used for applications such as medical imaging, defense electronics, digital television and wireless communications. “Last year we began shipping evaluation and development units of our new systems incorporating the G4 microprocessor, and in January we began shipments of early access systems,” said Robert Perry, vice president of manufacturing for Mercury Computer Systems. “These early adopters provided valuable feedback on performance and system requirements. Our newest products were placed into production status in June and we have shipped in excess of 500 G4 processors. The market acceptance of our G4-based products has created a healthy backlog of orders.”

The G4 processor is currently used in Mercury’s RACE++ VME systems and has been designed into both its MultiPort and PCI-based product lines. These systems promise to open up new application market opportunities in areas that require the processing of vast amounts of data in real time. Mercury Computer Systems is a leading independent producer of high-performance embedded, real-time digital signal and image processing computer systems that transform sensor data to information for analysis and interpretation. Mercury’s products play a critical role in a wide range of defense electronics and medical imaging applications. In air-, sea-, and land-based military platforms, these systems process real-time radar, sonar, and signals intelligence data. Mercury’s systems are also used in state-of-the-art medical diagnostic devices, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), and the rapidly growing field of digital X-ray. Visit http://www.mc.com for more information.

DATARAM UNVEILS MEMORY FOR WORKSTATIONS

Princeton, N.J. — Dataram Corporation, a leading provider of gigabyte-class memory for high-performance network servers, announces immediate availability of memory products for Silicon Graphics 230 and 330 workstations. Marrying state-of-the-art Intel architecture with Dataram memory and SGI visualization subsystems, this collective effort sets a new standard for graphics performance on Windows and Linux operating systems. Rejuvenating its strategy in the windows-based workstation market, SGI’s 230 and 330 newest models aim to leverage industry-standard, off-the-shelf components with an improved focus on Linux. The new workstations feature Intel Pentium III 667, 733, or 800MHz processors. Model 230 is a single processor-based system while the Model 330 can support up to two. In addition, both the 230 and 330 support a minimum of 128MB to a maximum of 1.5GB of memory using 133MHz ECC SDRAM DIMMs.

“Dataram remains committed to SGI’s Intel-based workstation marketplace and is pleased to offer these new products for the 230 and 330 workstations”, states Jeff Goldenbaum, Dataram’s product manager. “Adding our memory is a perfect way to extend the capacity and performance of these new systems.” SGI’s 230 and 330 family is the company’s first workstation offering for Linux users, and the industry’s first workstation family designed from the ground-up to accelerate OpenGL 3D graphics in hardware on the Linux operating system, providing an ideal platform for graphics software developers and users. Visit http://www.dataram.com for more information.

MICROSOFT PUBLISHES SPECIFICATIONS FOR WEB SERVICES

Orlando, FLA. — Microsoft Corp. has published preliminary versions of two core specifications for creating and using Web services, adding to the SOAP group of Extensible Markup Language (XML) interoperability technologies. The two specifications, published on the MSDN developer program Web site ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/ ), are the SOAP Contract Language (SCL), which describes the capabilities of Web services, and SOAP Discovery, which provides rules for locating Web services. Together, these additions strengthen the interoperability capabilities defined in the SOAP specification and provide the standards-based foundation underlying the entire Microsoft .NET Platform. “These two additions to the SOAP technologies enhance developers’ ability to build a Web services infrastructure,” said Andrew Layman, Web services architect at Microsoft. “By publishing these specifications openly, Microsoft is demonstrating a continuing commitment to working with the development community to make Web services ubiquitous.”

SOAP is an open standards-based interoperability protocol that uses XML to provide a common messaging format to link together applications and services anywhere on the Internet. Microsoft and industry partners submitted SOAP to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body earlier this year. The new SCL specification builds on SOAP to provide a mechanism to help developers describe the features of a Web service using XML. Developers will be able to use SCL to provide other developers and development tools with a description of the messages a Web service is expecting to send and receive. For example, they will be able to describe, in a standard way, that a stock quote Web service understands how to process messages that contain stock ticker symbols and return messages that contain the current stock price. The SOAP Discovery specification provides a set of rules for locating the SCL description of a Web service automatically; in other words, it enables the SCL description to be automatically discovered. For example, if a developer wanted to build the stock quote Web service into his application, a tool such as Visual Studio.NET would follow the rules defined in the SOAP Discovery specification to do so automatically.

