PC Week News for July 11, 1994. Contents Copyright (c) 1994 by Ziff
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reproduced or distributed IN ANY FORM without express written
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================================================================

Motorola takes over sole ownership of Ardis

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Michael Moeller

IBM is getting out of the wireless carrier business -- at least for now.
And Motorola Inc. might soon follow.

IBM's sale last week of its 50 percent stake in the Ardis radio-based
wireless network to partner Motorola changes the picture dramatically
for both companies and for users of the service.

With Motorola taking over sole ownership -- at least temporarily --
subscribers might have to weigh their needs for new technologies and
features, including CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data) networks,
against a more stable, though aging, environment.

"Motorola is a conservative company, and that is a concern of mine when
they roll out new technologies and services," said David Scraton,
director of technology at Memorex Telex Corp., in Irving, Texas. "If
they are conservative, then they are going to lose out to the
competition."

Currently, Motorola plans to use Ardis as the primary platform for the
launch of its Envoy personal communicator this year and to increase
Ardis' presence in the consumer marketplace, said Bob Growney, executive
vice president at Motorola, of Schaumburg, Ill.

Motorola's plan to push Ardis in the commercial marketplace will center
on improving messaging technologies and the creation of applications
developed specifically for Ardis, Growney said.

Meanwhile, IBM is free to pursue a variety of avenues. IBM officials
cited several reasons for opting out of Ardis. Chief among these is
IBM's desire to provide services and products on a variety of networks,
such as CDPD and Specialized Mobile Radio, and on competing networks.

"We are going to focus our attention on providing value-added services
and not on being a network service provider," said Tracy O'Neill, an IBM
spokeswoman in Armonk, N.Y. "We are now free to work across a variety of
different networks."

Although IBM declined to release specifics, officials said the company
plans to roll out later this year a wireless WAN adapter that will
support both circuit-switched and CDPD transmissions, as well as a new
wireless WAN adapter for Ardis.

IBM is also working on new software packages for multiple platforms and
carriers that will integrate voice, data, fax, and paging services with
wireless and wired services.

Observers said IBM's decision also could indicate that the company plans
to enter the Federal Communications Commission's auction for PCS
(Personal Communications Services) narrowband and broadband frequencies,
slated to take place later this month and again in December.

"IBM may be freeing up its assets with the hope that it can take the
knowledge that it has learned from Ardis and use it to launch its own
wireless network that will compete against Ardis," said Richard Siber,
director of wireless computing for Andersen Consulting, of Chicago. "It
has been talking with several cable companies about jointly bidding on a
PCS license or even going it alone."

IBM spokesman Ray Gorman confirmed, "We have been talking with just
about everybody you can imagine. Open your mind and that is who we have
been talking with."

IBM's decision to pull out of the Ardis partnership is a complete
reversal of its stance three months ago.

At that time IBM planned to become the sole owner of Ardis, the largest
provider of radio-based wireless services, with 40,000 users and
coverage in 400 metropolitan areas.

Although Motorola is now the sole owner, it, too, has made no promises
about to how long it will continue to own Ardis. Motorola's primary
focus is on the equipment side of the wireless market, not the service
side, officials said.

"There is no doubt that Motorola will divest itself of Ardis in the
future," said Frank Wapole, CEO and president of Ardis.

================================================================

AT&T's Vistium enables remote collaboration

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Matt Kramer

The stand-alone version of AT&T Global Information Solutions' Vistium
Share Software Professional makes it easier for users to collaborate on
a project without leaving their desks.

PC Week Labs tested a beta release of the $200 Vistium Share Software
Professional personal-conferencing package, slated for release this
summer. The package is a modified, stand-alone version of the
application-sharing and shared-whiteboard functions found in AT&T's
Vistium Personal Video System desktop-videoconferencing package.

Whereas the older version links users via ISDN, Vistium Share Software
uses LAN and modem connections. Share Software also has shared-
whiteboard features for annotating documents and images, but the real
power of the package is its ability to allow an application running on
one user's machine to be viewed and controlled by a remote user.

In our tests, the software worked well across both LAN and modem
connections.

However, it could use seasoning in interface design and additional
features.

Vistium joins a growing rank of shared-application tools. Intel Corp.
has released a new version of its ProShare Personal Conferencing that
includes application sharing. Other competitors include ShareVision
Technology Inc.'s ShareView Plus, Crosswise Corp.'s Face to Face, and
Fujitsu Network Industry's DeskTop Conferencing.

Like most of its competitors (except Fujitsu), Vistium is a point-to-
point link that connects two individuals via modem or a LAN.

With shared-application tools, both collaborators need not have the same
application software installed. For example, a graphic artist with a
graphics application can show the finished design on-screen to a client
via a modem connection. During the discussions, changes can be made
immediately.

Unlike remote control, which takes over an entire machine, shared
application tools focus on specific applications.

Cumbersome Configuration

Although Vistium Share Software doesn't require as much modification to
Windows as found in conventional remote-control packages, some of the
configuration options were a bit cumbersome.

To share an application, for example, required that the application's
icon be added to the Share Manager application within Vistium. When
connecting with another user, we first started the application from the
Vistium Share Manager display of shareable options. This brought up the
Vistium phone book, where a recipient and connection method were chosen.

This approach might work for users who plan their conferences in
advance, but it is not as intuitive for ad hoc conferencing on desktops,
where applications may change. Competitors such as Intel have less-
finicky configuration requirements and allow users to select any
application on their machines for sharing with another user.

We could easily tell which application was shared because it was tagged
with a special icon at the top of the title screen.

Cursor Control

Although working in the shared application was easy and comparable in
speed to remote-control products, we were unable to lock control of the
cursor. When both sides were trying to move the mouse it became slightly
confusing. An option for users to cede mouse and keyboard control could
make for a more orderly collaboration.

Vistium has some useful controls that let a remote user only view a
screen and use a pointer, only make annotations, or have full control of
the shared application. It was especially nice to be able to change the
permissions during a call.

When either user saved changes to the shared document, the file was
saved on the machine where the shared application was installed.

Multiple Applications

The beta release we tested let us share more than one Windows
application at a time only if we were also sharing the Program Manager.
However, this defeats the benefit of selectively choosing which
applications to share and can become a security breach.

Competing products such as Intel's ProShare Personal Conferencing do
permit multiple applications, so that our simulated discussion between
two accounting managers working on a budget could shift easily between a
spreadsheet detailing the costs of operating branch offices and a
document containing a budget proposal.

With Vistium, when an application that was not shared was moved on top
of a shared application, the remote side saw a blank outline of the
window.

With Vistium's useful annotation tools, we could make changes directly
on the shared whiteboard. We could also capture screen images of text or
graphics, share them, and make changes to them. Private annotations that
are not transmitted to the other party are also allowed.

================================================================

Wireless consortium to test updated CDPD spec

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Wendy Pickering

A new industry standard for CDPD will be in place by early 1995,
according to a spokesman for a recently formed consortium, the CDPD
Forum.

"We feel like we have a de facto standard ready now. By the end of '95,
[after the standard has had a chance to take hold, we will] have a
national footprint," said Chuck Parrish, a member of the Forum and GTE
Personal Communications Services' general manager for mobile data
services, based in Atlanta.

The first Cellular Digital Packet Data standard, set one year ago,
established architectural specifications for wireless data transmission
in short bursts over cellular voice channels.

At the Forum's first meeting last month at the Wireless Datacomm
conference in San Jose, Calif., the group announced plans to begin
interoperability testing of Version 1.1 of the CDPD standard next month.
The intent is to integrate hardware, software, and services when CDPD is
ready to go mainstream, according to Forum officials.

McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. announced last week that Federal
Express Corp. has signed on as its first commercial CDPD AirData
customer in Las Vegas and another, undisclosed city. FedEx will begin
installing CDPD modems in all of its delivery trucks in those areas
immediately.

