The Online REPORTER
WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
September 30 - October 4th Issue No 18
IBM GETS JAVA UP AND RUNNING ON MVS MAINFRAMES
IBM wheeled out its promised port of the Java Virtual Machine for its MVS mainframe line at London's Java Expo Show last week demonstrating a Java applet it had pulled straight from the Net.
Java for OS/390, said IBM software strategy consultant Mark Cathcart, fits well with the Internet Server for OS/390, part of the Internet bundle for MVS promised back in February and now available. It means that Internet-enabled applications, CGI programs, and extensions of and access to existing applications and databases, can all be run or be integrated with the mainframe.
Large customers interested in hosting IBM's new Network Computers with a mainframe, or writing thin-client applications, might also be interested. On the System 390, the Java Virtual Machine is part of OpenEdition, which has recently been certified X/Open 95-compliant: at least MVS/ESA 5.2.2 is required. It was ported from the AIX version, along with all the standard classes. Java's AWT windowing toolkit is implemented in X Windows.
Because the S/390 is used to handling packed decimal, IBM had to rework the IEEE floating point portions of the Java VM, and also had to work on ASCII-to-EBCDIC extended binary code character sets. A beta test program is beginning now, with a free beta available for download by the end of this month.
Next year, the Java Virtual Machine will be integrated into the OS/390 operating system. Future plans - for the not too distant future, says IBM - include access to CICS transaction processing systems and DB2 and IMS databases, via Java classes yet to be written, and an implementation of Sun's JDBC database connectivity specification for the mainframe. All could emerge before the year is out. As for Java on other proprietary IBM platforms, OS/400 remains "a committed plan", while a VM/ESA version is a somewhat more distant "future plan".
No-one was making any comment as to when we might see bits of MVS actually being re-written in Java, a la OS/2. http//:ncc.hursley.ibm.com
EC SET TO CLOSE 'TAX LOOPHOLE' - WILL HIT US SERVICE PROVIDERS
Bad news for US online service and network providers trying to make in-roads in Europe. Good news for their native European competitors. According to the UK Internet Service Providers Association, the European Commission is set to close a tax loop-hole which has benefitted non-European operators. Under existing legislation Value Added Tax is levied depending on where the service operator is based. So the likes of Compuserve and America Online argue that they are actually based in the US and gain an effective price advantage of at least 15% over their European rivals.
Not surprisingly - given the fiercely competitive ISP market - the Europeans griped to the Commission. The result, according to ISPA is a fast-tracked piece of legislation which will implement a derogation to Article seven of the the Sixth VAT Directive. "The indications are that there is no-one against it" said Nicholas Lansman of the ISPA Secretariat. ISPA quotes an un-named Commission spokesperson as saying that the new legislation would be in place "by the end of the year" assuming that none of the member states agree. It is understood that the proposal has largely been the work of DG XXI; the section of the Commission which deals with Community-wide taxation. DGXIII, which handles telecommunications and DG IV; competition policy, are also thought to have chipped in. As we went to press the Eurocrats had left for the evening and were not available for immediate comment.
NETSCAPE'S SANDBOX
With the release of Navigator 4.0 Netscape Communications is planning to introduce a new Java security model, extending applets' ability to carry out operations such as reading and writing arbitrary files to a disk. Applets will also have digital signatures attached and users will be able to set up policies on an applet-by-applet basis. However though the new 'SetScope' API will present applet developers with enhanced flexibility and power, it may also present them with a quandary. JavaSoft itself hopes to have its much broader Java Security Architecture in place during the first half of next year. Though the two groups talk regularly, Netscape group security product manager Eric Greenberg said last week that the company would not slow down the introduction of its technology to wait for the JavaSoft standard. Meanwhile JavaSoft Java Security Architect Li Gong said that though his new architecture "will enable applications and applets do things similar to 'SetScope'... it is unlikely that this call 'SetScope' will be provided as is, as part of the standard API. The good news is that "as far as digital signatures go, we are completely compatible with Netscape", says Marianne Mueller, JavaSoft security expert. "We are working closely with them and all other Java licensees in terms of sharing early implementations", she adds.
The Netscape plan essentially allows users to define their own "sandbox" - the restricted area in which applets are allowed to play. The current standard Java applet sandbox imposes severe restrictions on what an applet may, and may not, do. The result is secure, but suffers in terms of power when compared to, say, ActiveX components.
Netscape will introduce tools that will let applet developers sign their applets and will also automatically catalogue the resources
NETSCAPE TO GIVE APPLETS MORE CLOUT - AHEAD OF STANDARDS
Sister publication ClieNT Server News has it on good authority that Microsoft has decided on the Open Group as its preferred home for ActiveX. If everything goes to plan, the technology is likely to be put on a fast-track, taking say, around 12 weeks to emerge as a standard. One possible point of friction is that the Open Group previously signed a deal with the Object Management Group, under which the latter takes sole charge of any object technologies.
MURDOCH AND BT TEAM ON INTERNET AND CONTENT
Last week Rupert Murdoch gave notice that he means business in the online market when News International Plc formally announced the expected Internet alliance with British Telecommunications Plc .
In the UK, the two plan to launch an Internet service called Springboard, designed for the mass consumer market, in January. The aim is to provide fast and easy access to content drawn from major News International and News Corp titles such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World. "Unlike current services, which appeal only to limited sectors of the community, Springboard will have the depth of material and ease of use to appeal to a wide range of households," reckons British Telecom multimedia services director Rupert Gavin. "We will be able to offer teenagers help with their homework as well as news on their favourite football team (Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting Plc currently has exclusive TV rights to the English soccer Premier League), while providing parents with the latest in holidays, banking or local events," he added. The promise is "unique high-quality content," plus electronic mail, on-line chat, interactive debates and facilities for users to create their own Web pages.
Springboard will work with third parties to provide a broad spectrum of services including up-to-the-minute local and national news, weather, sport, events, listings and ticketing, as well as games, retailing and a definitive reference library, the partners claim. Evidently aimed at hoi poloi at least as much as the cognoscenti the service will likely stand or fall by how cheaply it provides Internet access. Rupert Murdoch does not look like having things all his own way in Germany: Bertelsmann AG says monopoly watchdogs in Brussels and Berlin told it they would block his proposed purchase of 25% of German pay-television broadcaster Premiere, agreed as part of Murdoch's alliance with Leo Kirch.
UNWIRED PLANET'S BROWSER TO GO INTO BELL'S CELLPHONE
Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile has licensed Internet start-up, Unwired Planet's, UP.Link browser software for the Cellscape Internet-enabled phone it plans to start selling by year's end.
Similar to AT&T's PocketNet Phone, which also uses UP.Link, Bell Atlantic's offering will allow users to talk, send email and access special Internet information services, using a menu-based interface. There is no keypad with the product, so sending messages and browsing the Web will likely be slow one-letter-at-a-time affairs. Basic service packages are expected to cost around $30, including a usage allowance.
New York's Walsh Messenger Service Inc has signed up as the first Cellscape service customer. Its 150 messengers will be trading in their pagers for the phones starting next month.
UP.Link software is based on Unwired Planet's Handheld Device Markup Language, which is sent via Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) services.
The company, which recently snatched Oracle Network Computer's Andy Laurson to be its Vice President of Engineering, is lining up deals with Ameritech, Comcast Cellular Communications, and GTE Mobilnet.
Interoperability agreements are expected to be in place soon, so that the device will work seamlessly across CDPD networks in 70 US markets by 1997.
SURPRISE! MCNEALY STILL BULLISH
Sun Microsystems Inc's chief executive Scott McNealy doesn't know how the company will make a Network Computer to sell for the fabled $500, but says purchase price is irrelevant because reduced cost of ownership is the key. In light-hearted mood in London last week McNealy, referring to Oracle Corp chief Larry Ellison's predictions of the $500 machine, said "when you're in the software business it is easy to price hardware. I might go round telling people that Java Office software will be free" he quipped. The company is still committed to have 2,500 Sun employees using NCs by June next year, and there are bonuses riding on it, although he admits it will be an ambitious target. The company is overwhelmed at the moment with interest in its Network Computer technology. McNealy admits that Sun is not sure what the first killer application will be. As a result, it does not seem to have really sorted out its marketing strategy, uncertain which market sectors to hit first. He talks a lot about bank tellers, ideally suited to the technology because the end user typically uses the same dozen or so parts of an application every day.
The company will not make money out of selling Java, McNealy insists, it will make money only out of using it - he does not believe anyone has the right to own the spoken and written languages of computing. The man is making no predictions on what proportion of Sun's business the Network Computer will represent in the year 2000. "It would be like guessing which one of your six children will do best at college," he said. But he has no doubt that the Network Computer model will take off. He only hopes it will not happen so quickly that Sun cannot cope with the demand, allowing the likes of IBM Corp, Intel and Compaq Computer Corp to clean up, he says with his tongue only slightly in his cheek.
Speaking in San Francisco last week, Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale said his company's Navigator software is now "deployed in over 45 million locations". Barksdale admitted that the company knows how many of these "deployments" were actually paid for, but it must not be a very flattering total, because neither he nor anyone at Netscape will reveal the figure.
If you are a Microsoft Network subscriber, you have been getting a free ride, but that's all about to end, and the piper - or rather Bill - must be paid, and not just Half, either: Microsoft Corp says it will resume billing subscribers of its on-line service - the first bills they have had since June, when the unexpectedly high backlog of new users caused the billing system to get hopelessly behind. Microsoft sent out a letter last week notifying users that they will soon see charges on their credit card statements for all the fees they have accumulated over the summer months; Microsoft wouldn't quantify the effect of the billing backlog, but its billing rates suggest that more than $22m of revenue has been deferred, Dow Jones & Co estimates.
Intel Corp is offering a new beta version of its Intel Internet Phone as a free download from its www.intel.com/iaweb/cpc Web site. The Intel Internet Phone, designed for Pentium machines running Windows95, will interoperate with other upcoming H.323-based communications software from Microsoft and other vendors. The new version adds busy line indicator and call progress indicator, and the file download size is reduced by a third.
AT&T Corp is launching its WorldNet managed Internet service for businesses in the UK beginning in the first quarter of next year, marking its first launch of WorldNet outside the US. Further launches in Europe and in the Pacific Rim are planned for later in 1997, it said.
British business has unrealistic expectations for electronic commerce generated over the Internet, according to KPMG Management Consulting. Its survey found that the UK's top companies expect to generate sales of about £170,000m a year over the Internet in five years, and unless companies invest seriously, and soon, these hopes are unlikely to materialise, it says.
BRIEFLY
NETSCAPE PINS HOPES ON
'EXTRANETS' - PICKS UP REUTERS
Hoping to aid in the development of the English language at the recent Jupiter Developer's conference in San Francisco, Netscape's Mark Andreesen introduced "extranet" as the buzzword du jour. The term is supposed to have been coined by IDG's Bob Metcalfe.
The extranet, says Andreesen, will be composed of business to business applications built on Internet technology. They will depend on guaranteed bandwidth and security and represent "a major opportunity for ISPs". Perhaps Netscape will make a buck or two off the extranet as well. Andreesen added that the ability to do encrypted voice telephony over the Internet will be built into future versions of Navigator.
Responding to an audience member's comment that Netscape's Developer Hotline is staffed by "the brain dead", Andreesen ended his keynote by pledging to personally resolve any outstanding issues with the service.