GLUECODE UNVEILS PLANS FOR INTERNET SOLUTION

Santa Monica, CA. — GlueCode ( http://www.gluecode.com ), a software developer and early leader in platform orchestration, unveiled its plans to develop an Internet infrastructure solution by early fall that enables companies to merge third-party software applications in an open platform environment. GlueCode’s initial product will serve businesses that need to build an Internet infrastructure under aggressive deadlines by providing them an open standards framework, a core applications platform, and plug-in component applications that allow for maximum flexibility and scalability.

GlueCode’s architecture is based on the open systems standards of J2EE and XML, which allow third-party software to be easily plugged into a platform using standard open systems interfaces. According to company Chief Executive Officer Winston Damarillo, GlueCode’s business model is designed specifically for industry collaboration among companies undertaking e-business integration projects. “Prior to GlueCode, no single source tied together third-party applications using a standards based approach. Consequently, the average enterprise uses 49 different software applications and spends 60 to 80% of their time and budget trying to integrate them. Our objective is to provide a flexible solution that can be used by Internet professional service providers on their integration projects,” said Damarillo. Visit http://www.gluecode.com for more information.

NCR ANNOUNCES SERVICES FOR RED HAT LINUX

Dayton, OHIO — NCR Corporation announced a new service focused on software support, management, and customization of the Red Hat Linux operating system. Businesses running applications on Red Hat Linux now have access to high availability support services from NCR’s Worldwide Customer Services group. NCR now has over 20 years of support experience with the Unix and Windows operating systems, and supports multiple hardware vendor platforms. This new offer extends NCR’s operating system support capabilities to include Red Hat Linux along with NCR MP-RAS, Sun Solaris, SCO, Windows NT, and Windows 2000.

“Although Linux is a product that reverses standard practices in software development, many elements of the service business are just the same when it comes to Linux software support,” said Tony Adams, senior analyst at Gartner in April 2000. “NCR is uniquely qualified to provide support for businesses with multiple operating systems in their enterprise,” said Dave Henderson, Vice President of Support Services at NCR. “We provide one stop shopping. Our Unix support and customer satisfaction is world class. We are now taking the same processes and experience and applying them to Linux.” Support is available for the English-language version of Red Hat Linux on Intel-based platforms, and can be accessed directly through NCR’s Support Site at http://www.ncrsupport.com .

IBM AND DASSAULT INTRODUCE CATIA V5R4

Paris, FRANCE — IBM and Dassault Systemes announced the general availability of CATIA Version 5 Release 4 (V5R4) for Windows and UNIX, effective July 14, 2000. This latest version of the world’s leading CAD/CAM/CAE software enables small, medium and large companies to integrate Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) in their strategic business processes. Delivered only eight months after CATIA V5R3, Release 4 provides users with twice as many products and twice as many capabilities as all previously announced CATIA products. CATIA V5R4 offers a wide range of integrated e-business solutions, including 12 new products and 39 enhanced ones across CATIA platforms P1 and P2.

CATIA V5R4 helps companies of all sizes and in all industries respond faster to their customers’ changing needs and improve time to market. For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), CATIA V5R4 offers 2D and 3D design capabilities, native Windows features and a user interface that is easy-to-use, easy-to-learn and friendly for even the most novice designers. Its expanded product functions provide full process coverage, from product design and detailing, through integrated analysis, to manufacturing. Plus, CATIA V5R4 includes enhancements that give SMEs leading-edge capabilities and enable PLM integration. For large businesses, in addition to these capabilities, V5R4 represents a set of flexible, integrated solutions supporting e-business throughout the digital enterprise. “As we are a small design department, it was important for us to choose a CAD system where we can add functionality as our needs grow. We chose CATIA Version 5 for this reason and because it will lead to a shorter development cycle for us. With its ease-of-use and excellent visualization capabilities, we use CATIA as a tool to work more closely with our customers during the development phase,” said Jan Zimmermann, technical manager, Wodschow & Co., Denmark. Information is available at http://www.ibm.com and http://www.dsweb.com .

TSA RELEASES HOOPS 3D APPLICATION FRAMEWORK 5.0

Alameda, CA — Tech Soft America (TSA), providers of core component technology to over 100 commercial CAD/CAM/CAE developers, announces the immediate availability of the HOOPS 3D Application Framework (HOOPS/3dAF) version 5.0, with significant major enhancements and extensions, including the entirely new HOOPS Internet Tools module. The HOOPS 3D Application Framework provides a flexible architectural foundation, based on a suite of modular application components, that enables the rapid development of design, visualization, and engineering applications for Windows, Unix, Linux and the Web. The backbone of the 3D Application Framework, HOOPS/3dGS, is the core graphics component in shipping applications from companies such as Parametric Technology Corp. (PTC), SDRC, Mechanical Dynamics, MicroCADAM, Tecnomatix, Fluent, Tecoplan, ITI, Pam Systems, Ansys/Centric, Minitab, and over 150 other organizations worldwide.