Bell Atlantic Mobile announced commercial availability of AirBridge
Packet in April. The network is available commercially in Baltimore,
Washington, and Pittsburgh, although the service is supporting only a
few small paying customers, according to Bell Atlantic Mobile officials.

The CDPD Forum may help to curb the criticism that service providers
such as McCaw Cellular have received for their late rollouts. McCaw has
pushed back the implementation date several times, but is sticking with
its goal to have some form of service in all its 105 markets by year's
end.

Right now, it is being tested in six major metropolitan areas, but FedEx
is the only commercial user.

The Federal Communications Commission is not mandating a CDPD standard,
said Alan Reiter, editor of the Mobile Data Report industry newsletter,
based in Alexandria, Va. It is up to consortiums such as the CDPD Forum,
Reiter said, to help ensure interoperabilty and roaming capabilities.

"The cellular industry has enough money to make CDPD work. Just because
it's late doesn't mean that it won't be a reality," Reiter said.

================================================================

Cheyenne announces NT client for NetWare backup

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Stan Gibson

Cheyenne Software Inc.'s ARCserve can now back up data for Windows NT
clients through an optional software package called Windows NTagent.

Cheyenne's announcement came late last month at the PC Expo show in New
York, where competitor Arcada Software Inc., of Lake Mary, Fla.,
announced it had begun shipping its Backup Exec for Windows NT-
Workstation, introduced in May.

"As more and more LAN utility vendors add robust client support, NT will
lose its reputation for weak back-up," said Greg Cline, an analyst at
Business Research Group in Newton, Mass.

"The NT agent extends ARCserve. It's the only Novell [NetWare] product
to be able to back up NT," said Reijane Huai, Cheyenne's CEO. Cheyenne
will ship software to back up NT servers in the fall, said Huai.

The Windows NT agent provides backup and restore of the Windows NT file
allocation table, High Performance File System, and NT File System. It
also backs up the Registry and security lists that cover access control.

ARCserve is available with several Agent Options, which back up
Macintosh computers and a variety of Unix platforms. It has built-in
support for DOS, OS/2, and Windows clients.

Windows NTagent carries a suggested price of $495, but is available free
to users of ARCserve for NetWare Windows Edition Version 5.x for a
minimum of 60 days, Huai said.

Cheyenne also announced Inoculan 3.0, a Windows version of its DOS
Inoculan anti-virus software.

"You don't really need the manual that much with the Windows interface,"
said beta user Phil Peterson, LAN systems administrator for Benefit
Consultants Inc., in San Carlos, Calif.

The software's domain-management feature lets a network administrator
manage a collection of servers. Using the feature, an administrator can
make configuration changes to a master server and have them
automatically made to servers in a given management domain.

Inoculan 3.0, a NetWare Loadable Module that works with NetWare 3.1x or
4.x, will ship this month. It is priced from $395 for a 20-user version
to $995 for a 1,000-user version.

Cheyenne, in Roslyn Heights, N.Y., is at (516) 484-5110.

================================================================

Common Object Model spec may face competition

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Mary Jo Foley

Digital Equipment Corp. and Microsoft Corp.'s delay in releasing their
jointly developed Common Object Model specification is giving
competitors time to create their own distributed object technologies.

The two companies finalized the COM specification and began distributing
it to key developers last week, Microsoft officials said. DEC and
Microsoft plan to hold their first COM design preview for about 100
developers this week in Seattle, the officials said.

Meanwhile, the competition has not been standing still. Candle Corp.,
Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, and SunSoft Inc. are expected to shed some
light on their respective OLE-to-CORBA connectivity plans during the
Object World show in San Francisco, which begins July 25.

The alternatives to COM raise the prospect that buyers will be
confronted with a confusing array of incompatible OLE-to-CORBA
technology, said Paul Anaya, director of information systems for Los
Angeles Freightliner Inc., in Whittier, Calif. "We wish everybody else
would just jump on the COM bandwagon," Anaya said.

The COM specification is designed to provide a way for Microsoft's OLE
(Object Linking and Embedding) to work with CORBA (Common Object Request
Broker Architecture), which was developed by the Object Management
Group. This will allow OLE, Microsoft's technology for linking text and
graphics across multiple Windows applications, to work in widely
distributed computer networks that use software and hardware from many
vendors.

Microsoft and DEC agreed last fall to work jointly on developing COM,
with DEC providing the OLE-to-CORBA compatibility technology. The two
companies were scheduled to complete the COM specification and design
preview in the first quarter of this year. Neither Microsoft nor DEC
officials would comment on reasons for the delay.

"Microsoft's desire is to put COM on as many platforms as possible,"
said Dave Seres, senior product manager for OLE Marketing with
Microsoft's developer division, in Redmond, Wash. As part of COM, DEC is
incorporating OLE into its ObjectBroker CORBA backbone. ObjectBroker
currently is available on Windows, NT, various DEC operating systems,
HP's HP/UX, IBM's AIX, Sunsoft's SunOS, and Apple Computer Inc.'s System
7.

"It doesn't take technical gymnastics to make OLE talk to CORBA," said
an official at one of the companies working on an OLE-to-CORBA link.
"The question is at what level you'll offer interoperability. If you do
it at the DDE [Dynamic Data Exchange] level through a proxy, you're
offering more compatibility than interoperability."

SunSoft, according to sources, is developing an OLE proxy kit that would
allow OLE to talk to its OpenStep/DOE (Distributed Objects Everywhere)
environment. SunSoft officials, in Mountain View, Calif., declined to
comment, although a SunSoft spokeswoman acknowledged that SunSoft has a
number of OLE connectivity projects under way. SunSoft also is
continuing to evaluate OpenDoc, the OLE-compatible compound-document
architecture from Component Integration Laboratories, the spokeswoman
said.

HP is considering developing an object kit that would handle OLE-CORBA
interoperability, said Amy Arnold, product manager for DCE and object
technologies for HP's General Systems Division, in Cupertino, Calif.

To avoid the development of conflicting specifications, the OMG is
considering putting out a request for proposals before the end of the
year that would call for a single OLE-to-CORBA standard, said Chris
Stone, president and CEO of the Westboro, Mass., standards group. "But
we won't put out an RFP unless Microsoft will respond," he said.

================================================================

CorelDraw 5.0 piles on the tools

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Quabidur R. Safi

The newest version of Corel Corp.'s CorelDraw provides a potpourri of
graphics and layout capabilities, but the program lacks stability.

CorelDraw Version 5.0 offers better integration between modules, new
tool bars, photographic effects, and masking tools. In addition, the
program's PhotoPaint feature has been enhanced with support for standard
plug-ins such as Kai's Power Tools (from HSC Software Corp.), natural
media capabilities, 32-bit CMYK editing, and new filters.

However, PC Week Labs experienced a few problems, mostly of the nuisance
variety, but often more serious. CorelDraw crashed many times during
testing; these crashes were frequently unrepeatable. Moreover, we
encountered several repeatable bugs known to Corel. For example,
CorelDraw crashed after importing an ASCI file. In addition, the Mosaic
image browser intermittently crashed when reading Adobe Systems Inc.
Illustrator files. Buyers will have to decide whether CorelDraw's myriad
features are worth the aggravation.

Corel plans to ship a maintenance release later this month; by that
time, it should also be ready with Ventura, its desktop-publishing
product.

CorelDraw, which was released in late May, is priced at $649 for the CD
ROM package and $849 for the floppy-disk version.

Ease of Use

CorelDraw 5.0 provides a wide assortment of tools that simplify
otherwise difficult tasks. Unfortunately, it doesn't permit the opening
of multiple images simultaneously.

The liberal use of roll-up elements, which allow tool palettes to remain
open without taking up space, adds to CorelDraw's ease of use and
accessibility to key functions. The weld, combine, and trim functions
make it easy to create mask effects, a task that is not easy to figure
out in Illustrator 4.0 for Windows. We were able to use Power-Clip to
place a bit map inside another object with only two mouse clicks.

