Altai Inc, Arlington, Texas will introduce its first client-server-based distributed systems management software worldwide in April. The firm, which comes from a traditional mainframe background specialising in the IBM Corp and Digital Equipment Corp markets, positions its product as a direct competitor to Computer Associates International Inc’s Unicenter and claims that a third of its current clientele, of which there are 1,700 customers worldwide, come from Computer Associates directly. Altai is also pitching itself against Unix systems management heavyweights Austin, Texas-based Tivoli Systems Inc and OpenVision Inc of Pleasanton, California, but its main targets are corporates using heterogeneous computing environments. The software is collectively called Z/Team Unix, but within this are a set of different modules and an underlying system architecture, called Oasis. Z/Team Unix has been completely reengineered and Oasis, although incorporating some specific features from the mainframe, is also new in design, the company says. Oasis is the backplane technology, comprising six layers. At the system level layer, in its initial release the thing supports MVS,VSE, RS/6000, AS/400, and personal computer operating systems.
Chosen operating system
Support for HP-UX, Solaris, AT&T Global Information Solutions Unix, Sequent Computer Systems Inc and Pyramid Technology Corp will follow after April through to 1996. The next layer comprises a set of host systems interfaces that connects the system with the user’s chosen operating system. Up from this is the distributed network manager. It supports both mainframe and Unix-based protocols, including LU6.2, Advanced Program-to-Program Communication, TCP/IP and the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment. Altai says the Oasis architecture is modular, so that different user specifications, like choice of protocol and operating system, can be slotted in without recompiling the tool. The communications manager provides two programming interfaces. One is specific to Altai and is used to provide program-to-program interoperability between different Altai products. The other programming interface supports third party systems management, storage and printing products, including software from Storage Technology Corp, Legent Corp, IBM Corp, Landmark Graphics Co and Memorex Telex NV. The logic manager enables users to navigate through on-line transactions and extract or import them to Z/Team for analysis. At the front end Z/Team supports Motif, Windows and OS/2 graphical user interfaces and the interface is consistent on every system, irrespective of the native operating system, the company says. The provision of one consistent view means that administrators can manage their computing environments either as a single or distributed points of control. Z/Team incorporates a range of distributed management functions, including automated systems, scheduling and event management, information transmission and report distribution. On the automation side, Z/Team dynamically manages the enterprise automatically doing back-ups and alerting staff of problems. It provides automated balancing, output management and message management. The user can choose the level of automation. It can process single or multiple actions which can be message-, event- or time-driven. Z/Team for Unix is due next year, with existing mainframe products available now.
