WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
July 29 - August 2 1996 Issue No 9
NETSCAPE SET TO EMBRACE OMG & GIVE REDMOND A HEADACHE
Netscape this week is supposed to throw the fat in the fire and embrace both the Object Management Group and IIOP, the OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol.
It is supposed to say that, not only will IIOP go into Navigator and all Netscape servers, but that it is joining the Object Management Group, effectively throwing its weight behind Corba and getting an object strategy in return.
The move is expected to create a dilemma for Microsoft which - with its competing COM/ActiveX object strategy - has never been what one might call a friend of the OMG.
However, Microsoft has toed much more of a standards line than it ever has before since getting involved with this Internet business, and Netscape's move makes Corba-IIOP look more and more like a de facto standard. Although Microsoft was quick to follow Netscape's lead in adopting LDAP and Java, observers find it difficult to believe it will compromise its position on objects.
The OMG is hoping Netscape's move also makes JavaSoft "look stupid," it says, since JavaSoft has so far refused to adopt IIOP as its native interoperability method, much to OMG's chagrin. It's hoping getting upstaged by Netscape will bring JavaSoft to its senses, paticularly in view of the fact that JavaSoft parent Sun Microsystems has been one of the OMG's heaviest supporters.
It says, "Maybe now it'll stop bringing up rathole technical arguments and see the big picture," which of course is who wins the objects war - OMG or Microsoft.
OMG boss Chris Stone, tracked down at press time at his vacation hideaway, was tickled pink at the prospect of Netscape's move. "Think of it," he said, "Corba on 38 million seats. That's a lot of objects. Take that, Redmond."
He is confident that Netscape's adoption of IIOP will get the attention of lots of ISVs. "They'll say, 'IIOP, IIOP. What's that? We'd better find out.'"
It should be no surprise to anyone that Netscape will use the all-Java Corba-compliant IIOP implementation created by PostModern Computing, the promising little ORB house now owned by Visigenic Software Inc which Netscape recently bought a piece of.
Last week Visigenic, which was started by Informix co-founder Roger Sippl, changed the name of that implementation from the fetching Black Widow that PostModern had dubbed it to VisiBroker for Java, ostensibly to create a consistent corporate image - though the fact that Black Widow is also the name of a mythical virus may have had something to
EUROPE MOVES STAMP ON INTERNET REGULATORY CONFUSION
The European Commission last week set out its plans to avoid Europe becoming enmeshed in conflicting Internet regulations. It also moved to relax EU IT procurement rules that have so far hindered use of de facto Internet standards.
The Commission's proposed "transparency mechanism" requires national governments to notify the Commisson whenever they plan new legislation regulating the Internet. They would be required to freeze any plans for three months, to give the Commission and other members time to comment. If objections arise, they could be asked to postpone the laws' implementation.
The Commission proposal, which needs to be agreed by ministers, comes at a time when separate European countries are starting to introduce a smorgasbord of regulatory controls on Internet service and content providers. But rather than trying to impose some over-arching structure, the Commission has decided on this more pragmatic, coordinating role. EU Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti told Reuters, "It would simply be too early" to regulate the Internet across the EU, however, "it would create an obstacle to the internal market if member states were to do this in an uncoordinated manner".
Of more immediate importance to equipment manufacturers going after lucrative government contracts will be the Commission's determination to embrace the de facto world. Existing procurement rules have been wedded to formal OSI standards, though numerous "derogations" mean that the requirements are often circumvented. The latest green paper says de facto standards are becoming "increasingly important", opening the way to a re-focussing of the regulations, as proposed by Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann.
The consultative green paper is at www.ispo.cec.be/infosoc/legreg/docs/nxtstpen.html. The Commission says it will publish an action plan before the end of the year, based on comments from the European Council of Ministers.
Microsoft has climbed down on its decision to set a limit of 10 unique IP connections over a 10-minute period on NT Workstation 4.0, which would have effectively eliminated it as a feasible option for Web servers. No such limit appears in the release 3.51 of Workstation, which does the job just fine. Microsoft told users that NT Server was required to run its Internet Information Server, whereas a simple registry entry change was all that was needed to make Workstation an effective alternative for Web serving. NT Server costs $1,000 against just $290 for NT Workstation. Microsoft has now promised "a compelling upgrade" from 3.51 Workstation to NT Server 4.0.
Twenty companies met last week at Netscape's HQ to begin work on an Internet-based calendar sharing standard. Those attending included Lotus and Microsoft, both of which have proposals they want to push as IETF standards. The companies intend to set up a new IETF work group on the subject and are committed to getting a draft proposal ready before the end of the year - politics permitting. The workgroup's chair is likely to be Anik Ganguly of FTP OnTime. Lotus's ICAP spec can be found at www.lotus.com/CALENDAR/. Microsoft has two drafts at the ftp://ietf.cnri.reston.va.us site: draft-shakib-mime-prop-00.txt and draft-ferrell-prop-cal-00.txt.
MACROMEDIA & ASTOUND: FREE VISUAL APPLET BUILDING
Web developers wanting to give their sites Java visual effects are becoming spoiled for choice. Following Aimtech's entry into the market with Jamba (OR issue 3) Macromedia is now touting AppletAce, making it available for free download. Palo Alto-based Astound Inc. is doing the same with a public beta of its new Astound WebMotion.
AppletAce is aimed at those wanting to add animated banners, interactive image maps and the like. The package can be used to customise the various "PowerApplets" which Macromedia has up on its Web site.
AppletAce for Windows 95 and Power Macs is available for free download from www.macromedia.com/software/powerapplets. It will be included with Backstage Designer in the Fall.
Astound Inc's WebMotion is somewhat more powerful, based on a path-type editor with VCR-esque controls for playback and editing of animations. On playback, the Java-enabled browser is first sent Astound's 15k player applet which the streams the presentation.
The streaming is intended to reduce the numbing wait that tends to accompany the arrival of Java animations. The beta can be grabbed from www.astoundinc.com. The finished product will cost $99. The authoring environment runs of Windows 95 or Windows 3.1.
CHANGE OF TACK FOR WORLDS INC AS IT LICENSES CODE
Worlds Inc, the multi-user Internet VR chat specialist last week announced it would begin licensing its authoring software. Previously, it had concentrated on building bespoke 3D interactive sites on the Internet.
Faced with a Netscape/Microsoft Schism, the company will make two complete families of tools available. "Active Worlds" are for - those more comfortable writing in ActiveX and Visual Basic. An early release of this is available now for evaluation, with the finished thing due late in the 3rd quarter or early in the first quarter of '97.
The "Gamma" suite is about 9 months behind this schedule and is written in C++ and Java. Though it's going to be later, Worlds claims that when it does arrive, its mixture of visual authoring tools and starter libraries "will increase development productivity by approximately 300% over previous Worlds tools." Gamma will have two possible user front-ends, a proprietary one "more suitable for gaming", or via a standard VRML 2.0-enabled browsers.
Worlds will also offer turnkey bundles aimed at specific vertical markets such as education, marketing, and electronic commerce.
The privately-owned company is not speculating as to how much of its business will come from tools sales, rather than its traditional world-construction business. "Substantial" says VP of product management, Rich Able. Worlds' own authoring team is likely to concentrate on projects that can show-case the technology, or push it particularly hard, he added.
FUTURETENSE PICKS UP SUPPORT FROM INFORMIX, MICROSOFT
Things are coming right for FutureTense Inc, which has gained support from both Microsoft and Informix for its 'Texture' web publishing package. Texture is a Windows based page construction package, probably the closest thing to WYSIWYG that the Web has yet seen. It gives publishers a great deal of control over their Web pages, both in terms of design and interaction.
The problem is that users need the FutureTense Java viewer; and that waiting for that to download can give drying paint a good name. In addition, without a Java Just In Time compiler, pages can take an age to display. Microsoft's decision to bundle the Texture viewer applet with the next release of Explorer 3.0 solves the first of these problems, Explorer's JIT helps the second.
Informix is drawing Texture into its database-to-web strategy, and will resell the authoring package which is being tied into Informix's Web DataBlade module (a middleware layer sitting between Informix's Illustra database server and a Web server). Texture can be used with the Web DataBlade's Application Page Builder, a tool that enables designers to browse Web site content and incorporate selected objects into Texture designs via copy and paste. Texture documents will also be able to deliver tailored content from the database. Informix will resell Texture for $495.
LOTUS AND POINTCAST TEAM UP TO OFFER INTRANET NEWSCASTS
Lotus Development Corp's mission to turn Notes into a "universal client": continued last week when it signed a technology agreement with news specialist PointCast Inc.
The duo are going to pool their technologies to produce a system that will let corporate broadcast personalized news to users' screens over their intranets. Lotus will be using its "Domino" technology, currently used to link Notes databases to the Inter/intranet.