The new Transformation roll-up let us precisely alter objects while
grouping similar functions together logically. We used the
transformation roll-up to rotate a filled object, then scale it
precisely -- all in the same palette. With Illustrator, we had to go to
two separate places to do the same thing.

The new weld and combine functions under the Arrange menu allowed us to
quickly cut shapes out of other objects in a cookie-cutter fashion.
Performing the same task in Illustrator had us reaching for the manual.

Comprehensiveness of Features

Many software packages provide more features than most people will ever
use -- you get the whole appliance department when buying a corkscrew.
CorelDraw is the undeniable king of this tool largess, which gives the
user plenty of room to grow.

CorelDraw supports a wide variety of color models, including Pantone
process and spot, Focoltone, Trumatch, CMYK, HSB, and RGB. The program
also features a color manager that includes a list of monitors and the
ability to define a new one.

Using Corel's gradient manager was a welcome change over Illustrator 4.0
for Windows' treatment of gradient fills. We used CorelDraw's gradient
manager to define varied and complex multicolored gradient fills for
later use. Illustrator, in contrast, has no such amenities in the
Windows version (although it does in Version 5.5 for the Macintosh).

Graphics users often find themselves awash in graphics files, a problem
that the Mosaic image-management utility helps alleviate. It did,
however, complain about the number of images on the clip-art CD ROM.

Range and Quality of Graphics Tools

CorelDraw provides all the expected graphics tools: freehand, Bezier
curves, rectangle, and oval. In addition, there are enough bells and
whistles to keep even the most demanding user happy.

We used the new lens tools to produce objects that acted like lenses. We
also created an additive effect by stacking multiple objects with
different lens characteristics.

However, it would have been more convenient if the lens tool could
create additive effects on one object.

Using too many lens effects and combining them with Power-Clip can
result in very slow redraw times (up to 2 minutes on one of our files).

PhotoPaint now supports standard plug-ins to apply special effects such
as glass-block and impressionist styles to regions of an image.

Interapplication Communication and File Format Support

CorelDraw supports Object Linking and Embedding 2.0 drag-and-drop across
applications, but does not support in-place editing of objects. The
program supports a large number of file formats for import and export.
However, when we tried to import a complex Illustrator Version 3.0 test
file, we were unable to import correctly. Other, more simple files did
import correctly.

Performance

CorelDraw performed satisfactorily most of the time. In tests against
Illustrator 4.0 for Windows, it was slightly slower in opening, saving,
and redrawing a 1.4M-byte test image. We also observed that some
combinations of text frames and lenses with Power-Clip can slow down
redraw speed significantly.

================================================================

DEC in talks to sell its drive and consulting units

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Erica Schroeder

As part of a campaign to pull itself out of the red, Digital Equipment
Corp. is trying to unload its Storage Business Unit, last week
confirming that the company is talking to Quantum Corp. about the
possibility of such a sale.

DEC also is reportedly talking to Computer Sciences Corp. regarding the
sale of its consulting and systems-integration business.

Quantum, which posted revenues of $2.1 billion in fiscal 1994, is
interested in buying DEC's magnetic disk, digital linear tape drive,
solid-state disk drive, and thin-film heads businesses, said officials
in Milpitas, Calif. DEC's Storage Subsystems and Video and Interactive
Information Services businesses are not part of the discussions, said
DEC officials in Maynard, Mass.

"The disk-drive business and the tape-drive business -- as we redefine
strategic directions -- are not critical," said a DEC spokeswoman.
Selling the unit would help DEC achieve its stated head-count reduction
goal of 20,000 employees this year, she said.

DEC and Quantum officials declined to comment further on the potential
acquisition.

Industry analysts, who value DEC's storage business at around $1.5
billion, said the move is a good one for DEC because it lets it focus on
its systems business. They view the arrangement as positive for Quantum
too, because it lets the disk-drive maker expand its production
capacity.

Quantum would be smart, however, to pick up DEC's M-R (magneto-
resistant) head joint technology, said Mike Casey, director of storage
services for InfoCorp, in Santa Clara, Calif.

"What's missing from [the deal] is DEC's M-R head joint venture with
Rocky Mountain Magnetics," Casey said, stressing that the technology is
critical for next-generation hard drives to increase capacity.

================================================================

Breaking News

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by PC Week Staff

Apple Readies Revamp of Macintosh File System

By Stephen Howard, MacWEEK Staff

Later this year, Apple reportedly will begin replacing parts of the Mac
file system with a new architecture that will result in higher disk
capacities and greater performance.

Based on technology to be used in the forthcoming "Copland" operating
system, the enhanced file system provides fully native PowerPC code;
asynchronous, multithreaded, and pre-emptive file access; and larger
volumes -- up to 256 terabytes. Copland is due in the second half of
next year.

Sources said the new file-system routines in the operating system will
work with Apple's existing HFS (hierarchical file system) and make
support for non-Macintosh file systems and disk formats "a no-brainer."

Mac files will also support an unlimited number of custom forks. This
change, which will not be available on HFS volumes, will enable programs
to layer multiple data types within a single file, sources said, much
like the compound-document format defined in OpenDoc.

Apple has reportedly promised developers that current programs will work
under the new system. But sources predicted that any applications that
copy or store files will need revisions to archive or transfer files
with multiple forks and attributes intact. Apple officials declined to
comment.

McCaw and AT&T await DOJ's findings

On Wednesday, the Justice Department is scheduled to submit to U.S.
District Judge Harold Green the findings from its antitrust
investigation into the proposed merger of McCaw Cellular and AT&T.

Next week, AT&T is set to respond to both the Justice Department's
findings and comments filed at the end of June by seven Regional Bell
Operating Companies, after which the companies will await the judge's
ruling. The two companies have set a Sept. 30 deadline for the merger to
be complete.

ATM Switch Due from IBM

IBM will announce this week asynchronous transfer mode switching modules
for its 8260 hub. One is the Token-Ring 18-port PPS Active Media Module,
priced at $5,140, a source familiar with IBM's plans said. It will ship
on Oct. 28. IBM officials were unavailable for comment.

MIT, CERN Announce Pact To Standardize Internet World-Wide Web Server
Software

The World-Wide Web, an Internet server tool, got another boost last
week, when MIT and CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics)
entered into a partnership to further develop and standardize Internet
software.

OS/2 for PowerPC Goes into Beta

IBM will announce the beginning of its beta-test program for OS/2 for
the PowerPC next week at the OS/2 World show in Santa Clara, Calif.

OS/2 for the PowerPC consists of the IBM Workplace microkernel, with an
OS/2 personality and DOS emulator on top. The first beta will be a
commercial client for desktop PCs only, and will not include LAN Server
or Communications Manager code, according to an IBM official.

McAfee To Offer LAN Management APIs

McAfee Associates this week will unveil a set of APIs designed to help
LAN management applications operate together. McAfee plans to publish
the APIs this fall and offer them to the Desktop Management Task Force
for inclusion in the Desktop Management Interface.

Briefly Noted:

Philips Consumer Electronics and Compression Labs last week inked a deal
with Bell Atlantic to deliver interactive digital set-top boxes. The
first installations, later this year, will be in Dover, N.J. Service is
expected to begin in early 1995.

Zenith Data Systems will announce a new reseller program this week aimed
at growing its reseller ranks from about 30 to 500 by the end of the
year.

Austin Computer Systems announced last week it has changed its name to
IPC Technologies Inc.

Sun Microsystems this week will add a model to its SPARCstation 5 lineup
that supports a 24-bit graphics subsystem.

EuroPak last week released the VESA local-bus-based EuroCom 9200 Super
Notebook priced at $2,680.

Computer Associates International last week announced its intention to
acquire computer services and software company Newtrend under the terms
of their joint-venture agreement.

Video Conferencing Communications this week will introduce TeleView
1000C, a $3,999 videoconferencing product that works over analog phone
lines.