To prove his sincerity, he gave out his personal email address.
Unfortunately Andreesen talks so fast that most of his audience was left scratching their heads trying to figure out what he had said. So in case you missed it, his address is marca@netscape.com.
Moving into its newly evangelized extranet market space, Netscape last week announced a deal with Reuters to provide the software for the new Reuters Web feature of its Reuters 3000 series of financial information products. Reuters Web will use Web technology like HTML and Java to enhance the delivery of news and other value-added data to any of the 340,000 current Reuters 2000 subscribers who elect to take the Reuters 3000 upgrade. Nobody was saying how much money the deal with Netscape is worth or even how many servers or clients are being purchased, but Reuters intends to charge another $100 per month to subscribers who upgrade to the service.
Reuters Web will be deployed over a secure high performance shared network and will not be available on the Internet in the foreseeable future. It will use some proprietary software, but if they wish, customers will be able to access data from any Web browser, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
FIRST VIRTUAL GETS BACKING FOR PAYMENT SCHEME
First Virtual Holdings Corp, not to be confused with Ralph Ungermann's First Virtual Corp, reckons it has solved the problem of secure credit card payment over the Internet with its VirtualPIN system - and two heavyweights, First Data Corp, Hackensack, New Jersey and General Electric Co Inc's GE Capital, Stamford, Connecticut, seem to agree: with First USA Paymentech Inc, they have together invested a total of $12.5m in First Virtual. First USA is a credit card processing company and First Data has a credit card processing operation. With the VirtualPIN system, customers register their credit card number just once over a secure telephone line, and the customer is allocated a VirtualPIN, which is used thereafter as the identifier in all transactions, so that the credit card number is never sent over the Internet. The system automates the buying process from initial information, outbound offer, purchase order, confirmation, credit verification, transaction settlement and fulfillment.
The VirtualPIN unlocks the customer's database record including identity, electronic mail address and personal, demographic, shipping and financial information. First Virtual launched the system two years ago, and has now refined it with an extension called Virtual Tags, Java applets that enable merchants to embed the VirtualPIN transaction process directly into multimedia advertisements, which can include animation, sound and video clips. Click on the appropriate area of the ad, and the entire selling, payment and delivery process is completely automated to the point where you sign for the goods on delivery. The buyer and the merchant of course both need the First Virtual software - and only 175,000 customers and 2,500 merchants have it so far, but with the heavyweight backing, it seems likely to increase rapidly. Sun Microsystems Inc, Electronic Data Systems Corp, Science Applications International Corp and Sybase Inc collaborated on the hardware and the software that makes the system work.
UK GETS SAFETYNET REGULATION
As Internet services providers and governments around the world attempt to find acceptable ways to censor content, the UK appears to have reached a rough consensus.
Rallied by the British government, Internet access providers in the UK are to finance Safety-Net, a body formed to make it possible to limit access to pornography on the Internet:
Safety-Net will have a hotline to which callers can report suspected illegal material and it will contact police if necessary. It will also publish a "legality indicator" or rating for each a Usenet news group, indicating whether the group normally contains illegal or pornographic material and of what kind.
Internet users can use the hotline to complain about material received from anyone via an automatic telephone, mail, electronic mail or facsimile, and Safety-Net operators will try to discover where the material came from, contact the authors and ask them to remove it, and failing that, will ask the relevant service provider to take action and pass details to the UK Police National Criminal Intelligence Service.
Meantime the European Commission is facing calls that it clamp down on use of the Internet to transmit pornography following the spreading Belgian paedophilia and mass murder scandal, will take a first step next month towards seeing how it can be done.
Culture Commissioner Marcelino Oreja, who intends to unveil his green paper on new media services on October 9, says that the process will be a lengthy one in consultation with all concerned and that at the end of the day a worldwide solution may be needed.
NEW IETF SECURITY LAYER SET TO APPEAR BY YEAR-END
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is downplaying reported squabbling between Microsoft and Netscape over their respective Private Communications Technology (PCT) and Secure Socket Layer 3 (SSL3) security protocols. The IETF formed the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Workgroup a few months before its June meeting in Montreal to sort out a standard from PCT, SSL2, and Europe's SSH protocols. According to Win Treese, Chair of the TLS, some issues had been raised with SSL2, but they have been mostly resolved with Netscape's newer version 3, which is now the starting point for the Workgroup's discussions.
Treese says that all is now hunky dory within the Workgroup and that it is likely a draft of the proposed standard, now called TLS will be presented to the IETF steering group shortly after the next IETF meeting this December in San Jose. The subject may still be a little tender, though, as neither Microsoft nor Netscape returned Online Reporter's calls on the subject. www.ietf.org
ORACLE UPDATES WEB SERVER
Oracle's WebServer 2.1 beta is now available for download at www.oracle.com. Version 2.1 comes with Netscape Application Programming Interface support, which lets you install Oracle's Web Request Broker directly into a Netscape server. The current release is for Sun Solaris only. An NT version is expected soon.
The next release of Navigator Personal Edition will support ISDN on Windows 3.1. The 16-bit Shiva dialer Netscape currently bundles with Navigator P.E. does not support ISDN, but Netscape says Shiva is working to incorporate ISDN capabilities into its next dialer, which is expected to ship with Navigator 4.0.
PROPRIETARY ONLINE SERVICES - IN THE LAST-CHANCE SALOON
Adam Page examines a world struggling to redefine itself
For the past two years, analysts have been saying that the proprietary online service industry is on the verge of being wiped out; the online services providers have always dismissed such forecasts as alarmist and misconceived. The Internet and the Web, they say, is an opportunity, not a threat. Until now, online suppliers have always been able to back up their argument with undeniable evidence in their favour. Market leader America Online Inc, Vienna, Virginia for example, has produced consistently strong financial results; and, like rival CompuServe Corp, it has subscriber numbers dwarfing the most popular Web sites (both claim up to 4.5m subscribers).
But that was in April and, just a few months on, 1996 is proving a critical watershed year for the online industry at large and for several of the smaller players in particular. With the exception of America Online, all of the major suppliers in the US, Europe and beyond are experiencing major upheavals which can be directly attributed to seismic shifts caused by the World Wide Web.
Certainly, CompuServe's first few months as a public company have not been easy. Executives, flush with $70m after the public offering, have been working on a plan to raise brand awareness, make tactical acquisitions, and re-position the service to exploit the Internet and the wave of new technology, rather than compete against it. Shortly after the share listing, for example, it finally abandoned its own proprietary standards and announced plans to adopt open Internet standards - including an expanded alliance with Microsoft Corp.
But some analysts believe it may have waited too long to make these changes, and in its latest fourth quarter, it announced losses of $1.1m, forecasting further losses in its next quarter. Perhaps more worrying for CompuServe is the face-off in subscribers. The company admits that it lost 1% of its subscriber base in May and June, bringing the total down to 3.4m.
This is a critical figure - subscriber numbers not only drive core revenues, but could be the key to unlocking new sources of revenues, such as advertising, and for negotiating alliances. Previously, CompuServe's subscriber base has grown steadily. These figures have triggered an angry response from some shareholders.
Last month, several law firms filed a class action suit on their behalf alleging
that CompuServe failed to disclose that its subscriber base and profitability were in jeopardy at the time of its flotation. This is not a speculative action: the law passed last year tightened up the rules relating to shareholder class actions, discouraging lawyers from filing suits except where there is a very good chance of success.
CompuServe hopes its problems will pass as it moves its business model towards that of America Online. It has re-positioned itself as a 'Super-Web-site' and as a low-cost, reliable way of accessing the Internet. For America Online, the market leader, this is so far proving a viable strategy. But even Microsoft, which has a similar 'Super-Web site' strategy based on alliances with major content suppliers, has said its Microsoft Network will not make a profit this year.
PRODIGY IN DIRE STRAITS
Another major rival, one-time market leader Prodigy Services Co, is also having a tough time. Its two disgruntled parents, IBM Corp and Sears Roebuck & Co, ended nearly two years of crippling indecision about its future by selling it to International Wireless Inc in June for $250m. As a sign of its falling stock, IBM is reported to have offered Sears $300m for its 50% of the company in late 1994.
Analysts have now given International Wireless two years to resurrect the struggling online service provider and one-time leader in electronic shopping. Its subscriber based is believed to be around 1m. For smaller and less established suppliers, problems are even worse.
Europe Online SA, an ambitious start-up designed to answer America Online and backed by some of Europe's most powerful content providers, has already filed bankruptcy papers - with between 25,000 and 50,000 subscribers, it has scarcely got off the ground. Europe Online's problems were sparked by a rebellion from one of its biggest backers, Burda AG, the German publisher. Burda, which holds 33%, wanted to put its money into developing Web sites rather than online services. It is believed to have tried to persuade Europe Online to change its management in order to reflect its new view of the market.
Europe Online wanted to make changes too, but did not want to hand over too much control to Burda. Burda's withdrawal of ongoing support exacerbated a cash crisis - the company's revenues had already been hit by a year-long delay in getting its service going. Although there is widespread scepticism, Europe Online expects to survive, and still has the backing of major shareholders such as Pearson Group Plc, publisher of the Financial Times, and the Luxembourg government.
But AT&T Corp, another shareholder, has withdrawn and partners Matra Hachette SA of France and Springer-Verlag AG of Germany also pulled out.
AT&T has further underlined its belief that the Internet, and only the Internet, is the way forward by folding its nascent AT&T Personalink service in the US. Based on proprietary standards, the service enabled customers to call in and exchange files, search databases and send out software agents for information.
The decision comes as a major blow for General Magic Inc, which supplied the TeleScript secure agent environment for AT&T Personalink. Personalink was the first and only major service across the US to have completely committed to TeleScript, which uses mobile agents to search out information and carry out tasks on behalf of users. But although the technologies are different, many believe that Sun Microsystems Inc's Java language will eliminate the need for TeleScript. Like many of the online service providers, General Magic has urgently revised its strategy to try to live with the Internet.
In what Business Development Director Elizabeth Atcheson calls "a shot across the bow of the commercial online services", Odyssey L.P. released a study finding that 35% of American households connected to the Internet use commercial providers, down significantly from 54% just six months ago. The study found that the penetration of ISPs jumped from 30% to 48% during the same period. Atcheson says that Odyssey's findings mean that, as far as consumers are concerned, "access to the Internet is more important to them than the proprietary content of commercial online services".
As mentioned above, AT&T last week revealed that it has scrapped its Personal Online Services Group - a program AT&T calls an experiment in "bringing value to the market by aggregating content", which means that the service's 100 test users could get access to proprietary content that AT&T slapped together. A company spokesman stopped short of saying that there was simply no money for AT&T in content.
On the ISP front, AT&T says it has passed the 400,000 subscriber mark - and this, seemingly, without flexing its significant marketing muscle. AT&T spokesman Mike Miller says that his company has focused on quality of service and customer support rather than any intensive marketing campaign. It seems as though the company has been testing the waters since WorldNet was launched a year ago and is now ready to up the ante. Miller says new promotions are planned for the fall and the Wall Street Journal reports that AT&T plans to spend $400 million on its Internet business this year. AT&T has also announced plans to provide Internet access to businesses.
LUCENT JUMPS INTO INTERNET TELEPHONY FEET FIRST
Lucent Technologies Inc has thrown its weight behind Internet telephony - but unlike competing offerings, which have taken the form of single-user software packages, it is developing a server-based offering pitched directly at the corporate marketplace.