Despite much talk of strategy, there's no news on when the first fruits of the technology partnership are expected to arrive. This is the first time that Pointcast's has exploited its in-house technology in this way.
After a couple of days of starvation a hungry animal is living off its fat. When that has all gone, it begins to digest its own muscle and then its own internal organs. Listen closely and you can hear some stomachs rumbling in the Internet content sector as companies begin to cast a hungry eye over their own innards.
Over the last month a definite fashion has emerged among content providers to begin "productizing" their in-house-developed tools. It started, perhaps when Microsoft, decided to sell the guts of MSN as 'Normandy'. Last week C/NET decided to sell the technology which powers its site. This week Worlds Inc has decided that its business of building 3D interactive worlds can usefully be bolstered by making its in-house tools commercially available. There are plenty of other examples.
To an extent, the urge to productize is the natural reaction of a company with a valuable asset that is not core to its business. An alternative interpretation, however, is that here we have companies experimenting at the cutting edge of business models on the Internet, which are being forced back on the older, tested model of selling software.
Rich Able, VP of product management at Worlds Inc would deny this. He says his company has always intended to licence its software, "it was just a question of when". However he admits that when it comes to looking at ways to make money from the business of building 3D interactive worlds: "The business model issues still remain" he says. They are the same issues that still face many Web content providers. "In the next year, hopefully we will have more data on which [business models] will work" he adds, rather optimistically.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong, from an individual company's point of view, with a move into software sales. But it's not a good sign for healthy growth of the Internet content sector. When the software is being sold to other content providers who are also struggling to find a business model, and are considering selling their software to other service providers who are selling their software to ... this is not self-sustaining.
No matter, say the optimists - look at the sites that are coining it in from advertising. Except, oh dear, the vast majority of advertising these days appears to be from other Internet companies. When Excite's results showed a $5m payment to Netscape last week, the first question to ask was how much of Excite's improving revenue stream came from advertising income from Netscape itself.
It's enough to make you bite your finger nails; not that they constitute a full meal.
FROM THE PULPIT
IEEE: NO JAVA STANDARD WITHOUT JAVASOFT OKAY
Treading warily, the IEEE workgroup whose agenda includes standardizing Java, JavaScript and Visual Basic has decided it can't proceed without the participation of the three intellectual property owners: JavaSoft, Netscape and Microsoft. The IP holders will be offered a standardization fast track through the Posix committee.
The decision was made at a workgroup meeting in Boston that was in progress as we went to press with the last issue.
Neither JavaSoft, Netscape nor Microsoft attended the meeting but Gary Robinson of SunSoft was there, presumably as a messenger and possible opinion shaper. Mercifully no lawyers went either.
The group's primary concern is with Java. It would like to standardize the core Java language and perhaps even the byte code for the Java Virtual Machine before too many extensions are created. It believes a simple spec could be written and pushed through.
It also expects an uphill fight since JavaSoft is regarded as being very hostile to any standardization attempt. In fact, a workgroup member described JavaSoft as "more rabidly anti-standardization than Microsoft" is notoriously perceived to be. Such a reputation is ironic for the offshoot of a company whose whole rationale and claim to moral superiority over Redmond's "evil empire" has been standards but JavaSoft is believed to regard standardization as premature.
Sources describe JavaSoft as a bunch of technologists whose "heads are down" and don't believe standardization would contribute to their effort. Instead it would restrict Java development. They are said to be blind to the economic side of standards.
Standardization supporters, on the other hand, express concerns that JavaSoft, in its on-going development, could break backward compatibility, upsetting lots of people and derailing current third-party Java work. Standardization, they argue, would attract more players.
The study group, which included attendees from the National Institute of Standards (NIST), Usenix, DEC, IBM and Tandem among others the week before last, figures it has until its January meeting to make its case. Posix chief Lowell Johnson will apparently be in charge of selling JavaSoft on the concept. Much behind-the-scenes wrangling is expected.
Conceivably, sources say, JavaSoft might sanction the standardization of the Java VM byte code, a less political animal than Java itself, just to see how it goes.
Posix people, meanwhile, are concerned that they might lose control of the Java spec if JavaSoft attempts to circumvent them and turns Java over to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) and ECMA's rubberstamp ISO, the International Standards Organization, for standardization. The ECMA route, they contend, is equivalent to "buying a spec."
Sun is in pretty good odour with ECMA since it turned the controversial APIW spec, the anti-Microsoft Public Windows Initiative specification, over to it last year.
IEEE groups for their part are easy to criticize, having a poor track record with C++, now in its fifth year of standardization with nothing definitive to show for the time spent, and having botched, as many survivors think, the old highly politicized Motif-Open Look GUI wars.
JavaSoft may also be wary of how much control Posix big shots like Jim Issac from rival DEC are exerting over the standards push and process.
MASTERCARD SIGNS UP WITH GTE, VISA GOES FOR VERISIGN
Mastercard and Visa both announced their SET digital signature partners last week. Mastercard has chosen GTE Inc for its Internet commerce partner, Visa has plumped for Verisign Inc.
GTE, which has hitherto had a lower profile than its competitor reckons its system, which it will market under the 'CyberTrust' name will be first out of the gate, with certificate authority services up by the fourth quarter. The system will be used to support a number of pilots, the first of which are taking place in Denmark and Malaysia.
Meanwhile Visa is paying VeriSign to operate the digital certificate service that Visa which will be offering its member financial institutions. Test certificates are now available from www.verisign.com who want to try out integrating certificate-handling into their applications.
Verisign is more vague as to when the service will be "tested later this year". "Real" IDs will follow in '97.
JAPAN & THAILAND TO GET JAVA PROMOTION GROUPS
Java has hit Japan where a group of 60 hardware and software companies are coming together to promote the language in areas such as consumer electronics. A spokesperson for Justsystems Corp in the US confirmed that its Japanese parent company will host the group in its Tokushima-based headquarters. On the face of it, Justsystems looks like an unlikely choice, it is is best known for its wordprocessing software. However the company intends to enter the Java development tools arena in the first or second quarter next year, according to the spokesperson.
Apart from word processing, the company also runs JustNet, one of the biggest Internet Service Providers in Japan, and its from here that the company will draw its experience- the spokesperson said JustNet's operating software has been constructed using Object Orientated principles, which are now being adapted for the forthcoming toolset.
Meanwhile in Thailand, the Bangkok Post reports that Sun Microsystems distributor, Logic Company is trying to gather support for a model "Java campus" to act as a model town of the future. The company is reportedly talking to the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre and universities as well as to private companies to get funding for the demonstrator.
INTEL GIVEAWAY THREATENS INTERNET PHONE COMPANIES
Continuing its campaign with Microsoft Corp to put the developers of Internet telephony software out of business, Intel Corp has come out with free Internet phone applet, saying it made the move because "there were a lot of Internet phones out there, but the frustration level was high because the phones didn't talk to each other." The Intel software meets the H.323 teleconferencing standard but only runs under Windows 95; it is designed to interoperate with other upcoming H.323-based communications software from Microsoft and other vendors. The beta version of the applet is available free from tomorrow at its Web site, www.intel.com/iaweb/cpc The applet incorporates Microsoft's User Location Service technology to locate other Internet phone users through existing Internet Directory Services.
l Intel, intent on pursuing its "connected PC" strategy in the face of hype about Network Computers, show-cased its strategy last week for the connected PC and the hybrid applications that run on it. Intel's pitch is that Internet-only applications running on thin clients can't supply the rich feature set that the majority of desktop users demand.
DEC's AltaVista-branded 'Search My Computer' Private eXtension beta for
Windows95 and Windows NT, is available free for downloading, and enables users to create an index of their personal desktop. Private eXtension performs keyword searches "in a split second," DEC says - but users must regularly commit processing time to indexing the contents of their hard disks. AltaVista Private eXtension includes scheduling components for automatic updates. A commercial version is set for release in October, pricing has yet to be set. Since Windows 95 will do a (slow) search anyway, will users bother?
COREL TIGHTENS JAVASOFT RELATIONSHIP STILL FURTHER
Corel, whose office suite for Java looks to be the first application (aside from e-mail and browsers) completely written in the language, has tightened its relationship to JavaSoft by licensing Java for future versions of its market-leading CorelDraw 7 program.
As reported last week, it will also include the Java Virtual Machine in versions of Venture and WordPerfect. Corel will build a Java applet viewer that allows users to view applets in any application; it will provide JavaSoft with the viewer, which may then be distributed to third-party vendors.
Corel expects its default position as leading Java application vendor to become official within the next two months, when the Network Computer people fill in details about the Internet terminal and Corel announces its OEM deals and produces a beta.