Centillion Networks (formerly LANSpeed) will announce this week
SpeedSwitch 100, a six-slot Token-Ring ATM switch capable of supporting
24 networks. It will be available at the end of the year. Pricing was
not set.

================================================================

Justice action on Microsoft probe expected soon

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Jane Morrissey

The noise level surrounding the Justice Department's investigation of
Microsoft Corp. is rising in anticipation of government action this
summer.

Almost a year after kicking off its investigation of Microsoft's
allegedly anti-competitive practices, Justice is hoping to work out a
consent decree, under which Microsoft would agree to make changes to its
business without admitting any wrongdoing. Failing such an agreement,
Justice plans to launch a federal lawsuit before summer's end, said
sources close to the case.

Whatever the decision, Justice's recent industry interviews point to
long-standing issues: Microsoft's per-processor operating system
licenses and charges that the Redmond, Wash., company unfairly restricts
access to products and information.

Justice received added ammunition this April when Microsoft's NDAs (non-
disclosure agreements) for Windows 4.0 came under fire for restricting
third parties from working on competitive products. That development
caused Justice to again miss an expected deadline for action.

While observers say Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates would never agree to a
consent decree, sources said he recently has been more open to hearing
Justice's offer. But observers said any resolution is still months away.

"Even if a consent decree is filed ... terms of the consent have to be
reviewed by the public," said Wendy Goldman Rohm, who is writing a book
on the investigation.

Despite the likelihood of some Justice action, industry analysts and
Microsoft's competitors doubt it will have a marked effect on the
industry or the company.

"Will it have a significant impact on Microsoft? No, I don't think so,"
said Mary Meeker, an analyst with Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York.

Novell Inc., for its part, hopes to see Microsoft change its ways
without government intervention. But officials at the Provo, Utah,
company said that obviously has not been the case, given that the
Windows 4.0 NDA snafu and a now-defunct Microsoft European bundling deal
came during Justice's investigation.

If Justice fails to curb what Novell believes is anti-competitive
behavior, Novell officials have hinted that they will change their
business practices in kind.

"I don't say we will do that, but at least Novell has the same option to
live by the same rules as Microsoft," said Novell Executive Vice
President Adrian Rietveld. "But we don't want to do that unless the
rules are clear."

================================================================

Folio and Lotus to link Views Infobase to Notes

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Lisa Nadile

Folio Corp. has inked a pact with Lotus Development Corp. to build a
filter to integrate its client/server Views Infobase publishing system
with Notes.

The agreement calls for integrating Folio Views with Notes at three
points: a filter to pass data between the two applications, a Notes
search menu option entitled Apply Query that will search available Folio
Infobases from a network or CD ROM, and a function named DocLinks that
will cross-reference Notes database data with Views Infobase data.

"Folio Corp. has the best text engine in the business, and what you see
is the industry recognizing that," said Frank Niepold, manager of
electronic document management systems for Chubb & Son Inc., in Warren,
N.J.

Niepold cited the ability to search and retrieve across Folio and Notes
databases, archiving Notes threads and databases, and replicating Folio
files as the three most important features that the Lotus deal should
yield.

The agreement is seen as a boost to Folio's effort to become a better-
known player in the publishing market by making it easier to access
documents that are stored in its databases.

In recent months, Folio has signed integration pacts that promise to
link Infobase with Workman Professional workflow software from Reach
Software Corp., optical character recognition software from Watermark
Software Inc., and real-time data-feed services from Mainstream Data
Inc.

In addition, the company has published an API for ISVs, which company
officials said is designed to position Infobase as a development
platform.

"In order to become closer to the end user, Folio has to make their
large repositories of information accessible via a standard desktop
tool," said Margaret Berry, a contributing editor of Patricia Seybold's
Workgroup Computing Report, in Boston. "This will also legitimize Notes
as a sophisticated front-end application."

Shipping dates and distribution channels of any products resulting from
the alliance have not been established. "We're unsure whether this will
be a separate kit or rolled into Notes. It could be both," said Tracy
Scott, Folio president.

"In my opinion, a stand-alone filter won't do it," Niepold of Chubb &
Son said. "You need to have something integrated. I hope Lotus even goes
so far as to adopt Folio's text engine."

================================================================

Wellfleet, SynOptics to merge

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Paula Musich

The convergence of the router and wiring hub markets reached a major
milestone last week, when Wellfleet Communications Inc. and SynOptics
Communications Inc. -- heavyweights in each segment -- announced their
intent to merge.

The deal, which accentuates the industry's shift toward network-
switching technology and away from traditional LANs, will yield a global
internetworking company with combined revenues of $1.04 billion.
Wellfleet holds the No. 2 position in routers, behind Cisco Systems
Inc., while SynOptics is first in the market for hubs, said analysts.

"This merger is based on the concept that, as customers want to build
switched networks, they need more high-performance networking, wide-area
networking, switching, and network management," said Paul Severino,
president and CEO of Wellfleet, in Billerica, Mass., who will become
chairman of the as-yet-unnamed merged company.

The deal gives SynOptics, which sells primarily through reseller
channels, access to Wellfleet's sophisticated direct-sales force for its
high-end ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) and LAN switching products.
Wellfleet, which currently ships only an ATM interface for its routers,
gains entry to a broader range of ATM offerings, analysts said.

"Overnight, Wellfleet gains ATM and a hub partner, good distribution for
its low-end routers -- where they need help," said Fred McClimans,
principal and cofounder of Decisis Inc., in Ashburn, Va. "SynOptics also
gains in that they finally have a close personal relationship with a
router vendor."

Customers gain from the merger by being able to turn to a single vendor
for their enterprise internetworking requirements, said one large
Wellfleet user.

"Now they can articulate a complete strategy together that draws on
switched hubs, the high-end volume hubs and routers, and the ATM
switches on the high end -- we can have a complete solution from one
vendor," the user said.

The deal, which must be approved by the board of directors for each
firm, is expected to be completed in October. It calls for Wellfleet to
exchange a 0.725 percent share of its stock for each of SynOptics'
outstanding shares. Although Wellfleet is smaller in terms of sales, its
market valuation is higher than SynOptics.

"People have more confidence in Wellfleet than in SynOptics," McClimans
said, noting, however, that Wellfleet's stock was down $5.19 after heavy
trading on news of the deal, closing at $20.06 on July 5. SynOptics'
stock was also down, falling $1.13 to $14.63 the same day.

The challenge for the firms, said analysts, will come in the
implementation of the merger.

"I think this is a very difficult thing to pull off," said Eric
Benhamou, president and CEO of rival 3Com Corp., which merged with
Bridge Communications Inc. seven years ago. "We had a merger of equals
in '87 that caused the management team to be very inwardly focused. That
caused us to lose momentum."

================================================================

Next-generation ATM on tap from SynOptics-Wellfleet

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Paula Musich

Large users migrating to high-speed switched networks led Wellfleet
Communications Inc. and SynOptics Communications Inc. to agree to merge
last week in a blockbuster deal.

The companies are gambling that together they can change from today's
hub and router maker into tomorrow's enterprise supplier of ATM
(asynchronous transfer mode) equipment. In the process, they will
combine their hub, LAN switch, router, and ATM technologies.

"Two to three years from now we want to be installing merged
capabilities in the ATM products and be the leading company supplying
corporate enterprise customers," said Paul Severino, president and CEO
of Wellfleet, in Billerica, Mass.

Although officials at the two companies would not offer specifics, the
new company at first is likely to create a router module for SynOptics
hubs. It also is expected to distribute Wellfleet low-end Access Node
routers through SynOptics' resellers and use Wellfleet's advanced direct
sales force to sell SynOptics' LattisCell ATM products.

Future products will fill out an end-to-end network architecture
combining router and switch technology, along with the migration tools
necessary to help enterprise network users move from shared-media
networks to switched networks. That movement is well under way,
according to Dataquest Inc., of San Jose, Calif., which has found that
16 percent of large companies are using LAN switches.