The plans were announced at last week's NetWorld+Interop show in Atlanta. Indeed, the timing of the announcement - coming just as Lucent gains its new-found independence from AT&T Corp - implies the now liberated company is releasing technologies previously witheld because of conflicts of interest with its then parent.
The new Internet Telephony Server is designed to enable users to route phone calls, facsimile messages and voice mail over the Internet, or over the public switched telephone network. The product uses core technology from Lucent's MultiMedia Communications Exchange, announced last year and is designed to enable users to select different classes of service according to the sensitivity of a transmission: a user could choose to send a non-confidential facsimile over the Internet, for example, or over the public switched telephone network if it is of a sensitive nature.
Initial availability of the Telephony Server is slated for the first quarter next year, with general availability the following quarter. Also for the MultiMedia Exchange is a new application that bears a strong similarity to the Instant Answers system that AT&T announced a few weeks ago - although in one respect, it significantly improves on the AT&T offering. Both systems are designed to integrate call centre operatives with the Internet, the idea being that Web surfers needing more information on a product can click on an icon and simultaneously speak with a customer service representative.
However, while AT&T instant Answers requires users to have two phone lines - one for the Web connection, the other used by the customer service representative to call up the user - the new Lucent technology, called Internet Call Centre, needs just one connection, which can be used simultaneously for both speech and Web communications.
It can be used with any speech-enabled Web browser, according to Lucent. Another new offering is the Internet Directory Server, designed to enable network operators to offer electronic commerce applications, such as an electronic telephone directory. Within the directory, says Lucent, subscriber profile databases can also be built, to offer Internet and intranet users personalised navigation services. A new venture from Bell Laboratories has also been announced. Called elemedia - which is short for "elements for multimedia" - it claims to have developed breakthrough speech and music compression technology that gives "the same quality and richness of sound" to Internet speech traffic that regular telephony traffic enjoys. The technology is part of a new Media Plus family. It has been applied to speakerphone software that is claimed to provide full-duplex capabilities to personal computers and Internet telephone devices, and audio software - said to support music-on-demand and real-time audio broadcasting - producing CD-quality stereo sound.
Elemedia says it is currently developing videoconferencing-over-the-Internet software as part of Media Plus; this is intended for launch next quarter.
Lucent has also updated its Intuity Messaging Solutions for the Internet era: the most recent release enables users to use any touch-tone phone to access their voice and - through text-to-speech technology - facsimile and electronic mail messages. The enhancement is claimed to give the same capabilities as any Web browser. Lucent used Java to provide the new features, and says it will begin beta trials of the system in the first quarter of 1997, with general availability slated for the second half. It did not give pricing for the new products; this will be announced as they become available.
WIND RIVER TO BUILD JAVAOS INTO EMBEDDED OFFERING
Wind River Systems is now the first embedded software company to license Sun's JavaOS. According to company Chairman, Jerry Fiddler, the new, as yet un-named OS will be built upon Wind River's VxWorks kernel using parts of the Java OS like the device driver and debugger APIs as well as Java's native abstract window toolkit (AWT). The deal will bring Java to the 15 or so chips currently supported by VxWorks and will allow VxWorks applications to become Java-enabled. Native AWT, based on X-Web (a bare bones version of X-Windows) is being developed by JavaSoft for JavaOS. Fiddler says that Java's current AWT windowing class requires either Motif or Win 32, which are far too kludgey for the embedded market.
In fact, Wind River has developed its own AWT, code named Tiny AWT, so that it can produce a Java-enabled OS while it waits for JavaOS to be finished up. It has been demoing this software for a few months and is closing negotiations with Sun on this product right now. The Java-enabled OS is available for "engineers in the development phase of their new product activities", according to Wind River's press release.As for supporting Sun's promised Java chip, Fiddler says there are no plans yet, but that, "if they ever do a Java chip, I'm sure we will be involved in that".
Training software company G.A. Sullivan's St. Louis headquarters will be home to a new Internet training site on October 14, 1996. Created in partnership with Internet training company Prosoft Inc., the center will provide businesses, including G.A. Sullivan's corporate clients, with instruction on browsers, Web page development, Internet business development and advanced Internet technologies.. www.gasullivan.com
MobileWare Corp is now shipping its WebMirror Personal 1.0 intelligent agent software. WebMirror lets users filter and manage the time and content of Web searches and its "intelligent" caching feature lets users view their search results while disconnected from the Internet. It is priced at $30.
Symantec has released a beta version of its dbANYWHERE product that can be downloaded free of charge on the Symantec CafŽ Website . dbANYWHERE is middleware designed to hook up corporate databases with Java-enabled applications over the Internet using JavaSoft's JDBC API. The product includes drivers to connect to Oracle, Sybase, Watcom and MS SQL server and supports OBDC compliant databases. It runs on Windows 95 and NT.
http://cafe.Symantec.com
Attention technology elite: mark January 19 to 21, 1997 on your calendars! This is when Upside Magazine will hold its second annual technology summit at the La Quinta Club in Palm Springs, themed "Managing Digital Mania: An Extreme Sport for Technology Executives". Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, and Nicholas Negroponte are all scheduled to headline. Upside has also announced that it will be presenting David Coursey's Showcase in late spring '97.
www.upside.com
Feeling the pressure from plummeting sales of its Sound Blaster cards, Creative Technology Ltd. has cut deals with NetSpeak Corp., Seer Systems, Onlive! Technologies, and Progressive Networks. The strategy, says Creative, is to bring "Internet multimedia to the masses". The company has licensed NetSpeak's technology under its Creative WebPhone brand and hopes to develop this into a line of Internet Telephony products. Seer's technology will be implemented in Creative NetSynth, available later this year, which will play high quality MIDI over the Internet. Creative intends to bundle Onlive!'s Traveler 3D and Progressive Network's RealAudio with its multimedia and communications products.
BRIEFLY
SUN GOES TO EGGHEAD FOR ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION
Sun Microsystems is using a new electronic software delivery service it hopes will encourage resellers to distribute its software products.
With its recently released Java WorkShop development product, Sun made its first move into traditional retail channels by offering Egghead Software a choice of two new electronic distribution kits. The first option, internally referred to as Web Host, lets the reseller download software code, product pages and supporting material to his own Web site, effectively delivering a prefabricated electronic distribution site for Sun's reseller to operate on his own. Alternately, Web Link gives the reseller some HTML pages for his own Website, but then links back to Sun for software delivery.
Egghead says it chose Java WorkShop as the first product to be sold and downloaded directly from its Website because Sun was able to provide the Web Host distribution kit. Spokesperson Marcy Savage says, however, that Sun's kit was used just to get the ball rolling and that New Release Software has developed a distribution package that Egghead will be using for future products. Savage adds that the site is in a test stage right now. 2-5 more products will be added over the next month and, if all goes according to plan, Egghead expects to host a catalog of about 200 products by April 1st.
SunSoft thinks that Java brand recognition and a low price point (you can get it for $80 at www.egghead.com) will allow Java WorkShop to penetrate beyond Sun's traditional highly technical developer market.
Sun says it envisions casual programmers picking up the product at a local computer store to teach themselves Java on weekends. It has even, according to a Bloomberg report, gone so far as to bundle the product in Singapore with rival Hewlett-Packard's Vectra Vl4 PCs rather than with good old Sun hardware. Presumably UltraSPARCs are not the fare of the casual programmer.
OPEN MARKET UNVEILS
COMMERCE-DATABASE LINK
Open Market will announce its new ActiveCommerce DB application development tool this week. The product uses Bluestone's Sapphire/Web development environment and Open Market's OM-SecureLink transaction technology to allow customers to create commerce-enabled Websites using existing ODBC-compliant databases.
Open Market says that customers will be able to link relational database information to HTML templates so that product information can be updated on the fly. OM-Secure Link would allow transactions to be processed on the back end by either Open Market's OM-Transact commerce software or by existing fulfillment software.
ActiveCommerce DB will also ship with a couple of sample applications like a Web store and a business control panel, which lets you make real-time changes to the database using a Web browser. The product will ship in early November. It will cost $2,995, with no limit on how many commerce sites can be created.
Open Market will also announce that Allaire Corporation, Millenium Productions, Inc, Sausage Software, WebEngine, Inc., and WebMate Technologies will integrate OM-SecureLink into their products. Commerce applications developed with these products will now be able to hook up to Open Market's back-end processing software, OM-Transact. www.openmarket.com.
CANDLE EXTENDS ITS MIDDLEWARE INTO THE WEB
Candle Corp last week accelerated the expansion of its middleware, integration and service businesses, announcing new communications packages for Lotus Development Corp, SAP AG and Web-based applications using IBM Corp's MQSeries messaging, plus the acquisition of MQSeries conversion shop Amsys North America Inc.
It is also opening up more of its Command Center management application programming interfaces to end-users and is hoping that Microsoft Corp will soon get over "its schizophrenic period with ActiveX" so it can begin to sell a bunch of new object and Internet management products it has sitting on the shelf.
Candle is majoring on the use of IBM's MQSeries messaging technology to develop future generations of management and communications products and will offer the same facilities over Microsoft's Falcon messaging system when that comes down. Candle chief executive Bob LaBant has recently hired the IBM MQSeries business manager Steve Craggs as his vice-president of solutions for network applications.
Having recently gobbled up Across Data Systems Inc's MQ/Secure middleware and Lotus Notes and desktop management company CleverSoft Inc, Candle this week announces it is buying 40-person MQSeries implementation shop Amsys North America on undisclosed terms. The privately-held Boston, Massachusetts concern is currently implementing MQSeries for Tandem Computers Inc's Himalaya massively parallel systems. It claims it has other implementations under wraps. Chief executive Ian Hadfield will extend Amsys's reach to the UK, Europe and elsewhere as vice-president of the Candle messaging, middleware and services division.
The new packaged products, initially Lotus Connect, followed by Web Connect and SAP Connect by year-end, will link organisations' applications in each of these areas to back-end mainframe and CICS environments managed by Command Center.
The Connect bundles include MQSeries and Command Center management for it, MQ/Secure and IntelliWatch management and desktop tools plus integration services. Prices will range from $50,000 to $100,000. Meantime Candle says there's a ton of application management holes it still has to fill by development or acquisition, including full end-to-end and drill-down facilities, and the first of these came with the licensing of Tivoli Systems Inc's application development environment tool kits to integrate the TME 10 framework into Command Center products.
Users will be able to share data between both companies' system frameworks and interface Candle offerings with Tivoli-based modules from independent software vendors. Craggs claimed about 85% of its mainframe customers have both Candle and Tivoli systems and about 20% to 30% of its client-server users do as well, so it's an obvious move. Candle says the first level of the agreement is bi-directional capability, so that an event monitored by a Tivoli product will also be passable to Command Center.
By the first half of 1997 it will have achieved framework-to-framework linkage so that any application in a Tivoli domain will be accessible for Command Center.
Last week the company also opened up console application programming interfaces in its Command Center management suite to accept messages created by users rather than just those pre-defined by Candle.
LIVE IN FINLAND? USE MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER - OFFICIAL
State-controlled Telecom Finland; last week gave Microsoft Corp a big boost in its browser battle with Netscape Communications Corp by saying that it wants to get all Finns to use the Internet, and is promoting Internet Explorer version 3.0 as its recommended browser for Windows 95 users, though it still recommends Navigator for Windows 3.1 users.