Corel's WordPerfect suite in Java will feature 80% of the current desktop WordPerfect suite features and take up single-digit megabytes of memory or less. Corel said Network Computer manufacturers will bundle a Corel suite smart card with the machines that would give them free access rights for one part of the suite, such as wordprocessing, but then requires a fee for other areas such as spreadsheets.
Corel doesn't expect Fortune 1,000 companies - the bulk of which use Microsoft Office - just to throw out their desktop suites entirely, but already has companies trying out the pre-beta in departmental environments.
Companies rarely switch suites, but Corel sees Internet terminals as an opportunity to convince users in mixed environments to make the move away from Office and IBM's Lotus suite.
INTERNET COMES TO HOTEL ROOMS - BROWSING IN BED
Hotel guests can now access the Internet in their hotel rooms via what is claimed to be the world's first hotel-room Internet service by ViewInn at the Chesterfield Hotel in London with hardware from Bull Information Systems.
Links have been included to hundreds of sites expected to be of most interest to guests visiting from overseas. All 110 rooms in the hotel will offer the on-line service with access provided through the television set.
On-line services offered include the electronic editions of various newspapers, sports news, entertainment guides and financial market reports, and are down-loaded and stored centrally in the hotel rather than being provided in real time. Other services include facsimile and electronic mail capabilities, breakfast and room service ordering and bill payment.
SUN AND NETWORK IMAGING LINK FIREWALLS AND STORAGE
Sun Microsystems Inc has teamed with Network Imaging Corp in an alliance dubbed Project Bedrock that brings together Sun's SunScreen firewall and security technology with Network Imaging's 1View storage management system. There are no new products, just a non-exclusive joint marketing and integration effort.
The first systems integrator signed up for Bedrock is Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Technologies Inc. The combination of Sun's SunScreen turnkey firewall with Network Imaging's WebMOM1View: WEB Multimedia Object Manager, which provides the link between corporate intranets and the 1View storage management system, will, say the pair, enable the safe deployment of World Wide Web-based applications across intranets and the Internet.
FULCRUM AND FUJITSU TEAM ON JAPANESE SEARCH ENGINE
After 18 months or so of co-development, Fulcrum Technologies Inc and Fujitsu Ltd are forming a Japanese joint venture company to market a Japanese-language version of Fulcrum's Search Server search and retrieval engine. Nippon Fulcrum KK, as it will be known, is 70% owned by Ottawa, Canada-based Fulcrum, with the rest held by Fujitsu, and the $900,000 invested by the pair reflects that split.
The company will begin selling the new product at the start of August from its Tokyo headquarters. The deal is non-exclusive, but the company itself will have exclusive rights to market the technology in Japan. Fujitsu, still plugging away at the groupware market with TeamWare, is to integrate the Japanese SearchServer technology into TeamWare, to Web-enable it and enhance its Japanese-language capabilities.
Fulcrum chief executive Eric Goodwin reckons the new engine has all the Japanese bases covered, including such idiosyncrasies as multiple characters with the exact same meaning. He said this deal will probably lead to other Asian language versions, given Fujitsu's muscle in that area of the world. The joint venture is very small to start with: "in the four or five range," as Goodwin put it. Goodwin said he expects the Japanese market to be "explosive" over the next few years.
At the end of this fiscal year, Fulcrum's chief financial officer Peter Reid said he expected Asia-Pacific revenues to account for between five and ten percent of the total, but the company expected that to rise to 20% in the next three years, according to Goodwin. Fulcrum's search engine came out of work done at Queens University in Canada, where the law school worked with the computer department to develop a text indexing system to search through legal documents at high speed. The competition is hotting up very fast in the search engine market, and competitors such as Verity Inc have driven Fulcrum to cut its prices, produce more powerful, low-end products, and step up its branding and licensing activities.
Fulcrum is also an example of that rare animal in the Internet search engine world: it is profitable and has been so for some time now.
J++ TURNS OUT TO BE A RESOURCE-HUNGRY BULLY
In Microsoft Corp's dash to publicise Visual J++, its new Java development environment, the company has accidentally - we assume - made the product appear considerably more attractive than it actually is. Visitors seeking the free beta release from www.microsoft.com/visualj are informed that it will run on an 80486 CPU with 8Mb of RAM and 14Mb of hard disk space. But when the bloated 13Mb download arrives - after a tortuous process that feeds Redmond a good deal of personal information - it demands a 90MHz Pentium, 24Mb of RAM and 35Mb of free disk. Both msnews.microsoft.com's newsgroups and others on the Usenet are bristling with complaints about problems with it too. In particular it clobbers rival Netscape Communications Corp's Navigator browser - without asking - so hard that even a re-install won't bring it back.
Navigator users are further incensed: debugging applets is impossible in Visual J++ without Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. An alternative approach was possible but, to quote a Microsoft spokesman, "would have taken much more time." Users of Windows NT 3.51 are unhappy at having to 'upgrade' to 4.0 - itself in beta - merely to try out the Visual J++ beta. And programmers from other Java backgrounds find that Visual J++ replaces the universally-accepted CLASSPATH variable with registry entries that only Microsoft's operating systems understand.
LBMS's latest Process Engineer process management software release has become Intranet enabled with the addition of the PE/Web Publisher component. This lets companies create and maintain a "best practices" Web site. Along with interface improvements, Learmonth has also added enhanced workgroup features, such as wider electronic mail standards, including Lotus Notes 4.X and cc:Mail 6.0, Object Linking & Embedding automation and support for Computer Science Corp's Project View 3.2 and ABT Corp's Project Workbench 3.0.
Ascend Communications Inc has reported second quarter net profits up at $29.8m from $5.3m before on turnover up at $123.3m from $28.6m last time; mid-term net profits rose to $50.7m from $8.8m last year on turnover up at $214.4m same time before. Net earnings per share rose to $0.24 from $0.05 in the quarter, and to $0.41 from $0.09 in the half.
Banyan Systems Inc has reported second quarter net profits up at $186,000 from losses of $3.3m before on turnover up 0.2% at $30.2m; mid-term net profits rose 109.4% to $555,000 on turnover up 14.7% at $60.1m. Net earnings per share rose to $0.01 in the quarter, and rose 200% to $0.03 in the half.
Macromedia Inc reported first quarter net profits up 61.0% at $7.1m on turnover up 46.7% to $35.0m. Net earnings per share were up by 38.5% to $0.18.
Microsoft Corp has reported fourth quarter net profits that soared 51.9% at $559.0m after a $31.7m charge on the forced termination of its plans to acquire Intuit Inc, on turnover that jumped 39.1% at $2,255m. Net profit for the year to June 30 climbed 51.1% at $2,195m on turnover that rose 46.0% at $8,671m. Net earnings per share rose 50% to $0.87 in the quarter, 48% to $3.43 in the year.
Network Equipment Technologies Inc has reported first quarter net profits that were down 30.3% at $4.5m on turnover that was down 3.9% to $76.5m. Net earnings per share dropped 34.4% to $0.21.
Nynex Corp has reported second quarter net profits that rose by 11.8% at $388.1m, which includes 1996 $30.1m and 1995 $106.2m exceptional pension charge on turnover up 5.5% at $3,446m; mid-term net profits were up by 22.2% to $795.4m, which includes above two charges, on turnover up 5.5% at $6,768m. Net earnings per share were up by 9.9% to $0.89 in the quarter, and up 19.6% to $1.83 in the half.
Sun Microsystems Inc has reported fourth quarter net profits down 4.6% at $122.3m after a $63.9m charge to write off in-process research and developent at, and acquisition costs for, Integrated Micro Products Plc and Lighthouse Design Inc, on turnover up 22.4% to $2,018.1m; net profit for the year to June 30 jumped 33.9% at $476.4m, on turnover up 20.2% at $7,094.7m. Net per share, off 2% at $0.62 in the quarter, rose 34% to $2.42 in the year.
COMPANY RESULTS
Netscape this week is supposed to throw the fat in the fire and embrace both the Object Management Group and IIOP, the OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol.
It is supposed to say that, not only will IIOP go into Navigator and all Netscape servers, but that it is joining the Object Management Group, effectively throwing its weight behind Corba and getting an object strategy in return.
The move is expected to create a dilemma for Microsoft which - with its competing COM/ActiveX object strategy - has never been what one might call a friend of the OMG.
However, Microsoft has toed much more of a standards line than it ever has before since getting involved with this Internet business,
VERIFONE AND CYBERCASH TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT
Hatim Tyabji, president and CEO of Verifone Inc has resigned from the board of CyberCash Inc in which Verifone has an investment and which previously has been described as a strategic ally.
The two companies, both founded by William Melton, Cybercash's current chief executive officer had been on a collision course ever since Verifone's recent announcement of a credit card Internet payment scheme. In a statement Tyabji said the two firms might still cooperate in some areas but "because of potential conflicting interests in the credit card payments market, however, it would be inappropriate for me to remain on CyberCash's board."