"We're looking at all the alternatives, including switching technology,
now," said Wellfleet customer John Scoggin, supervisor of network
operations at Delmarva Power & Light in Newark, Del. "We've got a
[Cabletron Systems Inc.] MMAC-Plus [hub] on order. We may decide to go
toward switching technology and move away from routing."

Although Wellfleet today is shipping one ATM interface for its high-end
Backbone Node router and another is due later this year, its LAN- or
frame-switching technology is still in internal development. SynOptics
is currently shipping LAN switching products, and earlier this year the
Santa Clara, Calif., firm introduced a virtual LAN capability, which
allows groups of users on different LAN segments to operate one logical
network.

"The fast-switching technology we're working on for the Backbone Node
complements the LattisCell technology, a pure ATM switch," said Mick
Scully, vice president of product management for Wellfleet. The
technology, code-named Bluefish, will perform frame-to-cell
internetworking and high-performance virtual network routing, Scully
added.

SynOptics and Wellfleet officials would not discuss how quickly the
merged company might deliver products melding LAN switching, routing,
virtual networking, and ATM technologies. Scully characterized the
virtual network router as a product for the distant future.

Internetworking competitors are all pursuing the same next-generation
networking sale, and each has its own migration story.

Cabletron is pursuing a "superhub" strategy with MMAC-Plus
concentrators, which will boast a cell-switched backplane. Cisco Systems
Inc., with its Fusion architecture, is promoting the idea of
distributing routing functions to a hierarchy of routers. IBM and
Chipcom Corp. are working together on superhubs. IBM also intends to
provide a soup-to-nuts line of LAN switching and ATM products, and 3Com
Corp., on a smaller scale, is doing the same.

The merger could force Cabletron, of Rochester, N.H., and Cisco, of
Menlo Park, Calif., to join forces. The two companies inked a deal in
March to put Cisco router components in Cabletron's hubs, including the
MMAC-Plus.

"We're definitely growing closer to Cisco," said Bob Levine, Cabletron's
president and CEO. "I expect that in August we're going to outline for
the press more of our development efforts together." But, as for a
merger, "it's not in the cards," Levine said.

Eric Benhamou, president and CEO of 3Com, in Santa Clara, criticized the
Wellfleet-SynOptics combination. "It is a defensive merger of two
companies trying to cover each other's weaknesses," Benhamou asserted.

But Gary Law, director of business development for SynOptics, countered
that the new company would solve a pressing user need in years ahead.
"Customers need a single point to go to, and a migration path, not a
forklift upgrade," Law said.

================================================================

Apple adds four Newton MessagePad applications

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Ken Siegal

Four new software applications for Apple Computer Inc.'s Newton
MessagePad are due for release this month.

The products, announced by Apple's StarCore software publishing and
distribution group, include integrated applications, a custom forms
tool, meetings software, and a health data package.

TapWorks is a $119 package that integrates text-processing, spreadsheet,
graphing, and page-layout functions in a single application on the
Newton.

FormPad, also $119, allows users to create forms for either a Mac or
Windows platform, then download the forms to a Newton. After data is
entered on the Newton, it can be transferred back to the Windows or Mac
platform for data analysis.

Great Meetings, at $69, enables better meeting planning. Diet Log, at
$119, tracks personal health data.

Apple's StarCore can be contacted at (800) 708-7827.

================================================================

Large NetWare sites win new pricing structure

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Eric Smalley

To bring NetWare 4.x license fees in line with large users' pocketbooks,
Novell Inc. is quietly writing license agreements with selected users
that charge them on a per-node basis.

Novell's MLA (Master License Agreement), typically offered to firms with
10,000 or more nodes on their networks, includes an option, which lets
users pay a per-node price. The MLA option lets users deploy as many
servers as they need and includes free upgrades.

The pricing structure offers no advantages to smaller users.

Novell's standard practice of charging by connections per server has
been rankling some users who have seen their license fees balloon under
4.x.

"With NDS [NetWare Directory Services], if everyone logs in to your
network instead of individual servers, your number of connections per
server skyrockets," said Bill Shaw, manager of planning for Hillsboro
County, Fla.

The county's network has fewer than 10,000 nodes, so it would gain no
advantage from an MLA.

With NetWare 3.x, a user logs on to one server at a time, making the
number of connections per server relatively predictable. But with NDS
under 4.x, users log on to the network as a whole and can connect to
multiple servers at the same time.

Novell executives have acknowledged the need to change how NetWare is
priced for all users, but declined to offer a time frame. The Provo,
Utah, firm is considering several alternatives, including per-user
pricing based on log-ins to NDS and metering access to NetWare services.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is considering deploying NetWare 4.x
on a 2,600-node network. The MLA doesn't seem cost-effective for its
network, said Erich Mueller, director of operations for operations and
checking services. Novell officials described the potential NDS-based
pricing model to some users at BrainShare, Mueller said. "That's the
model I'm interested in," he said.

Changing pricing models can make waves in a network operating system
vendor's installed base, as Banyan Systems Inc. found out in February.
Banyan announced a shift from server licenses with unlimited users to
per-user licensing, effectively raising prices for many users.

"Banyan got blown out of the water," Shaw said. "Novell will have to be
very careful." Attention: You are now reading news which is expressly
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================================================================

Novell sinks Corsair effort

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Mary Jo Foley

Novell Inc. executives have pulled the plug on the company's development
as an independent product of Corsair, a souped-up Unix client designed
to provide an alternative to Windows.

But the Corsair development team is hoping that Novell will spin off the
project into a separate company and has appealed to Chairman Ray Noorda
to continue his financial support, according to sources. Noorda
personally provided some of Corsair's financing, sources said.

"Novell was taking a look at experimental technology [in this area]," an
official Novell source acknowledged last week. "But the technology is
not in product form yet, and we're not sure it will make it into product
form."

Despite convincing evidence that Novell President and CEO Robert
Frankenberg has killed the experimental project, however, a top official
Novell source says it's alive and well in the lab. "The status of
Corsair remains unchanged. It is still a viable set of technologies.
[Frankenberg] has not killed it," the source said, requesting anonymity.

Sources said some of the Corsair technology could eventually be built
into UnixWare to bolster the operating system.

Frankenberg made the decision to back off from developing Corsair as an
independent product while evaluating all areas of the Provo, Utah,
company for a pending reorganization, sources said. Company executives
are expected to unveil the reorganization this fall as the "New Novell."
This reorganization will include the assimilation of WordPerfect Corp.,
whose acquisition was completed last month.

Novell officials previewed Corsair for a number of key customers at its
BrainShare conference earlier this year. Corsair combines the kernel of
Linux 1.0 for Intel processors with Novell's DOS 7.0, according to
internal Novell documents. The operating system, which had been priced
at $99 and originally slated to be announced this month, was being
designed to run on Intel, PowerPC, and other RISC processors, the
documents said.

Corsair was designed to include a DOS/Windows emulator, the Mosaic
graphical front end to the Internet, and a "virtual world" desktop. The
desktop was to be based on Visix Software Inc.'s Looking Glass product.

"We heard that Corsair was going to be targeted at embedded switches,
appliances, and other devices," said an official with a company that
licenses UnixWare, Novell's current Unix offering. "The feeling was that
the UnixWare kernel was too big for Novell to have a `UnixWare
Everywhere' strategy, like Microsoft's `Windows Everywhere' strategy.

"But Noorda was making noises that Corsair was what they'd lead with and
fight Windows with," the official continued. "That was a real slap in
the face for the UnixWare guys."

However, not even UnixWare is immune from Frankenberg's stamp. Novell is
continuing to wrestle with the question of how to market the Unix
operating system. As of the end of 1993, Novell still had sold only
between 40,000 and 50,000 copies of the operating system. The symmetric-
multiprocessing version of UnixWare, Version 2.0, is slated to ship
before year's end, but has yet to enter alpha testing.