The main target is business because the last survey showed almost 400,000 Finns out of a population of 5m use the Internet every week and almost 150,000 used it daily or almost every day, and they are predominantly fireside users. EuNet Finland Oy is also promoting Explorer. Despite its promotion of the Internet, it is not interested in Network Computers, saying that it doesn't get involved with hardware.
INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENTS MAKES SLIM NET PROFIT
Following its June flotation on London's Alternative Investment Market, Intelligent Environments Group Plc said it would be another year before the group achieved substantial revenue growth, and warned of large net losses for the full year.
Turnover for the six months to June 30 remained flat at £2m but the firm crept into the black at £35,000 after a £3,000 loss last time. The Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex-based developer of AM, a software tool designed to enable programmers to develop complex business applications using its proprietary Hyperlogic language, said it had made major progress during the period. Business is split evenly between Europe and North America.
Initial contracts for trial applications of Amazon, the group's Internet-intranet Web development product that launched during the half, have been signed. They include Tesco Stores Ltd, Honda Manufacturing Ltd and Air Express International Information Systems in the UK, plus the US Air Force. And although it may once have been a firm OS/2 advocator, more recently Intelligent Enironments has switched allegiances. Revenue from OS/2-related products has fallen sharply and the group has directed its attentions towards converting existing users of AM for OS/2 to the AM Windows client-server product for personal computers that run Windows NT.
The company said overall short-term revenue growth will depend on revenues from NT-related products. Cash balances at the halfway stage were at a healthy £6.7m, £5.6m of which derived from the flotation. Intelligent said the funds should enable the group to increase revenues within both the client-server and Internet-intranet markets, but share price has remained disappointing. From an initial flotation price of 94 pence, which put a market capitalisation of £21m on the firm, shares were down at 70 pence yesterday.
PLANNING SCIENCES BUILDS WEB-BASED ANAYLITICAL ENGINE
Denying it is just another quick and dirty Internet must-have, UK multi-dimensional database and analytical processing outfit Planning Sciences International Plc is talking up its Web-based analytical processing strategy. Codenamed Sumatra, it will be delivered in two phases based on Version 3.0 of its Gentia client-server executive information system development and decision support environment, including the GentiaDB multidimensional and analytical processing database engine. Phase one, Gentia Web Server, due the first quarter of next year, will enable standard Web browsers to access Gentia's analysis and development environment. Planning Sciences claims this work is essentially an extension of Gentia's core development, comprising two classes of object, those with core Gentia functionality and those governing the native client interface. It is these objects only that vary between the different graphical interfaces, says the firm. Gentia currently supports most Unixes, Windows 95 and Macintosh. It will integrate Java applets to improve local performance, aiding the management of network traffic, and enhance HyperText Mark-up Language.
Java applets will be stored and created in the Gentia object store. Phase two, due later in the year, will extend text integration by introducing a series of software agents to search intelligently for and link Mark-up Language documents relating to data in GentiaDB and SQL databases. The firm admits it has been forced to establish a Web strategy by prospective customers insisting on one. It has $30m from its May initial public offering and expects to announce a couple of partnerships soon.
OPEN HORIZON ADDS SECURITY TO DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
Belmont, California-based middleware house Open Horizon Inc, which has garnered a further $6m investment from US Venture Partners and PeopleSoft Inc in a third round of venture funding), says its Connection middleware enables organisations to add support for network security services - including single sign-on, authentication and encryption - centralised directory services, transaction processing monitors and other tools across distributed computing environments. The company offers Distributed Computing Environment security services, Distributed Computing Environment and X.500 directory services, browser and Java connections to databases, plus support for CICS, Encina, Tuxedo, Top End transaction monitors, C, C++, Forte and Dynasty. It claims to be able to tie applications, databases and security services together without changing customers' existing applications. Connection is also integrated with CyberSafe Corp's Challenger Kerberos-based security system. IBM Corp resells Connection and Open Horizon has other joint development and marketing deals with Apple Computer Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co. PeopleSoft sells Connection with its PeopleTools rapid application tool set. Open Horizon claims to have 2,000 customers and to have doubled in size since the beginning of the year. The company says it will use the money to broaden support for Connection and expand its Internet and intranet offerings.
NTT AIMS FOR THE INTERNET
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp, aiming to transform itself from a telephone company into a multimedia superpower, will launch a new network business in January to tap explosive demand for computer communications. It also plans to open up its network for use by rival Internet access providers and leased-line providers, partly to counter support for the government's proposed break-up of the company.
The new service, called the Open Computer Network, will be a data transmission network giving users access to the Internet and private lines for computer communications; the system will use routers, which cost only a small fraction of conventional telephone exchange systems used in voice communications.
NTT will spend only $110m on the project during its first year; the company hopes eventually, through affiliates, to launch businesses such as security-related applications on the network, which will also pose a serious threat to existing Internet and leased line providers that use more expensive systems such as telephone exchanges.
It will charge $275 to $366 a month for a 128Kbps line; the same lines via telephone exchanges cost $2,568 a month for Osaka-Tokyo services.
With the release of Navigator 4.0 Netscape Communications is planning to introduce a new Java security model, extending applets' ability to carry out operations such as reading and writing arbitrary files to a disk. Applets will also have digital signatures attached and users will be able to set up policies on an applet-by-applet basis. However though the new 'SetScope' API will present applet developers with enhanced flexibility and power, it may also present them with a quandary. JavaSoft itself hopes to have its much broader Java Security Architecture in place during the first half of next year. Though the two groups talk regularly, Netscape group security product manager Eric Greenberg said last week that the company would not slow down the introduction of its technology to wait for the JavaSoft standard. Meanwhile JavaSoft Java Security Architect Li Gong said that though his new architecture "will enable applications and applets do things similar to 'SetScope'... it is unlikely that this call 'SetScope' will be provided as is, as part of the standard API. The good news is that "as far as digital signatures go, we are completely compatible with Netscape", says Marianne Mueller, JavaSoft security expert. "We are working closely
DOT Gossip
Steve Markman, the first executive brought into Novell by ex-CEO Robert Frankenberg, will get another crack at turning a software company into an Internet software company. He has been named president, CEO and chairman of the Board of Directors of Sunnyvale software company General Magic Inc., replacing former president, Robert Kelsch, who resigned after a year on the job. Founder Marc Porat will step down from his role as CEO, but will remain with the company as an advisor and Board member.
Former Cambridge Technology Partners President, Robert Gett, will join Silicon Valley Internet Partners as President and CEO on November 1, 1996. Founded in April by Gartner Group's Eric Greenberg, the company provides Internet consulting and software services and is backed by a bevy of venture capitalists, including: Mohr, Davidow Ventures, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Trident Capital/Dun & Bradstreet Ventures, and CKS Group.
Progress Software Corp will ship its WebSpeed transaction processing over the Web tool this week; formerly code-named Mars. WebSpeed consists of two elements: a Transaction Server to interface with any Web browser and Common Gateway Interface Web browser, and, through transaction agents, manages the integrity of transactions over the Internet; and a Workshop of development tools, using Progress's proprietary language scripting for rapid application development.
Whitney G. Lynn has been named acting president and chief executive officer for Borland International Inc. The position is interim, as Borland continues its search for a new top dog. William F. Miller, who had been acting CEO, returns to his former job as Chairman of the board.
Tough times may be looming at Adobe Systems Inc which has reported third quarter net profits down 11.9% at $29.8m after a $9.5m investment gain this time and $691,000 loss last. Turnover also fell 1.2% at $180.9m; nine month net fell 18.8% to $85.5m, after a $14.7m write-off of in-process research and development, on turnover down 15.6% at $474.0m. As for net earnings per share ; they fell 9.1% to $0.40 in the quarter, 19.9% to $1.13 in the three quarters.
Time Warner Inc will carry the Microsoft Corp-backed all-news cable television network MSNBC, a move being taken to satisfy antitrust regulations as part of Time Warner's merger with Turner Broadcasting System Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported: Turner's 24-hour cable news channel, Cable News Network, is one of MSNBC's main competitors; the agreement to carry MSNBC will bring it into 6m homes served by Time Warner; MSNBC is a joint venture of General Electric Co NBC television network and Microsoft; meanwhile, negotiations between Time Warner and News Corp Ltd's Fox television network, aimed at the same agreement, have ended.
Microsoft Corp is not making nearly as much headway in winning hearts and minds for Internet Explorer if the latest survey results from Zona Research Inc, Redwood City, California are to be believed. It polled 150 corporate IT professionals and found that while Explorer is now available at 28% of sites, it is still the primary browser at only 8%, while Netscape's Navigator is in at 91%, primary at 83%, and the difference is so great that even the sampling error as a result of the small size of the sample does not alter the picture much; Zona argues that its method is more rigorous that counting hits on Web sites, because it picks up future policy, and because the other method cannot measure intranet usage; Zona's method however completely misses enthusiast usage, and although figures that embraced lone users might be expected to advance Microsoft's share considerably, anecdotal evidence goes the other way, suggesting they are even more Netscape-centric than corporates.
The gold code version Borland International Inc's IntraBuilder is now shipping. The Javascript development tool is available in two versions: IntraBuilder, which is designed for small workgroups and retails for $100, and IntraBuilder Professional, which is for higher volume applications. It costs $500. Borland says its high-end IntraBuilder Client/Server will ship later this year for $2,000. Evaluation copies of IntraBuilder can be downloaded at www.borland.com.
Check Point's popular FireWall-1 will now support Sybase SQL Server and Open Server applications through Firewall's Inspect engine.
PSINet Inc, Herndon, Virginia is to spend $100m to build an Internet network across Europe and begin offering PSINet-related services in mid-1997: its partner in the project is an investment group led by the Chatterjee Group affiliate of Soros Fund Management
British Telecommunications Plc is reviewing its ISDN prices following the complaints from the Office of Telecommunications that its tariffs are discriminatory: telecommunications director general Don Cruickshank has asked BT to review its tariffs, which he said were likely to have anti-competitive effects on customers and competitors who provide a similar service. The ISDN network is used by many small businesses, schools and some individuals for Internet access. Cruickshank said he has given Telecom a few days to meet his demands.
East Northport, New York-based Atec Group Inc, a full-service computer systems integrator, has acquired VDOT.NET Inc, a privately-held Internet service provider based in Hauppauge, New York, in a share exchange, of which the terms were not disclosed; VDOT.NET offers a variety of Internet specialty products, including Web page design, programming and the leasing of high-speed telecommunications lines.
The Pointcast Network is coming to Macs: the company says that its funky newswire front-end is currently out in beta and should be available in around a month. What's more - it's not a lowest-common-denominator port, but a proper re-write. www.pointcast.com
Diba Inc, the information appliance company emailed out a press release to its substantial list of high-tech journalists last week, immediately generating a couple of clueless 'please unsubscribe messages' sent - of course - to the list itself. Result? Escalation. As we went to press it looked as if a melt-down might be on the way. Increasingly annoyed and baffled hacks were asking 'why am I getting this stuff', 'get me off this list' and 'hi - anyone got any freelance work?'. One prankster suggested using the list to write a news story to appear in every publication simultaneously. The one person not on the press list, and not aware of the flood, was the original author at Diba itself. So if you're reading this guys, and wondering why your mailserver is shaking itself to pieces...
