What do Digital Equipment Corp and IBM Corp have in common in the networking arena? The answer is that both have large established bases of LAN Manager users, and both are involved in strategic agreements with Microsoft Corp and Novell Inc. DEC’s new agreements with both companies centre around the DEC Pathworks personal computer network operating system which provides users with support for access to NetWare and LAN Manager services running either on DEC hosts, or as separate servers. The agreements move DEC towards more up-to-date support of LAN Manager and Novell NetWare. For example, current NetWare for VMS is based on 16-bit portable NetWare code, while under the new agreement, the NetWare implementation will be based on the full 32-bit NetWare code for generic Unix NetWare. The server end of Pathworks, the provision of personal computer network operating system support for both VAX/VMS and Ultrix, is based on LAN Manager 1.1. Consequently, the sales of LAN Manager represented by Pathworks make DEC the largest OEM customer of LAN Manager in the world. Microsoft and DEC have announced plans to broaden their long-standing relationship, and a key element of this is the extension of the base Pathworks product to support LAN Manager 2.1. Initially this will be available from DEC for OS/2, with UltrixMIPS and VAX/VMS Pathworks to follow. Also, Microsoft will license the Windows NT operating system to DEC, and DEC will expand its Pathworks corporate network operating system to include server and client software for Microsoft Windows NT. In the US, the agreement means that DEC is a member of Microsoft’s new Strategic Integrator Programme, and the company is now a direct reseller of Microsoft’s family of networking products, including LAN Manager 2.1. Also in the US, a sales agreement between DEC and Microsoft is designed to compensate the Micro soft’s sales force for DEC’s sales of LAN Manager-based Pathworks products. However, the agreement between DEC and Novell is less well defined. It is not expected to bring any definite product announcements until later this year, third quarter or later. The two said that they will address the development of an enterprise-wide network computing system, and of interoperability between their products. The pact includes an expansion of Pathworks to integrate Novell’s NetWare network services on DEC’s VAX/VMS, RISC Ultrix and OSF/1 servers.