For example, UnixWare would benefit from closer integration with
Windows, said Linda Verbeten, president of ILC Holding Corp., in
Crofton, Md. "We suggested to Novell and Unisys [Corp.] that they put a
coprocessor in their [UnixWare-based PC] to bring Unix and Windows more
closely together," Verbeten said.

ILC is eagerly awaiting UnixWare 2.0, which is slated to include support
for enhanced-mode Windows by providing shared Windows-Unix memory
management, she said.

================================================================

IBM keeps pace with color ThinkPad 510

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Neal Boudette

IBM Personal Computer Co. moved to keep pace with Compaq Computer Corp.
and other vendors in the subnotebook market last month, unleashing a
color-screen version of its ThinkPad 510.

The 4-pound ThinkPad 510Cs features a passive-matrix color LCD and
software designed for on-line and wireless services.

At $2,399, the 510Cs can compete with Compaq's similarly priced color
Aero, but may have trouble winning over some buyers who suffered through
delays and recalls when PC Co. officials first announced the ThinkPad
500 a year ago.

"I'd hesitate to try them again because of what happened," said Jim
Miller, a free-lance writer in Long Beach, Calif.

After the 500's June announcement, a problem with its self-charging
battery forced IBM to delay shipments and eventually to halt production
for several months. IBM later relaunched the 500 with a standard battery
that uses an AC adapter for recharging.

Like the monochrome ThinkPad 510 released in May, the 510Cs is based on
an IBM-made, 25/50MHz 486 Blue Lightning processor, and comes with 4M
bytes of RAM (expandable to 20M bytes) and a 200M-byte hard drive.

It uses a nickel-metal hydride battery and comes with IBM's PC-DOS 6.3
and Windows 3.1. It also includes access software for America Online and
Prodigy, as well as IBM's Advantis wireless communications service.

IBM also released a new docking station for three of its full-sized
ThinkPads. The $719 Dock II can be used with the ThinkPad 360, 750, or
755, and includes two ISA slots and two drive bays.

Both products are available from IBM PC Direct. PC Co., of Somers, N.Y.,
can be reached at (800) 426-2968.

================================================================

IBM PC Co. to cut up to 3,000 employees

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Michael R. Zimmerman

IBM Personal Computer Co. plans to reduce its worldwide work force by
2,000 to 3,000 employees before the end of the year as part of a plan to
consolidate its PC operations.

The IBM division, currently based in Somers, N.Y., has begun the first phase
of moving its operations from three geographically disparate locations to a
plant in Raleigh, N.C., said sources close to IBM.

"Every business in IBM is looking for ways to cut costs and increase
efficiencies," said IBM spokeswoman Tara Sexton, who declined to comment
on the reports. Sexton stressed, however, that the PC Co. has not made
any announcements, adding, "If we were, we'd tell our employees first."

Raleigh-Bound

But according to some sources, the consolidation began several weeks ago
when the PC Co. moved a 20-person motherboard-development team from its
Boca Raton, Fla., facility to Raleigh. The remaining members of the Boca
Raton-based hardware-development team will move to Raleigh in stages
during the next 18 months, they said.

The PC Co. will also move distribution and fulfillment groups from
Atlanta to Raleigh over the next 18 months, sources said. The company's
Power Personal Systems division will remain in Austin, Texas, they said.

The PC Co.'s manufacturing facility is in Raleigh.

Richard Thoman, IBM senior vice president and group executive, and the
PC Co.'s executive management team -- including Bruce Claflin, general
manager of product and brand management, and William McCracken, general
manager of marketing and customer fulfillment -- will remain in Somers.

However, discussions are under way to move the Somers-based marketing-
support and brand-management operations to Raleigh by the end of 1995.

The PC Co. news comes just weeks before IBM is due to report its second-
quarter financial results. The cuts should help CEO Louis Gerstner reach
his goal of a total work-force reduction of 35,000 by the end of 1994.

================================================================

Powersoft tool kit to modernize Xbase apps

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Norvin Leach

Powersoft Corp. last week leaped into the suite market with a set of
homegrown and third-party tools that enable developers to modernize
their Xbase applications.

The Concord, Mass., firm also began reselling a third-party function
library that has been ported to work with PowerBuilder. The tool suite,
called the Jump-Start Client/Server Kit, is a bundle of tools designed
to help Xbase developers rebuild their applications as relational
client/server systems, said Doug Miller, director of Powersoft's desktop
business unit.

The tools include PowerBuilder Desktop, a scaled-down version of
PowerBuilder; a version of LogicWorks Inc.'s ERwin data-modeling tool
designed for PowerBuilder Desktop; a three-user Windows version of the
Watcom SQL relational database; and PowerViewer, Powersoft's query-
creation and report-writing tool.

The ERwin tool is a scaled-down version of ERwin/ERX for PowerBuilder.
The tool includes reverse-engineering and forward-engineering components
that allow users to create structure diagrams from installed database
files for use with PowerBuilder Desktop.

Brent Williams, an analyst with International Data Corp. in San
Francisco, said this version of ERwin's data-modeling tool could prove
valuable to Xbase developers who want to port their applications to SQL
databases.

"Moving data models is going to be a necessary capability for people who
want to migrate their databases," he said.

The third-party function library, called FunCky, is a port of a function
library for Clipper and C developers from DLesko Inc. of Jersey City,
N.J.

The Jump-Start Client/Server Kit, available through PowerBuilder
distributors, costs $599.

ERwin for PowerBuilder Desktop is available separately from LogicWorks
for $495.

================================================================

DEC cuts downsizing agreement with Oracle

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Sarah E. Varney and Michael Vizard

At a time when Digital Equipment Corp.'s commitment to its Rdb database
appears to be waning, the company last week pledged to work more closely
with Oracle Corp. to entice mainframe sites to downsize to DEC OSF/1
running on Alpha AXP systems.

The duo's Enterprise Solutions Program will provide users migrating from
mainframes to open systems with a single point of contact for both
hardware and applications, said officials from the two companies.

While the agreement is not focused specifically on migrating Rdb users,
Oracle officials said their systems consulting group is up to the task.

"We intend to provide both interoperability and migration from existing
databases, including Rdb and RMS," said Beatriz Infante, vice president
of the DEC products division at the Redwood Shores, Calif., database
vendor.

As part of a general restructuring of the company, DEC officials
acknowledged considering selling Rdb to a third-party supplier. Last
week, a spokesman for the Maynard, Mass., company declined to comment,
but observers said a deal is imminent.

"There is zero probability of the status quo continuing," said Wes
Melling, an analyst with Gartner Group Inc., in Stamford, Conn. "I'm
getting a call a day about DEC."

"I'm expecting an announcement any day now. I think the best thing is
for them to hurry up and make a decision," said Tom Bandy, president of
Information Systems Group Inc., in Richmond, Va., which sells database-
tuning software and database consulting services.

Industry analysts point to Computer Associates International Inc. as a
potential buyer of Rdb; officials at the Islandia, N.Y., company
declined to comment.

Maintaining Commitment

Despite the pending change in Rdb's status, some users appear to be
committed to a database architecture that has been heavily optimized for
proprietary VAX systems.

"I would prefer they not sell it, but it depends who they sell it to,"
said Ed Homko, an engineer in the MIS group at Dr Pepper/Seven-Up Co.,
in Dallas.

Anne Love, database administrator at AFSA Data Corp., in Long Beach,
Calif., expressed disbelief over the potential sale of Rdb.

"If I were to find out that Rdb was being sold, I would be very
worried," Love said. "But it's not going to happen."

The reaction from Rdb users is understandable, according to Richard
Finkelstein, president of Performance Consulting Inc., in Chicago.

"The software is actually quite good," Finkelstein said, "and they're
reluctant to face the fact that they're going to have to make a change."

