Unicomp has signed up database giant Oracle as its newest and biggest partner to help it push its forthcoming Unibol400 rehosting environment. Unibol400 is the NT implementation of Unicomp’s AS/400 application rehosting environment for Unix, which has been available for years and has been used by 30 AS/400 software houses to rehost their AS/400 RPG and Cobol applications on Unix servers. Unibol400 for NT is in controlled release and is due for general release in March 1999. Unibol400 runs on top of Oracle’s Oracle8i DBMS for Windows NT, much as the Unix version did, and basically acts as middleware to make an Oracle database look like the AS/400 DB2/400 database and allows RPG, Cobol and CL programs written for the AS/400 to be recompiled for the Unix, and now, NT environment with minimal changes. The Oracle partnership aims to offer AS/400 independent software vendors interested in porting their products to NT – that means most of them – a cost-effective, fast-track approach to getting their wares on NT. Unicomp says that Oracle’s Alliances, Design & Migration Services group has worked closely with its programmers to tightly integrate the Unibol400 environment with Oracle8i running on Windows NT Server. Under the agreement, Oracle will deliver technical assistance to help ISVs rehost their applications and help them tune those applications for optimum performance. It will also help ISVs add other functionality, such as data analysis, failover support and web access, to their applications after they have been moved to Oracle/NT servers. Presumably, the deal also covers those AS/400 ISVs who want to support Unix servers as well, although both vendors are keen on focusing on NT right now because of the momentum it has in the midrange server market. Several years ago, Unibol partnered with Unix server vendor Hewlett-Packard Co to assault the AS/400 market and met with some success; having Oracle as a partner in the NT space could very likely work out even better, since Oracle cuts across the entire midrange.