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WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
September 30 - October 4th Issue No 18
IBM GETS JAVA UP AND RUNNING ON MVS MAINFRAMES
IBM wheeled out its promised port of the Java Virtual Machine for its MVS mainframe line at London's Java Expo Show last week demonstrating a Java applet it had pulled straight from the Net.
Java for OS/390, said IBM software strategy consultant Mark Cathcart, fits well with the Internet Server for OS/390, part of the Internet bundle for MVS promised back in February and now available. It means that Internet-enabled applications, CGI programs, and extensions of and access to existing applications and databases, can all be run or be integrated with the mainframe.
Large customers interested in hosting IBM's new Network Computers with a mainframe, or writing thin-client applications, might also be interested. On the System 390, the Java Virtual Machine is part of OpenEdition, which has recently been certified X/Open 95-compliant: at least MVS/ESA 5.2.2 is required. It was ported from the AIX version, along with all the standard classes. Java's AWT windowing toolkit is implemented in X Windows.
Because the S/390 is used to handling packed decimal, IBM had to rework the IEEE floating point portions of the Java VM, and also had to work on ASCII-to-EBCDIC extended binary code character sets. A beta test program is beginning now, with a free beta available for download by the end of this month.
Next year, the Java Virtual Machine will be integrated into the OS/390 operating system. Future plans - for the not too distant future, says IBM - include access to CICS transaction processing systems and DB2 and IMS databases, via Java classes yet to be written, and an implementation of Sun's JDBC database connectivity specification for the mainframe. All could emerge before the year is out. As for Java on other proprietary IBM platforms, OS/400 remains "a committed plan", while a VM/ESA version is a somewhat more distant "future plan".
No-one was making any comment as to when we might see bits of MVS actually being re-written in Java, a la OS/2. http//:ncc.hursley.ibm.com
EC SET TO CLOSE 'TAX LOOPHOLE' - WILL HIT US SERVICE PROVIDERS
Bad news for US online service and network providers trying to make in-roads in Europe. Good news for their native European competitors. According to the UK Internet Service Providers Association, the European Commission is set to close a tax loop-hole which has benefitted non-European operators. Under existing legislation Value Added Tax is levied depending on where the service operator is based. So the likes of Compuserve and America Online argue that they are actually based in the US and gain an effective price advantage of at least 15% over their European rivals.
Not surprisingly - given the fiercely competitive ISP market - the Europeans griped to the Commission. The result, according to ISPA is a fast-tracked piece of legislation which will implement a derogation to Article seven of the the Sixth VAT Directive. "The indications are that there is no-one against it" said Nicholas Lansman of the ISPA Secretariat. ISPA quotes an un-named Commission spokesperson as saying that the new legislation would be in place "by the end of the year" assuming that none of the member states agree. It is understood that the proposal has largely been the work of DG XXI; the section of the Commission which deals with Community-wide taxation. DGXIII, which handles telecommunications and DG IV; competition policy, are also thought to have chipped in. As we went to press the Eurocrats had left for the evening and were not available for immediate comment.
NETSCAPE'S SANDBOX
With the release of Navigator 4.0 Netscape Communications is planning to introduce a new Java security model, extending applets' ability to carry out operations such as reading and writing arbitrary files to a disk. Applets will also have digital signatures attached and users will be able to set up policies on an applet-by-applet basis. However though the new 'SetScope' API will present applet developers with enhanced flexibility and power, it may also present them with a quandary. JavaSoft itself hopes to have its much broader Java Security Architecture in place during the first half of next year. Though the two groups talk regularly, Netscape group security product manager Eric Greenberg said last week that the company would not slow down the introduction of its technology to wait for the JavaSoft standard. Meanwhile JavaSoft Java Security Architect Li Gong said that though his new architecture "will enable applications and applets do things similar to 'SetScope'... it is unlikely that this call 'SetScope' will be provided as is, as part of the standard API. The good news is that "as far as digital signatures go, we are completely compatible with Netscape", says Marianne Mueller, JavaSoft security expert. "We are working closely with them and all other Java licensees in terms of sharing early implementations", she adds.
The Netscape plan essentially allows users to define their own "sandbox" - the restricted area in which applets are allowed to play. The current standard Java applet sandbox imposes severe restrictions on what an applet may, and may not, do. The result is secure, but suffers in terms of power when compared to, say, ActiveX components.
Netscape will introduce tools that will let applet developers sign their applets and will also automatically catalogue the resources
NETSCAPE TO GIVE APPLETS MORE CLOUT - AHEAD OF STANDARDS
Sister publication ClieNT Server News has it on good authority that Microsoft has decided on the Open Group as its preferred home for ActiveX. If everything goes to plan, the technology is likely to be put on a fast-track, taking say, around 12 weeks to emerge as a standard. One possible point of friction is that the Open Group previously signed a deal with the Object Management Group, under which the latter takes sole charge of any object technologies.
MURDOCH AND BT TEAM ON INTERNET AND CONTENT
Last week Rupert Murdoch gave notice that he means business in the online market when News International Plc formally announced the expected Internet alliance with British Telecommunications Plc .
In the UK, the two plan to launch an Internet service called Springboard, designed for the mass consumer market, in January. The aim is to provide fast and easy access to content drawn from major News International and News Corp titles such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World. "Unlike current services, which appeal only to limited sectors of the community, Springboard will have the depth of material and ease of use to appeal to a wide range of households," reckons British Telecom multimedia services director Rupert Gavin. "We will be able to offer teenagers help with their homework as well as news on their favourite football team (Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting Plc currently has exclusive TV rights to the English soccer Premier League), while providing parents with the latest in holidays, banking or local events," he added. The promise is "unique high-quality content," plus electronic mail, on-line chat, interactive debates and facilities for users to create their own Web pages.
Springboard will work with third parties to provide a broad spectrum of services including up-to-the-minute local and national news, weather, sport, events, listings and ticketing, as well as games, retailing and a definitive reference library, the partners claim. Evidently aimed at hoi poloi at least as much as the cognoscenti the service will likely stand or fall by how cheaply it provides Internet access. Rupert Murdoch does not look like having things all his own way in Germany: Bertelsmann AG says monopoly watchdogs in Brussels and Berlin told it they would block his proposed purchase of 25% of German pay-television broadcaster Premiere, agreed as part of Murdoch's alliance with Leo Kirch.
UNWIRED PLANET'S BROWSER TO GO INTO BELL'S CELLPHONE
Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile has licensed Internet start-up, Unwired Planet's, UP.Link browser software for the Cellscape Internet-enabled phone it plans to start selling by year's end.
Similar to AT&T's PocketNet Phone, which also uses UP.Link, Bell Atlantic's offering will allow users to talk, send email and access special Internet information services, using a menu-based interface. There is no keypad with the product, so sending messages and browsing the Web will likely be slow one-letter-at-a-time affairs. Basic service packages are expected to cost around $30, including a usage allowance.
New York's Walsh Messenger Service Inc has signed up as the first Cellscape service customer. Its 150 messengers will be trading in their pagers for the phones starting next month.
UP.Link software is based on Unwired Planet's Handheld Device Markup Language, which is sent via Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) services.
The company, which recently snatched Oracle Network Computer's Andy Laurson to be its Vice President of Engineering, is lining up deals with Ameritech, Comcast Cellular Communications, and GTE Mobilnet.
Interoperability agreements are expected to be in place soon, so that the device will work seamlessly across CDPD networks in 70 US markets by 1997.
SURPRISE! MCNEALY STILL BULLISH
Sun Microsystems Inc's chief executive Scott McNealy doesn't know how the company will make a Network Computer to sell for the fabled $500, but says purchase price is irrelevant because reduced cost of ownership is the key. In light-hearted mood in London last week McNealy, referring to Oracle Corp chief Larry Ellison's predictions of the $500 machine, said "when you're in the software business it is easy to price hardware. I might go round telling people that Java Office software will be free" he quipped. The company is still committed to have 2,500 Sun employees using NCs by June next year, and there are bonuses riding on it, although he admits it will be an ambitious target. The company is overwhelmed at the moment with interest in its Network Computer technology. McNealy admits that Sun is not sure what the first killer application will be. As a result, it does not seem to have really sorted out its marketing strategy, uncertain which market sectors to hit first. He talks a lot about bank tellers, ideally suited to the technology because the end user typically uses the same dozen or so parts of an application every day.
The company will not make money out of selling Java, McNealy insists, it will make money only out of using it - he does not believe anyone has the right to own the spoken and written languages of computing. The man is making no predictions on what proportion of Sun's business the Network Computer will represent in the year 2000. "It would be like guessing which one of your six children will do best at college," he said. But he has no doubt that the Network Computer model will take off. He only hopes it will not happen so quickly that Sun cannot cope with the demand, allowing the likes of IBM Corp, Intel and Compaq Computer Corp to clean up, he says with his tongue only slightly in his cheek.
Speaking in San Francisco last week, Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale said his company's Navigator software is now "deployed in over 45 million locations". Barksdale admitted that the company knows how many of these "deployments" were actually paid for, but it must not be a very flattering total, because neither he nor anyone at Netscape will reveal the figure.
If you are a Microsoft Network subscriber, you have been getting a free ride, but that's all about to end, and the piper - or rather Bill - must be paid, and not just Half, either: Microsoft Corp says it will resume billing subscribers of its on-line service - the first bills they have had since June, when the unexpectedly high backlog of new users caused the billing system to get hopelessly behind. Microsoft sent out a letter last week notifying users that they will soon see charges on their credit card statements for all the fees they have accumulated over the summer months; Microsoft wouldn't quantify the effect of the billing backlog, but its billing rates suggest that more than $22m of revenue has been deferred, Dow Jones & Co estimates.
Intel Corp is offering a new beta version of its Intel Internet Phone as a free download from its www.intel.com/iaweb/cpc Web site. The Intel Internet Phone, designed for Pentium machines running Windows95, will interoperate with other upcoming H.323-based communications software from Microsoft and other vendors. The new version adds busy line indicator and call progress indicator, and the file download size is reduced by a third.
AT&T Corp is launching its WorldNet managed Internet service for businesses in the UK beginning in the first quarter of next year, marking its first launch of WorldNet outside the US. Further launches in Europe and in the Pacific Rim are planned for later in 1997, it said.
British business has unrealistic expectations for electronic commerce generated over the Internet, according to KPMG Management Consulting. Its survey found that the UK's top companies expect to generate sales of about £170,000m a year over the Internet in five years, and unless companies invest seriously, and soon, these hopes are unlikely to materialise, it says.
BRIEFLY
NETSCAPE PINS HOPES ON
'EXTRANETS' - PICKS UP REUTERS
Hoping to aid in the development of the English language at the recent Jupiter Developer's conference in San Francisco, Netscape's Mark Andreesen introduced "extranet" as the buzzword du jour. The term is supposed to have been coined by IDG's Bob Metcalfe.
The extranet, says Andreesen, will be composed of business to business applications built on Internet technology. They will depend on guaranteed bandwidth and security and represent "a major opportunity for ISPs". Perhaps Netscape will make a buck or two off the extranet as well. Andreesen added that the ability to do encrypted voice telephony over the Internet will be built into future versions of Navigator.
Responding to an audience member's comment that Netscape's Developer Hotline is staffed by "the brain dead", Andreesen ended his keynote by pledging to personally resolve any outstanding issues with the service.
To prove his sincerity, he gave out his personal email address.