================================================================

Oracle7.1 gets one replication service, awaits two

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Anne Knowles

The imminent upgrade of Oracle Corp.'s namesake database features
advanced parallel processing and basic replication capabilities, but two
other types of replication are still missing.

All of the parallel functionality -- what Oracle calls Parallel
Everything -- will be available when the product ships this month. But
two of the three replication features won't be delivered until the first
quarter of 1995, a year after the product was originally scheduled to
ship.

The delayed symmetric replication features are what Oracle calls dynamic
ownership and update anywhere. Dynamic ownership lets an application
flow from site to site, taking with it the authority to replicate. That
guarantees that only one site at a time has the power to replicate.

Update anywhere allows any database to replicate changes to any other
database containing the same data. The feature includes software that
resolves any conflict that might arise when more than one database
attempts to alter the same data, according to Oracle officials.

A type of replication Oracle calls primary site replication, in which
only one site has the authorization to replicate, is available now.

At least one user said he has implemented primary site replication and
is alpha testing the other two types of replication. Dewey Allen,
national director of the advanced software engineering program at Price
Waterhouse's office in Bethesda, Md., said he has "tested the basics and
found no major bugs. We'll be building a more sophisticated application
with it now."

Oracle can be reached at (415) 506-7000.

================================================================

Bill huffs while Katt shoots geeks in a barrel

Rumor Central from PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Spencer F. Katt

Don't tell anyone where you got this," hissed a source at People for the
Ethical Treatment of Stuffed Animals, "but Microsoft is shooting you in
effigy." Sure enough, the organizers of the PC Expo GeekFest had strung
up eight Spencer dolls by their tails and invited partygoers to shoot
them with Nerf arrows. Points were allotted on the basis of body parts
-- hitting an eyeball earned more than a stomach -- and 100 points won
you a copy of Office. The shooting gallery proved so popular that the
organizers wanted to try it again at Fall Comdex, but unfortunately, all
of the Spencer dolls were stolen.

"Office? What kind of prize is that? Did they include a new hard drive
for that 60-meg full install?" huffed Le Chat. Spence had fashioned six
geeks out of Kleenex and was busy dispatching them with his paper-clip
cannon.

Speaking of huffs, it seems Bill G. has lately been challenging Thomas
the Tank Engine for huff-puffing. One Ma Bell tipster claimed to the
Katt that when higher-ups told Gates AT&T would not do a deal with MS
earlier this year, Redmond Bill stomped out of AT&T's Basking Ridge
headquarters, muttering, "We'll build the whole system ourselves." True
to his word, MS is building its own on-line service and enterprise
messaging server, already five years in the making and still with little
to show except a very squishy delivery date of 1995. If high heads have
not rolled already, they soon may.

"So what isn't for sale at Digital?" queried Spence, when one insider
regaled him with how DEC recently shelled out $200,000 to rename and
promote Avastor, formerly its OEM Storage Business -- then promptly put
it on the block. In addition to the peddling of the consulting biz, the
DEC tipster contended that field service also has a price tag, the chip
group will get AMD name tags, and the printer gang will become HPers.

Speaking of HP, one multimedia tipster confided that HP was in
negotiations to put the Video Toaster product line on Windows. In
unrelated news, virus protection will be built into new Compaq Deskpros
introduced in September.

Maybe OLE isn't the real dispute in the Wang-Microsoft legal battle,
speculated a longtime tipster and jokester. Noting Spence's tip last
week on Microsoft's imminent launch of WISE (Windows Interface Source
Environment), the tipster recalled that Wang used to have its own
version of WISE -- the Wang Integrated Services Exchange.

Another tipster, commenting on why the Microsoft-DEC design preview for
Common Object Model has been delayed, said he had heard that Microsoft
realized two weeks before the mid-June conference that they had
forgotten to invite DEC.

Intelligence from around the globe says no way is Jim Cannavino shelving
his blue suit. Au contraire, Jimbo is knee-deep in deal-making for IBM
with several VIPs (very important partners) and is in the game for the
long haul. Whoever said tip-tossing was a perfect science, quoth the
Katt, with a meow culpa to Jim.

A couple of gossipers called in to Spence, saying that MS is supposedly
getting serious pressure from the likes of United Parcel Service and
Ford to develop native 32-bit OS/2 apps.

"MS doing 32-bit OS/2 is about as likely as Chicago appearing before
next year's spring thaw," mumbled Spence, as his clip cannon zeroed the
final geekster.

================================================================

Modems able to hear their master's voice

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Ken Phillips

A new generation of modems is appearing on the market. "Voice-capable"
devices are becoming available in many formats, including internal PC
card, external stand-alone, and laptop-based PCMCIA, for little more
than the prices of yesterday's fax/data-only modems.

Voice/fax/data modems provide a means of recording voice input from
telephone circuits. The computer (usually a PC) thus takes on new
disguises: those of answering machine, dictaphone/recorder, and
telephone. More importantly, the recording capability also brings a way
of remotely controlling PCs without a keyboard.

Software developers have been quick to exploit the new voice technology,
creating inexpensive voice-mail systems that can place messages into
private mailboxes, transfer calls, and even call a user's pager upon
receipt of a message.

Fax-on-demand systems let customers call for automated information
delivery, saving wear and tear on sales and support teams. Interactive
voice-response systems provide the ability for clients with limited
computer skills to make their own appointments, check their account
balances, transfer funds between accounts, and more.

Voice-capable modems have made it possible to carry an entire office
around in a 6-pound notebook PC. Developers' ideas for the future
include voice annotation for faxes, high-quality "business audio"
multimedia presentations with sound and video images, and text-to-speech
applications that can read a fax to the recipient.

Several chip makers supply the new technology for the modem builders.
Rockwell International Corp.owns roughly three-quarters of the fax/data
modem chip market and is assured of a strong presence in the design and
implementation of voice-compatible chips. Other manufacturers include
Cirrus Logic Inc., AT&T Corp., Yamaha Corp., and TDK Corp.

CIM Engineering Inc., of Foster City, Calif., an OEM modem manufacturer,
introduced the first voice-capable modem in 1992. Several other modem
vendors affix private labels to CIM's modems, which are manufactured in
Hong Kong and China.

CIM has adopted the Cirrus Logic chip set, which mates a 14.4K-bps
fax/modem, voice capability, and an internal DSP (digital-signal
processor) for high performance.

CIM adds a tiny Data Access Arrangement, a normally bulky isolation
transformer that insulates the modem from the phone line. Compact size
leads to low power consumption and an attractive cost.

Although voice/fax/data modems are appearing in PCMCIA cards, such cards
are not being added into PDA (personal digital assistant) products. PDAs
currently have too little power and memory to benefit the disk-intensive
applications that operate the modems.

================================================================

IBM lays out strategy for messaging applications

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Erica Schroeder

IBM plans to roll out this fall a communications strategy designed to
make it easier for IBM sites to move from mainframe messaging
applications to PC LAN groupware packages.

According to IBM officials, many network administrators used to
centralized mainframe environments are now grappling with messaging
management. The strategy will provide centralized management with
flexible front ends and a variety of add-on functions.

The Armonk, N.Y., giant's plan is centered on a client/server
architecture that will function as a universal messaging back end, with
its own Windows and OS/2 front ends and interfaces to other client
applications, officials said.

The technology, not yet named, is based mainly on IBM's existing
Ultimail E-mail server products. It will incorporate such features as
voice, fax, video, and address-book and calendaring functions, said Dick
Sullivan, director of workgroup solutions marketing in Somers, N.Y.

IBM will announce its strategy in September and begin to roll out
products later in the quarter.

The first server platforms will be OS/2 and OS/400, with AIX following
shortly after. Other likely server platforms include Windows NT and
other versions of Unix, while IBM likely will support System 7 and
Windows 4.0 as clients, officials said.

The server-based software will also work as a back end for Lotus
Development Corp.'s Notes and cc:Mail, and with other Vendor-Independent
Messaging- and Messaging API-compatible E-mail and groupware
applications.