Tyabji's place on the board will be taken by Garen K. Staglin, chairman and chief executive officer of Safelite Glass Corp, who is also a director of First Data Corp, Quick Response Services Inc, and Grimes Aerospace Corp.
www.verifone.com www.cybercash.com
JAVA "SELECTION ENGINE" HELPS USERS MAKE CHOICES
Santa Clara, California-based Selectica Inc has set itself up to develop Java based "selection engines" that "will enable Internet applications to intelligently guide users to make wise selections out of the increasingly complex web of choices when conducting business interactively over the Internet and Intranet".
Its president is Raj Jaswa, former president and cofounder of OPTi, Inc and an Intel Corp veteran. He's joined forces with Dr. Sanjay Mittal, who was at Xerox PARC. The company is aiming its products particularly at developers of electronic commerce applications where the end user needs to make selections from catalogues.
Selectica's first offering, the SDK-100, should be out next month and includes the SRx-Pro Java selection engine, a Java-based GUI tool-kit, and specifications for the Client API, SRx Knowledge Base API and the ODBC Database API. the cost? a mere $10,000 per seat, which includes a three-day training course. www.selectica.com
Advent Technologies Inc of Coral Gables, Florida, has signed a letter of intent to acquire in a share exchange all the outstanding shares of New Reach Communications Inc. New Reach, based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, is a US provider of Internet services targeted at businesses. Offerings include Web presence services, and dial-up access.
MONDEX GETS INDEPENDENCE - 17 BANKS ETC BUY IN
The UK's National Westminster Bank Plc has established its Mondex electronic cash effort as an independent payments organisation. Mondex International Ltd is now owned by 17 major organisations from Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia.
Hot on the heals of the annoucement Amdahl Corp revealed that it has formed a SmartCard Group to supply processing systems in support of the Mondex electronic cash initiative.
The new Mondex International is still headquartered in London, and will be responsible for managing future development and international implementation of Mondex. NatWest has licensed its Mondex intellectual property rights, and has sold the Mondex brand, to Mondex International. Selling shares to member banks will raise about £100m for Mondex, but some £70m is expected to go back to NatWest to reimburse it for its development costs.
It retains about 10% and will receive deferred payments based on successes of the product globally. Other members are AT&T Corp and Wells Fargo & Co, who see possibilities for Mondex in making purchases over the Internet and as a form of identification. The other 14 participants are Midland Bank Plc; The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp Ltd; Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce; Royal Bank of Canada; Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd: Commonwealth Bank of Australia; National Australia Bank Ltd; Westpac Banking Corp; ANZ Banking Group (New Zealand) Ltd: Bank of New Zealand; Countrywide Banking Corp Ltd; National Bank of New Zealand Ltd; ASB Bank Ltd; and Westpac Banking Corp.
DOT Gossip
There are rumors running around - and it's hard to know how much to credit them - that DEC might put its Internet Business Unit, home to the bonnie AltaVista search engine, up for sale or spin it off because of the company's financial plight. The IBU's staff has already been cut and it doesn't look like the survivor really know how to leverage what they're got.
Dazel, the Texas firm with a corner on the output management market, is about to extend its technology to the Web.
Craig Harding, the former general counsel of Kaleida Labs, the spoiled IBM-Apple joint venture, has set up IPOTrade Inc to raise capital via Internet for development-stage companies. Its Internet Public Offering service includes setting up "Trading Rooms" to buy and sell the stock. www.ipotrade.com
Bell Labs is supposed to put a beta of its new Inferno operating system up on the Web Wednesday July 31. It'll also post its Limbo programming language, an SDK and some sample apps to kickstart the ISV community. Inferno and Limbo are purported in some corners to compete with Java and the JavaOS though Bell Labs would deny it. It'll probably go up on the lucent.com Web site. Meanwhile, if you look right now at http://inferno.bell-labs.com/inferno, you'll find a Limbo programming language with an introduction called "A Descent into Limbo" by Brian Kernighan whose C instruction manual educated an entire generation.
The Worldwide Web Consortium is looking for an Asian site to go with its existing US and French bases and expects to announce the location in a week or so. Outgoing W3C chairman Albert Vezza and his successor, Franois Abramatic visited two universities in Hong Kong: the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. They also visited the National University of Singapore. A report in the South China Morning Post that the host will need to find annual funding of $10 million was unconfirmed as we went to press.
ICS is very keen that we point out that its forthcoming product, reported on last week, is called Builder Xcessory, not, as reported, Xcessory Builder.
Premenos Technology Corp, the Concord, California Internet EDI software developer has snapped up encryption experts Prime Factors Inc of Eugene, Oregon. Financial details were not disclosed. Prime's customers includes Citicorp, and Chase Manhattan.
Last week's Internet Industry Association of Australia's summit on domain name allocation came to the conclusion that it needs a new system in place by October. The first draft document on the proposed changes will be published on the Web in mid-August, before the new system comes into effect from October 27.
Ten Japanese cable companies are coming together to offer a combined Internet access service from October. They have teamed with Japanese ISP Internet Initiative Japan which will be building a 45Mbps backbone connecting the companies.
www.iij.ad.jp/index-e.html
Santa Clara, California-based TestDrive Corporation, specialising in "try-before-you-buy" electronic software distribution says it has completed a $5.4 million private placement offering. New investors are James Bidzos, CEO of RSA Data Security and US Venture Partners. Existing investor, R.R. Donnelley & Sons and its venture group, 77
Capital, also stumped up more cash. The $5.4 million will be used for the launch of the Company's Internet-based electronic stores and further R&D. James Bidzos joins TestDrive's board.
Trusted Information Systems Inc of Glenwood has pepped up its Gauntlet Internet Firewall to specifically keep Java and ActiveX code out. It has also added centralised management, strong user authentication and support for mobile users. The company says it is the first firewall to allow the complete optional blocking of Java and JavaScript. www.tis.com
Macromedia will announce a version of Shockwave supporting streaming audio today, putting it up against RealAudio, according to C/Net news.
NCR Corp's Internet plans are still not cooked: it was intending to hand down a full Web and Internet strategy in May or June but its people say it's still in the oven.
Less than a week after Internet Explorer got its Java Just In Time compiler, Microsoft posted an upgrade to the Java capabilities claimed to improve performance and stability. (Bug reports were all over the browser-related newsgroups on Usenet). The company also posted a new beta of the browser for Macs.
Lundeen & Associates of Almeda, California will release Web Crossing/intranet next month, claimed to allow group conferencing and file-sharing to be enabled via a Web server. Macintosh and Windows 95 versions will cost $695, the Windows NT version $995. Unix users will pay $1,495. The company was formed in 1986 by Tim Lundeen,
the principal author of Microsoft Works. http://webx.lundeen.com.
Netcom , which last week reported an $11.4 million loss for its second quarter is now considering takeover offers. Chief financial officer Tom Weatherford told the Wall Street Journal the company "would not oppose the right offer." PSINet, which reported a net loss of $10.9 million for the second quarter, has been looming for a while.
Following its deal with British Telecom , Microsoft has signed an agreement with AT&T under which the telco will distribute Internet Explorer to users of its WorldNet dial-up Internet services. In return, Microsoft will bundle WorldNet services directly with Windows 95 shipping this fall. AT&T was adamant that the agreement would not affect its existing deal with Netscape. Both companies' browsers will be offered to WorldNet customers as options.
Wells Fargo Bank has licensed Spyglass Inc's client and server technology in its
online banking service for small businesses. Terms were not disclosed, but Spyglass says it "typically" goes for royalty-based payments, hint, hint.
If you are looking to sponsor something on the net, a Finnish zoo, the Ranua Wildlife Park is looking for funding to to let it build a Web site to show live pictures of the zoo's bear during its long winter hibernation. "It may be a bit like...watching paint dry, but it is scientifically interesting," the zoo's MD told Reuters. And it's probably less risky than sponsoring the IT for the Olympic games.
(c) 1996 May not be copied
online REPORTER, a sister publication of Unigram.X and ClieNT Server News, is published weekly in Europe by:
APT Data News Ltd, 12 Sutton Row, London W1V 5FH, UK, Tel:+44 171 208 4200
European Publisher: Simon Thompson (simont@aptdata.com), Editor: Chris Rose (chrisr@computerwire.com),
Associate Editor: Jeffrey Sweat (jsweat@panix.com), Consultant Editor, John Abbott (johna@aptdata.co.uk)
London Editorial Tel:+44 171 208 4226, Fax +44 171 439 1105. New York: Tel +1 516 759 7025, Fax +1 516 759 7028
Price: £395 for 52 issues. Available online to groups, departments and companies at OEM prices.
(c) Copyright 1996, G-2 Computer Intelligence, Inc. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission.