“Many of today’s leading CAD/CAM/CAE developers are looking to build next-generation web-centric applications for increased collaboration. We are pleased HOOPS 5.0 technology is the engine driving the development of this new class of software,” stated Yanick Fluhmann, Director of European Business Development for Tech Soft. Added Gavin Bridgeman, Director of Consulting Engineering for TSA, “HOOPS 5.0 is another outstanding example of how TSA serves as a virtual extension to our customers’ development groups. Each of the many enhancements and extensions in 5.0, including the new Internet Tools, were directly driven by the needs of our customers’ products. HOOPS 5.0 furthers our reputation as a trusted development partner providing core component technology and expertise to commercial software developers.” Visit http://www.hoops3d.com for more information.

SUN OPENS CENTER IN BANGALORE, INDIA

New Delhi, INDIA — Sun Microsystems, a global leader in Internet technology, has established its state-of-the-art industrial and allied facility in Bangalore. The center houses the entire Sun India office, which includes the India Engineering center (IEC), enterprise services, Sun education services, and a demo center. Speaking at the inauguration of the all-inclusive complex, Lionel Lim, vice president and managing director, South-Asia, Sun Microsystems Pvt. Ltd., said Sun continues to capture market share as it “sets the agenda for the dot com era.”

The IEC was set up with the aim of providing technologies and services to the still evolving Internet economy. Employees at the IEC are an extension of Sun’s US software engineering group. Some of the current IEC projects include: the mission critical Solaris operating environment; the entire Sunset Management product and iPlanet released BillerExpert 4.0; managing WebDist and Sunscreen Firewall products; enterprise service (ES) knowledge engineering, and ES IT core system maintenance. Several other Sun business units such as Sun Management Centre (SunMC), Desktop OS Development, and High Performance Computing, will start their projects soon at the IEC. Sun has strong partnerships with leading Indian corporations such as Wipro, Tata Infotech, CMC, Tech Pacific, Accell ICIM, and Apara, with the intention of delivering hardware products and services. With a presence in more than 100 locations across the country, Sun and its partners constitute a 400-strong team that supports an installed base of more than 15,000 systems. Some of Sun’s customers in India include Texas Instruments, Veritas, Lucent Technologies, ICICI, VSNL, Silicon Automation Systems, Reliance Industries, IIT (Delhi, Kanpur and Kharagpur), Motorola, and Oracle.

QUANTUM/ATL ANNOUNCES P2000 TAPE LIBRARY

Irvine, CA — Quantum/ATL, an element of Quantum’s DLT and Storage Systems Group and leading supplier of intelligent DLTtape automation for networked computers, announced its P2000 automated tape library. The P2000 is a new mid-range enterprise-class library designed for companies whose data is growing at Internet speed. With high-availability, connectivity and scalability options unmatched in the industry, the P2000 meets the requirements of data-intensive operations demanded by e-business, ISPs, ASPs and dot.com companies. “The flexibility of the SAN-ready P2000 from ATL is what makes it the right choice for our customers as they transition to an advanced storage management system,” said Chris Johnson, vice president of sales and marketing for Dynamic Solutions International (DSI). “Switched fabric SANs will drastically change the complexion of enterprise storage architectures. DSI recognizes that storage requirements will evolve from platform-centric into an enterprise-wide shared service system. During this transition, DSI must enable users to move aggressively to a strategic enterprise storage architecture.”

“The P2000’s high-availability, scalability, performance, capacity, upgradeability and ease of operation make it a superior solution in enterprise tape automation,” said Neal Waddington, chief operating officer of ATL. “ATL’s P2000 is configurable to meet the growing client/server storage needs of today and the future.” Utilizing the Prism Storage Architecture, the P2000 includes the benefits of Prism Storage Options that provide Fibre Channel attachment, library management, library partitioning, and expansive scalability. Quantum/ATL is a leader in the design, manufacture and service of automated tape libraries used to manage, store and transfer data in enterprise networked computing environments. Visit http://www.atlp.com for more information.

