Having re-styled itself the intranet company at the end of last year, JSB Computer Systems Ltd has created a separate product and division, surfControl, to deal with the thorny issue of Internet-intranet access control. The personal computer-to-Unix terminal emulation company saw the stagnation of its core business coming, and is looking to the emerging Internet technologies for its future success. Last year, it apparently launched a multimedia kiosk-style front end with its own suite of back office operations for corporate intranets, which it called Intranet Jazz (CI No 2,815). However, the company is now referring to this offering as a technology showcase, which it has apparently been touting around to potential customers. It would seem the access control options were what most impressed the customers, so, buoyed up by some independent research on the subject, JSB has launched surfControl. Some 84% of companies interviewed in the research said connection to the Internet was a fundamental business requirement, but most of those were concerned about time-wasting by surfers. While employees were cagey about giving precise timings, 100% of those questioned admitted to surfing the Internet for personal use, averaging 15 to 30 minutes per day. SurfControl currently runs under Novell Inc’s NetWare. It consists of an access control engine, in which organizations define their access rules. The system uses Novell Directory Services to implement the access rights. In this way, users and workgroups are already defined. The administrator simply drags a user or group onto company-defined access rules. The company can create a blacklist or a whitelist, either listing all sites that a user is not permitted to visit, or alternatively listing only those sites that the user is allowed to visit. The system is equally applicable to internal intranet access or external access to the Internet. SurfControl also includes a monitor of all sites visited by each user, so that companies can build up the blacklist as they go. JSB will also bring out versions of surfControl under Windows NT and Unix, it said. JSB’s European managing director Steve Purdham will also become president of surfControl. He said the company’s traditional business will continue to be an important revenue stream, and he does not see it dwindling in the near future. In fact, 60% of the Intranet Jazz product has been incorporated in a new 32-bit intranet-enabled version of the company’s Multiview terminal emulation product, soon to be released as Multiview 2000. However, Purdham says he expects surfControl to become JSB’s main business in the next few years. The NetWare version of surfControl is available now, on CD-ROM or to download from JSB’ s Web site.