July 29 - August 2 1996 Issue No 9
NETSCAPE SET TO EMBRACE OMG & GIVE REDMOND A HEADACHE
Netscape this week is supposed to throw the fat in the fire and embrace both the Object Management Group and IIOP, the OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol.
It is supposed to say that, not only will IIOP go into Navigator and all Netscape servers, but that it is joining the Object Management Group, effectively throwing its weight behind Corba and getting an object strategy in return.
The move is expected to create a dilemma for Microsoft which - with its competing COM/ActiveX object strategy - has never been what one might call a friend of the OMG.
However, Microsoft has toed much more of a standards line than it ever has before since getting involved with this Internet business, and Netscape's move makes Corba-IIOP look more and more like a de facto standard. Although Microsoft was quick to follow Netscape's lead in adopting LDAP and Java, observers find it difficult to believe it will compromise its position on objects.
The OMG is hoping Netscape's move also makes JavaSoft "look stupid," it says, since JavaSoft has so far refused to adopt IIOP as its native interoperability method, much to OMG's chagrin. It's hoping getting upstaged by Netscape will bring JavaSoft to its senses, paticularly in view of the fact that JavaSoft parent Sun Microsystems has been one of the OMG's heaviest supporters.
It says, "Maybe now it'll stop bringing up rathole technical arguments and see the big picture," which of course is who wins the objects war - OMG or Microsoft.
OMG boss Chris Stone, tracked down at press time at his vacation hideaway, was tickled pink at the prospect of Netscape's move. "Think of it," he said, "Corba on 38 million seats. That's a lot of objects. Take that, Redmond."
He is confident that Netscape's adoption of IIOP will get the attention of lots of ISVs. "They'll say, 'IIOP, IIOP. What's that? We'd better find out.'"
It should be no surprise to anyone that Netscape will use the all-Java Corba-compliant IIOP implementation created by PostModern Computing, the promising little ORB house now owned by Visigenic Software Inc which Netscape recently bought a piece of.
Last week Visigenic, which was started by Informix co-founder Roger Sippl, changed the name of that implementation from the fetching Black Widow that PostModern had dubbed it to VisiBroker for Java, ostensibly to create a consistent corporate image - though the fact that Black Widow is also the name of a mythical virus may have had something to
EUROPE MOVES STAMP ON INTERNET REGULATORY CONFUSION
The European Commission last week set out its plans to avoid Europe becoming enmeshed in conflicting Internet regulations. It also moved to relax EU IT procurement rules that have so far hindered use of de facto Internet standards.
The Commission's proposed "transparency mechanism" requires national governments to notify the Commisson whenever they plan new legislation regulating the Internet. They would be required to freeze any plans for three months, to give the Commission and other members time to comment. If objections arise, they could be asked to postpone the laws' implementation.
The Commission proposal, which needs to be agreed by ministers, comes at a time when separate European countries are starting to introduce a smorgasbord of regulatory controls on Internet service and content providers. But rather than trying to impose some over-arching structure, the Commission has decided on this more pragmatic, coordinating role. EU Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti told Reuters, "It would simply be too early" to regulate the Internet across the EU, however, "it would create an obstacle to the internal market if member states were to do this in an uncoordinated manner".
Of more immediate importance to equipment manufacturers going after lucrative government contracts will be the Commission's determination to embrace the de facto world. Existing procurement rules have been wedded to formal OSI standards, though numerous "derogations" mean that the requirements are often circumvented. The latest green paper says de facto standards are becoming "increasingly important", opening the way to a re-focussing of the regulations, as proposed by Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann.
The consultative green paper is at www.ispo.cec.be/infosoc/legreg/docs/nxtstpen.html. The Commission says it will publish an action plan before the end of the year, based on comments from the European Council of Ministers.
Microsoft has climbed down on its decision to set a limit of 10 unique IP connections over a 10-minute period on NT Workstation 4.0, which would have effectively eliminated it as a feasible option for Web servers. No such limit appears in the release 3.51 of Workstation, which does the job just fine. Microsoft told users that NT Server was required to run its Internet Information Server, whereas a simple registry entry change was all that was needed to make Workstation an effective alternative for Web serving. NT Server costs $1,000 against just $290 for NT Workstation. Microsoft has now promised "a compelling upgrade" from 3.51 Workstation to NT Server 4.0.
Twenty companies met last week at Netscape's HQ to begin work on an Internet-based calendar sharing standard. Those attending included Lotus and Microsoft, both of which have proposals they want to push as IETF standards. The companies intend to set up a new IETF work group on the subject and are committed to getting a draft proposal ready before the end of the year - politics permitting. The workgroup's chair is likely to be Anik Ganguly of FTP OnTime. Lotus's ICAP spec can be found at www.lotus.com/CALENDAR/. Microsoft has two drafts at the ftp://ietf.cnri.reston.va.us site: draft-shakib-mime-prop-00.txt and draft-ferrell-prop-cal-00.txt.
MACROMEDIA & ASTOUND: FREE VISUAL APPLET BUILDING
Web developers wanting to give their sites Java visual effects are becoming spoiled for choice. Following Aimtech's entry into the market with Jamba (OR issue 3) Macromedia is now touting AppletAce, making it available for free download. Palo Alto-based Astound Inc. is doing the same with a public beta of its new Astound WebMotion.
AppletAce is aimed at those wanting to add animated banners, interactive image maps and the like. The package can be used to customise the various "PowerApplets" which Macromedia has up on its Web site.
AppletAce for Windows 95 and Power Macs is available for free download from www.macromedia.com/software/powerapplets. It will be included with Backstage Designer in the Fall.
Astound Inc's WebMotion is somewhat more powerful, based on a path-type editor with VCR-esque controls for playback and editing of animations. On playback, the Java-enabled browser is first sent Astound's 15k player applet which the streams the presentation.
The streaming is intended to reduce the numbing wait that tends to accompany the arrival of Java animations. The beta can be grabbed from www.astoundinc.com. The finished product will cost $99. The authoring environment runs of Windows 95 or Windows 3.1.
CHANGE OF TACK FOR WORLDS INC AS IT LICENSES CODE
Worlds Inc, the multi-user Internet VR chat specialist last week announced it would begin licensing its authoring software. Previously, it had concentrated on building bespoke 3D interactive sites on the Internet.
Faced with a Netscape/Microsoft Schism, the company will make two complete families of tools available. "Active Worlds" are for - those more comfortable writing in ActiveX and Visual Basic. An early release of this is available now for evaluation, with the finished thing due late in the 3rd quarter or early in the first quarter of '97.
The "Gamma" suite is about 9 months behind this schedule and is written in C++ and Java. Though it's going to be later, Worlds claims that when it does arrive, its mixture of visual authoring tools and starter libraries "will increase development productivity by approximately 300% over previous Worlds tools." Gamma will have two possible user front-ends, a proprietary one "more suitable for gaming", or via a standard VRML 2.0-enabled browsers.
Worlds will also offer turnkey bundles aimed at specific vertical markets such as education, marketing, and electronic commerce.
The privately-owned company is not speculating as to how much of its business will come from tools sales, rather than its traditional world-construction business. "Substantial" says VP of product management, Rich Able. Worlds' own authoring team is likely to concentrate on projects that can show-case the technology, or push it particularly hard, he added.
FUTURETENSE PICKS UP SUPPORT FROM INFORMIX, MICROSOFT
Things are coming right for FutureTense Inc, which has gained support from both Microsoft and Informix for its 'Texture' web publishing package. Texture is a Windows based page construction package, probably the closest thing to WYSIWYG that the Web has yet seen. It gives publishers a great deal of control over their Web pages, both in terms of design and interaction.
The problem is that users need the FutureTense Java viewer; and that waiting for that to download can give drying paint a good name. In addition, without a Java Just In Time compiler, pages can take an age to display. Microsoft's decision to bundle the Texture viewer applet with the next release of Explorer 3.0 solves the first of these problems, Explorer's JIT helps the second.
Informix is drawing Texture into its database-to-web strategy, and will resell the authoring package which is being tied into Informix's Web DataBlade module (a middleware layer sitting between Informix's Illustra database server and a Web server). Texture can be used with the Web DataBlade's Application Page Builder, a tool that enables designers to browse Web site content and incorporate selected objects into Texture designs via copy and paste. Texture documents will also be able to deliver tailored content from the database. Informix will resell Texture for $495.
LOTUS AND POINTCAST TEAM UP TO OFFER INTRANET NEWSCASTS
Lotus Development Corp's mission to turn Notes into a "universal client": continued last week when it signed a technology agreement with news specialist PointCast Inc.
The duo are going to pool their technologies to produce a system that will let corporate broadcast personalized news to users' screens over their intranets. Lotus will be using its "Domino" technology, currently used to link Notes databases to the Inter/intranet.