Unfortunately Andreesen talks so fast that most of his audience was left scratching their heads trying to figure out what he had said. So in case you missed it, his address is marca@netscape.com.
Moving into its newly evangelized extranet market space, Netscape last week announced a deal with Reuters to provide the software for the new Reuters Web feature of its Reuters 3000 series of financial information products. Reuters Web will use Web technology like HTML and Java to enhance the delivery of news and other value-added data to any of the 340,000 current Reuters 2000 subscribers who elect to take the Reuters 3000 upgrade. Nobody was saying how much money the deal with Netscape is worth or even how many servers or clients are being purchased, but Reuters intends to charge another $100 per month to subscribers who upgrade to the service.
Reuters Web will be deployed over a secure high performance shared network and will not be available on the Internet in the foreseeable future. It will use some proprietary software, but if they wish, customers will be able to access data from any Web browser, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
FIRST VIRTUAL GETS BACKING FOR PAYMENT SCHEME
First Virtual Holdings Corp, not to be confused with Ralph Ungermann's First Virtual Corp, reckons it has solved the problem of secure credit card payment over the Internet with its VirtualPIN system - and two heavyweights, First Data Corp, Hackensack, New Jersey and General Electric Co Inc's GE Capital, Stamford, Connecticut, seem to agree: with First USA Paymentech Inc, they have together invested a total of $12.5m in First Virtual. First USA is a credit card processing company and First Data has a credit card processing operation. With the VirtualPIN system, customers register their credit card number just once over a secure telephone line, and the customer is allocated a VirtualPIN, which is used thereafter as the identifier in all transactions, so that the credit card number is never sent over the Internet. The system automates the buying process from initial information, outbound offer, purchase order, confirmation, credit verification, transaction settlement and fulfillment.
The VirtualPIN unlocks the customer's database record including identity, electronic mail address and personal, demographic, shipping and financial information. First Virtual launched the system two years ago, and has now refined it with an extension called Virtual Tags, Java applets that enable merchants to embed the VirtualPIN transaction process directly into multimedia advertisements, which can include animation, sound and video clips. Click on the appropriate area of the ad, and the entire selling, payment and delivery process is completely automated to the point where you sign for the goods on delivery. The buyer and the merchant of course both need the First Virtual software - and only 175,000 customers and 2,500 merchants have it so far, but with the heavyweight backing, it seems likely to increase rapidly. Sun Microsystems Inc, Electronic Data Systems Corp, Science Applications International Corp and Sybase Inc collaborated on the hardware and the software that makes the system work.
UK GETS SAFETYNET REGULATION
As Internet services providers and governments around the world attempt to find acceptable ways to censor content, the UK appears to have reached a rough consensus.
Rallied by the British government, Internet access providers in the UK are to finance Safety-Net, a body formed to make it possible to limit access to pornography on the Internet:
Safety-Net will have a hotline to which callers can report suspected illegal material and it will contact police if necessary. It will also publish a "legality indicator" or rating for each a Usenet news group, indicating whether the group normally contains illegal or pornographic material and of what kind.
Internet users can use the hotline to complain about material received from anyone via an automatic telephone, mail, electronic mail or facsimile, and Safety-Net operators will try to discover where the material came from, contact the authors and ask them to remove it, and failing that, will ask the relevant service provider to take action and pass details to the UK Police National Criminal Intelligence Service.
Meantime the European Commission is facing calls that it clamp down on use of the Internet to transmit pornography following the spreading Belgian paedophilia and mass murder scandal, will take a first step next month towards seeing how it can be done.
Culture Commissioner Marcelino Oreja, who intends to unveil his green paper on new media services on October 9, says that the process will be a lengthy one in consultation with all concerned and that at the end of the day a worldwide solution may be needed.
NEW IETF SECURITY LAYER SET TO APPEAR BY YEAR-END
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is downplaying reported squabbling between Microsoft and Netscape over their respective Private Communications Technology (PCT) and Secure Socket Layer 3 (SSL3) security protocols. The IETF formed the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Workgroup a few months before its June meeting in Montreal to sort out a standard from PCT, SSL2, and Europe's SSH protocols. According to Win Treese, Chair of the TLS, some issues had been raised with SSL2, but they have been mostly resolved with Netscape's newer version 3, which is now the starting point for the Workgroup's discussions.
Treese says that all is now hunky dory within the Workgroup and that it is likely a draft of the proposed standard, now called TLS will be presented to the IETF steering group shortly after the next IETF meeting this December in San Jose. The subject may still be a little tender, though, as neither Microsoft nor Netscape returned Online Reporter's calls on the subject. www.ietf.org
ORACLE UPDATES WEB SERVER
Oracle's WebServer 2.1 beta is now available for download at www.oracle.com. Version 2.1 comes with Netscape Application Programming Interface support, which lets you install Oracle's Web Request Broker directly into a Netscape server. The current release is for Sun Solaris only. An NT version is expected soon.
The next release of Navigator Personal Edition will support ISDN on Windows 3.1. The 16-bit Shiva dialer Netscape currently bundles with Navigator P.E. does not support ISDN, but Netscape says Shiva is working to incorporate ISDN capabilities into its next dialer, which is expected to ship with Navigator 4.0.
PROPRIETARY ONLINE SERVICES - IN THE LAST-CHANCE SALOON
Adam Page examines a world struggling to redefine itself
For the past two years, analysts have been saying that the proprietary online service industry is on the verge of being wiped out; the online services providers have always dismissed such forecasts as alarmist and misconceived. The Internet and the Web, they say, is an opportunity, not a threat. Until now, online suppliers have always been able to back up their argument with undeniable evidence in their favour. Market leader America Online Inc, Vienna, Virginia for example, has produced consistently strong financial results; and, like rival CompuServe Corp, it has subscriber numbers dwarfing the most popular Web sites (both claim up to 4.5m subscribers).
But that was in April and, just a few months on, 1996 is proving a critical watershed year for the online industry at large and for several of the smaller players in particular. With the exception of America Online, all of the major suppliers in the US, Europe and beyond are experiencing major upheavals which can be directly attributed to seismic shifts caused by the World Wide Web.
Certainly, CompuServe's first few months as a public company have not been easy. Executives, flush with $70m after the public offering, have been working on a plan to raise brand awareness, make tactical acquisitions, and re-position the service to exploit the Internet and the wave of new technology, rather than compete against it. Shortly after the share listing, for example, it finally abandoned its own proprietary standards and announced plans to adopt open Internet standards - including an expanded alliance with Microsoft Corp.
But some analysts believe it may have waited too long to make these changes, and in its latest fourth quarter, it announced losses of $1.1m, forecasting further losses in its next quarter. Perhaps more worrying for CompuServe is the face-off in subscribers. The company admits that it lost 1% of its subscriber base in May and June, bringing the total down to 3.4m.
This is a critical figure - subscriber numbers not only drive core revenues, but could be the key to unlocking new sources of revenues, such as advertising, and for negotiating alliances. Previously, CompuServe's subscriber base has grown steadily. These figures have triggered an angry response from some shareholders.
Last month, several law firms filed a class action suit on their behalf alleging
that CompuServe failed to disclose that its subscriber base and profitability were in jeopardy at the time of its flotation. This is not a speculative action: the law passed last year tightened up the rules relating to shareholder class actions, discouraging lawyers from filing suits except where there is a very good chance of success.
CompuServe hopes its problems will pass as it moves its business model towards that of America Online. It has re-positioned itself as a 'Super-Web-site' and as a low-cost, reliable way of accessing the Internet. For America Online, the market leader, this is so far proving a viable strategy. But even Microsoft, which has a similar 'Super-Web site' strategy based on alliances with major content suppliers, has said its Microsoft Network will not make a profit this year.
PRODIGY IN DIRE STRAITS
Another major rival, one-time market leader Prodigy Services Co, is also having a tough time. Its two disgruntled parents, IBM Corp and Sears Roebuck & Co, ended nearly two years of crippling indecision about its future by selling it to International Wireless Inc in June for $250m. As a sign of its falling stock, IBM is reported to have offered Sears $300m for its 50% of the company in late 1994.
Analysts have now given International Wireless two years to resurrect the struggling online service provider and one-time leader in electronic shopping. Its subscriber based is believed to be around 1m. For smaller and less established suppliers, problems are even worse.
Europe Online SA, an ambitious start-up designed to answer America Online and backed by some of Europe's most powerful content providers, has already filed bankruptcy papers - with between 25,000 and 50,000 subscribers, it has scarcely got off the ground. Europe Online's problems were sparked by a rebellion from one of its biggest backers, Burda AG, the German publisher. Burda, which holds 33%, wanted to put its money into developing Web sites rather than online services. It is believed to have tried to persuade Europe Online to change its management in order to reflect its new view of the market.
Europe Online wanted to make changes too, but did not want to hand over too much control to Burda. Burda's withdrawal of ongoing support exacerbated a cash crisis - the company's revenues had already been hit by a year-long delay in getting its service going. Although there is widespread scepticism, Europe Online expects to survive, and still has the backing of major shareholders such as Pearson Group Plc, publisher of the Financial Times, and the Luxembourg government.
But AT&T Corp, another shareholder, has withdrawn and partners Matra Hachette SA of France and Springer-Verlag AG of Germany also pulled out.
AT&T has further underlined its belief that the Internet, and only the Internet, is the way forward by folding its nascent AT&T Personalink service in the US. Based on proprietary standards, the service enabled customers to call in and exchange files, search databases and send out software agents for information.
The decision comes as a major blow for General Magic Inc, which supplied the TeleScript secure agent environment for AT&T Personalink. Personalink was the first and only major service across the US to have completely committed to TeleScript, which uses mobile agents to search out information and carry out tasks on behalf of users. But although the technologies are different, many believe that Sun Microsystems Inc's Java language will eliminate the need for TeleScript. Like many of the online service providers, General Magic has urgently revised its strategy to try to live with the Internet.
In what Business Development Director Elizabeth Atcheson calls "a shot across the bow of the commercial online services", Odyssey L.P. released a study finding that 35% of American households connected to the Internet use commercial providers, down significantly from 54% just six months ago. The study found that the penetration of ISPs jumped from 30% to 48% during the same period. Atcheson says that Odyssey's findings mean that, as far as consumers are concerned, "access to the Internet is more important to them than the proprietary content of commercial online services".
As mentioned above, AT&T last week revealed that it has scrapped its Personal Online Services Group - a program AT&T calls an experiment in "bringing value to the market by aggregating content", which means that the service's 100 test users could get access to proprietary content that AT&T slapped together. A company spokesman stopped short of saying that there was simply no money for AT&T in content.
On the ISP front, AT&T says it has passed the 400,000 subscriber mark - and this, seemingly, without flexing its significant marketing muscle. AT&T spokesman Mike Miller says that his company has focused on quality of service and customer support rather than any intensive marketing campaign. It seems as though the company has been testing the waters since WorldNet was launched a year ago and is now ready to up the ante. Miller says new promotions are planned for the fall and the Wall Street Journal reports that AT&T plans to spend $400 million on its Internet business this year. AT&T has also announced plans to provide Internet access to businesses.
LUCENT JUMPS INTO INTERNET TELEPHONY FEET FIRST
Lucent Technologies Inc has thrown its weight behind Internet telephony - but unlike competing offerings, which have taken the form of single-user software packages, it is developing a server-based offering pitched directly at the corporate marketplace.