MAXTOR SETS RECORD IN NAS DENSITY

Milpitas, CA — Maxtor Corp. announced a record breaking 240 GB in just 1.75-inches of rack mount space for their newest MaxAttach NAS 4000 system. The MaxAttach NAS 4000 rack mount storage system installs and configures in less than 10 minutes with no network downtime. Available immediately with a recommended retail price of GBP2,900 the MaxAttach NAS 4000 provides network addressable storage at an outstanding GBP11 per gigabyte with nearly one terabyte (TB) in seven inches of rack height. At the same time, Maxtor announced an enhanced MaxAttach NAS 3000 desktop storage system with an increased capacity of 120 GB. This newest member of the desktop NAS product line now supports Linux/UNIX clients and offers enhanced management software. With a recommended retail price of GBP1,295 the MaxAttach NAS 3000 also offers network addressable storage at an outstanding GBP11 per gigabyte.

“Maxtor’s industry leading storage density and cost advantage comes from our unique business model, which couples both NAS and hard disk drive design,” said Mike Cannon, Maxtor’s president and CEO. “Our record breaking MaxAttach NAS storage is important to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Application Service Providers (ASPs) and other mid-range enterprise customers who are charged indirectly or directly for rack mount space.” “Storage capacity is a big issue for ISPs,” said Keith Chiles, director of systems engineering at InReach Internet. “We believe our storage needs are going to increase by 400 percent in the next year. We are going to be using the latest line of MaxAttach NAS storage to quickly and easily support much of this explosion in growth.”

SHUGART TECHNOLOGY ENTERS STORAGE NETWORK TESTING

Irvine, CA — Shugart Technology, Inc. (STI), incorporated in August 1998, announced plans to enter the Storage Network testing market. Chairman Al Shugart reported that STI will soon ship the first in a family of software storage test products and is currently developing a series of hardware-based follow-on product offerings. Both families of software and hardware offerings are designed to simplify the dynamic and complex testing challenges facing the rapidly growing Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and RAID storage subsystems markets. STI’s initial test products will address the market needs for design verification testing and monitoring of disk, tape, CD-ROM and automated data storage library devices. The products are expandable and scalable, communicate across Fibre Channel or SCSI interfaces, and are compatible with all popular operating systems, including Windows NT, Linux, Solaris and Unix.

“The full potential of network storage systems is not being realized because the test equipment is too complicated, it takes too long to develop custom tests for various interface protocols, there is very little automation, and the tests aren’t portable across operating systems,” said Rick Brechtlein, President and CEO of STI. “On top of all that, these tests need to be accomplished in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. Our approach automates the testing process, which means it becomes a simple matter for a field service technician to run custom tests and get the results quickly.” In addition to Brechtlein, STI’s management team includes Kevin Kelly, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer; Ed Barnes, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering; and Jim Fainer, Vice President of Customer Advocacy. Major shareholders of STI include Brechtlein, Kelly, and the startup resource company, Al Shugart International (ASI). Initial funding has been supplied by Shugart Venture Fund I and Shugart Venture Fund 2. Brechtlein, Kelly and ASI’s Executive Vice President Jon van Bronkhorst have joined Al Shugart on STI’s Board of Directors.

TIMESYS OFFERS PATH FOR STRANDED PSOS USERS

Pittsburgh, PA. — TimeSys Corp., a leading provider of complete embedded real-time solutions, Wednesday announced the immediate availability of a pSOS Abstraction Layer (PAL) on top of its TimeSys Linux/RT distribution. The abstraction layer enables pSOS customers to run their existing pSOS applications without modification directly on top of TimeSys Linux/RT operating system. The pSOS user base is being forced to migrate to a new platform, due to the acquisition of Integrated Systems (ISI) by Wind River Systems.

“TimeSys Linux/RT is the logical choice for stranded pSOS users. It is important as pSOS customers choose a replacement operating system to ensure their systems will continue to meet their long-term requirements and technical needs,” said Dr. Raj Rajkumar, co-founder and chairman of TimeSys. “TimeSys Linux/RT, which adds all the necessary mission-critical features of a true embedded real-time operating system into Linux, ensures that the timing constraints of pSOS applications will continue to meet expectations.” The value proposition of a Linux-based embedded real-time OS solution over a proprietary RTOS is significant. TimeSys Linux/RT is royalty-free, open source, standards based, and can utilize millions of applications and device drivers “out-of-the-box.” Visit http://www.timesys.com for more information.

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