Despite much talk of strategy, there's no news on when the first fruits of the technology partnership are expected to arrive. This is the first time that Pointcast's has exploited its in-house technology in this way.
After a couple of days of starvation a hungry animal is living off its fat. When that has all gone, it begins to digest its own muscle and then its own internal organs. Listen closely and you can hear some stomachs rumbling in the Internet content sector as companies begin to cast a hungry eye over their own innards.
Over the last month a definite fashion has emerged among content providers to begin "productizing" their in-house-developed tools. It started, perhaps when Microsoft, decided to sell the guts of MSN as 'Normandy'. Last week C/NET decided to sell the technology which powers its site. This week Worlds Inc has decided that its business of building 3D interactive worlds can usefully be bolstered by making its in-house tools commercially available. There are plenty of other examples.
To an extent, the urge to productize is the natural reaction of a company with a valuable asset that is not core to its business. An alternative interpretation, however, is that here we have companies experimenting at the cutting edge of business models on the Internet, which are being forced back on the older, tested model of selling software.
Rich Able, VP of product management at Worlds Inc would deny this. He says his company has always intended to licence its software, "it was just a question of when". However he admits that when it comes to looking at ways to make money from the business of building 3D interactive worlds: "The business model issues still remain" he says. They are the same issues that still face many Web content providers. "In the next year, hopefully we will have more data on which [business models] will work" he adds, rather optimistically.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong, from an individual company's point of view, with a move into software sales. But it's not a good sign for healthy growth of the Internet content sector. When the software is being sold to other content providers who are also struggling to find a business model, and are considering selling their software to other service providers who are selling their software to ... this is not self-sustaining.
No matter, say the optimists - look at the sites that are coining it in from advertising. Except, oh dear, the vast majority of advertising these days appears to be from other Internet companies. When Excite's results showed a $5m payment to Netscape last week, the first question to ask was how much of Excite's improving revenue stream came from advertising income from Netscape itself.
It's enough to make you bite your finger nails; not that they constitute a full meal.
FROM THE PULPIT
IEEE: NO JAVA STANDARD WITHOUT JAVASOFT OKAY
Treading warily, the IEEE workgroup whose agenda includes standardizing Java, JavaScript and Visual Basic has decided it can't proceed without the participation of the three intellectual property owners: JavaSoft, Netscape and Microsoft. The IP holders will be offered a standardization fast track through the Posix committee.
The decision was made at a workgroup meeting in Boston that was in progress as we went to press with the last issue.
Neither JavaSoft, Netscape nor Microsoft attended the meeting but Gary Robinson of SunSoft was there, presumably as a messenger and possible opinion shaper. Mercifully no lawyers went either.
The group's primary concern is with Java. It would like to standardize the core Java language and perhaps even the byte code for the Java Virtual Machine before too many extensions are created. It believes a simple spec could be written and pushed through.
It also expects an uphill fight since JavaSoft is regarded as being very hostile to any standardization attempt. In fact, a workgroup member described JavaSoft as "more rabidly anti-standardization than Microsoft" is notoriously perceived to be. Such a reputation is ironic for the offshoot of a company whose whole rationale and claim to moral superiority over Redmond's "evil empire" has been standards but JavaSoft is believed to regard standardization as premature.
Sources describe JavaSoft as a bunch of technologists whose "heads are down" and don't believe standardization would contribute to their effort. Instead it would restrict Java development. They are said to be blind to the economic side of standards.
Standardization supporters, on the other hand, express concerns that JavaSoft, in its on-going development, could break backward compatibility, upsetting lots of people and derailing current third-party Java work. Standardization, they argue, would attract more players.
The study group, which included attendees from the National Institute of Standards (NIST), Usenix, DEC, IBM and Tandem among others the week before last, figures it has until its January meeting to make its case. Posix chief Lowell Johnson will apparently be in charge of selling JavaSoft on the concept. Much behind-the-scenes wrangling is expected.
Conceivably, sources say, JavaSoft might sanction the standardization of the Java VM byte code, a less political animal than Java itself, just to see how it goes.
Posix people, meanwhile, are concerned that they might lose control of the Java spec if JavaSoft attempts to circumvent them and turns Java over to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) and ECMA's rubberstamp ISO, the International Standards Organization, for standardization. The ECMA route, they contend, is equivalent to "buying a spec."
Sun is in pretty good odour with ECMA since it turned the controversial APIW spec, the anti-Microsoft Public Windows Initiative specification, over to it last year.
IEEE groups for their part are easy to criticize, having a poor track record with C++, now in its fifth year of standardization with nothing definitive to show for the time spent, and having botched, as many survivors think, the old highly politicized Motif-Open Look GUI wars.
JavaSoft may also be wary of how much control Posix big shots like Jim Issac from rival DEC are exerting over the standards push and process.
MASTERCARD SIGNS UP WITH GTE, VISA GOES FOR VERISIGN
Mastercard and Visa both announced their SET digital signature partners last week. Mastercard has chosen GTE Inc for its Internet commerce partner, Visa has plumped for Verisign Inc.
GTE, which has hitherto had a lower profile than its competitor reckons its system, which it will market under the 'CyberTrust' name will be first out of the gate, with certificate authority services up by the fourth quarter. The system will be used to support a number of pilots, the first of which are taking place in Denmark and Malaysia.
Meanwhile Visa is paying VeriSign to operate the digital certificate service that Visa which will be offering its member financial institutions. Test certificates are now available from www.verisign.com who want to try out integrating certificate-handling into their applications.
Verisign is more vague as to when the service will be "tested later this year". "Real" IDs will follow in '97.
JAPAN & THAILAND TO GET JAVA PROMOTION GROUPS
Java has hit Japan where a group of 60 hardware and software companies are coming together to promote the language in areas such as consumer electronics. A spokesperson for Justsystems Corp in the US confirmed that its Japanese parent company will host the group in its Tokushima-based headquarters. On the face of it, Justsystems looks like an unlikely choice, it is is best known for its wordprocessing software. However the company intends to enter the Java development tools arena in the first or second quarter next year, according to the spokesperson.
Apart from word processing, the company also runs JustNet, one of the biggest Internet Service Providers in Japan, and its from here that the company will draw its experience- the spokesperson said JustNet's operating software has been constructed using Object Orientated principles, which are now being adapted for the forthcoming toolset.
Meanwhile in Thailand, the Bangkok Post reports that Sun Microsystems distributor, Logic Company is trying to gather support for a model "Java campus" to act as a model town of the future. The company is reportedly talking to the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre and universities as well as to private companies to get funding for the demonstrator.
INTEL GIVEAWAY THREATENS INTERNET PHONE COMPANIES
Continuing its campaign with Microsoft Corp to put the developers of Internet telephony software out of business, Intel Corp has come out with free Internet phone applet, saying it made the move because "there were a lot of Internet phones out there, but the frustration level was high because the phones didn't talk to each other." The Intel software meets the H.323 teleconferencing standard but only runs under Windows 95; it is designed to interoperate with other upcoming H.323-based communications software from Microsoft and other vendors. The beta version of the applet is available free from tomorrow at its Web site, www.intel.com/iaweb/cpc The applet incorporates Microsoft's User Location Service technology to locate other Internet phone users through existing Internet Directory Services.
l Intel, intent on pursuing its "connected PC" strategy in the face of hype about Network Computers, show-cased its strategy last week for the connected PC and the hybrid applications that run on it. Intel's pitch is that Internet-only applications running on thin clients can't supply the rich feature set that the majority of desktop users demand.
DEC's AltaVista-branded 'Search My Computer' Private eXtension beta for
Windows95 and Windows NT, is available free for downloading, and enables users to create an index of their personal desktop. Private eXtension performs keyword searches "in a split second," DEC says - but users must regularly commit processing time to indexing the contents of their hard disks. AltaVista Private eXtension includes scheduling components for automatic updates. A commercial version is set for release in October, pricing has yet to be set. Since Windows 95 will do a (slow) search anyway, will users bother?
COREL TIGHTENS JAVASOFT RELATIONSHIP STILL FURTHER
Corel, whose office suite for Java looks to be the first application (aside from e-mail and browsers) completely written in the language, has tightened its relationship to JavaSoft by licensing Java for future versions of its market-leading CorelDraw 7 program.
As reported last week, it will also include the Java Virtual Machine in versions of Venture and WordPerfect. Corel will build a Java applet viewer that allows users to view applets in any application; it will provide JavaSoft with the viewer, which may then be distributed to third-party vendors.
Corel expects its default position as leading Java application vendor to become official within the next two months, when the Network Computer people fill in details about the Internet terminal and Corel announces its OEM deals and produces a beta.