The plans were announced at last week's NetWorld+Interop show in Atlanta. Indeed, the timing of the announcement - coming just as Lucent gains its new-found independence from AT&T Corp - implies the now liberated company is releasing technologies previously witheld because of conflicts of interest with its then parent.
The new Internet Telephony Server is designed to enable users to route phone calls, facsimile messages and voice mail over the Internet, or over the public switched telephone network. The product uses core technology from Lucent's MultiMedia Communications Exchange, announced last year and is designed to enable users to select different classes of service according to the sensitivity of a transmission: a user could choose to send a non-confidential facsimile over the Internet, for example, or over the public switched telephone network if it is of a sensitive nature.
Initial availability of the Telephony Server is slated for the first quarter next year, with general availability the following quarter. Also for the MultiMedia Exchange is a new application that bears a strong similarity to the Instant Answers system that AT&T announced a few weeks ago - although in one respect, it significantly improves on the AT&T offering. Both systems are designed to integrate call centre operatives with the Internet, the idea being that Web surfers needing more information on a product can click on an icon and simultaneously speak with a customer service representative.
However, while AT&T instant Answers requires users to have two phone lines - one for the Web connection, the other used by the customer service representative to call up the user - the new Lucent technology, called Internet Call Centre, needs just one connection, which can be used simultaneously for both speech and Web communications.
It can be used with any speech-enabled Web browser, according to Lucent. Another new offering is the Internet Directory Server, designed to enable network operators to offer electronic commerce applications, such as an electronic telephone directory. Within the directory, says Lucent, subscriber profile databases can also be built, to offer Internet and intranet users personalised navigation services. A new venture from Bell Laboratories has also been announced. Called elemedia - which is short for "elements for multimedia" - it claims to have developed breakthrough speech and music compression technology that gives "the same quality and richness of sound" to Internet speech traffic that regular telephony traffic enjoys. The technology is part of a new Media Plus family. It has been applied to speakerphone software that is claimed to provide full-duplex capabilities to personal computers and Internet telephone devices, and audio software - said to support music-on-demand and real-time audio broadcasting - producing CD-quality stereo sound.
Elemedia says it is currently developing videoconferencing-over-the-Internet software as part of Media Plus; this is intended for launch next quarter.
Lucent has also updated its Intuity Messaging Solutions for the Internet era: the most recent release enables users to use any touch-tone phone to access their voice and - through text-to-speech technology - facsimile and electronic mail messages. The enhancement is claimed to give the same capabilities as any Web browser. Lucent used Java to provide the new features, and says it will begin beta trials of the system in the first quarter of 1997, with general availability slated for the second half. It did not give pricing for the new products; this will be announced as they become available.
WIND RIVER TO BUILD JAVAOS INTO EMBEDDED OFFERING
Wind River Systems is now the first embedded software company to license Sun's JavaOS. According to company Chairman, Jerry Fiddler, the new, as yet un-named OS will be built upon Wind River's VxWorks kernel using parts of the Java OS like the device driver and debugger APIs as well as Java's native abstract window toolkit (AWT). The deal will bring Java to the 15 or so chips currently supported by VxWorks and will allow VxWorks applications to become Java-enabled. Native AWT, based on X-Web (a bare bones version of X-Windows) is being developed by JavaSoft for JavaOS. Fiddler says that Java's current AWT windowing class requires either Motif or Win 32, which are far too kludgey for the embedded market.
In fact, Wind River has developed its own AWT, code named Tiny AWT, so that it can produce a Java-enabled OS while it waits for JavaOS to be finished up. It has been demoing this software for a few months and is closing negotiations with Sun on this product right now. The Java-enabled OS is available for "engineers in the development phase of their new product activities", according to Wind River's press release.As for supporting Sun's promised Java chip, Fiddler says there are no plans yet, but that, "if they ever do a Java chip, I'm sure we will be involved in that".
Training software company G.A. Sullivan's St. Louis headquarters will be home to a new Internet training site on October 14, 1996. Created in partnership with Internet training company Prosoft Inc., the center will provide businesses, including G.A. Sullivan's corporate clients, with instruction on browsers, Web page development, Internet business development and advanced Internet technologies.. www.gasullivan.com
MobileWare Corp is now shipping its WebMirror Personal 1.0 intelligent agent software. WebMirror lets users filter and manage the time and content of Web searches and its "intelligent" caching feature lets users view their search results while disconnected from the Internet. It is priced at $30.
Symantec has released a beta version of its dbANYWHERE product that can be downloaded free of charge on the Symantec CafŽ Website . dbANYWHERE is middleware designed to hook up corporate databases with Java-enabled applications over the Internet using JavaSoft's JDBC API. The product includes drivers to connect to Oracle, Sybase, Watcom and MS SQL server and supports OBDC compliant databases. It runs on Windows 95 and NT.
http://cafe.Symantec.com
Attention technology elite: mark January 19 to 21, 1997 on your calendars! This is when Upside Magazine will hold its second annual technology summit at the La Quinta Club in Palm Springs, themed "Managing Digital Mania: An Extreme Sport for Technology Executives". Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, and Nicholas Negroponte are all scheduled to headline. Upside has also announced that it will be presenting David Coursey's Showcase in late spring '97.
www.upside.com
Feeling the pressure from plummeting sales of its Sound Blaster cards, Creative Technology Ltd. has cut deals with NetSpeak Corp., Seer Systems, Onlive! Technologies, and Progressive Networks. The strategy, says Creative, is to bring "Internet multimedia to the masses". The company has licensed NetSpeak's technology under its Creative WebPhone brand and hopes to develop this into a line of Internet Telephony products. Seer's technology will be implemented in Creative NetSynth, available later this year, which will play high quality MIDI over the Internet. Creative intends to bundle Onlive!'s Traveler 3D and Progressive Network's RealAudio with its multimedia and communications products.
BRIEFLY
SUN GOES TO EGGHEAD FOR ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION
Sun Microsystems is using a new electronic software delivery service it hopes will encourage resellers to distribute its software products.
With its recently released Java WorkShop development product, Sun made its first move into traditional retail channels by offering Egghead Software a choice of two new electronic distribution kits. The first option, internally referred to as Web Host, lets the reseller download software code, product pages and supporting material to his own Web site, effectively delivering a prefabricated electronic distribution site for Sun's reseller to operate on his own. Alternately, Web Link gives the reseller some HTML pages for his own Website, but then links back to Sun for software delivery.
Egghead says it chose Java WorkShop as the first product to be sold and downloaded directly from its Website because Sun was able to provide the Web Host distribution kit. Spokesperson Marcy Savage says, however, that Sun's kit was used just to get the ball rolling and that New Release Software has developed a distribution package that Egghead will be using for future products. Savage adds that the site is in a test stage right now. 2-5 more products will be added over the next month and, if all goes according to plan, Egghead expects to host a catalog of about 200 products by April 1st.
SunSoft thinks that Java brand recognition and a low price point (you can get it for $80 at www.egghead.com) will allow Java WorkShop to penetrate beyond Sun's traditional highly technical developer market.
Sun says it envisions casual programmers picking up the product at a local computer store to teach themselves Java on weekends. It has even, according to a Bloomberg report, gone so far as to bundle the product in Singapore with rival Hewlett-Packard's Vectra Vl4 PCs rather than with good old Sun hardware. Presumably UltraSPARCs are not the fare of the casual programmer.
OPEN MARKET UNVEILS
COMMERCE-DATABASE LINK
Open Market will announce its new ActiveCommerce DB application development tool this week. The product uses Bluestone's Sapphire/Web development environment and Open Market's OM-SecureLink transaction technology to allow customers to create commerce-enabled Websites using existing ODBC-compliant databases.
Open Market says that customers will be able to link relational database information to HTML templates so that product information can be updated on the fly. OM-Secure Link would allow transactions to be processed on the back end by either Open Market's OM-Transact commerce software or by existing fulfillment software.
ActiveCommerce DB will also ship with a couple of sample applications like a Web store and a business control panel, which lets you make real-time changes to the database using a Web browser. The product will ship in early November. It will cost $2,995, with no limit on how many commerce sites can be created.
Open Market will also announce that Allaire Corporation, Millenium Productions, Inc, Sausage Software, WebEngine, Inc., and WebMate Technologies will integrate OM-SecureLink into their products. Commerce applications developed with these products will now be able to hook up to Open Market's back-end processing software, OM-Transact. www.openmarket.com.
CANDLE EXTENDS ITS MIDDLEWARE INTO THE WEB
Candle Corp last week accelerated the expansion of its middleware, integration and service businesses, announcing new communications packages for Lotus Development Corp, SAP AG and Web-based applications using IBM Corp's MQSeries messaging, plus the acquisition of MQSeries conversion shop Amsys North America Inc.
It is also opening up more of its Command Center management application programming interfaces to end-users and is hoping that Microsoft Corp will soon get over "its schizophrenic period with ActiveX" so it can begin to sell a bunch of new object and Internet management products it has sitting on the shelf.
Candle is majoring on the use of IBM's MQSeries messaging technology to develop future generations of management and communications products and will offer the same facilities over Microsoft's Falcon messaging system when that comes down. Candle chief executive Bob LaBant has recently hired the IBM MQSeries business manager Steve Craggs as his vice-president of solutions for network applications.
Having recently gobbled up Across Data Systems Inc's MQ/Secure middleware and Lotus Notes and desktop management company CleverSoft Inc, Candle this week announces it is buying 40-person MQSeries implementation shop Amsys North America on undisclosed terms. The privately-held Boston, Massachusetts concern is currently implementing MQSeries for Tandem Computers Inc's Himalaya massively parallel systems. It claims it has other implementations under wraps. Chief executive Ian Hadfield will extend Amsys's reach to the UK, Europe and elsewhere as vice-president of the Candle messaging, middleware and services division.
The new packaged products, initially Lotus Connect, followed by Web Connect and SAP Connect by year-end, will link organisations' applications in each of these areas to back-end mainframe and CICS environments managed by Command Center.
The Connect bundles include MQSeries and Command Center management for it, MQ/Secure and IntelliWatch management and desktop tools plus integration services. Prices will range from $50,000 to $100,000. Meantime Candle says there's a ton of application management holes it still has to fill by development or acquisition, including full end-to-end and drill-down facilities, and the first of these came with the licensing of Tivoli Systems Inc's application development environment tool kits to integrate the TME 10 framework into Command Center products.
Users will be able to share data between both companies' system frameworks and interface Candle offerings with Tivoli-based modules from independent software vendors. Craggs claimed about 85% of its mainframe customers have both Candle and Tivoli systems and about 20% to 30% of its client-server users do as well, so it's an obvious move. Candle says the first level of the agreement is bi-directional capability, so that an event monitored by a Tivoli product will also be passable to Command Center.
By the first half of 1997 it will have achieved framework-to-framework linkage so that any application in a Tivoli domain will be accessible for Command Center.
Last week the company also opened up console application programming interfaces in its Command Center management suite to accept messages created by users rather than just those pre-defined by Candle.
LIVE IN FINLAND? USE MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER - OFFICIAL
State-controlled Telecom Finland; last week gave Microsoft Corp a big boost in its browser battle with Netscape Communications Corp by saying that it wants to get all Finns to use the Internet, and is promoting Internet Explorer version 3.0 as its recommended browser for Windows 95 users, though it still recommends Navigator for Windows 3.1 users.
