Iona Technologies Ltd, which licensed Microsoft Corp’s COM Component Object Technology back in January of this year is, as expected, to integrate Microsoft’s Transaction Server technology with its own OrbixOTM object transaction manager. The news was announced at the Tech Ed event 98 in New Orleans yesterday. Visual Edge Software Ltd also announced it would be licensing COM on Unix for its COM to Corba ObjectBridge product, and Digital Equipment Corp said it would provide interoperability between Microsoft Transaction Server and its own Digital ACMS transaction processing monitor. Iona and DEC will both be using the TIP transaction Internet protocol, a proposed Internet Engineering Task Force standard, for the integration work. Iona says the work will enable transaction components to communicate transparently across the Internet from either Microsoft Transaction Server or Orbix OTM servers. DEC said ACMS users on Open VMS, Digital Unix or Windows NT would be able to do the same. Visual Edge’s ObjectBridge technology is used by BEA Systems Inc, SAP AG and Inprise Corp (the company once known as Borland International Inc). Microsoft has gradually changed its mind over opening up the COM world to non-Microsoft platforms over the last six months or so. Over that time it has licensed COM to Siemens Nixdorf, Hewlett-Packard Co and Silicon Graphics Inc, and has been working with applications vendors such as SAP AG and Baan NV, and systems integrators such as Andersen Consulting and EDS Corp.