Corel's WordPerfect suite in Java will feature 80% of the current desktop WordPerfect suite features and take up single-digit megabytes of memory or less. Corel said Network Computer manufacturers will bundle a Corel suite smart card with the machines that would give them free access rights for one part of the suite, such as wordprocessing, but then requires a fee for other areas such as spreadsheets.
Corel doesn't expect Fortune 1,000 companies - the bulk of which use Microsoft Office - just to throw out their desktop suites entirely, but already has companies trying out the pre-beta in departmental environments.
Companies rarely switch suites, but Corel sees Internet terminals as an opportunity to convince users in mixed environments to make the move away from Office and IBM's Lotus suite.
INTERNET COMES TO HOTEL ROOMS - BROWSING IN BED
Hotel guests can now access the Internet in their hotel rooms via what is claimed to be the world's first hotel-room Internet service by ViewInn at the Chesterfield Hotel in London with hardware from Bull Information Systems.
Links have been included to hundreds of sites expected to be of most interest to guests visiting from overseas. All 110 rooms in the hotel will offer the on-line service with access provided through the television set.
On-line services offered include the electronic editions of various newspapers, sports news, entertainment guides and financial market reports, and are down-loaded and stored centrally in the hotel rather than being provided in real time. Other services include facsimile and electronic mail capabilities, breakfast and room service ordering and bill payment.
SUN AND NETWORK IMAGING LINK FIREWALLS AND STORAGE
Sun Microsystems Inc has teamed with Network Imaging Corp in an alliance dubbed Project Bedrock that brings together Sun's SunScreen firewall and security technology with Network Imaging's 1View storage management system. There are no new products, just a non-exclusive joint marketing and integration effort.
The first systems integrator signed up for Bedrock is Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Technologies Inc. The combination of Sun's SunScreen turnkey firewall with Network Imaging's WebMOM1View: WEB Multimedia Object Manager, which provides the link between corporate intranets and the 1View storage management system, will, say the pair, enable the safe deployment of World Wide Web-based applications across intranets and the Internet.
FULCRUM AND FUJITSU TEAM ON JAPANESE SEARCH ENGINE
After 18 months or so of co-development, Fulcrum Technologies Inc and Fujitsu Ltd are forming a Japanese joint venture company to market a Japanese-language version of Fulcrum's Search Server search and retrieval engine. Nippon Fulcrum KK, as it will be known, is 70% owned by Ottawa, Canada-based Fulcrum, with the rest held by Fujitsu, and the $900,000 invested by the pair reflects that split.
The company will begin selling the new product at the start of August from its Tokyo headquarters. The deal is non-exclusive, but the company itself will have exclusive rights to market the technology in Japan. Fujitsu, still plugging away at the groupware market with TeamWare, is to integrate the Japanese SearchServer technology into TeamWare, to Web-enable it and enhance its Japanese-language capabilities.
Fulcrum chief executive Eric Goodwin reckons the new engine has all the Japanese bases covered, including such idiosyncrasies as multiple characters with the exact same meaning. He said this deal will probably lead to other Asian language versions, given Fujitsu's muscle in that area of the world. The joint venture is very small to start with: "in the four or five range," as Goodwin put it. Goodwin said he expects the Japanese market to be "explosive" over the next few years.
At the end of this fiscal year, Fulcrum's chief financial officer Peter Reid said he expected Asia-Pacific revenues to account for between five and ten percent of the total, but the company expected that to rise to 20% in the next three years, according to Goodwin. Fulcrum's search engine came out of work done at Queens University in Canada, where the law school worked with the computer department to develop a text indexing system to search through legal documents at high speed. The competition is hotting up very fast in the search engine market, and competitors such as Verity Inc have driven Fulcrum to cut its prices, produce more powerful, low-end products, and step up its branding and licensing activities.
Fulcrum is also an example of that rare animal in the Internet search engine world: it is profitable and has been so for some time now.
J++ TURNS OUT TO BE A RESOURCE-HUNGRY BULLY
In Microsoft Corp's dash to publicise Visual J++, its new Java development environment, the company has accidentally - we assume - made the product appear considerably more attractive than it actually is. Visitors seeking the free beta release from www.microsoft.com/visualj are informed that it will run on an 80486 CPU with 8Mb of RAM and 14Mb of hard disk space. But when the bloated 13Mb download arrives - after a tortuous process that feeds Redmond a good deal of personal information - it demands a 90MHz Pentium, 24Mb of RAM and 35Mb of free disk. Both msnews.microsoft.com's newsgroups and others on the Usenet are bristling with complaints about problems with it too. In particular it clobbers rival Netscape Communications Corp's Navigator browser - without asking - so hard that even a re-install won't bring it back.
Navigator users are further incensed: debugging applets is impossible in Visual J++ without Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. An alternative approach was possible but, to quote a Microsoft spokesman, "would have taken much more time." Users of Windows NT 3.51 are unhappy at having to 'upgrade' to 4.0 - itself in beta - merely to try out the Visual J++ beta. And programmers from other Java backgrounds find that Visual J++ replaces the universally-accepted CLASSPATH variable with registry entries that only Microsoft's operating systems understand.
LBMS's latest Process Engineer process management software release has become Intranet enabled with the addition of the PE/Web Publisher component. This lets companies create and maintain a "best practices" Web site. Along with interface improvements, Learmonth has also added enhanced workgroup features, such as wider electronic mail standards, including Lotus Notes 4.X and cc:Mail 6.0, Object Linking & Embedding automation and support for Computer Science Corp's Project View 3.2 and ABT Corp's Project Workbench 3.0.
Ascend Communications Inc has reported second quarter net profits up at $29.8m from $5.3m before on turnover up at $123.3m from $28.6m last time; mid-term net profits rose to $50.7m from $8.8m last year on turnover up at $214.4m same time before. Net earnings per share rose to $0.24 from $0.05 in the quarter, and to $0.41 from $0.09 in the half.
Banyan Systems Inc has reported second quarter net profits up at $186,000 from losses of $3.3m before on turnover up 0.2% at $30.2m; mid-term net profits rose 109.4% to $555,000 on turnover up 14.7% at $60.1m. Net earnings per share rose to $0.01 in the quarter, and rose 200% to $0.03 in the half.
Macromedia Inc reported first quarter net profits up 61.0% at $7.1m on turnover up 46.7% to $35.0m. Net earnings per share were up by 38.5% to $0.18.
Microsoft Corp has reported fourth quarter net profits that soared 51.9% at $559.0m after a $31.7m charge on the forced termination of its plans to acquire Intuit Inc, on turnover that jumped 39.1% at $2,255m. Net profit for the year to June 30 climbed 51.1% at $2,195m on turnover that rose 46.0% at $8,671m. Net earnings per share rose 50% to $0.87 in the quarter, 48% to $3.43 in the year.
Network Equipment Technologies Inc has reported first quarter net profits that were down 30.3% at $4.5m on turnover that was down 3.9% to $76.5m. Net earnings per share dropped 34.4% to $0.21.
Nynex Corp has reported second quarter net profits that rose by 11.8% at $388.1m, which includes 1996 $30.1m and 1995 $106.2m exceptional pension charge on turnover up 5.5% at $3,446m; mid-term net profits were up by 22.2% to $795.4m, which includes above two charges, on turnover up 5.5% at $6,768m. Net earnings per share were up by 9.9% to $0.89 in the quarter, and up 19.6% to $1.83 in the half.
Sun Microsystems Inc has reported fourth quarter net profits down 4.6% at $122.3m after a $63.9m charge to write off in-process research and developent at, and acquisition costs for, Integrated Micro Products Plc and Lighthouse Design Inc, on turnover up 22.4% to $2,018.1m; net profit for the year to June 30 jumped 33.9% at $476.4m, on turnover up 20.2% at $7,094.7m. Net per share, off 2% at $0.62 in the quarter, rose 34% to $2.42 in the year.
COMPANY RESULTS
Netscape this week is supposed to throw the fat in the fire and embrace both the Object Management Group and IIOP, the OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol.
It is supposed to say that, not only will IIOP go into Navigator and all Netscape servers, but that it is joining the Object Management Group, effectively throwing its weight behind Corba and getting an object strategy in return.
The move is expected to create a dilemma for Microsoft which - with its competing COM/ActiveX object strategy - has never been what one might call a friend of the OMG.
However, Microsoft has toed much more of a standards line than it ever has before since getting involved with this Internet business,
VERIFONE AND CYBERCASH TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT
Hatim Tyabji, president and CEO of Verifone Inc has resigned from the board of CyberCash Inc in which Verifone has an investment and which previously has been described as a strategic ally.
The two companies, both founded by William Melton, Cybercash's current chief executive officer had been on a collision course ever since Verifone's recent announcement of a credit card Internet payment scheme. In a statement Tyabji said the two firms might still cooperate in some areas but "because of potential conflicting interests in the credit card payments market, however, it would be inappropriate for me to remain on CyberCash's board."