Users said that as they move from host-based systems to client/server,
system administration becomes a larger problem.

"We're looking at the corporate messaging architecture and I really
believe in supporting client/server mail, but we're facing huge support
problems if we downsize, because we have 12,000 users on the mainframe,"
said Glenn Chafe, system manager for the Canadian National Railway in
Montreal, who said IBM's strategy must be extremely compelling to be
considered. "We got burned in the past with OfficeVision and PROFS. At
this point, I don't think IBM's in the loop."

================================================================

Wanted -- ProShare partners for Intel

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Erica Schroeder

Although Intel Corp. is hatching OEM deals with PC vendors and a
software-suite maker to bolster its ProShare videoconferencing package,
the company will not offer videoconferencing over LANs until next year.

Intel officials made the announcement at the PC Expo show in New York
late last month. Intel officials had not previously given a time frame
for the LAN version. The projected rollout schedule will put Intel
behind rival PictureTel Corp., which is expected to deliver a LAN-based
videoconferencing package in September.

PictureTel announced at PC Expo a $149 application-sharing feature, Live
Share, for its PictureTel Live 100 videoconferencing system.

Intel also announced ProShare Premiere, a $299 application-sharing
feature for ProShare. The feature works over WANs and LANs. ProShare
Premiere will be available later this month.

Intel officials also said ProShare will include support for the h.320
videoconferencing standard by the end of the year. ProShare currently
relies on Intel's Indeo compression-decompression algorithm. Support for
the standard will provide interoperability with other videoconferencing
systems.

In addition, Intel last week reached at agreement with NYNEX Corp. to
provide ISDN service to ProShare users. The deal is similar to those
struck with other regional Bell Operating Companies earlier this year.

Although Intel officials declined to specify the companies with which
OEM deals are expected, they did confirm that agreements with three PC
hardware companies and one software-suite company are likely over the
next two months.

Industry analysts said Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. could
be hardware partners. One analyst said Compaq Computer Corp., which last
month penned a development agreement with competitor PictureTel, is a
likely candidate.

Although Intel's strategy is sound, users are still hesitant to adopt
videoconferencing, according to one analyst.

"Their strategy is fine -- it's just premature [for the market]. They
have to do all this to seed the market," said Elliot Gold, president of
TeleSpan, a market-research firm in Altadena, Calif.

"Every roadblock that they've found, they've solved," Gold added. "Users
wanted support for standards, and [Intel is] providing it."

The most likely suite candidate is Novell Inc. and its new acquisition,
WordPerfect Corp., analysts said. Novell currently offers NetWare Video
for video services over LANs, and WordPerfect last week announced that
it will support video in its software suite.

Sharing is Better

Users evaluating videoconferencing technology said that in many cases,
the ability to share information and files is more important than face-
to-face contact and is a much more cost-effective solution.

"What's interesting to us is where you can send something over a regular
phone line attached to computer so you don't have to have a high-end
telephone bill every month," said Sharon Opsahl, executive assistant at
Kurt Manufacturing Co., in Minneapolis. Current prices for video
capabilities are too high, Opsahl said.

Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at (800) 538-3373.

================================================================

SynOptics-Wellfleet deal shows foresight

This PC Week for July 11, 1994 by John Dodge

The merger of SynOptics and Wellfleet makes great sense from a strategic
perspective. The two companies have complementary strengths and
weaknesses, sell to the same customer type, and live in the same world.
Most important, they want to accelerate their drive toward adoption of
next-generation internetworking technology. The collaboration passes
most if not all of the strategic tests.

Where the marriage could turn sour is in bad execution of the details or
unexpected surprises. Key principals could leave (a $1 billion company
does not qualify as an entrepreneurship, an environment where the Paul
Severinos of the world usually thrive). Customers could get inconsistent
messages. Cultures could clash. Mergers are inherently dangerous.

The 3Com-Bridge merger looked just as opportune in 1987, but resulted in
the new company's becoming too inwardly focused, 3Com CEO Eric Benhamou
points out (see story entitled 'Wellfleet, SynOptics to merge'). As a
competitor, one could, however, question his statement that this was a
defensive move masking weaknesses (see story entitled 'Next-generation
ATM on tap from SynOptics-Wellfleet'). There is foresight in this move,
the first and largest in this generation of independent internetworking
companies.

Initial success depends on merging the companies without neglecting the
vision, and consequently the customers and the world they live in. The
merged concern's top executives must get employees to buy into and
execute the vision as their professional lives are changing
dramatically. The quicker the dust settles, the faster more energy can
be put into the plan.

The "gamble" to merge routers and hubs with advanced LAN switching and
ATM technologies is one the two companies have to take. With companies
like Compaq set to enter the low end (defined as low-margin commodity
products) of the router and hub market, independents like Wellfleet,
Cisco, 3Com, Cabletron, and SynOptics have to define and drive the high
end of the market.

In the eternal search for more network performance, these five companies
virtually created the hub and router businesses. Now they find
themselves squeezed between a re-energized IBM, DEC, and HP on one side
and dozens of nimble startups on the other.

There is a blurred line between defensive and offensive measures.
Moreover, classifying this merger as one or the other is really
unimportant. Either way, both companies had to do something. If in a
year the marriage is on the rocks, it will be the result of bad
execution en route, not something flawed from the start.

================================================================

Presentation battle hinges on suites

From PC Week for July 11, 1994 by Lisa Nadile

Lotus Development Corp. and Novell Inc.'s WordPerfect Corp. subsidiary
are racing to solidify their presence in a presentation-graphics market
that is increasingly dominated by suites.

Lotus, based in Cambridge, Mass., has announced Version 2.1 of Freelance
Graphics, while WordPerfect has begun previewing Presentations 3.0. Both
packages offer a number of templates and aids for configuring
presentations in addition to improved integration with applications
packaged in the same suite.

Due by the end of September, Freelance 2.1 adds Notes/FX 1.1 technology,
which is expected to be available as part of a Lotus SmartSuite edition
later this year, for tighter integration with Notes.

WordPerfect, of Orem, Utah, meanwhile, plans to deliver Presentations
3.0 this fall with the rest of its PerfectOffice suite. The package
supports Novell's Open Document Management API, NetWare Navigator, and
Intel Corp.'s ProShare Personal Conferencing, in addition to OLE (Object
Linking and Embedding) 2.0.

But while suites have had a substantial impact on sales of presentation-
graphics packages, users say they are more concerned about ease of use
than pricing. "The fact that Freelance Graphics is part of SmartSuite
isn't what's most important to me," said Neal David, director of MIS for
Waters Corp. in Milford, Mass., and a Freelance Graphics user. "Ease of
use is the most important factor."

David agreed with other users who cited DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange), OLE
compatibility, and graphing features as matters of ranking importance.
"Harvard Graphics does what I need it to," said Terry Brewster, a
Vienna, Va., communications engineer for AT&T Corp. who uses Harvard
Graphics from Software Publishing Corp. "I don't care that Harvard
Graphics is not part of a suite. DDE and OLE work fine."

Nevertheless, suites have allowed companies such as Microsoft Corp. and
Lotus to become dominant suppliers.

"Suites have had a tremendous effect on the sales of presentation
graphics," said Karl Wong, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., of San Jose,
Calif. "SPC took a dive. WordPerfect Presentations will probably go from
0 percent to 100 percent growth because of the visibility offered by
PerfectOffice."

Unit sales of presentation-graphics packages increased 37 percent last
year, according to the Software Publishers Association. But revenue has
not kept pace with volume, growing only 9.1 percent last year.

"SPC is competing with freeware. Not being part of a suite has really
hurt them," said David Tremble, executive director of the SPA in
Washington.

SPC claims to maintain about a 25 percent share of the overall market.
"We aren't going to compete with the suites," countered Chris Randles,
director of marketing at the Santa Clara, Calif., company. "There is
still a large group of users out there who want best of breed."

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