The main target is business because the last survey showed almost 400,000 Finns out of a population of 5m use the Internet every week and almost 150,000 used it daily or almost every day, and they are predominantly fireside users. EuNet Finland Oy is also promoting Explorer. Despite its promotion of the Internet, it is not interested in Network Computers, saying that it doesn't get involved with hardware.
INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENTS MAKES SLIM NET PROFIT
Following its June flotation on London's Alternative Investment Market, Intelligent Environments Group Plc said it would be another year before the group achieved substantial revenue growth, and warned of large net losses for the full year.
Turnover for the six months to June 30 remained flat at £2m but the firm crept into the black at £35,000 after a £3,000 loss last time. The Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex-based developer of AM, a software tool designed to enable programmers to develop complex business applications using its proprietary Hyperlogic language, said it had made major progress during the period. Business is split evenly between Europe and North America.
Initial contracts for trial applications of Amazon, the group's Internet-intranet Web development product that launched during the half, have been signed. They include Tesco Stores Ltd, Honda Manufacturing Ltd and Air Express International Information Systems in the UK, plus the US Air Force. And although it may once have been a firm OS/2 advocator, more recently Intelligent Enironments has switched allegiances. Revenue from OS/2-related products has fallen sharply and the group has directed its attentions towards converting existing users of AM for OS/2 to the AM Windows client-server product for personal computers that run Windows NT.
The company said overall short-term revenue growth will depend on revenues from NT-related products. Cash balances at the halfway stage were at a healthy £6.7m, £5.6m of which derived from the flotation. Intelligent said the funds should enable the group to increase revenues within both the client-server and Internet-intranet markets, but share price has remained disappointing. From an initial flotation price of 94 pence, which put a market capitalisation of £21m on the firm, shares were down at 70 pence yesterday.
PLANNING SCIENCES BUILDS WEB-BASED ANAYLITICAL ENGINE
Denying it is just another quick and dirty Internet must-have, UK multi-dimensional database and analytical processing outfit Planning Sciences International Plc is talking up its Web-based analytical processing strategy. Codenamed Sumatra, it will be delivered in two phases based on Version 3.0 of its Gentia client-server executive information system development and decision support environment, including the GentiaDB multidimensional and analytical processing database engine. Phase one, Gentia Web Server, due the first quarter of next year, will enable standard Web browsers to access Gentia's analysis and development environment. Planning Sciences claims this work is essentially an extension of Gentia's core development, comprising two classes of object, those with core Gentia functionality and those governing the native client interface. It is these objects only that vary between the different graphical interfaces, says the firm. Gentia currently supports most Unixes, Windows 95 and Macintosh. It will integrate Java applets to improve local performance, aiding the management of network traffic, and enhance HyperText Mark-up Language.
Java applets will be stored and created in the Gentia object store. Phase two, due later in the year, will extend text integration by introducing a series of software agents to search intelligently for and link Mark-up Language documents relating to data in GentiaDB and SQL databases. The firm admits it has been forced to establish a Web strategy by prospective customers insisting on one. It has $30m from its May initial public offering and expects to announce a couple of partnerships soon.
OPEN HORIZON ADDS SECURITY TO DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
Belmont, California-based middleware house Open Horizon Inc, which has garnered a further $6m investment from US Venture Partners and PeopleSoft Inc in a third round of venture funding), says its Connection middleware enables organisations to add support for network security services - including single sign-on, authentication and encryption - centralised directory services, transaction processing monitors and other tools across distributed computing environments. The company offers Distributed Computing Environment security services, Distributed Computing Environment and X.500 directory services, browser and Java connections to databases, plus support for CICS, Encina, Tuxedo, Top End transaction monitors, C, C++, Forte and Dynasty. It claims to be able to tie applications, databases and security services together without changing customers' existing applications. Connection is also integrated with CyberSafe Corp's Challenger Kerberos-based security system. IBM Corp resells Connection and Open Horizon has other joint development and marketing deals with Apple Computer Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co. PeopleSoft sells Connection with its PeopleTools rapid application tool set. Open Horizon claims to have 2,000 customers and to have doubled in size since the beginning of the year. The company says it will use the money to broaden support for Connection and expand its Internet and intranet offerings.
NTT AIMS FOR THE INTERNET
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp, aiming to transform itself from a telephone company into a multimedia superpower, will launch a new network business in January to tap explosive demand for computer communications. It also plans to open up its network for use by rival Internet access providers and leased-line providers, partly to counter support for the government's proposed break-up of the company.
The new service, called the Open Computer Network, will be a data transmission network giving users access to the Internet and private lines for computer communications; the system will use routers, which cost only a small fraction of conventional telephone exchange systems used in voice communications.
NTT will spend only $110m on the project during its first year; the company hopes eventually, through affiliates, to launch businesses such as security-related applications on the network, which will also pose a serious threat to existing Internet and leased line providers that use more expensive systems such as telephone exchanges.
It will charge $275 to $366 a month for a 128Kbps line; the same lines via telephone exchanges cost $2,568 a month for Osaka-Tokyo services.
With the release of Navigator 4.0 Netscape Communications is planning to introduce a new Java security model, extending applets' ability to carry out operations such as reading and writing arbitrary files to a disk. Applets will also have digital signatures attached and users will be able to set up policies on an applet-by-applet basis. However though the new 'SetScope' API will present applet developers with enhanced flexibility and power, it may also present them with a quandary. JavaSoft itself hopes to have its much broader Java Security Architecture in place during the first half of next year. Though the two groups talk regularly, Netscape group security product manager Eric Greenberg said last week that the company would not slow down the introduction of its technology to wait for the JavaSoft standard. Meanwhile JavaSoft Java Security Architect Li Gong said that though his new architecture "will enable applications and applets do things similar to 'SetScope'... it is unlikely that this call 'SetScope' will be provided as is, as part of the standard API. The good news is that "as far as digital signatures go, we are completely compatible with Netscape", says Marianne Mueller, JavaSoft security expert. "We are working closely
DOT Gossip
Steve Markman, the first executive brought into Novell by ex-CEO Robert Frankenberg, will get another crack at turning a software company into an Internet software company. He has been named president, CEO and chairman of the Board of Directors of Sunnyvale software company General Magic Inc., replacing former president, Robert Kelsch, who resigned after a year on the job. Founder Marc Porat will step down from his role as CEO, but will remain with the company as an advisor and Board member.
Former Cambridge Technology Partners President, Robert Gett, will join Silicon Valley Internet Partners as President and CEO on November 1, 1996. Founded in April by Gartner Group's Eric Greenberg, the company provides Internet consulting and software services and is backed by a bevy of venture capitalists, including: Mohr, Davidow Ventures, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Trident Capital/Dun & Bradstreet Ventures, and CKS Group.
Progress Software Corp will ship its WebSpeed transaction processing over the Web tool this week; formerly code-named Mars. WebSpeed consists of two elements: a Transaction Server to interface with any Web browser and Common Gateway Interface Web browser, and, through transaction agents, manages the integrity of transactions over the Internet; and a Workshop of development tools, using Progress's proprietary language scripting for rapid application development.
Whitney G. Lynn has been named acting president and chief executive officer for Borland International Inc. The position is interim, as Borland continues its search for a new top dog. William F. Miller, who had been acting CEO, returns to his former job as Chairman of the board.
Tough times may be looming at Adobe Systems Inc which has reported third quarter net profits down 11.9% at $29.8m after a $9.5m investment gain this time and $691,000 loss last. Turnover also fell 1.2% at $180.9m; nine month net fell 18.8% to $85.5m, after a $14.7m write-off of in-process research and development, on turnover down 15.6% at $474.0m. As for net earnings per share ; they fell 9.1% to $0.40 in the quarter, 19.9% to $1.13 in the three quarters.
Time Warner Inc will carry the Microsoft Corp-backed all-news cable television network MSNBC, a move being taken to satisfy antitrust regulations as part of Time Warner's merger with Turner Broadcasting System Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported: Turner's 24-hour cable news channel, Cable News Network, is one of MSNBC's main competitors; the agreement to carry MSNBC will bring it into 6m homes served by Time Warner; MSNBC is a joint venture of General Electric Co NBC television network and Microsoft; meanwhile, negotiations between Time Warner and News Corp Ltd's Fox television network, aimed at the same agreement, have ended.
Microsoft Corp is not making nearly as much headway in winning hearts and minds for Internet Explorer if the latest survey results from Zona Research Inc, Redwood City, California are to be believed. It polled 150 corporate IT professionals and found that while Explorer is now available at 28% of sites, it is still the primary browser at only 8%, while Netscape's Navigator is in at 91%, primary at 83%, and the difference is so great that even the sampling error as a result of the small size of the sample does not alter the picture much; Zona argues that its method is more rigorous that counting hits on Web sites, because it picks up future policy, and because the other method cannot measure intranet usage; Zona's method however completely misses enthusiast usage, and although figures that embraced lone users might be expected to advance Microsoft's share considerably, anecdotal evidence goes the other way, suggesting they are even more Netscape-centric than corporates.
The gold code version Borland International Inc's IntraBuilder is now shipping. The Javascript development tool is available in two versions: IntraBuilder, which is designed for small workgroups and retails for $100, and IntraBuilder Professional, which is for higher volume applications. It costs $500. Borland says its high-end IntraBuilder Client/Server will ship later this year for $2,000. Evaluation copies of IntraBuilder can be downloaded at www.borland.com.
Check Point's popular FireWall-1 will now support Sybase SQL Server and Open Server applications through Firewall's Inspect engine.
PSINet Inc, Herndon, Virginia is to spend $100m to build an Internet network across Europe and begin offering PSINet-related services in mid-1997: its partner in the project is an investment group led by the Chatterjee Group affiliate of Soros Fund Management
British Telecommunications Plc is reviewing its ISDN prices following the complaints from the Office of Telecommunications that its tariffs are discriminatory: telecommunications director general Don Cruickshank has asked BT to review its tariffs, which he said were likely to have anti-competitive effects on customers and competitors who provide a similar service. The ISDN network is used by many small businesses, schools and some individuals for Internet access. Cruickshank said he has given Telecom a few days to meet his demands.
East Northport, New York-based Atec Group Inc, a full-service computer systems integrator, has acquired VDOT.NET Inc, a privately-held Internet service provider based in Hauppauge, New York, in a share exchange, of which the terms were not disclosed; VDOT.NET offers a variety of Internet specialty products, including Web page design, programming and the leasing of high-speed telecommunications lines.
The Pointcast Network is coming to Macs: the company says that its funky newswire front-end is currently out in beta and should be available in around a month. What's more - it's not a lowest-common-denominator port, but a proper re-write. www.pointcast.com
Diba Inc, the information appliance company emailed out a press release to its substantial list of high-tech journalists last week, immediately generating a couple of clueless 'please unsubscribe messages' sent - of course - to the list itself. Result? Escalation. As we went to press it looked as if a melt-down might be on the way. Increasingly annoyed and baffled hacks were asking 'why am I getting this stuff', 'get me off this list' and 'hi - anyone got any freelance work?'. One prankster suggested using the list to write a news story to appear in every publication simultaneously. The one person not on the press list, and not aware of the flood, was the original author at Diba itself. So if you're reading this guys, and wondering why your mailserver is shaking itself to pieces...
(c) 1996 May not be copied
online REPORTER, a sister publication of Unigram.X and ClieNT Server News, is published weekly in Europe by:
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