Tyabji's place on the board will be taken by Garen K. Staglin, chairman and chief executive officer of Safelite Glass Corp, who is also a director of First Data Corp, Quick Response Services Inc, and Grimes Aerospace Corp.
www.verifone.com www.cybercash.com
JAVA "SELECTION ENGINE" HELPS USERS MAKE CHOICES
Santa Clara, California-based Selectica Inc has set itself up to develop Java based "selection engines" that "will enable Internet applications to intelligently guide users to make wise selections out of the increasingly complex web of choices when conducting business interactively over the Internet and Intranet".
Its president is Raj Jaswa, former president and cofounder of OPTi, Inc and an Intel Corp veteran. He's joined forces with Dr. Sanjay Mittal, who was at Xerox PARC. The company is aiming its products particularly at developers of electronic commerce applications where the end user needs to make selections from catalogues.
Selectica's first offering, the SDK-100, should be out next month and includes the SRx-Pro Java selection engine, a Java-based GUI tool-kit, and specifications for the Client API, SRx Knowledge Base API and the ODBC Database API. the cost? a mere $10,000 per seat, which includes a three-day training course. www.selectica.com
Advent Technologies Inc of Coral Gables, Florida, has signed a letter of intent to acquire in a share exchange all the outstanding shares of New Reach Communications Inc. New Reach, based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, is a US provider of Internet services targeted at businesses. Offerings include Web presence services, and dial-up access.
MONDEX GETS INDEPENDENCE - 17 BANKS ETC BUY IN
The UK's National Westminster Bank Plc has established its Mondex electronic cash effort as an independent payments organisation. Mondex International Ltd is now owned by 17 major organisations from Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia.
Hot on the heals of the annoucement Amdahl Corp revealed that it has formed a SmartCard Group to supply processing systems in support of the Mondex electronic cash initiative.
The new Mondex International is still headquartered in London, and will be responsible for managing future development and international implementation of Mondex. NatWest has licensed its Mondex intellectual property rights, and has sold the Mondex brand, to Mondex International. Selling shares to member banks will raise about £100m for Mondex, but some £70m is expected to go back to NatWest to reimburse it for its development costs.
It retains about 10% and will receive deferred payments based on successes of the product globally. Other members are AT&T Corp and Wells Fargo & Co, who see possibilities for Mondex in making purchases over the Internet and as a form of identification. The other 14 participants are Midland Bank Plc; The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp Ltd; Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce; Royal Bank of Canada; Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd: Commonwealth Bank of Australia; National Australia Bank Ltd; Westpac Banking Corp; ANZ Banking Group (New Zealand) Ltd: Bank of New Zealand; Countrywide Banking Corp Ltd; National Bank of New Zealand Ltd; ASB Bank Ltd; and Westpac Banking Corp.
DOT Gossip
There are rumors running around - and it's hard to know how much to credit them - that DEC might put its Internet Business Unit, home to the bonnie AltaVista search engine, up for sale or spin it off because of the company's financial plight. The IBU's staff has already been cut and it doesn't look like the survivor really know how to leverage what they're got.
Dazel, the Texas firm with a corner on the output management market, is about to extend its technology to the Web.
Craig Harding, the former general counsel of Kaleida Labs, the spoiled IBM-Apple joint venture, has set up IPOTrade Inc to raise capital via Internet for development-stage companies. Its Internet Public Offering service includes setting up "Trading Rooms" to buy and sell the stock. www.ipotrade.com
Bell Labs is supposed to put a beta of its new Inferno operating system up on the Web Wednesday July 31. It'll also post its Limbo programming language, an SDK and some sample apps to kickstart the ISV community. Inferno and Limbo are purported in some corners to compete with Java and the JavaOS though Bell Labs would deny it. It'll probably go up on the lucent.com Web site. Meanwhile, if you look right now at http://inferno.bell-labs.com/inferno, you'll find a Limbo programming language with an introduction called "A Descent into Limbo" by Brian Kernighan whose C instruction manual educated an entire generation.
The Worldwide Web Consortium is looking for an Asian site to go with its existing US and French bases and expects to announce the location in a week or so. Outgoing W3C chairman Albert Vezza and his successor, Franois Abramatic visited two universities in Hong Kong: the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. They also visited the National University of Singapore. A report in the South China Morning Post that the host will need to find annual funding of $10 million was unconfirmed as we went to press.
ICS is very keen that we point out that its forthcoming product, reported on last week, is called Builder Xcessory, not, as reported, Xcessory Builder.
Premenos Technology Corp, the Concord, California Internet EDI software developer has snapped up encryption experts Prime Factors Inc of Eugene, Oregon. Financial details were not disclosed. Prime's customers includes Citicorp, and Chase Manhattan.
Last week's Internet Industry Association of Australia's summit on domain name allocation came to the conclusion that it needs a new system in place by October. The first draft document on the proposed changes will be published on the Web in mid-August, before the new system comes into effect from October 27.
Ten Japanese cable companies are coming together to offer a combined Internet access service from October. They have teamed with Japanese ISP Internet Initiative Japan which will be building a 45Mbps backbone connecting the companies.
www.iij.ad.jp/index-e.html
Santa Clara, California-based TestDrive Corporation, specialising in "try-before-you-buy" electronic software distribution says it has completed a $5.4 million private placement offering. New investors are James Bidzos, CEO of RSA Data Security and US Venture Partners. Existing investor, R.R. Donnelley & Sons and its venture group, 77
Capital, also stumped up more cash. The $5.4 million will be used for the launch of the Company's Internet-based electronic stores and further R&D. James Bidzos joins TestDrive's board.
Trusted Information Systems Inc of Glenwood has pepped up its Gauntlet Internet Firewall to specifically keep Java and ActiveX code out. It has also added centralised management, strong user authentication and support for mobile users. The company says it is the first firewall to allow the complete optional blocking of Java and JavaScript. www.tis.com
Macromedia will announce a version of Shockwave supporting streaming audio today, putting it up against RealAudio, according to C/Net news.
NCR Corp's Internet plans are still not cooked: it was intending to hand down a full Web and Internet strategy in May or June but its people say it's still in the oven.
Less than a week after Internet Explorer got its Java Just In Time compiler, Microsoft posted an upgrade to the Java capabilities claimed to improve performance and stability. (Bug reports were all over the browser-related newsgroups on Usenet). The company also posted a new beta of the browser for Macs.
Lundeen & Associates of Almeda, California will release Web Crossing/intranet next month, claimed to allow group conferencing and file-sharing to be enabled via a Web server. Macintosh and Windows 95 versions will cost $695, the Windows NT version $995. Unix users will pay $1,495. The company was formed in 1986 by Tim Lundeen,
the principal author of Microsoft Works. http://webx.lundeen.com.
Netcom , which last week reported an $11.4 million loss for its second quarter is now considering takeover offers. Chief financial officer Tom Weatherford told the Wall Street Journal the company "would not oppose the right offer." PSINet, which reported a net loss of $10.9 million for the second quarter, has been looming for a while.
Following its deal with British Telecom , Microsoft has signed an agreement with AT&T under which the telco will distribute Internet Explorer to users of its WorldNet dial-up Internet services. In return, Microsoft will bundle WorldNet services directly with Windows 95 shipping this fall. AT&T was adamant that the agreement would not affect its existing deal with Netscape. Both companies' browsers will be offered to WorldNet customers as options.
Wells Fargo Bank has licensed Spyglass Inc's client and server technology in its
online banking service for small businesses. Terms were not disclosed, but Spyglass says it "typically" goes for royalty-based payments, hint, hint.
If you are looking to sponsor something on the net, a Finnish zoo, the Ranua Wildlife Park is looking for funding to to let it build a Web site to show live pictures of the zoo's bear during its long winter hibernation. "It may be a bit like...watching paint dry, but it is scientifically interesting," the zoo's MD told Reuters. And it's probably less risky than sponsoring the IT for the Olympic games.
(c) 1996 May not be copied
online REPORTER, a sister publication of Unigram.X and ClieNT Server News, is published weekly in Europe by:
APT Data News Ltd, 12 Sutton Row, London W1V 5FH, UK, Tel:+44 171 208 4200
European Publisher: Simon Thompson (simont@aptdata.com), Editor: Chris Rose (chrisr@computerwire.com),
Associate Editor: Jeffrey Sweat (jsweat@panix.com), Consultant Editor, John Abbott (johna@aptdata.co.uk)
London Editorial Tel:+44 171 208 4226, Fax +44 171 439 1105. New York: Tel +1 516 759 7025, Fax +1 516 759 7028
Price: £395 for 52 issues. Available online to groups, departments and companies at OEM prices.
(c) Copyright 1996, G-2 Computer Intelligence, Inc. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission.
No comments:
Post a Comment